The complete essay from the TPNHA Collection:

Although pious legends picture Thomas Paine as terrified of death, his only fear was lest he should live too long, and suffer like his parents from helpless age. When at length death was plainly approaching his only dread was excited by the zealous aggressions of proselytizers, whose eagerness for some miraculous manifestations from heaven or hell, at the death bed of the famous deist was likely, he foresaw, to fabricate a fabulous fulfillment. He therefore sent for the widow of friend Elihu Palmer, who had been left in poverty, to watch beside him till his death. His next anxiety was lest fanatics, in their disappointment that he was neither converted nor carried off by Satan, should subject his body to indignities, and, his parents having been Quakers, he requested burial in the Friends’ graveyard in New York. This was refused solely because of his deism, nothing whatever being alleged against his character. He was buried at New Rochelle on the farm presented to him by the State of New York at the close of the Revolution because of his services in that struggle.

And even then Paine entered on his posthumous career. There was no Quaker formula against deism, and the refusal of a grave to Paine, resented by some members of that Society, began a controversy which as I believe resulted twenty years later in a split, and the establishment of the rationalistic Society now known as “Hicksite Quakers”.

A plain headstone was placed at Paine’s grave, but bits of it were chipped away by visitors. A Fragment is sometimes shown at Paine’s celebrations in New York, and the destruction of the headstone ascribed to orthodox vandalism. But Gilbert Vale, who in 1837 edited The Beacon, said in that paper that it was done by “admiring visitors”. In his paper of July 15, 1837, Vale says: “After Cobbett violated the grave, and removed the bones from the remains of Paine, the headstone as broken, and pieces successively removed by different visitors; one large fragment was preserved by a lady in an opposite cottage, in which Mr. Paine had sometimes boarded; but this fragment gradually suffered diminution, as successive visitors begged a piece of what they could no longer steal. To preserve the last remnant the lady has had it plastered up in a wall.” The cottage alluded to is the Bayeaux house, and the lady Mrs. Badeau, who lived there with her mother, the widow Bayeaux, when Paine was a boarder. Her son, Mr. Albert Badeau, whom I visited in New Rochelle in 1891, preserved various relics of Paine. He saw Cobbett’s workmen digging up Paine’s bones about dawn.

In September 1819 Cobbett wrote from America a public letter to Lord Folkstone in which he advised him to read Paine’s “Decline and Fall of the British System of Finance”: “and then blush at the use of the words ‘Lower Orders’; blush to think that this man, born in humble life, knew more than all the ‘higher orders’ put together. Yet while such a fellow as pensioned Johnson, ‘that slave of state’, stands in colossal marble in St. Paul’s, Paine lies in a little hole under the grass and weeds of an obscure farm in America. There, however, he shall not lie, unnoticed, much longer. He belongs to England. His fame is the property of England; and if no other people will show that they value that fame, the people of England will. Yes, my Lord, among the pleasures that I promise myself, is that of seeing the name of Paine honoured in every part of England, where base corruption caused him, while alive, to be burnt in effigy. Never will England be what it ought to be until the marble of Pitt’s monument is converted into a monument to the memory of Paine.”

In the same month the remains were dug up. “Our expedition”, wrote Cobbett, “set out from New York in the middle of the night; got to the place (twenty-two miles off) at peak of day; took up the coffin entire; and just as we found it, goes to England. Let it be considered the act of the Reformers of England, Scotland and Ireland. In their name we opened the grave, and in their name will the tomb be raised.” (Cobbett’s Register xxxv. P.382.) According to The Beacon (Dec. 27,1845) a little finger of Paine was left in America, and was “in the possession of a friend <?Quaker> on Long Island.”

In Manordes’s “Biographical Treasury” it is said, “Many however assert that Cobbett did not take that trouble, but brought over from America the remains of a criminal who had been executed.” There is not however the slightest room for doubt on this point. Not only did Mr. Albert Badeau of New Rochelle witness the removal of the coffin, but the grave itself long bore the like witness. Dr. Clair J. Grece of Redhill has sent me an extract from a diary kept by his uncle Danial Constable while in America, who visited the grave on July 26,1822, and says “The grave is surrounded by a stone wall 16 feet by 12 and l8 inches thick, about 4 feet high. The grave is sunk in about the depth of a coffin. Some of the neighbors aided the three men who came with a wagon a little before day. They say had the proper authorities had known in time they would prevented the outrage.”

An aged Quaker informed me that a number of “Friends” who were on the “Elizabeth” when Cobbett came aboard with the big box, at New York, left the ship on learning its contents; but those who looked for a striking judgment on the vessel were disappointed. Cobbett with his strange freight landed at Liverpool on November 21,1819.

Before relating the adventures of Paine’s bones it may be of interest to record that the project of a monument to Paine at New Rochelle originated in 1837 with Gilbert Vale, who compiled a biography of Paine, and Mrs. Badeau, who, with her mother Mrs. Bayeaux, – both orthodox, – preserved an affectionate memory of the author and his sojourn as a boarder in their home at New Rochelle. The graceful monument was designed by John Frazee, an eminent architect, gratuitously, and was constructed at James’s marble works in New Rochelle. The portrait was cut from a medal of the time, owned by a Mr. Gill and is – or was- a good likeness. The monument is not exactly over the grave but near its head. The farmer into whose hands the surrounding land had passed would not permit the committee to reach the twelve square feet which had been reserved inviolably for Paine’s grave, by Madame Bonneville, so they had to purchase, at a cost of $50, twenty square feet of ground at the corner of the road and the lane leading to Paine’s house. The largest subscription for the monument was that of Hiram Parker, $30, the others having mostly one dollar each. The total cost, including the land, was $1,634. The monument was erected in November 1839, in the presence of about fifty persons, but without any formalities or speeches.

The reaction caused by the French Revolution was beginning to subside when Cobbett brought to England the bones of its famous outlaw, who, the Attorney General had declared in 1792, should never enter the country again except in vinculis. The “Painites” were reviving interest in their hero, and Richard Carlile had just been sent to prison for publishing the “Age of Reason”. And by the way, soon after his arrival Cobbett visited Carlile in gaol: the prisoner said “Ah, had I been in America, they would not have thrown me in prison.” “No”, replied Cobbett, “they would have tarred and feathered you.”

Cobbett’s enterprise was met with mingled wrath and ridicule. Probably most people now have no association with the incident except the four lines of Byron (following an equally cynical epitaph on Pitt) in a letter to Moore, from Ravcuna, Jan. 2,1820

“In digging up your bones, Tom Paine, Will Cobbett has done well: You visit him on earth again, He’ll visit you in hell.”

“Pray”, adds Byron, “let not these versiculi go forth with my name except among the initiated, because my friend H. has foamed into a reformer, and I greatly fear will subside into Newgate.” Even while the poet was writing, his friend H. – John Cam Hobhouse – was already in Newgate. It was for a pamphlet on Lord Erskine, so severely contrasting his earlier with his reactionary position, that it must almost have seemed to summon Paine as a Banquo at the feast of his once noble defender, but afterwards ennobled prosecutor. In fact Byron, in his Southern retreat, interested only in his alter ego Don Juan, was little aware of the political situation in England, and took the laughter over Paine’s bones to be more genuine than it was. The merriment was not that of the Tories, but rather an effort of the old Whigs to hooh-pooh an incident fallen at the most serious crisis since the French Revolution.

In August had occurred the terrible suppression of the mass meeting at Manchester (“Peterloo”). The trials of the Carliles and other heretical publishers and writers were filling the radicals with consternation. The storm was rising concerning Queen Caroline around whom the liberals were gathering with intense wrath against the Prince Regent whose full reign was at hand. Eight days after the arrival of Paine’s bones at Liverpool three different Bills were introduced into Parliament, all heavily loaded guns aimed against the recovery by the people of rights lost during the French revolution – the Seditious Meetings Bill, the Training Prevention Bill, and the Blasphemous Libels Bill. The promoters of these measures were not slow in availing themselves of the Paine-Cobbett incident. On December2 Mr. Wilmot made a strong point of it in the House of Commons:

“Does anybody advocate the principle of these meetings? If such a man exists it can only be in the person of the individual just returned from America, who has dug up the unhallowed bones of the blasphemer, and has brought them to this country for the purpose of creating a frenzied feeling in favour of his projects, and like old John Ziska, who desired that his skin be made into a drum to rouse his countrymen, wished to stir up impiety and disaffection by the exhibition of this mummery to the initated people of this country.”

After that, the Whig ridicule began, as if by mot d’ordre, and on December 17 a leading opponent of the government Bills, Earl Grosvenor, utilized the ridicule to prove them unnecessary:

“To prove still further the feelings by which people are actuated, I beg leave to mention the way in which a posthumous production, the bones of Thomas Paine, has been treated in this country. The person by whom that vile experiment has been tried found that he had a little mistaken the feeling and character of the people of England. Was there ever any subject treated with more laughter, contempt, and derision than the introduction of these miserable bones, – whether the bones of Thomas Paine or not I will not undertake to decide.”

Mr. Edward Smith of Walthamstow, Cobbett’s able biographer, does not share my suspicion that this ridicule was artificial. He says that Paine’s religious heresies had obliterated his political ideas.” In England he was known by his theology; and was branded as an Atheist by the hirelings who could not, or dare not try to refute him.” He reproaches Cobbett for not knowing that such things do not strike or interest the English mind. But two years later the performance was imitated by the importation in a ship of what was left of the bones of Major Andre for burial in Westminster Abbey, and Cobbett wrote: “All the differences between me and the Duke of York is, that I bring home the bones of an Englishman famed throughout the world for his talents and writings; and that the Duke brings home the bones of one who was hanged as a spy.” As for the ridicule, it was, apart from newspaper paragraphs, chiefly represented by some anonymous rhymes written with skill, but with an affectation of rudeness, and printed in the cheapest form. The date of the first effusion in December1 819, about three weeks after the bones were heard of in London, and it was entitled, “The Political House that Jack Built”. In a picture Cobbett is seen in a boat marked “Rights of Man”, seated on a coffin, and rowed by two Negroes.

“B is a boat that used to ply Across the Brooklyn Ferry; To Market Slip that’s called the Fly, A pretty kind of wherry.

“And ’tis constructed on a plan That’s best to cut the waves: The name of it is rights of man, And rowed by Negro slaves.

“This boat Bill Cobb hired for a week, And entered on a trip, A passage over sea to seek In Merchant Brig or Ship

“A coffin with him too he took When Paine’s Bones lay in state, And tried each bark from Sandy Hook, In vain – quite to Hell’s Gate.

“And thither was his utmost scope, Nor farther has he been; The massive door refused to ope Just yet – to let him in.”

Another piece is headed “sketches of the Life of Billy Cobb and the death of Tommy Pain”. The woodcut here shows Cobbett under an apple tree, his hat on the ground full of apples, with Paine’s skeleton on one side seizing him by the throat, and on the other the Devil touching him on the shoulder. The muses tell that when Paine was dying the Devil appeared and said his skull was now to be buried “for ever and ever.”

“One boon and only one I crave”, Said Thomas with a sigh, “Let it be till there pass my grave A caitiff worse than I.”

The Devil thinks it quite safe to agree to this, but when Cobbett touches the grave Paine springs up, and attacks him on old scores, for Cobbett had reproduced “Oldys”‘ libels in America, and was connected to Painism only in after years. The Devil is at first rather pleased with the fight, being afraid that he may be “superceded” on his throne by one of them, but finally he reconciles them in view of the mischief they can do in England. Another woodcut shows Cobbett, coffin on shoulder; and next we see the ship.

“E for Elizabeth doth stand And that’s a vessel’s name, That lately sailed from Yankey-Iand And to the Mersey came.”

Another hand identified in Notes and Queries, Feb. 29, 1868 as Thomas Rodd, Sr., (“John English” is the pseudonym) wrote an “Ode on the Bones of the Immortal Thomas Paine, newly transported from America to England by the no less immortal William Cobbett, Esq. Hic labor hic opus. Great Paine for little trumpery.” (4 to pp 8). This privately printed poem (now very rare) tries at points to be satirical, without much success; it is severe on Paine’s theological negations, but discloses a certain admiration for the arch-heretic. I quote a specimen:

“No Judge or Jury does he fear, Nor e’en the Attorney General’s frown Nor dread lthuriel with his spear Can knock this doughty Champion down.

‘Tis cowardice to strike the slain, ‘Tis cowardice to strike Tom Paine High high in dust the hero lies, And from his narrow box his face defies.

Who shall the great Arch-Flamen be Of this new god? Upon whose shrine Let brass and farthing candles shine; His pen once gain’d the victory,

And still victorious reigns, in spite Of all the Bishop could indite: None but the mighty hand of Law Against this daring Chief the quill could prosperous draw.”

Whether under more auspicious circumstances Cobbett could have received any enthusiasm for Paine can now be only a matter of conjecture. In 1820 George the Third, born in the same year with Paine, gave a fatal blow to all interest in his bones by dying on Paine’s birthday, January 29. Thenceforth popular feeling was entirely occupied with the sufferings of Queen Caroline and the affairs of George IV. Cobbett at once began his efforts to get into Parliament, and Paine’s bones were stored away and forgotten for many a long year. It appears, however, that he occasionally exhibited the bones. The Rev. Gerald Davies, of Charterhouse, wrote to the “Surrey Times”, Feb. 2, 1889, that he was told by the late James Wyatt, of Bedford, geologist, that in boyhood, being at Normandy Farm, Cobbett’s last residence, he said, “Is it true you keep the bones of Tom Paine, the infidel?” Cobbett replied, “What do you know about Tom Paine?” But he took the boy up stairs and showed him the bones. William Cobbett dies June 18, 1835, at Normandy Farm, near Guilford. His son J.P. Cobbett found himself unable to pay off his father’s debts and his own, and the effects were sold by Thomas Piggott at auction in the autumn of the same year, on the premises. This information was communicated to the “Surrey Times”, Jan. 19, 1889,b y D.M. Stevens, who adds:

“My informants, who were present at the sale, told me that a box was pointed out as containing the remains of Paine, and they believed that the box and its contents were described in the catalogue, and that some allusion being made to the fact, the auctioneer refused to bring the lot under the hammer. What eventually became of the box and its contents is an unsolved problem, and, notwithstanding my own efforts to solve it, had better to remain so. The whole subject is a painful one, and I have no doubt that Cobbett, of whom we Surrey men have abundant reason to be proud, often regretted that he had not left the noted Freethinker’s bones to remain in their original American resting-place.”

Gilbert Vale, who was in correspondence with English freethinkers, stated in “The Beacon”, Dec.27, 1845, “The bones fell into the hands of an elderly female, a nurse in Cobbett’s family, and by her given or sold to Lta King’s gardener.'” Lord King, who died two years before Cobbett, was a nobleman who held many opinions in common with Paine. His residence, Ockham, was not far from that of Cobbett.

I have a letter (autograph) written by Gilbert Vale, Aug. 20, 1860, in which he says: “Cobbett did take the bones of Paine to London: they are in the hands of the friends of Paine, who will one day put a monument up to him. I saw some of the parties in charge of them in 1848, and I have a pamphlet on the subject which I suppose I brought from England in that year.”

The pamphlet was: “A Brief History of the Remains of the late Thomas Paine, from the time of their disinterment in 1819 by the late William Cobbett M.P., down to the year 1846. London: J. Watson, 1847” pg.8.

I was acquainted with James Watson, and gave the address at his burial, in 1874. He was an able and exact man, and as he no doubt wrote the pamphlet himself, the following statements in it were undoubtedly those Watson received from Benjamin Tilly, – a tailor, and a factotum of Cobbett in London. According to the pamphlet Cobbett brought the coffin-plate, inscribed “Thomas Paine, died June 8, 1809, aged74 years.” (Both Watson and Tilly would certainly know that laine was- born January 29, 1737, and this pres6rvation of an error as to his age, probably due to Madame Bonneville who ordered the coffin, is a certificate of the genuineness of this plate, which must still be in existence.) Cobbett placed Paine’s remains for a short time “in the keeping of a well known friend of his in Hampshire” (Lord King?), but they were brought to London, and remained in Cobbett’s house, Bolt Court, until January 1833, when Tilly sent them to Normandy Farm. There they remained until Cobbett’s death (June 18, 1835). James Paul Cobbett (his son and executor) inscribed his own name in several places on the skull, and on the larger bones. This gentleman was charged with insolvency by one Jesse Oldfield, who had been his father’s shopman, and the litigation resulted in the appointment of a receiver for the Normandy Farm estate, George West, a neighboring farmer. In January 1836, when Cobbett’s effects were sold at his Farm, the auctioneer refused to offer Paine’s remains, and they were retained by the receiver to await the orders of the Lord Chancellor, who, on the subject being mentioned to him in Court, refused to recognize them as part of the estate, or to make any order. Georgel West’s receivership ended in 1839. After keeping Paine’s remains nine years, he ascertained that Tilly wished to carry out Cobbett’s intentions concerning them, and he therefore, saysW atson, conveyed them in March, 1844, to Mr. Tilly (13 Bedford Square, East, London) “by whom they will in all probability be kept, until a public funeral of them can be arranged.”

In “Notes & Queries”, January 25, 1868, a writer signing “A Native of Guilford” states that in the summer of 1849 he saw Paine’s bones in a box in the house of John Chennell, corn merchant in Guilford, who told him that they had been purchased at the Cobbett sale at Ash by someone ignorant of the contents of the chest. A writer in the “Surrey Times”, January 19, 1889, states that the same merchant, Chennell, possessed a porcelain jar, with parchment cover inscribed “The GreatP aine’s Bones”, but that “only a few bones were inside the jar”. To this the Surrey editor adds: A correspondent from the United States was assured that in 1849 they were lying in the cellar of Mr. Chennell’s house, and inquiries are being anxiously made in the States for any authentic information as to them..” This American correspondent had probably got his information from the “Native of Guilford” in “Notes & Queries”, which can hardly be correct. It does not harmonize with the porcelin jar story, and the latter is inexact; the sale was not at Ash, but on the Normandy Farm premises. Chennell may have kept the remains for some years for the receiver George West, but if any were there in 1849 it could only have been a few of the bones which, as will presently appear got separated from the rest. In that year they were seen in possession of Benjamin Tilly.

About 1860 Tillv died in the house of a Mr. Ginn, wood-merchant, Bethnal Green, and left with him a number of Cobbett’s MMS. and Paine relics, but apparently without careful information. According to a statement made to me by Mr. George Reynolds of 23 Stepney Green, his attention was called to these relics in 1879 by a daughter of Mr. Ginn, who was a member of the Baptist Church of which he (Reynolds) was then minister. He purchased the box of papers and relics which proved to be the MSS. Of Cobbett, and some of the brain and hair of Paine, of which Mr. Reynolds is still in possession. From these papers he ascertained that Tilly had owned Paine’s skeleton, and he at once inquired about it. Mrs. Ginn said that in cleaning the room after Tilly’s death she found a lot of bones in a large bag and sold them to a rag-and-bone collector. Mr. Reynolds says she did not appear to know they were human bones. Mr. Ginn, however, knew they were human, and said it was “a skeleton with the exception of the skull and leg or arm.”

On hearing this story of Mrs. Ginn it struck me that there was an accent of sophistication about it. The rag-and-bone collector must have known they were-human bones, if she did not. She may have expected to gain some credit with the Baptist pastor for having turned the remains of “Tom Paine” into more rubbish and dust. I have since discovered that her story is not true, and also, what Mr. Reynolds did not know, that the skull and right hand of Paine had indeed, before Tilly’s death, been removed and gone on a career of their own.

It is probable that Tilly never. knew that any of the bones had been removed from the box. Mr. Joseph Cowen (of the “Newcastle Chronicle”) tells me that about 1853-54 he was consulted by James Watson concerning the propriety of a public burial of Paine’s bones at Kensal Green. Watson said they were in the possession of a tailor who kept them in a box on which he sat while at work.. Mr. Cowen went with Watson to the shop of the tailor who however was not at home. On his next visit to London he again went to the place, but the tailor had removed without leaving any address. Mr. Cowen says it was in the neighborhood of Red Lion Square, and he does not remember he name; but it was no doubt Tilly, who might have been temporarily working in that neighborhood. Mr. Cowen never heard of the matter again, but he remembers asking James Paul Cobbett about the bones, and finding that he knew not what had become of them, and evidently did not wish to talk on the subject.

In December 1874 I inserted in the “National Reformer” an inquiry concerning Paine’s remains. I received the same week a note from Mr. James Dickens of Denham Vila, Guilford, who said that he had made inquiries there, but could only learn that at the Cobbett sale “there was no bidder” for the box and its contents. My inquiry, however, was taken up, and Mr. J. Darbyshire of Manchester, in a letter of September 18, 1875, to “The Secular Chronicle” (London) suggested that “Messrs. Bradlaugh, Watts, G.L. Holyoake, Foote, Mrs. Law and Mrs. Besant, and others should be requested to look after the remains of Thomas Paine and conduct a public funeral, and that a monument be erected over his grave.” Mr. Darbyshire was “sure that sufficient cash would be obtained for so good an object.” Therein he was no doubt right, but Paine’s remains were not discovered.

Meanwhile, however, a lecture I gave in London in 1876 on Thomas Paine attracted the attention of Edward Truelove, the veteran publisher rationalist literature, who wrote me (Dec. 2,1876) that in 1853 or 1854 the Rev. Robert Ainslie came into his shop in the Strand, and observing Paine’s Works “volunteered the very startling information that he, the Rev. Robert Ainslie – of all men! – had in his possession the skull and right hand of Thomas Paine, but did not say how he came by them, evading my question.”

Mr. Ainslie was not aware that Mr. Truelove knew his name, but the bookseller recognized him as the Secretary of the London City Mission, under whose auspices many years before a course of lectures had been given in Eagle Street Chapel against “Infidel Socialism”. Mr. Ainslie gave one of the lectures, and Mr. Truelove was naturally startled that any remains of Paine should have fallen into such orthodox hands. However, he did not mention to Mr. Ainslie that he recognized him. But on a later occasion, when the minister again entered his shop (removed to Holborn) he asked him what had become of Paine’s bones, and his question was not answered.

Mr. Ainslie probably became the owner of Paine’s skull and right hand before George West brought the box to Benjamin Tilly. His daughter Margaretta (first wife of the late Sir Russell Reynolds) having received an inquiry of mine addressed to her father (1877) who died before it arrived, answered:

“Mr. Thomas Paine’s bones were in our possession. I remember them as a child, but I believe they were lost in the various movings which my father had some years ago. I can find no trace of them, but if I do by more inquiries.”

I heard nothing more from Mrs. Russell Reynolds, and she died in 1880. The late Sir Russell Reynolds had, as he lately wrote me, “an obscure recollection of having seen the bones of a hand a great many years ago.” As Margaretta Ainslie was married in 1852, her childhood recollections probably extended into the years preceding 1844, when Watson says the bones were brought to London. This marriage took place at Fromer House, Bromley, Kent, where Mr. Ainslie resided at the time, and it is not Improbable that his near neighbor, Charles Darwin, inspected the skull of his predecessor in heresy. But it is a more picturesque reflection that eventualities should have brought Paine’s skull back to the vicinity of his favourite haunt, -the so-called “Tom Paine Tree”, an ancient oak in the grounds of the old Bishop’s Palace.

As this tree has not, I believe, been mentioned in any book, it may interest the reader to know that there is such a tree, and that it is said by long tradition to be the favourite resort of Paine while writing the “Age of Reason”. I recently visited the tree, in company of Mr. Coles Childs, present owner of Bromley Palace. The trunk, about 25 feet in girth at the ground, is entirely hollow, but the foliage is ample, and there is hardly a dead branch. As a matter of history Paine did pass some time in Bromley, and a very intelligent watchmaker there, Mr. How, told me that he remembers his aged father pointing out the rather handsome residence, “Church Cottage”, as that in which Paine resided. There is no evidence that Paine wrote any part of the “Age of Reason” at Bromley, but it is not improbable. In my historical introduction to the “Age of Reason”, just published, I have shown that parts were written long before its publication; the subject was always near his heart, and he was fond of discussing it with his neighbors. In the early months of 1792 Paine was residing with his publisher, Clio Rickman, at 7 Upper Marylebone Street (still a bookbinding with the old bookshelves remaining), where the swarming of radicals left too little leisure for writing. “Mr. Paine goes out of town tomorrow to compose what I call Burke’s funeral sermon”, says John Hall in his diary, April 20,1792. This was at Bromley, where, on May l4, he heard of the summons of the publisher of “Rights of Man”, and hastened to London, and claimed the right to stand in the publisher’s place. He then doubtless resumed work at Bromley, and one may indulge the picturesque legend that there in “Church Cottage”, which was ecclesiastical property, and beneath the giant oak on the bishop’s grounds, this heresiarch worked on the book that was to shake temples. From the “Tom Paine Tree” one may almost see Down homestead, where Darwin still more shook the temples, though the most venerable of them became his monument.

The Rev. Robert Ainslie had a brother who was an eminent veterinary surgeon, and in his professional or some other capacity was, I am told, connected with the estate of Lord King at Ockham, not far from Cobbett’s place. It was through him that the Rev. Robert Ainslie heard of Paine’s bones. His son. Mr. Oliver Ainslie, tells me that the remains were then in the rooms of the auctioneer Richards( 43 Rathbone Place) “for sale”, and that the skull and right hand were there purchased by his father. It is thus clear that all of the facts were not known to Tilly and Watson. In Watson’s pamphlet it is stated that the bones were brought up to London by George West and given to Tilly, at 13 Bedford Square East. But Benjamin Tilly’s name does not appear at that place in the directories of the time; indeed it does not appear at all until 1852. It seems possible that the tailor had no such fixed residence as would carry as his name into the directory, and that he confided the box of bones to the auctioneer Richards until he had a house of his own. If so Richards, or some subordinate, may have abstracted th e skull and hand and sold them to Mr. Ainslie, Tilly remaining ignorant of the trespass. It is possible, however, that the skull and hand had been sold by West the receiver to Chennell of Guilford before the remains were brought to Tilly, who did not examine them. Mr. Edward Smith tells me that he “interviewed” the son of Chennell in 1877, and heard that Paine’s bones had been sold, and brought 7s 6d. Mr. Truelove says that when he told Watson that Ainslie had the skull he smiled in credulously, yet amid all the tangle of conjectures the certainties are that Tilly had the skeleton without the skull and right hand, a portion of the brain and several pieces of hair, and that Ainslie possessed the cranium and right hand.

Mr. Oliver Ainslie remarked that the smallness and delicacy of Paine’s hand were such that the late Professor John Marshall, of the Royal College of Surgeons, at first thought it the hand of a female. “The head was also small for a man, and of the Celtic type I should say, and somewhat conical in shape, and with more cerebellum than frontal development.” ‘Some little time after his father’s death the skull and hand were brought from 7l Mornington Road, where the Rev. Robert Ainslie had resided, to Mr. Oliver Ainslie’s house 48 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, whence they were taken away by a Mr. Penny, to whom had been confided some arrangements of the room containing them for a new tenant. Mr. Oliver Ainslie became interested in the remains only when too late to save them, and has not been able to find Mr. Penny, nor does he know his full name. He fears that Penny may have disposed of the skull to one of the wastepaper dealers nearby. But this appears to me improbable. Every physician must possess a skull, which is worth more than a wastepaper dealer would pay. This skull of Paine also had the name of J.P. Cobbett written, or perhaps scratched, on it. If an obvious remark may be forgiven, Mr. Penny would hardly be so pound foolish as to dispose of a skull so inscribed as mere rubbish, and it is probable that Paine’s skull is now in some doctor’s office or craniological collection.

The Rev. Robert Ainslie, whom I met at Brighton in 1863, was a man of ability, and my conjecture would be that his purchase of Paine’s skull may have been due to an interest in phrenology, were it not that he bought the hand also. Mr. George Jacob H lyoake tells me that he spoke to Mr. Ainslie about these bones, but that the minister did not wish his name publicly connected with them at the time. There were sufficient reasons for this, but they have long since passed away.

Mr. Ainslie had been, it will be remembered, an official member of the City Mission, which consists of men belonging to different denominations, but has a reputation of being very strict about their orthodoxy. Mr. Ainslie’s orthodoxy was assailed by some of his fellow-labourers in the City Mission, and though he warmly resented this at the time it would appear that his assailants saw the tendencies of some of his views more clearly than himself, for some years after the controversy he became (1860) minister of a liberal chapel at Brighton, where he remained until 1870. Mr. Ainslie had come into possession of Paine’s skull some years before his orthodoxy was called in question, and the hue and cry might have been disagreeably renewed had it reached the public that while Secretary of the City Mission he had the bones of the terrible “Tom Paine” in his house.

It appears certain that when he purchased the skull and hand, Mr. Ainslie was quite unconscious of any heretical symptoms. If it were admissible for Painites to believe in the potency of saintly relics they might point to the fact that Paine’s skull fell into the hands of an orthodox member of the City Mission, and Paine’s brain into those of an orthodox Baptist Minister (Rev. George Reynolds), and that both of these ministers subsequently became unorthodox. And indeed it seems not improbable that these relics may have contributed something to the result, by exciting in the two divines some curiosity to know what thoughts had played through the lamp whose fragments had come into their possession. And it is difficult for one who reads the “Age of Reason” to remain precisely the simple believer he was before.

That Paine’s skull is still somewhere in London is highly probable, and were any found with the name “Cobbett” on it its genuineness could be easily proved by another word or two on it which for the present I reserve. As to the other remains of Paine’s skeleton they were not destroyed, as Mrs. Ginn’s story might imply, for they were seen in by the Rev. Alexander Gordon, now a Unitarian tutor at Manchester, in 1873, and heard of in 1876. Although that gentleman gives no further particulars, the correspondence which has passed between us leaves no doubt on my mind that he was led by his respect for Paine (despite divergences from that author’s religion) to secure for the remains quiet burial, – perhaps near his parents at Thetford. I find especial satisfaction in this belief since reading in the “New York World” (January 26,1896) the following statement:

“Out in the country, somewhere back of New Rochelle, in a lonesome spot, there is a mound with a monument raised over it, and an inscription to the effect that the remains of Thomas Paine lie beneath that stone. If this is not true a great many worthy people are wasting their indignation, for the majority of those who pass the monument and know to whom it is erected, throw stones at it. Thus do Christians show their contempt for those whose opinions do not agree with theirs.”

This stone-throwing ceased, I believe, some years ago; the pious anti-Painites may have found that they were really adding to the author’s cairn by attributing such importance to his writings long after those of his opponents were forgotten.

Of the remains of Thomas Paine exhumed by Cobbett there are now traceable a portion of his brain and two locks of his hair. One of the latter was presented to me by Mr. Edward Smith, biographer of Cobbett. Paine’s hair never became grey. The hair before me (on the old paper wrapping of which is written in Tilly’s hand “Mr. Paine’s Hair”) is soft and dark, with a reddish tinge. The portion of Paine’s brain owned by Mr. George Reynolds is about the size of one’s fist, and quite hard. It is under glass and beside it is a note in Tilly’s writing:

“On Tuesday January 7th 1833 I went to 11 Bolt Court, Fleet Street, and there with Mr. Entrell and Mr. Dean, I saw, at the house of Mr. Cobbett, the remains of Mr. Thomas Paine, when I procured some of his hair, and from his skull I took a portion of his brain, which had become hard, and which is almost perfectly black. – B. Tilly”

There are other personal relics of Paine. During the American revolution Paine wrote the fifth number of his “Crisis” at the house of the Hon. William Henry at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and his spectacles and shoe-buckles were left there. These were presented by a grand-daughter of Mr. Henry to the National Museum at Washington, where I examined them. The spectacles (silver) have small glasses of extraordinary power. Paine’s arm-chair and his brass and irons are in the possession of Albert Badeau at New Rochelle. It is said that a walking cane of his exists but I cannot discover it. Mr. G.J. Holyoake has a copy of Paine’s portrait (Sharp’s engraving of Romney’s picture) with the author’s presentation to Rickman on it. Claire J. Grece, of Redhill, possesses Paine’s snuff-box presented to his uncle, Daniel Constable, in 1807, by Paine. Edward Truelove possesses the writing-table used by Paine while in Rickman’s house in 1792. Alfred Hammond, of Lewes, possesses imprints of his (portrait) seal while an exciseman in that town, Louis Breeze, Stratford-by-Bow, has a piece of wood from the birthhouse of Paine, at Thetford, now destroyed. Of course there are many autograph letters of Paine, but no manuscript of anything he ever wrote for publication has been preserved.

A considerable number of these relics were among the five hundred articles shown at the Paine Exhibition in South Place Chapel, openedD ecember 2 , 1895.There were also first editions of his works, and many polemical caricatures, books, and pamphlets called forth by these works; there were portraits of famous men – American, English, French – whose swords were unsheathed to maintain or assail the republic of Paine’s vision, with its rainbow flag; but most impressive of all was the darkened bit of brain whence radiated the inner light of that miraculous Thetford Quaker.

If we pass from personal relics to relics of personality, those of Paine are innumerable; and among these the most important are the legends and fictions told concerning him by enemies, unconscious that their romances were really tributes to his unique influence. Nothing concerning Paine seems to have been too marvelous for acceptance, in the past, and even in our own time one occasionally meets with inventions suggesting a certain praeternaturalism in his character. Thus on September 21, 1895,a London journal, “Answers”, gravely published as a genuine autograph letter of Paine’s, in the possession of one of its Dublin readers, the following, said to be addressed to a linendraper at Chelmsford:

“Chapter Coffee House

London, May 8th, 1793

“Sir, – in perusing the Chelmsford paper I see you are a vendor of Fleecy Hosiery, and as you are a man after my own heart, a Leveller and a Talker of Treason, please to send six pair of the above Fleecy Hosierie to me at Chapter, and I will send you the money. Yours, Tom Paine.”

I wrote to the editor asking to be put into communication with the owner of this letter signed “Tom(!) Paine”, and written more than seven months after Paine had left England forever, but he could not do so -of course.

I must venture to repeat here, though it is mentioned in my edition of the “Age of Reason”, a legend told me by Mr. Van der Weyde, the eminent London photographer, who remembers when a boy a sermon in which the preacher said that Tom Paine was so wicked that he could not be buried. The earth would not hold him. His bones were placed in a box and carried about from one place to another, until at last they came into the hands of a button-maker, and now his bones are traveling about the world in the form of buttons! This variant of the Wandering Jew legend recalls to me a verse which William Allingham added with pen to his admirable poem “The Touchstone” in a volume in my possession. The original poem, it will be remembered, closes with burning the formidable man’s touchstone, and strewing the ashes on the breeze, little guessing that each grain of these `conveyed the perfect charm.’ The manuscript addition is:

“North, South, in the rings and amulets, Throughout the crowded world ’tis borne, Which, as a fashion long outworn, Its ancient mind forgets.”

The post The Adventures of Thomas Paine’s Bones appeared first on .

By Daniel Gomes de Carvalho

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the specificity of Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, Dissertation on First Principles of Government (1795) in the context of the relations between liberalism and democracy in the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. The objective is to explain how Paine—as an English revolutionary and an actor, witness, and interpreter of the Age of Revolutions—developed a democratic vision during the period of the Convention initiated on 9 Thermidor (1794-1795) that distanced him from both Jacobin formulations and practices, and from legislations and speeches by Thermidorian deputies. To this end, we will also investigate other texts and letters by the author, and demonstrate his profound changes in relation to previous texts, such as Common Sense and Rights of Man. With this in mind, this text intends to open new perspectives regarding Paine’s work and its place in the history of political thought.¹

“The pomp of courts and pride of kings 

I prize above all earthly things; 

I love my country; the king 

Above all men his praise I sing:

The royal banners are displayed, 

And may success the standard aid. 

I fain would banish far from hence, 

The Rights of Man and Common Sense; 

Confusion to his odious reign,

That foe to princes, Thomas Paine! 

Defeat and ruin seize the cause 

Of France, its liberties and laws”.² 

– Arthur O’Connell

Written and published in July 1795, the Dissertation on the First Principles of Government was the culmination of Thomas Paine’s (1737–1809) democratic theory, in which he advocates for universal (“non-census,” though still restricted to men) suffrage and criticizes its absence in the Thermidorian French Constitution, the third of the revolutionary period, enacted that same year. 

At this point, Paine was a prominent figure in the Atlantic world through various writings, especially Common Sense (1776), the main pamphlet of the American Revolution, and Rights of Man (1791), a defense of the French Revolution against Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. 

No foreigner took part in the French Revolution as decisively and for such a prolonged period as Paine. Elected deputy for Pas-de-Calais, he was imprisoned by the Jacobin government in December 1793, along with deputy Anacharsis Cloots (of Prussian origin and Dutch descent), both under the justification of being foreigners. With the help of the American ambassador and future U.S. president James Monroe, Paine was released in November 1794. The unspoken reason for his imprisonment was his opposition to the execution of Louis XVI (although he was a republican, Paine was against the death penalty and advocated for the exile of the Bourbon king) and his closeness to Brissot and the Girondins. 

After being released from prison and once again serving as a deputy, Paine distanced himself from the former Girondins (many of whom were now Thermidorians) by advocating for universal suffrage. Paine’s opposition to them was not new: it is worth noting his defense of the Republic in 1790, even before Robespierre. However, such criticism eased during the Jacobin period—resisting the Terror and the de-Christianization movement became paramount. Once the Jacobins were overthrown, the divide between Paine and the Thermidorians gained momentum, a decisive factor in his return to the United States in September 1802. 

BEGINNINGS 

Paine had first sailed to North America in 1775 with a political stance that was unclear, which we could describe as leveling (a reference to the Levellers during the English Civil War of 1642–1649) and censitary, whereby only those with leisure and financial autonomy could vote.⁴ 4 In 1778, Paine wrote: 

Likewise all servants in families; because their interest is in their master, and depending upon him in sickness and in health, and voluntarily withdrawing from taxation and public service of all kinds, they stand detached by choice from the common floor. 

In that same letter, Paine, judging by Foner’s complete works, used the word democracy and democratical for the first time. At this point, however, he still viewed democracy in the pejorative sense commonly held, i.e., as a degenerate form of government: “Such a State will not only become impoverished, but defenceless, a temptation to its neighbors, and a sure prize to an invader.”⁵ This use, in the context of the debate over the independence of the 13 colonies, was intended to defend a constitutional government. 

In the context of the French Revolution, Paine began to condemn property qualifications for voting. In Rights of Man (1791), a response to Edmund Burke’s text, Paine argued that voting should be as universal as taxation, a radical proposal in the English context, where nearly all adult men paid some form of indirect tax. Only in 1795, in the Dissertation on the First Principles of Government, did he openly defend universal suffrage. For this reason, Moncure Conway, who wrote the first well-founded biography of the author, stated that few pamphlets by Paine deserve more study.⁷ 

By the way, Rights of Man represented the second time—again, according to Foner’s complete works—that Paine used the words democracy and democratical, but this time in a positive sense: now, the notion of “democracy” was equivalent to a desirable, equal, representative government, one that was taking shape in the United States and France. The Dissertation, in turn, was the third and final time that the author used the term in his texts; in this case, although the idea of democracy is bolder, the word’s use is more restrained (it appears only twice in the text), as the author prefers the term “representative government” to refer to male universal suffrage, equality before the law, checks and balances, and human rights (between the two texts, there were Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety, which, as we will see, likely explains the different uses and notions). 

The terms “liberal” and “illiberal” appear much more frequently in Paine’s works (“liberalism,” in turn, is a term from the 19th century, as will be discussed). In most of Paine’s writings, the term appears in its common sense, referring to generosity (“my intentions were liberal, they were friendly.”⁸ Paine also described friendliness (the terms liberality and liberal sentiments are also frequent), or a specific type of education (such as liberal arts and sciences). 

However, as we will see below, according to some recent studies, the term “liberal” underwent transformations in 18th-century Anglo-Scottish enlightenment thought. Paine’s works seem to follow this movement. The term began to appear in his works in a compound form—such as liberal ground, liberal cast, and liberal thinking—and was related to forms of noninterference and non-oppression.⁹ For example, in a letter to George Washington, Paine stated that trade between North America and France was founded on “most liberal principles, and calculated to give the greatest encouragement to the infant commerce of America.”¹⁰ Another letter of Paine’s, concerning the Constitution of Pennsylvania, expresses this transformation of the term well, as here the word liberal can be understood as “generosity,” but at the same time as “non-interference” and “non-oppression”:

It is the nature of freedom to be free… Freedom is the associate of innocence, not the companion of suspicion. She only requires to be cherished, not to be caged, and to be beloved, is, to her, to be protected. Her residence is in the undistinguished multitude of rich and poor, and a partisan to neither is the patroness of all (…) To engross her is to affront her, for, liberal herself, she must be liberally dealt with.¹¹

Having made these preliminary observations, it is important to note that Dissertation on the First Principles of Government has never received the attention it deserves from historians. This absence is particularly evident among classic Paine scholars. Foner merely emphasized that the pamphlet addresses the issue of suffrage. Aldridge merely noted that he wrote the pamphlet in light of the “new constitution.”¹² Vincent only highlighted Paine’s defense of bicameralism.¹³ Paine biographers John Keane and Craig Nelson simply stated that Paine defended universal suffrage.¹⁴ Mark Philp and Gregory Claeys, the two historians who have best studied Paine’s thought, were brief: the former surprisingly qualifies it as “a summary of Rights of Man (1791).”¹⁵ The latter merely notes its limited reception. Modesto Florenzano pointed out the pivotal place of the text in the discussion about liberalism and democracy; however, his study, as it is more concerned with other aspects of Paine’s life and work, did not focus on an in-depth analysis of this pamphlet.¹⁶ 

Currently, the English revolutionary has received a substantial amount of study, both for his role as an Atlantic revolutionary and for his position neither strictly Jacobin nor exactly Girondin. However, the Dissertation remains secondary in the most recent studies on the author. Mario Feit cites the text only three times to address the relationship between time and rights in Paine.¹⁷ J.C.D. Clark claims that it “has little to say about France.”¹⁸ Thus, Dissertation, a “milestone in Paine’s career,” has never received the attention it deserves.¹⁹ However, in addition to filling an important gap, its analysis will reveal significant shifts in relation to Paine’s more well-known texts Common Sense and Rights of Man, and, as a result, will showcase facets of the author that have been little discussed, which may strengthen Paine’s place as a political thinker and, contrary to what Clark stated, an interpreter of the French Revolution.

To fulfill this purpose, this text will be structured in three parts: first, we will examine the publication of Dissertation within its context; second, we will analyze its fundamental ideas; and finally, the pamphlet will be considered within the political/philosophical debates of its time. The text, like all of Paine’s political works, is deeply intertwined with the revolutionary axis of London-Paris-Philadelphia, and can only be understood within these dialogues (although it also holds importance in other spaces such as Ireland and the Netherlands). 

THE THERMIDORIAN LIBERALISM 

Paine began writing Dissertation with the Dutch Republic in mind. However, after the fall of the Jacobin government on July 27, 1794 (9 Thermidor), the text was directed at the Thermidorian National Convention, as it discussed the Constitution of Year III. The Thermidorian Convention, which followed the Jacobin government, lasted fifteen months, until October 1795, when it gave way to the Directory. The day after 9 Thermidor, the deputies opposed the old slogan, “Terror on the agenda,” with a new counter-slogan, “Justice on the agenda!”²⁰ There was a new rallying cry, “restore social order in place of the chaos of revolutions.”²¹ Therefore, it was a government that sought to end the Revolution and justified itself negatively: neither Terror nor monarchy. 

The new declaration of rights replaced “men are born free and equal” with “equality consists in the law being the same for all,” just as the right to property, which had not been defined in 1789, was specified: “property is the right to enjoy and dispose of one’s goods, income, the fruits of one’s labor, and industry.”²² While still considering the Caribbean world, the Convention maintained the abolition of slavery and guaranteed citizenship to Haitians.

After the occupation of the Convention by representatives of the sections linked to the sansculottes, demanding bread and freedom, the Assembly appointed, in April 1795, an eleven-member commission to draft a new Constitution. The report was delivered on June 23. A well-known speech by the reporter Boissy d’Anglais is illustrative:

We must be governed by the best men; and these are the most educated and the most interested in maintaining the law. However, with few exceptions, such men can only be found among the holders of property who, consequently, are tied to their country, the laws that protect their property, and the social peace that preserves them. A country governed by men of property is an authentically civil society; a country where men without property govern is in a state of nature.²³

On June 6, 1795, Paine, alarmed by the direction the Convention was taking, wrote to Deputy Thibaudeau emphasizing that reverting to a censitary system would justify new rebellions: “How could we imagine that recruits willing to die for the cause of equality tomorrow would agree to sacrifice their lives for a government that had stripped them of their fundamental natural rights?”²⁴ Paine then published the pamphlet Dissertation on First Principles of Government on July 4, 1795. Three days later, for the first time since the fall of the Jacobins and the last time in his life, Paine took the floor at the Convention. The brief speech at the French National Convention is transcribed in The Constitution of 1795.

[the] Constitution which has been presented to you is not consistent with the grand object of the Revolution, nor congenial to the sentiments of the individuals who accomplished it…The first article, for instance, of the political state of citizens (v. Title ii. of the Constitution), says: ‘Every man born and resident in France, who, being twenty-one Years of age, has inscribed his name on the civic register of his canton, and who has lived afterwards one year on the territory of the Republic, and who pays any direct contribution whatever, real or personal, is a French citizen.’ 

I might here ask, if those only who come under the above description are to be considered as citizens, what designation do you mean to give the rest of the people ? I allude to that portion of the people on whom the principal part of the labor falls, and on whom the weight of indirect taxation will in the event chiefly press. In the structure of the social fabric this class of people are infinitely superior to that privileged order whose only qualification is their wealth or territorial possessions. For what is trade without merchants? What is land without cultivation? And what is the produce of the land without manufactures?²⁵

One of the more opportunistic traits of this Constitution was the “two-thirds decree,” which aimed to prevent monarchists (encouraged by the self-proclaimed Louis XVIII) from forming a majority in the assembly: in the first elections, two-thirds of the future deputies had to be chosen from among the convention members whose mandates were about to expire. Despite the fall of the Jacobins, the “logic of public salvation” remained, according to which the Revolution should be defended, even at the cost of transgressing its principles.²⁶ By the way, two important leaders, the former supporters of the Jacobin government, Tallien and Billayd-Varenne, openly spoke of maintaining terror against traitors.²⁷ 

On October 26, the Convention dissolved itself and, according to Sieyés’s proposal for the new Constitution, was replaced by the Council of Five Hundred (tasked with drafting laws) and the Council of Ancients (tasked with voting on them, being half as numerous, with members having to be over forty years old). The executive power (the five members of the Directory) was elected by the two branches of the legislature: unlike the other two revolutionary constitutions, bicameralism was established here, under strong American influence.²⁸ The Directory would dismiss local administration members without appeal, direct diplomacy, and could issue orders for arrests; in these respects, the Consulate was not a rupture but an intensification of the previous government.²⁹ In October, the election of the Directory took place; Paine, who never ran again, became an ordinary citizen.

That said, it is essential to acknowledge that, during the Thermidorian period, a version of French liberalism emerged, which we will call Thermidorian liberalism.³⁰ This version consisted of the idea that it was impossible to reconcile the participation of the population in the political process (democratic principles) with the protection of individual rights and liberties (liberal principles) in the post-Jacobin context. Therefore, in his speech of July 20, 1795, Sieyès criticized “the unlimited sovereignty that the Montagnards had attributed to the people, based on the model of the sovereignty of the king in the Old Regime”—he refers, incidentally, to the Jacobin regime as ré-totale, in contrast to ré-publique.³¹ It is clear that the tension between individual freedoms and democracy—frequently associated with the 1820s— was already present in the Thermidorian Convention. 

With these considerations in mind, it is possible to highlight the problem that is at the heart of this text, which is to explain how Paine, a Thermidorian deputy openly anti-Jacobin and concerned with individual liberties and the limits of the state, positioned himself at this moment. 

DISSERTATION ON THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT 

The pamphlet Dissertation on the First Principles of Government presents a clear and well-structured argument, aiming to introduce the author’s most radical point: private property cannot be a natural right that overrides others and, therefore, should not be used as a criterion for voting rights. The pamphlet is divided into five parts: in the first, Paine expresses his belief in the centrality of politics; in the second, he presents three arguments against hereditary governments, discussing his conceptions of nation, social contract, and popular sovereignty; in the third, he addresses representative government, emphasizing the irrationality of property-based voting; in the fourth, he defends bicameralism (a significant shift from his ideas in Common Sense and a departure from the antifederalists ), explains the role of the executive power and the rotation of power, and reaffirms the importance of education; finally, he concludes with a defense of tolerance.³² 

Paine begins by stating that there is no “subject more interesting to every man than the subjects of government. His security, be he rich or poor, and in a great measure his prosperity, are connected therewith.”³³ His goal, therefore, is to study and perfect what he calls the “science of government,” which, of all things, is the least mysterious and the easiest to understand.³⁴ From there, he moves away from classical subdivisions and proposes that: 

The primary divisions are but two: First, government by election and representation. Secondly, government by hereditary succession. 

(…) As to that equivocal thing called mixed government, such as the late Government of Holland, and the present Government of England, it does not make an exception to the general rule, because the parts separately considered are either representative or hereditary.³⁵

The revolutions spreading across Europe are, ultimately, “a conflict between the representative system founded on the rights of the people, and the hereditary system founded in usurpation.”³⁶ Thus, aristocracy, oligarchy, and monarchy are distinct expressions of the same hereditary system, which must be rejected. Paine also rejects “simple democracy” (direct democracy), considering it impractical: “the only system of government consistent with principle, where simple democracy is impracticable, is the representative system.”³⁷ 

Paine was a key figure in the Thirteen Colonies, transforming republicanism from an ethical ideal and “way of life,” as it was seen in the mid-1700s, into a practicable and desirable political regime.³⁸ At this point, he reaffirms his well-known departure from part of the 18th-century republican language by conceiving the English government not as mixed and balanced, but as aristocratic: “It is certain,” Paine wrote to Condorcet, “that certain places, such as Holland, Bern, Genoa, Venice, etc., which are called republics, do not deserve such a designation (…) for they are in a condition of absolute servitude to aristocracy.”³⁹ 

Thus, Paine proceeds to discuss hereditary governments: “there is not a problem in Euclid more mathematically true than that hereditary government has not a right to exist.”⁴⁰ He then lists three arguments against hereditary rule, all of a temporal nature: the first concerns the succession of governments; the second, their origins; and the third, the eternity of rights. 

Hereditary government is contrary to reason because, by its nature, it is susceptible to falling into the hands of a minor or a fool.⁴¹ If the uncertainty of succession speaks against hereditary governments, the same can be said about their origins: hereditary government cannot begin because no man or family is above others. “If it had no right to begin,” Paine says, “it had no right to continue,” for:

The right which any man or any family had to set itself up at first to govern a nation, and to establish itself hereditarily, was no other than the right which Robespierre had to do the same thing in France. If he had none, they had none. If they had any, he had as much; for it is impossible to discover superiority of right in any family, by virtue of which hereditary government could begin. The Capets, the Guelphs, the Robespierres, the Marats, are all on the same standing as to the question of right. It belongs exclusively to none.⁴²

In this regard, Robespierre’s power resembles the despotism of the Old Regime more than democracy. Unlike many liberals of the early 19th century, Paine did not see Jacobinism as an inherent danger to the egalitarian impulse of democracy, nor did he conceive liberty as an aristocratic stronghold, but precisely the opposite. 

Hereditary government is also inconsistent in considering the relationship between time and rights: even if a government began illegitimately, would its usurpation become a right through the authority of time? The answer is negative in both directions: the present generations have no duty to submit to the men of the past (as he had already stated in Rights of Man), nor do they have the right to subjugate future generations. Rights are timeless and meta-historical and, therefore, universal in time and space: “Time with respect to principles is an eternal now: it has no operation upon them: it changes nothing of their nature and qualities.”⁴³ It is up to the living to make politics, so the injustice that began a thousand years ago is as unjust as if it began today; and the right that originates today is as just as if it had been sanctioned a thousand years ago.

The notion that time does not create any form of right, reason, or authority is what definitively separates Paine from the ideas of Burke and those known as British conservatives. The historian Anthony Quinton describes, British conservatism in the 18th and 19th centuries as aiming to preserve the historical arrangement of the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89, which encompassed three doctrines: the belief that political wisdom is historical and collective, residing in time (traditionalism); the belief that society is a whole, not just the sum of its parts (organicism); and the distrust of theory when applied to public life (political skepticism).⁴⁴ 

For Paine, on the other hand, any nation that enacts an irrevocable law or tradition would be betraying, at once, the right of every minor in the nation and the rights of future generations: “The rights of minors are as sacred as the rights of the aged.”⁴⁵ Thus, since minors and future generations are bearers of rights, any law that violates these groups is illegitimate. Legal authority (that is, the power to elect representatives and formulate laws), for Paine, rests on the consent of living men over 21 years of age; however, groups deprived of legal authority are not deprived of rights: “A nation, though continually existing, is continually in a state of renewal and succession. It is never stationary. Every day produces new births, carries minors forward to maturity, and old persons from the stage.⁴⁶ In this ever running flood of generations there is no part superior in authority to another.”⁴⁷ 

Thus, if it is evident that when a family establishes itself in power, we have a form of unquestionable despotism, it would be equally despotic when a nation consents to establish a regime with hereditary powers. The principle of consent as a source of legitimacy is taken to its ultimate consequences and extended to minors and those yet to be born: If the current generation, or any other, is willing to be enslaved, that does not diminish the right of the next generation to be free. 

For Paine, including minors and future generations in the concept of the people and, consequently, protecting them by law, would prevent democracy from turning into tyranny; and, therefore, in Paine, “the subject of democracy must be understood as a subject that is both juridical (the people of citizenvoters) and historical (the nation that binds the memory and promise of a shared future).”48 However, democracy is historical precisely because it encompasses timeless human values and rights—the commitment to future generations and freedom from past generations is due to this unbreakable bond that would unite the living and the dead, which, contrary to what Burke and conservatives think, is not historical. 

That said, democracy in Paine is a prolonged exercise of commitment, often tacit. It is not, therefore, a plebiscitary democracy in the sense of consulting the people on all decisions, or a “permanent revolution,” in the sense of a clean slate of political organization and a total reformulation of institutions, laws, and customs with each generation; but, as he stated in Rights of Man, the idea that “A law not repealed continues in force, not because it cannot be repealed, but because it is not repealed; and the non-repealing passes for consent.”⁴⁹ Therefore, Himmelfarb seems to exaggerate when she says that: “The political revolution called for in Rights of Man was a genuine revolution that required the abolition of all the heritage of the past (..,) and inaugurated a kind of ‘permanent revolution’in which each generation would create its own laws and institutions.”⁵⁰

However, it is important to note that, in the text, the author does not envision the possibility of granting women the right to vote, whose exclusion is not even discussed. In contrast to hereditary government, in representative government (in Rights of Man, he had already observed that direct democracy would only be feasible in small territories), there is no problem of origins, as it is not anchored in conquest or usurpation, but in natural rights: “Man is himself the origin and the evidence of the right. It appertains to him in right of his existence, and his person is the title deed.”⁵¹ 

Property-based voting, therefore, would produce a new kind of aristocracy, as a despotism installed within representative government. Private property, when used to strip others of their rights, becomes a privilege and becomes illegitimate:

“Personal rights, of which the right of voting for representatives is one, are a species of property of the most sacred kind: and he that would employ his pecuniary property, or presume upon the influence it gives him, to dispossess or rob another of his property or rights, uses that pecuniary property as he would use fire-arms, and merits to have it taken from him.”⁵²

If, in nature, “all men are equal in rights, but they are not equal in power,” the institution of civil society aims at an “equalization of powers that shall be parallel to, and a guarantee of, the equality of rights.”⁵³ While nature and civil society are spaces of inequality, political society is the space of equality; thus, democracy, inseparable from the idea of rights, guarantees a field of negotiation and compromise, creating the possibility of defending the poor against the rich and everyone against the state.

The inequality of rights is created by a maneuver of one part of the community to deprive the other part of its rights. Every time an article of a Constitution or a law is created in which the right to elect or be elected belongs exclusively to people who own property, whether small or large, it is a maneuver by those who possess such property to exclude those who do not: “it is dangerous and impolitic, sometimes ridiculous, and always unjust to make property the criterion of the right of voting.”⁵⁴ 

Subjugating the freedom to vote to property relegates the right to choose representatives to irrelevance. Hence the absurdity of subordinating the freedom to vote to property, which, in the end, ties the right to things or animals:

“When a broodmare shall fortunately produce a foal or a mule that, by being worth the sum in question, shall convey to its owner the right of voting, or by its death take it from him, in whom does the origin of such a right exist? Is it in the man, or in the mule? When we consider how many ways property may be acquired without merit, and lost without crime, we ought to spurn the idea of making it a criterion of rights.”⁵⁵

Property-based suffrage, moreover, can link voting to crime, since, as the author reminds us, it is possible to acquire income through theft; in this sense, a crime could create rights. Furthermore, since, in a democracy, one can only lose their rights through a crime, the exclusion of the right to vote would create a “stigma” on those who do not own property, as if they were delinquents: Wealth is not proof of moral character, nor is poverty proof of its absence. “On the contrary, wealth is often the presumptive evidence of dishonesty; and poverty the negative evidence of innocence.”⁵⁶

The worst kind of government, Paine argues, is one in which deliberations and decisions are subject to the passion of a single individual. When the legislature is concentrated in one body, it resembles such an individual. Therefore, representation should be divided into two elected bodies, separated by lot. Such separation of powers did not actually occur in England, as the House of Lords, lacking representativeness, relates to the legislative power as a “member of the human body and an ulcerated wen.”⁵⁷ 

The executive and judicial powers, on the other hand, would both exercise a mechanical function: “The former [the legislative] corresponds to the intellectual faculties of the human mind which reasons and determines what shall be done; the second [the executive and judicial], to the mechanical powers of the human body that puts that determination into practise.”⁵⁸ Magistrates, thus, are mere delegates, “for it is impossible to conceive the idea of two sovereignties, a sovereignty to will and a sovereignty to act.”⁵⁹ Nevertheless, the defense of the separation of powers remains intact to the unity of sovereignty. 

Similarly, Paine continues, power should never be left in the hands of someone for too long, as the “inconveniences that may be supposed to accompany frequent changes are less to be feared than the danger that arises from long continuance.”⁶⁰ 

It is precisely these checks and balances that faded during the Jacobin period. Paine, then, distinguishes the methods used “to defeat despotism” and the procedures “to be employed after the defeat of despotism,” which are the “means to preserve liberty.”⁶¹ 

In the first case, necessity predominates, calling for insurrection and violence, since, in a despotic regime, legal means for change are barred. In the second case, respect, pacifism, and debate predominate, so that: “Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced [of the importance of rights have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy.”⁶² 

Therefore, the government following a revolution should not be a revolutionary government. By revolutionary government, Paine means—and this is the heart of his interpretation of Jacobinism—a regime that maintains the use of the means that were necessary to overthrow the previous regime:

“Had a constitution been established two years ago (as ought to have been done), the violences that have since desolated France and injured the character of the Revolution, would, in my opinion, have been prevented. The nation would then have had a bond of union, and Every individual would have known the line of conduct he was to follow. But, instead of this, a revolutionary government, a thing without either principle or authority, was substituted in its place; virtue and crime depended upon accident; and that which was patriotism one day became treason the next (…) But in the absence of a constitution, men look entirely to party; and instead of principle governing party party governs principle.⁶³

In summary, Paine aligns himself with the predominant concern of the Thermidorian deputies, namely, to “end the Revolution.” However, the Thermidorians, by removing the right to vote from the population, resemble the Jacobins in despotism and end up justifying new rebellions. In a way, although Paine rejects, as we have seen, British conservatism and the Thermidorian anti-democratic perspective, he does not fail to aspire to a kind of liberal-democratic status quo that institutionalizes revolutionary measures and ideas, abolishing the revolutionary government and leaving no other path for change but legal means. Thus, he concludes his pamphlet with one of his most expressive phrases:

“An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”⁶⁴

However, a note is in order: democracy, to Paine, will be incomplete if we think only of its political dimension. Its religious and social dimensions remain. At the time of the Dissertation, Paine wrote, in 1793, The Age of Reason, in which he presented revealed religions as anti-democratic, as they reinforced the authority of institutions and excluded the illiterate (who could not read the Scriptures) and those who had no opportunity to come into contact with the true religion from Truth and Salvation. Thus, deism would be the truly democratic religion, equally accessible to all human beings, regardless of where they were born or their level of education. In this text, Paine also discussed the importance of religions protecting animals other than humans. In 1797, he published Agrarian Justice, in which he argued that democracy would only be realized when everyone had minimum social conditions of existence and basic opportunities guaranteed—hence his idea of a state-guaranteed income for all citizens from a fund constituted by a universal tax on inheritances (at a rate of ten percent), a reform proposal that should serve as an alternative to the Agrarian Law. A treatment of these other dimensions of democracy in Paine will be done on another occasion. It is noteworthy, however, that Paine is far from reducing the democratic ideal to voting or mere political institutional mechanisms. 

In the meantime, a question arises: does Paine’s discourse, by defining itself as democratic, align in any way with the Robespierrist projects? There are several convergences between Paine and Robespierre: both converge in their critique of the Agrarian Law and in their defense of some form of Progressive Tax. The most glaring divergences between Paine and Robespierre occur, in this sense, in the political field. It should be noted that the Jacobin group did not have a ready-made program, as is sometimes assumed (moreover, there were no political parties as we understand them today), but an ideology always modified by revolutionary circumstances and which can only be qualified based on its speeches and practices. The same happened, by the way, with Robespierre himself, who oscillated in his defense of direct democracy (1789-1792), representative government (from the end of 1792), the importance of primary assemblies (changes of opinion are verified in September 1792), and the Constitution of 1791.⁶⁵ 

In this sense, we refer here to Robespierre during the months he was part of the collegium of the Committee of Public Safety. At first glance, Robespierre agreed with Paine, stating that property-based voting would create a new aristocracy, that of “the rich.”⁶⁶ However, although the Jacobin Constitution guaranteed universal suffrage, it did not put it into practice, as he stated in February 1794, it is necessary to “end the war of liberty against tyranny.”⁶⁷ To understand such measures, Robespierre said, one only needed to “consult the circumstances,” a thesis reproduced both by the Jacobins and by part of historiography in the 19th and 20th centuries.⁶⁸

Robespierre then accused those who called themselves moderates of being traitors (seen by him, in fact, as “moderantists”), for they desired a revolution “subordinated to pre-existing norms.”⁶⁹ Similarly, although Robespierre philosophically opposed the death penalty, he emphasized that a revolutionary government would require extreme measures: “The government owes the good citizens all national protection; to the enemies of the people, it owes nothing but death.”⁷⁰ Therefore, the opposition to the idea of a revolutionary government, as seen in the analysis of the Dissertation, is the crux of the disagreement between Paine and Robespierre—the tension “necessity/liberty,” capable of turning democracy into despotism, is rejected by the English thinker.⁷¹ 

It should be noted that, while Paine distances himself from the “thesis of circumstances” (usually associated with Marxist or Jacobin historiography), he also does not align with the notion, defended by a certain “liberal” historiography, that the terror was a logical conclusion of the Revolution, as suggested by Furet and Ozouf, or that violence was “the driving force” of the revolutionary process.⁷² The place of the Dissertation in the early interpretations of Jacobinism, therefore, lies in the reading of the terror as a deviation from the Revolution and a reminiscence of the despotism of the Old Regime (I hope that, thus, it is demonstrated that Paine’s text, contrary to what Clark pointed out, has something to tell us about the French Revolution). 

A DEMOCRATIC LIBERALISM 

In this sense, the moderate stance and the “preexisting norms” referred to by Robespierre touch precisely on what can be seen, from a certain perspective, as the liberal character of Paine’s thought—a key element that separates the positions of the two protagonists.

The earliest uses of the word liberal in reference to the ideas embodied in the revolutions of 1776- 1848 — no longer in relation to a specific education or vague idea of amicability (Simpkin, Weiner and Proffitt, 1989) — date back to early 19th century Spain. In the context of the Cádiz Constitution, the liberales referred to those opposed to representative government and the Constitution as serviles (servants). For example, in the magazine El Español, in 1811, Blanco White referred to the constitutionalists as liberales in reference to the impact of the French Revolution on Europe. In a letter to Jovellanos in 1809, the French general Sebastiani referred to “vuestras ideas liberales” (your liberal ideas) in speaking of the ideas of tolerance and equality that should lead the Spanish to ally with Napoleon against the Spanish monarchy.⁷³ In 1813, in the Diario Militar, Politico y Mercantil de Tarragona, we find the first known use of the word liberalismo: “if liberalism is (…) to desacralize a people, I detest being a liberal.”⁷⁴ 

That being said, it should be noted that in the realm of political ideas, the emergence of a specific denomination may not be understood exactly as an act of foundation, but as a gain in awareness (which is also a form of producing new meanings and possibilities for thought) regarding a situation that already possesses some degree of crystallization. In the case of liberalism, this crystallization process in the decades preceding 1820 is well-documented, as recent studies show. However, it is equally true that, in the absence of such a denomination, there is a risk of seeing in what has been established earlier a degree of coherence that might not actually exist.⁷⁵

In this sense—and considering the enormous variety of liberalisms throughout history—rather than thinking of liberalism as a doctrine, it seems more appropriate to see it as a field, or a vast space of thought with some identifiable degree of kinship, within which there is room for the creation and proposal of the most varied positions. As a space of thought, liberalism has limits, which defines the objective existence of this field and at the same time distances us from overly essentialist, dogmatic, or normative positions. 

Starting from these premises, we support the possibility of agreeing on the existence of a classical liberal language in the second half of the 18th century, prior to the actual emergence of the term liberalism, but which would share degrees of kinship with 19th century ideas. The elements and limits of this language would include, namely, the defense of natural rights, contractarianism, opposition to traditional privileges and corporate monopolies, the idea of a state of nature, and the defense of checks and balances against the excesses of the state and society. 

It is important to note, however, that such elements are often scattered (after all, it is only the emergence of the word liberalism that would attempt to create some unity and coherence) and do not appear uncontested in any one author. Likewise, they are sensitive to other discourses, especially republican ones. 

That said, to what extent is it plausible to say that classical liberalism is democratic? In other words, how did authors of the time deal with the issue of limiting and distributing power at the same time? 

The word democracy in the 18th century was rarely used in a favorable sense. Marquis d’Argenson (1694- 1757), in his Considérations sur le gouvernement de la France (1764), was one of the first to use it referring to political equality and rights (thus favored by the monarchy), rather than self-government. However, the terms Démocrat and Aristocrate did not appear in France and America before the revolutions—its first uses date back to the Dutch Revolution (1784-1787) and the Belgian Revolution (1789-1791). 

Throughout the Age of Revolutions, the term gained greater circulation, being associated with equal rights, popular government, or the primacy of local assemblies. For instance, Barnave referred to an “era of democratic revolutions” to characterize the period in which he lived. The uses indicate a fundamental transformation: in addition to being a form of government (democracy), the term also referred to agency (democrat), adjectivation (democratic), and actions (democratize). Thus, democracy meant both a form of government and a practice aimed at greater equality. 

Indeed, the three most frequent and favorable uses of the word democracy during the period were made by Robespierre (which, by the way, would later be a key reason for the word having a negative connotation in the following decades), by the bishop of Imola and future Pope Pius VII, and, of course, by Thomas Paine. The first time Paine explicitly used the term was, as seen, in the second half of Rights of Man, where he referred to democracy as a form, as well as a public principle of government, advocating for representation as a means of its realization. 

Nevertheless, at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, the field we call classical liberalism and democratic language in both Europe and North America were mismatched. The dominant position excluded from voting workers, salaried individuals, beggars, as well as women and children, as they were assumed to depend on the will of others. Property was understood by many as the means to link self-interest with societal interest, thereby ensuring access to political power.⁷⁶ Even in the 17th century, Locke, a highly influential author for this generation, believed that non-property owners lacked “full interest” in the benefit of society and should, therefore, be excluded from voting.⁷⁷ Jefferson, although reflecting critically on land and inheritance, viewed the condition for the existence of democracy as a society in which everyone was economically independent; like the Federalists Jay, Madison, and Hamilton, he linked voting to property.⁷⁸ Burke believed that society could not be governed by an “abstract principle” like popular voting.⁷⁹ Madame de Stäel, who attacked the Dissertation defended a more limited suffrage than that of the 1795 Constitution.⁸⁰ Benjamin Constant argued that “only property grants men the capacity to exercise democratic rights.”⁸¹ After the French Revolution, the so-called doctrinaire liberals concerned with the “tyranny of the majority” argued, as Tocqueville would later, for the need for firm dams against the democratic flood. 

Macpherson argued that the utilitarians Bentham and James Mill, the father of Stuart Mill, were the first democratic liberals. However, Bentham, in 1817, said that certain exclusions should be made, at least for a certain time and for the purposes of gradual experimentation.⁸² James Mill, in turn, argued that it would be prudent to exclude women, men under 40, and the poorer classes from voting. Stuart Mill, a proponent of women’s suffrage in Parliament, excluded from the franchise those who did not pay taxes, lived off charity, and argued that the more enlightened should have the right to plural voting.⁸³ 

A more recent historiography of liberalism brings new light to Paine’s work. In Liberalism: A Very Short Introduction, Michael Freeden reaffirms that until the 19th century, liberalism and democracy were disconnected for two correlated reasons: fear of the “tyranny of the majority” and the “ignorance of the people” (themes that were addressed by Paine).⁸⁴ In addition, three recent handbooks on the history of liberalism bear mention. First is Edmund Fawcett’s Liberalism.⁸⁴ Fawcett’s text does not reference Paine’s work, but James Traub’s What Was Liberalism briefly mentions Paine as someone who endorsed the revolutionary violence of the crowd.⁸⁵ After this characterization, Traub credits Madison with a view closer to ours on liberalism for considering the solution to the tyranny of the majority within, and not outside, democracy.⁸⁶ 

However, Madison’s democracy, as shown, was less inclusive in social and political terms than Paine’s. In The Federalist (No. 10, 1787), the Virginian, contrary to Paine, made an effort to dissociate republic and democracy: “democracies have always been the scene of disturbances and controversies, have proven incapable of ensuring personal security or property rights, and in general, have been as brief in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”⁸⁷ Finally, Helena Rosenblatt’s The Lost History of Liberalism refers to Paine in the chapter discussing the relationships between liberalism and the French Revolution.⁸⁸ The author makes an observation, which we believe is correct about Paine, arguing that, for him, the problem was not whether an individual or group was liberal, but whether the fundamental principles of a nation were. This observation is based on the distinction between “people” and “principles” made in Rights of Man, in his debate with Edmund Burke. 

Thus, it is possible to affirm that Thomas Paine was one of the first to present the formula of democratic liberalism, advocating a specific notion of equality and a broader suffrage than was common at the time, while still maintaining the foundation of natural rights, contract theory, free trade, and checks and balances. This combination, as seen, can only be understood in light of the history of the French Revolution and sets him apart from many of the positions that were overlooked by historians.

In Paine, the remedy for the ills of democracy and the protection of individual liberties does not lie in limited suffrage or repression, but in the refinement of democracy, understood as a limit to authoritarianism and greater political participation, coupled with a broader enlightenment of the population. The way to avoid the tyranny of the majority is not through restricting the vote, but by incorporating the lesser groups and future generations into the notion of the people, thus expanding the notion of popular sovereignty. The richness of these discussions in which Paine’s thought is embedded is, finally, symptomatic of the great laboratory of political experiments and ideas that constituted the Age of Revolutions. 

CONCLUSION 

The Dissertation is a seminal text in understanding the changes in Paine’s thought throughout the French Revolution and enlightening in regard to the problems and debates raised during the Thermidorian period, which became fundamental in the first half of the 19th century. The little attention the text has received from Paine is unfortunate. The text thus expresses two lesser-known facets of Paine: on one hand, his concern with the excesses of central power and the possibilities of a majority dictatorship, contrary to what was emphasized in most of his earlier texts; on the other hand, an openly democratic stance, which, although underlying texts such as Rights of Man, takes its most expressive form in this pamphlet—therefore, at once, a more democratic Paine, but also concerned with the potential excesses of such democracy, a rather distinct image from the Paine of Common Sense, who supported unicameralism and was hesitant about universal suffrage. The formulation of property undoubtedly as a right, but as a right less important than life or liberty, lies at the heart of his insubordination against inequalities. These changes, as attempted to be shown, are strongly linked to the Jacobin phenomenon itself and the practices of the Thermidorian government, which reveals the relevance of Paine studies for understanding the period.

Nevertheless, it is clear that Paine had his own contradictions. What, for some, is an ideological inconsistency and, for others, true political realism (since the enemies did not act within the rules of the democratic game and had international connections), he supported the coup of 18 Fructidor of Year IV, September 4, 1797, when the Directory annulled the March elections that had given the realists a majority. The Fructidor coup reinforced an authoritarian path that culminated in the 18 Brumaire coup of 1799. Although he rejected Robespierre’s “principle of circumstances” and “the logic of Public Salvation,” Paine did not, therefore, refrain from using the same tactic. In any case, Paine never denied the need for revolutionary violence, as expressed in his well-known break with the Quakers in 1776—only that, in the Jacobin period, he did not see such a need. The author also encouraged the Directory to invade Great Britain and, along with Bonaparte, devised a detailed plan for the French troops’ entry into the island and launched the idea of a vast popular subscription to finance the operation.⁸⁹ 

Moreover, the ^Dissertation occupies a fundamental place in the history of liberal thought, as I have attempted to show. I believe that today, the liberal field faces three primary challenges, namely: how to prevent inequality, in its most acute forms, from being harmful to life and liberty without resorting to authoritarian solutions? How to ensure that the purported universalism of liberty and human rights coexists with the contradictory diversity of thoughts, beliefs, and forms of existence? How, without resorting to some form of elitist dirigisme, to prevent men, by their own disposition, from renouncing democracy in favor of dictatorial regimes? The discussions about these issues can be enriched if Paine’s perspectives are considered.

1. This paper was originally published in 2021 in the Revista de História of University of São Paulo (USP) under the title “Thomas Paine e a Revolução Francesa: Entre o Liberalismo e a Democracia (1794-1795).” The generosity of the Revista de História in allowing the publication of this text in English is greatly appreciated. 
2. This poem was distributed by the Irishman Arthur O’Connell in 1798. Apparently, it was a rebuttal to Thomas Paine. However, if the first verse of the first stanza is interwoven with the first verse of the second stanza, as well as the second, the third, and so on, the result would be a subversive pamphlet, which was O’Connell’s real objective. Paine was an honorary member of the Society of United Irishmen, which advocated for parliamentary reform (Hitchens, 2007).
4. On the leveling position, see Crawford Brough Macpherson, Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973, and more recently, Taylor; Tapsell, 2013. 
5. Philip S. Foner, ed., The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, I, (New York: The Citadel Press, 1945), 287. 
6. Foner, The Complete Writings, 277 
7. Moncure Daniel Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, (New York: Arno Press, 1977), 161-162. 
8. Foner, The Complete Writings, 1238
9. Foner, The Complete Writings, 61, 127, 237. 
10. Foner, The Complete Writings, 715. 
11. Foner, The Complete Writings, 284. 
12. Alfred Owen Aldridge, Man of Reason: The Life of Thomas Paine, (New York: J. P. Lippincott Company, 1959). 225. 
13. Bernard Vincent, Thomas Paine: O Revolucionário da Liberdade. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1989. 
14. John Keane, Tom Paine: A Political Life. London: Bloomsbury, 1995; and Craig Nelson, Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution and the Birth of Modern Nations, (New York: Viking Penguin, 2006
15. Philp, Mark. Paine. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 21; and Gregory Claeys, Thomas Paine: Social and Political Thought, (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989). 
16. Modesto Florenzano, Começar o mundo de novo: Thomas Paine e outros estudos. Tese (livre-docência:Universidade de São Paulo, 1999). 
17. J.C.D. Clark, Thomas Paine: Britain, America, and France in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) 359-362. 
18. Modesto Florenzano, Começar o mundo de novo: Thomas Paine e outros estudos. Tese (livre-docência:Universidade de São Paulo, 1999). 
19. Carine Lounissi, Thomas Paine and the French Revolution. (Cham: Springer, 2018), 235
20. Bronislaw Baczko, Comment sortir de la Terreur, (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), 421. 
21. Albert Soboul, A Revolução Francesa. (São Paulo: Difel, 2003), 108. 
22. Jean-Clément Martin, La Revolución Francesa: Una Nueva Historia. (Barcelona: Crítica, 2019), 447. 
23. Jeremy Popkin, A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution,(London: Hachette UK, 2019), 448. 21 Foner, II, pg. 968. 
24. Bernard Vincent, Thomas Paine: O Revolucionário da Liberdade. (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1989), 258.
25. Foner, The Complete Writings, 590. 
26. François Furet, e Mona Ozouf, eds. Dicionário Crítico da Revolução Francesa. (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteira, 1988), 50. 
27. Richard Bienvenu, The Ninth of Thermidor: The Fall of Robespierre. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968). 
28. Nora citation is missing, 1988. 
29. Soubel, A Revolução Francesa.
30. Baczko, Comment sortir de la Terreur, 429. 
31. Popkin, A New World Begins, 420, 450. 
32. It is important to remember that, at the time of the publication of Common Sense, John Adams stated that Paine’s pamphlet was “o democratical, without any restraint or even an Attempt at any Equilibrium or Counterpoise, that it must produce confusion and every Evil Work” (Bailyn, 2003, p. 262). During the French Revolution, in a text likely written in 1791, Paine wrote an interesting and little-known pamphlet, organized around questions and answers, called Answer to Four Questions on the Legislative and Executive Powers. The first of the four questions (which by itself is representative of the urgency of the issue) concerns the possible abuses of the executive and legislative powers. Paine is then emphatic in stating that, “If the legislative and executive powers be regarded as springing from the same source, the nation, and as having as their object the nation’s weal by such a distribution of its authority, it will be difficult to foresee any contingency in which one power could derive advantage from overbalancing the other” (Foner, 1945, p. 522). Therefore, there is an important shift in Paine’s thinking, which occurs in light of the Jacobin practices, namely, the greater importance of checks and balances in political structures. 
33. Foner, The Complete Writings, 571. 
34. Foner, The Complete Writings, 571. 
35. Foner, The Complete Writings, 571-572
36. Foner, The Complete Writings, 572. 
37. Foner, The Complete Writings, 584. 
38. Franco Venturi, Utopia e reforma no Iluminismo. (São Paulo: Edusc, 2003). 
39. Jonathan Israel, A Revolução das Luzes: O Iluminismo Radical e as Origens Intelectuais da Democracia Moderna. São Paulo: Edipro, 2013. 
40. Foner, The Complete Writings, 572-573. 
41. Foner, The Complete Writings, 573. 
42. Foner, The Complete Writings, 574. 
43. Foner, The Complete Writings, 574.
44. Anthony Quinton, The Politics of Imperfection: The Religious and Secular Traditions of Conservative Thought in England from Hooker to Oakeshott. (London: Faber, 1978). 
45. Foner, The Complete Writings, 574. 
46. Foner, The Complete Writings, 575. 
47. Foner, The Complete Writings, 575. 
48. Pierre Rosanvallon, El momento Guizot: el liberalismo doctrinario entre la Restauración y la Revolución de 1848/Le moment Guizot, (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2015), 90. 
49. Foner, The Complete Writings, 254 
50. Gertrude Himmelfarb, La Idea de Pobreza: Inglaterra a Principios de la Era Industrial, (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1988), 116.
51. Foner, The Complete Writings, 577. 
52. Foner, The Complete Writings, 577. 
53. Foner, The Complete Writings, 583. 
54. Foner, The Complete Writings, 579 
55. Foner, The Complete Writings, 579 
56. Foner, The Complete Writings, 579
57. Foner, The Complete Writings, 586. 
58. Foner, The Complete Writings, 586. 
59. Foner, The Complete Writings, 586. 
60. Foner, The Complete Writings, 587 
61. Foner, The Complete Writings, 587 
62. Foner, The Complete Writings, 587 
63. Foner, The Complete Writings, 587-588
64. Foner, The Complete Writings, 588. 
65. Furet, François, e Mona Ozouf, eds. Dicionário Crítico da Revolução Francesa. (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteira, 1988), 320. 
66. Žižek, Slavoj. Robespierre: Virtude e Terror. (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Zahar, 2007), 53. 
67. Žižek, Robespierre, 144. 
68. Žižek, Robespierre, 146
69. Žižek, Robespierre, 12. 
70. Žižek, Robespierre, 12. 
71. Ruy Fausto, “Em torno da pré-história intelectual do totalitarismo igualitarista.” Lua Nova, no. 75 (2008): 143–98. 
72. Schama, Simon. Cidadãos: Uma Crônica da Revolução Francesa. (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1989)689. 
73. Gaspar Melchor Jovellanos, Obras Completas, Vol 1, (Madrid: Atlas, 1963), 590-591. 
74. Vicente Lloréns, “Sobre la aparición de liberal.” Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 12, no. 1 (1958): 53–58. 
75. Daniel Klein showed how, in English the word “liberal” underwent a dual transformation in the second half of the 18th century: both quantitative, as the word began to appear more frequently after 1760; and qualitative, as it started to appear in compound forms (“liberal policy,” “liberal views,” and “liberal ideas.” It was associated with the idea of free action, free trade, and non-intervention. The change was not drastic, and as seen in Paine’s work, the term displays clear polysemy. For example, Dugald Stewart, in the 1790s, presented Adam Smith as a representative of the liberal system and as someone who thought of “freedom of trade” as distinct from “political freedom” (the latter, for him, being typical of the French Revolution). See Rothschild, 2003; Klein, 2014; and the text by Robertson in Clark, 2003
76. Rothschild, Emma. Sentimentos econômicos: Adam Smith, Condorcet, e o iluminismo. (Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2003.) 
77. Crawford Brough Macpherson, A Teoria Política do Individualismo Possessivo: De Hobbes até Locke. (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1979).
78. Arendt, Hannah. Da Revolução. (Brasília: Editora Universidade de Brasília, 1988). 
79. Burke, Edmund. Reflexões sobre a Revolução na França. (São Paulo: Edipro, 2014), 36. 
80. Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël, Des circonstances actuelles et autres essais politiques sous la Révolution. (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009). 
81. Benjamin Constant, Principes de politique applicables à tous les gouvernements. (Paris: Hachette, 1997), 113. 
82. Macpherson, A Teoria Política do Individualismo Possessivo, 40. 
83. John Stuart Mill, Considerações Sobre o Governo Representativo. (Brasília: Editora da Universidade de Brasília, 1981). 
84. Michael Freedon, Liberalism: A Very Short Introduction. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 84 Edmund Fawcett, Liberalism: The Life of an Idea. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. 
85. James Traub, What Was Liberalism?: The Past, Present, and Promise of a Noble Idea. (New York: Basic Books, 2019), 18. 
86. Traub, What Was Liberalism,? 23. 
87. Modesto Florenzano, Começar o mundo de novo: Thomas Paine e outros estudos. (Tese livre-docência:Universidade de São Paulo, 1999), 10. 
88. Helena Rosenblatt, The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), 47.
89. Daniel Gomes de Carvalho, O pensamento radical de Thomas Paine (1793-1797): artífice e obra da Revolução Francesa. Tese de doutorado, Universidade de São Paulo, 2017. https://doi.org/10.11606/T.8.2018.tde-12062018-135137. Acesso em 15 de fevereiro de 2020.

The post Thomas Paine and the French Revolution appeared first on .

By Gary Berton

In March, 1775, an article appeared in the Pennsylvania Journal in Philadelphia denouncing the institution of slavery in America – “African Slavery in America”. It was signed “Justice and Humanity”, and the pseudonym, a predominate practice of the period, left authorship open to interpretation. It lay unattributed until Moncure Conway included the article in his four volume set of The Writings of Thomas Paine¹ in 1894, since then repeated in other collections, and still referred to as Paine’s work by many to this day. 

Thomas Paine was the philosophical leader of the age of democratic revolutions. Through works like Common Sense and Rights of Man, he opened the possibility of a democratic republican system of government, grounded in natural rights and equality. Fighting for the universal application of “the natural rights of all mankind” (in the Introduction to Common Sense)², Paine’s life was a selfless struggle for liberty, equality and fraternity. 

So it was natural to assume that he wrote this important essay in 1775. The article is one of the earliest strong statements against slavery, whose language and salient points led to the creation of the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully held in Bondage a month later. The Society was led by Anthony Benezet³, but disbanded due to the Revolutionary War, and re-established by most of its founding members in 1784 as the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. Paine was not a founding member in 1775, per the Society’s founding documents at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, but after the Society relaunched after the Revolution in 1784, Paine did join and by records attended meetings in 1787⁴. 

Other scholars have questioned Paine’s authorship of “African Slavery in America”, led by James V. Lynch⁵. There are specific clues in the text that do not point to Paine: the article was sent to the Pennsylvania Journal, not the Magazine where Paine was editor at the time; the essay includes religious references that Paine would not use, like referring to “our religion” of Christianity (Paine was not a Christian) and referring to the slave trade as in “opposition to the Redeemer’s cause”; and Paine uses references to other authors which he never used in other works, or would use, as Lynch points out. 

Paine’s authorship of “African Slavery in America” can be analyzed now by a more objective criteria: computer text analysis.  During the process of this analysis, the real author has come to light. I am taking the opportunity to demonstrate Author Attribution Methodology (AAM) which will become a vital tool for historians to settle many questionable claims which have little basis, such as this slavery essay. It was used to uncover undiscovered Paine works, and clarify  collaborative writings that have gone unknown for centuries, as was done in the forthcoming Thomas Paine: Collected Works, due out in January, 2026 from Princeton University Press. 

Misattribution 

The source of the attribution of “African Slavery in America” to Paine traces back to Benjamin Rush in a letter in 1809, after Paine’s death, who claims he was told that Paine was the author. 

“About the year 1773 I met him [Paine] accidentally in Mr. Aitken’s bookstore and was introduced to him by Mr. Aitken. We conversed a few minutes, when I left him. Soon afterwards I read a short essay with which I was much pleased, in one of Bradford’s papers, against the slavery of Africans in our country, and which I was informed was written by Mr. Paine. This excited my desire to be better acquainted with him. We met soon afterwards at Mr. Aitkin’s(sic) bookstore, where I did homage to his principles and pen upon the subject of the enslaved Africans. He told me the essay to which I alluded was the first thing he had ever published in his life. After this Mr. Aitkin employed him as the editor of his Magazine…”⁶

However Rush has numerous errors in recounting these events more than thirty years after the events. The year is wrong: they would have met in early 1775 since he did not arrive in America until November 30, 1774. The allusion to “the first thing. . .ever published” was a statement Paine made about Common Sense, not this article.  For example John Adams complained: “There was one circumstance in his conversation with me about the pamphlets, which I could not account for. He was extremely earnest to convince me that “Common Sense” was his first born; declared again and again that he had never written a line nor a word that had been printed, before “Common Sense”.⁷  Paine would have said something similar to Rush a year after the meeting referred to by Rush. Rush also confuses the hiring of Paine by Aitken after the essay appeared, when Paine started two months before in January, after Paine contributed 3 articles in January, and took over editorship in February. 

And Rush also claims elsewhere in this letter that he gave the idea of writing Common Sense to Paine⁸ (Paine said Franklin gave him the idea in October 1775⁹), as well as its title, which appears to be an aging Rush exaggerating his role in history. Secondary sources are not reliable, as demonstrated here. New tools are needed, and AAM is the most reliable, accurate tool to use. 

Attributed by Moncure Conway in his breakthrough biography completed in 1893¹⁰, and since repeated by most Paine collections and biographies, “African Slavery in America” was accredited to Paine, as a key treatise of the abolitionist movement. Conway went so far as to anoint Paine as one of the first abolitionists¹¹. It is safe to say that in sentiment he may well have been, but as an author, there is no clear justification to support the contention. It is most probable that Paine did not write “African Slavery in America” based on a lack of evidence, on the language used in the essay, and on our computer analysis of the text. 

Paine’s Support for the Abolition of Slavery 

Paine referred to his support of the abolition of slavery in letters and elsewhere with unreserved hatred for the practice, upholding the revolutionary principle that people must free themselves. For example, in a letter to Benjamin Rush, March 16, 1790 (the letter has been mistakenly assigned as 1789 by Foner): 

“I despair of seeing an abolition of the infernal traffic in Negroes. We must push that matter further on your side of the water. I wish that a few well instructed could be sent among their brethren in bondage; for until they are enabled to take their own part, nothing will be done.” 

This letter may have fixed the association of Paine to “African Slavery in America” in Rush’s mind. Lynch is correct to an extent however in demonstrating the dichotomy of Paine’s private views and public efforts. 

Paine’s support for the Haitian slave uprising, his comments in congratulations to Thomas Addis Emmett on his work against the slave trade¹², his association with abolitionists in England in the early 1790s and his support for the abolitionist bill in England in 1790, and his intimate friendship with two of the leading abolitionists in New York in the years before his death, with whom he made the executors of his will – Morton and Emmett, demonstrate Paine’s abolitionist sentiment. But most notably, his close association with Franklin and their political comradeship led to his membership in Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery when Franklin was its President. Mariam Touba sums up this allegiance to antislavery in an essay presented at the 2012 First International Conference of Thomas Paine Studies at Iona College.¹³ 

Paine’s support for the abolition of slavery can be seen in other contexts. His support for the Haitian slave uprising and his statements in letters to Jefferson, such as the following, exhibit a profound hatred of slavery: 

“It is chiefly the people of Liverpool that employ themselves in the slave trade and they bring cargoes of those unfortunate Negroes to take back in return the hard money and the produce of the country. Had I the command of the elements I would blast Liverpool with fire and brimstone. It is the Sodom and Gomorrah of brutality.”¹⁴ 

From the Forester’s Letters in the spring of 1776 Paine was an early opponent of slavery: 

“…can America be happy under a government of her own, is short and simple, viz. As happy as she please; she hath a blank sheet to write upon. Put it not off too long.” Footnote by author: “Do not forget the hapless African.”¹⁵ 

In 1796, in a poem to a female acquaintance, “On the Descent upon England¹⁶”, where his stanzas iterate the crimes of Britain, is this notable one (Lynch also refers to this poem): 

“See Afric’s wretched offspring torn 

From all the human heart holds dear, 

See millions doomed in chains to mourn, 

Unpitied even by a tear. . .” 

Other scholars have questioned Paine’s authorship of “African Slavery in America”, such as Hazel Burgess and Jonathan Clark (who take their lead from Lynch¹⁷). There are specific clues in the text that do not point to Paine: the article was sent to the Pennsylvania Journal, not the Magazine where Paine was editor as I mentioned; the essay includes religious references that Paine would not use, like referring to “our religion” of Christianity (Paine was not a Christian) and referring to the slave trade as in “opposition to the Redeemer’s cause”; and Paine uses references to other authors which he never used in other works of this time period, as Clark points out. Clark assigns it to Anthony Benezet, based on the note accompanying the article to the publisher signed “A.B.” But A.B. was also used by Hopkinson in several essays, so that is not proof, just a guess. 

Lynch is correct in scolding many noted academics for using faulty references for proof of Paine’s abolitionism, something that will only be corrected by an official Collected Works. Despite a few errors¹⁸, the Lynch article makes a sound argument about the dichotomy of Paine’s private and public views, and correctly attributes to Paine the strength of his overarching ideology of universal human rights, and how abolitionism is ensconced under that banner, despite Lynch’s hostility to Paine. 

But Lynch assumes also that Paine “joined other revolutionaries in the conviction that American citizens would only be white.”¹⁹  And Lynch goes on to use examples from Louisiana and Haiti to support his contention that Paine saw only a white republic. But here is where Lynch’s bias rooted in his conservative world view oversteps the complete analysis. He attacks Paine for opposing expansion of slavery into Louisiana on practical grounds, yet ignores the fact he is trying to convince the power structure through Jefferson to do what is good for them, and so Lynch denies Paine’s humanitarian desires. He does the same in regards to Haiti, where Paine was writing to the President about the best approach to the revolution in Haiti for American interests. Lynch rightly asserts that Paine was not focused on individual issues, but on the wider era of democratic revolutions, where these particular issues would be resolved. And Lynch selects passages that suit him, and ignores the others: for example, the conclusion of “To the French Inhabitants of Louisiana”, Paine sums up his argument by making two points: “The case to which is being found in direct injustice is that which you petition for power, under the name of rights, to import and enslave Africans! Dare you put up a petition to heaven for such a power, without fearing to be struck from the earth by its justice? Why, then, do you ask it of man against man? Do you want to renew in Louisiana the horrors of Domingo?”²⁰ Lynch talks about the last sentence not the vehemence of the first part. Paine uses both the moral and the practical, so Lynch’s claim that Paine never publicly denounced slavery is not correct, just from these few quotes mentioned in this article. 

And Lynch does quote Paine’s true reasons for not writing about slavery, which belies other parts of his essay: “an unfitter person for such a work could hardly be found. The cause would have suffered in my hands. I could not have treated it with any chance of success; for I could never think of their condition but with feelings of indignation.”²¹ Lynch also repeatedly denies that Paine “seems” to deny blacks equal citizenship, that only whites could rule a republic. But here too his concept of civilization was paramount, not his attitude towards races, and it is misleading to say Paine only supported a Republic of whites . There are many out of context quotes in Lynch’s essay, which must wait for another article to lay out. 

But the question then remains, who wrote “African Slavery in America”? 

The Petrovic Method²² of Author Attribution 

Moncure Conway and Philip Foner in their collections of Paine’s works included “African Slavery in America,” however they did not have the tools we have today. 

The Text Analysis Project at the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona University developed a computer-based author attribution procedure to help in the problem of identifying authorship of texts attributed to Paine, or texts previously not attributed to Paine that should be. Several articles have been published, and peer reviewed to great acclaim. We focus on the style of the documents in the computer analysis, not the content, but then confirm the results through thorough analysis of its content by Paine scholars familiar with the philosophy and approach to political issues of Paine, and the forensic clues to geographical, personal content, and internal evidence in the document. Techniques to identify other styles not yet in JGAAP (Java Graphical Author Attribution Program), like the use of alliteration, were being developed by the Institute, but abandoned, and will be put to use in future analyses as we continue to perfect the Methodology. JGAAP is a free source of programmed style features that can be used to test texts using style(s) features. 

Stylistic features identified in JGAAP are often used unconsciously and consistently by authors, and, if correctly identified, will correctly reveal the identity of the author. It is much like fingerprints, which are hardwired in the author’s head, who can only explain, argue, or express themselves with their unique brain patterns. We use machine learning where special algorithms use documents of known authorship as training examples to train the computer to recognize each author’s writing style, or syntax, based on the use of 17 accepted author attribution features. Once the computer is trained, the completed model is tested against the disputed document to assess the nearest fit to the author training sets. 

Using JGAAP as a starting point, the method takes accepted features of style identification from established software of lexical features, and combines them in four types of machine learning methods and features that our team developed in a statistical array to generate percentages of likelihood of authorship. The results produced a self-testing, accurate measure of authorship attribution. Author files need to be created, from 2000 to 3000 words from definitive works of each author, as well as a program to group selective author files to which to test. 

The number of authors used was twenty-nine here, including Paine, Franklin, Benezet, Jefferson, Hopkinson, Price, Priestley, John and Sam Adams, Hopkins, Witherspoon, Madison, Monroe, Young, Cassandra, Matlack, G. Morris, Peale, Rittenhouse, and others. Authors are selected by time period and physical availability. A “leave-one-out” method of testing each author’s file is done: one of the works in an author’s file of works is tested against the remaining works, and so on through all the works. When using this method of testing the integrity of Paine’s file, we noticed that “African Slavery in America” stood out with a very low percentage. By removing it, the remaining works tested at 100%, assuring that Paine’s file was accurate. The same tests were done on all the author files to be certain of their purity. In all we use over 100 author files that we have covered French, English, and American authors in testing. Non-English texts are Google-translated, which has proved to be extremely accurate so that all tests are done in English. 

Some of the features used: 

• Character NGrams (Cg) – uses a sequence of n (2 or 3) characters to compare. For example, “Character NGrams” has these 2-grams: Ch, ha,ar,rc,ct,te,er,r_, _N, NG, Gr,ra,am,ms. This has proven very reliable in text mining applications. 
• First Word In Sentence (Fwis) – compiles the first words used in all sentences and compares. 
• MW Function Words (Mwfw) – from Mosteller-Wallace “Federalist Papers” work. Function words are the most common words, like prepositions, pronouns, articles, etc. They are content neutral and are used in a subconscious manner, and are most reliable in author attribution works. 
• Prepositions (Prep) 
• Special Words 2 (Sw2) – developed by our Text Analysis Project, these include use of period words like “hath”, “juster”, “wilfull”. 
• Suffices (Suf) – looks at the last three letters of each word. 
• SW French Origin (Swfo) – words are compared to an English words of French origin compilation. 
• Vowel-initial Words (Viw) 
• Word NGrams (Wg) – uses a sequence of words for comparison 

Learning methods used and abbreviations 

• Centroid Driver, Cosine Distance (CdCosd) – nearest-neighbor approach using normalized product distance 
• Centroid Driver, Histogram Distance (CdHisd) – nearest-neighbor approach using Euclidian distance 
• Linear SVM (Lsvm) – generates a linear separator to divide the feature space into regions, each corresponding to a specific author 
• Multilayer Perceptron (Mp) – an artificial neural network that maps sets of input data onto appropriate outputs. 

Using individual features separately, the results obtained only ranged from 37% to 73% accuracy in predicting authorship. With the combined method that we are employing, the accuracy was at 78% consistently in 2012, and then the accuracy was improved to over 90% through 2021. 

Random guessing would only expect to see a 6% result for each of 16 authors on a random test. The precision of the “leave-one-out” tests showed accuracy of 90%. This was achieved by weighting the features for each author for the features that work best for that author. Some authors showed, for example, a more reliable outcome consistently using function words, while it performed badly consistently using French origin. So we weighted function words for that author. The 62% threshold that we use ensures that only features that show effective accuracy above the median are used for the analysis. 

Testing “African Slavery in America” 

With different combinations of all possible authors, here are some results, taken from testing all the above authors: 

There are several things to notice in these tests: first, Paine shows little to no support; second, Hopkins shows very strong support; third, Anthony Benezet also shows little support; and lastly, there are no indications that the author is not present. Normally in leave-one-out testing procedures to insure accuracy, if one author among several achieves over 40%, with no other author above 20%, it is a strong indication that the 40% one is the author. A consistent 50% result shows a very high probability that the author has been found. If the real author is not present, the results would show several authors with under 40% support, with no clear winner. For example, here is a test that does not include Hopkins for “African Slavery in America”: 

Without Hopkins in the author choices, there is no clear probable author, a pattern that recurs whenever the actual author is not included in the test. 

Who is Samuel Hopkins? 

Samuel Hopkins was a Congregational minister and theologian from Rhode Island. Hopkinsianism bears his name, also referred to as the New Divinity, which he helped develop with Jonathan Edwards. He was a type of Calvinist. And he was one of the original ministers to denounce slavery, and his Congregationalist Church was the first to publicly denounce slavery. Hopkins wrote at least three other articles against slavery. He would have been familiar with Anthony Benezet’s Quaker objections to slavery who had written against it since the 1760s. It is likely that he sent this article to Benezet to be published in the center of political activity, Philadelphia, thus explaining the note to the publisher, signed A.B. 

The content of Hopkins’ “A Dialogue concerning the Slavery of the Africans,” written a year after “African Slavery in America,” exhibits the same arguments. 

From “A Dialogue”:

“And I take leave here to observe, that if the slavery in which we hold the blacks, is wrong; it is a very great and public sin; and therefore a sin which God is now testifying against in the calamities he has brought upon us, consequently must be reformed, before we can reasonably expect deliverance, or even sincerely ask for it.. . . we have no way to exculpate ourselves from the guilt of the whole, and bear proper testimony against this great evil, but by freeing all our slaves.” 

From “African Slavery”:

“How just, how suitable to our crime is the punishment with which providence threatens us? We have enslaved multitudes, and shed much innocent blood in doing it; and now are threatened with the same. And while others evils are confessed, and bewailed, why not this especially, and publicly; than which no other vice, if all others, has brought so much guilt on the land?” 

From “A Dialogue”: 

“Let no Christian then, plead this permission to the Jews to make bond slaves of their neighbours, as a warrant to hold the slaves he has made, and consequently for universal slavery.” 

From “African Slavery”:

“But some say, “the practice was permitted to the Jews. To which may be replied. The example of the Jews, in many things, may not be imitated by us . . .” 

The two essays exhibit the same philosophy, with the same religious arguments, and the same remedies – 

From “A Dialogue”:

“Let them be subject to the same restraints and laws with other freemen; and have the same care taken of them by the public. And be as ready to direct and assist those who want discretion and assistance to get a living, as if they were your own children; and as willing to support the helpless, infirm and aged. And give all proper encouragement and assistance to those who have served you well, and are like to get a good living, if not put under peculiar disadvantages, as freed negroes most commonly are; by giving them reasonable wages for their labour, if they still continue with you, or liberally furnishing them with what is necessary in order to their living comfortably, and being in a way to provide for themselves.” 

From “African Slavery”:

“To turn the old and infirm free, would be injustice and cruelty; they who enjoyed the labors of their better days should keep, and treat them humanely. As to the rest, let prudent men, with the assistance of legislatures, determine what is practicable for masters, and best for them. Perhaps some could give them lands upon reasonable rent, some, employing them in their labor still, might give them some reasonable allowances for it; so as all may have some property, and fruits of their labors at their own disposal, and be encouraged to industry; the family may live together, and enjoy the natural satisfaction of exercising relative affections and duties, with civil protection, and other advantages, like fellow men.” 

Conclusion 

The aim of the use of this Author Attribution Methodology article is to exhibit and assist in learning this methodology, is provide an objective, scientific method to help analyze texts attributed to historical authors, and discover text not attributed to the proper author(s), in order to be able to significantly close the debate on many documents. With this tool, we will be able to bring the full collected works of Thomas Paine to the forefront in the discussion on his legacy, his place in the history of political philosophy, and his continuing role in the struggle for democracy. In the process, we have discovered other documents that can be attributed to specific writers of the period. By determining that “African Slavery in America” with high probably is not Paine’s work, it does not diminish his role in the history of human freedom. And especially after the “Slave Letter” has been proved to be Paine’s using this Methodology.²³ And it does allow for the full recognition of the early abolitionists, like Anthony Benezet and Samuel Hopkins, to take a position of greater importance in American history. 

AAM also has demonstrated that most political and philosophical essays in the 18th century were written collaboratively, and several years were directed towards testing collaborative works. We have developed accuracy in authorship down to the paragraph level, and in individual sentences if necessary. The Collected Works will demonstrate it, as Paine led a group of writers in a collaborative manner to avoid discovery. No secondary references could break down the collaborative works. For example, it appears by our testing analyses, that the Federalist Papers are mainly inaccurate, having relied on secondary sources, and by using only one feature by Mosteller and Wallace.²⁴

“But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.” (Rights of Man) 

By Gary Berton, President of the Thomas Paine National Historical Association and Founder of the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona University 

Appendix: Paine’s Antislavery Legacy: Some Additional Considerations 

By Miriam Touba 

When assessing his legacy, modern commentators have noted Thomas Paine’s consistent objections to African slavery.  Paine’s strong antislavery stand was, however, seldom cited and often unknown to those “in the trenches,” the 19th-century abolitionists who were actually fighting the peculiar institution in antebellum America.  Reasons for this ignorance can easily be found:  Paine’s religious writings made him unpalatable to the churches, many of whom provided the energy for the abolitionist and reform movements of the first half of the 19th century.  Thus, the very Christian-based publications that printed arguments against slavery ran them virtually side-by-side with denigrating stories about the “infidel” Thomas Paine.  Furthermore, most of Paine’s antislavery writings were either unsigned articles, ephemeral newspaper remarks, or were entirely unknown before being brought to light by his dedicated biographer, Moncure Conway (an abolitionist in his own right) only late in the 19th century, when the fight against North American slavery was over. 

Not previously cited in this context is the wide circulation in the antislavery literature of the letter addressed to Thomas Paine by the British abolitionist Edward Rushton sometime around 1805.  Rushton’s persistent fight against slavery was admirable, carried on despite his blindness.  Among his efforts were letters written to George Washington and Thomas Paine pleading with them to use their influence against slavery.  To these pleas, Rushton never received a reply from Washington and, apparently, never a formal answer from Paine, then living in New York.  His letter to Paine, wrongly suggesting that Paine never published a syllable against slavery, would find its way into such influential abolitionist papers as The Liberator and the National Antislavery Standard much later in the mid-19th century. 

This presentation will discuss Rushton, his letter, and whatever influence it may have had on 19th-century abolitionists in viewing Paine as indifferent, timid, or lukewarm in the antislavery cause.  This study will also then briefly try to answer Rushton’s reasonable question:  Why did Paine oppose slavery and yet devote so little of his writings to the injustice of slavery? 

Finally, this paper will bring to light one piece of evidence of Paine’s commitment to the cause of antislavery just about the time Rushton was writing to him.  It is found in a greeting in a letter in the TPNHA/Iona Collection.  From New Rochelle, Paine sends on his congratulations to Thomas Addis Emmet, the Irish émigré lawyer who would later serve as Paine’s executor.  In this unpublished 1805 letter, Paine wishes to commend Emmet, whose first case before the bar in the United States was a successful effort on behalf of fugitive slaves.  While the details of the case appear lost to history, Paine’s passing reference to “the Affrican Affair” [sic] is just a reminder that there are new things to be discovered in the collection as it is being catalogued and made more widely available.

Mariam Touba is the Reference Librarian at the New-York Historical Society, March 2012

ENDNOTES

1. Conway, Moncure, The Writings of Thomas Paine, Vol. I, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1894, pg. 4.
2. Philip S. Foner, ed., The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, (New York, 1945), I, 3.
3. Antony Benezet (1713-1784), born in France as a Huguenot, converted to Quakerism in America.
4. Papers of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, March 5, 1787, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
5. James V. Lynch, “The Limits of Revolutionary Radicalism: Tom Paine and Slavery,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, (July 1999) CXXIII, 3, 177.
6. L.H. Butterfield, Rush, Benjamin, ed., Letters of Benjamin Rush, (Princeton, 1951), II, 1007.
7. John Adams, Collected Works, (Boston, 1850) II, 510. This insistence by Paine to have never written before was a means of protecting his Whig writing group in England starting in 1758. His revolutionary, underground activity using the printing press included a dozen like minded writers of note, and Paine was its leader (proof to be published in January, 2026 in Thomas Paine: Collected Works, in January, 2026.) 
8. L.H. Butterfield, Rush, Benjamin, ed., Letters of Benjamin Rush, (Princeton, 1951), II, 1008.
9. Philip S. Foner, ed., The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, (New York, 1945), I, 89.
10. Moncure D. Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine (2 vols., New York, 1892,1893), p. 41.
11. Ibid., p.95.
12. From an unpublished letter to John Fellows, April 18, 1805 in the TPNHA Collection at Iona College.
13. See Appendix for the essay.
14. See Paine’s letters to Jefferson in January, 1805, in Foner, Vol. II, ibid., pgs. 1453-63.
15. Foner, V. II, Letter 3, pg. 82.
16. Original at the Morgan Library.
17. XXX footnotes await access to these books.
18. Lynch for example refers to Paine’s religion as Quakerism. Paine was not a Quaker, but he was exposed to its teachings. See p. 188.
19. Lynch, p. 180.
20. Foner, II, pg. 968.
21. From John Epps, The Life of Thomas Walker (London, 1832), p .142, quoted by Lynch on p. 196.
22. Dr. Smiljana Petrovic of Iona University led the programming to create two packages needed to analyze text.
23. For a detailed look at Paine’s anti-slavery view, see “Identifying “A Slave”: The Iona College Text Analysis Project Explores a Mystifying Letter to Thomas Jefferson”, Gary Berton, Smiljana Petrovic, Michael Crowder, Lubomir Ivanov, in Mark Boonshoft, Nora Slonimsky, and Ben Wright, eds., American Revolutions in the Digital Age (CornellUniversity Press, 2024)
24. Frederick Mosteller (1916-2006) was professor of statistics at Harvard University. David L. Wallace (1928-2017) was professor emeritus of statistics at the University of Chicago. Their feature is one of the 17 features we used in our methodology. Unfortunately, using only one feature only results in less than 50% accuracy, and thus the Federalist Papers, which they tested, are only 50% accurate. That will be a future study, to correct the authorship of the Federalist Papers.

The post The Author Attribution of “African Slavery in America” appeared first on .

Imagine Thomas Paine as a “raw and adventurous” youth, scurrying up a ship’s rigging in storm-tossed waters, overwhelmed by the booms of two dozen cannons fired in unison, the clouds of choking smoke, and the violent lurches of a shuddering ship. In Age of Reason, Paine recalled the greatest dangers came “not by cannon balls, but by splinters from the inside of the ship that fly in all directions.” 

Perhaps Paine’s worldview took shape in war. Paine biographers often cite his Quaker father and Anglican mother, his small-town upbringing in Thetford, his forced departure from schooling at age 12 to apprentice in staymaking, effectively ending his formal education. Debate persists if he made corset stays or rope stays for ships. Either way, for young Thomas, the purgatory of grueling, tedious handwork weighed on him.

In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Ishmael went to sea “to hurtle after adventure and to inspect the self in a personal quest for truth and knowledge.” Young Paine apparently felt that same pull of the sea. 

He first tried fleeing to the sea in 1756 on the privateer Terrible, commanded by Captain William Death. Paine’s father pursued and begged his son not to go. Good thing, for the Terrible sank midway through its voyage with only a handful of survivors. 

Paine’s next escape attempt in 1757 succeeded. He found adventure on the privateer King of Prussia. For more than six months, he pursued prizes from seized French merchant ships, a life-changing event. 

In “Thomas Paine, Privateersman,” historian Alice Berry writes, “most privateersmen, like their piratical counterparts, sailed not for the glory of King and country, but for profit.” All hands shared the bounty. 

Understudied by biographers of Paine’s youthful years is the impact from his six months of shipboard life amid the Seven Years War. At age 19, he faced his first personal encounter with globalism. Paine worked with or fought against multinational ship crews. All profited directly from their oceanic capitalism. 

Privateers had their own sociability. Anthropologist David Graeber in Pirate Enlightenment, describes a “collectivistic ethos” aboard ships of plunder, including privateers. Graeber writes they were “experimenting with new ways of organizing social relations …happening not in the great cities of Europe — still under the control of various Ancien Régimes — but on the margins of the emerging world system, and particularly in the relatively free spaces.” 

As an inexperienced sailor, Paine’s job was to be “able-bodied,” ready to fight when needed. A knowledge sponge, he was eager to learn the ways of the sea. His desire to learn from experience led him later to observe about seamanship lessons, “a few able and social sailors will soon instruct… active landsmen in the common work of a ship.” 

In his later years Paine told his old friend Thomas “Clio” Rickman that he had “seldom passed five minutes… however circumstanced, in which he did not acquire some knowledge.” 

For Paine, as a curious young privateer exposed for the first time to a wide cross-section of humanity and worldviews, life at sea was a kind of higher education in the ways of the world. 

Paine’s early practical education was put to good use two decades later when he wrote Common Sense. He was able to knowledgeably present precise costs for building a navy. He accurately calculated the “charge of building a ship of each rate [type], and furnishing her with masts, yards, sails and rigging, together with a proportion of eight months boatswain’s and carpenter’s sea-stores.” 

In coming years, Paine’s naval experiences filtered into his fiscal analyses like a political crystal ball to see the future. Paine asserted that for the British, “the expense of the navy is greater than the nation can bear.” He backed up his statement with detailed calculations of the interest rates for the navy debts that Britain was incurring.

In addition to advising his colleagues on the construction and operating costs of navies, he addressed matters of naval invention and engineering by writing about deployment of gunboats for invasion and defense, also the rights of neutral vessels in times of war. His reasoning sprang from knowledge and experience. Paine’s youthful months at sea gave him understanding he carried with him for the rest of his life. 

NOTE: 

Essay excerpted from Thomas Paine and the Company He Kept, a doctoral dissertation in progress by Joy Masoff, PhD candidate

The post Thomas Paine, Privateer appeared first on .

The dedication of Thomas Paine to rational thought and inquiry was unparalleled amongst the Founders.¹ His commitment to a strictly rational regimen was particularly notable, and fraught, on the religious front.² 

In Paine’s view, organized religions marketed unreliable hearsay piled on hearsay as “revelations” that are, by definition, based on faith rather than evidence.³ Carefully observing nature, he rejected nearly everything propounded by organized religions as antithetical to rational analysis, retaining from Biblical accounts only what was discernable through observation.⁴ 

Restricting his mental diet to reason did not make him an atheist. To the contrary, Paine concluded that “reason can discover” the “existence of God.” Articulating his thought process, Paine first observed that nothing can make itself. He then noted that many things do exist such that those things were undeniably made. Articulating his thought process, Paine first observed that nothing can make itself. He then noted that many things do exist and, therefore, were undeniably made. Rounding out that syllogism, Paine reasoned that there must be “a power superior to all those things, and that power is God.”⁵ 

Related declarations are more difficult to square with his allegiance to reason. Paine expressed absolute confidence that “Providence” actively intervened to protect not just America but Paine himself. By contrast to his express articulation of why, logically, existence of a Deity comported with reason, his surviving writings disclose no hint of a rationale for believing in an intervening Providence.⁶ More puzzling, when he referenced gender regarding Providence, he identified Providence as female, never as male. Like his expressed belief in an intervening Providence, those identifications appear in his writings as unexplained givens.⁷ 

Two separate but intertwined mysteries are implicated. How could Paine reconcile a belief in an intervening Providence with his dedication to rational inquiry? Why did Paine, uniquely among the Founders and other contemporaries, identify Providence as female? That both mysteries ultimately resist resolution should not surprise Paine aficionados given how much is unknowable regarding Paine, primarily due to an 1830s fire that consumed many of his papers.⁸ What may surprise is that, on the unknowable subject of Providence, Paine conveyed definitive conclusions with utter confidence and calmness and without any explanations, rational or otherwise. 

Paine vigorously pursued rational inquiry as far as it would take him—farther than some contemporaries preferred—insisting that societal systems incapable of withstanding rational inquiry should be abandoned. But remarks about the limits of human capabilities and his persistent optimism in the face of frequent adversity suggest that, when faced with the inexplicable, Paine was neither frustrated nor sought to flog the inexplicable into submission.⁹ 

John Keats contended that creativity in people “of Achievement” is opened to new and fruitful frontiers by embracing “uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”¹⁰ Paine knew nothing about Keats, having died in 1809 when Keats was only thirteen. But conceivably Paine, despite or even because of his dedication to reason, would have appreciated this concept of “Negative Capability” developed by Keats in 1817.¹¹ 

The boundary between the rational and the inexplicable is individual for each human and shifts over time and societal developments with no bright line demarking that boundary. With Keats applying his deeply probing mind to poetical expression, for example, while Paine applied his to clear and rational thinking and writing, they would have encountered dramatically differing locations. But when they each individually faced what they respectively deemed the inexplicable, it is conceivable that their responses may have paralleled. 

Did Paine refrain, in those circumstances, from “irritable reaching after fact & reason”— with irritable being the key word— and, encouraging his sense of wonder to flourish, allow deeper and unexpected insights to come his way?¹² If so, Paine may well have experienced, as Keats expressed elsewhere, “‘the intense pleasure of not knowing’” on those occasions when Paine’s pursuit of rational inquiry left significant questions unanswered and unknowable.¹³ Exploring the two mysteries posed here may provide keys to appreciating the complicated force that was Thomas Paine and, more generally, the limitations of rational inquiry and contemplation of the inexplicable that each human must address within their own mind. 

INTERVENING PROVIDENCE AND RATIONAL INQUIRY 

In America during the Revolutionary Era, belief in an intervening Providence was nearly universal.¹⁴ Contemporaries belonging to Calvinist sects, like Samuel Adams, John Jay and John Witherspoon, were certain that Providence as a manifestation of the male God intervening regularly in human affairs in ways that comported with Biblical texts, which were literally the Word of God.¹⁵ Deist Founders filtered their beliefs in an intervening Providence through rational inquiry.¹⁶ Because Paine was more obsessively dedicated to reason than other Deist Founders, his belief in an intervening Providence is notable.¹⁷ His assumption that Providence directly intervened to protect him personally was most explicitly expressed when, after returning to America, he lambasted Federalists for attacking him. He questioned why they didn’t also attack Providence for having protected Paine “in all his dangers, patronized him in all his undertaking, encouraged him in all his ways, and rewarded him at last by bringing him in safety and in health to the Promised Land.”¹⁸ 

Terrific satire and intentionally over-the-top. But could Paine reason his way to a belief that a supernatural force directly intervened to protect him, as an individual, from harm? Paine firmly rejected the concept of guardian angels, expressly criticizing Quaker pacifists in 1775 by declaring that “we live not in a world of angels” and that we cannot “expect to be defended by miracles.”¹⁹ His Age of Reason more thoroughly eviscerated the concept of miracles.²⁰ Yet he believed in an intervening Providence. Is the answer that Paine was, as George Bernard Shaw said of Joan of Arc, a visionary who was “mentally excessive”?²¹ 

Reconciling Paine’s references to Providence with his overarching commitment to reason would be easier if one accepted the view of an unsympathetic commentator that Paine employed mere rhetorical flourishes insincerely manufactured to persuade readers by exploiting their religious beliefs.²² That commentator’s theory falls apart when one recognizes that he restricted analysis to Paine’s early American writings, ignoring Paine having repeatedly invoked Providence from 1775 through 1803 and even doing so on an occasion when manipulative motives made no sense—a private letter to Franklin.²³ Aldridge, more convincingly, cited Paine’s invocation of an intervening Providence in that letter to Franklin as evidence Paine had “a firm belief in the doctrine of special providence.”²⁴ Paine’s surviving writings confirm that he was sincere in invoking an intervening Providence. 

Teasing out explanations for the apparent disparity in Paine’s thinking between an unyielding devotion to reason and a belief in an intervening supernatural force was furthered through Matthew Stewart’s superb book Nature’s God. Although Stewart did not expressly address Paine’s views on Providence, he carefully studied views of the Deist Founders in contrast to earlier religious beliefs in England and the colonies and observed that the very idea of Providence was transformed by the Deists.²⁵

Some contemporaries of Paine, for example, took the Bible literally and believed that Providence caused many events contrary to laws of nature, such as the Biblical stories of the Sun standing still in the sky for a full day or the Red Sea parting. For example, that “the Bible was divinely revealed and that its miracles were valid were accepted by Samuel Adams “without question.”²⁶ By contrast, for “the deists, a miracle by definition constituted an infraction of the regular and predictable operations of physical reality.”²⁷ 

Deists generally viewed Providence as causing only events that, while improbable, fully complied with the laws of nature.²⁸ Washington attributed his survival from multiple bullets hitting his coat to the intervention of Providence.²⁹ Improbable but feasible under the laws of nature. Paine attributed his survival during the Jacobin reign to an intervening Providence.³⁰ Improbable but well within the laws of nature. The intervention of Providence, viewed in this way, comports closely with Giordano Bruno’s view that Providence does not override “the operation of nature” and can instead “be explained in terms of natural laws.”³¹ 

Deists were, by nature, individualist and unconfined by a fixed set of creeds mandated by a hierarchical church structure. As a result, their beliefs regarding God and Providence varied. Franklin straddled the fence between Deism and other belief systems and remained governed, due to his Puritan upbringing, by assumptions that God was infinitely powerful and infinitely good.³² Those assumptions directed his reasoning towards a conclusion that God’s Providence must sometimes act in ways contrary to the laws of nature.³³ Otherwise, Franklin reasoned, God would be either impotent or willing to countenance demonstrably evil actions—results inconsistent with God being infinitely powerful and infinitely good.³⁴ 

Recall that Paine, by contrast, deduced the existence of God from a logical supposition that God was whatever first created things.³⁵ Unconstrained by assumptions that troubled Franklin, Paine was freed to view Providence as a force that acted in ways fully compliant with the laws of nature.³⁶ But is belief in an intervening Providence ultimately just belief rather than a result of reasoned examination of actual occurrences? Paine may have responded that human abilities to ferret out explanations for actions of God and Providence are severely restricted. 

In 1782, Paine asserted that “no human wisdom could foresee” the purposes of expectation that rational inquiry in the future would push further than he could, at that time, into probing that “secret.” Eleven years later, Paine concluded that “the power and wisdom” that God “has manifested in the structure of the Creation that I behold is to me incomprehensible,” and “even this manifestation, great as it is, is probably but a small display of that immensity of power and wisdom by which millions of other worlds, to me invisible by their distance, were created and continue to exist.”³⁸ 

Some observers accused Paine of thinking too well of himself and his abilities. Remarks by Paine that fed those types of accusations should be balanced against the humility and calm wonder he displayed when observing nature and the universe. Conceivably, and consistent with the later musings by Keats, his belief in an intervening Providence constituted an effort to appreciate and marvel at the “incomprehensible” while remaining otherwise unflinchingly dedicated to rational inquiry. 

What effect did Paine’s belief in an intervening Providence have on his overall philosophy and his political and social views? Gregory Claeys argued that Paine’s “social theory owed much to his belief in Providence, which underpinned, for example, the optimistic elements of his theory of commerce.”³⁹ Would a Paine who lacked beliefs in an intervening Providence have penned theories substantially different from those he promulgated? Would he have lacked the optimism and confidence to propound and push the radical and uncompromising views that continue to resonate? If Paine, after exhaustive efforts to tease out everything reason had to offer in his lifetime, experienced “the intense pleasure of not knowing” that Keats praised as a font of human creativity and achievement, that may have reignited fires within his mind even as nighttime candles flickered in his darkening writing rooms. 

PROVIDENCE AS FEMALE 

The first mystery ultimately remains unresolved. Exploring the second mystery will similarly leave open questions but will, hopefully, provide insight into Paine. Drilling down into what Paine said about Providence, we discover a startlingly unique conviction. Every time Paine referenced gender for the Deity, he identified the Deity as male.⁴⁰ But every time he referenced gender for Providence—in 1777, 1778, 1782, 1792 and 1802—he identified Providence as female.⁴¹

Where did that perspective come from? While in England, Paine was exposed to Quakers, Anglicans and Methodists. Each sect generally viewed Providence as a manifestation of a male God.⁴² Contemporaries such as Rev. Joseph Priestley and Rev. Richard Price had conveyed the view of Providence as a manifestation of a male God in writings published before Paine emigrated to America.⁴³ References to Providence in Political Disquisitions by James Burgh, which Paine cited several times in Common Sense, nowhere hint at Providence having a female gender.⁴⁴ French influences may be excluded for many reasons, including the Catholicism of France and Paine’s anti-Papist views, but it suffices that Paine publicly identified Providence as female at least three times before first travelling to France in 1780.⁴⁵ 

One Paine biographer, after noting Paine’s identification of Providence as female in Rights of Man, observed, with understatement, that “few references to Providence in this period characterized it as female.”⁴⁶ Few indeed. One must reach back to Imperial Rome to find general beliefs in Providence being female. Unconnected dots invite speculation that Paine may have absorbed a belief in a female Providence from contemporary discussions of that Roman source. In ancient Rome, “Providentia” was viewed as a female “divine personification of the ability to foresee and make provision.”⁴⁷ Macrobius, a Roman author who wrote about paganism about 400 CE, declared that “providence was personified as a proper goddess in her own right.”⁴⁸ 

“In the late Republic PROVIDENTIA was that foresight which…helped to secure the continued and peaceful existence of the state, preserving it against external or internal dangers.”⁴⁹ Refraining from learning Latin in Thetford Grammar School, Paine said, “did not prevent” him “from being acquainted with the subjects of all the Latin books used in the school.”⁵⁰ Reference to “Latin books” is sparse in his writings, although that is unsurprising for an author known for minimalistic citations to other authors. What “Latin books” was he exposed to before first identifying Providence as female that may have influenced him? In several writings that preceded his first identification of Providence as female in Crisis No. 3, published on April 19, 1777, Paine displayed considerable familiarity with Roman times and ways.⁵¹ Later references suggest far deeper absorption by Paine of ancient Roman authors, and books about ancient Rome, than is generally assumed.⁵² With that in mind, Paine may have consumed either an unabridged 1747 or 1755 edition of Polymetis by Joseph Spence, or a 1765 abridged version, most likely sometime after returning from his privateering adventures in 1757.⁵³

The unabridged editions of Polymetis contain detailed discussions about the Imperial Roman belief in female Providence and illustrations of “Providentia” as displayed on Roman coins.⁵⁴ Paine had multiple opportunities prior to first identifying Providence as female in 1777 to be exposed to Spence’s discussions of a female Providence. Benjamin Martin subscribed to the unabridged 1747 edition of Polymetis and Paine later attended his astronomy lectures and became a friend, so Paine could have borrowed a copy from Martin.⁵⁵ Alternately, though the purchase price was likely far beyond Paine’s budget, he could have perused a copy of an unabridged edition through the lending libraries then taking hold in London.⁵⁶ Alternately, Paine could have read a far less expensive abridgment published in 1765 that, like the unabridged version, contained detailed discussions about a female Providence, though with far less content and no “Providentia” illustrations.⁵⁷ 

Assume, however, that Paine was not exposed to any of those editions before emigrating in 1774. He still had opportunities, before first identifying Providence as female in April 1777, to have consumed an unabridged edition of Polymetis. The 1775 catalogue of the Library Company of Philadelphia listed the 1755 unabridged edition amongst its holdings.⁵⁸ Polymetis was sufficiently available in America that Jefferson, in a July 1776 letter, accurately expected that “some library in Philadelphia” would have Spence’s Polymetis.⁵⁹ 

Paine rarely mentioned books he had read and sometimes claimed not to have read books that scholars conclude he must have consumed.⁶⁰ That Polymetisis unmentioned in his writings, particularly since he never attempted to explain his beliefs regarding Providence, is unsurprising. Unabridged editions of Polymetis were filled with citations to Macrobius and Cicero and contained images of the transparently female figure of Providentia as displayed on Roman coins.⁶¹ Even the abridged version published in 1765 would have conveyed the essence, noting that “among the “MORAL DEITIES” in Rome, “PRUDENCE (or GOOD SENSE) was received very early as a goddess,…the affairs of human life are by her regulated as they ought to be” and “She is called also Providentia but when they used it for divine providence, the usual inscription on medals is, PROVIDENTIA DEORUM,” while a different name is used for human prudence.⁶² 

Spence, in Polymetis, conveyed critiques of classically based educational methods that were remarkably like critiques that Paine articulated later.⁶³ Spence took “aim in the Polymetis at the classical scholarship of his day, which he” found “obscure and pedantic, and generally unhelpful in explicating the texts themselves” and “also question[ed] the need for a classical education grounded in a thorough study of Latin and Greek, which he consider[ed] an unnecessary preparation for most professions.”⁶⁴ Paine was similarly critical of classical scholarship for its own sake as opposed for purposedriven uses.⁶⁵ Cursory glances through Polymetistelegraph that the intellectual sponge that Paine was in his twenties after returning from privateering adventures would have thrilled at its content. With Paine’s fascination regarding astronomy, Paine may have found Macrobius interesting because he authored a text “that transmitted classical astronomical knowledge to medieval Latin Europe” by commenting on a work of Cicero that Macrobius included in his work.⁶⁶ 

The 1755 unabridged edition and the 1765 abridgement were extensively advertised in London papers that Paine likely read.⁶⁷ As noted earlier, a copy of the 1755 edition of Polymetis was available in Philadelphia, at the Library Company founded by Franklin, after he arrived in Philadelphia in November 1774 and before April 1777.⁶⁸ The Library Company was open to the public well before Paine emigrated and with Paine’s bibliophilia being a quality about which we have little doubt, it is fair to assume he spent many hours there.⁶⁹ While other books published in England before Paine emigrated noted the Roman belief that Providence was female, their references were so slight and obscure that they are a far less likely source for Paine’s belief.⁷⁰ If his belief is derived from a book, Polymetisis the prime candidate. 

May we connect these disparate dots to create a coherent constellation, in Roman style, displaying the origin of Paine’s belief in a female Providence? Tempting as that may be, evidentiary gaps preclude, for now, a definitive conclusion. But sifting the soil of Paine’s contemporaries during the Revolutionary Era as an alternative source is sufficiently unpromising to return us, by deductive reasoning, to Polymetis.

Many Deist Founders, when referencing gender at all, identified God as male and Providence as either male or a manifestation of a male God.⁷¹ When Paine referenced gender regarding God, he similarly identified God as male and never as female.⁷² Paine was unique among his American contemporaries in identifying Providence as female.⁷³ 

John Adams referenced Providence with some frequency, usually with no gender reference. On occasions when Adams referenced gender, he identified Providence as genderless three times and as male twelve times, never suggesting that Providence was female.⁷⁴ Jefferson referenced Providence more infrequently also without usually referencing gender. Of the occasions when Jefferson referenced gender, he identified Providence as genderless twice, as male six times and, like Adams, never suggested a female gender.⁷⁵ Washington referenced an intervening Providence with extraordinary frequency, usually without identifying gender beyond implying a male gender by equating God with Providence.⁷⁶ Of the occasions when Washington expressly referenced gender for Providence, eighteen identified Providence as genderless (“it” or “its”).⁷⁷ Nine identified Providence as male (“he” or “his”).⁷⁸ Curiously, Washington twice deviated from his general practices by identifying Providence as female in 1777 and 1783.⁷⁹ 

No surviving information sheds light on those two deviations from Washington’s general practices. Paine’s identifications were an unlikely influence.⁸⁰ Conceivably, Washington was exposed to Polymetis since George Wythe—a sufficiently close friend that Washington “settled into” Whyte’s home for a while— apparently had a copy in his personal library.⁸¹ But, with Washington having only used female pronouns for Providence twice among the many occasions that he expressed or implied a gender, could they merely have been slips of the pen? What is certain is that Paine, who was extraordinarily careful with his word choices, consistently and repeatedly Providence as female, even emphasizing “her” on one occasion.⁸² 

A possible explanation is that Paine’s unique perspective among the Founders about the differing genders of God and Providence is unattributable to any, so why did he develop that perspective without any outside influence? Did his identification of Providence as female reflect the respect he had for women as equal human beings?⁸³ There is sparse evidence that Paine’s relatively egalitarian views towards women, while remarkably modern for the time, would have sufficiently evolved by April 1777 to have inspired that initial identification of Providence as female.⁸⁴ More broadly, it seems inconceivable, that Paine would have refrained from his general practice of expressly articulating thought processes that were uniquely his regarding his identification of Providence as female if he had developed that concept entirely on his own.uniquely his regarding his identification of Providence as female if he had developed that concept entirely on his own. 

Deductive reasoning and circumstantial evidence suggest that the most likely influence was reports of ancient Roman beliefs as relayed in one or more sources available to him before, and after, he emigrated. For now, Polymetis seems the most likely inspiration for Paine identifying Providence as female. 

Did his identification of God as male and Providence as female indicate that, unlike other Deist Founders, Paine perceived Providence as an entity separate from God? That has intriguing implications but, given limited evidence, cannot proceed beyond the question being posed.⁸⁵ The only Paine biographer who noted Paine’s practice of identifying Providence as female and God as male reported that it troubled him for quite a while.⁸⁶ Unfortunately, his conclusions were unhelpful, declaring, with evidence-free confidence, that “Paine envisioned Providence as an all-encompassing, nurturing she-goddess of nature” and that “Paine’s Providence was the First Cause, the giver of all life,” and “created the universe,…”⁸⁷ Paine’s writings directly belie those conclusions, with that very biographer repeatedly noting that Paine instead stated that the Creator was a male God and, indeed, was the “sole” Creator.⁸⁸ 

Since Paine also consistently identified Nature as female when referencing gender regarding Nature, did he equate Providence with Nature?⁸⁹ His separate expressions of gratitude to both “nature and providence” suggest that he did not equate them, particularly with Paine generally minimizing redundancy in his writings.⁹⁰ More telling, he did not view Nature as actively intervening in human affairs like Providence. Instead, he viewed the laws of Nature as imposing limits on human affairs and on Providence. 

As with many aspects of Paine, the only clues are disclosed through his surviving writings, which offer tantalizing hints that will likely remain perennially unresolved. Ultimately, we cannot know why he identified God as male and Providence as female. We are, regarding his reasoning, consigned to the “intense pleasure of not knowing.” 

EXPLAINING THE INEXPLICABLE 

Ultimately, what humans—unlike other species so far as we know—perennially confront is how to explain the inexplicable. For humans, that results in concepts like God and Providence. How did Paine— the Man of Reason dedicated in his bone marrow to rational thought—explain the inexplicable? Paine struggled to develop the best answers he could given the limitations of what was rationally detectable in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. Recognizing how little could then be explained through reason and the vastness of what was inexplicable, his enlistment of and reliance on Providence is understandable. 

Did he consider his belief in an intervening Providence grounded on reason? He never either said that it was and articulated any rationale in his surviving writings. He may instead have explored the issues as deeply as rational inquiry carried him and then, in proto-Keats fashion, have embraced the unknowable that he labeled “Providence” while refraining from “irritable reaching for fact and reason.” That we, in the 21st Century, may reach different conclusions through reason does not mean that Paine was less dedicated to reason. Then, and today, firm devotees of reason rather than revelation necessarily marvel daily at inexplicable events and at the intricacies presented by Nature that are well beyond the capacities of humans to explain.

ENDNOTES

1. Jack P. Greene, “Paine, America, and the ‘Modernization’ of Political Consciousness, 93, Political Science Quarterly 73-92 (Spring, 1978), 76- 81 (Paine frequently advocated for people to insist on being governed by rationalsystems and was himself devoted to rational thinking). The biography title best capturing Paine may be Alfred Owen Aldridge, Man of Reason: The Life of Thomas Paine (Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott & Co., 1959). 
2. E.g., John Keane, Tom Paine: A Political Life (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1995), 500- 503. 
3. Thomas Paine, Age of Reason [1793], The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. P. Foner (New York: The Citadel Press, 1945), 1:463-514; Age of Reason: Part Second [1795], Paine Writings, 1:514-604. 
4. Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:463- 514; Age of Reason: Part Second [1795], Paine Writings, 1:514-604. Religious views expressed in Age of Reason were “based entirely on the observation of nature and reasoning from it.” Aldridge, Man of Reason, 231. “Paine applied tests of reason to scripture,” and “rejected almost everything,” with the “notable exception [of] creation, because he could actually see the results of it”—using “his own rational teststo question every event in the Bible.” Jack Fruchtman, Jr., Thomas Paine and the Religion of Nature, (Baltimore: MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 159 & 160. Paine identified within the Bible a few exceptions grounded on actual observations of “creation” and, therefore, consistent with rational inquiry. Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:484-486. 
5. Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:486. This logic, compelling in the late 18th Century, was drawn in question by Darwin but only genuinely challenged with the advent of modern physics. Full disclosure calls for noting that, applying the limited knowledge gleaned through the present day, your author views beliefs in a Deity and an intervening Providence to be precluded by rational inquiry while fully respecting Paine’s ability to rationally reach different conclusions using knowledge available while he lived. As indicated elsewhere, the boundary between rational inquiry and the inexplicable is individual and shifts with time and societal changes. 
6. Paine proffered a rationale for his belief in a Deity. Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:486. But on none of the occasions that he expressed belief in Providence as an intervening force did he ever broach reasons for that belief. “Crisis No. 1” [1776], Paine Writings, 1:55; “Crisis No. 3” [1777], Paine Writings, 1:75; id, Paine Writings, 1:87; “Crisis No. 5” [1777], Paine Writings, 1:120; “Crisis No. 6” [1778], Paine Writings, 1:131; “Crisis No. 8” [1780] Paine Writings, 1:160: “Crisis No. 9 [1780], Paine Writings, 1:166: “The Crisis Extraordinary” [1780], Paine Writings, 1:185-186, “Crisis No. 10” [1782], Paine Writings, 1:193; id, Paine Writings, 1:193-194; “Crisis No. 13” [1783], Paine Writings, 1:235; Rights of Man, Part the Second [1792], Paine Writings, 1:366; “An Act for Incorporating the American Philosophical Society, held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge” [1780], Paine Writings, 2:39; Letter No. 3 on Peace and Newfoundland Fisheries, [1778], Paine Writings, 2:202; Public Good [1780], Paine Writings, 2:305; “To the Sheriff of the County of Sussex [1792] Paine Writings, 2:464; “Addressto the People of France” [1792], Paine Writings, 2:539; id, Paine Writings, 2:540; “Letter to the Citizens of the United States,” November 15, 1802, Paine Writings, 2:909; “Letter to the Citizens of the United States,” December 29, 1802, Paine Writings, 2:920; “Letter to the Citizens of the United States,” February 2, 1803, Paine Writings, 2:931; March 4, 1775 letter to Franklin, Paine Writings, 2:1130; “To the Chairman of the Society for Promoting Constitutional Knowledge [1792], Paine Writings, 2:1325-1326. Ironically, hissole mention of Providence in Age of Reason wasto dismiss “Christian mythology” that believed in a pantheon of Gods and Goddesses. Age of Reason [1794], Paine Writings, 1:498). De-attributed works are excluded from consideration. Thomas Paine National Historical Association, “Works Removed from the Paine Canon,” https://thomaspaine.org/writings. html#works-removed-from-the-paine-canon last accessed 6/20/2024. 
7. “Crisis No. 3” [1777], Paine Writings, 1:75 (“… embarrass Providence in her good designs”); id, Paine Writings, 1:87 (“…Providence, who best knows how to time her misfortunes as well as her immediate favors, chose this to be the time, and who dare dispute it?”); “Crisis No. 6” [1778], Paine Writings, 1:131 (“To the interposition of Providence, and her blessings on our endeavours, …are we indebted …”); “Crisis No. 10” [1782], Paine Writings, 1:193 (“…providence, for seven yearstogether, has put [the King] out of her protection,…” (italicsin original)); id, Paine Writings, 1:193-194 (“Untainted with ambition, and a stranger to revenge, [America’s] progress hath been marked by providence, and she, in every stage of the conflict, has blest [America] with success”); Rights of Man, Part the Second [1792], Paine Writings, 1:366 (“Such a mode of reasoning … finally amounts to an accusation upon Providence, asifshe had left to man no other choice with respect to government than between two evils,…”); “Letter to the Citizens of the United States,” December 29, 1802, Paine Writings, 2:920 (“They have not yet accused Providence of Infidelity. Yet according to their outrageous piety,she must be as bad as Thomas Paine;she has protected him in all his dangers,…” (italicsin original)). 
8. Conway, observing that “among these papers burned in St. Louis were the two volumes of Paine’s autobiography and correspondence seen by Redman Yorke in 1802,” characterized the loss as a true “catastrophe.” Moncure Daniel Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine (New York: G. P. Putnam’s & Sons, 1908), 1:xx-xxi. 
9. For examples of those remarks,see “Crisis No. 10” [1782], Paine Writings, 1:193 and Age of Reason, Paine Writings, 1:486. 
10. During a walk in 1817, “several things dovetailed” for Keats into his developing the concept of “Negative Capability,” the ability to comfortably be “in uncertainty.” December 22, 1817, letter from John Keatsto George & Thomas Keats, The Poetical Works and Other Writings of John Keats(London: Reeves & Turner, 1883), 3:99, italicsin original. Keats perceived that, for writers “of Achievement” to embrace rather than battle the unexplainable is a criticalspark to human creativity and inventiveness. One biographer observed that it was “precisely the ability to hold contrary truthsin creative tension which Keatssaw asthe essential quality” possessed by writers “of Achievement.” John Barnard, John Keats (Cambridge, England: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1987), 51. Paine’s ability to hold contrary truths in creative tension may be at the heart of the two mysteries we explore here. 
11. December 22, 1817, letter from Keats, Poetical Works, 48. 
12. December 22, 1817, letter from Keats, Poetical Works, 48. 
13. Robert Giddings, John Keats (Boston, MA: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1968), 173; John Keats, “Notes on Milton’s Paradise Lost,” Poetical Works, 3:24 (“What creates the intense pleasure of not knowing? A sense of independence, of power, from the fancy’s creating a world of its own by the sense of probabilities.”) 
14. John F. Berens, Providence and Patriotism in Early America, 1640-1815 (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1978), 81-111. 
15. E.g., Samuel Adams, “Resolution of the Continental Congress,” The Writings of Samuel Adams, ed. Harry Alonzo Cushing (New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1907), 3:414-416; February 28, 1797 letter from John Jay to Rev. Jedediah Morse, The Correspondence and Papers of John Jay, ed. Henry P. Johnson (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1893), 4:225 (“except the Bible there is not a true history in the world”); John Witherspoon, “A Practical Treatise on Regeneration,” The Works of The Rev. John Witherspoon (Philadelphia: William W. Woodward, 1802), 1:93-265, John Witherspoon, “The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men,” The Works of The Rev. John Witherspoon (Philadelphia: William W. Woodward, 1802), 3:17-46; Jeffry H. Morrison, John Witherspoon and the Founding of the American Republic (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 20-21, 90-91. “Sam Adams and John Jay…were orthodox, even conservative Christians, while Franklin, Jefferson, and Paine were deists.” Berens, Providence and Patriotism in Early America, 1640-1815, 107. 
16. See “ADAMS, John,” Joseph McCabe, A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists (London: Watts and Co., 1920), 7-8 (1920); “ALLEN, Colonel Ethan, Biographical Dictionary, 16; “FRANKLIN, Benjamin,” Biographical Dictionary, 267; “JEFFERSON, Thomas,” Biographical Dictionary, 387- 388; “LAFAYETTE, the Marquis M. J. P. R. Y. G. M. de,” Biographical Dictionary, 412-413; “MADISON, James,” Biographical Dictionary, 471-472; “MORRIS, Gouverneur,” Biographical Dictionary, 929-930; “PAINE, Thomas,” Biographical Dictionary, 577-578; WASHINGTON, George,” Biographical Dictionary, 870-872. A “firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence” wasinvoked in the Declaration of Independence. “Declaration of Independence: A Transcription,” National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/foundingdocs/declaration-transcript. The dominant belief among Foundersin an intervening Providence is expressed in the “Eye of Providence” displayed on all one-dollar bills and on the Great Seal of America. Leonard Wilson, The Coat of Arms, Crest and Great Seal of the United States of America: The Emblem of the Independent Sovereignty of the Nation (San Diego, CA: Leonard Wilson, 1928), pp. 28-29; U. S. Department of State, The Great Seal of the United States(Washington D.C.: Office of Media Services, Bureau of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of State, 1976). Superficially, beliefs of Deist Foundersin an intervening Providence seem to differ from those of prior Deists. Giordano Bruno, executed in 1600, created a central tenet of Deism when he “rejected the idea that Providence intervenes in the operation of nature” and that what “are called miracles can be explained in terms of natural laws.” Edward L. Ericson, The Free Mind Through the Ages(New York: F. Unger Publications, 1985), 56. As noted later, the beliefs of the Deist Founders, interrogated more deeply,suggests a heritage deriving from Bruno.
17. One commentator opined that “[n]obody believed more deeply than radical deists in an allwise Providence.” Henry F. May, Ideas, Faiths, and Feelings: Essays on American Intellectual and Religious History, 1952-1982 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 141. May’s opinion is debatable, particularly when compared to contemporarieslike Rev. John Witherspoon, but, even if true, would beg the question of why “radical deists” held such beliefs. 
18. “Letter to the Citizens of the United States,” December 29, 1802, Paine Writings, 2:920. In 1804, Paine contributed numerous articlesto Elihu Palmer’s Prospect magazine. “Prospect Papers” [1804], Paine Writings, 2:789-830. The religious arguments of Paine and Palmer—who was a substantially deeper thinker regarding religious issues—mostly coordinated but may have clashed regarding the existence of an intervening Providence. Kirsten Fischer, American Freethinkers: Elihu Palmer and the Struggle for Religious Freedom in the New Nation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021), 174-221; Kerry S. Walters, American Deists: Voices of Reason and Dissent in the Early Republic (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1992), 244-277 (discussing Palmer); G. Adolf Koch, Republican Religion: The American Revolution and the Cult of Reason (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1933), 51- 73 (same); Herbert M. Morais, Deism in Eighteenth Century America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934), 128-138. Intriguingly, Paine’slast known reference to an intervening Providence was in February 1803 (see n7 supra) before he first published in Palmer’s Prospect. Whether that is coincidence or influenced by Palmer must remain in the realm of speculation. 
19. Thomas Paine, “Thoughts on Defensive War” [1775], The Pennsylvania Magazine or the American Monthly Museum for July 1775 (Philadelphia, July 1775), 313-314; The Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. M. Conway (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1894), 1:55 (attribution to Paine). 
20. Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:505- 511; Age of Reason, Part the Second [1796], Paine Writings, 1:520 & 1:587. 
21. Bernard Shaw, Preface, Saint Joan, A Chronicle Play in Six Scenes and an Epilogue (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2001), 13-14. 
22. Nicholas Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States, 1607-1876 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 7-8 (assuming, based on Paine’s assault on Christianity in Age of Reason, that, in Common Sense and the Crisis series, Paine’s “public piety diverged from” his “private convictions” and that he cynically “adopted providential language precisely because” he realized “that many Americans accepted its premises”). 
23. Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States, 7-8, 89-90, 95, 105, 148, 152, 155- 157, 169, 171 (noting only Paine’sreferencesto an intervening Providence in Common Sense and the Crisis series and not Paine’s later references). See n6 supra (noting eleven references by Paine to an intervening Providence in writings other than Common Sense and the Crisis series including a reference as late as 1803). 
24. Aldridge, Man of Reason, 53. See also Aldridge, Man of Reason, 276 (citing 1802 invocation). 
25. Matthew Stewart, Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Revolution (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014), 190-192. 
26. Morais, Deism in Eighteenth Century America, 97. 
27. Walters, American Deists, 29. 
28. Stewart, Nature’s God, 190-192. John Fea, by contrast, opined that being a Deist and believing in an intervening Providence are entirely incompatible. John Fea, “Deism and Providence,” Current, August 19, 2011, https://currentpub.com/ 2011/08/19/deism-and-providence/ 
29. June 12, 1754, letter to Robert Dinwiddie, Washington Writings, 1:76; July 18, 1755, letter to John Augustine Washington, Washington Writings 1:152. See Stewart, Nature’s God, 190-192. 
30. “Letter to the Citizens of the United States,” December 29, 1802, Writings of Paine, 2:920. 
31. Ericson, The Free Mind Through the Ages, 56. 
32. Benjamin Franklin, “A Lecture on the Providence of God in the Governance of the World,” The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, ed. John Bigelow (New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1888), 7:489-497. 
33. Benjamin Franklin, “A Lecture on the Providence of God,” 7:489-497. 
34. Benjamin Franklin, “A Lecture on the Providence of God,” 7:489-497. 
35. Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:486. 
36. Examining those occasions when Paine cited an intervening Providence, each implicates a situation that comports with the laws of nature, even if improbable. See citations at n6 supra. 
37. “Crisis No. 10” [1782], Paine Writings, 1:193. 
38. Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:486. See Stewart, Nature’s God, 190. 
39. Gregory Claeys, Thomas Paine: Social and Political Thought (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 204-206 (Paine “extended his notion of Providence unreasonably far”) 
40. References to God as “He” “he” “His” “his” “Him” “him” “Himself” “himself” “Father” “father’s”: “Crisis No. I” [1776], Paine Writings, 1:50- 51; Rights of Man-Part the First [1791], Paine Writings, 1:452; Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:478; id, Paine Writings, 1:483; id, Paine Writings, 1:486; id, Paine Writings, 1:487; id, Paine Writings, 1:493; id, Paine Writings, 1:497; id, Paine Writings, 1:506; id, Paine Writings, 1:510; id, Paine Writings, 1:512; Age of Reason-Part the Second [1795], Paine Writings, 1:523; id, Paine Writings, 1:529; id, Paine Writings, 1:583; id, Paine Writings, 1:584; id, Paine Writings, 1:595; id, Paine Writings, 1:601; id, Paine Writings, 1:602; Agrarian Justice [1797], Paine Writings, 1:609; Epistle to Quakers[1776], Paine Writings, 2:58; “The Forester II,” [1776], id., Paine Writings, 2:79; “A Serious Addressto the People of Pennsylvania on the Present Situation of their Affairs” [1778], Paine Writings, 2:295; “Answer to Four Questions on the Legislative and Executive Powers” [1791], Paine Writings, 2:525; “A Letter to the Hon, Thomas Erskine” [1797], Paine Writings, 2:729; id, Paine Writings, 2:733; id, Paine Writings, 2:738; id, Paine Writings, 2:744; “The Existence of God” [1797], Paine Writings, 2:749; id, Paine Writings, 2:750; Paine Writings, 2:754; “Extractsfrom a Reply to the Bishop of Llandaff” [1796-1802], Paine Writings, 2:776; id, Paine Writings, 2:785; id, Paine Writings, 2:786-787; “Remarks on R. Hall’s Sermon” [1804], Paine Writings, 2:790; “Of the Word ‘Religion,’ and Other Words of Uncertain Signification” [1804], Paine Writings, 2:792; id, Paine Writings, 2:793; “Of the Religion of Deism Compared with the Christian Religion, and the Superiority of the Former over the Latter” [1804], Paine Writings, 2:797; id, Paine Writings, 2:798; id, Paine Writings, 2:800; id, Paine Writings, 2:802; “Of the Sabbath Day in Connecticut” [1804], Paine Writings, 2:804; id, Paine Writings, 2:805; “Of the Old and the New Testament” [1804], Paine Writings, 2:806; “To John Mason” [1804], Paine Writings, 2:813; id, Paine Writings, 2:814; id, Paine Writings, 2:815; “On Deism, and the Writings of Thomas Paine” [1804], Paine Writings, 2:816; id, Paine Writings, 2:817; “Biblical Blasphemy” [1804], Paine Writings, 2:824; “Examination of the Prophecies” [1807], Paine Writings, 2:876; id, Paine Writings, 2:886; id, Paine Writings, 2:887; id, Paine Writings,, 2:888; id, Paine Writings, 2:889; id, Paine Writings, 2:890; id, Paine Writings, 2:891; “My Private Thoughts on a Future State,” Paine Writings, 2:892; id, Paine Writings, 2:893;“Predestination: Remarks on RomansIX, 18- 21” [1809], Paine Writings, 2:896. 
41. See citations in n7 supra. 
42. Daniel Gittens, Remarks on the Tenets and Principles of the Quakers as Contained in the Theses Theologica of Robert Barclay (London: J. Betterman, 1758), xii, xviii, 100, 149, 150, 157, 206 & 312 (Quaker views) William Craig Brownlee, A Careful and Free Inquiry into the True Nature and Tendency of the Religious Principles of the Society of Friends, Commonly Called Quakers (Philadelphia: John Mortimer, 1924), 107, 108, 110, 135, 149, 158, 161, 177, 184, 212, 268, (Quaker viewsin 18th century); Quaker anecdotes, ed. Richard Pike (London: Hamilton, Adams, & Co., 2nd ed. 1881), 24, 206-207, 230, 266-267, 272 & 300 (same); Alfred Plummer, The Church of England in the Eighteenth Century (London: Methuen, 1910), 97, 157, 218 (Anglican views in 18th century); A New History of Methodism, eds. Townsend, Workman, & Eayrs (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1909), 1:28- 29, 1:35, 1:66, 1:229, 1:448, 2:36, 2:45, 2:230, 2:287, 2:289 (Methodist views in 18th century). 
43. Priestley and Price routinely, in writings published before Paine emigrated, referenced the “Providence of God” or “Divine Providence” and never hinted at a female gender for Providence. E.g., Richard Price, “Dissertation I on Providence,” Four Dissertations (London: A. Millar & T. Cadell, 1767), 3- 194; Joseph Priestley, No Man Liveth to Himself: A Sermon Preached Before and Assembly of Dissenting Ministers (Warrington, 1764), viii, 19 & 33. 
44. A. Owen Aldridge, Thomas Paine’s American Ideology (Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1984), 52-53 & 80 (Paine’s citation to Burgh’s book in Common Sense); J. Burgh, Political Disquisitions: An Enquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and Abuses. Illustrated By, And Established Upon Facts and Remarks, Extracted from a Variety of Authors, Ancient and Modern, (London: Edward & Charles Dilly, 1774) 1:486, 3:85, 3:91, 3:121, 3:162, 3:183, 3:205, 3:257 (references to Providence). 
45. “Crisis No. 3” [1777], Paine Writings, 1:75; “Crisis No. 3” [1777], Paine Writings, 1:87; “Crisis No. 6” [1778], Paine Writings, 1:131. Paine’s belief in a female Providence certainly did not derive, for example, from any Catholic belief in an intervening Virgin Mary. Even Protestants in France firmly rejected Mary cults(e.g., David Garrioch, “Religious Identities and the Meaning of Things in EighteenthCentury Paris,” 3, French History and Civilization 17- 25, (2009), 22) and Paine was unquestionably anti-Papist (e.g., Aldridge, Thomas Paine’s American Ideology, 63). 
46. Fruchtman, Thomas Paine and the Religion of Nature, 188, n27. 
47. “Providentia,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org wiki/Providentia#cite_note1, citing J. Rufus Fears, “The Cult of Virtues and Roman Imperial Ideology,” Aufstieg und Niedergang (1981), 886. See “Providentia,” Encyclopedia Mythica,https://pantheon.org/articles/p/ providentia.html#google_vignette. 
48. Theodorus P. van Baaren, “ProvidenceTheology,” Britannica, https://www.britannica.com /topic/Providence-theology. 
49. Martin Percival Charlesworth, “Providentia and Aeternitas,” 29, The Harvard Theological Review 107-132 (April 1936), 109. 
50. Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:496. 
51. See n7 supra. “Thoughts on Defensive War” [July 1775], Paine Writings, 2:54 (the “Romans held the world in slavery, and were themselvesthe slaves of their emperors”); Forester’s Letter No. 1 [April 3, 1776], Paine Writings, 2:61 (addressing a contemporary opponent using the pseudonym Cato by stating that the “fate of the Roman Cato is before his eyes”); “A Dialogue Between the Ghost of General Montgomery Just Arrived from the Elysian Fields; and an American Delegate, in a Wood Near Philadelphia” [May 1776], Paine Writings, 2:92 (listing “Grecian and Roman heroes” by name); “Retreat Acrossthe Delaware” [January 29, 1777], Paine Writings, 2: 95 (“the names of Fabius”— a Roman hero —“and Washington will run parallel through eternity”). Aldridge identified many occasionsthat Paine referenced classical authors or figuresfavorably or unfavorably. A. Owen Aldridge, “Thomas Paine and the Classics,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 370-380 (Summer, 1968), 370-373. 
52. “Crisis No. 5 [1778], Paine Writings, 123-124 (extended discussion of Rome and Greece); Age of Reason [1793], Paine Writings, 1:491-492 (same). In 1795, Paine expressly listed the “works of genius” by Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, and others “as works of genius,” also mentioning Herotodus, Tacitus and Josephus. Age of Reason: Part the Second [1795], Paine Writings, 1:520. Later in life, Paine expressed admiration for Cicero at considerable length because he advocated rational thought. “Examination of the Prophecies of the New Testament…” [1807], Paine Writings, 2:882-886; Meyer Reinhold, Classica Americana: The Greek and Roman Heritage in the United States(Detroit, MI: Wayne University Press, 1984), 105-106; Aldridge, “Thomas Paine and the Classics,” 371-372. 
53. Keane, Paine, 41-44. 
54. Joseph Spence, Polymetis, or, An Enquiry Concerning the Agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets, and the Remains of the Antient Artists(London: R. & J. Dodsley, 2nd Edition with Corrections by the Author, 1755), https://hdl.handle.net/2027/gri.ark:/13960/t25b8jp2 x, 138, 150-151 (Roman belief in female Providence; Joseph Spence, Polymetis, or, An Enquiry Concerning the Agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets, and the Remains of the Antient Artists, (London: R. & J. Dodsley, 1st Edition, 1747), https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.3901505709 9940, 138, 150-51, 161 (same). Those discussionsin Polymetis were partly supported by a citation to Cicero for the proposition “Providentia deorum mundus administrator.” (Italics added.) The 1747 and 1755 unabridged editions were available in the late 1750s when Paine, living off privateering profits, frequented London bookshops, likely borrowed library booksfor a small fee, and attended astronomy lectures by Benjamin Martin. Keane, Paine, 41-44; Craig Nelson, Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations(New York: Viking, 2006), 22, (Martin as friend). 
55. Joseph Spence, Polymetis, 1st Ed., https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp. 39015057099940, x. 
56. In 1760, an unabridged edition was advertised for “2l. 12s. 6d.” The Public Advertiser” (London, August 6, 1760), 4). Keane, Paine, 41-44. See Eleanor Lochrie, A Study of Lending Libraries in EighteenthCentury Britain, University Of Strathclyde (Thesis, September 2015), https://local.cis.strath.ac. uk/wp/extras/msctheses/papers/strath_cis_publicati on_2684.pdf. 
57. Joseph Spence, A Guide to Classical Learning, or, Polymetis Abridged (London: R. Horsfeld, 1765), https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.fl1e34. 153-154, text & note c (same). The abridgementsold for three shillings. The Public Advertiser (London, February 22, 1766), 4), far less than the unabridged version (e.g., The Public Advertiser (London, August 6, 1760), 4). 
58. Library Company of Philadelphia, The Second Part of the Catalogue of Books, of the Library Company of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Robert Aitken, 1775), 55 (listing the 1755 edition of Spence’s Polymetis as No. 292 in its holdings). The Library Company wasfounded several decades earlier by Paine’sfriend, Benjamin Franklin. Austin K. Gray, Benjamin Franklin’s Library: A Short Account of the Library Company of Philadelphia 1731-1931 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1937), 7-17. “Members could borrow booksfreely and without charge” and nonmembers could read books within the library and even borrow books. “At the Instance of Benjamin Franklin”: A Brief History of the Library Company of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: York Graphic Services, 1995), 14. 
59. July 20, 1776, letter from Jefferson to John Page, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/ 01-01-02-0189 
60. E.g., Aldridge, Thomas Paine’s American ideology, 95-122. 
61. References to Cicero: Spence, Polymetis, 2nd ed., title page quote, iii, 8-13, 15, 16, 21, 23, 29, 31, 38, 40-41, 46-47, 49-50, 57-58, 68-69, 92, 95, 103- 104, 114, 134-135, 137-140, 143-144, 150, 164, 166, 168, 172, 174, 179-180, 182, 188, 190, 193, 195-196, 207-209, 214, 220, 225, 258, 266-267, 272, 279, 287 & 316. Referencesto Macrobius: Spence, Polymetis, 2nd ed., v, 17, 20, 26, 51, 58-59. 64, 116, 174, 193, 196-198, 288 & 315. Images of Providentia: Spence, Polymetis, 1st ed., # 229, https://hdl.handle.net /2027/mdp.39015057099940?urlappend=%3Bseq=2 29%3Bownerid=113489623-228; Spence, Polymetis, 2nd ed., #225, https://hdl.handle.net /2027/gri.ark:/13960/t25b8jp2x?urlappend=%3Bseq =225. 
62. Spence, A Guide to Classical Learning, 153-154, text & note c. 
63. Maiora, “Classical Almanac: Joseph Spence,” EcBlogue: A Classics Blog, https://classicsblogging. wordpress.com/2009/04/28/classical-almanacjoseph-spence/ Compare Aldridge, “Thomas Paine and the Classics,”, 370-380. 
64. Maiora, “Classical Almanac: Joseph Spence,” EcBlogue: A Classics Blog. 
65. Aldridge, “Thomas Paine and the Classics,”370- 380. 
66. Latura, “Milky Way Vicissitudes: Macrobius to Galileo,” 18 Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 319-325 (2018), DOI:10.5281/zenodo.1477993, 320, 322 & 324. 
67. A combined total of 67 advertisements appeared for those two versions in The Public Advertiser in London from August 3, 1758 to December 29, 1772. Search for Polymetisin London County newspapers from 1700 to 1774, Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com /search/?query=polymetis&p_province=gb eng&p_county=greater%20london&dr_year=1700- 1774&sort=paper-date-asc 
68. In 1775, the holdings of the Library Company included a copy of the 1755 edition of Polymetis. See n7 supra. Paine arrived in Philadelphia on November 30, 1774. Frank Smith, “The Date of Thomas Paine’s First Arrival in America,” 3, American Literature 317- 318. (November 1931). Paine’s first known identification of Providence asfemale wasin April 1777. “Crisis No. 3” [April 19, 1777], Paine Writings, 1:75 & 1:87. 
69. See n55 supra. 
70. E.g., Edward Herbert, The Antient Religion of the Gentiles, and Causes of their Errors Consider’d (London: John Nutt, 1705), 95-96 (Romans, “by her, mean Divine Providence…”). 
71. Franklin regularly referenced Providence as a manifestation of God, rarely referenced gender regarding Providence, and never identified Providence as a manifestation of God, rarely referenced gender regarding Providence, and never identified Providence asfemale. Benjamin Franklin, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. A. Smyth (New York: The Macmillan Co. 1905 to 1907), 1:221- 439, 2:1-470, 3:1-483, 4:1-471, 5:1-555, 6:1-477, 7:1-440, 8:1-651, 9:1-703 & 10:1-510. See Walters, American Deists, 53-55 & 74-75 (Franklin); Walters, American Deists, 122-124 (Jefferson); Walters, American Deists, 143, 146 & 148-155 (Ethan Allen). See nn58-62 infra. 
72. See n30 supra. 
73. See n7 supra. 
74. When Adams referenced gender regarding Providence, he sometimes identified Providence as being genderless(“it” “its”): John Adams, Diary Entry of March 9, 1774, Diary, The Works of John Adams, ed. C. Adams(Boston: Charles C. Little & James Brown, 1851), 3:110; Discourses on Davila; A Series of Papers on Political History by an American Citizen, Adams Works, 6:396; “To the Young Men of the City of New York,” Adams Works, 9:198; May 22, 1821, letter to David Sewall, Adams Works, 10:399. More often, when he referenced gender, Adamsidentified Providence as male (His” “his”): Diary Entry of March 2, 1756, Diary, Adams Works, 2:8; Diary Entry of June 14, 1756, Adams Works, 2:22; Diary Entry of October 24, 1756, Adams Works, 2:221; Diary Entry of June 9, 1771, Adams Works, 2:274; Works on Government, Adams Works, 4:220; id, Adams Works, 4:413; “Inaugural Speech to Both Houses of Congress, 4 March 1797,” Adams Works, 9:111; Adams, “Speech to Both Houses of Congress, 8 December 1798,” Adams Works, 9:128; Adams, “Speech to Both Houses of Congress 3 December 1799,” Adams Works, 9:128; December 26, 1806 letter to J.B. Varnum, Adams Works, 9:607; October 4, 1813, letter from Adamsto Jefferson, Adams Works, 10:75; April 5, 1815 letter to Richard Rush, Adams Works, 10:159. No surviving documents reflect Adams identifying Providence as female. 
75. Jefferson sometimes identified Providence as genderless(“it” “its”): March 4, 1801 Inaugural Address, The Writings of ThomasJefferson, ed. A. Bergh (Washington D.C.: The ThomasJefferson Memorial Association, 1903), 3:320; May 31, 1802 letter to Thomas Law, Jefferson Writings, 19:130. Other times, he identified Providence as male (“his” “His” “he” “Him”): March 4, 1804 Inaugural Address, Jefferson Writings, 3:383; December 5, 1805 Fifth Annual Message to Congress, Jefferson Writings, 3:384; October 12, 1786, letter to Mrs. Cosway, Jefferson Writings, 5:444; February 14, 1807, letter to the Two Branches of the Legislature of Massachusetts, Jefferson Writings, 16:287; March 28, 1809, letter to Stephen Cross, Jefferson Writings, 16:352. Jefferson ambiguously referenced Providence by “their” without indicating any particular gender. Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, Jefferson Writings, 2:242. No surviving documents reflect Jefferson identifying Providence as female. 
76. Washington’s first recorded reference to an intervening Providence was in 1754. June 12, 1754, letter to Robert Dinwiddie, The Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1931), 1:76. The next year, he credited “the miraculous care of Providence” for protecting him from harm “beyond all human expectation.” July 18, 1755, letter to John Augustine Washington, Washington Writings, 1:152. 
77. April 25, 1773, letter to Burwell Bassett, Washington Writings, 3:133; May 31, 1776, letter to John Augustine Washington, Washington Writings, 5:93; March 1, 1778, letter to Bryan Fairfax, Washington Writings, 11:3; May 30, 1778, letter to Landon Carter, Washington Writings, 11:492; October 18, 1780, letter to Joseph Reed, Washington Writings, 20:213; March 9, 1781, letter to William Gordon, Washington Writings, 21:332; June 5, 1782, letter to Chevalier de la Luzerne, Washington Writings, 24:314; June 30, 1782, lettersto the Ministers, Elders, and Deacons of the Reformed Dutch Church of Schenectady, Washington Writings, 24:391; August 1, 1786, letter to Chevalier de la Luzerne, Washington Writings, 28:501; September 25, 1794, Proclamation, Washington Writings, 33:508; March 30, 1796, letter to Elizabeth Parke Custis Washington, Washington Writings, 35:1; March 30, 1796, letter to Tobias Lear, Washington Writings, 35:5; June 8, 1796, letter to Henry Knox, Washington Writings, 35:85; October 12, 1796, letter to the Inhabitants of Shepard Town and its Vicinity, Washington Writings, 35:242; March 2, 1797, letter to Henry Knox, Washington Writings, 35:409; March 3, 1797, letter to Jonathan Trumbull, Washington Writings, 35:412; August 15, 1798, letter to Reverend Jonathan Boucher, Washington Writings, 36:413-414; November 22, 1799, letter to Benjamin Goodhue, Washington Writings, 37:436. 
78. July 20, 1776, letter to Colonel Adam Stephen, Washington Writings, 5:313; April 23, 1777, letter to Brigadier General Samuel Holden Parsons, Washington Writings, 7:456; November 30, 1777, General Order, Washington Writings, 10:123; April 12, 1778, General Order, Washington Writings, 11:252; August 20, 1778, letter to Thomas Nelson, Washington Writings, 12:343; April 28, 1788, letter to L’Enfant, Washington Writings, 29:481; October 3, 1789, Thanksgiving Proclamation, Washington Writings, 30:427; July 28, 1791, letter to Lafayette, Washington Writings, 31:324; Jun 10, 1792, letter to Marquis de La Fayette, Washington Writings, 32:54. 
79. November 8, 1777, letter to Thomas Nelson, Washington Writings, 10:28 (“We must endeavour to deserve better of Providence, and, I am persuaded,she will smile upon us”); October 12, 1783, letter to Chevalier de Chastellux, Washington Writings, 27:190 (“…with the goodness of that Providence which has dealt her favour to us with so profuse a hand”). 
80. Paine was an unlikely influence on Washington, who first identified Providence as female over six months after Paine had done so. November 8, 1777, letter to Thomas Nelson, Washington Writings, 10:28; “Crisis No. 3” [April 19, 1777], Paine Writings, 1:75 & 1:87. Though Paine and Washington interacted personally shortly before the November 8, 1777, letter, including an extended conversation over breakfast after the Battle of Germantown in early October, no record suggeststhat topic was mentioned. May 16, 1778, letter to Franklin, Paine Writings, 2:1145- 1147; Keane, Paine, 160. Washington’s second identification was a year and half after Paine identified Providence as female in human right to suffrage” and that “women have rights because they are human, not because they are weaker, poorer, or more vulnerable than men”). mythology” (Age of Reason [1794], Paine Writings, 1:498). Hisidentification of Providence asfemale and God as male does not mean that he viewed Providence as a Goddess much less a separate one. “Crisis No. 10.” October 12, 1783, letter to Chevalier de Chastellux, Washington Writings, 27:190; “Crisis No. 10” [March 5, 1782], Paine Writings, 1:193-194. Personal contact in the weeks before October 12, 1783 was precluded by Paine, due to scarlet fever, delaying his visit to Washington’s Rocky Hill estate. Hawke, Paine, 140-142; October 13, 1783, letter to Washington, Paine Writings, 2:1243. 
81. Washington “settled into” Whyte’s home in September 1781. Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (New York: The Penguin Press, 2010), 410-411. Wythe reportedly had a copy of Polymetis. “Polymetis,” Wythepedia, William and Mary Law Library, https://lawlibrary.wm.edu/ wythepedia/index.php/Polymetis. 
82. See n7 supra. 
83. E.g., Botting, “Thomas Paine amidst the Early Feminists,” The Selected Writings of Thomas Paine, eds. I. Shapiro & J. Calvert (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), 633 & 643-644 (observing that Paine, in his 1797 Agrarian Justice, made “a creative argument for women’s 
84. While there are many signals of Paine’s egalitarian attitudes towards women in the 1790s, there are far fewer before April 1777. Paine is no longer deemed the author of “An Occasional Letter on the Female Sex” that appeared in Pennsylvania Magazine in 1775. https://thomaspaine.org/works/works-removedfrom-the-paine-canon/an-occasional-letter-on-thefemale-sex.html 
85. Some conclude that Paine was a Pantheist rather than Deist or had pantheistic tendencies. Fruchtman, Thomas Paine and the Religion of Nature, 3-4, 52-53; Zaidi, “Rediscovering Thomas Paine and the Sacred Text of Nature,” Left Curve, No. 35 (2011), 138-141, https://www.academia.edu/2327425/Rediscovering_Thomas_Paine_and_the_S acred_Text_of_Nature. Taking Paine at his own word, however, he believed “in one God, and no more” (Age of Reason, Paine Writings, 1:464) and criticized what he viewed as the pantheism of “Christian mythology,” Age of Reason (1794], Paine Writings, 1:498). His identification of Providence as female and God as male does not mean that he viewed Providence as a Goddess much less a separate one. 
86. Jack Fruchtman, Jr., The Political Philosophy of Thomas Paine (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 178, n15, (after thinking long on Paine identifying Providence as female and God as male, concluding that “at the least he viewed Providence as an immanent divine element, as part of all of nature (or Nature, in deist terms), whereas his vision of God was as creator of the universe, or First Cause”).“Crisis No. 10.” October 12, 1783, letter to Chevalier de Chastellux, Washington Writings, 27:190; “Crisis No. 10” [March 5, 1782], Paine Writings, 1:193-194. Personal contact in the weeks before October 12, 1783 was precluded by Paine, due to scarlet fever, delaying his visit to Washington’s Rocky Hill estate. Hawke, Paine, 140- 142; October 13, 1783, letter to Washington, Paine Writings, 2:1243. 
87. Fruchtman, Political Philosophy of Paine, 37-38. 88 Fruchtman, Political Philosophy of Paine, 2, 24, 26, 28, 54, 56, 
88. (“Paine’s deeply held faith in God as the sole creator…” (italics added), 135 and 178, n15. 
89. Of the many times Paine referenced gender regarding Nature, he identified Nature as genderless once. “The Existence of God: A Discourse at the Society of Theophilanthropists, Paris” [1796], Paine Writings, 2:252. Otherwise, he identified Nature asfemale—not as male or genderless. Common Sense [1776], Paine Writings, 1:13 (“she”); id, Writings of Paine, 1:23; id, Paine Writings, 1:30; id, Paine Writings, 1:34; id, Paine Writings, 1:40); “Crisis No. 6” [1778], Paine Writings, 1:131; “Crisis No. 8” [1780], Paine Writings, 1:160; Rights of Man, Part the First [1791], Paine Writings, 1:260; Paine Writings, 1:321; Rights of Man, Part the Second [1792], Paine Writings, 1:357; Paine Writings, 1:365; id, Paine Writings, 1:367; Paine Writings, 1:371; id. at p. 400; Age of Reason [1795], Paine Writings, 1:509; id, Paine Writings, 1:529; Forester Letter III [1776], Paine Writings, 1:79; Second Letter on Peace and the Newfoundland Fisheries[July 14, 1779], Paine Writings, 1:198; Third Letter on Peace and the Newfoundland Fisheries[July 21, 1779], Paine Writings, 1:201; Dissertations on Government [1786], Paine Writings, 1:411; “Answer to Four Questions,” Paine Writings, 1:525; Paine Writings, 1:527; Prospects on the Rubicon [1787], Paine Writings, 1:631; Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance [1796], Paine Writings, 1:666; Specification of Thomas Paine, A.D. 1788, No. 1667, Constructing Arches, Vaulted Roofs, and Ceiling [1788], Paine Writings, 1:1032; Spring of 1789 letter from Paine to Sir George Staunton, Bart., Paine Writings, 1:1045; June 25, 1801 Letter from Paine to Jefferson [1801], Paine Writings, 1:1048. 
90. “Crisis No. 13” [1783], Paine Writings, 1:235.

The post The Mysteries of Paine’s Beliefs in Providence appeared first on .

By Edmund Smith

A curious teenager sifting through my fathers small library, I opened up a cardboard-boxed book by Joseph Lewis, Inspiration and Wisdom from the Writings of Thomas Paine, signed by the author. Contained within were numerous short and longer quotes of Paine’s writings, filled with such clarity, power and sense! I felt drawn back to that book numerous times.

I came to Paine not as an academic, but as a “common man.” My life’s bent was as a naturalist, eventually a science teacher. History was a hobby for light dabbling. Always pulled toward Paine, I once asked a high school social studies department chair what he thought of Paine. He grimaced and said he despised Paine for having sought the execution of King Louis XVI, who had supported the colonies against England. I believed him and assumed I had misread Paine. Soon after, I read the truth about him in France. I was shaken that a respected history teacher could err so badly.

In time, I learned that much of Paine’s “history” is false — he was a drunk, a filthy little atheist. “He had lived long, did some good and much harm.” The true history of Paine’s treatment was worse — spat on when he returned to America, denied service, denounced in newspapers and physically accosted in the streets. Even the Quakers refused him burial privileges. 

Why then did young Lincoln have a copy of Age of Reason and quote from it, causing his concerned friends to hide this fact from public view? Why was Jose Gervasio Artigas so inspired by Paine that he led the revolution that founded Uruguay? How could Robert Ingersoll and Thomas Edison come to write defenses of Paine with passion, eloquence and glowing praise?

I joined the TPNHA hoping to learn more of Paine, to discover if he wasn’t, in fact, optimis hominus. Here I learned of Paine’s anti-slave letter to Jefferson. I wondered, would there have been a Civil War if the founders listened? Would we have a prouder American history? No race massacres? No razing of Black Wall Streets? No Green Book? No impugned Black welfare mothers? No necessity for Black Lives Matter? 

Here in the TPNHA, I learned that wherever Paine went, he profoundly moved the needle of progressive history. His pamphlets and books helped form modern America, England and France, earning immediate translations into other languages. That’s known. Few know about his several weeks’ sojourn in Mystic, Connecticut, with Madame Bonneville’s family. Few know he dove into the creation of the Connecticut state constitution. For me, there is no greater catalytic enzyme to accelerate progressive movements everywhere he journeyed. 

I ponder what were Paine’s other achievements that we know nothing about, partly from many of his papers being lost in a fire, mostly from public rejection of him since Age of Reason was published in America. 

When he wrote, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again,” what if the world had listened to his views regarding religion? Would Europe’s Christians have engaged so deeply in the Jewish Holocaust? 

Would there have been the Irish “Troubles?” Would Christians, Muslims and Jews still be squabbling over shared holy acres, scattered throughout the Mideast? Would there be war in Gaza and Israel today? 

Why did the world miss its chance for the equitable, sustainable and happier world that Paine envisioned? Why did our ancestors not pay heed? 

Carl Sagan, a Paine admirer, wrote: 

What an astonishing thing a book is. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Thus I hear Thomas Paine speaking to me. He still lives. He still wants the world to listen. 

To achieve the civilization we can still have, if only we listen and take action, have we fairly named ourselves homo sapiens, wise humans? Would a better fit be homo insipiens, senseless, or homo acedians, peevish?

I joined the TPNHA because Paine still lives among us, on bookshelves, yes, but moreso here in The Beacon. There are still statues to be cast, a national monument to be built, national school curriculums to be written, and biographical movies to be made with enough drama without the slightest exaggeration. 

“We — even we here — hold the power and bear the responsibility,” said Lincoln, channeling Paine when trying to save our nation. Do not both speak directly to us at this moment, as our modern American democratic government again teeters?

The post Discovering the Truth About Thomas Paine appeared first on .

Introduction. 

Putting the world to rights: The presumptuous audacity of Thomas Paine. 

How dared Thomas Paine, a man whose formal education had ended at thirteen (Gilbert Wakefield, Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, would call him ‘the greatest ignoramus in nature’), a man who had failed as a skilled craftsman, as a teacher, as a shopkeeper, as a street preacher, as a petty customs official in the Excise, dismissed more than once and a sometime debtor and bankrupt, how dared such a nobody, such a non-achiever even dare to think about the ends and means of government, about the basis of a just society, about the meaning we can give life? Some of the fundamental questions that Paine pondered and tried to answer were: 

Are humans essentially anti-social animals, whose lives are, in the philosopher Hobbes’ words, just ‘nasty, brutish and short’? 

Do we have to be ruled by some absolute, hereditary, hierarchical authority backed by force? 

Is humanity capable of instituting an alternative to war? 

Is Christianity the only true religion? 

Is any religion true? 

But Thomas Paine did not merely articulate such fundamental questions in his secret thoughts, he also talked about them and dared to write about them. Think of his audacity when he, an almost penniless, recently very sick, immigrant Englishman, not long off the boat, started telling the people of North America in print what they should all now do, first in relation to slavery (they should abolish it) and then in relation to Britain. He called on Americans to revolt against his own country, and even called it just ‘Common Sense’ for them to do so. 

Or think how Paine, a few years later, dared to take on Edmund Burke, Burke, the graduate of Trinity College Dublin, former barrister at the Middle Temple, former Private Secretary to the Secretary for Ireland, and then Private Secretary to the Prime Minister and himself an MP. Paine told Burke that his reactionary championing of the ancient regimes of Europe after the fall of the Bastille was wrong. His answer to Burke in Rights of Man was a trumpet call to ‘begin the world anew’: the British should abolish the hereditary principle of monarchy and aristocracy and substitute a just redistribution of wealth through graduated income tax. 

Paine did not engage only Burke but also with many other dominant spirits of his age, including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, General Lafayette, Danton, Condorcet, Marat, even Napoleon. In his dedication of the first part of Rights of Man to George Washington, Paine hoped that its principles of freedom would soon become universal. In his Dedication of the second part of his Rights of Man to General Lafayette, he urged the latter to export the French Revolution to the whole world – above all to the despotism of Prussia. 

Finally, in his Age of Reason, Paine took on God Himself and denied the divinity of Christ whom he called simply ‘a virtuous and amiable man’: ‘I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church’. 

Mocked and caricatured in his own day as presumptuous little ‘Tommy Paine’, where on earth did Paine get this unexampled, defiant audacity from? But it was not unexampled. Paine did have exemplars for ‘speaking Truth to Power’. Ultimately, behind Thomas Paine, I suggest, there lies the Epistle of James: the most radical, angry exhortation to social justice in the whole New Testament. Let me remind you: 

…[Be] ye doers of the word, and not hearers only… My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ… with respect of persons. 

If there come into your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come also a poor man in vile raiment and ye have no respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool: 

Are ye not then partial in yourselves,… [Ye have despised the poor…[If] ye have respect to persons ye commit sin;… What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, poor…[If] ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin;… What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him? And if a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not these things which are needful to the body; what do it profit? Even so faith if it hath not works, is dead … For, as the body without spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also… 

Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you… Ye have heaped up treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth, and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth’. 

That had been written, perhaps by Jesus’s brother, 1,700 years before Paine’s birth but was available to him of course as a young child and a young man, in the Authorised version of the King James English Bible. The Epistle of James would resonate repeatedly among the early Quakers and in Paine’s own writings. 

Much nearer to Paine, both in place and time, as exemplars, were these early English Quakers – the Quakers of the recent persecution period 1650-1690. Moncure Conway, Paine’s first serious, sympathetic biographer wrote Iliad] there no Quakerism there would have been no Paine.¹ Was he right? 

Part One 

Who were the Quakers? 

Had there been no Civil War, or ‘Revolution’ as Paine himself called it, in England between1642 and 1651 there would have been no Quakerism, which began as a collective movement in 1652. The world had just been ‘turned upside down’ in Britain by that very recent war in which people had been asking – and killing each other over – fundamental questions about how to be a Christian and what kind of society Britain should be. The Parliamentarian ‘Roundheads’ believed they were fighting against royal tyranny and ungodliness; the monarchist Cavaliers believed they were fighting against mob anarchy and against hypocrites out to usurp power under the fig leaf of religion. 

Each side, of course, believed very sincerely that God was on their side. And this English Civil War, called ‘The Great Rebellion’ by the royalist Cavaliers, and ‘The Good Old Cause’ by their Puritan Roundhead opponents, had actually been the English Revolution – culminating in the trial and execution of the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1645 and of King Charles 1 – only very recently, in 1649. The men and women who would be convinced and converted to Quakerism just three years later at the beginning of the 1650s had sympathised with the Puritan, Roundhead side.

Some (though not George Fox), had even fought for Cromwell and Parliament against the king. They saw themselves in the tradition of the Protestant Martyrs burned at the stake under ‘Bloody Mary’ a century earlier – for instance Margaret Fell, ‘the Mother of Quakerism’, born Margaret Askew, was believed by some, mistakenly, to be actually descended from the famous Protestant martyr Anne Askew. During the Civil War they had often called themselves ‘independents’. Once the war had been won by Cromwell’s New Model Army and the Parliamentarians, many of these self- styled ‘Independent’ men and women remained restless ‘Seekers’, looking for spiritual leadership that might help them towards personal and social salvation. They would walk or ride many miles to hear a preacher who, they had heard, was a true man of God. Hence that great assembly of about a thousand or more Westmoreland Seekers at Firbank Fell, above Brigflatts, near Sedbergh, in Whitson, 1652, who heard George Fox tell them: ‘Let your lives speak’. He told them they had no need of a church or parish priest, but that they should all live their Christianity, emulating the earliest ‘primitive’ Christians as a Society of Friends. The ‘Valiant Sixty’ among those who heard Fox, then attempted to do just that, spreading their message of ‘the inner light’ in every man and woman out from the North Down to London, South, West and East – to Norfolk, the county of Thomas Paine. 

Although the Quakers’ creation of new congregations of ‘Friends’ in the 1650s came out of the spiritual turmoil of the Civil War, it was also a reaction against the brutal cruelty of that war. In fact George Fox had been moved to begin preaching a gospel of brotherly love already in 1646, right in the middle of the war. For is any war quite as terrible as the Civil War? – town against town, family against family, father against son, brother against brother, besieged women and children deliberately starved to death, prisoners deliberately mutilated and murdered after they have been promised pardon on surrender – and many other such atrocities – all in the name of ‘King and Country’ or else ‘For God and the People’. These very early Quakers were fired by a defiant, millenarian vision; they too wanted to turn the world upside down – but this time, unlike in the recent Civil War, by wholly non-violent means. Therefore immediately after the Civil War that had not brought about Jerusalem the Quakers preached and practised the alternative to war – non-violent resistance. Margaret Fell, the ‘Mother of Quakerism’ who would later marry Fox, wrote in 1660 to Charles II: 

We who are the people of God called Quakers, who are hated and despised, and everywhere spoken against, as People not fit to live… We are a people that follow after those things that make for Peace, love and Unity… we do bear our Testimony against all strife and wars… Our weapons are not Carnal, but Spiritual.

George Fox, 1661, delivered to Charles II a ‘Declaration from the Harmless and Innocent People of God, called Quakers against all plotters and fighters’. 

The Quaker Francis Howgilt, at his trial in Appleby said: 

It has been a Doctrine always held by us, and a received principle…that Christ’s Kingdom could not be set up with carnal Weapons, nor the Gospel propagated by Force of Arms, nor the Church of God builded by Violence; but the Prince of Peace is manifest among us and we cannot learn War any more, but can love our Enemies, and forgive them that do Evil to us…This is the Truth, and if I had twenty lives, I would engage them all, that the Body of Quakers will never have any Hand in War, or Things of that Nature, that tend to the Hurt of others. 

Following George Fox, the Quakers also opposed slavery and capital punishment. 

But if Quakers were so peaceable, why were they so persecuted in the 1650s, 1660s, 1670s and 1680s? Betrayed by local ‘informers’, arrested just for meeting to worship in silence in one another’s houses, or for refusing to attend their local church, they were heavily fined, imprisoned for months in filthy, stinking, dark holes – often below ground -, publicly stripped and whipped, stoned and even transported as slaves?. Under Charles II (1660- 1685), 13,562 Quakers were arrested and imprisoned; 198 were transported as slaves; at least 338 died in prison as a result of their injuries. It was in this same period that Bunyan the unlicensed Baptist preacher was in Bedford Jail and Richard Baxter, the Presbyterian minister who would not conform to the 39 Articles was tried in his frail and sick old age by the Chief Justice Judge Jeffreys. “What ailed the old stock-cole, unthankful villain, that he would not conform… He hath poisoned the world with his linsey wolsey doctrine”. Judge Jeffreys wanted the old man publicly whipped. But Baxter and Bunyan were individuals who were persecuted; the Quakers were persecuted as a collective body, an alternative, threatening counter- culture, a ‘Society of Friends’ that was a standing criticism of the wider dominant – and unfriendly – social fabric of Great Britain. 

The Reasons for the persecution: 

Quakers were seen as a threat to the given social order into which they had been born because they had many subversive beliefs and practices in addition to their refusal to bear arms. The refused to take their hats off in respect to ‘their betters’ because they were `no respecters of persons (cf. the Epistle of James above). This was not trivial; it was a traditional gesture of popular social protests and enraged ‘the better sort’. When one accused Quaker refused to take his hat off before the magistrate, the judge seized it, burned it and sentenced him to five months’ imprisonment. 

Quakers refused to bow courteously or to use the polite terms of address; for instance they refused to say ‘You’ to their ‘betters’ but called everyone the familiar ‘Thou’, like ‘Du’ in German or ‘Tu’ in French. They refused to . give any of their fellow humans a special title. If they lived under a monarchy, they would not say ‘Your Majesty’ to the King, but just call him ‘King’; they would not say ‘My Lord’ to an aristocrat or ‘Your Honour’ to a Judge, or even refer to anyone as ‘Sir’ or ‘Lady’, ‘Mr’ or ‘Mrs’. Instead, everyone was simply called by their first name and surname and addressed as ‘Friend’ by Quakers – even Cromwell, when Lord Protector of England, was addressed as ‘Friend Oliver’ by Fox. 

Quakers refused to swear any oath in a court of law because Christ had said ‘Swear not at all’. Again, in that same radical Epistle of James, we find : ‘above all things brethren, swear not, either by heaven, neither by the earth, either by any other oath: let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay. The truth was that everyone should speak everywhere and at all time, not merely in the witness box. But how could the non-oath taking Quakers be believed to be loyal citizens owing allegiance, or held capable of keeping any binding contracts, if they refused all oaths? 

Quakers refused to have any parson or minister, believing instead in their own Inner Light, that which is of God in everyone; they refused even to attend Anglican church services, that is ‘the prescribed national worship’, let alone pay their local Anglican parson his ‘tithes’ or church rates, no matter how often and how grossly their own goods were thereupon ‘distrained’, looted; half of their confiscated property being taken by those who had informed against them. Quakers maintained that there should be no paid ‘hireling’ ministers in Britain at all, which did not endear them to the professional clergy. And who knew what sedition, or incitements their meetings in one another’s houses might not be brewing, asked the magistrates? 

Finally, and perhaps worst of all in the eyes of their contemporaries, there even were many women Quakers, who followed their own Inner Light and preached in the streets as public missionaries who, when they were not in prison, travelled indefatigably throughout Britain and even the world, broadcasting the Quaker message of ‘that of God’ existing in every human being, including women. 

Thus 17th century Quakers seemed to be threatening the creation of an alternative, much more egalitarian society, and one that even included the spiritual equality of men and women. Quakers would not conform to church or state. And they were making thousands of converts. Where might it not end if almost everyone turned Quakers? Social Revolution? Already by 1660, i.e. in their first eight years, there had been at least 20,000 converts. In 1653 George Fox wrote: ‘0 ye great men and rich men of earth! Weep and howl for your misery that is coming [quotation from the Epistle of James]…the day of the Lord is appearing… All the loftiness of men must be laid low’. 

Alarmed, the Presbyterian Major-General Skipton, then in charge of London, had said in Parliament already in 1656: ‘[The Quakers’] great growth and increase is too notorious, both in England and Ireland; their principle strike at both ministry and magistracy’. It is not surprising, after all, that peaceable though they were, the Quakers were ruthlessly persecuted in an attempt to extirpate every one of them. How did they respond? They articulated their resistance, and testified to the principle of liberty of conscience. 

Quaker History of the Persecution. 

From the moment that they were persecuted, the late 17th century Quakers chronicled that persecution and their own un-budge-able, non-violent resistance. They wrote and printed pamphlets and letters to one another, above all to Margaret Fell, herself often imprisoned, and appealingly eloquently to the Magistrates, to King or to Parliament. 

In 1660 Richard Hubberthom wrote ‘[If] any magistrate do that which is unrighteous, we must declare against it’. This the Quakers judged the magistrates, and their social ‘superiors’, not the other way round. In 1664, after the Conventicle Act, that sought to banish Quakers to the West Indies, George Whitehead, who has been called possibly the most influential advocate of religious liberty in Britain,² ‘sheaved the judges their duty from the law and Magna Carta’. Every single example of arrest and punishment of Quakers was documented by a local Friend who could write a clear hand, naming both the local Sufferers and the local Persecutors on facing pages of their records.³ 

Thus Quaker solidarity and continuity was achieved through the creation of their own written accounts of individual and collective persecution. And it was upon these many local records, in addition to trial transcripts, that the amazingly comprehensive collective narrative compiled by Joseph Besse was based – The Suffering of the People Call Quakers for the Testimony of a Good Conscience 1650-1689. Thomas Paine was born precisely half way between these dates, in 1737. 

Besse title page: If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you (John). For the oppression of the poor, for the Sighing of the Needy, now I will arise, saith the Lord” (Psalms). 

Besse’s Preface to the Reader:

‘It was an excellent observation… that God is tried in the fire, and acceptable Men in the Furnace of Adversity… Persecution is a severe test upon the Hypocrite and Earthly-minded. ‘When thou passest flub the Waters, I will be with thee..ffsalahr. A Measure of this holy Faith, and a sense of this divine Support; bore up the spirit of the People called Quakers for near 40 years together, to stem the Torrent of Opposition… The Messengers of it were entertained with Scorn and Derision, with Beatings, Buffetings, Stonings, Whippings and Imprisonment, Banishments, and even Death itself’ 

Just to give one vivid example of the persecution of a woman Quaker in Sussex there is the case of Mary Akehurst as summarised by Besse in his volume on Southern England, ch. 34, pp.711-712: 

1659… Mary Akehurst, a religious Woman of Lewis [sic], going into a Steeple-house there, and asking a Question of the Independent Preacher, after his Sermon, was dragg’d out by the people, and afterwards beaten and puncht by her Husband, so that she could not lift her Arms to her Head without Paine. She also suffered much cruel Usage from her said Husband, who bound her Hand and Foot, and grievously abused her, for reproving one of the Priests who had falsely accused her. Her Husband also kept her chained for a Month together, Night and Day. 

Mary Akehurst’s neighbours won her release by pinning a written protest about her treatment on the Church door. She continued to testify to her Quaker convictions, although even after her husband had died, she was punished by the authorities time and again. David Hitchin’s Quakers in Lewes (1984), based on the full account held in the Public Record Office Mary Akehurst’s neighbours won her release by pinning a written protest about her treatment on the Church door. She continued to testify to her Quaker convictions, although even after her husband had died, she was punished by the authorities time and again. David Hitchin’s Quakers in Lewes (1984), based on the full account held in the Public Record Office takes up the story: In 1670 she was distrained of goods worth £29 by false information. She appealed to the next Sessions and the informer, fearing be found a perjurer, fled. Her goods were ordered to be returned. In 

1672 William Penn visited her in Lewes. In 1673 she was reported by an informer priest, William Snatt, for meeting in a private house, fined £8.10 shillings, and her goods were taken worth £16.18 shillings. In 1676 she was fined £10 for meeting in a house in West FirIe. In 1677 she was indicted for nine months’ absence from church. In 1686 (27 years after asking her first question in St. Michael’s church) when old, sick and unable to walk without being held up on either side, she was carried off at midnight by bailiffs to prison. In Besse’s words, op.cit. p.734: 

One of the Bayliffs, being drunk, when he got on Horseback, with many Oaths and Threatenings had set her upon his Horse, and would not suffer her to take Necessaries with her, so that her Friends thought she could not live till she came to the Prison. But the barbarous Bayliff swore, that if she could not hold it to Prison, which was twenty Mlles, he would tie her, and drag her thither at his Horse’s Tail. Being brought to Horsham Jail, she was kept dose Prisoner there about seven Months, and then was removed to London and committed to the King’s Bench. In Oxford… In Cumbria… 

It was men like George Fox, Francis Howgill, Edmund Burroughs, Richard Hubberthom, George Whitehead and Robert Barclay, and women like Margaret Fell, Ann Blaykling, Mary Fisher and Mary Akehurst who were Thomas Paine’s fearlessly radical 17th century forerunners, speaking out for justice and civil liberty, including liberty for (non-violent) non-conformity. 

Part Two 

Paine’s own Quaker Background. 

Paine’s magisterial biographer John Keane stresses that Paine was the child of a mixed marriage – half Anglican, half Quaker and suggests that this must have led to his having a balanced, even detached, view of both orthodox and heterodox Christianity and hence to his championing of toleration. I myself see no reason to think that young Paine felt himself to be equally Anglican and Quaker. He is generally agreed to have been much closer to his Quaker father to whom he was apprenticed at thirteen than he was to his Anglican mother. And he actually recounts in The Age of Reason how shocked and alienated he had been when he was 7 or 8 years old, on hearing his Anglican aunt’s orthodox Anglican religious teaching of Original Sin and redemption through God’s allowing the crucifixion of his own son. Instead, when young Tom Paine attended Quaker meetings in Meeting House Lane, he would have heard Quaker neighbours testifying not to sin or damnation but to their feelings of love and unity and to the working of God’s mercy in their own lives; he would also have absorbed the practical mercy that Thetford Quakers gave out towards the needy, suffering members of their meeting. 

For in Thetford, Quakers collective self-organization had already been established soon after the start of the first Friends’ meetings there.³ 

Through democratic ‘Quaker discipline’ that included ‘elders’ and ‘overseers’ and monthly, quarterly and yearly meetings as well as women’s meetings, taking care of the poor, the sick, the old, the widowed and the orphans had been the Quaker way from the first.⁴ Their path-breaking schemes of providing accommodation, weekly allowances, legacies and gifts of fuel and clothing (we again remember the Epistle of James) gave Paine a lifelong Quaker ‘feeling for the hard condition of others’ as he himself would write in his letter to the town of Lewes later. There would also have been (as there still is) decision-making by consensus – ‘the sense of the Meeting’. Therefore, despite arguments and some defections, and criticism, Quakers managed to practice democratic consultation and to avoid continuous acrimonious splitting into ever smaller groups. Instead, they tolerated different approaches to Truth if sincerely sought, trusting in each Friend’s own moral and reasoned judgement, as he or she followed their ‘Inner Light’. 

We should also note that Quakerism is, and has always been, an outward looking faith. They believed from the first that Quakerism is something to be lived out in the world and this bonded them in shared efforts at humanitarian intervention. For the Quakers have never been short of others’ Sufferings’ that need addressing, the sufferings of slaves, prisoners, the disenfranchised, the starving, refugees, the victims of war and persecution. 

Quakerism already had an influence on Paine’s schooling, between the ages of 7-13. His father said he must not learn Latin because of the books thro’ which that language is taught – think of the semi-divine status claimed for the founding of Rome in the Aeneid or the city or the deity accorded the later Roman emperors or Caesar’s triumph list history in his accounts of his conquest of Gaul. Simon Weil called history ‘believing the murderers at their own word’. 

Did, during this period, young Paine read a copy of Besse’s Sufferings of the Early Quakers in the small Thetford Meeting House library? Or did his father, or a richer Quaker neighbour actually own a copy?⁵ We shall never know, but at the very least there must have been an inextinguishable orally transmitted tradition. As Sylvia Stevens writes in her monograph A Believing People in a Changing World: Quakers in Society in North-east Norfolk, 1690-1800: 

When Friends such as Mary Kirby and Edmund Peckover who were directly descended from a Quaker of the first generation, gave their [oral] ministry, they were doing so as people who linked to the past but spoke a message for the present 18th century Norfolk Quakers acknowledged, shaped and revered their own religious pasts but lived in their own time. 

What would young Thomas Paine have read or been told about the treatment of the Quakers, including his own kin, in Thetford, in Norwich and elsewhere in Norfolk, before he was born? And how would they have reacted? 

The written history of persecution of Norfolk Quakers, especially Norwich and Thetford (Source: Besse)

1660 the deposition of Samuel Duncombe on the breaking up of a meeting in Norwich: ‘[We suffered their] smiting, punching, cruel mocking… thumping on the Back and Breast without Mercy, dragging some most inhumanly by the Hair of the Head, and spitting in our Faces, abusing both men and women…[They] have taken the Mire out of the Streets and have thrown it at the Friends, some of them holding the Maid of the House whilst others daubed her face with Gore and Dung, so as the skin of her face could hardly be seen.’ 

For that ‘scandalous expression’ Duncombe and the other Quakers were sent to prison. Whereupon Samuel Duncombe wrote again to the Mayor and Aldermen, beginning ‘Friends, Our Oppression is more than we ought always to bear in Silence. And now we are upon the brink of Ruin by the loss of our Goods,… made harbourless in our own houses… And what would you have us do? Do you think we are only wilful and resolve so to be? Do you think these things are pleasing to our own wills as creatures of flesh and blood as you are also, to suffer? You must also expect Judgement – therefore be not high-minded, but fear – for the Lord can quickly blast your Honour and disperse your Riches. We cannot sew Pillows under your armholes, but wish you well as we do ourselves.’

Duncombe later sent a second letter from Norwich prison, beginning not ‘Friends’, this time, but ‘Magistrates!’ And continuing: ‘For complaining of injustice our liberties are taken from us, we are forced to lodge in straw’. 

In February 1665 at the Quarter Sessions held at Norwich Castle, Henry Kettle and Robert Eden both of Thetford, and two others, were convicted of the third offence in meeting together (see Conventicle Act) and were sentenced to be carried thence to Yarmouth, and from that Port to be transported for seven years to Barbados’ (i.e. as slaves). When Kettle returned after seven years, he was again arrested and imprisoned. 

In 1676, William Gamham, Mary Townsend and Robert Spargin of Thetford were distrained of their good worth £2.5 shillings. One Captain Cropley molested them and attempted to disperse their religious meeting by Force of Arms. And when they asked for his commission so to do, he showed them his rapier. And one of them not going at his command, he beat him on the Head with his Stick and kickt him on the Back to the endangering of his Life. 

November 1676, Samuel Dunscombe [again] reported how his house was forcibly entered; ‘officers bringing with them one Tennison and impudent Informer and the common Hangman. They tarried several days and nights in that home and kept Samuel Duncombe’s wife, then big with child, a Prisoner, suffering her to speak to no body and admitting none of the neighbours to come near her. The Goods they took were valued at £42.19 shillings’. 

1678 ‘George Whitehead and Thomas Burr were taken at a meeting in Norwich. Charles Alden, a Vintner and one of the singing Men in the Cathedral, rushed in calling out ‘Here’s Sons of Whores; here’s 500 Sons and Daughters of Whores. The Church Doors stand open but they will be hanged before they will come in there’. sand whilst George Whitehead was speaking, [Alden] cryed out ‘Put down that Puppy Dog! Why do you suffer him to stand there prating?’ 

These Norfolk Quakers were then sent to prison in Norwich Castle and again in 1680 for refusing to take the oath. On his release George Whitehead went straight to Hampton Court to plead with the King on behalf of his fellow-prisoners left 27 steps below ground in Norwich Castle dungeons – ‘They are burying them alive’, he told the King, whom he just addressed as ‘King’, ‘They are poor harmless people, poor Woolcombers, Weavers and Tradesmen, like to be destroyed’. The prisoners were only released two years later. 

1682 Anne Payne was committed to prison for ‘absence from National Worship’ (Many other Paines, or Paynes, in Norfolk suffered the seizure of their goods, and imprisonment). 

1684 saw an ‘excessive Seizure from two Norfolk farmers, John Roe and William Roe, who were fined £240 and had all their cattle, corn and households goods taken by the Sherriff’s Officers in East Dereham. ‘The behaviour of the Officers and Assistants and who made this seizure was very rude. They broke open the Doors, Drawers and Chests and threatened the Servants of the House with Sword and Pistol. To make themselves merry they roasted a pigg and laid so much wood on the Hearth that they set the Chimney on Fire with which, and their Revelling, Cursing and Swearing, they affrighted the wife of the said William Roe to the endangering of her Life; she being then great with child, was delivered before her lime, and the child died a few days later’. 

The persecution continued in Norfolk up to 1690. Such things are not soon forgotten. Whether or not young Thomas Paine, born in 1737, read a copy of Besse, so many were the oral accounts of the persecution period that he must have heard many examples from his father, from his paternal grand- parents and from other Thetford Quakers. It was still living memory and there can be no doubt at all on which side he and his father were on. It would simply not have been possible for him as a sensitive, spirited, indignant child and youth to have been equally pro-Anglican, on the side of the punishing ruling class, and on the side of their victims, the heroes and heroines of Quaker dissent. 

Part Three 

Paine’s writing on Quakers and on Quakerly principles. 

1768-1775: Paine in Lewes. 

Thomas ‘Clio’ Rickman, who would become Paine’s closest English friend and first devoted biographer (Paine would write part of the Rights of Man in his London home), first attached himself to Paine as his inspiring mentor when he was a youth in Lewes. ‘Clio’ Rickman was a ‘birthright’ Lewes Quaker on both sides of his family, the Rickmans being the dominant family in the meeting there. They first settled in Lewes around 1700 and were almost certainly related to, if not directly descended from, the Quakers Nicholas Rickman from Arundel who had been pitilessly persecuted in West Sussex decade after decade before 1690. Their common Quaker heritage and knowledge of Quaker persecution history would have been one of the bonds between the radical debating Paine of the Lewes Headstrong Club and his young admiring convert to radicalism, Rickman. ‘Clio’ Rickman himself would be disowned by the Lewes meeting for ‘marrying out’ but eventually died as a Quaker in London and would be buried in the Quaker burial ground in Bunhills Fields. He would publish Paine and give him sanctuary in London, and himself suffer as a publisher for his Paine connection. 

1775-1787 America. 

1775-80 Paine worked with Philadelphia Quakers in the first anti-slavery society in America, founded by the Quaker John Woolman. He wrote his first essay there asking the Americans to ‘discontinue and renounce’ slavery in African Slavery in America. 

1775. In his Thoughts on a Defensive War, he wrote “I am thus far a Quaker, in that I would readily agree with all the world to lay aside the use of arms, and settle matters by negotiation: but unless the whole will, the matter ends, and I take up my musket”, i.e. against the troops, including Hessian mercenaries, being employed by the British to put down the American struggle for colonial independence – ‘laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword (Common Sense). 

Therefore, in 1776 in his Appendix to Common Sense, Paine opposed those conservative ‘Tory’, non-resisting Philadelphia Quakers who, in 1776, advocated reconciliation with the British King, Paine accused this group of rich Quakers, who, he said, did not represent all Quakers, of being not really neutral and peacefully above the conflict as they claimed by de facto partisans on King George III’s side, when they argued against resistance. Their very participation in political argument forfeited their claim to be apolitical quietists. They were really on the side of Mammon. Had Paine known of the actual degree of American Quaker economic collaboration with the British then going on behind the scenes, he would have been even more incensed.⁶

It is noteworthy that in the same Appendix Paine proves that he has read some Quaker persecution history in his admiring allusion to ‘the honest soul of [the Quaker Robert] Barclay’ and his quotation from Barclay’s Address to Charles 11, criticising persecution under Charles II, a King who having himself been oppressed ‘hest reason to know how hateful the oppressor is to both God and man’. 

Xmas 1776 The American Crisis – first essay by Paine advocating total resistance even unto death: ‘These are the times that try men’s souls… Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered;…’ show your faith by your works’ (Epistle of James). 

November 1778, 7th Crisis essay, Paine coined the phrase ‘Religion of Humanity’, i.e. humanity is the true religion. My religion is to do good’. 

1788-9 and 1791: England. 

1789 Letter to Kitty Nicholson: 

There is a Quaker favourite of mine at New York, formerly Miss Watson of Philadelphia ; she is now married to Dr. Lawrence and is an acquaintance of Mrs. Oswald; so be kind as to make her a visit for me. You will like her conversation. She has a little of the Quaker primness – but of the pleasing kind about her.

1789 -1790 and 1792-1795: France 

1793 attacked by Marat re clemency for King denounced for being a Quaker and therefore against death penalty.

1794 – 6: Paine on Quakers and Quakerism in The Age of Reason. Conway Introduction. Paine’s ‘Reason’ is only an expansion of the Quakers “inner light’. Paine was a spiritual successor of George Fox. He too had ‘apostolic fervour’. 

Part 1, Ch. 1. The author’s profession of faith. 

‘I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow-creatures happy’. ‘My own mind is my own church’. 

Ch.111. The character of Jesus. 

‘He was a virtuous and amiable man. The morality he preached and practiced was of the most benevolent kind; and though similar systems of morality had been preached by Confucius, and by some Greek philosophers many years before, by the Quakers since, and by many good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any. 

Ch. X111 

My father being of the Quaker profession, it was my good fortune to have an exceedingly good moral education, and a tolerable stock of useful learning. Though I went to the grammar school, I did not learn Latin, not only because I had no inclination to learn languages, but because of the objection the Quakers have against the books in which the language is taught. 

And note how his first attempts to think and write about politics and government were determined by the principle in which he had been raised – I.e. Quakerism. 

The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true Deism, in the moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by the Quakers: but they have contracted themselves too much by leaving the works of God out of their system. Though I reverence their philanthropy, I cannot help smiling at the conceit that if a Quaker could have been consulted at the creation, what a silent and drab-coloured creation it would have been! Not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties nor a bird been permitted to sing. 

Part 2, Conclusion to The Age of Reason: 

The only sect that has not persecuted are the Quakers; and the only reason that can be given for it is, that they are rather Deists than Christians. They do not believe much about Jesus Christ, and they call all scriptures a dead letter. 

1797, Letter to Camille Jordan who was anxious to restore Catholic privileges, inc. church bells, in post-revolutionary France. 

The intellectual part of religion is a private affair between every man and his Maker, and which no third party has any right to interfere. The practical part consists in our doing good to each other. But since religion has been made into a trade, the practical part has been made to consist of ceremonies performed by men called priests; true religion has been banished; and such means have been found out to extract money even from the pockets of the poor, instead of contributing to their relief… 

No man ought to make a living by Religion. It is dishonest to do so. Religion is not an act that can be performed by proxy. One person cannot act religion for another… that can be performed by proxy. One person cannot act religion for another… 

The only people who, as a professional sect of Christians provide for the poor of their society, are people known by the name of Quakers. These men have no priests. They assemble quietly in their places of meeting, and do not disturb their neighbours with shows and noise of bells… Quakers are equally remarkable for the education of their children. I am a descendent of a family of that profession; my father was a Quaker, and I presume I may be admitted as evidence of what I assert. … Principles of humanity, of sociability, and sound instruction for advancement of society, are the first objects of studies among the Quakers… One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests. 

1803, Letter to Samuel Adams. 

…”the World has been overrun with fables and creeds of human invention, with sectaries of whole nations against all other nations, and sectaries of those sectaries in each of them against each other. Every sectary, except the Quakers, has been a persecutor. Those who fled from persecution were persecuted in their turn. 

1804, Prospect Papers. 

It is an established principle with the Quakers not to shed blood, Re revelation: the O.T. usage ‘the word of the Lord came to such a one – like the expression used by a Quakers, that ‘the spirit moveth him”. 

The Quakers are a people more moral in their conduct than the people of other sectaries, and generally allowed to be so, do not hold the Bible (i.e. the O.T.) to be the word of God. They call it ‘a history of the times’. 

Conclusion 

Paine himself was not a Quaker, because he was not a Christian and the Quakers were Christians, however unorthodox and radical. Nevertheless, his Quaker heritage from his father gave him a birthright example of principled, fundamental criticism of the corrupt, caste-ridden, unjust society into which he was born. 

The persecution history, in particular, of his Quaker forebears transmitted to Paine both by word of mouth and in print in his youth, must, I believe, have been truly inspirational ‘strengthening medicine’ as he in his turn dared to ‘speak truth to power’. There is no foundation for conviction like saeva indignatio. And Paine, like the early Quakers, would also face trial for ‘sedition’, would be exiled by a fearful aristocratic government and would be imprisoned and risk death for his convictions – the latter, ironically, at the hand of revolutionary extremists. 

Paine acknowledged the idea rightness of the Quaker Peace testimony and would only ever see justification in a purely defensive armed struggle. Paine helped start the American Quaker campaign in Philadelphia to abolish slavery and the slave trade. 

Paine remembered the Society of Friends’ organization of care for its weakest members as a template for the possibility of organized social welfare that he would expound in Rights of Man. His allusions to Quakerism and the practice of the Quakers in his writings whether in America„ in France or in England, were overwhelmingly respectful, even at time reverential – ‘I reverence their philanthropy’. 

So far I have implied the influence of Quakerism on Paine was as positive as it was profound. But was it wholly positive? Perhaps we should consider the comment made by the eighty year old portrait painted by James Northcote, himself a political liberal, as reported in Hazlitt’s first Conversation with Northcote, in 1829. 

Nobody can deny that [Paine] was a very fine writer and a very sensible man. 

But he flew in the face of a whole generation; and no wonder that they were too much for him, and that his name became a byword with such multitudes, for no other reason than that he did not care what offence he gave them by contradicting all their most inveterate prejudices. If you insult a room-full of people, you will be kicked out of it. So neither will the world at large be insulted with impunity. If you tell a whole country that they are fools and knaves, they will not return the compliment by crying you up as the peak of wisdom and honesty. Nor will those who come after be very apt to take up your quarrel. It was not so much Paine’s being a republican or an unbeliever, as the manner in which he brought his opinions forward (which showed self-conceit and a want of feeling) that subjected him to obloquy. People did not like the temper of the man. 

The first Quakers had certainly known how to get up the noses of their late 17th century persecutor. They knew they were in the right, that they were ‘the Children of God’ and those who were against them were mere ‘hirelings’ and ‘worldlings’. But they did not thereby endear themselves to their world. As Besse himself said: Nor could it be expected that a Testimony levelled both against the darling Vices of the Laity and the forced maintenance of the Clergy should meet with any other than an unkind reception.⁷ Was Paine too much like those earliest Quakers, forfeiting persuasiveness in the certainty of his own exclusive rightness – and so ‘[meeting] an unkind reception’? 

Twenty years earlier than Hazlitt’s Conversation about him with Northcote, on his deathbed in March,1809, Paine had expressed his last wish: 

“I know not if the Society of people called Quakers, admit a person to be buried in their burying ground, who does not belong to their Society, but if they do, or will admit me, I would prefer being buried there; my father belonged to that profession, and I was partly brought up in it.” 

According to Keane, a local New Jersey Friend, Willett Hicks: 

‘conveyed Paine’s request sympathetically to the local Friends, but it was refused. Hicks reported back that the society felt that Paine’s own friends and sympathizers “might wish to raise a monument to his memory, which being contrary to their rules, would render it inconvenient to them”….Paine sobbed uncontrollably’ …

Notes

1. Conway, Moncure, Life of Thomas Paine…. 1892, vol.1, p. 11. 
2. See Oxford DNB entry on Whitehead, See Public Record Offices for the earliest mss. Quaker archives, listing local ‘Sufferers’ and ‘Perpetrators on facing pages, month by month, year by year, 1652-1690. 
3. Those among the Valiant Sixty’ at Firbank Fell in 1651 who had gone to ‘ publish truth’ in Norwich and Norfolk in 1653-4 pi included Christopher Atkinson from Kendal, Ann Blaylding from Drawell, Richard Hubberthome from Yealand, James Lancaster from Walney, Dorothy Waugh from Preston Patrick and George Whitehead from Orton. 
4. Keane p. 24: they believed their mutual aid enabled them to return in Spirit to the grace of the earliest ‘primitive’ Christians. 
5. Quote intro. to facsimile of Besse re their distribution. 
6. See Conway, vol.1, pp. 78-77. 
7. Besse, Introduction.

The post `No Respecter Of Persons’: Thomas Paine And The Quakers: The Influence Of 17th Century Quaker Persecution History On Paine’s Radicalism  appeared first on .

Thomas Paine His Life, His Time and The Birth of Modem Nations. Craig Nelson. 398pp, Profile Books, London, 2007, hardback, illustrated, ISBN 1 86197 638 0. £20 

Why, one wonders, has Craig Nelson moved from writing travel books and an account of a wartime American bombing raid on Japan to a biography to a biography of Thomas Paine. It’s not as if there is a shortage of such works, indeed the bibliography lists several from the pioneering writings of Rickman, Cobbett and Conway to more recent books by Aldridge, Ayer and Keane. Nelson’s book adds nothing new to our knowledge of Paine’s life and work but it does contain a massive amount of information and opinion about the Enlightenment era. It is not bedside reading but if you have plenty of time it fully rewards the effort of reading it. 

Some of the facts that Nelson records are inspiring such as American militia charging into battle shouting the famous lines from Common Sense: ‘These are the times that try means’ souls”. Nearly two centuries after it was penned, American veteran opponents of the Vietnam War would call themselves winter soldiers, another quotation from Paine. Paine’s efforts as a propagandist for American independence far outweighed his efforts as an infantryman. 

Other facts are of little interest to political historians, although found the presentation of a chamber pot by Louis XVI to the duchesse Polignac de Sevres illustrated with an engraving of Franklin, who described Paine as his adopted political son and the circulation of pornographic drawings of Marie Antoinette rather amusing. 

Nelson records Paine’s bitter opposition to slavery. Paine wrote in African Slavery in America: “Our traders in men…must know the wickedness of the slave trade, if they attend to reasoning or the dictates of their own hearts…” Five weeks after its publication the first abolitionist organisation in America, the Pennsylvania Society for the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage was formed. What humbug is displayed by the British ruling class, Elizabeth Windsor presiding at a ceremony to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade when the British aristocracy and the Anglican Church made a vast fortune out of it, the slaves of the Anglicans were branded with the word “society”. Paine would have supported the Africans such as Nanny of the Maroons (now a national heroine in Jamaica) who revolted against slavery. Slavery was abolished in Pennsylvania in 1780 but millions remained in bondage in the other states. 

Nelson sees Paine very much as a product of the 18th century enlightenment and he contrasts the plebian coffee houses and taverns of America with the aristocratic salons of pre-Revolutionary France. The revolutions of the enlightenment raised an important question which still remains unanswered. Is it inevitable that revolutions aimed at liberating humanity and building a better world always end with the enslavement of the people by new and worse tyrannies? The American and Russian revolutions created so much hope only to end with the rule of corrupt plutocratic oligarchies. 

Paine took a positive view of Native Americans and while secretary to the United States Council of Safety negotiated new treaties with Iroquois leader Last Night. Paine thought that the English government had but half the sense this Indian had. The Iroquois confederation of six tribes was governed by the Great Law of Peace. Many of its ideas would later be found in the American Constitution. By the end of the 19th century the Native Americans had been the victims of legalised robbery and genocide, an impoverished remnant living as second class citizens in their own land. 

Paine was a scientist as well as a revolutionary and Nelson relates how he and Washington experimented with igniting gas bubbles stirred up from the bottom of a muddy river. He tells us that Joseph Priestley, who fled to America to escape the Church and King mob, invented seltzer by capturing the gas released by a Leeds brewery. 

Nelson devotes an entire chapter to The Age of Reason which Paine wrote while imprisoned as a victim of the Terror during the French Revolution and which led to his denunciation as a “dirty little atheist”. Paine made it clear that he believed in one God and hoped for happiness beyond this life. He did not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish, Roman or any other church. Like many advanced Frenchmen and Americans Paine was a deist. While Paine’s religion of doing good was better than that of the established Protestant and Catholic churches as an atheist I find belief in any God irrational and unproven. However in an age of fundamentalist fanaticism and jihad suicide bombings The Age of Reason should be translated into Arabic and Urdu and widely circulated in the Islamic community. But I fear its publishers would suffer a worse fate than the Englishmen who were imprisoned in the 19th century for publishing it. In his later life Paine would become a regular contributor to The Prospect published by the blind Presbyterian turned deist Etihu Palmer. 

Nelson is nothing if not an opinionated writer. He describes Rousseau as an “…expert on parenting who abandoned all of his children; the deist who proclaimed all other deists as infidels.” He describes Jane Austen as writing “a good skewering”. In my view her twee tales could be marketed as a cure for insomnia. 

One subject Nelson doesn’t address is the influence of Freemasonry on the American Revolution. Paine was of too humble an origin to be a mason but Washington He was initiated into the Fredericksburg Lodge in 1752. The Masonic eye in the pyramid symbol appears on Federal Reserve notes. It was said that the execution of Louis Capot was revenge for the execution of the medieval Templar Jacques De Molay. Paine narrowly escaped execution himself, no thanks to his former close friend Washington. 

Sadly Paine, largely rejected and even deprived of a vote by the America he had helped create, spent the last two years of his life as an invalid afflicted by bouts of fever and dropsy. He died on June 8, 1809. He was placed in a mahogany coffin and buried in New Rochelle having been refused a plot in New York’s Quaker cemetery. His tombstone proclaimed: ‘Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense, died June 8 1809, aged 74 years.” A year later Cobbett and his son removed the remains to England. When the bankrupt Cobbett died in 1835 they became lost. Some of his writings suffered the same fate. A collection which came into the hands of Benjamin Bonneville was destroyed by fire. 

But Paine’s ideas and influence lived on. Craft weavers in Leeds opposed to the dark satanic mills of the industrial revolution 

gathered in a Thomas Paine hall. Welsh radicals met in secret to read his books which they had hidden under rocks. In Sheffield God Save Great Thomas Paine was sung to the tune of the National Anthem. The Chartists lauded him, when his name appeared in George Hamey’s Red Republican it was printed in capitals. Secularists named their children for him. Paine birthday events were widely popular on both sides of the Atlantic. 

In America was an influence on such various persons as the Feminist Susan B Taylor, the Socialist Eugene Debs and the reformist Democrat President Franklin Rossevelt. Abraham Lincoln, the father of the modern Republican Party, was converted to deism by reading The Age of Reason. He wrote a pamphlet extolling Paine’s views which his friends tossed into the stove. Even the bumbling third rate movie actor Ronald Reagan could quote Paine correctly although I suspect Paine would have been with the Black Panthers who led Californian students in chanting: “r** Ronald Reagan.” 

Not one of the golden statues of Paine proposed by Napoleon has ever been constructed. When in the early 1960s a group of Americans commissioned a statue to be constructed by Charles Wheeler and erected in Thetford, local reactionaries opposed this. The chair of the women’s section of the British Legion exploded: “Tom Paine, the philanderer and an unmitigated scamp, is the last man Thetford should honour.” The Tory deputy mayor wanted an inscription about Paine’s conviction for treason be engraved on the base. Happily this move was defeated. Out of this incident the Thomas Paine Society was formed. It exists to this day to promote the legacy of Paine’s revolutionary democracy. But it always needs more active members. 

This is a big book and will require considerable effort to read it. But the effort should prove worthwhile.

The post BOOK REVIEW: Thomas Paine His Life, His Time and The Birth of Modem Nations appeared first on .

Gender, Religion And Radicalism In The Long Eighteenth Century by Judith Jennings. Illustrated. 204pp. ISBN 0 7546 5500. £55.00 

This excellent book, sub-titled “The ‘Ingenious Quaker’ and Her Connections”, came my way by chance. I enjoyed reading it. 

It is well presented, and beautifully printed. The scholarship is rigorous. The book itself is easy to handle, and the text well written. It is meticulously indexed. 

Although a Quaker I knew nothing of Mary Morris Knowles, sometimes called Molly Knowles, nor of her patient determination to live her faith so fearlessly and – more or less – without pretension. Her constancy shines through the text; so does her single mindedness in holding to her beliefs and mounting her attack when forced so to do without bitterness even when wrongly accused, and always with considerable fortitude. A certain tenacity emerges, but one devoid, apparently, of jealousy or pettiness. 

Born in 1733 as Mary Morris, Knowles was an accomplished eighteenth century artist and writer who struggled successfully to express her gender within the turbulent ups & downs of George the Third’s feign. That vibrant century with its agricultural and industrial revolutions, the emergence of Wesley and English Methodism, the new sciences, the challenge of slavery, the French and American revolutions, Thomas Paine and other enlightened thinkers, but then the loss of the American colonies – could not have been an easy stage on which a woman might make her case, let alone win it. But Knowles was no ordinary woman. She deliberately cultivated new forms of “polite Quakerism” which stood her in good stead throughout life – not least with non-Quakers. She also knew how to use humour so as to subvert traditional Quakerism. 

Knowles was a “middling” woman by way of social standing. But she emerges under the skilful eye of author Jennings (Kentucky Foundation for Women, USA), as a powerful, determined woman who thought for herself and acted accordingly – regardless of class, wealth, or standing.

Because of their commitment to non-violence, their assumption of equality as between men and women, their rejection of titles and honours including clericalism, Quakers who sought social advancement were mostly excluded from-the recognised norms for making progress — the Crown and its royal court, the Church of England, or the military. Their idiosyncratic faith obliged them to find their own way notwithstanding these closed doors. 

Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries many Quakers turned to industry, commerce, or manufacturing for their living. Increasingly, education and science also became an open and creative field of endeavour for many of them. Mainly because of their honesty and plain speaking they performed brilliantly – as the great banking families of Lloyds and Barclays, the manufacturers Carr (biscuits), Cadbury, Rowntree and Fry (chocolates), Clarke of Street (footwear) and many others, demonstrated: Often the entrepreneurs became embarrassingly wealthy as a consequence of their probity and inventiveness. Power came their way, frequently to their inner embarrassment. 

Knowles, doubly handicapped as a woman and a Quaker, found her way through force of personality, diligence, and clarity of thought. In not a few instances she helped to create or shape prevailing social conditions. 

She chose her own husband when most women did not. Dr. Thomas Knowles was an expert in treating fever, although he would die of it in due course. Their marriage was happy and fulfilling. Knowles was also able to count amongst her personal friends many of the leading Quaker bankers, some of the principle manufacturers and educationalists, many writers and poets. Unusually she was destined to be recognised by the King and became a visitor at court, yet without bending before it. 

Her style was to communicate by way of poetry — the heroic couplet more often than not. She travelled widely, enjoyed good health, engaged in music, and a new form of needlework. In the process she developed her radical politics without rancour or bitterness. Moreover, inner serenity and a blend of gender confidence arising from clear religious convictions formed a solid basis for life. By probing these characteristics in the “most minute of particulars” as Ashmole might have observed, Jennings reveals new insights which rarely appear in the lexicon of standard British history. 

Knowles’ life was punctuated by a handful of events or occasions which became her “concerns” — itself a special word in Quaker philosophy. 

From her twenties she helped to pioneer the new art form of “needle painting”. Later Dr. Johnson was to call her art “the subtle pictures which imitate tapestry”. It changed her life for on seeing examples of her work the Queen, in 1771, invited her to embroider a full size portrait of her husband, King George the Third. It was an outstanding success such that it went into the Royal collection where it remains today. The King, mightily pleased, gave her £800 (sterling) for her endeavours — a considerable sum of money in the eighteenth century. Knowles was also made welcome in court as, a century earlier, had been Wm Penn who founded Pennsylvania but whose father had been an Admiral of the Fleet. 

Both “portraits” and “access to the court” must have been problematic for the Quaker needle painter — but once settled in her mind that her independence had not been compromised, Knowles would not.be diverted. She knew that, “Those who tread in Courts tread in slippery places.” Her commitment to political liberty and all that flows from that concept emerges as the constant of her personal morality. Jennings unravels this process with sound analysis. 

In 1776 Knowles met James Boswell and then the formidable Dr. Samuel Johnson over dinner. Others were present including John Wilkes and his supporter Arthur Lee as well as other radical Whigs. Their host was the liberal Quaker Edward Dilly. Typically, Knowles was the only woman present. 

The American colonies were a major subject for debate — but so therefore were religion and liberty — especially women’s liberty on which subject Johnson was decidedly negative, complex and, at times, contradictory. He placed individual liberty lower than social cohesion and so had little sympathy for the American revolutionaries. 

Knowles’ position was the opposite – she abhorred slavery. Being a Quaker she held it self evident that “that there is that of God in every person”. The Quakers were largely responsible for forming the Anti-Slavery Society which continues the work today. 

Her argument with Johnson and Boswell embraced the case of a young Jamaican woman — Jane Harry — who had decided to quit the Church of England and was later to attend Quaker meetings. Eventually Harry was disowned by her adopted family and was looked after by the Knowles. Knowles directly disputed Johnson’s position. She defended the right of the Jamaican to choose her own religion. She also rebuked Johnson for his negative attitude towards Quakers whom he disparagingly classified as “deists”. The dispute thus laid between them was to rumble on for decades. 

From the outset of their many encounters Knowles steadfastly claimed that Boswell took no notes during much of the argument as to her own contribution, nor when they met again to dispute much the same range of subjects. She maintained that Boswell only wrote later in respect of her contribution from memory. She asserted that he had paraphrased her contribution, getting it wrong in the process. When Boswell and Johnson visited her in 1790 so as to read to her Boswell’s narrative of her earlier meetings with Johnson, Knowles declared that “It was not genuine”. It contained too many “fabrications and suppressions”. Subsequently, she published her own account. Boswell refused to recognise its authenticity. 

It is within the interstices of the arguments which continue over the years that Jennings is able to unveil and pin-point aspects of gender, morality, liberty, freedom for colonists, the social limits of toleration (Harry), the meaning of death, of Quakerism and the like, which other historians have tended to ignore — except with passing reference. Knowles’ analysed issues painstakingly. She drew radical confusions consistent with her spiritual beliefs. Henceforth, Knowles would speak and write carefully, but without restraint and largely in contradiction to what the Doctor claimed, or judged. She gave no quarter whatsoever. 

In June 1788, for example, to take but one typical example, Knowles crafted the verse,

‘Tho various tints the human face adorn,

To glorious Liberty Mankind are born:

0, May the hands which rais’d this fav’rite weed (tobacco)

Be Ioos’d in mercy and the slave be freed!’

Here is what Jennings calls “a female expression of the radical commitment to “glorious liberty”. Knowles viewed liberty as the birthright of all. For her, liberty encompassed politics as well as religion, “liberty had become a rational, non-sectarian, universal, human right”, she wrote. We still need to understand that insight two centuries later. She advocated the freeing of all slaves. She practised and extolled the virtues of her Quakerism; she promoted the virtues of liberty and tolerance, especially for women. 

Knowles discussed Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man Part 1 with her close Quaker friend, Anne Seward. She also quoted from Paine’s Age of Reason that the Quaker taste presided at the Creation “what a drab world we should have had.” (1794) Two years earlier Seward & Knowles had discussed Paine’s Rights of Man Part 11 when the former criticised “Paine’s pernicious and impossible system for equal rights.” This radical difference between the two women gave rise to “sharp tension” for Knowles supported the French Revolution and whole- heartedly approved of Mary Wollstonecraft’s, Vindication of the Rights of Women. 

Motherhood and a happy, secure marriage were critical to Knowles’ understanding of life. She secured and held on to lifelong friendships, not least within the Society of Friends, but also well outside that community. Her verse, her wit, and her fearless but consistent honesty, transcended even her feminism. 

The French Revolution as well as lesser issues were dissected, debated and fought over when necessary. She never backed off. Issues included deism, water baptism, wealth, beauty and public fame, all of which featured in her verses, as well as in her discussions with friends and those experts or commentators whom she met. 

At the end Knowles, now a rich woman, carefully arranged for The transfer of 50 — 60 thousand pounds prior to her death to her son, George, by way of a “Deed of Gift”. Prudent to the end, yet despite having practised “polite Quakerliness” all her life, she was finally assailed by doubt as death approached. She died on the morning of 3rd February 1807, aged 73 years. 

The real virtue of this riveting analysis of a highly intelligent woman who could and did match any man or alleged “expert” who came her way is in the light it shines on the way the great issues of the day were meticulously discussed in homes and saloons, in court and coffee houses by otherwise ordinary men and women. Many of the issues she tackled through her verse, the exchange of letters, or by debate remain to be resolved 200 years later. But as a guiding light Knowles, an extraordinary woman, can be trusted and followed.

The post BOOK REVIEW: Gender, Religion And Radicalism In The Long Eighteenth Century appeared first on .

A biography can follow a personal life-history as honestly or as deviously as suits its author’s purpose, for biographers may be motivated just as strongly against as in favour of their subject. The justification for a biography is that its subject has achieved enough distinction to excite curiosity about the factors in his life, which induced a situation marking parts in the development of many personal lives, and these can become known only in variable degree, even to close associates. It is not very surprising when a man from a distinguished background makes an impact upon the history of this time (although his background does not diminish his title to credit for his achievements), but it is much more intriguing when a man from an apparently common-place background makes a strong impact. Sons born to monarchs, and sons born to prominent dignitaries may reasonably be expected to make a contribution to contemporary society, but members of the lower orders do not inherit springboards from which to launch themselves. Those of undistinguished birth who do achieve enduring fame, whether or not they drive – or were driven by,- the special circumstances with which posterity subsequently associate them, may therefore fall to be judged by serried ranks of undistinguished peers unwilling to award them adequate credit through reluctance to concede that better results than their own have been attained from similar circumstances. As has long been recognised ‘a prophet is’ never without honour save in. his own country and amongst his own people’. So it has been, in considerable measure for Thomas Paine, the man from the people who remained always a man of the people, notwithstanding that he achieved far greater distinction than did most of his fellows. 

To the resentment of those of similar social standing to himself, who felt – and still feel in their subconscious minds, that his exceptional success underlined their own mediocrity, there must be added the open hostility shown by members of the upper classes who could not bring themselves to recognise that greater intellectual powers could emanate from a man of lower social ranking. To these, any rod was a suitable one with which to belabour the upstart stay-maker turned excise officer, later driven by intellectual hostility into rebellion against the Crown that failed to reciprocate his loyalty. And since Paine was modest about his private life. A circumstance which greatly contrasted with his justified pride in his immensely popular writing — his personal life was an avenue to which his enemies and detractors have turned en masse when seeking to off-set the great unassailable support his writings elicited from the numerous thinkers then emerging from the populace. Within Paine’s little-known private life, there was no important aspect less familiar to the public than the marriages which had been central to his early life in England, and so it was the matrimonial field which was selected as the location for the most virulent attacks upon his personal character. 

Paine’s experience of marriage, that of his parents as well as his own, did greatly influence him, just as it greatly influences the great majority of other Englishmen; and it is therefore appropriate to take another look at all three of these, within the broad context of feminine influence upon him during his formative years; for greater insight into this aspect of his life has slowly accrued to us, and has conferred an ability to make a more fair assessment thereon than Paine has generally received from earlier writers. 

Paine’s parents, Joseph Pain and his wife Frances, came from two very different backgrounds; Joseph was a farmer’s son and a practising Quaker, Frances was daughter to an attorney and a member of the Established Church. Their points of contact are not easily imagined, but were obviously sufficient to allow them to move towards wedlock. They seem to have resolved their religious differences through toleration of each other’s opinions. Frances’s view was allowed to prevail when they decided the mode and location of their marriage, and Joseph’s yielding to her wishes was a reasonable masculine deferment to her natural concerns that their wedding should be recognised by her family and friends; but Joseph’s choice of a bride from outside the Quaker community brought him into disfavour with his own religious confreres, who are thought to have expelled him from formal membership of their Society. However, this would not have debarred Joseph and his family from attendance at Quaker meetings. 

Joseph and Frances were married on June 20, 1734 in the parish church at Euston, just outside Thetford. Joseph was twenty-six on his wending day, and his bride was eleven years older. According to Oldys [George Chalmers], the biographer who found out most about Paine’s family, Frances possessed a sour temper and was an eccentric character, and later commentators have sometimes drawn the conclusion that Joseph contracted an unhappy marriage, but this opinion is probably ill-founded, as is explained below, and there is no positive reason to suppose that the marriage was other than normally stable and happy. Thomas was born after two years of wedlock to a mother aged thirty-nine, and was followed eleven months later by a sister, who did not survive infancy. Understandably, in view of Frances’s age, there were no more children born to the union, which continued without known loss of harmony until Joseph died in 1788 at the age of seventy- eight; Frances survived him by nearly three years, living to the grand old age of more than ninety. 

Joseph Pain probably received a great deal of help from his wife in the course of his business, for Oldys speaks of ‘fitting stays for the ladies of Thetford’. At that time, corsets were worn continually until they were worn out, and they were never cleaned. The fitting of these foundation garments would have called for considerable tact, and a working wife would have been necessary for a small stay maker; certainly, a woman such as Oldys represented Frances to have driven customers away, and the family business would scarcely have survived. George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, and Joseph% constant source of guidance, had expressed Quaker opinion on such matters: ‘There are many things proper for a woman to look after, both in their families and concerning women, which are not so proper for the men; which modesty in women cannot so well speak of before men as they can amongst their own sex’. Undoubtedly, the matrons of Thetford would have addressed themselves more readily to Frances than to Joseph when they needed a new corset. 

Thetford was an old town and the government maintained a constant presence in it, for an excise officer was stationed there. Excise offices were usually located at inns and when Paine was born it was at The Swan, though the following year it was moved to another inn, The Cock. Thomas would have been familiar with the excise presence from his earliest days and Oldys suggested that in his early youth he enquired about the duties of the excise men.

Later in life, when Paine returned to Thetford and applied for an excise appointment, his application would have entailed placing on record a considerable amount of information regarding his personal circumstances, and this would have been fully disclosed to Oldys when the Excise Head Office was instructed to cooperate with him in his privileged researches into Paine’s life and excise experience. Thus it was Paine himself who supplied much of the information drawn on by Oldys for his book, though it was adversely slanted by him, but every biographer of Paine since has turned to his biography for information; but it is not necessary to accept it blindly and without consulting contemporary information from sources Oldys found convenient to ignore. For example, he disclosed that Paine had not been baptised, but he did not make known to the public that this was sufficiently common in excise applicants (in those days) for the Excise Commissioners to have provided for alternative evidence of an applicant’s age to be acceptable for ensuring that it fell within the strictly prescribed limits. Family evidence, such as an entry in a family bible, was the favoured alternative, but all alternative evidence of age was required to be vetted by an investigating supervisor (a senior excise official), who had to reconcile it with visual indications, and have it confirmed by formal declarations before magistrates. When Paine applied to join the excise service his mother would have been visited by a mature official who studied her face and inquired why she was so much older-looking than he had expected, and why there had ‘been variations in the baptismal practices of her children, and he would have demanded legal statements in support of her replies. Such probing into her personal life might have seemed highly impertinent to Frances, and if she gave sharp replies, the investigator would have recorded them as evidence of Paine’s family background, and in due course they would have been made known to Oldys. Such is the likely basis for the adverse comments he made about Frances. 

Paine separated himself from the direct influence of the unusual marriage of his diverse parents when he left Thetford whilst still a young man, having found himself dissatisfied by the hum-drum life of an assistant to his father in the stay making business, and went to sea, but returned to the stay making craft for a while in London, at which stage in life he probably joined the new Christian sect we now know as Wesleyan Methodism, which was then growing within the Established Church. Methodism took root and spread most swiftly within the concentrations of workers who had entered the new industries spawned by the Industrial Revolution; many of them keenly missed the social support they had known in cottage industries now superseded, and they found an answer to their need in Methodism. Much of the credit for the movement’s success is due to the genius of its leader John Wesley, whose novel technique for integrating local groups into an internally- communicating national organisation was soon copied by other movements seeking to integrate workers. 

Well-known features of modern trade-unionism such as the membership card and regular local subscriptions are of Methodist origin. Wesley’s local societies were the fore-runners of local union branches, each guided by a class leader who collected a penny a week from every member. Each society also elected its own officers and took a lively interest in the welfare of every individual member. Membership was formally acknowledged by a ‘ticket which conferred membership nationally as well as locally and thus served as a ‘passport’. It is probable that Paine availed himself of such a Methodist ‘passport’ when he moved from London to Dover in 1758, and there entered into employment with another stay maker, Mr. Grace, a prominent Methodist in the town. Indeed, he may even have heard of the vacancy in Dover through the Methodist grape-vine. 

The Methodist Recorder for August 16, 1906, described Mr. Grace as the Dover class-leader, and that he took Paine to class with him. On one occasion a preacher failed to turn up and Paine was invited to take his place. It is interesting that Grace did not himself take the missing preacher’s place but delegated the job to Paine. Clearly he had decided that Paine was worthy to stand before his fellow Methodists, but it is unlikely that this was solely on his own judgement, for there was another member of his household whose advice would have been highly influential, Miss Grace, his niece, a lady of outwardly meek behaviour, but who was driven by an implacable will. She had already demonstrated her concern to further Methodism by converting her uncle, and she was probably the strongest influence on Paine. She has been frequently misrepresented by Paine biographers as the daughter of Mr. Grace, a precedent maliciously set by Oldys which others have ineptly followed. Oldys also foolishly imputed a romantic attachment between her and Paine, although at the time of his sojourn in Dover she was probably being courted by the first of her two husbands. But she was undoubtedly a strong influence on Paine at the time, and she is long overdue for depiction in his story.

Miss Grace was born about May 1735 and was brought up in Wakefield, where she scandalised her parents by attending a Methodist service in a public house. They thought her insane and threatened to have her confined in an asylum if she attended again, but on reflection decided to send her to live with her uncle in Dover, where Methodism had not quite arrived, but it soon did and Miss Grace attended its first service there held in a cooper’s shop about 1755. Now it was her uncle’s turn to remonstrate with her and he too banned her from attending but she ignored the ban. He then reported the matter to her family in Wakefield which brought her mother to Dover. But this too failed to prevent the girl attending the meetings, and eventually she converted her uncle! 

Paine moved to Sandwich, but the town was in the doldrums and a poor prospect for a stay maker. Oldys states that Paine was ‘not the first who had there used the mysteries of stay-making’, and Mr. Grace would have known the fate of Paine’s predecessors in trade and probably had warned him of the risk he was taking, but also probably hoped that Paine would bring hope to the town with his missionary zeal for Methodism. Oldy records that ‘There is a tradition that in his lodging he collected a congregation to whom he preached as an independent, or as a Methodist…’. 

One of Paine’s most urgent needs was for a local source of raw materials, which would have brought him into contact with Richard Solly, the town’s woollens draper, his visit would also have afforded him an opportunity to make known his evangelical mission and issue invitations to his meetings. Solly’s wife Maria seems to have become interested in the remarkable new-comer, and just as Miss Grace had taken her uncle to a Methodist meeting in Dover, so did Maria Solly bring her maid an orphan named Mary Lambert, who, according to Oldys, was ‘a pretty girl of modest behaviour’. To her the lonely preacher may have seemed a romantic figure. Five months later Paine and Mary married at St. Peter’s Church, Sandwich, one of the witnesses being Maria Solly. 

The marriage did not last long. Paine may have drawn encouragement from his parent’s union, as they had achieved success although initially appearing to have little in common, but his parents were much more mature on their wedding day than 

Mary, aged twenty-one, and Thomas twenty-two, whose parents had both come from the same locality and had got to know each other over a far longer period than Thomas had known Mary, a mere five months. The pair simply had not had enough time together, nor enough leisure in each other’s company to discuss to adequately discuss their ambitions and domestic prospects. For Mary, the sudden transition from a life in service where many decisions would have been taken for her, to a hectic doubly- demanding existence divided between being a working wife to a newly-established stay-maker, and a supportive wife to an enthusiastic evangelical preacher, must have been traumatic. Many years later, in the June 1775 issue of the Pennsylvania Magazine, Paine published his essay, ‘Reflections on Unhappy Marriages’, and his comments therein seem drawn from the disappointment of his youthful first marriage: 

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

Little is known of Paine’s first marriage except that it was short; and the circumstances of its termination have never been reliably ascertained. The couple are said to have furnished a house with the assistance of Mr. Rutter, an upholsterer, who could have been another supplier of materials to Paine in his business; a house in Sandwich has long been regarded as their abode, but this is not an established fact, and a few months after their wedding, the couple moved to Margate, a busier town where Methodism was also making its appearance. And there Paine’s first marriage seems to have come to an end. 

Oldys sought to portray Paine as a cruel husband, disappointed because Mary, who had been merely a lady’s maid, had bought no fortune, but conceding that Maria Sony remained a benefactress. Oldys also recalls a local tradition that Mary died in childbirth, but this is unsubstantiated, although many writers sympathetic to Paine have seized upon it as the reason for the termination of the union. Finally, Oldys suggested that Mary may have left Paine to live out the rest of her life in obscurity, and this is not only plausible, but is the most probable outcome of his ill-advised, short lived first marriage. Little information has ever come to light, although Oldys availed himself of every assistant he could find, including an antiquary living in Sandwich, and various excise officers in Margate and London. He tried very hard to trace Mary, because Paine’s first marriage and its break-up, offered him the most likely prospect of embarrassing Paine though his private life, but he did succeed in capitalising on this opportunity. However, he did succeed in discovering a lot about Mary’s background (probably through trawling the excise network in south-east England), and elicited the fact that her father had once been an excise officer in the vicinity of Sittingboume, consequently, with the assistance of the surviving excise archives, we can discern some features of Mary’s life and experiences before her marriage to Thomas, from which an outline of her world may be attempted. 

Mary Lambert seems to have been of considerable interest in her own right; she was the only known child of James Lambert and his mentally unstable wife, having been born two years after he was dismissed from the excise station of Milton near Sittingboume. James became first a shop-keeper and then a bailiff for the rest of his life. He died in poor circumstances when Mary was only fifteen years old, and her mother died in an asylum about the same time, thus her situation must have been very difficult. Nevertheless, she made a life for herself, although this entailed crossing the county and entering into service in the Solly household, where six years later she appears to have achieved the status of an accepted companion for Mrs. Solly, going with her to church, and enjoying her mistress’s support both at her marriage and afterwards. Why she came to Sandwich is not dear, but there is a link between Sandwich and Sittingboume through trade, for many of the brick houses in Sandwich had been built of Sittingboume bricks; the distance between the two towns was about thirty miles, and heavy consignments of bricks would have floundered in mud on poor roads if they had been conveyed in horse drawn carts, but both tons had access to functioning wharves along the coast and transport by sea would have been convenient and economic for this trade. The greater part of Lambert’s professional life whilst Mary lived with him was as a bailiff, which would have brought him into contact with disputing parties within this established trade, and he would have been called to Sandwich on occasion and to have met some of the established traders there, possibly including the Sollys. We do not know when Mary’s mother entered a mental home, but as Mary approached school-leaving age, her father may have looked out for vacancies in service for young girls in his area of work, and he may have been the agent arranging Mary’s employment by Mrs. Solly, who is a rather shadowy figure of whom we know little. But Maria SoIly was obviously a warm-hearted woman, possibly lacking a daughter of her own, and she seems to have treated Mary more as an adopted daughter than just a maid. 

When Mary tried to settle down with her very busy husband, and friction began to arise in the marriage, it is quite likely that from a background of a quasi-favoured daughter she stood her ground against Thomas, and noisy quarrels became known to their neighbours, which reflected against Paine as both a stay maker and preacher. Mary, indeed, may seriously have fought to make a success of her marriage, but whether she knew it or not the dice were loaded against her, for her husband probably already had in mind a fixed idea of the wife he thought he needed, and believed he had found in Mary, whose modest behaviour would have initially seemed to reflect that of Miss Grace, the talented niece of his previous employer. But if so, such an expectation would have been unfair, as well as ill-judged. Miss Grace had settled into her uncle’s household before Methodism became a growing part of both their lives, and her later style of living was in the established house of a successful man much more mature in outlook than the young preacher Mary married. Had Paine been similar to John Bunyan, and content to develop his religion with the assistance of his wife, Mary’s marriage might have enjoyed better prospects, but Paine was more akin to George Fox, are zealous to pit himself against a world still hostile in many places to Methodism. Mary may have soon lost heart, and Thomas may well have lost patience; the circumstances of unhappy marriages which Paine later described accord very well with what is known of his swift courtship and hasty marriage to Mary, and with the rapidly deteriorating domestic relationships they soon seem to have found themselves in. 

In such stressful circumstances, the not-distant town of Margate where Methodism was also taking hold, may have offered better domestic prospects from stay making, and hence a firmer basis from which Paine could acquire expanding status a..; a preacher, but clearly any such idea did not work out. There is no indication whether Mary developed similar irrationality to that which had brought her mother into mental care, but having once before made a new start in life, Mary could have felt it was time to do so again, and slipped away to another location where Oldys failed to find her. And Paine probably sought her himself after she had gone missing and similarly failed to find her. However, speculative gossip retailed by Oldys that Mary, now pregnant, had gone to a lying in hospital may have been well-founded although it was not confirmed by his subsequent enquiries. But two entries survive in the records for the nearby Parish of St. Lawrence in Thanet which strongly suggest the presence there of Mary after the presumed break-up date of her marriage; the first is of the baptism on December 7, 1760 of: ‘Pain — Sarah, daughter of Thomas and Mary; the second sadly records that Pain’s daughter did not survive infancy, for in a burial entry reading baldly: Sarah, daughter of Thomas and Mary Pain. Clearly someone had been concerned that Sarah’s brief existence should be formally recorded; Mary herself is the obvious suggestion, and since Sarah lived for nine months someone must have taken care of her, presumably within the Parish of St. Lawrence, where Mary gave her birth, and may have seen out her own life also. Nothing is known of any other friends of Mary along the coast, but her father may have had contacts she could avail herself of, through deliveries coastwise of consignments of Sittingboume bricks. And of course Maria Sally may have had friends to whose care Mary and her unborn child could have been recommended; but although Mrs. Sally is reputed to have maintained contact with Mary after her marriage, Mary’s return to the Sally household never seems to have taken place. 

How much Paine ever learned about his daughter and his estranged wife we will probably never know. Sarah would appear to have conceived about six months after the marriage, and Paine was back in Thetford to commence studying for the Excise about the time his daughter died in the Autumn of 1761, according to information supplied by Oldys. Only one piece of evidence as to what actually happened has ever existed, and amongst the scores of Paine biographers it has been held only by Oldys. It is the written declaration of his martial status Paine made in his own hand when he applied to enter the Excise. Oldys seems to have held this document in reserve, presumably to challenge Paine if he could tempt him into public dispute, but it must have been insufficient in itself to clinch a case against Paine in the contemporary climate. Unless Paine’s excise dossier ever comes to light, and this, in the opinion of the present writer, remains a possibility, then the circumstances of the break-up of his first marriage, and its probable effect on his second, will remain forever subjects of speculation. The likelihood is that Mary simply left him, possibly while he was visiting his parents and seeking their advice, and it may have been that when Paine returned to Margate he found her gone, and never ascertained what had actually happened to her. This possibility, which Oldys also postulated, is supported by what we know of his second marriage ten years later in 1771.

Editorial Note

The paper presented above was extracted from notes left by the late George Hindmarch that are now held by the society, having been presented to it by his wife. It was intended to be followed by a study of Paine’s second marriage, as there is a note to that effect at the conclusion of the paper, but there is no manuscript of such a study in the papers we have. 

However, Mr. Hindmarch, who worked as an Excise officer for forty years and took a great interest in its history, wrote about Paine’s work in drawing up a petition for better pay and conditions for excise officers which he set out in his Case of the Officers of Excise (1772-3). Mr. Hindmarch’s study was published in an edition of only one hundred copies in 1998, of which he allowed only a strictly limited number to go, and then only to scholars he felt would acknowledge his work. His book, a paperback of 95 pages was entitled, Thomas Paine: The Case of the King of England and his Officers of Excise, and is a very important though little known study. Anyone seriously interested in Paine’s life and work should read it. The remaining copies of the book have been presented to the society to sell for its funds and copies are available at £3. 50 which includes postage.

The post Thomas Paine: Observations On Methodism And His Marriage To Mary Lambert  appeared first on .

It often surprises me when I discover, as I do from time to time, the story of Paine having supposed to have recanted the opinions he expressed in The Age of Reason. It is difficult to understand why Christian critics of Paine’s theological opinions, some of whom are also critical of his political ideas, although usually reluctant to be explicit on this. I have commented on the story in the past,¹ but at a meeting in Sheffield a few weeks ago I was rather taken aback when a distinguished astronomer at a northern university referred in passing to Paine having renounced his views critical of Christianity. When I pressed him later as to how he knew this was the case, he referred to a little book by the Rev. Leith Samuel entitled The Impossibility of Agnosticism (1968). A few days later I was surprised to receive a copy from the professor. 

The story of Paine’s “conversion” surfaced within days of his death. In fact there has rarely been a critic of Christianity who has not renounced his critical opinions according to writers such as Mr. Samuel, one-time president of the Protestant Truth Society and author of several evangelical works who also trots out the tale of Voltaire having renounced his opinions. In fact, inventing stories of infidels being converted, usually after encounters with simple, young believers, became a sort of evangelical cottage industry and those familiar with the religious press of the 19th century and later – the most recent I have seen is a piece claiming that F. A. Ridley converted just before his death, this being supposedly based on a claim made by a member of the staff of the nursing home he was in, although the home in question has denied that the person named as the story’s source ever worked there. In fact such tales were a feature of evangelical newspapers and magazines-in the 19th century, and parts of the 20th, as G. W. Foote noted, such tales have ‘been a fertile theme of pulpit eloquence’, and one clergyman named Erskine Neale, even published an entire collection of such claims in a work he called Closing Secrets, which Foote states ‘was at one time, very popular and influential; but its specious character having been exposed, it has fallen into disrepute, or at least into neglect’ (Infidel Death-Beds. London. Pioneer Press, Nd. pp.vii-viii). Though I suppose we must exclude from this Mr. Samuel, not that he refers to it. 

The claim that Paine had renounced his theological opinions first surfaced in the memoirs of Stephen Grellet, an American evangelical of Dutch origin who had connections with the Quakers, who claimed that he had got the story from a girl named Mary Roscoe. Samuel also claims that it came from a girl named Mary Hinsdale, its source being one Charles Collins. In fact both girls were one and the same person, Hinsdale being Roscoe’s married name. She was in the employ of a Quaker named Willett Hicks; a friend of Paine’s who conducted his funeral. She claimed to have been sent by her employer to deliver something to Paine and when there to have had a conversation with him during which he is supposed to have caned out ‘with intense feeling Lord Jesus have mercy upon me’, then informed here that, if ever the Devil has had any agency in any work he has had it with me writing that book’ [The Age of Reason]. Paine is also said to have asked the girl’s opinion of his book, and later told her that he wished he had burned it. 

Needless to say this tale took on a life of its own and from having supposedly made a single delivery Mary Roscoe had, it was claimed, been in ‘constant attendance’ . According to the Reverend Mr. Samuel, Grellett’s ‘unimpeachable testimony… seemed to outweigh anything found in contrary sources’, as he put it in a letter he wrote to me in 1967 when I had inquired as to what investigation he had made of the story before going into print (I had read his little book many years ago, unknown to my astronomical correspondent). It then transpired that he had not read any criticism of Grellett’s little tale, admitting so in a letter written to me in July 7, 1967, following me having drawn attention to William Cobbett’s investigation into the story. 

Cobbett had sought out both Mary Hinsdale and Charles Collins in New York in 1818 while collecting material for his own life of Paine. It seems that Samuel was labouring under the impression that Cobbett was a critic of Paine, as indeed he was when writing as Peter Porcupine, but later he had read Paine’s pamphlet on The Decline and Fail of the English System of Finance (1796) and found the ideas expressed therein coincided with his own, he underwent a genuine ‘conversion’ and became as ardent a supporter of Paine as he had hitherto been a critic. Cobbett asked Collins for evidence of Paine’s conversion and he had in response given him a document containing Roscoe’s statement. Cobbett then called on her at her home 10, Anthony Street, New York, and showed her the document, requesting her to authenticate it. This Hinsdale flatly refused to do, and said she could provide no information about what was in it. She said she had never seen the document before, nor had she authorised Collins to speak in her name. So the story collapsed and that would have been the end of the matter except it was just too good a tale for evangelical propagandists to give up and so we still find the likes of Leith Samuel trotting it out as though it had never been refuted by the very person it is claimed who had made it in the first place. 

As for Willard Hicks, he personally denounced the story as a ‘pious fraud and fabrication’, stating that Roscoe had never spoken to Paine. He also spoke of the many bribes and other inducements he had received to produce a statement in which he said Paine had recanted. 

We know from various other sources that Paine maintained the opinions he had expressed in The Age of Reason to the last. His friend the painter Wesley Jarvis is on record as stating that there were those who would seek to claim that he had denounced his theological opinions and for that purpose he insisted on there being witnesses present when being interviewed, doing so when he learned of the possible fatal character of his illness he showed no regret about having made public his theological opinions, which he in fact looked on as a defence of Christianity, thus when John Pintard the founder of the Tammany Society, who is now looked upon as one of the originators of what became the modern Democratic Party, a long- time friend of Paine, told him at a dinner in New York held in his honour and attended by many distinguished figures, that he had read The Age of Reason several times and that it had removed any doubts he had about the truth. of revelation, and that his arguments had convinced him ‘of its truth’, Paine was delighted that the intent behind it had been grasped. ‘I may return to my couch tonight with the consolation that I have made at least one Christian’. Paine’s doctor James Manley, a devout Christian but one who usually kept his opinions on the matter private, had informed him of the probable fatal consequences of his illness, and later gave a statement under oath that three days prior his death Paine’s opinions in respect to religion had not changed. He had asked him whether he ‘wished to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?’ To which Paine had replied following a pause of some minutes, I have no wish to believe on that subject.’ 

I suspect we have not heard the last of the Paine conversion myth as it appears to give some sort of psychological satisfaction to those who continue to retail it. They remind me of ghouls who in mythology are desperate to steal the souls of the dead. Perhaps the likes of the Reverend Leith Samuel should read Matthew 19; 18, where they are told not to bear false witness.

The post `Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness’  appeared first on .

Freethinkers, A History Of American Secularism. Susan Jacoby. New York, Metropolitan Books, 2004. 417pp. Illustrated. Hardback. ISBN 0 8050 7442 2. $27.50 (£17.50). 

Although it may seem something of an exaggeration I nevertheless feel that books devoted to the history of secularism are sadly as rare as hens teeth, so it was something of a surprise when I read a mention in an American publication about the forthcoming publication of the work under review. The author’s name was unfamiliar to me, something which made me wonder just what sort of book she had produced, would it turn out to be a poorly researched work that damned secularists and then went on to describe them as old fashioned and out of date because Christianity had changed so much, which it has not? Or would it be a melodramatic essay based around the activities of a few controversial figures such as Madelyn Murray O’Hair? 

Well, in the event the book turned out to be an extremely well written and very readable work, and, yes, it does mention Madalyn Murray O’Hair, albeit briefly, the author describing her as “almost alone in her willingness to call herself an atheist”, and who earned her place in the religious right’s pantheon of demons for her success in having prayers banned in American schools. However, although individual rooms are large in the pages of the book, by no means all having actually connected with organised secularism as such, the author’s overwhelming concern is with issues, and it is the secular response to these that is the main characteristic of the book. Nevertheless in the process the author, who does not lack a sense of humour, introduces her readers to characters such as Philo D. Beckworth, who built a “grand theatre” or “temple of the performing arts”, in Dowagiac. Beckworth was “a committed freethinker and the town’s main employer, his factory being one of the largest producers of stoves and furnaces in the United States. He had a strong philanthropic streak and not only paid his employees high wages but also gave them sick pay, which, Ms.Jacoby remarks, was in 1890s America almost unheard of. His theatre was, which was adorned with busts of famous freethinkers, including Ingersoll, Paine, Voltaire, Susan B. Anthony, George Elliot, Victor Hugo, George Sand and Walt Whitman, theatre was dedicated by Ingersoll, who, she writes, °seized the once-in-a- lifetime chance to dedicate a building prominently displaying his own graven image — a distinction customarily reserved for the honoured dead”. The theatre was demolished in 1968 and many of the busts were destroyed, however, local freethinkers rescued that of Ingersoll and it can now be seen in the Ingersoll Birthplace Museum in Dresden, New York. Another bit of odd information was that the notorious Roman Catholic bishop Fulton J. Sheen, went to considerable lengths to conceal the fact that he had a Protestant half-sister, and what was more, something he acknowledged with great reluctance, his great uncle Daniel Sheen had been a partner in Robert Ingersoll’s law practice in Peoria, but, claimed Sheen, he never embraced his partners agnosticism. 

American is a country in which state and church are legally separated, but as Ms. Jacoby notes, it is “one of the greatest unresolved paradoxes of American history that religion has come to occupy such an important place in the communal psyche and public life of a nation founder on the separation of church and state”. The early chapters of the book discuss the influence of Thomas Paine, to whom a whole chapter is devoted and attempts to impose religion on the new republic, one such attempt being made by Patrick Henry, who in 1784 introduced a bill into the Virginia General Assembly to assess all citizens for faxes to pay teachers of religion. The bill’s passage appeared to be a foregone conclusion but following a campaign against it led by James Madison, which even gained support from religious groups — one petition against it was signed by four thousand Quakers, it was, the author says, “relegated to the dustbin of history”, and instead the Assembly adopted Jefferson’s proposal for the complete separation of church and state, with some modifications. 

Essentially this book might be described in broad terms as being thematic, in that the author examines in subjects such as woman’s rights, slavery, evolution and anti-evolution, the rights of America’s coloured population, cultural activities, the ‘Unholy Trinity: Atheists, Reds, Darwinists’ (a chapter heading) which introduces readers to among others, the Scopes trial, which has popularly been represented as a defeat for obscurantist fundamentalism, but, as the author points out, this was not quite so, and literary censorship, discussing in detail the efforts to suppress Walt Whitman’s poem Leaves of Grass. In this issue, the author presents the attitudes and work of individual secularists, but also brings to the fore just how much support they received from religious individuals and groups. 

Freethought had little impact on one major group in American society, the coloureds. Ms.Jacoby discusses the reasons for this and in the process introduces us to the Negro secularist W. E. B. Du Bois, not that he appears to have had any formal connection with any freethought group. Brought up a Christian he increasingly came to regard “the church as an institution which defended such evils as slavery, colour caste, exploitation of labour and war”, although this clearly points to his freethought, or if you like, secularism, having been founded on and inspired by political considerations. In 1894 he had created a storm of controversy while employed as a lecturer at Wilberforce College, a college for Negroes run by the Ohio state government and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, when he flatly refused to lead students in public prayer. He was to write as a consequence of having studied in Europe that, ‘Religion helped and hindered my artistic sense. I knew the old English and German hymns by heart. I loved their music but ignored their silly words with studied inattention. Grand music came at last in the religious oratorios which we learned at Fisk University but it burst on me in Berlin with the Ninth Symphony and its Hymn of Joy. I worshiped at the Cathedral and ceremony which I saw in Europe but I knew what I was looking at when in New York a Cardinal became a strike-breaker and the Church of Christ fought the Communism of Christianity. The cardinal in question was Patrick Hayes. In old age Du Bois joined the Communist Party as a protest against McCarthyism. 

Secularists prominent in the fight for women’s rights include Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Ernestine Rose, both of whom get good coverage in the book. The work of the anti-immorality campaigner Anthony Comstock in seeking to use the legislation he and his associates had inspired in an attempt to suppress the distribution of freethought and secularist works, targeting in particular the freethought publisher D. M. Bennett, whom he managed to have jailed having tricked him into selling him an immoral pamphlet and sending it through the post, this being the charge, however, Comstock’s real aim, as Ms. Jacobi notes, was to close down Bennett’s successful journal the Truth Seeker. In this he failed.

It may well be that in the coverage of individual Secularists one could wish for more detail, as in the case of Emanuel Haldeman- Julius. His success as a publisher is recounted, indeed his Little Blue Books sold in their hundreds of millions, but there is no mention of the attention FBI’s chief J. Edgar Hoover’s animosity and his attempts to have Haldiman-Julius indicted as a communist, however, unlike so many others Haleman-Julius’s great wealth made this difficult because he could afford to hire good lawyers. He was certainly a sort of ambivalent socialist but he never a member of the Communist Party, even if he did publish a gushingly uncritical biography of Stalin written by Joseph McCabe, although this was during the war when Stalin was very, much an `Uncle Joe’ figure. One might add that Ms. Jacoby says Haldeman-Julius also published an edition of the bible, though while I possess the Stalin biography I have. never. I saw a copy of this, though it would not surprise me if he did, it’s rather too long for the Little Blue Book format, or the other series, the Big Blue Books, in which the Stalin biography appeared. 

This is a truly fine book, even if it is not about organised, secularism as such, and here the title is a bit misleading, but secularism in broad terms, or secularisation if you prefer. Nevertheless it deserves a place on the shoes of anyone interested in freethought history. It is well indexed, and has a bibliography that has extended my books wanted list considerably. What is more, for a well-bound, illustrated hardback the price is reasonable, there are many paperbacks that nowhere approach its value priced far in excess of it. I do not often describe a work as being essential reading, but in this case I have not the slightest hesitation in doing so.

The post BOOK REVIEW: Freethinkers, A History Of American Secularism appeared first on .