By Gary Berton

Arthur O’Connor, although he inherited an estate and was a member of the Irish Parliament, was an advocate for women’s rights, supported emancipation of Catholics although a Protestant, and independence from England. When he joined the United Irishmen fighting the British occupation of Ireland, he was arrested. 

On his way to prison, he wrote a poem in code. To decipher what he was really saying, here is the code: Take the first line of the first verse, and next the first line of the second verse, the second line of the first verse and then the second line of the second verse, and so alternatively.

“The pomp of courts and pride of kings, 

I prize above all earthly things, 

I love my country but my king 

Above all men his praise I sing; 

The royal banners are display’d, 

And my 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 Ireland, its liberties and laws.”

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Transoceanic Radical: William Duane, Nigel Little. London, Pickering and Chatto. ISBN 9781851969296. Hardback, 230pp. £60.00 

Thomas Paine called himself a citizen of the world and as if to sustain this claim was an active revolutionary in Britain, France and America. If any one of his contemporaries deserves the title more it is William Duane. While for reasons of political expediency he often described himself as an American, his life and political activity took in Canada, America, India, Ireland and Britain. He was one of the first internationalists. 

Duane’s roots were in Ireland, in Clowns!, County ‘Tipperary, though he was born in St John’s, Newfoundland, which would have made him a British subject. This was then disputed territory between Europeans, native Americans, British and French. His family returned to Ireland then returned to America, settling in the area around Lake Champion, upper New York. His political opponents said he was not entitled to American citizenship as his family had left America again before the Declaration of Independence. 

Little writes: ” …William Duane appeared by 1795 to be a perfect version of Thomas Paine’s “citizen of the World”. By the early 1800s he had become an American citizen. But his vision of citizenship was heavily influenced by Painite radicalism. Cut loose from the British Empire, this “Citizen of the World” contributed to attempts to finish the project of nation-building that Paine had begun in the 1770s.” 

In 1765 he lost his father and after having wandered around in America he and his mother returned to Ireland. In 1779 he married Catherine Corcorariet, a member of the. Church of Ireland, despite his Catholic family’s opposition. Duane broke with Catholicism and became a Deist, which in turn led him on to Painite radicalism. To support his wife, he took a job as an apprentice printer on the Hibernian Advertiser. Its owner, a Freemason, was known for his Whig and reformist Ideas. Some of these must have rubbed off onto Duane. 

In 1782 Duane with his family moved to London and he became a journeyman printer. He also began to write as a parliamentary reporter and journalist. 

Beset by financial problems, Duane was approached in 1786 by Philip Young, the principal proprietor of the India Gazette with an offer to become editor of his Calcutta newspaper. British India was then ruled by the East India Company which made no effort to understand the Indian people, but sought to exploit them at every turn. Duane’s family returned to Ireland and to finance his passage to India Duane enlisted as a private in the EIC’s army. Many of the officers in the army were mercenary adventurers while many of its troops were displaced Radicals. Not a few United Irishmen served in it including Wolfe Tone’s brother, William. Mutiny was always a real threat to the establishment. The job with the India Gazette did not materialise and on being discharged from the EIC’s army, Duane became editor and manager of the weekly Bengal Journal. 

The role of Freemasonry in the American and French Revolutions is well known and in India Duane became an active mason. Indian masonry was split between the wealthy gentlemen who opposed the French Revolution and the more radical artisans who supported it. This theme of class conflict between gentlemen willing to compromise principles and uncompromising artisans runs all through Duane’s political activity. 

Duane got himself into trouble for an attack on Colonel Canaple, the Royalist leader who had fled to Calcutta following a revolution in French India. Instead of apologising as ordered Duane berated Canaple about the rights of the press and the rights of man. For this Duane came near to being deported. 

Duane now published a new paper The World which publicised the grievances of officers in the EIC’s army. With the outbreak of war between Britain and revolutionary France in 1793, the authorities resolved to deport Duane to Britain. Held below decks on the ship he arrived back in Portsmouth and made his way to London. 

Back in Britain, he was reunited with his family, joined the London Corresponding Society, one of forty Jacobin societies founded in the wake of the French Revolution, and contributed and edited to its press attacking the EtC in print. Little writes: “If Duane had been French one would have seen him in the ranks of the sans- culottes, working like Marat on a paper like the Am! De People…” Fifty years on, The Chartist George Harney would take the name Friend of the People for one of his papers. Duane chaired a mass LCS demonstration against the war but when Pitt’s government passed repressive legislation against seditious meetings and treasonable practices Duane thought it wise to depart to America. 

In America he made his living as a jobbing printer and writer. In 1796 under the pen-name Jasper Dwight he wrote an attack on the then President George Washington accusing him of being a quasi-king using the ideology of Federalism to set up a quasi- monarchy. He criticised Washington’s view of Paine saying that while he upheld the religion of Christ he negated the rights of man by owning slaves. The pamphlet was published and sold in the offices of Benjamin Franklin Bache’s paper The Aurora. It brought on him the ire of William Cobbett. Himself a political exile from Britain, he was then an anti-radical and author of vicious attacks on Paine who he damned as an ‘Infidel anarchist”. Later he tried to make amends by returning Paine’s bones to Britain where they became lost. 

Duane went to work for Bathe and when Bathe died of the yellow fever, which also took Duarte’s wife, he took over the paper and later married Bache’s widow. He became deeply embroiled in the bitter feud between the pro-British Federalists and the revolutionary democratic Republicans. When Cobbett attacked the United Irishmen Duane argued that their rebellion in 1798 had much in common with the American War of Independence. 

In 1799 Duane was arrested after a riot broke out after he had gone to St Mary’s Catholic Church to gather signatures on a protest against the Alien Friends EMIT. Brought to trial, he was found not guilty. That year a rebellion broke out amongst German- speakers against Federalist tax policy. Duane supported them. For this he was beaten up by the pro-Federalist McPherson’s Blues militia. In retaliation Duane took part In the formation of the Republican Philadelphia Militia Legion. 

In 1800 Thomas Jefferson was elected President and this ended the persecution of Duane by the government during which time he had been imprisoned for a month for libel. Duane established a correspondence with Jefferson which lasted for twenty years and wrote that Afro-Americans should be incorporated in the American Army and Native Americans should be represented in Congress. The Republicans suffered a split into Quids and Democrats on the class lines mentioned above. 

In 1812 Britain and America went to war and the British burned Washington but were roundly defeated in the Battle of New Orleans in Louisiana, which Napoleon had sold to the United States in 1803. Sadly he never built a golden statue of Paine there or anywhere else. Duane became a colonel in the American army and wrote military manuals. He had at last become an American citizen in 1802, although his opponents had accused him of rape and murder in Ireland. 

Duane opposed Federalist big government and therefore opposed a central banking system and a standing army. America suffers both from the Federal Reserve and an Army which rivals that of ancient Rome as a symbol of imperialist oppression.He argued for an elected judiciary. 

Duane befriended many Latin American revolutionary miles and visited Columbia in a bid to obtain payment for arms supplied to Columbia revolutionaries. Suffering great poverty, at 69 he became a protonotary of the Supreme Court for the eastern district of Pennsylvania. He was nominated as a candidate for Congress, coming fourth in the election. He also became a kind of mentor to the Working Men’s Party, which was heavily influenced by Robert Dale Owen. It was one of the first attempts at working class organisation in America and the Priestess of Beelzebub Frances Wright was involved in it. He wrote a tract on money Notes on Gold and Silver. He continued printing The Aurora until a lack of subscribers forced him to stop. He died on November 24, 1835. 

Today George Bush is a worse despot than Washington ever could have been and his America plays the role once played by the British Empire. Blair could have fit easily into the role of Pitt, and his repressive legislation in the so-called war on terror reminds one of the measures taken to silence the friends of revolutionary France. Little’s biography is superb radical history and highlights a man who played a leading role in the struggle for liberty in three continents. Sadly, its high price may prevent many of today’s radicals obtaining it. 

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Thomas Paine, an Englishman born in 1739, first became interested in politics when he was living at Lewes in Sussex. Here he joined the Headstrong Club, a society for young men who wished to debate current affairs, politics and poetry. Subsequently he went to work in London where he attended meetings of the Royal Society. Here he had the opportunity of meeting many learned men. This was the beginning of his programme of self-education. In London Paine met specialists in many fields. The one, which intrigued him most, apart from politics, was astronomy, and he drew on his knowledge of this subject many years later when he was writing The Age of Reason. Books on Paine have been published by scholars’ seeking to salvage him from oblivion. However they have either aimed their works at other scholars or have failed to reach a popular audience, beyond the academic community. Politicians and polemicists regularly quote him as one of their own; but they usually invoke him only by pulling a phrase out of his texts for present- minded utilitarian purposes. Such partial references to him offer no sense of the man, and distort him into a convenient icon. But, Paine is too important a leading political philosopher of his day, too significant in his exposition of democratic thought and prophecy into the future, to merit this treatment. This paper will discuss Paine’s involvement in the American and French Revolutions. Though he participated in a wide range of activities related to these events, his most effective contribution was through his writings, Paine’s involvement in the American War of Independence will be considered in two sections, relating to “Common Sense and the Pennsylvania Magazine”, and “the War of Independence against the forces of King George III” together with the Crisis pamphlets. This paper will then set out Thomas Paine’s involvement in the French Revolution, covering his “Reply to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution”, “Paine’s the Rights of Man”, and the “French National Assembly and Committee to formulate the Declaration of the Rights of Man”, and finally “Thomas Paine’s return to France for the next 10 years.”

At present work is being done both in North America and in England (Gary Berton, past President of the Board of Trustees of the Thomas Paine National Historical Association, on the Committee of their Journal and their Research Committee and Audrey Taylor. Assistant Honorary Secretary or the Thomas Paine Society in England), which is aimed at authenticating how much the American Declaration of Independence depended for content and form on Thomas Paine. It is well known that Paine came close to losing the fight to establish democracy within the ruling circles in the American Colonies, because of the wish of John Adams, an American Federalist Congressman, who wanted to have a monarchy in the new United States of America. Paine would never have accepted this, because, to him, democracy was everything.

Paine’s Involvement In The American War Of Independence 

Works arrived from Moscow and were translated from Russian into local languages. Therefore it can be said that Thomas Paine was influential from his lifetime to the present day whenever a country has sought its independence.

This was the first indication of Thomas Paine’s influence after he wrote Common Sense in which he finally recommended a separation from Britain of these Colonies which he named the United States of America. Thomas Paine decided to join the Colonists’ Army following the British Army’s massacre of the British Colonists at Lexington and Concorde. He was then asked to become our equivalent of a war correspondent and then he wrote the American Crisis series. When there was a tremendous shortage of money in America he made a visit to France to ask them for financial help, which Louis XVI was only too willing to make. By the end of the War of Independence the British Colonists were ready to prepare their Declaration of Independence in which they set forth the rules by which their new country would be run, as suggested by Thomas Paine. 

Unfortunately they did not take his advice where slavery was concerned and so had to wait for the outcome of the Civil War before being forced to give slaves their freedom. Paine told the founding fathers that they were unjust in demanding their freedom from Britain when they were not giving freedom to their slaves, who were separated from their families and never paid. 

American War of Independence and the Crisis 

Series Paine enlisted in July 1776 with the ‘flying camp’ , a mobile body of one thousand men forming the militia of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Paine was attached to the Pennsylvania division. He served first as volunteer secretary to General Roberdeau and then at Fort Lee on the western bank of the River Hudson, where he became aide-de-camp to General Nathanael Green, retreating with the Continental Army to its winter base in Brunswick, New Jersey. 

In Modern terms, Paine was asked to be a war correspondent, enlarging on his series of pamphlets called Crisis (December 1776 to December 1783) on the ideas and principles first . sketched in Common Sense, which had crystallized, at least in part, in the Colonists’ bold Declaration of Independence on 4 July 1776. They began at a genuine moment of crisis for the American troops. In the summer of 1776, the American army had retreated across the Hudson River to New Jersey: Among Americans hatred of the British army ran high: They were as Paine noted, with some sharpness, in many cases not even British, but Prussians, Brunswickers, German dragoons and Indians with scalping knives. There were even Russian soldiers with their typical weapons the knout. 

George Washington, leader of the Colonists’ Army, could only muster five thousand men at the Delaware River, although later they were joined by General Williamson’s group of soldiers and the Philadelphia militia. This was all the Americans who were available to fight the entire force of soldiers led by the British General, Sir William Howe. Washington had been pressed back along the Hudson River, while Howe occupied Manhattan Island, Long Island and Staten Island, and in December, Paine says that Washington wrote sadly: 

“Your imagination can scarce extend to a situation more distressing than upon the speedy enlistment of a new army. If this fails I think the game will be pretty well up, as from disaffection and want of spirit and fortitude, the inhabitants, instead of resistance, are offering submission and taking from General Howe in Jersey.” (Quoted in Paine’s The first Crisis, 23rd December 1776)

The army’s situation as Washington had informed the President of Congress, was extremely bad as many of the troops were so thinly clad as to be unfit for their jobs. It was a bitter, icy winter with Arctic winds penetrating the men’s scanty clothes and with their feet wrapped in rags, owing to the lack of shoes and supplies. In November, Fort Lee had been surprised and Paine with the soldiers of Washington’s Army had retreated in haste, abandoning the boiling kettles and much-needed food baking in the American ovens, to the British. 

To his relief Paine had discovered that he did not lack physical courage. However he discovered a different weakness and wrote of it in one of the earliest issues of Crisis, addressed to Howe. He wrote with typical sympathy of a soldier’s psychological problems: 

“We cannot alter nature, neither ought we to punish the son because the father got him in a cowardly mood. However, I believe most men have more courage than they know of, and that a little at first is enough to begin with. I knew the time when I thought the whistling of a cannon ball would have frightened me almost to death: But I have since tried it and from that I can stand it with as little discomfort, and, I believe, with a much easier conscience than your lordship.” (Ibid)

His sincerity was not in doubt When Paine was at Trenton with the Pennsylvania Navy Board, he urged the men to set fire to the British fleet on the Delaware River, and was restrained with difficulty from personally carrying out the project. In December 1776, alarmed by American defeats and determined to bolster the cause of independence, Paine published the first of 4 his Crisis essays, (Ibid) which built upon the foundation of Common Sense. Washington’s great Christmas victory at Trenton, a notable turning point of the war, was achieved by troops heartened and inspired by this publication. No.1 contains the most quoted passage that Paine ever wrote: 

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny like hell is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” (Ibid)

Refuting British arguments for American surrender, rallying the Americans’ morale and exhorting the Revolutionaries to continue the war, Paine carefully timed his essays and other articles for maximum political effect. The Crisis series proved as popular and successful as Common Sense, although once again he was never paid for these works. Paine’s series provided ample reason for George Washington and other leaders to esteem him and value his writings as essential to the maintenance of the American cause. 

In April 1777 Paine became secretary to the Continental Congress’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, a title that Paine later shortened, misleadingly, to Secretary for Foreign Affairs. As he worked constantly for the Revolution and urged the creation of a truly national knit of government for the fledgling United States of America, Paine allowed himself to be drawn into the factional in-fighting of the Continental Congress. It was here that Paine showed that his sharpness in writing political documents was not matched by equally sharp debating skills, and this soon became evident to his friends and to his enemies as well. 

Thomas Paine’s problem was that he was a seeker of truth, totally unable to’ countenance anything underhand or corrupt. Quite undiplomatically he wrote and published his views about this, using his pen name Common Sense. It seemed to him (and he was later to be proved right when letters belonging to the persons concerned came to light), that some American notables, as well as several foreigners, were seeking to make their profits from the American War of Independence. This involved contributions from the French government to help the American colonists in their war with Britain. 

The factions within Congress lost no time in aligning themselves on opposite sides of the controversy surrounding Silas Deane, who was the agent for the transactions, together with the author Beaumarchais, but Paine seemed to disregard the political situation, looking rather simplistically at the overall affair. As a result he played into the hands of those he criticised, who became his enemies. In 1779 they tried to have him dismissed, but Congress partially 5 exonerated him and refused to dismiss him. Paine angrily resigned from his position. He filed a memorandum with the Pennsylvania legislature, detailing his services to the Revolution, and was duly given a position as a clerk. 

A new American envoy to France, Colonel John Laurens, was asked to negotiate further contributions from France to help the American war effort. As he was a very young man, he was loath to take on such a responsibility alone, so he asked Thomas Paine, a friend of his father, to accompany him as secretary. Paine took with him a copy of Common Sense to give to the French King, where there was no mention of monarchy or aristocracy. Although Paine did not speak or understand French at that time, he and Laurens managed to make themselves understood and Louis XVI was most generous to the American Colonists, who were fighting the enemies of the King Louis, the British. The negotiators were very successful and sent three shiploads of silver and goods back to America. 

Throughout this period Paine continued to write the Crisis essays analysing the events of the war and other pamphlets calling for American unity and governmental reform. The most noteworthy of these was called Public Good, which was published by Paine in 1780, perhaps the bleakest year of the War. In this essay, Paine argued with passion and conviction for the strengthening of the central government, so that the loose confederation of states could truly become one nation. In particular he urged that Virginia cede to the Confederation its claims to western lands, the settlement of which, Paine argued, would help to provide revenue for the United States. In the years following the Revolution and the winning of independence, Paine continued to write essays and pamphlets pleading for a strong national government. It was at this time that Paine met the Marquis de Lafayette„ who was going to remain his lifelong friend. Lafayette came from France to fight with the Colonists against the British. 

(At the end of the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson of the United States formed the League of Nations exactly following Paine’s advice but Wilson was not then on good terms with the leaders of Congress, who would not agree to America joining the League. However the United Nations was formed at the end of the Second World War, with its headquarters in New York.) 

Paine’s involvement in the French Revolution 

Reply to Edmund Burke’s ‘Reflections on the French Revolution’

Edmund Burke was a well-known Whig political orator, whose notable characteristic was a love of order. He resisted when, as he thought, sympathisers with the French Revolution wanted to abolish the government 6 He claimed that he loved liberty but only if it was connected to order. He had a distinct veneration for the accumulated wisdom of centuries of experience, and held that liberty should be treated with great caution. He claimed that a political system that had lasted a long time, seemed to him to be an argument that it was fit for a current purpose and should not be changed rashly. With views like this it was inevitable that he would not agree with such a revolution and in fact he threw himself violently into the opposition camp. He could not see the hopeful things emanating from the revolution and he was unable to discriminate between man and motives. His book showed great wisdom and practical insight and led the reaction in England. The book created fame for him within Europe. 

The French Revolution had already begun when Thomas Paine went to live in France as an honorary French citizen and an elected member for the Pas-de- Calais region of France in the new government. His great friends and colleagues were the Marquis de Lafayette, who had fought in the American War of Independence, the Marquis de Condorcet and Georges Jacques Danton, a lawyer, orator and leader of the Revolution. Although Paine was unable to speak or write French, he was able to take part in discussions in the government, since one or other of his friends would interpret his speeches and let him know what was happening. Condorcet and Paine were elected to a committee to design a new constitution for France, together with its declaration of the rights of man. 

Through the Marquis de Lafayette who became the leader of the King’s Guard, Paine was able to keep abreast of everything that was happening in Paris. Following the storming of the Bastille and the massacre on the Champs de Mars, there was a lull during which, from time to time, Louis XVI and his Queen made several unsuccessful attempts to leave France: 

During a search of the royal apartments a lead safe was discovered containing… copies of correspondence between the French King and Queen and various crowned heads of other European countries. This was written evidence of treason against the people of France and they were arrested. Paine spoke in the King’s defence saying that while he was against the system of monarchy, he found it hard to speak against the King who had been so generous to the British Colonists in America and without whose aid there might not have been an independent republic so soon. He pleaded for their lives as people and not as royalty. He claimed that all the time they were alive it would preclude relatives trying to rebuild the monarchy and this would postpone a genuine republic being formed in France. Paine was proved to be correct in his prophecy, because France_did not truly become an independent republic until Louis Napoleon DI, his wife and son were granted asylum in Britain by Queen Victoria at the end of the 19th century.  

Paine had promised his friends in France that as soon as Burke’s book was published, he would ensure that a copy went to them for translation into French. However in January 1790 Burke made a speech in the British Parliament relating to his book, which he was to publish in the autumn of that year. His speech was so contrary to all Whig beliefs, as well as to anything, which he had discussed previously with Paine, that the tatter decided to analyse carefully Burke’s speech, and then his writing, when the book was eventually published. The speech’s warning gave Paine a headstart in writing his book, the first part of which was almost finished by the time that Burke’s book was published in November 1790. 

Paine’s book the Rights of Man, was to go down in history not only as a reply to Burke, but as a document of human rights which was to sound the clarion call for Chartism and the Reform Bill of forty years later, and for the universal franchise and social security in our own time. In 1781 Burke had even introduced a Reform Bill, including a proposal to prevent King George ITl from using large amounts of money from the Civil List on corruption, so there was nothing in Burke’s earlier political career to suggest that he would join the King’s Party physically or mentally. 

Paine and Burke had visited France some sixteen years previously but Burke had not visited it again and his book was based on third party information. Paine was receiving updated information about the Revolution from his friend Lafayette, and therefore considered that he was more likely than Burke to know the true facts of the situation in France. Lafayette was put in charge of the National Guard to the King of France, upon his return from America where he had fought the British. There was a popular revulsion in France against the activities of the monarchy, the aristocracy and the clergy, by whom the country was dominated. France was in a financial state bordering on bankruptcy and a parliament of 144 notables had been unable to resolve anything. At that time there appeared to be no intention of removing King Louis XV1 from the throne of France. The States-General had become the National Assembly, consisting of nobles and clergymen who were considerably outnumbered by the Third Estate, comprising lawyers such as Maximilien Robespierre coming from Arras, and intellectuals such as Volney and the astronomer Bailly, as well as a handful of artisans. 

The presence in the movement for reform of leaders such as the Comte de Mirabeau and Lafayette, demonstrated that the group included aristocrats and property-owners, who were certainly not anti-monarchial. Mirabeau was to hold the country together, bridging the gap between the King’s party and the revolutionaries. But the ordinary people of Paris, fearing some mischief from the King, stormed the Bastille. This was the destruction of a symbol of power rather than anything else. 

The Assembly met to arrange for some new regulations to be put in place. They abolished feudal privileges, serfdom and tax privileges. They clipped the wings of the wealthy priesthood, but this largely backfired because the effect rebounded on the poor dergy. There was even to be a democratic election of bishops. 

But the main target of Burke’s rage as set out in his book, was the march of the women of Paris to Versailles in October. Burke painted a lurid picture of a violent, uncontrollable mob storming Versailles and bringing the “mildest of monarchs and the most beautiful of queens”v” back to Paris in a state of fear. They had ruled over a spirited, honourable and cultivated nobility, a respectable clergy and an independent judiciary. (Burke, E.M. author of Reflections of the French Revolution. edited by J G A. Pocock, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989, page 153.) 

Paine challenged Burke point by point in his sober straightforward narrative in the Rights of Man, many of his facts having been obtained directly from Lafayette. Since then Paine’s account has largely been substantiated by contemporary historians. This march was mainly a protest from half-starving housewives. Lafayette followed the march with the National Guard and soon everything was under control. 

The marchers’ demands were presented to the King by Lafayette personally. The King agreed to them all, and was content to return to Paris the following day; but in the morning disaster occurred. One of the King’s bodyguards saw the crowd beginning to stir from sleep and fired on them. This enraged them and they broke into the palace. This relatively sober explanation was carefully ignored by Burke who presented it as a dramatic and very gory scene. 

Paine returned from England in the winter of 1789 to follow the progress of the revolution and to discuss it with his American and French friends in Paris. • Neither the Jacobins or the Girondins had yet acquired any strong leaders and there was still no question of the King losing his throne. Louis XVI had become a constitutional king and, if he had been a clever diplomat, he could easily have preserved the situation. Unfortunately he was surrounded by the courtiers and other sycophants. He was unduly influenced by his wife who was anxious to return to her native Austria. Under these conditions he was quite unable to adapt to the circumstances he now found himself in. 

Lafayette had put before the National Assembly, proposals for a Declaration of the Rights of the Man and the Citizen, which gave Paine the title for the book he was writing and would publish. While in Paris Paine had written to Burke to advise him on how well everything was going. 

Paine’s attitude to Burke’s book indicated that Paine feared the possibility of war. He said that he had seen enough of war’s miseries to wish he might never see one again, and hoping some other way might be found to settle differences, which occasionally arise between neighbouring countries. He observed that the state of harmony, which then existed between America and France could have been achieved also between England and France. Counter- revolutionary forces from other countries invaded France and induced a panic which led to the revolution’s temporary collapse. 

Paine’s rational reply to Burke, pleading for human rights for the common people, reached even more readers than Burke’s book in England overseas. But its greatest impact was in reinforcing the views of those already converted, and in convincing the poor who had nothing on which to stake a claim. Yet the Rights of Man did have an effect on the rich and powerful, because it alarmed the Pitt government, which instituted repressive measures and a level of censorship which Britain had not experienced for many years. 

There was a lot of political fighting in America and England at the time of the publication of the Rights of Man, doubtless due in part to the fact that the British government was discussing a trading affiance with the American government.. Perhaps Paine was tactless to have addressed his Rights of Man to the American President, George Washington. 

Paine’s description of the French Revolution, both from his own experience and from the information he received from Lafayette, the Marquis de Condorcet and other French friends, is said by modern historians still to be a valuable historical document. t. At a time when few men were like this, Paine was still able to be impartial in his comments. 

Paine tried at all times to be truthful and unbiased, as exemplified by the fact that he did not minimize the incidental loss of life. He said there was no doubt that it was the crowds of ordinary people who committed the burnings and who carried the heads of the beheaded upon pikes in Paris, but then this was not new to Britons who had seen similarly at the time of the English Civil War. 

The Rights of Man must also be regarded as a blueprint for a new society. Paine contradicted Burke, who claimed that the English Revolution of 1688 had set a pattern of English government ‘for all time’ and that the country could only be governed by the privileged classes and the aristocracy – to both of which groups he had recently himself been elevated. His claim was that only these men had the necessary experience. Paine considered this to be a violation of democratic human rights, and he said once again that the privileges of monarchs and aristocrats could not be inherited. Everyone, according to Paine, had the right to elect their own government, on condition that they did not require it to be imposed on the next generation. Paine’s theme was to stand up for the rights of the living, not of the dead. 10 

At Easter 1791 the French King and Queen tried to leave Paris for their residence at Saint-Cloud under the protection of Lafayette and the National Guard. Everything seemed to be very calm but there had been widespread rumours in Paris, that the royal couple were planning to escape abroad. The crowd found their carriage, and Lafayette, faced with a mutiny by a large section of his Grenadiers, was unable to protect the King and Queen unless they returned to the Tuileries. This caused the King, no doubt on the advice of his Queen, to complain to the Assembly. It was at this point that Lafayette began to feel that the royal family had not told him the truth about their plans and his loyalties became divided. 

One wonders how long it took the usually sharp-witted Paine to realize how Lafayette’s basically republican feelings were in conflict with his care of the royal family. In June the royal family again escaped from the Tuileries and the following morning Lafayette hurried to tell Paine. Paine would have been pleased if the royal family had reached a foreign country; in this event the Revolution could have continued and the King and Queen would not have been killed. Paine recorded that apart from some wild attacks on aristocrats being released from prison, Parisian life continued throughout the revolution period with the theatres, bars and restaurants being lit up and full of people. 

Paine was faithful in his friendships and could not support Marat, whose writings including those in L’ami du Peuple, took every opportunity to demand the downfall of Lafayette. But Paine was also ready to show his Republican principles and actively worked to disseminate them. He wrote and issued a Manifesto, which was translated and signed by a French friend, Achille du Chatelet, who may have made minor alterations to Paine’s text, which he had to sign, as the law required published documents to be signed by a French citizen. There was still little support for a republic and until September 1792, even Marat favoured a very restricted monarchy. 

Madame Roland, who held political discussion groups in her home, thought, like Paine, that it was a misfortune for the royal family to have returned to Paris. As well as sharing Paine’s views she also predicted that Louis would continue to obstruct the Assembly, and would make use of the armies of France’s enemies. In the Societe Republicaine, Paine published an article extending the ideas of the Manifesto and referring to the King as ‘Louis Capet’. He challenged Montesquieu’s theory that republicanism can only occur in small countries, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s view that ‘Liberty diminishes the larger the state becomes’. 

Paine believed that a Constitution for all to read, as being a likely remedy for the French people, as well as it had salved American ills. He said that France could only be called a civic empire when it had its own Constitution conforming to its Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. II 

National Assembly and Committee to formulate the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen

Paine had returned briefly to England and, according to Clio Rickman at whose home he was staying, Achilles Audibert, the French radical, arrived at the house on the 12th September, straight from the French Convention to request Paine’s personal assistance in their deliberations. Audibert came from Calais, which was one of four constituencies, which invited Thomas Paine to represent them in the Nations] Assembly. On 26 August the Assembly had conferred the title of French citizen on a number of distinguished foreign sympathizers including Paine, Wilberforce, Washington and the American poet friend of Paine’s, Joel Barlow. the accompanying invitation read: 

“Your love for humanity, for liberty and equality, the useful works that have issued from your heart and pen in their defence, have determined our choice. It has been hailed with universal and reiterated applause. Come, friend of the people, to swell the number of patriots in an assembly which will decide the destiny of a great people, perhaps of the human race.” 

Thomas Paine returns to France for the next ten years 

This then was the reason for Paine’s return to France, and not – as maintained by many of his critics – his arraignment for seditious libel in England. A thorough study of all Paine’s writings, and a great number of biographies and critical analyses of his works, leads to the conclusion that the Thomas Paine who leaps at you from the written page, would have been divided as to which he wanted more: the opportunity of being physically and actively further involved in the making of the French Republic, or the wonderful opportunity of standing up in court and disputing the charge of seditious libel, from which he would undoubtedly have derived great satisfaction. 

In 1791 on the second anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, a republican petition had been prepared by Paine against the King’s reinstatement. The excited crowds in the Champ de Mars, lynched two men of whom they were suspicious, and the Mayor of Paris was obliged to call out the National Guard. Lafayette arrived with the Guard to be greeted by a hail of stones. The National Guard fired upon a largely unarmed crowd causing a massacre of some 50 people. 

On 22nd September 1793, the National Convention declared a Republic at which point the newly-named first month, Vendemaire, of Year One began. Paine’s first triumph at the National Assembly was to cross swords with Dutton, newly elected Minister of Justice on a judicial matter. Paine’s inability to speak French was not a problem since he was able to converse with Danton in English. Danton had moved that judges should be chosen from any section of the community, irrespective of legal training or knowledge of the law. However Paine resisted this proposal as being too revolutionary, on the rational and commonsense basis, that justice could only be effectively administered by men of good legal knowledge and training. He further maintained that reforms in the law, where needed, could only be effective if planned as a whole, and not piecemeal. Paine won his point and Danton capitulated. 

The young Maximilien Robespierre took over the Convention in the autumn of 1793 and Paine found they had much in common. Incorruptibility, war and the death penalty were three main areas of agreement. Paine heard with pleasure of Robespierre’s proposal to abolish the death penalty. The liberal moral code of both Paine and Robespierre, included their belief in religion without intermediaries, and Robespierre envisaged replacing the Church by an “Etre Supreme”. There would be celebrations to this personage on the Champ de Mars in Paris for everyone to enjoy. 

Louis XVI was unable to defend himself at his trial, because a quantity of correspondence with the enemies of France had been found in the royal apartments. The object of this correspondence was the enemies’ successful invasion of France and the restoration of the King on the throne as absolute monarch. Paine, the humane idealist who could never forget the help of Louis to the American cause, tried to help him. In a paper read to the Convention on 21 November, he stated the following: 

“I think it necessary that Louis XVI should be tried; not that this advice is suggested by a spirit of vengeance, but because this measure appears to me just, lawful and conformable to sound policy. If Louis is innocent let us put him to prove his innocence; if guilty let the nation determine whether he shall be pardoned or punished.” (Doyle, William, The Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press. p.167)

When Louis was found guilty on 17 January 1793, Paine wrote, as a member of the National Assembly, confessing that he was far more ready to condemn the Constituent Assembly, when he thought of the unaccountable folly, which restored the King’s executive power. Paine suggested that the United States of America could become a royal asylum, bearing in mind the amount of help, which Louis XVI gave to the American War of Independence. There, Louis might learn from the constant aspect of public prosperity, that the true system of government consisted in fair and equal representation. Paine submitted the suggestion, remembering the debt of gratitude, which America owed to every Frenchman_ Paine said that he was normally the enemy of monarchy, but he could not forget their human frailties. He reminded the court it had already been proposed by Maximilien Robespierre, that the death penalty should be abolished.  

In his Address to the People of France, Paine was both adulatory and optimistic, ending with the suggestion that they should begin the new era by instructing, rather than taking revenge, and by ensuring a greatness of friendship to welcome the approach of union and success. He was delighted when he was appointed to the Committee for framing a new French Constitution. This Committee originally had been the idea of the Marquis de Condorcet, and it was he who led the discussion while Paine drafted a Declaration for Rights to accompany the Constitution. These documents were adopted after many amendments, on 25 June 1793. 

Paine’s apparent friendship with the American Ambassador, Gouverneur Morris had added to Marat’s dislike of Paine, because Morris was distrusted by the Revolution due to his relationship with the English Court, and the Assembly had finally written to America asking them to replace him. The Assembly was also suspicious of Paine because of the stand he had made for saving the King’s life. Paine had written to Marat, whose suspicions of Paine may have been lulled as a result, so that when Robespierre demanded a more stringent law against foreigners, Paine was one of two foreign deputies, who were accepted. 

Ten months in the Luxembourg Prison and then return to America 

Paine had been warned against attending the Assembly, because Danton was to be arrested, and, as a friend of Danton, possibly Paine would also be arrested. Paine had been advising Barere, in charge of the Committee of Public Safety, on a project for sending commissioners to America in order to obtain American food aid for France during the war with England. Barere feared a massive country-wide famine. At his request Paine wrote long and lucid arguments for Barere to use, and spent a good deal of time taking the matter up with American sea captains whose vessels had been held up in Bordeaux, because the French feared that the English navy would seize them. The captains appealed personally to Paine after their useless application to the American Ambassador, Morris. 

Barere instigated the Reign of Terror, when he presented a report to the Convention on 5 September, which contained the words: “Let us make Terror the order of the Day”. Paine had already published Part 1 of The Age of Reason,  and planned to leave it with the American poet Joel Barlow, if there was a risk of him being arrested. It was also Barere who made the speech leading to Paine’s arrest. He gave some very incredible excuses to Paine, but at least in his Memoires, he told the truth about Paine’s help in saving France from famine. 

When Paine was arrested he found an excuse to visit Joel Barlow’s lodgings with his captors and was able to leave with him Part 1 of The Age of Reason, without his captors’ knowledge. Various reasons have been put forward as to 14 the reason for his imprisonment, but none of them have been confirmed. Paine was able to complete the second part of The Age of Reason despite his poor state of health while in prison. When James Monroe was brought in as the new American Ambassador Paine was at last released. At first Paine was nursed by Mrs Monroe when he was so ill that they feared he would die. Gradually he recovered and moved into the home of Nicholas de Bonneville, who produced a radical newspaper in Paris, and his family. With the coming of Napoleon Bonaparte came an amnesty for all emigres and Paine finally was able to return to America. It has been said that he actually met Napoleon Bonaparte while staying with the de Bonneville family and that Bonaparte had read many of his works and found them ‘most interesting’. However I must say that there is no actual proof of this meeting. 

Paine’s involvement in British and Irish affairs 

Paine had drawn up a detailed topographical plan for the invasion of Britain but this must have been kept with the rest of his manuscripts, which he left for safe keeping with Madame de Bonneville, who gave them to her son. Nicholas de Bonneville was a French Radical friend of Paine and when he knew that Paine was returning to the U.S.A. he asked him to take his wife and three sons to America where de Bonneville thought they would have better lives. However following his death Madame de Bonneville inherited everything belonging to Thomas Paine and his land and house were divided between the two elder de Bonneville boys, who had remained with Paine. His manuscripts were subsequently passed to General de Bonneville and were “accidentally” lost in a fire at the General’s home. 

When Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Theobald Wolfe Tone asked Thomas Paine to obtain French ships and men to invade Ireland the French government was not averse to helping them, but on the advice of an Irish American they did not do so immediately because he recommended waiting until the United Irishmen were more of a cohesive group. It is believed that this Irish American was a Colonel William Tate who later led a French invasion force to Bantry Bay, but on their first attempt they were prevented by violent storms. The very fact that this fleet had been sent encouraged the United Irishmen particularly since the British then used military coercion in Ulster in 1797. The rebellious Irish were mixed Catholics and Protestants and the rebellion was severely squashed. 

The first French-based raiding party after that was due to attack Newcastle where the Legion Franche were to burn the docks and shipping and destroy the coal mines. The second party was to land at Bristol going on to Wales and Liverpool with the Legion Noire. These two groups of soldiers comprised mainly convicts. It was a weak plan based as it was on expecting great military action, but using the poorest quality of troops. Martell° Towers 15 had been built on Bere Island in Bantry Bay and were the forerunners to those later built by the English. 

Britain had been saved because none of the French troops spoke or understood English and only the aristocracy could speak and/or understand French so that there was no rapport between the French and the English. The non-appearance of the British Navy, the one, which Pitt had reassured Parliament in October 17% was the “national defence of this kingdom in case of invasion” did nothing to persuade the ordinary Englishmen that this was a cause for them to join in. After the recapture of [(Biala, Wolfe Tone was captured by a British warship and committed suicide. The utter failure of the Irish invasion did not stop the related diversion raid against Wales. The French arrived at Fishguard in February, for what was to prove to be the last time that Britain was ever invaded. It was not planned to harm the British people but to be the first step in liberating the oppressed poor of the country from the domination of the English ruling classes, thereby alighting the fire of independence and democracy. 

The French had left Brest in Brittany on 18 February and anchored to the north-west of Fishguard. From information received from a captive, they were misled as to the size of the fort’s militia and they sailed out to Carreg Wasted Point, out of reach of the militia’s guns. Meanwhile the French soldiers were looting and setting fire to churches in a manner hardly conducive to encouraging the local people to join in a revolution and rise up against their oppressors. Lord Cawdor on behalf of the British Army demanded Tate’s surrender. 

All of these events led to a run on the Bank of England and it suspended cash payments, but instituted bank notes to the value of El and £2. People were suspicious of these novel notes and many found them hard to use in a commercial way. Things gradually calmed down and normal trade continued. 

With the failure of the French-aided attempts at invasion of the British Isles followed by Admiral Nelson’s destruction of the French fleet in Aboukir Bav in 1798 the immediate threat of further invasions seemed to disappear until Napoleon created himself Emperor when considerable monies were spent on fortifications such as 74 lvlartello towers on the South Coast of England and 40 on the east coast. Each tower had a cannon on top with a one mile range. They cost £3,000 each to build and were to carry 24 soldiers each. 

This was the time of the Royal Military Canal being built from Rye towards London and Birmingham and when Weed on Beck in Northamptonshire was planned to be the emergency capital of Britain in case London were to fall. Chatham was the next fallback position and this time led to the birth of the semaphore system between Chatham and Portsmouth. In 1852 when Louis I6 Napoleon 111 came to power further large sums were spent on fortifications against the French.” 

Paine’s involvement in Russia 

Common Sense reached either St Petersburg in Russia or, more probably, Leipzig, where it had been translated into German. The young Russian Radical, Alexander Radishchev, was studying jurisprudence there at the instigation of Catherine the Great. Several books have been written on the subject of Radishchev: “The First Russian Radical”, by David Marshall Lang while Jesse Clardy wrote another, but the most up to date information has been researched and written by a fellow Russian, !Cara Rukshina, who is presently working in the U.S.A. [n her work she established that Radishchev was familiar with Common Sense from its inclusion in G. Th. Ravnal’s A History of the Two Indies (1780 edition). Until now the question of Paine’s influence on Radishchev has received no scholarly attention, writes Rukshina This was probably due to the fact that when Common Sense  was first published it did not have Paine’s name on it as the author. 

Ravnal described Common  Sense  as the ideological foundation of the French Revolution. However Rukshina claims that Radishchev had an excellent command of English and could have read an original English-language copy when he was at Leipzig University or in the famous multi-lingual library of his employer, the Count Vorontsov. The main difference between Paine’s book and that of Radishchev’s A  Journey from St Petersburg to Moscow is that Radishchev considered the monarch’s death essential and unavoidable while Paine only wanted the position of the monarch to be removed. 

Radishchev’s ideas laid the groundwork for the revolutionary tradition in Russia. Karl Man is said to have had a library containing two copies of each of Thomas Paine’s works and Nikolai Lenin was known to have read Radishchev’s work as well as that of Raynal, and, during his time in London was to have read the rest of Paine’s works in English. Therefore the thinking behind the Russian Revolution of 1917 can be said to have been influenced by Thomas Paine. 

Cuba and South America influenced by Paine 

Copies of Paine’s works had been circulated throughout Argentina, Bolivia and Mexico since 1816, so they had been read and considered by the Castro family and other revolutionary-minded young men for generations before Fidel Castro came on the scene in 1953. In 1955 Castro went to Mexico and teamed up with the Argentine doctor, Che Guevara. 

Fidel Castro had tried several times to overcome the right-wing government of Batista in Cuba and did not succeed until, accompanied by his brother Ratil 17 and Dr Ernesto Che Guevara, they won a rousing victory with the backing of the ordinary people in January 1959. Castro assumed control of Cuba and governed without a formal constitution until 1976. Castro frequently asked for financial aid from the government of the U.S.A. but when this was not forthcoming, he publicly proclaimed his allegiance to Marxism-Leninism on 2 December 1961. Although Castro retained political independence from the Soviet Union, the Cuban economy came to depend on billions of dollars in Soviet aid. 

Che Guevara was a keen follower of Thomas Paine, and Fidel Castro in his defence before the court of Santiago de Cuba in 1953, claimed that “Thomas Paine said that a just man deserves more respect than a crowned rogue”, thereby indicating that he was well aware of Paine’s political writings. 

In Latin America Common Sense and the American Crisis papers were only translated in part, but were used as symbols by leaders of independence movements. In South America no biographical details about Paine were known and his political writings were concentrated. upon Paine was a symbol of toleration and individual human rights. In Argentina a Spanish translation of Common Sense circulated in Buenos Aires during 1816 and inspired heated discussion in the local press. A number of political documents such as the Declaration of Independence and several state constitutions were circulated in translation but only Paine’s major political works attracted comments in the press. 

The works of Paine, which were readily available consisted of parts of Common Sense the Dissertation on First Principles of Government, the Rights of Man, the Dissertations on Government the Affairs of the Bank and Paper Money. The sections from Common Sense include Paine’s famous distinction between government and society, and his demonstration of the superiority of republican over monarchical government. Paine’s forthright method of expression was well received in Buenos Aires. 

It could be argued that Paine’s ideas were foremost in the minds of Central and South American revolutionaries, because they were all reared on the works of Karl Marx and Lenin. It is also possible to argue that wherever revolutions have taken place in the world in modern times, the leaders were also educated in Marxism or Leninism. Either Paine’s works arrived in countries, directly in English, say from America, and were then translated into local languages, or his work was directly translated into Spanish or Portuguese. 

CONCLUSION 

Few men could have led such a fascinating life as Thomas Paine. He saw two momentous revolutions at the end of the 18th century, in America and France and was heavily involved in both of them. He always felt that the only one which was a true Republic was America, though he could easily be accused of prejudice where “America was concerned. Nevertheless by 1802 when Paine left France, the country had an imperial monarchy ruled every bit as tyrannically as that before 1789. Paine had forecast that this would happen and events proved him right By contrast the U.S.A. was, and remains, a genuine republic. 

Paine never claimed that his writings were original; what was original was the way in which he wrote. He used a simple, straightforward style, which was very easy to understand. Paine did not write for the academic audience but for the ordinary people and it can be argued that following the publication of Common Sense followed by the Rights of Man and the tremendous number of copies of each that were sold or borrowed or available in taverns or reading rooms, his words did not reach exactly the people to whom they were addressed. It can be said therefore, that Paine achieved what he set out to do, which was to make the ordinary people understand that they could eventually enjoy the social reforms, which he talked about He did not guarantee when this would happen, nor that it would happen without them being involved in pushing their politicians to take action. 

If taxation was tackled – and he showed how this could be done equitably – there would be sufficient money to carry out all the social reforms, which he had described. His aim in life had been to improve the life of the ordinary people, who had nobody else to speak for them. He considered that if a government was run according to the plans he had suggested, then people would be happy. Paine said that insufficient food, clothing, housing and work was not sufficient to make people happy. 

Without the benefit of modern communications, Paine was able to act as a prophet to two revolutionary bodies: the American fight for independence and the French for liberty, equality and fraternity. Equally he made major contributions to the English evolution towards extended suffrage. His failure to make the American Revolution into an egalitarian movement must have been a bitter blow to him. It was the English, after Paine’s death, who made policies out of his proposals. 

Paine is still a controversial figure, but his ideas have never lost their power or their appeal. To read any of his works today is to read a modern, well written and easily understandable text.

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Revolutionary Britannia? Reflections On The Threat Of Revolution In Britain, 1789-1848 Edward Royle. Manchester University Press, 2000. Hardbound: £45. Paperback: £16.99. ISBN 0-7190-4802-8 (Hb.); 0-7190-4803-6 (Pb.).

MANY readers will be familiar with the first rate historical work of Edward Royle. The present work maintains his high level of excellence. It examines the men, movements and ideas which brought Britain to the very brink of revolution in the turbulent years between the French Revolution and the revolutions which swept Europe, toppling thrones and governments, in the middle of the nineteenth century; this was the period of transition from feudalism to capitalist democracy. 

Royle begins with the period 1792-1820, a time when Britain was almost constantly at war with revolutionary France. He first looks at the impact of the French Revolution in Britain. Examining the ideas of such radical organisations as the London Corresponding Society, he points out that while the aim of such bodies was parliamentary reform they readily identified themselves with the French Revolution, an event which had turned the world upside down. They were also so identified by the government, a government which became almost paranoid in its fear of revolutionary plots. 

The government reacted in typical fashion with repression. A Royal Proclamation was issued against “seditious” writings and proceedings were started against Paine, who wisely fled. 

In Ireland in 1798 the government’s nightmares came true with the uprising of the United Irishmen. Although this is often depicted as a bloody Catholic peasant insurgency the influence of Paine on the thinking of its leaders such as Wolfe Tone cannot be overestimated. Royle then turns to such events as the Cato Street conspiracy and the outbreak of machine breaking by displaced artisans known as Luddism. 

In his next chapter, Royle places under his historians microscope the crisis surrounding the Reform Bill of 1831 which was moved in an often hostile parliament by the Whig leader, Earl Grey. When the Lords rejected the Bill, rioting broke out in the course of which Nottingham castle was burned down.

More importantly, both the middle class, as yet largely unrepresented, and the working class, the child of the industrial revolution, began to organise politically. In London a specifically working class body, the National Union of the Working Class, was formed. As Royle writes, it was led by radicals schooled in the literature of Paine. 

While the Reform Act enfranchised the middle class, the workers remained without the vote. This circumstance led to the formation of Chartism. In 1836 former members of the NUWC and other radicals set up the London Working Men’s Association to promote democratic reform by peaceful means. The more militant had other ideas and they set up the East London Democratic Association which readily acknowledged its intellectual debt to Paine. Amongst them was George Harney whose Red Republican would publish the first English translation of the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels. 

There is not space here to recount the history of Chartism, the reader can find many informative works on the subject such as those of Reg Groves and Dorothy Thompson. Suffice to say that despite strikes, riots and attempted uprisings on the one hand and the presentation of massive petitions to parliament on the other, Chartism both as a revolutionary and a reformist movement was a heroic failure. Its success was in providing an example of working class political self organisation independent of the middle classes who would become the mainstay of the Liberal Party. 

In his final chapter, Royle attempts to answer the question why there was no revolution? He looks at the nature of the popular movements arguing that their leaders knew both their own limits and those of their followers. He further argues that the revolutionaries were always in the minority, a minority easily contained by an extensive government network of spies and informers. 

Royle may well be right, but one cannot help feeling a large measure of empathy with such as the hand loom weavers who met near Manchester to read the Chartist press and who saw as the solution to their problems, political and economic, the dethronement of the queen and her replacement by an elected president of a Republic. 

Royle then examines a number of other factors which prevented revolution. He looks at the problem of geography, the differences between London and the provincial manufac- turing towns. He states that one reason why Chartism failed was because its strength was not in the capital. 

He looks, too, at the strength of loyalism epitomised by the church and king mobs which burned Paine in effigy and shows how loyalists with their references to Magna Carter and the ancient liberties of the freeborn English used the language and ideas of the radicals against them to great effect. 

Royle, too, shows the strength of the state, the establishment of the railways enabling troops to be easily moved around the country, and the weakness of the revolutionaries. Not only were their ranks riddled with informers but their main weapon, the pike, had become effectively obsolete in the 17th century. Royle looks as well at the role of religion with its promise of reward in heaven for suffering in this life and rudimentary social welfare which at the very least took the edge off the desperation which drives people to violent revolution.

He concludes with a long quotation from an editorial published by Harney in the Morning Star in November 1849. In England, as in Europe, concedes Harney, attempts at revolution have failed. Yet he remains optimistic, showing that even though the people may win only very limited changes very slowly their strength grows and one day they will win. 

One may disagree with Royle’s analysis and conclusions but this book surely deserves a place in the library of every thinking radical.

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This year sees the bicentenary of the Irish rebellion, part of a world historic process which started in America in 1776, continued in France  and included such events as the slave revolt in San Domingo and the struggle of Paine’s colonies in the South American struggles for independence. Starting with high hopes of uniting a Protestant middle  class in search of political rights and a land hungry Catholic peasantry,  breaking the connection with England, emulating America and France  and establishing a republic of liberty, equality and fraternity, it ended  with the rebels being shot down with musket and cannon and slashed  down with yeomanry sabres in unequal battles such as that at Vinegar  Hill in Wexford. Pikes and courage were no match for the redcoats  fire-power. To their cost. The Scots had discovered that at Culloden. For  the Scots the price of rebellion was the Highland clearances, for the  Irish it was An Gorta Mor, which English history calls the famine.  

The influence of Paine’s political thought on the Irish rebels cannot be underestimated. In the Ireland of 1790 many minds were fixed upon the French Revolution. For Burke, Ireland was either a strong dike to keep Jacobinism out or a broken bank to let it in. It was in reply to  Burke that Paine wrote Rights of Man, a work which many in Ireland  read with enthusiasm. For Protestant Dissenters in Belfast, Rights of Man  became their Koran. Influenced by their fellows who had been in the  forefront of the American War of Independence in which Paine himself  played a major role, they formed, in Wolfe Tone’s words, ‘…the flower  of the famous volunteer army of 1782 which extorted from the English  minister the restoration of which is affected to be called the constitution  of Ireland’. At a time when the nation was fairly divided into two  great parties, the Aristocrats and the Democrats, Rights of Man not only  influenced the middle class Dissenters but also the Catholic peasantry;  indeed it sold more copies in Ireland than in England and Wales  together. From Connaught to Wexford, peasants in market places and  taverns discussed Rights of Man. A teacher was exposed as a rebel spy  when a copy of The Age of Reason was found on him and there were  reports of the book being sold in Mayo. For many inspired by Paine  liberty and equality were no mere slogans and the republic more than  an end to rents and taxes. What they wanted was a social revolution.  

Wolfe Tone, the son of a coachmaker, had studied law. Despite  obtaining a degree, he claimed he knew as much about law as he knew  about necromancy and turned his hand to political pamphleteering.  Tone’s work struck a chord and after a celebration of the French Revolution, a Society of United Irishmen was formed in Belfast to be  quickly followed by a Dublin society. Paine was made an honorary  member. The United Irishmen complained that at a time when ‘…the  Rights of Man are ascertained in Theory and that theory substantiated  in practice…when unjust governments are falling in every quarter of  Europe… we are ruled by Englishmen and the servants of Englishmen…’  Their remedy was ‘…an equal Representation of all the people in  Parliament’. It was proposed that the country be divided into 300  constituencies with a vote for every man. There was even a proposal that  women be given the vote. Other proposals included annual parliaments,  no property qualification for public representatives and payment for  members of parliament. Thus the United Irishmen anticipated the  demands of the Peoples’ Charter by nearly half a century.  

Echoing Paine, Tone wrote, ‘The greatest happiness of the greatest  number. On the rock of this principle let this society rest; by this let it  judge and determine every political question, and whatever is necessary  for this end let it not be accounted hazardous, but rather our interest,  our duty, our glory and our common religion. The Rights of Man are  the Rights of God and to vindicate the one is to maintain the other’.  

The United Irishmen maintained contact with similar radical  societies in England and Scotland. In Margate, Arthur O’Connor and  Father Quigley were arrested in possession of a large sum of money and  incriminating documents, one of which was allegedly an invitation from  English Jacobins in France to stage an invasion. It was thought they were  en route to a meeting with the United Britons. At their trial O’Connor  was acquitted, Quigley was sentenced to death. He was hung and then  beheaded. Among the literature being distributed by English Jacobins at  this time was Paine’s Agrarian Justice. When the Irish rebellion broke  out, the London Corresponding Society issued a supporting address  which called upon British soldiers to refuse to act against the Irish. The  authorities ordered a general crackdown and in 1799 most leading  English Jacobins were behind bars, often being held in the most  appalling conditions.  

In Scotland the government had struck much earlier. Thomas Muir,  a young advocate, received fourteen years’ transportation for participating in a convention of Scottish reform societies. His “crimes” were  circulating Paine’s works and reading an address from the United  Irishmen. T.F.Palmer received seven years for encouraging the reading  of Paine and membership of a Dundee society. Back in England,  Thomas Hardy of the London Corresponding Society had been luckier.  Charged with high treason in that he had expressed sympathy with the  French revolution and distributed Paine’s works, he was found not guilty. Everywhere Rights of Man struck terror into the ruling class and it  reacted accordingly.  

In Ireland repression drove the United Irishmen underground,  transforming it from a society of constitutional reformers into a  revolutionary movement and Tone went into exile. He first went to  America and then to France. In Paris he met Paine, who was already on  friendly terms with James Napper Tandy of the Dublin United Irishmen.  While describing Paine as vain and critical of his drinking habits, Tone  wrote of Paine, ‘He has done wonders for the cause of liberty, both in  America and Europe, and I believe him conscientiously to be an honest  man’.  

Tone managed to enlist the aid of the French for a landing in  Ireland. A first attempt in 1796 had to be aborted when foul weather  scattered the ships and prevented the troops getting ashore. Paine, who  was still advocating a French invasion of England as late as 1806, noted.  `The suspicion that England governs Ireland for the purpose of keeping  her low…will always operate to hold Ireland in a state of sentimental  hostility with England’. Paine commented on Irish events in Le Bein  inform’, one issue of which detailed his friendship with Thomas Muir.  

In Ireland the authorities had unleashed a reign of terror. Martial  law had been proclaimed and the yeomanry, a kind of territorial army  in which many members of the sectarian Orange Order had been  enrolled, on the pretence of searching for arms wrecked and burned  homes and carried out floggings and even hangings.  

In Dublin in May 1798 despite the loss of many arms, the arrest of leaders such as Edward Fitzgerald and a disrupted organisation riddled  with informers, the United Irishmen decided to rise. The signal for the  rising was to be the interception and burning of the mail coaches. This  went off at half cock. In many areas the rebels failed to muster and  where they did often had not a clear plan of action.  

In some areas the people were panicked into rising. The activities of  the yeomanry who flogged, tortured and even murdered anyone  thought to be a rebel spread fear of an Orange pogrom. A desperate  people, sometimes led by their priests, resisted with scythes, spades and  stones, anything that came to hand. Atrocity was answered with atrocity.  

Where the rebels managed to form something like an army, they  marched to the tune of the Marseillaise. Officers wore a green cockade  on red regimentals and other ranks a green or white hatband.  

In Wexford Ireland’s first republic was set up. Liberty and equality as  well as Erin go Bragh were the watchwords. Officers were elected, a  committee of public safety established, food rationed and paper money  put to practical use as pipe lighters and musket wadding. A new anthem, Cod Save The Rights of Man replaced God Save the King. Many  politically minded artisans looked to the abolition of a ruling class who `consider the people an inferior and degraded mass’.  

In August, a small French force led by General Humbert had landed  in Mayo. By September it had surrendered. It was in Mayo that month  that the last battle of the rising was fought. By October 2nd., the English  were celebrating victory.  

Tone himself had again set sail for Ireland but after a hard fought  sea battle in which he commanded a battery of guns, he was captured by  the English. Back in Dublin he was sentenced to be hanged despite  requests to be shot. History records that he took his own life, many  think he was murdered.  

Irish history since 1798 is well known – failed risings, civil war,  partition and a thirty year struggle in the six counties. At the time of  writing,* a fragile peace has been broken by riots in Portadown  triggered by an Orange march. Sectarianism has mostly been triumphant, Protestant and Catholic only rarely uniting in a common cause.  Ireland, it seems, has a long way to go before the democratic,  republican ideas of Paine and Tone are realised.  

*The manuscript was received in June.  

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THOMAS PAINE PLANNED to visit Ireland in the summer of 1791 because it was a country ripe for revolution. Other matters intervened. Among the educated he was a household name. His Rights of Man was “the Koran” of Belfast, Theobald Wolfe Tone learned in October 1791 when he went north from Dublin to found the first Society of United Irishmen. Edmund Burke, an Irishman, lost the loyalty of his radical countrymen to Paine because of his defence of the status quo. Public opinion in Ireland, Catholic as well as Protestant, leaned to Paine. The original United Irishmen, the Presbyterian merchants and manufacturers of Belfast, saw Paine as a hero and Burke as a villain. When Tone wrote his “Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland”, to convince them that they had nothing to fear by supporting full rights for Catholics and allying themselves with the majority in an independent Ireland, with its own national government, he clinched his case with the remark, “for, after Paine, who will, or who need, be heard on that subject?” 

Of the 40 to 50 thousand copies of Rights of Man sold in England, Scotland and Ireland, more than 20,000 were circulated in Dublin, which was one of the reasons why Paine wanted to visit Ireland. Tone claims that the Rights of Man, combined with the French Revolution which it explained, “changed in an instant the politics of Ireland.” This change led to the founding of the United Irishmen in Belfast, and a few weeks later in Dublin, the most radical movement in Irish history, one that has had a lasting influence on the politics of the Irish people. 

Paine supported the United Irishmen’s revolutionary republicanism, knew some of its leaders, including Tone and Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the egalitarian aristocrat chosen to lead the 1798 rebellion, and befriended James Napper Tandy, a Dublin democrat and fellow exile in Paris. Tandy, a somewhat boastful man, believed that his name would spark rebellion in Ireland. He is remembered in the ballad, “The Wearing of the Green.” He and Paine could be found in the Irish Coffee House, a Paris meeting place for Irish revolutionaries, often in the company of Thomas Muir, the Scots radical who was tried for sedition because he had told someone to read Rights of Man. All three talked treason against the Crown, the Pitt government was told by its many secret agents. 

Tone wrote in his diary on March 3, 1798: “I have been laterly introduced to the famous Thomas Paine and like him very well. He is vain beyond all belief, but he has reason to be vain and, for my part, I forgive him. He has done wonders for the cause of liberty both in America and Europe, and I believe him to be conscientiously an honest man. He converses extremely well and I find him wittier in discourse than in his writings, where his humour is clumsy enough. He read me some passages from a reply to the Bishop of Llandaff, which he is preparing for the press, in which he belabors the prelate without mercy. He seems to plume himself more on his theology than his politics, in which I do not agree with him. I mentioned to him that I had known Burke in England and spoke of the shattered state of his mind in consequence of the death of his only son Richard. Paine immediately said it the Rights of Man which had broke his heart and that the death of his gave him occasion to develop the chagrin which had preyed upon him since the appearance of that work. I am sure the Rights of Man has tormented Burke exceedingly, but I have seen myself the workings of a father’s grief on his spirit and I could not be deceived; Paine has no children…He drinks like a fish, a misfortune which I have known to befall other celebrated patriots. I am told that the true time to see him to advantage is about ten at night, with a bottle of brandy and water before him, which I can very well conceive” 

Tone disliked The Age of Reason, calling it “damned trash.” He did not object to it on religious grounds of Anglican stock, he was likely a freethinker but thought Paine must be doting to switch from politics to theology; yet he remained an admirer of Paine. 

In the summer of 1798, rebellion broke out in Ireland. Tone tried to organise a French expedition to aid the United Irishmen. An expedition under General Hoche at Christmas 1796 had reached Bantry Bay but was forced by the winds to turn back. Tone was aboard. Paine worked with Tandy to help the rebels. He sent a memorial to the Directory for a thousand men and five thousand. In August 1798 General Humbert sailed for Killiala in County Mayo with a thousand men. The Irish flocked to his flag. He defeated General Lake at “the races of Castlebar,” and broke through to the heart of the country, only to be surrounded a couple of weeks later by Lord Cornwallis at Ballinamuck. Humbert surrendered, his Irish allies were executed. 

Shortly after Humbert sailed, Tandy set out for Ireland on a fast ship, the Anacroon, landing on the Donegal coast north of Mayo. He learned that Humbert was a prisoner, the rebellion defeated. He scattered a few proclamations, then sailed back to the continent via the Orkneys and Norway with the British hot pursuit. Tandy eventually reached Hamburg and asked for asylum. He held the rank of Major General in the French Army, but despite this was handed over to the English in October 1799. Tried, convicted and sentenced to death, he was reprieved after Napoleon, then First Consul, threatened reprisals, and was ordered transported beyond the seas. And then he was permitted to return to France a free man. Up to now the reason for this has been a mystery. The explanation, it turns out, was Paine. 

Robert Livingstone, Secretary of Foreign Affairs under the Continental Congress, was Thomas Jefferson’s Minister to France. Paine’s letter to Livingston for Tandy came to light in the summer of 1979 when Paul O’Dwyer, former President of New York City Council, a great admirer of Paine, found it among Livingston’s papers. The letter, dated “25 Brumaire Year 10,” reminded Livingston of an incident during the American Revolution in which both were involved. An English officer, Captain Charles Asgill, was sentenced to death by the Americans as a reprisal. The French court was shocked, especially the Queen. Livingston enlisted Paine’s polemical skills, first to explain the matter publicly, secondly to have Asgill reprieved. Paine blamed the English for Asgill’s plight, then wrote to Washington a plea for Asgill’s life. Congress lifted the death sentence and everyone’s honour was upheld. 

Paine’s letter for Tandy opens with the salutation, “Dear Friend, “and went on to explain the reason for writing, “to engage your benevolence, and, as far as you can give it, your assistance in behalf of an honest unfortunate old man whom you know by name, Napper Tandy, who after several years of imprisonment is now sentenced to Botany Bay. 

“You remember that at the time of Asgill’s Affair you were Minister for Foreign Affairs, and you will recollect a conversation you had with me respecting Asgill, in consequence of which I published a piece upon the subject and wrote to General Washington to engage him to suspend the execution of the sentence upon Asgill. 

“During that suspension the letter of Vergennis (sic) arrived asking in the name of his Court (or rather that of the Queen) a remittance of the sentence, which terminates the affair, and relieved us all from a painful sensation. 

“Now as you were an instrument for saving Asgill, I think you might find aid to way, without involving your diplomatic character, to throw in your relieve poor Napper Tandy. What I wish to be done for him is to let him tran- sport himself, in which case I suppose he will go to America, because that our Government is reformed, the honest and the unfortunate will find Asylum there. 

“Neither Talyrand (sic), nor any person in the government here, knows anyt- hing of the case of Asgill, and I think you might very consistently write private note to Talleyrand to inform him of it, and to engage him to make government acquainted with it, and to ask in return a remittance of the sent- ence of Napper Tandy, for though it is not now the same government, it is the same nation. 

“Cornwallis, you know, was in America while the affair of Asgill was perding, and I cannot see any impropriety (keeping the Ministerial character out of the question) in your writing a note to remind Cornwallis of the circumstance and to hint to him your wish that he would be as friendly to Tandy as you had been to Asgill. 

“So far from there being any inconvenience in this, I think the contrary will be the case. It will most probably happen that you and Cornwallis will meet either in company or at a public audience, and this preliminary introduction will take off the awkwardness which might otherwise take place at a first meeting, and furnish a subject of conversation when it might be cult to start a political one and hypocritical to propose a friendly Nothing brings people more easily together than a joint endeavour to do a good thing. 

“If you are much engaged and have not leisure to turn the whole of affair in your mind I will throw a few thoughts together for the purpose forwarding it; and if, while I stay here I can render you any auxiliary aid, you know there is nobody more disposed to do it than myself – In remembrance of former times and former friendships, I remain 

Your fellow-labourer 

Thomas Paine.” 

Cornwallis was Viceroy and Commander-in-Chief of the forces in Ireland during and after the rebellion of 1798 and the Act of Union with Great Britain thirty months later. He acted on Paine’s request, though how he received it we do not know. Tandy went to France and died shortly afterwards. Even at the end of his eventful life he still dabbled in conspiracy and was loosely involved in Robert Emmet’s plans for a rising in July 1803. Emmet was hanged. 

Robert Emmet’s brother, Thomas Addis Emmet, a founder of the United Irishmen, went into exile in America after the Peace of Amiens, March 1802, and became Attorney General of New York. He was a friend of Paine during the lonely final years. He was Paine’s executor and was named in his will. There is a statue to Thomas Addis Emmet in St. Paul’s churchyard, Lower Broadway, New York City. 

Wolfe Tone, like Tandy, set out from France for Ireland in the autumn of 1798 to join the revolution and after a sea battle was captured by the English. Tried by court martial in Dublin, he was sentenced to death by hanging in November 1798. He committed suicide in prison, although some Irish mintain he was murdered. He had asked to be shot because he was an officer in the French army, but they refused his request. “In a cause like this,” he said, “success is everything Washington succeeded and Kosciusco failed.” He was prepared for the sentence of the court and would discharge his duty, he added: This cryptic remark may well explain his death. Paine’s Rights of Man explains his life.

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by Nigel H. Sinnott 

BY THE MIDDLE OF THE 1790’s all Ireland was in a political ferment which had been sparked off as a result of the success of the French Revolution abroad, and at home, the formation by Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-1798) and others, at the end of 1791, of the Society of United Irishmen, which “at its foundation ……stood broadly on the principles of Paine’s Rights of Man (part 1 of which was published in 1791) which work, Tone notes with glee, at once became the ‘Koran of Belfast.” (Jackson, T.A. & Greaves,C.D. (1971) Ireland Her Own London. p.119.) The Society flourished particularly in Dublin and Belfast until it was suppressed (at least officially) in 1794. The following year, 1795, marked the reaction to Irish Jacobinism with the formation of the Orange Order, and was also the occasion of Tone’s leaving Ireland in the hope of obtaining help from the French for an armed uprising against the Dublin Castle authorities.

In the same year, in the city of Cork, an interesting tract was published. It was entitled Letters addressed to the inhabitants of Cork, occasioned by the circulation of a work, entitled, The Age of Reason, &c., in that city. (Cork: printed and sold by J. Haly, King’s Arms, Exchange, 1795). The pamphlet, or small book, was a defence of orthodox (Protestant) Christianity, and we now know the author to have been Thomas Dix Hincks,LL.D., an eminent Presbyterian divine of the day. I do not intend here to discuss the details of Dr. Hincks’ theological arguments, save to say that, to an inexperienced eye, they appear to be typical of scholarly defences of religion in that period. What is interesting is that Dr. Hincks should have felt it necessary to go to print at all, and it is clear on reading the preamble to the letters that The Age of Reason was not merely “circulated” in Cork, but published there. I quote: 

“A work has lately been circulated amongst you with much industry, and, if I have been rightly informed, with considerable success….Had this work been permitted to take the usual course, and only one or two copies of it reached this part of the Kingdom, I should not have thought of troubling you with any remarks, but have trusted to the answers which have been or will be published in other places, and to the many excellent works which have been written in support of the evidences of Revelation. But when some persons, with a zeal which I cannot think laudable, and which perhaps deserves reprehension, have rendered it by their exertions a local publication, and have caused its dispersion amongst those, who from their situation in life, are unable to themselves to see the false reasoning it contains, it is incumbent on those, whose education and course of study have led them to investigate the subject, to endeavour to assist their brethren, and prevent them if possible from forsaking the clear and pleasant streams of Religion, for the muddy and bitter waters of infidelity.” 

I have been unable to trace any surviving copies of this Cork edition of The Age of Reason, but its circulation must have been quite wide enough to worry the devout Dr. Hincks, and, indeed, his Letters ran to a second edition in the following year, retitled, Letters originally addressed to the inhabitants of Cork, in defense of Revealed Religion, occasioned by the circulation of Mr.Paine’s Age of Reason in that city. (By T.D.H.) Second edition with additions, &c. (Cork, 1796) (British Museum Cat Printed Books to 1955. I have not examined this version.)

Despite Dr. Hincks and the Government spy network, however, the illegal United Irishmen continued to spread and flourish. In 1797 we read how a number of Cork militiamen were sentenced to death and executed for taking the United Irishmen’s oath, but only after a local Scottish regiment had refused to carry out the sentence, and a more “loyal” regiment procured for the purpose. (Jackson & Greaves. Loc.cit. p.160.) This same year General Lake “dragooned” Ulster to disarm the people and terrorize the Northern Jacobins into obedience, though this failed to prevent the great risings in Ulster and Leinster in 1798, and the unsuccessful French landing in Bantry Bay later in the same year. In that year, too, Dr.Hincks had another tract published in Cork, which was entitled, aptly enough, On dwelling together in unity, a sermon (on Ps. 133) preached….on….the first of July 1798. (British Museum Cat Printed Books to 1955.)

Thomas Dix Hincks was born in Dublin in 1767, the son of a customs officer, Edward Hincks, who died in 1772. He was educated both in England and in Dublin, intended to read medicine, but decided instead to take Orders. He went to Trinity College, Dublin (? 1784); and Hackney New College (1788). His ministry in Cork lasted from 1790 to 1815, during which time he was ordained (1792), became a salaried officer of the Royal Cork Institute, lectured on chemistry and natural philosophy, ran his own school (1791-1803) and taught at Fermoy Academy, Co. Cork (1815-1821). In 1821 he left the province of Munster for Ulster, where he taught classics in Belfast Academical Institution. He died in Belfast in 1857, and was buried in Killyleagh, Co. Down. A memorial window was subsequently erected to him in Belfast’s First Presbyterian Church. 

Hincks was a varied and adaptable writer; in addition to the works already mentioned he published A Greek-English Lexicon (1831, 1843), edited the Munster Agricultural Journal and several school textbooks. Of his theology, Alexander Gordon says this was “Arian, but he avoided polemics, and was on intimate terms with men of all religious parties.” (Gordon, A. (1882). Hincks, Thomas Dix. Dict. Natl. Biography 9: p.892.) Hincks was awarded his· LL.D. by Glasgow University in 1834. In 1791, the year after he came to Cork, he married Anne Boult (d. 1835), who bore him seven children, of whom five survived him. Of these, two sons achieved particular distinction: Edward Hincks (1792-1866) was a distinguished orientalist, and made major contributions to the decipherment of cuneiform script. Another son, Sir Francis Hincks (1807- 1885) was at various times of his life Premier of Canada (1851), Governor of Barbadoes and the Windward Islands (1855), and Governor of British Guiana (1862). In 1844 he launched a liberal newspaper in Canada, the Montreal Pilot, to promote, amongst other causes, “the secularisation of clergy reserves.” (Moriarty, G.P. (1882). Hincks, Francis Dict. Natl. Biography 9: p.890.) When Premier, however, his tardiness in carrying this measure through resulted in the religious Gavuzzi Riot of 1853. Sir Francis eventually published a book entitled Religious Endowments in Canada in London, in 1869. 

To return, finally, to Thomas Paine. There can be no doubt that his ideas in the 1790’s (and later) had profound effects upon political thinking among Irish radicals, just as they did among the revolutionaries of France, the United States, and Britain. Both he and Wolfe Tone met in Paris in March 1797 and during the period of the “dragooning” of Ulster and the ’98 Rising, a copy of Paine’s Rights of Man was virtually a death-warrant if found in an Irishman’s pockets. (Equally interesting are unconfirmed, but reliable, accounts of a Gaelic edition of the Rights of Man which circulated in the Scottish Highlands in the 1790’s. If any collector of Paineana can run down a copy of either of the Gaelic Rights of Man, or the Cork edition of The Age of Reason, I would be very pleased to hear of it.) It is interesting to see the spread of Jacobin ideas in the 1790’s from Dublin and Belfast to Cork, where they were ruthlessly suppressed in 1798, and remained more or less dormant until the Tithe War in the 1830’s. During the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) the County was a major theatre in the fighting, and has ever since earned itself the nickname of “Rebel Cork.”

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