By Richard Briles Moriarty

Many resources purport to provide biographical information about Thomas Paine. Some resources intentionally, at times maliciously, contain definitive statements that are contrary to available evidence or otherwise demonstrably untrue. Others do so unintentionally, often by relying on misstatements in prior resources that even cursory research would disclose to be groundless.

The best means to determine reliable biographical information about Thomas Paine (or other historical figures) is to critically and skeptically examine multiple sources, hew to evidence, and avoid urges to connect unconnectable dots. Original sources should be sought out when available. No matter how often a false statement appears, or how prominent an author may be, the statement remains false.

This is an attempt to compile biographical resources through which Paine researchers may access, and assess, multiple resources. Each citation is hyperlinked, where possible, to the cited resource. The state of accessibility of each hyperlink when this compilation was created is noted after the hyperlink. Resources that focus exclusively on Paine’s writings or his influence without any biographical information are not included.

The cited resources are listed in alphabetical order based on the author or editor or, absent either, the first substantive word of the title. They encompass the good, the bad and the ugly. No effort is made to judge or report the relative value or reliability of those sources. To minimize broken links resulting from multi-line URLs, all hyperlinks are in https://tinyurl.com format. Should a hyperlink not work, internet searches using the other information provided will hopefully succeed. A work in progress, the intent is to periodically update this compilation with additional sources.

CAUTION: The PDF is over 200 pages and contains over 2000 citations with hyperlinks. Printing copies is not recommended. Best to bookmark this page to assure access to the most recent version and that hyperlinks work.

Click the image below to access the PDF containing the Resources:

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By Gary Berton – Secretary, Thomas Paine National Historical Association Coordinator, Institute for Thomas Paine Studies (Iona College)

The great historian E. H. Carr said, “By and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants. History means interpretation.” In an essay published as part of a new collection of writings by and about Thomas Paine (Selected Writings of Thomas Paine, Yale U. Press, 2014), J. C. D. Clark has pushed this premise to absurd limits.

In contradistinction to the rest of the book, which contains a selection of primarily major works of Thomas Paine, Clark tries to refute any influence Paine had on the world, and scolds scholars for claiming he did. There is a long history of marginalizing Thomas Paine by conservative historians, from Jared Sparks to Forest MacDonald to David McCulloch. Clark’s essay is the latest. In an awkward juxtaposition with Paine’s own writings, Clark questions the need to read Paine at all.

The Thomas Paine National Historical Association and the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona College knew about the preparation for this book through Clark himself, who attended the 2012 Conference on Paine Studies at Iona. He was eager to refute the originality, impact and significance of Paine. He latched onto the Institute’s Text Analysis Project, hoping to refute the authorship of as many of Paine’s attributed works as possible. His list of disputed works was exaggerated, however.

Despite better advice, the editors of Selected Writings of Thomas Paine went ahead and put Thoughts on Defensive War as their first selection, with the note that its “attribution has never been questioned”. The Institute questioned this in writing to Dr. Clark. And Clark himself makes reference to linguistic studies of Paine’s writings without ever acknowledging the Institute as the source, or the Institute’s complete analysis of the documents. But this a minor flaw compared to Dr. Clark’s essay, which is full of vitriol and demonstrably false statements about Thomas Paine, unworthy of a scholarly presentation. There is a chip on Clark’s shoulder which has tilted his stance, and it comes from the long tradition of conservative historians who have repeatedly tried to bury Paine. Perhaps Clark’s forthcoming book will provide evidence otherwise lacking in his essay Thomas Paine: The English Dimension.

Clark organizes his attack on Paine in the disguise of an “historic Paine” versus a “usable Paine”. To Clark, “historic” means the actual Paine he will supposedly define for us untouched by ideology. “Usable” means how other scholars, with a political leaning (unlike him), incorrectly appraised Paine in the past. Clark is to raise the questions and reveal the truth which everyone has missed because of ideological blinders. He will set us all on the correct path of dethroning Paine from his lofty perch. Unfortunately, Clark falls prey to the very thing he attacks – prolepsism: imposing one’s own views and prejudices upon a previous historical era and searching for evidence, often invented, to justify one’s views.

At the 2012 Thomas Paine Studies Conference, Clark, from the University of Kansas, did not submit an abstract yet attended anyway. He was given time to speak in deference to his reputation. He talked about what direction Paine Studies should take, but he was never clear upon what “direction” meant. It subsequently became clear. He was there to gather pieces of evidence to show there really shouldn’t be any Paine studies (other than finding reasons to dismiss him) because he believed Paine never said or thought anything original and his influence was marginal at best. His motives became evident when he declared “you can’t prove Paine was against the death penalty”, though all of the writings which documented Paine’s stance were listed. He went on to the issues of women’s rights and the abolition of slavery, where there was some disagreement – Paine never made these subjects the focus of his writings despite his personal views in support of them. But Clark pushed it further, and it was apparent where he was going. He arrived there finally with his essay.

In this essay, which stands in stark contrast to the reasoned, balanced introduction by Ian Shapiro, Clark begins by briefly examining why American scholarship of Paine outstrips British and French scholarship, and he blithely deals with it thus: “…there is some academic attention to Paine in France and Britain, but [there is] a major Paine industry in the United States”. The explanation is clear: in the United States Paine was swept up into the republic’s myth of origins.’ Many academics still implicitly treat Paine as an American whose primary significance is for that society’s present-day ‘civil religion’.” Leaving aside for the moment the Americanism of Paine, it is evident Clark’s relocation to Kansas (he was originally at Oxford) was a shock, witnessing the attention Paine is receiving here in comparison to Britain. Clark assumes there is some mania over Paine due to a myth of “civil religion” and a “myth of origins”, neither of which he accepts. But Paine was kept out of the “myth” of America’s origins for 200 years, he was not part of it, and was deliberately left out of it. Look at the 19th (and most 20th) century books written about the founding of America: nowhere is Paine part of the “myth of origins”. He has been marginalized, slandered, reduced to a quirky, disheveled side-line pamphleteer at best. Perhaps because he was not part of this myth creation story scholars finally asked why a man of such crucial importance to American history is left out of textbooks. I know that is why I started my scholarship on Paine 45 years ago. It is fair to attack the American myth of origins, but Clark accepts the conservative myths, which dominate, without question. What he doesn’t accept is any basis which shows there was a radical trend in the founding of the country.

As to Paine’s “primary significance” to academics in his use of promoting “civil religion”, the reference he makes in his footnote is to an essay by Bellah in Daedalus which refutes his point. Bellah excludes Paine from the founders who would be happy to create a non-specific religious creed acceptable for civil society. To Bellah, Paine is the exception to this civil religion which sought to coexist with Christianity, unlike the other leading founders – Franklin, Jefferson, Washington and others. (It is a separate question whether Bellah is correct in putting Franklin and Jefferson on his list in NOT favoring an end to organized religion – see Nature’s God by Matthew Stewart.) Paine is not an example of founders favoring the parallel existence of civil religion as Clark is posing him (although Clark clearly opposes Paine’s designation as a founder). So this does not explain why North American scholars are researching Paine. Clark’s disdain for American research, which he refers to as the “Paine industry”, arises in his belief Paine never ever acted as an American, nor an internationalist, but only as a befuddled, dogmatic Englishman.

Although to Clark’s credit, he does point out correctly the use which American propaganda makes of Paine concerning the country’s founding. But this does not explain the scholarship which preceded such propaganda. The propaganda began with Reagan, who decided to make use of Paine after the 200 year forced exile from academia. The breakthrough scholarship began with Alfred Young and Staughton Lynd in the 60’s, gained traction with Aldridge and Claeys in the 80’s (although Claeys’ scholarship is based from England not America), and E. Foner in the same period. After establishing and reanimating Paine based on these works, Paine studies increased to the dismay of Clark. He wanted Paine left buried in obscurity, as he is in England.

At least Clark is honest. Most conservative historians simply neglect and marginalize. Clark comes right out as a defender of the status quo, and he exposes his ideology when he states: “the most famous and successful example of the representative system, the Westminster Parliament, was already operative in the Britain that Paine rejected with hatred.” Meaning, there was no need to alter the British system of government in the 1790s! It was the “most successful” representative structure! (“Successful” for whom?) No need for the Reform Act of 1832, as small a step as it was. Certainly no need for a Rights of Man. No wonder Paine draws Clark’s ire.

Enlightenment thinking

The ensuing lecture from Clark lays out a series of negative rebuttals to Paine’s worth. The first is the concept that “Since the idea of ‘the Enlightenment’ was absent in Paine’s lifetime, his society’s reforming causes were not united under any overarching ideology: many campaigns or crusades were therefore missing from the historic Paine’s commitments that later commentators expected to find there.” Clark declares academics “proleptic”, inventing ideas and placing them in Paine’s head. Yes, academics have labelled the historic process (philosophic, social, intellectual, political) the “Enlightenment” because they needed a term (much like “civil religion”) to describe a real phenomenon. Just as Washington, Franklin and Jefferson did not know the term “civil religion” but promoted the concept without being aware of future conceptualizations, so too can people join the phenomenon of “Enlightenment” thinking without being aware of future designations. One does not negate the other. Clark is demonstrating idealist thinking, where the concept being made conscious determines its existence. The Enlightenment is the belief that science and reason are the real source of knowledge and understanding instead of religion and tradition. This is exactly Paine’s philosophy – opposition to organized religion and to the dependence on the traditions of hereditary government. According to Clark, Spinoza, for example, could not have advocated for Enlightenment thinking because he did not know the term – just ignore all the passages about reason, an objective material world, the role of science in human society. Spinoza wasn’t aware of 20th century conceptualizations of his period, so he could not have been part of the Enlightenment?

Clark is attacking the “misinterpretations” of scholars in leaping to link Paine to 19th century movements that carried into present day. While there are certain exaggerations in some interpretations, Clark is wrong on substance throughout all his negatives. Take the Enlightenment for example: there were references to self-knowledge about this revolution in thinking, well-documented by Jonathan Israel. The French were even referring to it as the “luminere” before Paine was born, and like-minded Enlightenment thinkers found each other, like the Encyclopedists. That demonstrates some common philosophy with common goals. We now know it as the Enlightenment, back then they knew they shared the same world outlook. And Paine’s core tenets fit exactly into this Enlightenment period. Clark is grasping at straws to try and prove a thesis which is unsustainable.

Clark’s thesis is: Paine’s “mindset, values, and frame of reference remained largely those of an English freethinker of the reign of George II, confidently repeating his religious teaching and its political consequences in the new situations into which he blundered.” (Notice the use of “blundered”, a repeated pattern throughout the essay of denigrating Paine.) In order to maintain this thesis, Clark must negate the core of what Paine wrote because it does not fit into his own misinterpretation.

Clark denies Paine’s relevance by showing Paine was not aware of movements like socialism, democracy, or Enlightenment thinking, and then denying Paine ever had a philosophy which linked to them anyway. In his denials he reduces Paine to an English yeoman, half-educated in the 1750’s intellectual trends, who never progressed past them. But to accomplish that, Clark must also deny reality, and the reality of the content of Paine’s writings.

Suffrage and constitutions

Let’s start with the most egregious insult to both Paine’s legacy and the scholars who have meticulously uncovered it, in his depiction of Paine’s lack of democratic ideals. Clark uses the tactic of attacking the strength of an opponent by hitting Paine on the issue of voting and constitutions:

“Was Paine a democrat? True, he always favored a wide franchise, but on older premises he generally held that ‘men’ (ignoring women) were entitled to vote as taxpayers or property owners rather than as individuals.” (The women’s rights issue is dealt with below.) Clark read every word of Paine looking for tidbits to feed his theories, but a simple read of Dissertation on the First Principles of Government would have shown him the falsity of his statement:

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

“Whenever it be made an article of a constitution, or a law, that
the right of voting, or of electing and being elected, shall appertain exclusively to persons possessing a certain quantity of property, be it little or much, it is a combination of the persons possessing that quantity to exclude those who do not possess the same quantity. It is investing themselves with powers as a self-created part of society, to the exclusion of the rest.”

“In any view of the case it is dangerous and impolitic, sometimes
ridiculous, and always unjust to make property the criterion of the right of voting.”

Instead, Clark grabs onto obscure statements taken out of context to prove his negative view, like the franchise should be as “universal as taxation” from Rights of Man. The quote is part of Paine’s analysis of the fight between Fox and Pitt over the rights of Parliament: “With respect to the House of Commons, it is elected but by a small part of the nation; but were the election as universal as taxation, which it ought to be, it would still be only the organ of the nation, and cannot possess inherent rights.” Paine divided taxations into two parts, direct and indirect. He made this point clearly in Dissertation on the First Principles of Government where all consumers pay an indirect tax. The phrase used shows nothing, but that’s the best Clark’s biased hunt could come up with.

On women’s rights, Clark should have taken time to read an essay by Eileen Hunt Botting in the same book his essay appears, who gives a scholarly analysis of the question, summarizing thus: “Much of what Paine argued in the latter part of his career, especially in Rights of Man, Part the Second (1792) and Agrarian Justice (1797), either explicitly or implicitly endorses women’s equal rights with men, especially welfare rights but also political rights such as suffrage.” This does not fit Clark’s thesis so he ignores it. It would be hard to find women’s rights in the 1750 English countryside, or universal male suffrage not based on property qualifications, so when facts disagree with his imagined thesis, to Clark, they can’t be valid.

To an unprejudiced mind, Paine’s philosophy on suffrage would be plain enough. And this view of voting rights is central to Paine’s political philosophy, as is his theory of constitutions. But Clark also states: “It has now been established that Paine had no hand in drafting the Pennsylvania constitution of 1776, whose extensive franchise is still sometimes taken as demonstrating his views.” Paine did have a strong hand in that Constitution. The “established” reference is to P. Foner who remarked that Paine had left for the war before the actual writing of the constitution. But the philosophy and even the structure of the 1776 constitution rest on Paine’s fourth Forester letter and Four Letters on Interesting Subjects, the letters being left behind as the model for the constitution as he was enlisting in the army. [Four Letters has been verified by the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies’ Text Analysis Project as clearly Paine’s work, as Aldridge anticipated.] And Paine took the Pennsylvania Constitution as the model for the French Constitution of 1793. By dismissing Paine’s link to revolutionizing the nature of constitutions with this off-hand remark, Clark avoids having to deal with the immense impact Paine had in this area. [See Robin West’s Tom Paine’s Constitution for an analysis of the democratic road not travelled in America.]

Paine’s theory of constitutions is the most democratic form ever devised, but Clark would prohibit us from calling it democratic because Paine didn’t know the word. The features of the 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution can be found in the Four Letters article, and also in To the People and Candid and Critical Remarks on a Letter signed Ludlow, the latter of which Clark tried to de-attribute from Paine as well, but was tested to be Paine’s. The public debate between the radicals and the moderates in Philadelphia, to present a model constitution for the rest of America, had Paine at the center, and the radicals won. I won’t belabor the point here by listing the structure of the Pennsylvania constitution and these articles, but any reasonable scholar can discern Paine’s clear influence on the former. Issues like a plural executive, unicameralism (more on this below), a Bill of Rights reflecting natural rights, etc., all begin with Paine popularizing these democratic issues. All the public debates on Constitutions in the spring of 1776 – from Tiberius to Cato to Forester – all center on Common Sense.

Constitutional theory is one of Paine’s greatest contributions to political philosophy, and to democratic structures. To dismiss it like Clark does is not being honest or accurate. But he couldn’t find this new theory of constitutions in 1750 England, so he had to flippantly dispose of it.

Class and labor

The same can be said of Clark’s labored attempt to sever any connection between Paine and the emerging labor movement. His claim that “Paine’s economics thus had nothing to do with the new doctrine of socialism, which emerged only in the 1820’s” while technically true is used by Clark not only to scold academics who link Paine to that emerging ideology, but to denigrate Paine’s motivations and world view. To Clark, Paine “did not conceive of ‘the working class’ or any synonym for it, and did not defend such a reification.” To Clark, all that exists is “Paine’s very English ambition … to become a small freeholder, an independent yeoman … although a failure as a farmer in America.” [Another in a long list of vitriolic characterizations from Clark – Paine took up farming at age 67, in retirement, and was too old for the work until he had a stroke 2 years after. Clark calls that a “failure”.] Clark’s claims that since ‘class’ was an unknown concept in Paine’s day, there couldn’t have been class views, class interests, or class contradictions. Another idealist position. Clark gloats over the fact that in academia (at least in Kansas) there exists the “progressive weakening of the politics of class in recent decades” and then states that “a language [of class] was devised only after Paine’s lifetime.” If Clark had properly studied Paine, he would have noticed a letter in 1778 to Henry Laurens:

To Henry Laurens Spring 1778

As we are forming government on a new system, that of representation I will give you my thoughts on the various classes and merits of men in society so far as relates to each other.

The first useful class of citizens are the farmers and cultivators. These may be called citizens of the first necessity, because every thing comes originally from the earth.

After these follow the various orders of manufacturers and mechanics of every kind. These differ from the first class in this particular, that they contribute to the accommodation rather than to the first necessities of life.

Next follow those called merchants and shopkeepers. These are convenient but not important. They produce nothing themselves as the two first classes do, but employ their time in exchanging one thing for another and living by the profits.

Perhaps you will say that in this classification of citizens I have marked no place for myself; that I am neither farmer, mechanic, merchant nor shopkeeper. I believe, however, I am of the first class. I am a farmer of thoughts, and all the crops I raise I give away. I please myself with making you a present of the thoughts in this letter.

THOMAS PAINE.

And as a “farmer of thoughts” he was no failure.

Clark states the obvious that Paine did not know the word “socialism”. But Clark uses this to negate scholars who tie Paine to the socialist movement. When Paine wrote: “This is putting the matter on a general principle, and perhaps it is best to do so; for if we examine the case minutely it will be found that the accumulation of personal property is, in many instances, the effect of paying too little for the labor that produced it; the consequence of which is that the working hand perishes in old age, and the employer abounds in affluence.” (Agrarian Justice), he was not planning the socialist revolution, but he was contributing to the labor movement which evolved into the socialist movement. Why divorce his contribution to that growing consciousness among workers? He was the most influential writer in his time to the ordinary laboring and dispossessed people, he wrote directly to them and contributed to the awakening in them to their rights, individually and collectively. Because he didn’t know the term ‘socialism’ does not diminish his influence in the movement. There is a firm reason why the early unions of New York City hosted and toasted Paine. While the politics of class struggle mostly passed Paine by just before his death (as Alfred Young points out), it doesn’t mean workers (or mechanics or artisans) were not aware of his contributions at the time.

Clark makes similar arguments about “liberalism” and “radicalism”. He accuses scholars of drawing links to Paine, and then denying Paine did anything that advances these trends. The method is consistent throughout.

Clark even questions Paine’s uncompromising attack on monarchy. He reduces Paine to favoring one group of monarchs over another. “Paine’s mind was formed in the decades before 1760, years in which the legitimacy of monarchy was framed almost wholly as a dynastic alternative between the houses of Hanover and Stuart, not between monarchy as such and republicanism.” I guess all the passages in Common Sense, Rights of Man, Address to the Addressers, etc., were to get the Stuarts back on the throne? Paine’s watershed stance against monarchy was an historical leap. All the other reformers and Dissenters in the 1770s never broke with monarchy completely — Price, Cartwright, Burgh, Priestley and their precursors Locke and Montesquieu, wanted only reform of monarchy, giving more power to others, especially the emerging mercantile classes. It was Paine in Common Sense that caused the crack in the dam of political thinking which couldn’t be mended — no compromise with monarchy on principle. Breaking with the unquestioned traditions of hereditary rule and organized religion completely, and not in small reformist steps, was a major contribution of Paine, and it is what made him revolutionary.

Poverty

Clark makes the unsupported claim that “Poverty was not central to his [Paine’s] political thought.” Let’s look at how poverty was central to his political thought:

“It is not charity but a right, not bounty but justice, that I am
pleading for. The present state of civilization is as odious as it
is unjust. It is absolutely the opposite of what it should be, and it
is necessary that a revolution should be made in it. The contrast of
affluence and wretchedness continually meeting and offending the eye,
is like dead and living bodies chained together.” Agrarian Justice

The existence of poverty, which Paine declared increases with the advance of civilization, was the central focus of his attacks on monarchy. His politics and remedies all centered on ending poverty. The plans in Rights of Man and Agrarian Justice, for instance, present concrete ways to at least alleviate the issue, to curb the accumulation of wealth to benefit society.

“All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a
man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and
he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of
civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from
whence the whole came.” Agrarian Justice

Clark claims that “Even his program of social security chiefly extended the practice of English poor relief in his youth,” and “Paine had been a member of the vestry of St. Michal’s parish, and was involved in the regular payments to the poor,” to try and show no original thought. But again he obscures the main point: Paine sought to make government, not private charity, the means to solve the problem, government intervention to redistribute wealth. The last phrase is a modern description of what Paine did, eventually creating the basis for social democracy and the welfare state by popularizing this new approach to government.

Poverty was not seen as endemic to capitalist production by Paine, obviously, even though he made reference to workers not getting fair value in a previous quote. He did show the sources of poverty lie in unfair compensation, tax policies, and theft of land. Capitalism had not matured to industrial capitalism, the systemic impoverishment of populations by the new system had not emerged fully, yet still, the problem of poverty appears throughout Paine’s writings from Europe, and is repeatedly targeted as the problem that cannot be solved by monarchy. Monarchy and hereditary succession were the immediate obstacles to human progress (along with their religious organizations). That was what Paine was dealing with. Yet the seeds in the arguments to overthrow monarchy as a system and mindset did grow into movements on other fronts once the lid on Pandora’s box was removed, and Paine was ever present in postulating new approaches and new concepts to advance humanity’s condition. By popularizing, to the majority of the people, the issues of the new age, Paine played a pivotal role in the mass politics of the new era that carried into the 19th century movements.

###American Revolution

Clark even tries to make the case Paine had no idea what was going on in America in 1776, that the impact of Common Sense was exaggerated, and it did not have wide distribution. No evidence is given except to mention Common Sense was only reprinted as a pamphlet in 7 of the 13 colonies. Of course he neglects all the newspaper reprints, all the comments in newspapers about Common Sense from every state, the 96 declarations of independence based on the language of Common Sense written from every state, etc. He makes fun of the 500,000 copies figure some scholars used, but fails to say it included foreign printings where French editions outpaced American.

By confusing the motives of scholars with the objective role historic people play should immediately discount Clark’s ideas, as his English-centric (to the exclusion of everything else) model has ideological fingerprints all over it, from hands that have used these marginalization techniques against Paine for 200 years. In an attempt to lecture uncontrollable scholars, Clark has an eye to downgrade Paine’s role in history, and his dismissive terminology demonstrates this: Clark refers to Paine “blundering” into situations and applying his disjunctive ideas to alien phenomenon; Clark declares that “Common Sense was more of a bitter negation of his homeland” than a blueprint for American society, “bitter” being a slander taken from the book about former Englishmen trying to get even with their mother country; “Paine failed in a project of universal citizenship” is a claim made by Clark after declaring Paine could never separate himself from the culture of parochial England; Clark claims throughout Paine never learned anything outside of his first two decades in the English countryside, a preposterous claim, but slanderous in its presentation; “Paine was out of his depth in the French Revolution”; “a failure as a farmer in America”; “the society that developed [in America] after 1776, Paine understood little.”; and “Paine’s ideas are seldom now employed functionally to solve present-day problems.”

This last brusque statement is another flaw running throughout Clark’s analysis — because the world did not follow Paine’s philosophy, he had no influence. Because Britain followed the monarchical representative system and not Paine’s system, he had no influence; since America had a bicameral system, Paine had no influence in America; since the French Revolution devolved into tyranny, Paine was irrelevant, etc. Clark confuses the movements to challenge the status quos with the status quo. Paine has been the inspiration for many progressive movements, from free speech to national liberation in South America. This is what makes Paine the perennial revolutionary, not the narrow-minded yeomen stuck intellectually in 1750 Norfolk. To “functionally” apply Paine’s philosophy would entail a level of democratic rule that is scarce in the world, evidenced by struggles for democracy around the world, including the US. It would mean the implementation of FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights, or the abolition of corrupt monarchies, including Britain, or an American government free of oligarchic rule.

But despite the shortcomings of history, Paine has already won, not failed. The conventional wisdom — although not necessarily in practice but in ideals — was Paine’s wisdom: democracy (people, not elites, should control government), a complete separation of church and state, and a loosened, if not severed, grip of organized religion on society.

Obscurantism

There is so much more to untangle from Clark’s gnarled analysis. Here are a few misinterpretations, negative spins, and false claims not already mentioned:

• “Paine was widely read in his day, but a politically aware mass reading public was the creation of the Reformation and the 1640s, not the late eighteenth century”. By denying that Paine created a mass reading public, he slurs over the fact that the reading public of the 1640s was confined to the elite — Paine enlarged that base to the majority.
  
• “Although he had worked as an artisan, he never attributed to artisans, even urban artisans, any special political character or role.” Eric Foner’s documentation on this to the contrary is sound, and issues like the Bank of Pennsylvania cannot be explained outside the political stance of the mechanics of Philadelphia, where Paine’s support was.
  
• “Although Paine protested against the cruelty and misconduct of governments, especially in their colonies, he never systematized these critiques to protest against ‘imperialism’ or ‘colonialism’, concepts that derived from the economic theory of the late nineteenth century.” Again, because Paine didn’t use the term ‘colonialism’ his opposition to British plunder and rule doesn’t count because he did not systematize it, as if America was not a colony. Paine stood in the middle of the first great anti-colonial struggle, yet Clark cannot find a link to more modern forms of colonialism.
  
• Rights of Man “contained no worked out theory of natural rights”. From Rights of Man:
  

  “Every history of the Creation, and every traditionary account,
  
  whether from the lettered or unlettered world, however they may vary in their opinion or belief of certain particulars, all agree in establishing one point, the unity of man; by which I mean that men are all of one degree, and consequently that all men are born equal, and with equal natural rights, in the same manner as if posterity had been continued by creation instead of generation, the latter being only the mode by which the former is carried forward; and consequently, every child born into the world must be considered as deriving its existence from God. The world is as new to him as it was to the first man that existed, and his natural right in it is of the same kind.”
  

  
  

And:

“Hitherto we have spoken only (and that but in part) of the natural rights of man. We have now to consider the civil rights of man, and to show how the one originates from the other. Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured. His natural rights are the foundation of all his civil rights. But in order to pursue this distinction with more precision, it is necessary to make the different qualities of natural and civil rights.

A few words will explain this. Natural rights are those which apper tain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the natural rights of others. Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society.

Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection.

From this short review, it will be easy to distinguish between that class of natural rights which man retains after entering into society, and those which he throws into the common stock as a member of society.

The natural rights which he retains, are all those in which the power to execute is as perfect in the individual as the right itself. Among this class, as is before mentioned, are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind: consequently, religion is one of those rights.

The natural rights which are not retained, are all those in which, though the right is perfect in the individual, the power to execute them is defective. They answer not his purpose. A man, by natural right, has a right to judge in his own cause; and so far as the right of the mind is concerned, he never surrenders it: but what availeth it him to judge, if he has not power to redress ? He therefore deposits his right in the common stock of society, and takes the arm of society, of which he is a part, in preference and in addition to his own. Society grants him nothing.

Every man is proprietor in society, and draws on the capital as a matter of right. From these premises, two or three certain conclusions will follow.

First, That every civil right grows out of a natural right; or, in other words, is a natural right exchanged.

Secondly, That civil power, properly considered as such, is made up of the aggregate of that class of the natural rights of man, which becomes defective in the individual in point of power, and answers not his purpose, but when collected to a focus, becomes competent to the purpose of every one.

Thirdly, That the power produced from the aggregate of natural rights, imperfect in power in the individual, cannot be applied to invade the natural rights which are retained in the individual, and in which the power to execute is as perfect as the right itself.

We have now, in a few words, traced man from a natural individual to a member of society, and shown, or endeavored to show, the quality of the natural rights retained, and those which are exchanged for civil rights. Let us now apply those principles to governments.”

This seems like a worked out theory of natural rights far beyond the 1750 English political discussions of Paine’s youth.

• Clark even questions Paine’s legacy in freethought: “Only in the history of English freethinking did Paine enjoy a posthumous prominence; but freethinking was to lead via agnosticism to atheism, positions that the deist Paine had repudiated.” Clark fails to see the legacy that Paine has in the freethought movement is his stance against organized religion. The Age of Reason still inspires new freethinkers and remains the enchiridion of freethought.
  
• Paine “has written nothing in condemnation of British ‘colonialism’ or ‘imperialism’; indeed he had been an enthusiastic combatant in the war of 1756-1763…” A teenage sailor was “enthusiastic” about extending the British empire? e,e, cummings was a soldier in W.W. I, so that proves he really wasn’t an anti-war poet?
  
• Paine’s famous quote “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” from Common Sense is reduced by Clark to a sermon from the pulpit: “In a secular sense this was impossible, and his pamphlet demands interpretation not as a prophetic emancipation but as a product of Paine’s English religious experience, mobilized in a new context.” This ignores the fact that this phrase summed up Paine’s detailed argument of how America can break free of the old Europe and invent its own government philosophy free of privilege and anciens regimes. And in a secular sense it did prove possible, and has inspired nascent revolutionary movements ever since.
  
• Clark claims Paine was not aware of the link between the American and French Revolutions until Part II of Rights of Man. But his letters to Rush and Washington in 1790 and 1791 refute that. He states that to debunk Paine’s supposed self-image as “progenitor of revolutions”, but Paine describes himself as a servant to the cause, never its originator, even as he proposed ideas that were original in their application. Clark goes on to deny any effect on France from the American Revolution anyway, which stands opposed to the fact that revolutionary leaders in France paid homage to American leaders, including Paine.
  

And there are dozens of other poorly supported statements, easily refuted:

• “Paine moved in a cultural cocoon.”
  
• “He wrote nothing to show that he recognized anything essentially different about American culture.” And then he contradicts himself later with: “What attuned Paine with the American population was his use of English religious imagery and argument” but states he hid his deistic views, showing a sophisticated awareness of American culture at the time of Common Sense.
  
• Clark speaks of a passage in Rights of Man where Paine uses an account from Lafayette, describing it as “awkwardly inserted” and Paine “unknowingly swallowed” the “self-serving” account.
  
• After 1802 on Paine’s return to America, “Paine persisted in a lurid binary view of American party politics, a view still indebted to the English polarity that dated from the Exclusion Crisis of the 1680s.” The binary view was the struggle between two ideologies, Federalism and Republicanism, being fought out in America. To stretch that back to the Exclusion Crisis is creative, although myopic.
  
• “Two revolutions had made little difference to his core beliefs; although he extrapolated those beliefs in a few areas, he seldom did so logically or systematically.”
  
• “…he became open to the idea of bicameral assemblies, although this again echoed the Westminster model rather than the new American states.” It echoed neither because his openness was not to bicameralism, as in Lords and Senates, but to having assemblies debate separately and come together afterwards to pass laws. Paine objected strenuously to the idea of a House of Lords or a Senate, and said so consistently.
  
• “…his celebrity in his lifetime is more difficult to explain”. Only in Clark’s world is this easy to imagine.
  

John Adams was a major ideological opponent of Paine, because Adams regarded Paine as a threat for being “so democratical”. He summarized Paine’s role in history as he was experiencing it: “I know not whether any man in the world has had more influence on its inhabitants or affairs or the last thirty years than Tom Paine. There can no severer satyr on the age. For such a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a bitch wolf, never before in any age of the world was suffered by the poltroonery of mankind, to run through such a career of mischief. Call it then the Age of Paine.” It seems that Clark is channeling Adams. Like Adams, Clark can’t understand why Paine is so popular. It is clear from even his opponents of the day that Paine was an impactful player, his philosophy was threatening the old regimes, and he was unleashing forces the old guard could not control. It appears Clark has the same grudges. He would rather slander than explain, bear false witness than show scholarship.

Or perhaps Clark’s essay was meant as farce, a lampooning of conservative interpretations of Thomas Paine. If it was not meant that way, he has still provided one.

As if by accidental metaphor, Paine refuses to remain buried.

“Slander belongs to the class of dastardly vices. It always acts under cover. It puts insinuation in the place of evidence, and tries to impose by pretending to believe.” – Thomas Paine

The post Burying Thomas Paine appeared first on .

By Fayette Arnold

“Paine Was The Voice Of The Revolution And Was An Independent Thinker On The Level Of Voltaire And Goethe”.

From Thomas Paine Apostle of Freedom By Jack Fruchman Jr. – Paine Scholar

Paine Is An Impressive Figure As He Took A Tax Rebellion And Transformed It Into A Revolution And Independence. This is What Neither Side Expected Or Wanted.

Fayette Arnold, Three St. Croix Lofts Drive, Unit 104, St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin 5402, CHANGING THE 18TH CENTURIES VIEW OF LIFE

“In My Judgment, Thomas Paine Was the Best Political Writer That Ever Lived. What He Wrote Was Pure Nature, And His Soul And His Pen Went Together. Ceremony, Pageantry, And All the Paraphernalia Of Power Had No Effect Upon Him. He Examined Into The Why And Wherefore Of Things. He Was Perfectly Radical In His Mode of Thought. Nothing Short Of Bedrock Satisfied Him”1.

Robert G. Ingersoll

Introduction

Despite Thomas Paine’s numerous contributions to America and the world, his most significant accomplishment has escaped the attention of scholars as well as students of history. There is an important and vital area of his thought and creativity, completely neglected, which illuminates Paine’s unique role in American and World History. One of many factors that make Thomas Paine a great historical figure and force is his transformation of Lockean Philosophy. In fact, he significantly changed the structure and meaning of Locke’s thought system. In modifying the public’s understanding of Locke, Paine altered the character and destiny of American and World History. This may be Paine’s greatest contribution to mankind as well as the seminal aspect of his intellectual activities that makes him one of the world’s most prominent and original thinkers.

Thomas Paine’s ideas and efforts inspired and consolidated the American Revolution. He provided the colonists with the fuel to fire their rebellion. His majestic phrases rang through the colonies and united Americans in a common cause. Paine’s eloquence in speech and the power of his pen imparted the ideals and courage needed for the founding of a new nation. In his efforts to unite and direct the colonists, Paine created what may have been one of his greatest phrases – The United State of America.

The American concepts of freedom, equality, and human rights, which came from the mind and pen of Thomas Paine, set the 18th century world ablaze. He gave Americans and Europeans the rational, inspiration, and confidence to reject outmoded social and political structures of the past and the courage to create new ones that would provide a better future for mankind. Men and women were longing for a social order where there was justice as well as the ability to achieve their human potential.

Democracy would provide the new vehicle for reaching age old aspirations. A modification of the philosophy of John Locke would be a stepping stone to that brighter future. Thomas Paine went far beyond Locke’s thinking and created a new intellectual architecture and world view. Paine broke the bonds of the 18th centuries’ intellectual framework, philosophical, social and political. He shattered the structure that John Locke’s thinking was contained within and which his ideas supported. America is not founded on the ideas of John Locke per se, but upon the transformation of his concepts by Thomas Paine. In altering Locke, Paine gave his ideas meanings that John Locke would not have recognized or accepted.

Paine’s ideas and concepts about freedom, equality and independence were new and unique. They went well beyond the opinions embraced by Europeans and colonial Americans. For example, according to John Locke man was free, equal an independent in the state of nature, but gave up that status when he accepted the “Social Compact” and joined society. In Locke’s own words, “But though men when they enter society give up the equality, liberty and executive power they had in the state of nature into the hands of society… yet it being only with the intention in everyone to preserve himself, his liberty and property”.2 Locke apparently sees no conflict between individuals giving up equality, liberty, and executive power over self and their likely status and treatment within an autocratic society. His “Social Compact” takes away from the individual the very ideals Locke appears to be espousing. In the mind of Thomas Paine, men were free, equal and independent within society. This was a radical notion and a threat to the political and social structure of the 18th century world. The consequences of this shift in thinking were enormous as it fundamentally changed a world view and value system that Europeans had revered for centuries.

According to Locke’s conception of man and society, human beings are not free, equal or independent because they have accepted a “Social Compact”. Locke finds a variety of reasons for condoning inequality and injustice as well as a lack of freedom and independence within the social and political orders. He claims that the invention of money created conditions whereby men give their “consent” and “agree” that the earth’s possessions should be “disproportionate” and “unequal”. Further, Locke proclaims that the unequal conditions of wealth created by money operate outside the “bounds of society” as well as the “Compact”. Although he gives many reasons for human inequality, Locke still states that, “All men by nature are equal. I cannot propose to understand all sorts of equality. Age or virtue may give men a just precedence. Excellency of parts and merit may place others above the common level. Birth may subject some, and alliance or benefits others…”3 It is obvious, except to Locke, that the ideals he professes do not apply in the social and political atmosphere existing in England. Locke is consistently inconsistent in his thinking and cannot logically reconcile his philosophy with the world of reality.

Locke fails to perceive the conflict between his abstract ideals and the reasons he give for their circumvention in the concrete world. In addition, he does not understand that most of the inequality and injustice existing in his day was due to the structure of society and government which favored the few and handicapped the many. His explanation of the reasons for differences in status and wealth within society ignores the impact of social and political arrangements that create inequity and limited opportunity for the majority of the population. Locke’s writings also lack political and social insights that could be utilized to create programs to alleviate injustice and inequity resulting from England’s feudal and autocratic traditions. Of course, his aims were not egalitarian but elitist.

John Locke does not utilize the term republic or republican in his writings, but frequently employs the word commonwealth which he defines as a civilized community. In fact, Locke in his “Essay Concerning Civil Government” uses the word commonwealth over 75 times. Further, the term democracy is only mentioned once and that is for the purpose of defining commonwealth as not meaning democracy. Locke’s philosophy is clearly concerned with the formation of a commonwealth rather than the creation of a republic. Locke affirms this by saying, “By commonwealth, I must be understood all along to mean, not a democracy, or form of government, but an independent community which the Latins signify by the word civitas, to which the word which best answers in our language is commonwealth, and most properly expresses such a society of men”4. Locke’s philosophy is focused on building a civilized society that would avoid the political and social strife that existed in his era. His goal was not to create a government based upon democratic values, but to establish a refined, rational, well mannered, and harmonious social order founded upon a traditional belief in limited monarchy.

Interpreters of Locke’s philosophy have extracted his belief in republican principles from his use of certain words, especially terms like “freedom”, “equality”, and “executive power over self”, and his emphasis on laws being created, not by the king but by the legislature. Locke indicates that the legislature in making laws not only checks the power of the sovereign, it also “puts men out of the state of nature into that of commonwealth”. He believes that the legislature is the means by which men achieve the purpose or end results of their entering into society. The reason human beings accept social institutions are the “enjoyment of their properties in peace and safety”. Further, the “instrument” and “means” of fulfilling this aim are the “laws established in society (by the legislature)”.5

Traditional expositions of John Locke’s philosophy credit him with creating democratic ideas that were responsible for inspiring the American and French Revolutions. In fact, customary explanations of his ideology express the belief that the structure of the American state is predicated upon Locke’s political and social ideals. Conventional proponents of Lockean thought also indicate he embraced the opinion that society and the state are independent of each other. This interpretation of Locke is founded on the conviction that the social order is based upon natural law and commonly shared moral rights. From his notion of natural law, exponents of Locke deduce that he supported the precept that the state and society are separate entities. To Lockes’ interpreters, this implies the formation of a social order that is democratic in nature and which requires very little in the way of government.

However, a close inspection of John Locke’s philosophy reveals that the above points of view are invalid. It is impossible to associate Locke’s beliefs concerning the reasons for as well as the role of government with the theory of natural law. The political and social functions of government devised and implemented by the English Aristocracy and Monarchy are in conflict with the doctrine of natural and moral law. In fact, Locke’s “Democratic Ideals” are abrogated by his “Social Compact” and his belief in Autocratic government. Again, according to Locke, it is government (Laws enacted by the legislature) that takes man out of the state of nature. Only by abandoning the freedom, equality and independence men possessed in the state of nature can mankind live in harmony within society. Locke’s fundamental precepts and the society he is attempting to create are diametrically opposed. It is quite apparent that his social and political orders are not separate entities. In fact, they are one and the same due to his replacing natural law with political laws that are derived from a government ruled by the Nobility and Sovereign. In John Locke’s thought system, God’s law has been replaced by man’s law. This results in the creation of a state and society that are neither separate from one another or republican in nature.

Thomas Paine offered mankind an alternative to John Locke’s conflicting and illogical thought system. Paine rejected any philosophy advancing the idea that social and political equality is best achieved in a society ruled by Patricians and Monarchs. In contrast to Locke, Paine created a democratic belief system based upon popular sovereignty. He replaced a medieval view of the social and political orders with an outlook that was both Modern and Egalitarian. By presenting an approach to society and government that was based upon an acceptance of natural law as well as upon his understanding of God’s will for mankind, Paine handed the world a new and different philosophy as well as an expanded world view in which men would be equal, free and independent within the social and political orders. He not only gave old words and ideas new meanings but also greater dimensions and depth. Thomas Paine’s beliefs and not John Locke’s “Social Compact” became the legal and social foundation of American society. Our nation’s intellectual and spiritual character came directly from the mind of Thomas Paine.

THOMAS PAINE AND JOHN LOCKE RE-EXAMINED

Thomas Paine’s fundamental belief system as well as his views on the origin and purpose of government are strikingly different than John Locke’s. His intrinsic principles were based upon a belief in freedom, equality, human rights and security for all of mankind. Paine’s opinions with respect to the reasons for and the objectives of government were, in fact, contrary to those of John Locke. To quote Thomas Paine, “Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here is the design and end of government, viz. “freedom and security”.6 His belief in human freedom rested upon the foundation of equal rights. In his own words, “Why then not trace the rights of man, to the creation of man. The illuminating and divine principle of equal rights of man (for it had its origin from the maker of man), relates not only to the living individuals; but to generations of men succeeding each other. Every history of creation… agree in establishing one point, the unity of man; by which I mean that men are all of one degree and consequently that all men are born equal and with equal rights’.7 “His natural rights are the foundation of all his civil rights”.8

Thomas Paine summed up his political and social viewpoint by saying, “Men are born; an always continue, free and equal in respect to their rights. The end of all political association, is, the preservation of the natural an imprescriptible rights of man… political liberty consists in the power of doing whatever does not injure another. The exercise of the natural rights of every man has no other limit than those that are necessary to secure to every other man the free exercise of the same rights and these limits are determined by law”.9

Because men are born having equal rights and retain these rights within the social and political order, government according to Paine must be based upon the will of the people. To ensure their rights, citizens must be allowed to direct their own affairs. This belief in the consent of the governed presents a sharp contrast to John Locke’s philosophy in which government and society are based upon rule by monarchs and patricians. The objective of Locke’s social and political thinking is to protect those who have property and social status. Locke’s thought system certainly was not predicated on power to the people. His was an elitist conception of society. Dominate power in the social and political orders was shared by the king and aristocracy. In fact, the purpose of Locke’s writings were to confirm and justify existing conditions in English society and government, conditions that were inherited from a medieval world order and world view.

John Locke’s philosophy was founded upon exclusivity, selectivity as well as patrimony and not upon the universality and equality of mankind. Locke conceives of government as an institution that primarily serves and protects the noble and the few. Thus, government and the power structure that controls it are purposely designed to be undemocratic in nature. Paine believed that government should be constructed and operated so that it directed its efforts to serve the greater good of all citizens. Unlike John Locke, he did not feel that bloodline and property should determine one’s station and opportunities in life. Republican government is not based upon property and pedigree but on majority rule.

According to the philosopher Bertrand Russell, John Locke is “the most influential though by no means the most profound of philosophers”.10 Locke’s philosophy was “little more than a clarification and systematization of prevalent opinion in England”.11 “Even before the reformation theologians tended to believe in setting limits to kingly power”.12 “What Locke has to say about the state of nature and the law of nature, in the main, is not original, but a repetition of medieval scholastic doctrine”.13 Bertrand Russell states that his ideas can be traced back to the writings of “Saint Thomas Aquinas and Hugo Grotius”.14 John Locke in dealing with the concepts of liberty, human rights, and equality was looking to the past at ideals that he felt were already established. Thomas Paine by contrast was looking to the future at ideals that needed to be actualized.

Although John Locke’s thinking was affected by the Renaissance and Reformation, his ideas on government and society find their roots in Medieval Europe. To be more specific, Locke’s philosophy is derived from the thought structure of the medieval Catholic Church which was based upon a combination of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian revelation. The Schoolmen of the middle ages, who were exponents of Scholasticism, propounded arguments to challenge the theory of the divine right of kings in order to justify the Popes position as being superior to that of monarchs. Despite the fact that Locke rejected Scholasticism, his political and social outlook was rooted in this system of thought. The Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation as well as the Enlightenment should not be viewed as sharply divided eras, but as a gradual transition occurring during a period of over 1300 years. The various ages did react against one another, sometimes with great passion. However, even with their predilection for zealotry, like children rebelling against their parents, much of the parent remained in the child.

Notwithstanding the impact of the past upon Thomas Paine, his philosophy and belief system was not acquired from Scholasticism. Paine’s ideas and ideals were inspired by the Enlightenment and his Deist theological beliefs. He felt that God revealed himself to man through nature. Thus, reason and science were the means of approaching both truth and one’s creator. In brief, Thomas Paine’s philosophy came from the Modern world and not the Middle Ages. America’s world view and value system is derived from Rationalism rather than Scholasticism.

There are additional reasons for concluding that Thomas Paine’s philosophy was not acquired from John Locke. Professor Jack Fruchtman, Jr. in the introduction to his book, Thomas Paine Apostle of Freedom, quotes Paine as saying, “I never read John Locke, nor ever had the work in my hand”.15 Thomas Paine’s philosophy was created from his belief in human reason and his vision of God’s ongoing plan for humanity. It was not acquired from reading John Locke or being influenced by the medieval power struggles of the Christian Church. Paine is clearly a product of the Enlightenment; Locke a reflection of the Reformation, Renaissance and Middle Ages. Unfortunately, we have attributed our modern view of freedom, equality and democracy to John Locke’s philosophical beliefs and have failed to perceive that our American thought and value system is unique and thus quite different than his.

Bertrand Russell also states that John Locke’s concepts with respect to the law of nature and the state of nature are not only unoriginal; they are in addition quite vague. Per Russell, “The nearest thing to a definition of the state of nature to be found in Locke is the following: Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth: with authority to judge between them; is properly called the state of nature”.16 Russell comments, “This is not a description of the life of savages, but of an imagined community of virtuous anarchists, who need no police or law courts because they always obey “Reason”, which is the same as “Natural Law”, which in turn, consists of those laws of conduct that are held to have divine origin”.17 Locke’s beliefs that human beings are equal, independent, and rational are naive and contradictory as well as disingenuous. The vague and contrary nature of Locke’s thinking has allowed us to read into his writings ideas and beliefs that he did not embrace. In fact, modern interpretations of his philosophy would have surprised him.

In Locke’s opinion the “State of Nature” was abrogated by a “Social Compact” which created government. The “State of Nature” is not dissolved by just any compact, but only one that can make a single body politic. In brief, Locke begins his thinking with a supposition that he refers to as a “State of Nature”. This state is antecedent to any and all human government. It is ruled by a “Law of Nature” which is based upon divine commands rather than being imposed by human legislation. Men finally emerged from this “State of Nature” by creating a “Social Compact” which became the means for inaugurating civil government. Of course in light of logic and man’s historical experience, the concept of the “Social Compact” seems absurd. However, it may have been the best and most practical explanation people could envisage to account for the creation of government and society.

According to John Locke, “The great and chief end of men uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government is to protect their property, to which in the state of nature there are many things wanting”.18 Property plays a prominent and in fact dominant role in his political and social philosophy. It is obvious from his writings that property is the main reason for creating the institution known as government. In fact, Bertrand Russell proclaims that “Locke is driven by his worship of property.”19 Again, it should be noted that the purpose of government for Paine is to ensure freedom, equality, human rights, and security for all human beings.

Locke’s obsession with property must be emphasized as it reflects a belief system as well as a social and political outlook that is fundamentally at odds with Thomas Paine’s thinking and the American conception of democracy. John Locke’s thought system reserved political influence for those who were eminent both socially and economically. John Locke believed that economic power in the form of money was the real derivation of political power. He felt that predominate political control should be vested within the aristocracy. Those individuals in society who have conspicuous monetary interests should manage government. Citizens lacking pronounced wealth in either property or money did not deserve a voice in the affairs of state. In fact, the aristocracy feared the lower classes because they were the majority within society. A government and society based upon majority rule would not bode well for the nobility. In contrast to Locke, Paine believed in rule by the majority as well as universal suffrage so that all citizens could have a voice in government. Locke’s philosophy was not designed to support democracy or the welfare of the common man. His social, political and economic beliefs were the antithesis of Thomas Paine’s egalitarian views regarding humanity, government and society.

John Locke actually believed that English society and government correspond to his expressed ideals. Thomas Paine rejected the assumption that the English people were free, independent and lived within an egalitarian society. He bluntly stated that their government was not republican in nature. In his words, “If we will suffer ourselves to examine the component parts of the English Constitution, we shall find them to be base remains of two ancient tyrannies, compounded with some new republican materials.

First: The remains of monarchial tyranny in the person of the King.

Second: The remains of aristocratical tyranny in the persons of the Peers.

Thirdly: The new republican materials, in the persons of the Commons, on whose virtue depends the freedom of England.

The first two being hereditary, are independent of the people; wherefore in a constitutional sense they contribute nothing towards the freedom of the state. To say, “that the constitution of England is a union of three powers, reciprocally checking each other, is farcical, either the words have no meaning, or they are flat contradictions.”20 Paine avows that the British government is based upon the principles of despotism. In fact, he feels that in England there are despotic rivalries between the King, Parliament and the Church. The conflicts amongst these three entities were exacerbated because they functioned within a society which evolved out of feudalism. According to Paine, the remaining elements of feudalism within British society were also a form of tyranny. He believed that the fundamental nature of English culture and its government precluded it from being a democracy.

To properly compare the difference between John Locke’s and Thomas Paine’s philosophy, it is necessary to further explore their conflicting viewpoints regarding the nature of society and government. First we will allow Paine to speak for himself and then compare his thought system to John Locke’s. Paine indicates that there are “several sources from which governments have arisen, and on which they have been founded. First, superstition. Secondly, power. Thirdly, the common interests of society and the rights of man. The first was government of priest craft, the second of conquerors, and the third of reason”.21 Paine indicates that monarchy and aristocracy emerged from governments that were founded upon conquest. He is clearly annoyed with the idea of government and society being established on the basis of either superstition or conquest. Paine expresses his dissatisfaction withthese two kinds of government by saying, “I became irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by forceor fraud”.22

Paine indicates that in his day there were only two types of government. He states, “The two modes ofgovernment which prevail in the world are, first, government by election and representation: secondly, government by hereditary succession. The former is generally known by the name of republic; the latter by that of monarchy and aristocracy. These two distinct and opposite forms, erect themselves on two distinct and opposite bases of reason and ignorance”.23 According to Paine, prior to the American experiment there were no revolutions worthy of the name. He sees the American enterprise as the source of modern democracy. In brief, the modern republican form of government began with the American Revolution. Thomas Paine asserts, “What were formerly called revolutions, were little more than a change of persons, or an alteration of local circumstances”.24 “One of the great advantages of the American Revolution has been, that it led to the discovery of the principles, and laid open the impositions, of governments. All revolutions till then had worked within the atmosphere of a court, and never the great floor of the nation. The parties were always of the class of courtiers; and whatever was the rage for reformation, they carefully preserved the fraud of the profession. It is impossible that such governments that have hither to existed in the world could have commenced by any other means than a total violation of every principle, sacred and moral”.25

Paine in his analysis of the inadequacies of British government and society criticizes hereditary rule as irrational and in fact ludicrous. He points out that virtue, wisdom, intelligence and moral character are not evenly passed on from generation to generation. Their quality and variety vary through time to an extent that government is subject to being run by human passions and driven by accidents. Objections to hereditary rule could only be removed if virtue and wisdom as well as other attributes required by an overlord were, in fact, inherited. Paine declares that, “The representative system of government takes society and civilization for its basis; nature, reason, and experience for its guide. The hereditary system, therefore, is as repugnant to human wisdom, as to human rights, and is absurd, as it is unjust. A hereditary governor is an inconsistent as hereditary author”.26

In his writings Thomas Paine builds a strong case for the superiority of republican government due to its rationality and civility. He is also convinced that Britain fails to qualify as a republic, not only because of its governmental structure, but by reason of its lack of a constitution. Paine states that “Government without a constitution is power without a right. All delegated power is a trust, and all assumed power is usurpation”.27 He asserts that a constitution is not created by government, but by an act of the people. A constitution belongs to the nation and is not the property of those who rule. In fact, it is antecedent to and distinct from government. Paine cites America as being an example of a nation where constitutions are established by the authority of the citizenry. In contrasting England to America he declares that, “In the Magna Charta and Bill of Rights…we see nothing of a constitution, but only of restrictions on assumed power. From the time of William (the Conqueror) a species of government arose, issuing out of this coalition or rights…that can be described by no other name than despotic legislation…the only right it acknowledges out of itself, is the right of petitioning. Where is the constitution that either gives or restrains power”?28

Paine concludes his arguments against the British form of government by stating that it is a species of slavery, whereas representative rule establishes and secures freedom. He feels that because England lacks a true constitution there is nothing to regulate or restrain the abuse of power. As a result of the absence of a constitution, government is both irrational and tyrannical. Paine declares, “Government is but now beginning to be known. Hither to it has been the mere exercise of power, which forbade all effectual inquiry into rights, and grounded itself wholly on possessions. The rights of man are the rights of all generations of men, and cannot be monopolized by any”.29

According to modern interpretations of Lock’s philosophy, he believed that Britain was a “republic” because Parliament had the authority to make laws and check as well as control the executive branch of government (the King). Locke felt that power resided in the people or to be more precise in their chosen representatives. However, when referring to political power, the term people to Locke means men of property. In his political and social system, power is in the hands of the Aristocracy and Sovereign. Paine attacked the English government as it represented a combination of tyrannical Royalty and decadent Aristocracy. Because of its power structure and lack of a constitution, British style government placed severe limitations on the concept of democracy. There is a republican element in this system due to the fact that Parliament consisted of a House of Commons as well as a House of Lords. However, the House of Lords was the dominate power and the system of electing people to the House of Commons was far from democratic. The few rather than the many chose the nations representatives. It was not until the 20th century (Parliament Act of 1911) that legislative supremacy shifted to the House of Commons.

It is interesting that Locke in his discourses relating to the structure and functions of government has absolutely nothing to say about the judiciary. This is astonishing as debates regarding the judiciaries role within the framework of government were common. In fact, the subject was a heated topic of discussion in Locke’s day. A strong judiciary would have the potential to alleviate the imbalances of power within the British system of government and cause it to evolve along a more democratic path. Locke overlooked the importance, in fact the necessity, of an independent judiciary as a prerequisite for ensuring that government would be just, impartial as well as truly republican in nature. Not only was Locke’s view of government lacking in balance and substance, he failed to perceive that the government and social system that he was advocating was actually non-existent. To quote Bertrand Russell, “Locke seemed blandly unaware that, in all the countries of Europe, the realization of his programs (philosophy) would hardly be possible without a bloody revolution. The odd thing is that he could announce doctrines requiring so much revolution before they could be put into effect, and yet show no sign that he thought the system existing in his day unjust, or that he was aware of it being different from the system he advocated”.30

Locke’s attitude isn’t surprising if one realizes that he wasn’t advocating modern democracy, but the status quo of British society and government. The purpose of his writings were to provide a Justification for the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 and 1689. John Locke was attempting to defend the past and to do so within the framework of traditional British society. Unlike Thomas Paine, he was not acting to create the future order of mankind. Locke did not envisage our modern American concept of republican government. He had no clue with respect to the nature of our egalitarian world view and value system. In essence, Locke’s philosophy reflected convictions that were popular in his day. Thus, Paine’s and Locke’s thought systems are dissimilar in origin and content. Because they often used similar terminology does not mean their words are synonymous.

According to Bertrand Russell, “Locke is the most fortunate of all philosophers. He completed his work in theoretical philosophy just at the moment when the government of his country fell into the hands of men who shared his political opinions. Both in practice and in theory, the views which he advocated were held, for many years to come, by the most vigorous and influential politicians and philosophers”.31 This statement is true until Paine’s entry upon the world stage in the latter half of the 18th century. Then John Locke would be forever transformed.

The increase in democratization within Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries was due to a delayed and reluctant response to revolutions in American and France. The English government did not just wake up in the 20th century and shift controlling power to the House of Commons because it finally understood John Locke. What impacted and moved the people of England to accept democratic reforms were the ideas and ideals born out of the American Revolution. An extreme slowness to embrace change and a hidebound worship of tradition lies at the heart of British character. To this day, modern English Democracy is combined with an archaic and debilitated monarchy. Bertrand Russell in trying to explain the English temperament, as well as to account for John Locke’s paradoxical thinking states, “A conflict between King and Parliament in the civil war gave Englishmen, once for all, a love of compromise and moderation, and a fear of pushing any theory to its logical conclusion, which has dominated them down to the present time”.32 When dealing with Locke there is an obvious difference between appearance and reality. The simplest way of resolving the evident paradox that exists in Locke’s political and social ideas that sharply conflict with his actual beliefs and life style, is to realize that Locke’s world view and value system are a mirror image of his understanding of past and current British culture. In brief, his value system and world view were not contrary to, but embraced traditional British institutions and their underlying precepts. Again, Locke was attempting to conserve and modify rather than dismantle the structure of the old world order. In brief, he was not trying to create new political and social formations.

In order to more fully comprehend the dissimilarity between the political and social outlook of John Locke and Thomas Paine, it is necessary to understand that they were born over 100 years apart (1632-1704 versus 1737-1809). Both were affected by unique social, political and religious forces and as a result had distinctive concerns and goals. Not only did Locke and Paine live in separate eras, they were from different social classes and did not share the same cultural views. The era in which they lived and their social class status resulted in divergent and conflicting philosophies. Paine’s goal was to usher in a new world order based upon fresh and untried social and political ideals and structures. Locke’s aim was to justify the political and social arrangements already in existence. Locke grew up during a time of civil war and social disorder. He believed that the only foundation for eliminating violence and securing peace within society was through government by a protestant monarchy that was checked as well as controlled by Parliament. In addition to limited monarchy and rule by the aristocracy, he visualized a comprehensive and tolerant church establishment that would embrace the majority of discordant religious sects within society. Locke felt that the appropriate balances between the branches of government, as well as between government and church, would result in civility and harmony within the social order. He was convinced that the current structure of British government and society provided for a peaceful and civilized culture. In contrast, it was Paine’s opinion that “All European governments (France now excepted) are constructed not on the principles of universal civilization, but on the reverse of it…”33 Paine felt that European governments (excluding France)actually placed themselves above the law and ignored both the will of the people and the will of God.

Paine like Locke grew up in a time of social unrest. However, instead of attempting to justify the social and political world about him, he rebelled against its restrictive and oppressive nature. In contrast to Locke, Paine who was born into a lower social class was repulsed by the injustice and adverse social conditions that flourished around him in English society. He said, “When…we see age going to the workhouse and youth to the gallows in a civilized country, something must be wrong in the system of government. Why is it that scarcely any are executed but the poor? Young people should be educated and older people supported…The resources of a country are lavished upon kings, upon courts, upon hirelings. The poor are compelled to support the fraud that oppresses them”…34 Paine displays his anger towards inequitable social conditions by saying, “When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them, my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive…When these things can be said, then may that country boast about its constitution and government”.35

Thomas Paine believed that poverty, ignorance and injustice were a national disgrace. In order to eliminate injustice and resolve social problems, he advocated social and political reforms on a grand scale and in a manner that is original and modern. Not only did Paine extol modern republican government and the universal franchises, he recommended and pleaded for state sponsored programs such as medical care, guaranteed employment and compensation, maintenance and security for the elderly and indigent, as well as free universal education. No other person in the revolutionary period was pleading for social security, socialized medicine, free universal education and other forms of state welfare. Thomas Jefferson did suggest a state funded educational program. His plan was created years earlier by a curriculum committee [Jefferson’s educational program was devised by a committee of revisors at the College of William and Mary in 1779. It was presented by Jefferson to the Virginia legislature in 1817. 12.] Paine made it clear that his ideas and proposals were neither paternalistic or Christian philanthropy. According to Paine, these state supported social programs were not charity but a right.

In both social thought and humane policies, Paine stood alone and was ahead of his times. He advanced these and other ideas on government’s civic responsibilities almost 150 years before the rise of social democracy. No similar sweeping social reforms can be found in John Locke’s writings. In fact, they are conspicuous by their absence. Locke has been cited for representing liberal thought that grew out of the Renaissance and Reformation. It should be noted, his thinking is only liberal compared to that of the Middle Ages. It does not reflect modern liberalism which grew out of the Enlightenment. Thomas Paine is the father of modern liberalism. Our American view of the nature of government and society can be traced to his writings and not those of John Locke. The inspiration for radical change, within mankind’s social and political orders, came from the new and not the old world.

Another critical area of thought that distinguishes Thomas Paine’s Philosophy from John Locke’s relates to Paine’s seminal thinking regarding the nature of the relationship between society and government. One of the most original and creative aspects of Paine’s thought system, that made the modern world possible, is the discrimination he made between civil society and government. In brief, he changed mankind’s view concerning the relationship of society and government. “Common Sense” is the first modern political essay to make and defend a distinction (separation) between the concepts of state and civil society. Previous to the printing of this political tract the terms state and civil society were looked at as being the same. All American and European writers, including Locke, utilized the concept of civil society to portray political associations that bound people together. In European tradition the state and civil society are interchangeable terms. Elemental or conclusive power was originally vested in the king and over time increasingly shared with members of the aristocracy. Louis XIV summed up the old worlds political and social point of view (philosophy) when he said, “I am the state”. According to Thomas Paine the people are the state.

Paine turned the 18th century’s concept of government and society on its head. After and because of “Common Sense” people felt that they, rather than rulers and aristocrats, exercised ultimate control over both government and society. Past ways of looking at political and social relationships were inverted. Overlords would be viewed as subject of the citizenry. The divine right of king’s philosophy was challenged by a thought system that placed decisive authority and power in the hands of the populace. A shift in thinking took place in which government of, by and for the people became the new reality. The raison d’etre for government would be the rights and welfare of the people. America’s revolution was a struggle between two diametrically positioned philosophies, rule from the top or rule by the populace.

“Common Sense” treated previous political and social concepts and principles as obsolete and in fact irrelevant. In order to support a republican point of view, Paine had to disconnect the state/civil society couplet. He preferred to use the terms society and government. These words though related were conceived of as being separate entities. Paine believed that government is simply a delegation of power by the public to representatives who are to exercise its use for the common good. Power was to be utilized to provide universal benefits for the citizenry. Government exists to secure individual liberties and to protect the populace from harm whether caused by internal or external sources. In short, the role of government is to ensure the rights, well-being and advancement of its people.

“Common Sense” was brilliantly written and in fact a revolution in the use of language. It mesmerized the American public. Paine’s treatise boldly argued several critical social ideas from an American point of view. His essay did so with great power and enormous consequence. Its originality, creativity and uniqueness stimulated public discussions that forever changed America. After “Common Sense” American and World History would be profoundly altered and find new directions.

There are other factors in addition to those already presented that reveal a difference in the character of these two men. For example, Locke has stated, “Lastly those are not all to be tolerated who deny the being of God”.36 This statement displays a narrow minded and intolerant attitude that can be traced to his medieval world view and value system. Locke’s religious convictions certainly would not support republican government or a secular society. To further complicate the matter of understanding the disparity between Locke’s and Paine’s philosophies, history and reference books state that the enlightenment was an 18th century intellectual movement and John Locke was an exponent of its philosophy. However, Locke was born in 1632 and spent all but the last four years of his life in the 17thcentury. To designate a 17th century man as being the creation of the 18th century is, to say the least, a solecism. Either our dating schemes do not make sense or interpretations of Lockean thought are in error.

It is apparent that mankind’s intellectual activities cannot be neatly classified or demarcated by century boundary posts. Dating is a man made artificial construct. The fabric of history is a single piece. Change occurs continuously over long periods of time and at an accelerating pace as new ideas and inventions make further progress possible. In particular, the struggle between faith and reason has gone on for thousands of years and still persists in the 21st century. A shift in the balance with respect to these two entities has occurred since the Middle Ages. However, faith and reason are strong components of every period in history. It should be observed that no era has been noted for cornering the market on rationality. Thomas Paine, even thought he lived during the Enlightenment, was severely persecuted by the religious right of his day.

In spite of the fact that history is a continuum and boundary markers that differentiate eras are not easy to establish with great precision, each age does have characteristics that make it unique and distinguish it from other historical periods. For example, the Renaissance and Reformation produced ideas that undermined the Medieval world view. In the words of Dr. Crane Brinton, the intelligentsia of these overlapping eras were “Agents of Distinction” who set the stage for a new cosmology and worldview. Their intellectual achievements were impressive and had great impact upon world history by stimulating the development of Protestantism, humanism, rationalism and science. Even though the intelligentsia were progressive within certain fields of thought, in the social and political spheres, they embraced a traditional belief that society is based upon rule by Aristrocrats and Monarchs. Thus, they did not adopt a philosophy and value system that was democratic in nature.

It was not until the 18th century that our modern world view was created. To quote Professor Crane Brinton, “The democratic world-view was formulated in the eighteenth century at the end of three centuries of change”…37″Our central theme is how the Medieval view of life was altered into the eighteenth century view of life. This eighteenth century view of life, though modified in the last two centuries, is still at the bottom of our view of life, especially in the United States”.38 Thus, the Renaissance (14th into the 17th century) and Reformation (16thcentury) were a transition period between the Middle Ages (500 to approximately 1500 AD) and the Enlightenment (18th century) which gave birth to our modern democratic outlook on society and government. During the period of the Renaissance the forces of Feudalism and Scholasticism, which in the past had ordered human life, were visibly shattered. The time period between the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment was significant because, it provided a view of life that was increasingly rational and scientific rather than mystical and theological.

On the important questions regarding the time span for and the interpretation of the Renaissance, the author is accepting Bertrand Russell’s viewpoint. “The Modern as opposed to the Medieval outlook began in Italy (14th century) with a movement called the Renaissance. At first, only a few individuals, notable Petrarch had this outlook, but in the 15th century it would spread to the great majority of cultivated Italians, both lay and clerical”.39 “The period of history which is commonly called `Modern’ has a mental outlook which differs from the Medieval period in many ways. Of these, two are most important: the diminishing authority of the church, and the increasing authority of science. With these two, others are connected. The culture of modern times is more lay than clerical. States increasingly replace the church as the governmental authority that controls culture”.40

In the world that was emerging, during the modern period of history, human reason and science rather than superstition and theology would become the major forces shaping our world. From the 14th to the 18th century mankind’s world was placed on foundations that were more materialistic and less theistic. During the 18th century men were willing to let go of the past and challenge the concept that people and their political and social orders were subservient to Kings, Clerics, and Aristocrats. From this point on the theory that power resided in the hands of Monarchs, Patricians, and the Church was supplanted by a belief in the rights of the common man. In brief, the 18th century contested the idea that the locus of power was in the Sovereign, Nobility and Religious Institutions. It was decided that the center of political authority was the will of the people.

The point of view expressed here regarding features of the various historical eras is critical not only for understanding the transition from the Medieval to the Modern World, it is crucial for comprehending the contributions of both Thomas Paine and John Locke to mankind as well as ascertaining their proper place in the United States and World History.

SUMMARY

In comparing and contrasting John Locke’s thought system with that of Thomas Paine’s, my main concerns are that Locke’s Philosophy, unlike Paine’s, is not modern, original, generative, or democratic. By embracing past and present social and political conditions in England as reflecting an existing egalitarian way of life, John Locke fails to comprehend and support the concepts and ideals of modern republican government. His system of thought differs from Paine’s because it is not based upon government of, by, and for the people. Democracy in our political tradition is predicated on the will of the majority rather than the desires of the few. In Locke’s thinking, the will of the people is precluded as the majority of individuals lack citizenship rights, including the right to vote. What Locke’s philosophy supports is a medieval faith in limited monarchy. It is incomprehensible that one could embrace a political and social system dominated by royalty and the nobility and claim to be an advocate of republicanism. As a corollary, it is also illogical to believe that Locke’s views on government and society are the source and model for American democracy. Paine’s and Locke’s social and political concepts lie at opposite ends of the speculative spectrum.

If we look at a variety of interrelated factors in John Locke’s thinking, such as, a medieval conception of the social and political orders, power in the hands of monarchs and aristorcrats, government not basedupon republican principles, absence of an independent an impartial court system, the majority being denied citizenship rights, preservation of property being the main motive that causes human beings to form governments, man’s position under the social compact, pedigree and property determining one’s opportunities and position in life, lack of a genuinely representative form of government, limited political and social freedoms, a society built upon an operated by despotic institutions, the state and civil society being coterminous; it becomes apparent that a wide intellectual and conceptual gulf exists between John Locke and Thomas Paine. If we add to the above components that represent Locke’s thinking the lack of a true British constitution, it also becomes evident that all of these items whencombined do not reflect the thinking of Thomas Paine or a democratic life style. Again, it is difficult to look at the array of principles, opinions and concepts that John Locke embraced and believe that his thought system is the foundation of American society.

Thomas Paine’s writings and speeches altered Lockean philosophy in particular and European thought in general. A shift in thinking, in which man was regarded as free, equal and independent within society, resulted in a new political and social architecture. Paine’s ideas and ideals not only transformed the philosophy of John Locke and the relationship between citizens and their government, they universalized the concept of revolution. Events in America might lead to the destruction and reordering of Europe’s political and social arrangements. This is one reason Paine was looked upon as a threat to the stability and structure of the 18th century world. America’s revolution would prove to be a harbinger of things to come.

Many people in colonial America and in Europe considered Paine’s agenda for government and society too liberal. Others felt his programs and proposals went beyond liberalism and were in essence anarchic. Thomas Paine did not view himself as being either liberal or radical. He simply believed that his ideas and efforts on behalf of freedom, equality and independence were a means of ushering in a new world order that would bring about the fulfillment of God’s plan for humanity. The values of democracy were in harmony with the universal mind and natural law. They were capable of properly linking human beings to one another as well as to creation and their creator. Thomas Paine persuaded and impelled men to abolish the political and social structures under which they existed. His essay “Common Sense” convinced the colonists that separation from Great Britain and the formation of a republic were a necessity. This composition transformed public opinion and created the American Revolution. In fact, this publication is the dividing line between British American and the United States History. Thomas Paine’s achievements are remarkable and transcend time and place. To give just one example, he wrote the three best-selling books of the 18th century (Common Sense, Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason). These works are the cornerstones of modern democracy as well as 21st century social and political thought.

Thomas Paine was the most prodigious political and social polemicist of the revolutionary era. His thinking is far more original and seminal than he has been given credit for by historians. Its scope is immense which is one of many reasons why he is something much more than a “Political Propagandist” and “Pamphleteer”. Such terms have been utilized in denigrating manner in order to limit Paine’s significance as a creative force in American and World History. His thinking encompassed the past, present and future of mankind. Few people in history have affected and changed the world as much as Thomas Paine. John Adams, our second president, said that “History will ascribe the (American) Revolution to Thomas Paine”.41 “Paine crystallized public opinion in favor of revolution and was the first factor in bringing about revolution”.42 John Adams also stated, “I know not whether any man in the world had had more influence on its in habitants or affairs for the last 30 years than Tom Paine. Call it the age of Paine”.43 It was apparent to many of Paine’s contemporaries that the cause of the American Revolution and the creator of the structure and values of Modern Democracy was Thomas Paine and not John Locke. In fact, many highly intelligent men in both America and Europe perceived Paine as being one of the world’s most creative and advanced minds. He was regarded by numerous prominent individuals as a man of genius who changed the nature and composition of government and society. Napoleon Bonaparte grasping Paine’s impact on his era asserted, “Paine deserved a statue in gold in every town”.44 Considering Paine’s contributions to the formation of the American State and the direction of modern World History, his life needs to be reexamined in the light of honesty in order that he may receive the long overdue recognition and respect that he justly deserves.

POSTSCRIPT

“Among enemies and friends alike, Paine earned a reputation as a citizen extraordinary — as the greatest political figure of his generation. He made more noise in the world and excited more attention than such well-known European contemporaries as Adam Smith, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, Madame de Stael and Pietro Verri”.45

From TOM PAINE A POLITICAL LIFE

By John Keane (Prologue)

NOTE

John Adams detested Thomas Paine. They were at opposite ends of the republican spectrum. Adams was conservative and Paine even by today’s standards would be considered extremely liberal. However, one thing they did agree on was independence. Thomas Paine not only created modern liberalism, Eugene V. Debs in one of his speeches paid homage to the prophet of freedom by declaring that Paine isalso the father of the modern radical tradition in politics.

QUOTATIONS

1. Foot & Kramnic. The Thomas Paine Reader

New York: Penguin Books, 1989 Pages 32 & 33

2. Burtt, Edwin A. The English Philosophers From Bacon To Mill

New York: Random House, Inc. 1939 Page 455

(Locke – Essay Concerning Civil Government)

3. Ibid Page 424 (Essay Concerning Civil Government)
4. Ibid Page 456 (Essay Concerning Civil Government)
5. Ibid Page 457 (Essay Concerning Civil Government)
6. Foot & Kramnic. The Thomas Paine Reader

New York: Penguin Books, 1989 Page 68 (Common Sense)

7. Foner, Phillip S. The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine

New York: The Citadel Press, 1969 Page 274 (Rights of Man)

8. Ibid Page 275 (Rights of Man)
9. Ibid Page 314 (Rights of Man)
10. Russell, Bertrand. A History of Western Philosophy

New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1945 Page 600

11. Ibid Page 601
12. Ibid Page 619
13. Ibid Page 623
14. Ibid Page 630
15. Fruchman, Jack Jr. Thomas Paine Apostle of Freedom

New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994 Page 6

16. Russell, Bertrand. A History of Western Philosophy

New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1945 Page 624 & 625

17. Ibid Page 625
18. Ibid Page 627 19
19. Ibid Page 632
20. Foner, Philip S. The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine

New York: The Citadel Press, 1969 Page 7 (Common Sense)

21. Ibid Page 277 (Rights of Man)
22. Ibid Page 277 (Rights of Man)
23. Ibid Page 338 (Rights of Man)
24. Ibid Page 341 (Rights of Man)
25. Ibid Pages 360 & 361 (Rights of Man)
26. Ibid Pages 367 & 368 (Rights of Man)
27. Ibid Pages 375 & 376 (Rights of Man)
28. Ibid Page 383 (Rights of Man)
29. Ibid Page 396 (Rights of Man)
30. Russell, Bertrand. A History of Western Philosophy

New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1945 Pages 634 & 635

31. Ibid Page 605
32. Ibid Page 601
33. Foner, Philip S. The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine

New York: The Citadel Press, 1969 Page 399 (Rights of Man)

34. Foot & Kramnic. The Thomas Paine Reader

New York: Penguin Books, 1989 Pages 20 & 21 (Rights of Man)

35. Ibid Page 21 (Rights of Man)
36. Seldes, George. The Great Thoughts

New York: Ballantine Books, 1996 Page 274

37. Brinton, Crane. The Shaping of Modern Thought

Englewood Cliffs New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1963 Page 247

38. Ibid Page 24 20
39. Russell, Bertrand. A History of Western Philosophy

New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1945 Page 495

40. Ibid Page 491
41. Seldes, George. The Great Thoughts

New York: Ballantine Books, 1996 Page 353

42. Brooks, Van Wyck. The World of Washington Irving

New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1944 Page 57

43. Foot & Kramnic. The Thomas Paine Reader

New York: Penguin Books, 1989 Page 28 & 29

44. Ibid Page 34
45. Keane, John. Tom Paine A Political Life

London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1995 Page IX (Prologue) 21

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Foot & Kramnic. The Thomas Paine Reader

New York: Penguin books, 1989

2. Foner, Phillip S. The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine

New York: The Citadel Press, 1969

3. Fruchtman, Jack Jr. Thomas Paine Aspostle of Freedom

New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994

4. Keane, John. Tom Paine A Political Life

London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1995

5. Paine, Thomas. Common Sense – Rights of Man

Delran New Jersey: The Classics of Liberty Library, 1992

6. Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government

Delran New Jersey: The Classics of Liberty Library, 1992

7. Brooks, Van Wyck. The World of Washington Irving

New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1944

8. Seldes, George. The Great Thoughts

New York: Ballantine Books, 1996

9. Burtt, Edwin A. The English Philosophers From Bacon To Mill

New York: Random House, Inc., 1939

10. Russell, Bertrand. A History of Western Philosophy

New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1945

11. Russell, Bertrand. Wisdom of the West

New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1959

12. Whittemore, Robert C. Makers of the American Mind

New York: William Morrow & Company, 1964

13. Brinton, Crane. The Shaping of Modern Thought

Englewood Cliffs New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963

14. Bowersock, Brown & Graber. Late Antiquity

Cambridge Massachusetts: The Belknap Press, 1999.

15. Haskins, Charles Homer. The Renaissance of the 12th Century

New York: Meridian Books, Inc., 1960 22

16. Lindsay, A.D. The Modern Democratic State

New York: Oxford University Press, 1962

17. Stenton, Doris May. English Society In the Early Middle Ages

London: The Whitefriars Press LTD, 1959

18. Dawson, Christopher. The Making of Europe

New York: Meridian Books, Inc., 1960

19. McNeill, William H. The Rise of The West

Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1963

20. Rowan, Herbert H. A History of Early Modern Europe

New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., 1960

21. Morgan, Edmund S. The Birth of the Republic

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1956

22. Degler, Carl N. Out Of Our Past

New York & Evanston: Harper & Row Publishers, 1962

23. Curti, Shryock, Cochran & Harrington. A History of American Civilization

New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers. 1953

24. Taylor, Alan. American Colonies

New York: Viking Penguin, 2001

25. Barzun, Jacques. From Dawn to Decadence

New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000

26. Bowen, Catherine Drinker. John Adams And The American Revolution

New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1950

27. Boyer, Paul S. Editor. Oxford Companion to United States History

New York: Oxford University Press, 2001 23

The post How Paine Transformed Locke appeared first on .

By Gary Berton

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

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

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

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

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

Misattribution 

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

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

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

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

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

Paine’s Support for the Abolition of Slavery 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“See Afric’s wretched offspring torn 

From all the human heart holds dear, 

See millions doomed in chains to mourn, 

Unpitied even by a tear. . .” 

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

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

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

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

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

The Petrovic Method²² of Author Attribution 

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

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

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

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

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

Some of the features used: 

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

Learning methods used and abbreviations 

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

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

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

Testing “African Slavery in America” 

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

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

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

Who is Samuel Hopkins? 

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

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

From “A Dialogue”:

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

From “African Slavery”:

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

From “A Dialogue”: 

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

From “African Slavery”:

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

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

From “A Dialogue”:

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

From “African Slavery”:

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

Conclusion 

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

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

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

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

Appendix: Paine’s Antislavery Legacy: Some Additional Considerations 

By Miriam Touba 

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

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

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

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

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

ENDNOTES

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

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Part Three of a Three-Part Historiography

The last decades of the 20th century saw revived interest in the life and contributions of Thomas Paine, evidenced by the books published. Three new studies of Paine were Gregory Claeys’ Thomas Paine: Social and Political Thought (1989), Jack Fruchtman Jr.’s Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom (1994). and John Keane’s Tom Paine: A Political Life (1995).

Claeys’ biography, published in London, investigates Paine’s influence on social and political thinking in Britain and America, focusing on how Paine’s ideas were understood in the moment. Claeys presents Paine as an important writer on politics and society. He also criticized earlier Foner and Aldridge biographies for ignoring discussions of Paine’s repeated calls for simple human kindness and moral virtue. 

The second decade of the 21st century introduced two more books on Paine’s life and contributions. 

Thomas Paine: Britain, America, and France in the Age of Enlightenment (2019) by J.C.D. Clark seems determined to tar Paine as an unoriginal thinker who contributed next to nothing to revolutionary events — another belittling Paine biography. 

Thomas Paine and the Clarion Call for American Independence (2019) by Harlow Giles Unger was a well-received, easily readable and mostly accurate biography. Unger made Paine much more accessible to mainstream readers but added little to Paine studies.

Since Conway’s 1892 biography, the historiography of Thomas Paine has offered readers glimpses of greatness, petty personal attacks, and weighty word-by-word analyses. Consideration is rarely given to views of Paine as a man with loyal friends and people he loved.

Instead, as historian Yannick Bosc wrote, “Behind the smoke from the censer, there are always sulfurous fumes floating around Thomas Paine.” 

More than 200 years of historiographical inquiry still leaves us with too many questions. We can only look forward to the new, impartial, unbiased, and well-researched works that are yet to come.

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Part Two of a Three-Part Historiography 

Historians are challenged to remain ambivalent when writing about multi-layered Paine. We have Paine the political strategist, the enlightened idealist and utopian, the religious heretic, the economist, the journalist, the inventor, and humanitarian. Paine was vilified, idolized and all in between. 

Many early accounts of Paine’s life were scurrilous attacks that painted him as drunken, filthy, cheap, selfaggrandizing, and a wife-beater. Scholars did not offer elevating views of Paine until the late 19th century 

Moncure Daniel Conway’s 1892 The Life of Thomas Paine attempted to rescue him from the rubble of distorted historical memory. Rather than quote unreliable earlier documents, Conway started anew, traveling across England, America and France to walk the streets where Paine lived, worked, fought, and faced death. Conway’s aim was to pull Paine from the historical gutter and lift him up to the pantheon of great revolutionaries. 

Paramount among 20th century studies was Philip S. Foner’s 1945 Life and Major Writing of Thomas Paine. Previous biographers focused almost entirely on Paine as a political disruptor. Foner offered other sides of Paine as an economist, philanthropist, deist, scientist, and poet. Foner gave us Paine as a radical ideologue grappling with the fractures between aristocracy and meritocracy as the walls between the two crumbled, calling Paine “the right man at the right place, at the right time.” 

Alfred Owen Aldridge’s 1959 Man of Reason was less favorable, placing Paine on the other side of greatness as a man whose out-sized personality self-sabotaged his public career. He described Paine as having a “solitary manner of existence” and “an undeniably difficult personality.” Unlike Foner, Aldridge saw Paine as a historical accident, undeserving of his fame. 

The Foner-Aldridge divide (saint or sinner) was characteristic of almost every 20th century Paine biography, revealing how little the debates about Paine’s character had changed since the early 19th century. 

As the American bicentennial approached, several Paine biographies emerged. Audrey Williamson, a British theater journalist, became enamored with Paine by writing a 1963 biography of George Bernard Shaw, an admirer of Paine. Her 1973 Thomas Paine: His Life, Work, and Times unearthed new information on Paine’s metamorphosis from a young political fledgling to a polished polemicist. Like Conway, Williamson built her framework by studying the times, places and faces, and then situating Paine in the midst of them. 

Samuel Edwards’ 1974 Rebel! A Biography of Thomas Paine attempted to psychoanalyze Paine, beginning with the assertion Paine had “mommy issues” that led to a distrust of women unless they were cheap blondes. Scholars were united in their dismissal of Edward’s book In fact, Aldridge, no fan of Paine, called it a work of “perversion and deception.” 

The most successful bicentennial biography was David Freeman Hawke’s 1974 Paine. He gave no detours into sexual suggestiveness like Edwards, no mini-travelogues like Williamson. Instead, Hawke found new primary sources, particularly papers from the American Philosophical Society’s Gimbel Collection. He presented Paine as an inventor as well as a writer. He plumbed the entire Paine historiography, sifting through everything written — even disputed early “biographers” — with a fresh eye. 

However, Hawke found it impossible to write about Paine without forming an opinion of the man and expressing it, a bias that critics of the work have pointed out. Williamson wrote with admiration, Hawke with a disapproving smirk. Williamson tried to place us in Paine’s world, Hawke in Paine’s mind. Little attention was paid to Paine as a man dependent on his connections to others, both negative and positive. The move to see Paine as more than an ideologue was beginning to occur, but the idea of important human connections was still not being made. 

The most foundational bicentennial work was Eric Foner’s 1976 Tom Paine and Revolutionary America, The nephew of Philip Foner focused on 13 crucial years in the life of Paine and the fledgling United States, 1774 to 1787. Foner suggests that Paine was constantly trying to define who he was and who he would become. The topic of personhood was beginning to percolate as a line of study. Foner strived to ensure Paine was “successfully located within the social context of his age.” His acknowledgment of Paine’s personal connections to peers in his community is a link to the importance of interpersonal relationships in Paine’s life. 

Foner’s work concentrated on America during its fracture with Great Britain. The unrest in France was a different beast, and Paine’s response to that revolution was different, but it was not Foner’s focus.

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Part One of a Three-Part Historiography

Even before Paine’s death, his life was being dissected by those around him on both sides of the Atlantic. The earliest “biographies” of Paine were highly critical, politically-motivated smear campaigns funded by political enemies in high places. Each writer set out to debunk Paine’s major works, especially Common Sense; The Crisis; and the Rights of Man. 

The earliest published works were political hatchet jobs by Paine’s enemies. Francis Oldys, a 1793 biographer, really was George Chalmers, masquerading as a University of Pennsylvania divinity professor. Chalmers painted Paine as a drunken, lazy wife-beater. 

William Cobbett, another British expatriate in America, joined Chalmers in verbally tarring and feathering Paine. Cobbett’s The Life of Thomas Paine (1797) built upon the foundation of Chalmers’ work and quoted heavily from it. 

Like Chalmers, Cobbett offered a running editorial commentary about Paine’s embrace of enlightenment thinking and then picked up with Paine’s life through his release from prison during the French Revolution. Cobbett wrote: 

Whenever or wherever he breathes his last, he will excite neither sorrow nor compassion… men will learn to express all that is base, malignant, treacherous, unnatural, and blasphemous, by a single monosyllable, Paine. 

This statement demands a word about the long and erratic relationship between Cobbett and Paine, the downs and ups of their often parallel lives.

Both were sons of the British working class. Both were successful pamphleteers, although Paine was more commercially successful. Both suffered some degree of egotism and arrogance. 

Cobbett, the angry polemicist, later made a drastic emotional U-turn and disinterred Paine’s corpse from its New Rochelle resting place for an envisioned monument to honour Paine in England, where it was not permitted. 

The Cheetham Biography 

Shortly after Paine died in 1809, his enemies and friends began sharpening their quills. Some spewed vitriol, while others offered praise. 

James Cheetham, the New York publisher of a newspaper called The Citizen, was a colleague of Paine turned bitter foe. Cheetham’s The Life of Thomas Paine (1809) opened with a description of his first meeting with Paine in New York in 1802, shortly after Paine returned to the United States from France. A more unsavory description of the encounter cannot be imagined, which is interesting because Cheetham published Paine’s writing in The Citizen for five years until a falling out (evidently over pay) led to Paine’s refusal to write for him anymore. 

Claiming impartiality, Cheetham wrote that his goal was “neither to please or displease any political party. I have written the life of Mr. Paine, not his panegyrick [sic].” Rather than telling the life of Thomas Paine, Cheetham brought an indictment. 

Cheetham said he’d interviewed many who knew Paine personally, describing them as people of the highest echelons of society. He ridiculed/ Common Sense as “Defective in arrangement, inelegant in diction…” While ostensibly analyzing all of Paine’s writings, Cheetham relentlessly criticized them. 

So vituperative is Cheetham’s tone that one wonders if there’s any value in reading it, but it captures the ethos of the Painehaters, giving a better understanding of the constant bile Paine faced throughout his life in the public eye. 

Harford, Rickman, Sherwin, and Carlile 

Ten years after Paine’s death, a quartet of biographies appeared within months of each other: John S. Harford’s Some Account of the Life, Death, and Principles of Thomas Paine (1819); Thomas Clio Rickman’s The Life of Thomas Paine (1819); W. T. Sherwin’s Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Paine (1819); and Richard Carlile’s The Life of Thomas Paine (1820). 

Harford picked up where Cheetham left off, offering a scathing portrait of a despicable human being. The other three mounted a defense against the virulent misrepresentations of Paine’s life. Rickman, Sherwin and Carlile actually knew Paine and believed that fear of progressive ideas, not facts, were behind the grotesque portrayals being offered. 

John Harford came from a wealthy British banking family. While he shared Paine’s abolitionist sentiments and began his biography promising to be less vindictive than Cheetham, he unleashed an equally critical diatribe. While conceding that Paine did have “considerable natural talent, ” Harford presented Paine as cruel, unclean, constantly drunk, and miserly. He painted Paine as being possessed of an “inordinate spirit of egotism and selfishness which rendered him incapable of friendship to a single human being.” He described those who befriended Paine as “chiefly low and disreputable persons.” 

Clio Rickman, a lifelong friend of Paine, set out to rescue his friend “from the undeserved reproach… cast upon it by the panders of political infamy.” Rickman knew Paine better than anyone and had much in common with him. He grew up in Lewes, the coastal Sussex town where Paine lived, worked and became politically active between 1768 and 1774. The two men shared Quaker beliefs and a love of books. Rickman eventually moved to London, became a publisher of political pamphlets, and a lifelong friend. 

William Thomas Sherwin, a London publisher, wrote the first unbiased assessment of Paine’s life. For Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Paine, Sherwin interviewed Paine’s personal and political friends to offer a biography devoid of mudslinging and name-calling. 

Sherwin pointed at Chalmers, who was paid £500 to smear Paine’s reputation. He pilloried Cheetham as a “treacherous apostate” and “illiterate blockhead.” 

One year later Richard Carlile, released The Life of Thomas Paine. Carlile also rebutted Cheetham’s work by presenting an entirely laudatory portrait, built upon the same structure of analyzing each work in counterpoint to Paine’s life at the time of its writing. 

Carlile’s Paine is a man above reproach, a man so honest that he would not let a friend correct one of his grammatical errors, saying, “he only wished to be known as what he really was, without being decked with the plumes of another.” 

Vale and Linton 

These early works cannot be read as traditional biographies, but they prove useful as a way to understand Anglo-American radicalism in the eighteenth-century. Cobbett, Harford, Rickman, and Carlile all lived with one foot in America and the other in Britain. Much like Paine they were “ideological immigrants.” 

A Compendium of the Life of Thomas Paine (1837) by Gilbert Vale was the first biographical study intended to look at Paine through an American lens, untinged by Whig versus Tory politics. Vale was London-born, but he openly tried to remove Paine’s story from friends and foes on European shores. 

Vale wrote from avowed neutrality, determined to neither debase nor laud. He declared, “We are not… about to write a eulogy; to enhance his virtues, or to suppress his faults, or vices. Paine was a part of human nature, and partook of its imperfections.” 

William James Linton’s The Life of Thomas Paine (1841) clearly shows where his sympathies lay. Linton called Paine a “sturdy champion of political and religious liberty.” In subsequent editions, Linton wove in brief profiles with homage quotes from some of Paine’s notable cohorts — such as Benjamin Franklin and Mary Wollstonecraft — to further humanize him. 

By the mid-1800s, Paine had become a man instead of a monster. The dawn of the 20th century would bring a new scrutiny to his life.

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By Edmund Smith

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carl Sagan, a Paine admirer, wrote: 

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

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

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

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

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By Gary Berton

The Beacon, a freethought journal by Gilbert Vale (1788-1866) was a pivotal, influential social and political publication in the mid-19th century, publishing 587 issues from 1836 to 1851.

In the mid-19th century, The Beacon helped to forge a movement against the age’s undemocratic, religious, anti-labor, anti-women cultural and political forces. The Beacon prepared society for the Progressive Era. The Beacon further played a central role in restoring the reputation and legacy of Thomas Paine.

A weekly print publication for its first 10 years, The Beacon voiced ideas from Paine and others from The Enlightenment, contributing freethinking to public conversations, as did the transcendentalists. The Beacon then published quarterly before going monthly for two years, closing as a bi-weekly called Sunday Beacon. 

In our era, 170 years after the last Vale edition, the Thomas Paine National Historical Association in 2021 relaunched The Beacon as its official member publication. Entering our third year as a bi-monthly, counting Vale’s 14 volumes, this edition is Vol. 17, No 1. 

Gilbert Vale, “Citizen of the World,” made another crucial contribution to the Paine legacy — his vision for the Paine farmland in New Rochelle, a former Tory farm that New York State gifted to Paine in 1784. 

At the farm entrance, Vale in 1839 erected the Paine Monument, the nation’s first monument for any Founder of the Republic. The monument stands at North Avenue and Paine Avenue (once the main farm road). It’s 30 feet north of Paine’s long-empty gravesite, now under widened North Ave. 

An 1850 report says Vale,“legally holds title in the Paine farm but that the management of the farm is in the hands of the subscribers and that the cemetery is now being laid out.” Also,“subscribers to the Paine farm are now an incorporated body.” The three planned projects were a cemetery, industrial school and college, plus a rural retreat. None of the projects were realized, because Vale’s health began to weaken, and the following year he retired.

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By Gary Berton

Using computer methods of analyzing text to determine authorship is not a matter of opinion. Calculations are objective, there is no room to introduce prejudices. 

Such a methodology to analyze text was developed by the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies: to make use of proven methods of comparing author features, they took these methods and combined them for use by historians to determine authorships. This process of analysis began in the early 1960s with Mosteller and Wallace, using function word use (“and”, “but”, “as”, etc.), they achieved 50% accuracy. The “authorships” of the Federalist Papers that you read on the Internet were based on them, and thus only half correct. By deploying the new features (17 of them now, compared to the one above) ITPS was able to achieve 90%. The Java Graphic Author Attribution, JGAAP, is a tool to allow non-experts to use cutting edge machine learning techniques on text attribution problems. Our methodology used all 17 together for the first time to produce a high degree of certainty. Similar versions using a few features are used in court cases to prove authorships, and the FBI uses it to identify certain bloggers (bad always comes with the good). 

This ITPS methodology is being employed in the Collected Works Project managed by this Association. It can identify likely Paine works that otherwise would never be able to be uncovered, and we would remain in ignorance of them. This shines a light on more works and a full biography. 

Remarks in letters are often lies, or misunderstandings. Computers don’t lie. Take Benjamin Rush for example: after Paine’s death Rush claimed Paine wrote an essay against slavery, and the only such essay at the time Rush designated was “African Slavery in America”. To this day most people think Paine wrote it solely based on Rush’s claim. He didn’t – the religious references exhibit a Christian wrote it, and in fact Samuel Hopkins, a Christian preacher, did. And text analysis confirms it. One example of many , which old fashioned historical methods are very inaccurate, but they still are repeated endlessly because they were in a book!

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By Gary Berton

In 1965, a noted historian, Forest MacDonald, wrote a textbook on the creation of the Republic, E Pluribus Unum. He is known for his rationalizing of slavery, ultra-conservatism, and apologist for all things Southern. But he got one thing right: 

“Sometimes in the course of human events, as the Declaration of Independence had proclaimed, it becomes necessary for people to dissolve political bonds….The American Revolution was only the beginning in teaching men the process, but once it was done – once the vulgar overstepped the bounds of propriety and got away with it – there was no logical stopping place. Common Sense led unerringly to Valmy, and Valmy to Napoleon, and Napoleon to the Revolution of 1830, and that to the Revolutions of 1848, and those to the Paris Commune of 1871, and that to the Bolshevik Revolution, and that to the African and Asian Revolutions in Expectations, and those to eternity.” 

What he got right was that Thomas Paine started the age of Revolutions, by introducing that hated process of democracy. To MacDonald, democratizing the world (“overstep the bounds of propriety” by the “vulgar”) led to the listed upheavals starting with the American Revolution. He ignores the history of brutal oppression which created the need for revolutions, known as “propriety”. It was the reaction against the movement towards the rights and equality of people that caused the atrocities and squelched the “Expectations” of peoples. But the “process” is in place, thanks to Paine, and the world can evolve. 

The hatred of Paine by some historians can be well-documented, and this is why many historians are propagandists ahead of documenting all history. As E. H. Carr (an objective historian) said: “Study the historian before you begin to study the facts.” And “By and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants.”

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By Gary Berton

In the last Beacon, the problem with historians marginalizing and ignoring Thomas Paine was discussed, and Bailyn was used as a typical example. He is an excellent historian by modern standards, and he is also emblematic of the norm which assumes a world view and then looks for data to justify it. The 19th century history books were steeped in prejudice against Paine, driven by political and theistical bias, largely rooted in fake news, incomplete facts, and the myth of the founding. That myth of the founding puts the Federalist Party as the Founding Party, with people like Paine and Franklin on the sidelines watching. Independence Mall in Philadelphia was created around that myth.

An historian steeped in that education deepens it in order to be accepted, not question it. Franklin, up to the 1930s, was treated like Paine, a caricature, sitting on the sidelines. When an accurate book on Franklin finally emerged then, it caused a great stir, and eventually a reexamination. History has always been the tool of those who control a country, as Orwell said, “those who control the past, control the future.” Some 20th century historians continued the trope on Paine from the 19th century, right up to today with J.C.D. Clark, Chernow, Ellis and others. There is even an organization of conservative historians, which is an improvement since at least they admit it. 

There was a book which came out a year after Bailyn’s The IDEOLOGICAL Origins of the American Revolution, in response: The INTELLECTUAL Origins of the American Revolution by Staughton Lynd. It was full of quotations so we could see the material left out of the ”accepted” narrative. In 1968 it was eyeopening. We recommend it.

Lynd put Paine out front with other radical leaders, and in his 2009 updated version he apologized for not adequately crediting Paine. As information spread in history departments, and that generation became the heads of those departments, like Eric Foner and many more, the blind eye to Paine was slowly opened. The Collected Works of Thomas Paine Project, managed by our Association with the leading Paine scholars in the world, will further reveal the incredible impact of Paine not only on the American Revolution, but world history: much of the atmosphere of radical English politics fueling the American cause was generated by Thomas Paine before he came to America.

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