Born, at Thetford, Norfolk, 29 Jan. 1737. Educated at Thetford Grammar School. At sea, 1755–56. In London, working as staymaker, 1756–58. Removed to Dover, 1758; to Sandwich, 1759. Married (i.) Mary Lambert, 17 Sept. 1759. She died, at Margate, 1760. Returned to Thetford, as Excise Officer, July 1761; to Grantham, Dec. 1762; to Alford, Aug. 1764. Dismissed from Office, Aug. 1765; restored, Feb. 1768; sent to Lewes; dismissed again, April 1774. Married (ii.) Elizabeth Ollive, 26 March 1771; separated from her, June 1774. To Philadelphia, Nov. 1774, with introduction to Franklin [?]. Contrib. to “Pennsylvania Journal,” 1775–76. Editor of “Pennsylvania Mag.,” Jan. 1775 to Aug. 1776. Took part in American War of Independence. Sec. to Committee of Foreign Affairs, April 1777 to Jan. 1779. Clerk to Pennsylvania Assembly, Nov. 1779 to Dec. 1780. M.A., Pennsylvania Univ., 4 July 1780. Sec. to Col. Laurens on Mission to France, Feb. to Aug. 1781. Presented with estate of New Rochelle, 1784. Visit to England in connection with his invention of an iron bridge, 1787–90. To Paris, 1790. French citizen, Aug. 1793; Mem. of Convention, Sept. 1793. On Committee to form Republican Constitution, Oct. 1793. Imprisoned in Paris, Dec. 1793 to Nov. 1794. Returned to America, Oct. 1802. Contrib. to “The Prospect,” 1804–05. Died, in New York, 8 July, 1809. Works: “The Case of the Officers of Excise” (anon.), [1772]; “Common Sense” (anon.), 1776; “Large Additions to Common Sense” (anon.), 1776; “Epistle to the People called Quakers,” 1776; “Dialogue between Gen. Montgomery and an American Delegate,” 1776; “The American Crisis” (13 nos.; anon.), 1776–83; “The Public Good,” 1780; “Letter addressed to the Abbé Raynal,” 1782; “Thoughts on the Peace,” 1783; “Letter to the Earl of Shelburne,” 1783; “Dissertation on Government,” 1786; “Prospects on the Rubicon” (anon.), 1787; (another edn., called: “Prospects on the War,” 1793); “Letter to Sir G. Staunton,” 1788; “The Rights of Man” (2 pts.), 1791–92; “Address and Declaration of the Friends of Universal Peace and Liberty” [1791]; “Letter to the Abbé Sièyes,” 1792; “Four Letters on Government,” 1792; “Address to the Republic of France” [1792]; “Letter addressed to the Addressers,” 1792; “Speech in Convention on bringing Louis Capet to trial,” 1792; “Lettre … au Peuple françois” [1792]; “Opinion … concernant le judgment de Louis XVI.,” 1792; “Works,” 1792; “Miscellaneous Articles,” 1792; “Reasons for wishing to preserve the life of Louis Capet” [1793]; “Prospects on the War and Paper Currency,” 1793; “Rational and Revealed Religion” (anon.), 1794; “The Age of Reason,” pt. i., 1794; pt. ii, 1795; pt. iii., 1811; “Letter to the French Convention,” 1794; “Dissertations on First Principles of Government,” 1795; “The Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance,” 1796; “Letter to George Washington,” 1796; “Agrarian Justice opposed to Agrarian Law,” 1797; “Lettre … sur les Cultes,” 1797; “Letter to the Hon. T. Erskine,” 1797; “Letter to Camille Jourdan,” 1797; “Atheism Refuted,” 1798; “Maritime Compact,” 1801; “Letter to Samuel Adams,” 1802; “Letter to Citizens of the United States,” 1802; “Letter to the People of England,” 1804; “To the French Inhabitants of Louisiana,” 1804; “To the Citizens of Pennsylvania,” 1805; “On the Causes of Yellow Fever,” 1805; “On Constitutions, Governments and Charters,” 1805; “Observations on Gunboats,” 1806; “Letter to A. A. Dean,” 1806; “On the Political and Military Affairs of Europe,” 1806; “To the People of New York,” 1807; “On Governor Lewis’s Speech,” 1807; “On Mr. Hale’s Resolutions,” 1807; “Three Letters to Morgan Lewis,” 1807; “On the question, Will there be War?” 1807; “Essay on Dreams,” 1807. Posthumous: “Reply to the Bishop of Llandaff,” 1810; “The Origin of Freemasonry,” 1811; “Miscellaneous Letters and Essays,” 1819; “Miscellaneous Poems,” 1819. Collected Works: ed. by M. D. Conway, 1894.

Personal

  Dear Son, The bearer, Mr. Thomas Paine, is very well recommended to me, as an ingenious, worthy young man. He goes to Pennsylvania with a view of settling there. I request you to give him your best advice and countenance, as he is quite a stranger there. If you can put him in a way of obtaining employment as a clerk, or assistant tutor in a school, or assistant surveyor, (of all which I think him very capable), so that he may procure a subsistence at least, till he can make acquaintance and obtain a knowledge of the country, you will do well, and much oblige your affectionate father.

  Philadelphia, Feb. 10, 1782.—The subscribers, taking into consideration the important situation of affairs at the present moment, and the propriety and even necessity of informing the people and rousing them into action; considering also the abilities of Mr. Thomas Paine as a writer, and that he has been of considerable utility to the common cause by several of his publications: They are agreed that it will be much for the interest of the United States that Mr. Paine be engaged in their service for the purpose above mentioned. They are therefore agreed that Mr. Paine be offered a salary of $800 per annum, and that the same be paid him by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs. The salary to commence from this day, and to be paid by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs out of monies to be allowed by the Superintendent of Finance for secret services. The subscribers being of opinion that a salary publicly and avowedly given for the above purpose would injure the effect of Mr. Paine’s publications, and subject him to injurious personal reflections.

  Dear Sir, I have learned since I have been at this place, that you are at Bordentown. Whether for the sake of retirement or economy, I know not. Be it for either, for both, or whatever it may, if you will come to this place, and partake with me, I shall be exceedingly happy to see you. Your presence may remind Congress of your past services to this country; and if it is in my power to impress them, command my best services with freedom, as they will be rendered cheerfully by one who entertains a lively sense of the importance of your works, and who, with much pleasure, subscribes himself, Your sincere friend.

  The villain Paine came over to the Crown and Anchor; but, finding that his pamphlet had not set a straw on fire, and that the 14th of July was as little in fashion as the ancient gunpowder-plot, he dined at another tavern with a few quaking conspirators; and probably is returning to Paris, where he is engaged in a controversy with the Abbé Sieyes, about the “plus or minus” of the rebellion.

  I lodge with my friend Paine—we breakfast, dine, and sup together. The more I see of his interior, the more I like and respect him. I cannot express how kind he is to me; there is a simplicity of manner, a goodness of heart, and a strength of mind in him, that I never knew a man before possess.

  The crime of ingratitude I trust will never stain our national character. You are considered by all your countrymen as one who has not only rendered important services to them, but also as one, who, on a more extensive scale, has been the friend of human rights, and a distinguished and able advocate in favor of public liberty. To the worth and welfare of Thomas Paine the American people can never be indifferent.

  That infamous wretch “Tom Paine” the Democrat, whom we all execrate, and who is now, with or without a head in France, I hope in the late fashion of that country.

  I met this interesting personage at the lodgings of the son of a late patriotic American governour [Trumbull]…. He was dressed in a snuff-coloured coat, olive velvet vest, drab breeches, coarse hose. His shoe buckles of the size of a half dollar. A bob tailed wig covered that head which worked such mickle woe to courts and kings. If I should attempt to describe it, it would be in the same stile and principle with which the veteran soldier bepraiseth an old standard: the more tattered, the more glorious. It is probable that this was the same identical wig under the shadow of whose curls he wrote “Common Sense,” in America, many years before. He was a spare man, rather under size; subject to the extreme of low, and highly exhilarating spirits; often sat reserved in company; seldom mingled in common chit-chat: But when a man of sense and elocution was present, and the company numerous, he delighted in advancing the most unaccountable, and often the most whimsical paradoxes; which he defended in his own plausible manner. If encouraged by success, or the applause of the company, his countenance was animated with an expression of feature which, on ordinary occasions one would look for in vain, in a man so much celebrated for acuteness of thought; but if interrupted by extraneous observation, by the inattention of his auditory, or in an irritable moment, even by the accidental fall of the poker, he would retire into himself, and no persuasion could induce him to proceed upon the most favourite topic.

  That the said Elizabeth Pain had ever since lived separate from him the said Thos. Pain, and never had any issue, and the said Thomas Pain had many years quitted this kingdom and resided (if living) in parts beyond the seas, but had not since been heard of by the said Elizabeth Pain, nor was it known for certain whether he was living or dead.

  I have received your letter calling for information relative to the life of Thomas Paine. It appears to me that this is not the moment to publish the life of that man in this country. His own writings are his best life, and these are not read at present. The greater part of readers in the United States will not be persuaded, as long as their present feelings last, to consider him in any other light than as a drunkard and a deist. The writer of his life who should dwell on these topics, to the exclusion of the great and estimable traits of his real character, might indeed please the rabble of the age, who do not know him; the book might sell, but it would only tend to render the truth more obscure for the future biographer than it was before. But if the present writer should give us Thomas Paine complete in all his character, as one of the most benevolent and disinterested of mankind, endowed with the clearest perception, an uncommon share of original genius, and the greatest breadth of thought; if this piece of biography should analyze his literary labors and rank him, as he ought to be ranked, among the brightest and most undeviating luminaries of the age in which he has lived, yet with a mind assailable by flattery, and receiving through that weak side a tincture of vanity which he was too proud to conceal; with a mind, though strong enough to bear him up and to rise elastic under the heaviest hand of oppression, yet unable to endure the contempt of his former friends and fellow-laborers, the rulers of the country that had received his first and greatest services; a mind incapable of looking down with serene compassion, as it ought, on the rude scoffs of their imitators, a new generation that knows him not; a mind that shrinks from their society, and unhappily seeks refuge in low company, or looks for consolation in the sordid, solitary bottle, till it sinks at last so far below its native elevation as to lose all respect for itself and to forfeit that of his best friends, disposing these friends almost to join with his enemies, and wish, though from different motives, that he would hasten to hide himself in the grave—if you are disposed and prepared to write his life thus entire, to fill up the picture to which these hasty strokes of outline give but a rude sketch with great vacuities, your book may be a useful one for another age, but it will not be relished, nor scarcely tolerated, in this…. You ask what company he kept. He always frequented the best, both in England and France, till he became the object of calumny in certain American papers (echoes of the English court papers) for his adherence to what he thought the cause of liberty in France—till he conceived himself neglected and despised by his former friends in the United States. From that moment he gave himself very much to drink, and, consequently, to companions less worthy of his better days. It is said that he was always a peevish ingrate. This is possible. So was Lawrence Sterne, so was Torquato Tasso, so was J. J. Rousseau. But Thomas Paine, as a visiting acquaintance and as a literary friend, the only points of view from which I knew him, was one of the most instructive men I have ever known.

  Paine had no good qualities. Incapable of friendship, he was vain, envious, malignant; in France cowardly, and every where tyrannical. In his private dealings he was unjust, never thinking of paying for what he had contracted, and always cherishing deadly resentments against those who by law compelled him to do justice. To those who had been kind to him he was more than ungrateful, for to ingratitude, as in the case of Mr. Munroe, he added mean and detestable fraud. He was guilty of the worst species of seduction; the alienation of a wife and children from a husband, and a father. Filthy and drunken, he was a compound of all the vices.

  I have lived a honest and useful life to mankind; my time has been spent in doing good; I die in perfect composure and resignation to the will of my God.

  Mr. Paine in his person was about five feet ten inches high, and rather athletic; he was broad shouldered, and latterly stooped a little. His eye, of which the painter could not convey the exquisite meaning, was full, brilliant, and singularly piercing; it had in it the “muse of fire.” In his dress and person he was generally very cleanly, and wore his hair cued, with side curls, and powdered, so that he looked altogether like a gentleman of the old French school. His manners were easy and gracious; his knowledge was universal and boundless; in private company and among his friends his conversation had every fascination that anecdote, novelty and truth could give it. In mixt company and among strangers he said little, and was no public speaker.

  Paine lies in a little hole under the grass and weeds of an obscure farm in America. There, however, he shall not lie, unnoticed, much longer. He belongs to England. His fame is the property of England; and if no other people will show that they value that fame, the people of England will. Yes, amongst the pleasures that I promise myself, that of seeing the name of Paine honoured in every part of England; where base corruption caused him, while alive, to be burnt in effigy.

  Paine, I regret to own it, was a native of England; at his outset a Quaker, and a stay-maker of Thetford, in Norfolk.

  About this period, the notorious Tom Paine arrived at Nantes, in the Alliance frigate, as Secretary of Colonel Laurens, Minister Extraordinary from Congress; and he took up his quarters at my boarding-place. He was coarse and uncouth in his manners, loathsome in his appearance, and a disgusting egotist; rejoicing most in talking of himself, and reading the effusions of his own mind. Yet, I could not repress the deepest emotions of gratitude towards him, as the instrument of Providence in accelerating the declaration of our Independence…. On his arrival’s being announced, the Mayor, and some of the most distinguished citizens of Nantes, called upon him to render their homage of respect. I often officiated as interpreter, although humbled and mortified at his filthy appearance, and awkward address. Besides, as he has been roasted alive at L’Orient, for the ———, and well basted with brimstone, he was absolutely offensive, and perfumed the whole apartment. He was soon rid of his respectable visitors, who left the room with marks of astonishment and disgust. I took the liberty, on his asking for the loan of a clean shirt, of speaking to him frankly of his dirty appearance and brimstone odor; and I prevailed upon him to stew, for an hour, in a hot bath. This, however, was not done without much entreaty; and I did not succeed, until, receiving a file of English newspapers, I promised, after he was in the bath he should have the reading of them, and not before. He at once consented, and accompanied me to the bath, where I instructed the keeper, in French (which Paine did not understand) gradually to increase the heat of the water, until “le Monsieur serait bien bouilli.” He became so much absorbed in his reading, that he was nearly parboiled before leaving the bath, much to his improvement and my satisfaction.

  Poverty was his mother—Necessity his master. He had more brains than books; more sense than education; more courage than politeness; more strength than polish. He had no veneration for old mistakes—no admiration for ancient lies. He loved the truth for the truth’s sake, and for man’s sake…. The result of his investigations was given to the world in the “Age of Reason.” From the moment of its publication he became infamous. He was caluminated beyond measure. To slander him was to secure the thanks of the Church. All his services were instantly forgotten, disparaged or denied. He was shunned as though he had been a pestilence. Most of his old friends forsook him. He was regarded as a moral plague, and at the bare mention of his name the bloody hands of the Church were raised in horror. He was denounced as the most despicable of men. Not content with following him to his grave, they pursued him after death with redoubled fury, and recounted with infinite gusto and satisfaction the supposed horrors of his death-bed; gloried in the fact that he was forlorn and friendless, and gloated like fiends over what they supposed to be the agonizing remorse of his lonely death. It is wonderful that all his services were thus forgotten. It is amazing that one kind word did not fall from some pulpit; that some one did not accord to him, at least—honesty. Strange, that in the general denunciation some one did not remember his labor for liberty, his devotion to principle, his zeal for the rights of his fellow-men…. He had made it impossible to write the history of political freedom with his name left out. He was one of the creators of light; one of the heralds of the dawn. He hated tyranny in the name of kings, and in the name of God, with every drop of his noble blood. He believed in liberty and justice, and in the sacred doctrine of human equality. Under these divine banners he fought the battle of his life. In both worlds he offered his blood for the good of man. In the wilderness of America, in the French Assembly, in the sombre cell waiting for death, he was the same unflinching, unwavering friend of his race; the same undaunted champion of universal freedom. And for this he has been hated; for this the Church has violated even his grave.

  Poor Paine! His errors were, for the most part, those of his age; and they were aggravated by his circumstances, his defective education, and the ardor of his temperament. But his merits, which were real and not small, were peculiarly his own. He loved the truth for its own sake; and he stood by what he conceived to be the truth when all the world around him reviled it…. It becomes us, however, to deal charitably with the faults of a benefactor who wrote, “The Crisis” and “Common Sense,” who conceived the planing-machine and the iron bridge. A glorious monument in his honor swells aloft in many of our great towns. The principle of his arch now sustains the marvellous railroad depots that half abolish the distinction between in-doors and out.

  A somewhat extended study of the French Revolution, during the extraordinary period in which Paine was so intimately connected with it, fails to show anything to the prejudice of his personal or political character, but, on the other hand, it reveals many things eminently creditable to him.

  The bones of Thomas Paine were landed in Liverpool November 21, 1819. The monument contemplated by Cobbett was never raised. There was much parliamentary and municipal excitement. A Bolton town-crier was imprisoned nine weeks for proclaiming the arrival. In 1836 the bones passed with Cobbett’s effects into the hands of a Receiver (West). The Lord Chancellor refusing to regard them as an asset, they were kept by an old day-laborer in 1844, when they passed to B. Tilley, 13 Bedford Square, London, a furniture dealer. In 1849 the empty coffin was in possession of J. Chennell Guildford. The silver plate bore the inscription “Thomas Paine, died June 8, 1809, aged 72.” In 1854, Rev. R. Ainslie (Unitarian) told E. Truelove that he owned “the skull and the right hand of Thomas Paine,” but evaded subsequent inquiries. The removal caused excitement in America. Of Paine’s gravestone the last fragment was preserved by his friends of the Bayeaux family, and framed on their wall. In November, 1839, the present marble monument at New Rochelle was erected.

  At eight o’clock on the morning of June 8, 1809, Paine died quietly and at peace in the seventy-third year of his age. He had expressed a wish to be buried in the Quaker cemetery, for the Quakers were the only Christian sect he held in respect; but the request was denied. Two days after his death his body was carried for burial to his farm at New Rochelle, twenty-five miles away. The Bonnevilles, good Willett Hicks, and two negroes were his mourners, and followed him to the journey’s end. A stone was placed to mark the grave; and ten years later William Cobbett, once a mistaken vilifier of Paine and afterwards his eulogist, had his bones removed and carried to England, intending to raise a monument to him in his native land. But the old outcry was heard again. A town-crier was sent to jail for proclaiming the arrival of the infidel’s bones. Cobbett relinquished his design, and no one in the world to-day knows the resting place of Thomas Paine…. Paine was a religious man. His convictions were few and profound. So strong was his faith that it led him into the very intolerance he detested, and made him ridicule where he ought to have shown respect…. In private life Paine was uncorrupted by the worst vices of his generation. He was never abstemious, and during the Reign of Terror he drank to excess; but, if there be any truth in the accounts of drunkenness of his later years, it lies in the very occasional indulgence at a time when gentlemen slept under the table and awoke still gentlemen. The stories of his filthy habits are slander, though towards the close of his life, he became more careless of his dress, and maybe did not brush his coat after each pinch of snuff. He was always gentle to children and to animals. In manner he was kindly, and in conversation intelligent; but he was intolerant of contradiction, and not disinclined to assume the god in a gathering of friends. Like most vain men, Paine had little pride. His repeated requests for money for his services grate harshly enough, but their origin was not in meanness…. His tasks were not all done wisely, but they were done bravely. Too often his light was darkness; but he walked steadfastly in its path, and the goal which he sought was the happiness of his fellow-men.

Common Sense, 1776

  This day was published, and is now selling by Robert Bell, in Third Street, price two shillings, “Common Sense,” addressed to the inhabitants of North America.

  A few more of such flaming arguments as were exhibited at Falmouth and Norfolk, added to the sound doctrine and unanswerable reasoning contained in the pamphlet “Common Sense,” will not leave numbers at a loss to decide upon the propriety of separation.

  A pamphlet that had prodigious effects.

  Speaking a language which the colonists had felt but not thought, its popularity, terrible in its consequences to the parent country, was unexampled in the history of the press.

  A pamphlet whose effect was such, that it is quite a feature in this memorable contest. You may now read it, and wonder how a performance not marked, as you may at first sight suppose, with any particular powers of eloquence, could possibly produce effects so striking.

  Nor is our England without her missionaries. She has her life-saving Needham; to whom was solemnly presented a “civic sword,”—long since rusted into nothingness. Her Paine: rebellious Staymaker; unkempt; who feels that he, a single Needleman, did, by his “Common Sense” Pamphlet, free America;—that he can and will free all this World; perhaps even the other.

  In ’76 or ’77 I was present, at Providence, Rhode Island, in a social assembly of most of the prominent leaders of the State. I recollect that the subject of independence was cautiously introduced by an ardent Whig, and the thought seemed to excite the abhorrence of the whole circle. A few weeks after, Paine’s “Common Sense” appeared, and passed through the continent like an electric spark. It everywhere flashed conviction; and aroused a determined spirit, which resulted in the Declaration of Independence, upon the 4th of July ensuing. The name of Paine was precious to every Whig heart, and had resounded throughout Europe.

  He was the first to perceive the destiny of the New World. No other pamphlet ever accomplished such wonderful results. It was filled with argument, reason, persuasion, and unanswerable logic. It opened a new world. It filled the present with hope and the future with honor. Everywhere the people responded, and in a few months the Continental Congress declared the colonies free and independent States. A new nation was born. It is simple justice to say that Paine did more to cause the Declaration of Independence than any other man. Neither should it be forgotten that his attacks upon Great Britain were also attacks upon monarchy; and while he convinced the people that the colonies ought to separate from the mother country, he also proved to them that a free government is the best that can be instituted among men. In my judgment, Thomas Paine was the best political writer that ever lived.

  Had in him the seeds of something like genius…. Though Burke moves in an intellectual sphere altogether superior to that in which Paine was able to rise, and though the richness of Burke’s speculative power is as superior to Paine’s meagre philosophy as his style is superior in the amplitude of its rhetoric, it is not to be denied that Paine’s plain-speaking is more fitted to reach popular passions, and even that he has certain advantages in point of argument.

  Like all his works, this pamphlet was written in clear, racy, vivid English, and with much power of popular reasoning; and, like most of his works, it was shallow, violent, and scurrilous.

  No other pamphlet published during the Revolution is comparable with “Common Sense” for interest to the reader of to-day, or for value as an historical document. Therein as in a mirror is beheld the almost incredible England, against which the colonies contended. And therein is reflected the moral, even religious, enthusiasm which raised the struggle above the paltriness of a rebellion against taxation to a great human movement,—a war for an idea. The art with which every sentence is feathered for its aim is consummate.

  Colonial resolution had been screwed to the sticking point by Tom Paine, the stormy petrel of three countries, with his pamphlet “Common Sense,” issued in the nick of time, coarsely but forcibly written and well spiced with rhetoric about the “royal brute.”

The American Crisis, 1776–83

  Under that cloud, by Washington’s side, was silently at work the force that lifted it. Marching by day, listening to the consultations of Washington and his generals, Paine wrote by the camp fires; the winter storms, the Delaware’s waves, were mingled with his ink; the half-naked soldiers in their troubled sleep dreaming of their distant homes, the skulking deserter creeping off in the dusk, the pallid face of the heavy-hearted commander, made the awful shadows beneath which was written that leaflet which went to the Philadelphia printer along with Washington’s last foreboding letters to his relatives in Virginia. It was printed on December 19th, and many copies reached the camp above Trenton Falls on the eve of that almost desperate attack on which Washington had resolved…. America has known some utterances of the lips equivalent to decisive victories in the field,—as some of Patrick Henry’s, and the address of President Lincoln at Gettysburg. But of utterances by the pen none have achieved such vast results as Paine’s “Common Sense” and his first “Crisis.” Before the battle of Trenton the half-clad, disheartened soldiers of Washington were called together in groups to listen to that thrilling exhortation…. Not a chord of faith, or love, or hope was left untouched. The very faults of the composition, which the dilettanti have picked out, were effective to men who had seen Paine on the march, and knew these things were written in sleepless intervals of unwearied labors…. The pamphlet was never surpassed for true eloquence—that is, for the power that carries its point. With skilful illustration of lofty principles by significant details, all summed with simplicity and sympathy, three of the most miserable weeks ever endured by men were raised into epical dignity. The wives, daughters, mothers, sisters, seemed stretching out appealing hands against the mythically monstrous Hessians. The great commander, previously pointed to as “a mind that can even flourish upon care,” presently saw his dispirited soldiers beaming with hope, and bounding to the onset,—their watchword: These are the times that try men’s souls! Trenton was won, the Hessians captured, and a New Year broke for America on the morrow of that Christmas Day, 1776.

  In the terrible hour of blackest disaster, poverty, suffering, and despair, when Washington was retreating before Lord Howe, defeated, and the country was beginning to feel the cause hopeless, Paine wrote the first number of “Crisis.” Washington had it read at the head of every army corps; and at every pinch of affairs throughout the war, the words of Paine were looked for, to inspirit the soldiers and arouse the flagging patriotism of the people. Franklin could not have done this work. His logic of prudence and honesty and courage would have failed to touch the souls that were discouraged. It needed words of fire and logic that rang like the blows of a berserker’s sword on his shield.

The Rights of Man, 1791–92

  Mr. Paine’s answer to Burke will be a refreshing shower to their minds. It would bring England itself to reason and revolution if it was permitted to be read there.

  With respect to Paine’s book, the first impression was seized by the government, and the circulation of it stopped as much as possible, but still many copies have got abroad, and, as I am just informed, have done much mischief. Your help, therefore, is as much wanted and as strongly called for as ever. I will venture to say, that the eyes of many are fixed on you at this important crisis.

  I have had the ill or good fortune to provoke two great men of this age to the publication of their opinions: I mean Citizen Thomas Paine, and his Grace the * * * of * * * I am not so great a leveller as to put these two great men on a par, either in the state, or the republic of letters; but “the field of glory is a field for all.” It is a large one, indeed; and we all may run, God knows where, in chase of glory, over the boundless expanse of that wild heath whose horizon always flies before us. I assure his Grace, (if he will yet give men leave to call him so), whatever may be said on the authority of the clubs or the bar, that Citizen Paine (who, they will have it, hunts with me in couples, and who only moves as I drag him along) has a sufficient activity in his own native benevolence to dispose and enable him to take the lead for himself. He is ready to blaspheme his God, to insult his king, and to libel the Constitution of his country, without any provocation from me or any encouragement from his Grace.

  The book was characteristic of the man. Its purpose was, through the debasing principle of envy, which is after all the main principle of a leveller, to reduce all mankind to one standard, to write up a sort of confusion made easy, by addressing the baser to war against the better passions of our nature, by pulling down superior station, talents, virtues, and distinctions to the level of the lowest. It was an open declaration of hostility to all the institutions which we in England had been accustomed to consider as our ornament and pride; not a reform of the real or imaginary abuses of government, but a pretty plain recommendation to pull it down altogether for the pleasure of building afresh on the republican model—good perhaps in the eyes of an American, but at variance with the habits, the feelings, the opinions, the honest convictions and prejudices of an Englishman.

  This work should be read by every man and woman. It is concise, accurate, natural, convincing, and unanswerable. It shows great thought; and intimate knowledge of the various forms of government; deep insight into the very springs of human action, and a courage that compels respect and admiration. The most difficult political problems are solved in a few sentences. The venerable arguments in favor of wrong are refuted with a question—answered with a word. For forcible illustration, apt comparison, accuracy and clearness of statement, and absolute thoroughness, it has never been excelled.

Age of Reason, 1794–95–1811

  How exceedingly superficial and frivolous are the hackneyed objections to Christianity, and how entirely they arise from the grossest ignorance of the subject, will appear from my animadversions on Mr. Paine’s boasted work. He would have written more to the purpose, if he had been acquainted with the writings of Voltaire, and other better informed unbelievers. But he seems entirely unread on the subject, and thereby to be acquainted with the ground on which either the friends or the enemies of Christianity must stand. Had he been better acquainted with the Scriptures which are a constant subject of his ridicule, he might have made a more plausible attack upon them.

  Read Tom Paine’s “Age of Reason,”—God defend us from such poison.

  This volume, the hornbook of vulgar infidelity, is now before us, and we have doubted how far we ought to refer to it, or what use to make of it. It has passed utterly out of the world’s thoughts, and we have a repugnance, not easily to be overcome, in bringing it to light again. Its blasphemies are enough to sicken the heart; but still it may not be useless, in one view, to show the Christian reader to what dregs infidelity, beginning with refinement and high-bred speculation, will at last come.

  Perhaps the most blasphemous and mischievous book that was ever issued from the English press.

  That hasty pamphlet of his which he named “The Age of Reason,” written to alleviate the tedium of his Paris prison, differs from other deistical works only in being bolder and honester. It contains not a position which Franklin, John Adams, Jefferson, and Theodore Parker would have dissented from; and, doubtless, he spoke the truth when he declared that his main purpose in writing it was to “inspire mankind with a more exalted idea of the Supreme Architect of the Universe.” I think his judgment must have been impaired before he could have consented to publish so inadequate a performance.

  The man who was the most influential assailant of the orthodox faith was Thomas Paine. He was the arch infidel, the infidel par éminence, whom our early and later theologians have united in holding up as a monster of iniquity and unbelief. The truth is that Paine was a dogmatic, well-meaning iconoclast, who attacked religion without having any religious experience or any imaginative perception of the vital spiritual phenomena on which religious faith is based. Nobody can read his “Age of Reason,” after having had some preparatory knowledge derived from the study of the history of religions, without wondering at its shallowness. Paine is, in a spiritual application of the phrase, color-blind. He does not seem to know what religion is. The reputation he enjoyed was due not more to his masterly command of all the avenues to the average popular mind than to the importance to which he was lifted by his horrified theological adversaries. His merit as a writer against religion consisted in his hard, almost animal, common-sense, to whose tests he subjected the current theological dogmas.

  Is popular only with the lower classes, unable to perceive its cheap and unscholarly critical method and its vulgar temper.

  As an exponent of religious views, had a position in his day somewhat similar to that of Robert Ingersoll with us. He made a determined and vigorous attack upon a faith of whose true character he was irremediably ignorant. He was devoid of Ingersoll’s quick wit and poetic genius; but he had his rough and ready knowledge of human nature, his love of destruction, his hard common sense, his spiritual color-blindness, and, perhaps, more than his earnestness. As in Ingersoll’s case, too, the consternation which his attacks upon religion produced among clergymen and church members greatly increased his weight and importance as an “infidel.” His “Age of Reason” is a shallow production, but it had its effect when it was written. Religion, it needs hardly be said, sustained no permanent injury at Paine’s hands.

  The “Age of Reason” went everywhere, into holes and corners, among backwoodsmen and pioneers, and did more execution among plain moral men than many a book that was more worthy of acceptance. It is a pity that his disciples should be content with repeating his denials, instead of building on the rational foundations which he laid. For instance, they might while adding to his criticism of the Scriptures, have shown their high moral bearing and their spiritual glow. They might have carried out further his “enthusiasm for humanity,” showing that man had more in him than Paine suspected. They might have justified by more scientific reasons his belief in God and in immortality. They might have been truly rationalists as he wanted to be, but could not be at that period. But they were satisfied in saying over and over again, what he said as well as he could, but not as well as they can. He was simply a precursor, but he was a precursor of such men as Colenso and Robertson Smith, and a large host of scholars beside.

  Paine’s book has done as much to modify human belief as any ever written. It is one of the very few religious works of the last century which survives in unsectarian circulation. It requires a scholarly perception to recognize in its occasional expressions, by some called “coarse,” the simple Saxon of Norfolkshire…. Paine’s book is the uprising of the human HEART against the Religion of Inhumanity…. But here is one man, a prisoner, preparing for his long silence. He alone can speak for those slain between the throne and the altar. In these outbursts of laughter and tears, these outcries that think not of literary style, these appeals from surrounding chaos to the starry realm of order, from the tribune of vengeance to the sun shining for all, this passionate horror of cruelty in the powerful which will brave a heartless heaven or hell with its immortal indignation,—in all these the unfettered mind may hear the wail of enthralled Europe, sinking back choked with its blood, under the chain it tried to break. So long as a link remains of the same chain, binding reason or heart, Paine’s “Age of Reason” will live. It is not a mere book—it is a man’s heart.

  The “Age of Reason” damaged Paine’s reputation in America, where the name of “Tom Paine” became a stench in the nostrils of the godly, and a synonym for atheism and blasphemy. His book was denounced from a hundred pulpits, and copies of it were carefully locked away from the sight of “the young,” whose religious beliefs it might undermine. It was, in effect, a crude and popular statement of the deistic argument against Christianity…. The contest between skepticism and revelation has long since shifted to other grounds. Both the philosophy and the temper of “The Age of Reason” belong to the eighteenth century. But Paine’s downright pugnacious method of attack was effective with shrewd, half-educated doubters; and in America well-thumbed copies of his book passed from hand to hand in many a rural tavern or store, where the village atheist wrestled in debate with the deacon or the schoolmaster.

  A crude but often acute and forcible exposition of deism.

General

  That the early, unsolicited, and continued labors of Mr. Thomas Paine, in explaining and enforcing the principles of the late revolution by ingenious and timely publications upon the nature of liberty, and civil government, have been well received by the citizens of these States, and merit the approbation of Congress; and that in consideration of these services, and the benefits produced thereby, Mr. Paine is entitled to a liberal gratification from the United States.

  I have frequently with pleasure reflected on your services to my native and your adopted country. Your “Common Sense,” and your “Crisis,” unquestionably awakened the public mind, and led the people loudly to call for a declaration of our national independence. I therefore esteemed you as a warm friend to the liberty and lasting welfare of the human race. But when I had heard you had turned your mind to a defence of infidelity, I felt myself much astonished and more grieved, that you had attempted a measure so injurious to the feelings and so repugnant to the true interest of so great a part of the citizens of the United States. The people of New England, if you will allow me to use a Scripture phrase, are fast returning to their first love. Will you excite among them the spirit of angry controversy at a time when they are hastening to amity and peace? I am told that some of our newspapers have announced your intention to publish an additional pamphlet upon the principles of your “Age of Reason.” Do you think that your pen, or the pen of any other man, can unchristianize the mass of our citizens, or have your hopes of converting a few of them to assist you in so bad a cause? We ought to think ourselves happy in the enjoyment of opinion, without the danger of persecution by civil or ecclesiastical law. Our friend, the President of the United States, has been culminated for his liberal sentiments by men who have attributed that liberality to a latent design to promote the cause of infidelity. This, and all other slanders, have been made without the least shadow of proof. Neither religion nor liberty can long subsist in the tumult of altercation and amidst the noise and violence of faction. Felix qui cautus. Adieu.

  Nobody now-a-days would trouble himself to read Tom Paine.

  When our children’s children shall celebrate America’s second centennial, a hundred years from now, they will write in largest letters, upon their national banner, this sentence, which all intelligent American citizens will then enthusiastically recognize and applaud: “Thomas Paine—The Patriot, Philanthropist and Theologian of Two Hundred years ago.”

  What other last-century writer on political and religious issues survives in the hatred and devotion of a time engaged with new problems? What power is confessed in that writer who was set in the place of a decadent Satan, hostility to him being a sort of sixth point of Calvinism, and fortieth article of the Church? Large indeed must have been the influence of a man still perennially denounced by sectarians after heretical progress has left him comparatively orthodox, and retained as the figure-head of “Free thought” after his theism has been abandoned by its leaders. “Religion,” said Paine, “has two principal enemies, Fanaticism and Infidelity.” It was his strange destiny to be made a battle-field between these enemies. In the smoke of the conflict the man has been hidden. In the catalogue of the British Museum Library I counted 327 entries of books by or concerning Thomas Paine, who in most of them is a man-shaped or devil-shaped shuttlecock tossed between fanatical and “infidel” rackets. Here surely were phenomena enough to attract the historic sense of a scientific age, yet they are counterpart of an historic suppression of the most famous author of his time. The meagre references to Paine by other than controversial writers are perfunctory; by most historians he is either wronged or ignored. Before me are two histories of “American Slavery” by eminent members of Congress; neither mentions that Paine was the first political writer who advocated and devised a scheme of emancipation. Here is the latest “Life of Washington” (1889), by another member of Congress, who manages to exclude even the name of the man who, as we shall see, chiefly converted Washington to the cause of independence. And here is a history of the “American Revolution” (1891), by John Fiske, who, while recognizing the effect of “Common Sense,” reveals his ignorance of that pamphlet, and of all Paine’s works, by describing it as full of scurrilous abuse of the English people,—whom Paine regarded as fellow-sufferers with the Americans under royal despotism.

  Paine is the only English writer who expresses with uncompromising sharpness the abstract doctrine of political rights held by the French revolutionists. His relation to the American struggle, and afterwards to the revolution of 1789, gave him a unique position, and his writings became the sacred books of the extreme radical party in England. Attempts to suppress them only raised their influence, and the writings of the first quarter of the century are full of proofs of the importance attached to them by friends and foes. Paine deserves whatever credit is due to absolute devotion to a creed believed by himself to be demonstrably true and beneficial. He showed undeniable courage, and is free from any suspicion of mercenary motives. He attached an excessive importance to his own work, and was ready to accept the commonplace that his pen had been as efficient as Washington’s sword. He attributed to the power of his reasoning all that may more fitly be ascribed to the singular fitness of his formulæ to express the political passions of the time. Though unable to see that his opponents could be anything but fools and knaves, he has the merit of sincerely wishing that the triumph should be won by reason without violence. With a little more “human nature,” he would have shrunk from insulting Washington or encouraging a Napoleonic invasion of his native country. But Paine’s bigotry was of the logical kind which can see only one side of a question, and imagines that all political and religious questions are as simple as the first propositions of Euclid. This singular power of clear, vigorous exposition made him unequalled as a pamphleteer in revolutionary times, when compromise was an absurdity. He also showed great shrewdness and independence of thought in his criticisms of the Bible. He said, indeed, little that had not been anticipated by the English deists and their French disciples; but he writes freshly and independently, if sometimes coarsely.

  The coarse and violent expression, as well as the unpopular matter, of Paine’s works may have led to his being rather unfairly treated in the hot fights of the Revolutionary period; but the attempts which have recently been made to whitewash him are a mere mistake of reaction, or paradox, or pure stupidity. The charges which used to be brought against his moral character matter little; for neither side in these days had, or in any days has, a monopoly of loose or of holy living. But two facts will always remain; first, that Paine attacked subjects which all require calm, and some of them reverent, treatment, in a tone of the coarsest violence; and, secondly, that he engaged in questions of the widest reach, and requiring endless thought and reading, with the scanty equipments and the superabundant confidence of a self-educated man.

  When we consider the dignity, the elevation, and the reasonableness of so much that he says in his argument for the separation of the Colonies from England, and of many passages even in the “Age of Reason,” one hardly knows how to account for the ribaldry which belongs to so many of his later writings: ribald about old friends and benefactors; ribald about religion; ribald about the public which had honored him. Jealous, morbid, crazed by his vanities—his clever mind at intervals blazing through the clouds and foulnesses which his own dissipations and selfish arrogance had created; dying at last, after long stages of drunkenness, and, as many report, with a nose as bloated as Bardolph’s.