* "Thetpord, Norfolk, 27th July, 1774. Dear Daughter,—Imust beg leave to trouble you with my inquiries concerningmy unhappy son and your husband: various are the reports,which I find come originally from the Excise-office. Such ashis vile treatment to you, his secreting upwards of 30£.intrusted with him to manage the petition for advance ofsalary; and that since his discharge, he have petitioned tobe restored, which was rejected with scorn. Since which I amtold he have left England. To all which I beg you'll be kindenough to answer me by due course of post.—You 'll not bea little surprized at my so strongly desiring to know what'sbecome of him after I repeat to you his undutiful behaviorto the tenderest of parents; he never asked of us anything,but what was granted, that were in our poor abilities to do;nay, even distressed ourselves, whose works are given overby old age, to let him have 20£. on bond, and every othertender mark a parent could possibly shew a child; hisingratitude, or rather want of duty, has been such, that hehave not wrote to me upwards of two years.—If the aboveaccount be true, I am heartily sorry, that a woman whosecharacter and amiableness deserves the greatest respect,love, and esteem, as I have always on enquiry been informedyours did, should be tied for life to the worst of husbands.I am, dear daughter, your affectionate mother,"F. Pain."P. S. For God's sake, let me have your answer, as I amalmost distracted."
The letter may have been manipulated, but it is not improbable that rumors, "exaggerated by enmity or misstated by malice," as Oldys confesses, elicited some such outburst from Thetford.* The excisemen, angry at the failure to get their case before Parliament, and having fixed on Paine as their scapegoat, all other iniquities were naturally laid on him. Eighteen years later, when the scapegoat who had gone into the American wilderness returned with the renown of having helped to make it a nation, he addressed a letter to Lewes, which was about to hold a meeting to respond to a royal proclamation for suppressing seditious writings. His tone is not that of a man who supposed that Lewes had aught against him on the score of his wife.
"It is now upwards of eighteen years since I was a resident inhabitant of the town of Lewes. My situation among you as an officer of the revenue, for more than six years, enabled me to see into the numerous and various distresses which the weight of taxes even at that time of day occasioned; and feeling, as I then did, and as it is natural for me to do, for the hard condition of others, it is with pleasure I can declare, and every person then under my survey, and now living, can witness the exceeding candor, and even tenderness, with which that part of the duty that fell to my share was executed. The name of Thomas Paine is not to be found in the records of the Lewes justices, in any one act of contention with, or severity of any kind whatever towards, the persons whom he surveyed, either in the town or in the country; of this Mr. Fuller and Mr. Shelley, who will probably attend the meeting, can, if they please, give full testimony. It is, however, not in their power to contradict it. Having thus indulged myself in recollecting a place where I formerly had, and even now have, many friends, rich and poor, and most probably some enemies.
* When Paine had the money he did forward twenty pounds tohis parents, and made provision for his mother when she wasa widow. As to writing to her, in those unhappy years, heprobably thought it better to keep his burdens to himself.He may also have been aware of his mother's severity withoutknowing her interest in him.
I proceed to the import of my letter. Since my departure from Lewes, fortune or providence has thrown me into a line of action which my first setting out in life could not possibly have suggested to me. Many of you will recollect that, whilst I resided among you, there was not a man more firm and open in supporting the principles of liberty than myself, and I still pursue, and ever will, the same path."
Finally, it should be added that Rickman, a truthful man, who admits Paine's faults, says: "This I can assert, that Mr. Paine always spoke tenderly and respectfully of his wife; and sent her several times pecuniary aid, without her knowing even whence it came."
While Paine was in London, trying to get before Parliament a measure for the relief of excisemen, he not only enjoyed the friendship of Goldsmith, but that of Franklin. In the Doctor's electrical experiments he took a deep interest; for Paine was devoted to science, and the extent of his studies is attested by his description of a new electrical machine and other scientific papers, signed "Atlanticus," in thePennsylvania Magazine, The sale of his effects in Lewes paid his debts, but left him almost penniless. He came to London, and how he lived is unknown—that is, physically, for we do find some intimation of his mental condition. In a letter written many years after to John King, a political renegade, Paine says:
"When I first knew you in Ailiffe-street, an obscure part of the City, a child, without fortune or friends, I noticed you; because I thought I saw in you, young as you was, a bluntness of temper, a boldness of opinion, and an originality of thought, that portended some future good. I was pleased to discuss, with you, under our friendOliver'slime-tree, those political notions, which I have since given the world in my 'Rights of Man.' You used to complain of abuses, as well as me, and write your opinions on them in free terms—What then means this sudden attachment toKings?"
This "Oliver" was probably the famous Alderman Oliver who was imprisoned in the Tower during the great struggle of the City with the Government, on account of Wilkes. Paine tells us that in early life he cared little for politics, which seemed to him a species of "jockeyship"; and how apt the term is shown by the betting-book kept at Brooks' Club, in which are recorded the bets of the noblemen and politicians of the time on the outcome of every motion and course of every public man or minister. But the contemptuous word proves that Paine was deeply interested in the issues which the people had joined with the king and his servile ministers. He could never have failed to read with excitement the letters of Junius, whose "brilliant pen," he afterwards wrote, "enraptured without convincing; and though in the plenitude of its rage it might be said to give elegance to bitterness, yet the policy survived the blast." We may feel sure that he had heard with joy that adroit verdict of the jury at the King's Bench on Woodfall, Junius' printer, which secured liberty of the press until, twenty-two years later, it was reversed by revolutionary panic, in the same court, for Paine himself. Notwithstanding the private immorality of Wilkes, in which his associates were aristocratic, the most honorable political elements in England, and the Independents and Presbyterians, were resolute in defending the rights of his constituents against the authority arrogated by the Commons to exclude him. Burke then stood by Wilkes, as John Bright stood by Bradlaugh at a later day. And while Paine was laboring to carry his excise bill through Parliament he had good opportunity to discover how completely that body's real opinions were overruled by royal dictation. It was at that time that George III., indifferent to his brother's profligacies, would not forgive his marriage with a commoner's sister, and forced on Parliament a Marriage Act which made all marriages in the royal family illegitimate without his consent. The indignant resignation of Fox modified the measure slightly, limiting the King's interference at the twenty-sixth year of the marrying parties, and then giving the veto to Parliament. For this the King turned his wrath on Fox. This was but one of the many instances of those years—all told in Trevelyan's admirable work*—which added to Paine's studies of the Wilkes conflicts a lasting lesson in the conservation of despotic forces. The barbaric eras of prerogative had returned under the forms of ministerial government. The Ministry, controlled by the Court, ruled by corruption of commoners.
* "The Early History of Charles James Fox," 1880.
It was arégimealmost incredible to us now, when England is of all nations most free from corruption and court influence in politics; and it was little realized in English colonies before the Revolution. But Franklin was in London to witness it, and Paine was there to grow familiar with the facts. To both of them the systematic inhumanity and injustice were brought home personally. The discharged and insulted postmaster could sympathize with the dismissed and starving exciseman. Franklin recognized Paine's ability, and believed he would be useful and successful in America. So on this migration Paine decided, and possibly the determination brought his domestic discords to a crisis.
Paine left England in October and arrived in America November 30, 1774. He bore a letter of introduction from Dr. Franklin to Richard Bache, his son-in-law, dated September 30, 1774:
"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 of 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."
"Your countenancing me has obtained for me many friends and much reputation, for which please accept my sincere thanks. I have been applied to by several gentlemen to instruct their sons on very advantageous terms to myself, and a printer and bookseller here, a man of reputation and property, Robert Aitkin, has lately attempted a magazine, but having little or no turn that way himself, he has applied to me for assistance. He had not above six hundred subscribers when I first assisted him. We have now upwards of fifteen hundred, and daily increasing. I have not entered into terms with him This is only the second number. The first I was not concerned in."
It has been often stated that Paine was befriended by Dr. Rush, but there is no indication of this. Their acquaintance was casual.
"About the year 1773 [says Dr. Rush—the date is an error for 1774] I met him accidentally in Mr. Aitkin's bookstore, and was introduced to him by Mr. Aitkin. We conversed a few minutes, and 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 the 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 in Mr. Aitkin's 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, with a salary of fifty pounds currency a year. This work was well supported by him. His song upon the death of Gen. Wolfe, and his reflections upon the death of Lord Clive, gave it a sudden currency which few works of the kind have since had in our country."
As the anti-slavery essay was printed March 8, 1775, it appears that Paine had been in America more than three months before Rush noticed him.
The first number of thePennsylvania Magazine, orAmerican Museum, appeared at the end of January, 1775. Though "not concerned" in it pecuniarily, not yet being editor, his contributions increased the subscription list, and he was at once engaged. For eighteen months Paine edited this magazine, and probably there never was an equal amount of good literary work done on a salary of fifty pounds a year. It was a handsome magazine, with neat vignette—book, plough, anchor, and olive-twined shield,—the motto,Juvat in sylvis kabitare. The future author of the "Rights of Man" and "Age of Reason" admonishes correspondents that religion and politics are forbidden topics! The first number contains a portrait of Goldsmith and the picture of a new electrical machine. A prefatory note remarks that "the present perplexities of affairs" have "encompassed with difficulties the first number of the magazine, which, like the early snowdrop, comes forth in a barren season, and contents itself with modestly foretelling that choicer flowers are preparing to appear." The opening essay shows a fine literary touch, and occasionally a strangely modern vein of thought. "Our fancies would be highly diverted could we look back and behold a circle of original Indians haranguing on the sublime perfections of the age; yet 't is not impossible but future times may exceed us as much as we have exceeded them."
Here is a forerunner of Macaulay's New Zea-lander sketching the ruins of St. Paul's. It is followed by a prediction that the coming American magazine will surpass the English, "because we are not exceeded in abilities, have a more extended field for inquiry, and whatever may be our political state, our happiness will always depend upon ourselves." A feature of the magazine was the description, with plates, of recent English inventions not known in the new world—threshing-machine, spinning-machine, etc.,—such papers being by Paine. These attracted the members of the Philosophical Society, founded by Franklin, and Paine was welcomed into their circle by Rittenhouse, Clymer, Rush, Muhlenberg, and other representatives of the scientific and literary metropolis. Many a piece composed for the Headstrong Club at Lewes first saw the light in this magazine,—such as the humorous poems, "The Monk and the Jew," "The Farmer and Short's Dog, Porter"; also the famous ballad "On the Death of General Wolfe." printed March, 1775, with music. Lewes had not, indeed, lost sight of him, as is shown by a communication in April from Dr. Matthew Wilson, dated from that town, relating to a new kind of fever raging in England.
The reader who has studied Paine's avowed and well-known works finds no difficulty in tracking him beneath the various signatures by which he avoided an appearance of writing most of the articles in thePennsylvania Magazine, though he really did. He is now "Atlanticus," now "Vox Populi," or "Æsop," and oftener affixes no signature. The Thetford Quaker is still here in "Reflections on the Death of Lord Clive" (reprinted as a pamphlet in England), "A New Anecdote of Alexander the Great," and "Cursory Reflections on the Single Combat or Modern Duel." The duel was hardly yet challenged in America when Paine wrote (May, 1775)
"From the peculiar prevalence of this custom in countries where the religious system is established which, of all others, most expressly prohibits the gratification of revenge, with every species of outrage and violence, we too plainly see how little mankind are in reality influenced by the precepts of the religion by which they profess to be guided, and in defence of which they will occasionally risk even their lives."
But with this voice from Thetford meeting-house mingles the testimony of "common sense." In July, 1775, he writes:
"I am thus far a Quaker, that I would gladly agree with all the world to lay aside the use of arms, and settle matters by negotiations; but, unless the whole world wills, the matter ends, and I take up my musket, and thank heaven he has put it in my power.... We live not in a world of angels. The reign of Satan is not ended, neither can we expect to be defended by miracles."
Titles he sees through (May, 1775):
"The Honourable plunderer of his country, or the Right Honourable murderer of mankind, create such a contrast of ideas as exhibit a monster rather than a man. The lustre of the Star, and the title of My Lord, overawe the superstitious vulgar, and forbid them to enquire into the character of the possessor: Nay more, they are, as it were, bewitched to admire in the great the vices they would honestly condemn in themselves.... The reasonable freeman sees through the magic of a title, and examines the man before he approves him. To him the honours of the worthless seem to write their masters' vices in capitals, and their Stars shine to no other end than to read them by. Modesty forbids men separately, or collectively, to assume titles. But as all honours, even that of kings, originated from the public, the public may justly be called the true fountain of honour. And it is with much pleasure I have heard the title 'Honourable' applied to a body of men, who nobly disregarding private ease and interest for public welfare, have justly merited the address ofThe Honourable Continental Congress."
He publishes (May, 1775), and I think wrote, a poetical protest against cruelty to animals, to whose rights Christendom was then not awakened. His pen is unmistakable in "Reflections on Unhappy Marriages" (June, 1775): "As extasy abates coolness succeeds, which often makes way for indifference, and that for neglect. Sure of each other by the nuptial bond, they no longer take any pains to be mutually agreeable. Careless if they displease, and yet angry if reproached; with so little relish for each other's company that anybody else's is more welcome, and more entertaining." It is a more pointed statement of the problem already suggested, in the April magazine, by his well-known fable "Cupid and Hymen," whose controversies are now settled in the Divorce Court.
In his August (1775) number is found the earliest American plea for woman. It is entitled "An Occasional Letter on the Female Sex," and unsigned, but certainly by Paine. His trick of introducing a supposititious address from another person, as in the following extract, appears in many examples.
"Affronted in one country by polygamy, which gives them their rivals for inseparable companions; inslaved in another by indissoluble ties, which often join the gentle to the rude, and sensibility to brutality: Even in countries where they may be esteemed most happy, constrained in their desires in the disposal of their goods, robbed of freedom of will by the laws, the slaves of opinion, which rules them with absolute sway, and construes the slightest appearances into guilt, surrounded on all sides by judges who are at once their tyrants and seducers, and who after having prepared their faults, punish every lapse with dishonour—nay usurp the right of degrading them on suspicion!—who does not feel for the tender sex? Yet such I am sorry to say is the lot of woman over the whole earth. Man with regard to them, in all climates and in all ages, has been either an insensible husband or an oppressor; but they have sometimes experienced the cold and deliberate oppression of pride, and sometimes the violent and terrible tyranny of jealousy. When they are not beloved they are nothing; and when they are they are tormented. They have almost equal cause to be afraid of indifference and love. Over three quarters of the globe Nature has placed them between contempt and misery."
"Even among people where beauty receives the highest homage we find men who would deprive the sex of every kind of reputation. 'The most virtuous woman,' says a celebrated Greek, 'is she who is least talked of.' That morose man, while he imposes duties on women, would deprive them of the sweets of public esteem, and in exacting virtues from them would make it a crime to aspire to honour. If a woman were to defend the cause of her sex she might address him in the following manner:
"'How great is your injustice! If we have an equal right with you to virtue, why should we not have an equal right to praise? The public esteem ought to wait upon merit. Our duties are different from yours, but they are not less difficult to fulfil, or of less consequence to society: They are the foundations of your felicity, and the sweetness of life. We are wives and mothers. 'T is we who form the union and the cordiality of families; 't is we who soften that savage rudeness which considers everything as due to force, and which would involve man with man in eternal war. We cultivate in you that humanity which makes you feel for the misfortunes of others, and our tears forewarn you of your own danger. Nay, you cannot be ignorant that we have need of courage not less than you: More feeble in ourselves, we have perhaps more trials to encounter. Nature assails us with sorrow, law and custom press us with constraint, and sensibility and virtue alarm us by their continual conflict. Sometimes also the name of citizen demands from us the tribute of fortitude. When you offer your blood to the state, think that it is ours. In giving it our sons and our husbands we give it more than ourselves. You can only die on the field of battle, but we have the misfortune to survive those whom we love the most. Alas! while your ambitious vanity is unceasingly laboring to cover the earth with statues, with monuments, and with inscriptions to eternize, if possible, your names, and give yourselves an existence when this body is no more, why must we be condemned to live and to die unknown? Would that the grave and eternal forgetfulness should be our lot. Be not our tyrants in all: Permit our names to be sometime pronounced beyond the narrow circle in which we live: Permit friendship, or at least love, to inscribe its emblems on the tomb where our ashes repose; and deny us not the public esteem which, after the esteem of one's self, is the sweetest reward of welldoing.'"
Thus the Pennsylvania Magazine, in the time that Paine edited it, was a seed-bag from which this sower scattered the seeds of great reforms ripening with the progress of civilization. Through the more popular press he sowed also. Events selected his seeds of American independence, of republican equality, freedom from royal, ecclesiastical, and hereditary privilege, for a swifter and more imposing harvest; but the whole circle of human ideas and principles was recognized by this lone wayfaring man. The first to urge extension of the principles of independence to the enslaved negro; the first to arraign monarchy, and to point out the danger of its survival in presidency; the first to propose articles of a more thorough nationality to the new-born States; the first to advocate international arbitration; the first to expose the absurdity and criminality of duelling; the first to suggest more rational ideas of marriage and divorce; the first to advocate national and international copyright; the first to plead for the animals; the first to demand justice for woman: what brilliants would our modern reformers have contributed to a coronet for that man's brow, had he not presently worshipped the God of his fathers after the way that theologians called heresy! "Be not righteous overmuch," saith cynical Solomon; "neither make thyself over-wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself?"
With regard to Paine's earliest publication there has been needless confusion. In his thirdCrisishe says to Lord Howe: "I have likewise an aversion to monarchy, as being too debasing to the dignity of man; but I never troubled others with my notions till very lately, nor ever published a syllable in England in my life." It has been alleged that this is inconsistent with his having written in 1772 "The Case of the Officers of Excise." But this, though printed (by William Lee of Lewes) was not published until 1793. It was a document submitted to Parliament, but never sold. The song on Wolfe, and other poetical pieces, though known to the Headstrong Club in Lewes, were first printed in Philadelphia.*
* Mr. W. H. Burr maintains that Paine wrote in the EnglishCrisis (1775) under the name of "Casca." As Casca's articlesbear intrinsic evidence of being written in London—such ashis treating as facts General Gage's fictions aboutLexington—the theory supposes Paine to have visited Englandin that year. But besides the facts that Rush had aninterview with Paine near the middle of March, and Franklinin October, the accounts of Aitkin, preserved inPhiladelphia, show payments to Paine in May, July, andAugust, 1775. As Mr. Burr's further theory, that Paine wrotethe letters of Junius, rests largely on the identificationwith "Casca," it might be left to fall with disproof of thelatter. It is but fair, however, to the labors of acourageous writer, and to the many worthy people who haveadopted his views, to point out the impossibilities of theircase. An able summary of the facts discoverable concerningthe personality of Junius, in Macaulay's "Warren Hastings,"says: "As to the position, pursuits, and connexions ofJunius, the following are the most important facts which canbe considered as clearly proved: first, that he wasacquainted with the technical forms of the Secretary ofState's office; secondly, that he was intimately acquaintedwith the business of the War Office; thirdly, that he,during the year 1770, attended debates in the House ofLords, and took notes of speeches, particularly of thespeeches of Lord Chatham; fourthly, that he bitterlyresented the appointment of Mr. Chamier to the place ofDeputy Secretary of War; fifthly, that he was bound by somestrong tie to the first Lord Holland."
Now during the period of Junius' letters (Jan. 21, 1769, to Jan. 21, 1772) Paine was occupied with his laborious duties as exciseman at Lewes, and with the tobacco mill from which he vainly tried to extort a living for himself and wife, and her mother. Before that period there was no time at which Paine could have commanded the leisure or opportunities necessary to master the political and official details known to Junius, even had he been interested in them. He declares that he had no interest in politics, which he regarded as a species of "jockeyship." How any one can read a page of Junius and then one of Paine, and suppose them from the same pen appears to me inconceivable. Junius is wrapped up in the affairs of Lord This and Duke That, and a hundred details. I can as easily imagine Paine agitated with the movements of a battle of chessmen. But apart from this, the reader need only refer to the facts of his life before coming to America to acquit him of untruth in saying that he had published nothing in England, and that the cause of America made him an author.
In America Wolfe again rises before Paine's imagination. In thePennsylvania Journal, January 4th, appears a brief "Dialogue between General Wolfe and General Gage in a Wood near Boston." Wolfe, from the Elysian Fields, approaches Gage with rebuke for the errand on which he has come to America, and reminds him that he is a citizen as well as a soldier. "If you have any regard for the glory of the British name, and if you prefer the society of Grecian, Roman, and British heroes in the world of spirits to the company of Jeffries, Kirk, and other royal executioners, I conjure you immediately to resign your commission."
Although this "Dialogue" was the first writing of Paine published, it was not the first written for publication. The cause that first moved his heart and pen was that of the negro slave. Dr. Rush's date of his meeting with Paine, 1773,—a year before his arrival,—is one of a number of errors in his letter, among these being his report that Paine told him the antislavery essay was the first thing he had ever published. Paine no doubt told him it was the first thing he ever wrote and offered for publication; but it was not published until March 8th. Misled by Rush's words, Paine's editors and our historians of the antislavery movement have failed to discover this early manifesto of abolitionism. It is a most remarkable article. Every argument and appeal, moral, religious, military, economic, familiar in our subsequent anti-slavery struggle, is here found stated with eloquence and clearness. Having pointed out the horrors of the slave trade and of slavery, he combats the argument that the practice was permitted to the Jews. Were such a plea allowed it would justify adoption of other Jewish practices utterly unlawful "under clearer light." The Jews indeed had no permission to enslave those who never injured them, but all such arguments are unsuitable "since the time of reformation came under Gospel light. All distinctions of nations, and privileges of one above others, are ceased. Christians are taught to account all men their neighbours; and love their neighbours as themselves; and do to all men as they would be done by; to do good to all men; and man-stealing is ranked with enormous crimes." Bradford might naturally hesitate some weeks before printing these pointed reproofs. "How just, how suitable to our crime is the punishment with which Providence threatens us? We have enslaved multitudes, and shed much innocent blood, and now are threatened with the same." In the conclusion, a practical scheme is proposed for liberating all except the infirm who need protection, and settling them on frontier lands, where they would be friendly protectors instead of internal foes ready to help any invader who may offer them freedom.
This wonderful article is signed "Justice and Humanity." Thomas Paine's venture in this direction was naturally welcomed by Dr. Rush, who some years before had written a little pamphlet against the slave trade, and deploring slavery, though he had not proposed or devised any plan for immediate emancipation. Paine's paper is as thorough as Garrison himself could have made it. And, indeed, it is remarkable that Garrison, at a time when he shared the common prejudices against Paine, printed at the head of hisLiberatora motto closely resembling Paine's. The motto of Paine was: "The world is my country, my religion is to do good"; that of theLiberator: "Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind." Garrison did characteristic justice to Paine when he had outgrown early prejudices against him.* On April 12th, thirty-five days after Paine's plea for emancipation, the first American Antislavery Society was formed, in Philadelphia.
* It will be seen by the "Life of William Lloyd Garrison,"i., p. 219, and iii., p. 145, that Mr. Garrison did not knowof Paine's motto ("Rights of Man," i., chap. v.). His reviewof Paine's works appeared November, 1845. TheLiberator first appeared January 1, 1831.
Although the dialogue between Wolfe and Gage (January 4th) shows that Paine shared the feeling of America, the earlier numbers of hisPennsylvania Magazineprove his strong hope for reconciliation. That hope died in the first collision; after Lexington he knew well that separation was inevitable. A single sentence in the magazine intimates the change. The April number, which appeared soon after the "Lexington massacre," contains a summary of Chatham's speech, in which he said the crown would lose its lustre if "robbed of so principal a jewel as America." Paine adds this footnote: "The principal jewel of the crown actually dropt out at the coronation." There was probably no earlier printed suggestion of independence by any American.*
* The London Chronicle, of October 25, 1774, printed MajorCartwright's "American Independence the Interest and Gloryof Great Britain," and it was reprinted in the PennsylvaniaJournal. Although it has little relation to the form inwhich the question presently suggested itself, the articleis interesting as an indication that separation was thenmore talked of in England than in America. Twelve yearsbefore the Revolution a pamphlet in favor of separation waswritten by Josiah Tucker of Bristol, England. Then as nowcolonists were more loyal than the English at home.
There are three stages in the evolution of the Declaration of Independence. The colonies reached first the resolution of resistance, secondly of separation, and thirdly of republicanism.
In the matter of resistance the distribution of honors has been rather literary than historical. In considering the beginnings of the Revolution our minds fly at once to the Tea-party in Boston harbor, then to Lexington, where seven Massachusetts men fell dead, and seven years of war followed. But two years before the tea was thrown overboard, and four years before the Lexington massacre, North Carolinians had encountered British troops, had left two hundred patriots fallen, and seen their leaders hanged for treason. Those earliest martyrs are almost forgotten because, in the first place, North Carolina produced no historians, poets, magazines, to rehearse their story from generation to generation. In the second place, the rebellion which Governor Tryon crushed at Alamance, though against the same oppressions, occurred in 1771, before the colonies had made common cause. Governmental anachronisms have a tendency to take refuge in colonies. Had Great Britain conceded to Americans the constitutional rights of Englishmen there could have been no revolution. Before the time of George III. British governors had repeatedly revived in America prerogatives extinct in England, but the colonists had generally been successful in their appeals to the home government. Even in 1774 the old statesmen in America had not realized that a king had come who meant to begin in America his mad scheme of governing as well as reigning. When, in September, 1774, the first Continental Congress assembled, its members generally expected to settle the troubles with the "mother country" by petitions to Parliament. There is poetic irony in the fact that the first armed resistance to royal authority in America was by the North Carolina "Regulators." On the frontiers, before official courts were established, some kind of law and order had to be maintained, and they were protected by a volunteer police called "Regulators." In the forests of Virginia, two hundred years ago, Peter Lynch was appointed judge by his neighbors because of his wisdom and justice, and his decisions were enforced by "Regulators." Judge Lynch's honorable name is now degraded into a precedent for the cowardly ruffians who hunt down unarmed negroes, Italians, and Chinamen, and murder them without trial, or after their acquittal. But such was not the case with our frontier courts and "Regulators," which were civilized organizations, though unauthorized. For several years before the Revolution lawful and civilized government in some of the colonies depended on unauthorized administrations. The authorized powers were the "lynchers," as they would now be called, with traditional misrepresentation of Peter Lynch. The North Carolina Regulators of 1771 were defending the English constitution against a king and a governor acting as lawlessly as our vile lynchers and "White Caps." It was remarked, by Paine among others that after the royal authority was abolished, though for a long time new governments were not established, "order and harmony were preserved as inviolate as in any country in Europe."*
* "The Rights of Man," part ii., chapter i.
In the dialogue between Wolfe and Gage, Paine writes as an Englishman; he lays no hand on the constitution, nor considers the sovereign involved in ministerial iniquities. Apart from his Quaker sentiments he felt dismay at a conflict which interrupted his lucrative school, and the literary opportunities afforded by his magazine. "For my own part," he wrote to Franklin, "I thought it very hard to have the country set on fire about my ears almost the moment I got into it." And indeed there was a general disgust among the patriots during the year 1775, while as yet no great aim or idea illumined the smoke of battle. They were vehemently protesting that they had no wish for separation from England, just as in the beginning of our civil war leading Unionists declared that they would not interfere with slavery. In March, 1775, Franklin maintained the assurance he had given Lord Chatham in the previous year, that he had never heard in America an expression in favor of independence, "from any person drunk or sober." Paine says that on his arrival he found an obstinate attachment to Britain; "it was at that time a kind of treason to speak against it." "Independence was a doctrine scarce and rare even towards the conclusion of the year 1775." In May, George Washington, on his way to Congress, met the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, in the middle of the Potomac; while their boats paused, the clergyman warned his friend that the path on which he was entering might lead to separation from England. "If you ever hear of my joining in any such measures," said Washington, "you have my leave to set me down for everything wicked."* Although Paine, as we shall see, had no reverence for the crown, and already foresaw American independence, he abhorred the method of war. In the first number of his magazine he writes: "The speeches of the different governors pathetically lament the present distracted state of affairs. Yet they breathe a spirit of mildness as well as tenderness, and give encouragement to hope that some happy method of accommodation may yet arise."
* Notes and Queries (Eng.), series 3 and 5. See also inLippincotts Maga-rine, May, 1889, my paper embodying thecorrespondence of Washington and Boucher.
But on April 19th came the "massacre at Lexington," as it was commonly called. How great a matter is kindled by a small fire! A man whose name remains unknown, forgetful of Captain Parker's order to his minute-men not to fire until fired on, drew his trigger on the English force advancing to Concord; the gun missed fire, but the little flash was answered by a volley; seven men lay dead. In the blood of those patriots at Lexington the Declaration of Independence was really written. From town-meetings throughout the country burning resolutions were hurled on General Gage in Boston, who had warned Major Pitcairn, commander of the expedition, not to assume the offensive. From one county, Mecklenburg, North Carolina, were sent to Congress twenty resolutions passed by its committee, May 31st, declaring "all laws and commissions confirmed by or derived from the authority of the King and Parliament are anulled and vacated," and that, "whatever person shall hereafter receive a commission from the crown, or attempt to exercise any such commission heretofore received, shall be deemed an enemy to his country."*
* These resolutions further organized a provisionalgovernment to be in force until "the legislative body ofGreat Britain resign its unjust and arbitrary pretensionswith respect to America." In 1819 a number of witnessesstated that so early as May 20th Mecklenburg passed anabsolute Declaration of Independence, and it is possiblethat, on receipt of the tidings from Lexington, some popularmeeting at Charlottetown gave vent to its indignation inexpressions, or even resolutions, which were tempered by theCounty Committee eleven days later. The resolutionsembodying the supposititious "Declaration," written out(1800) from memory by the alleged secretary of the meeting(Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander), are believed by Dr. Wellingto be "an honest effort to reproduce, according to the bestof his recollection, the facts and declarations contained inthe genuine manuscripts of May 31, after that manifesto hadbeen forgotten."—(North American Review, April, 1874.) Butthe testimony is very strong in favor of two sets ofresolutions.
Many years after the independence of America had been achieved, William Cobbett, on his return to England after a long sojourn in the United States, wrote as follows:
"As my Lord Grenville introduced the name of Burke, suffer me, my Lord, to introduce that of a man who put this Burke to shame, who drove him off the public stage to seek shelter in the pension list, and who is now named fifty million times where the name of the pensioned Burke is mentioned once. The cause of the American colonies was the cause of the English Constitution, which says that no man shall be taxed without his own consent.... A little thing sometimes produces a great effect; an insult offered to a man of great talent and unconquerable perseverance has in many instances produced, in the long run, most tremendous effects; and it appears to me very clear that some beastly insults, offered to Mr. Paine while he was in the Excise in England, was the real cause of the Revolution in America; for, though the nature of the cause of America was such as I have before described it; though the principles were firm in the minds of the people of that country; still, it was Mr. Paine, and Mr. Paine alone, who brought those principles into action."
In this passage Cobbett was more epigrammatic than exact. Paine, though not fairly treated, as we have seen, in his final dismissal from the excise, was not insulted. But there is more truth in what Cobbett suggests as to Paine's part than he fully realized. Paine's unique service in the work of independence may now be more clearly defined. It was that he raised the Revolution into an evolution. After the "Lexington massacre" separation was talked of by many, but had it then occurred America might have been another kingdom. The members of Congress were of the rich conservative "gentry," and royalists. Had he not been a patriot, Peyton Randolph, our first president, would probably have borne a title like his father, and Washington would certainly have been knighted. Paine was in the position of the abolitionists when the secession war began. They also held peace principles, and would have scorned a war for the old slave-holding union, as Paine would have scorned a separation from England preserving its political institutions. The war having begun, and separation become probable, Paine hastened to connect it with humanity and with republicanism. As the abolitionists resolved that the secession war should sweep slavery out of the country, Paine made a brave effort that the Revolution should clear away both slavery and monarchy. It was to be in every respect a new departure for humanity. So he anticipated the Declaration of Independence by more than eight months with one of his own, which was discovered by Moreau in the file of thePennsylvania Journal, October 18th.*