* "When I arrived in France, the French naturally had agreat many questions to settle. The first was whether I wasthe famous Adams, 'Ah, le fameux Adams.' In order tospeculate a little upon this subject, the pamphlet 'CommonSense' had been printed in the 'Affaires de l'Angle-terre etde l'Amerique,' and expressly ascribed to Mr. Adams, 'thecelebrated member of Congress.' It must be further knownthat although the pamphlet 'Common Sense' was received inFrance and in all Europe with rapture, yet there werecertain parts of it that they did not dare to publish inFrance. The reasons of this any man may guess. 'CommonSense' undertakes to prove that monarchy is unlawful by theOld Testament They therefore gave the substance of it, asthey said; and paying many compliments to Mr. Adams, hissense and rich imagination, they were obliged to ascribesome parts of it to republican zeal. When I arrived atBordeaux all that I could say or do would not convinceanybody but that I was the fameux Adams. 'C'est un hommecalibre. Votre nom est bien connu ici.'"—"Works of JohnAdams," vol. iii., p. 189. This was in 1779, and when Adamsentered on his official duties at Paris the honors thrustupon him at Bordeaux became burdensome.
When the last proof of his book was revised Paine sped to Paris, and placed it in the hand of his friend M. Lanthenas for translation. Mirabeau was on his death-bed, and Paine witnessed that historic procession, four miles long, which bore the orator to his shrine. Witnessed it with relief, perhaps, for he is ominously silent concerning Mirabeau. With others he strained his eyes to see the Coming Man; with others he sees formidable Danton glaring at Lafayette; and presently sees advancing softly between them the sentimental, philanthropic—Robespierre.
It was a happy hour for Paine when, on a day in May, he saw Robespierre rise in the National Assembly to propose abolition of the death penalty. How sweet this echo of the old "testimonies" of Thetford Quaker meetings. "Capital punishment," cries Robespierre, "is but a base assassination—punishing one crime by another, murder with murder. Since judges are not infallible they have no right to pronounce irreparable sentences." He is seconded by the jurist Duport, who says impressively: "Let us at least make revolutionary scenes as little tragic as possible! Let us render man honorable to man!" Marat, right man for the role, answered with the barbaric demand "blood for blood," and prevailed. But Paine was won over to Robespierre by this humane enthusiasm. The day was to come when he must confront Robespierre with a memory of this scene.
That Robespierre would supersede Lafayette Paine could little imagine. The King was in the charge of the great friend of America, and never had country a fairer prospect than France in those beautiful spring days. But the royal family fled. In the early morning of June 21st Lafayette burst into Paine's bedroom, before he was up, and cried: "The birds are flown!" "It is well," said Paine; "I hope there will be no attempt to recall them." Hastily dressing, he rushed out into the street, and found the people in uproar. They were clamoring as if some great loss had befallen them. At the Hotel deVille Lafayette was menaced by the crowd, which accused him of having assisted the King's flight, and could only answer them: "What are you complaining of? Each of you saves twenty sous tax by suppression of the Civil List." Paine encounters his friend Thomas Christie. "You see," he said, "the absurdity of monarchical governments; here will be a whole nation disturbed by the folly of one man."*
* The letter of Christie (Priestley's nephew), written June22d, appeared in the London Morning Chronicle, June 29th.
Here was Marat's opportunity. His journal,L'Ami du Peuple, clamored for a dictator, and for the head of Lafayette. Against him rose young Bonneville, who, inLa Bouche de Ferwrote: "No more kings! No dictator! Assemble the People in the face of the sun; proclaim that the Law alone shall be sovereign,—the Law, the Law alone, and made for all!"
Bonneville's words in his journal about that time were apt to be translations from the works of his friend Paine, with whom his life was afterwards so closely interwoven. The little group of men who had studied Paine, ardent republicans, beheld a nation suddenly become frantic to recover a king who could not be of the slightest value to any party in the state. The miserable man had left a letter denouncing all the liberal measures he had signed since October, 1789, which sealed his doom as a monarch. The appalling fact was revealed that the most powerful revolutionists—Robespierre and Marat especially—had never considered a Republic, and did not know what it was.
On June 25th, Paine was a heavy-hearted spectator of the return of the arrested king. He had personal realization that day of the folly of a people in bringing back a king who had relieved them of his presence. He had omitted to decorate his hat with a cockade, and the mob fell on him with cries of "Aristocrat! a la lanterne!" After some rough handling he was rescued by a Frenchman who spoke English, and explained the accidental character of the offence. Poor Paine's Quaker training had not included the importance of badges, else the incident had revealed to him that even the popular rage against Louis was superstitious homage to a cockade. Never did friend of the people have severer proofs that they are generally wrong. In America, while writing as with his heart's blood the first plea for its independence, he was "shadowed" as a British spy; and in France he narrowly escapes the aristocrat's lantern, at the very moment when he was founding the first republican society, and writing its declaration.
This "Société Républicaine," as yet of five members, inaugurated itself on July 1st, by placarding Paris with its manifesto, which was even nailed on the door of the National Assembly.
"Brethren and fellow citizens:
"The serene tranquillity, the mutual confidence which prevailed amongst us, during the time of the late King's escape, the indifference with which we beheld him return, are unequivocal proofs that the absence of a King is more desirable than his presence, and that he is not only a political superfluity, but a grievous burden, pressing hard on the whole nation.
"Let us not be imposed upon by sophisms; all that concerns this is reduced to four points.
"He has abdicated the throne in having fled from his post. Abdication and desertion are not characterized by the length of absence; but by the single act of flight. In the present instance, the act is everything, and the time nothing.
"The nation can never give back its confidence to a man who false to his trust, perjured to his oath, conspires a clandestine flight, obtains a fraudulent passport, conceals a King of France under the disguise of a valet, directs his course towards a frontier covered with traitors and deserters, and evidently meditates a return into our country, with a force capable of imposing his own despotic laws.
"Whether ought his flight to be considered as his own act, or the act of those who fled with him? Was it a spontaneous resolution of his own, or was it inspired into him by others? The alternative is immaterial; whether fool or hypocrite, idiot or traitor, he has proved himself equally unworthy of the important functions that had been delegated to him.
"In every sense that the question can be considered, the reciprocal obligation which subsisted between us is dissolved. He holds no longer any authority. We owe him no longer obedience. We see in him no more than an indifferent person; we can regard him only as Louis Capet.
"The history of France presents little else than a long series of public calamity, which takes its source from the vices of the Kings; we have been the wretched victims that have never ceased to suffer either for them or by them. The catalogue of their oppressions was complete, but to complete the sum of their crimes, treason yet was wanting. Now the only vacancy is filled up, the dreadful list is full; the system is exhausted; there are no remaining errors for them to commit, their reign is consequently at an end.
"What kind of office must that be in a government which requires neither experience nor ability to execute? that may be abandoned to the desperate chance of birth, that may be filled with an idiot, a madman, a tyrant, with equal effect as by the good, the virtuous, and the wise? An office of this nature is a mere nonentity: it is a place of show, not of use. Let France then, arrived at the age of reason, no longer be deluded by the sound of words, and let her deliberately examine, if a King, however insignificant and contemptible in himself, may not at the same time be extremely dangerous.
"The thirty millions which it costs to support a King in the éclat of stupid brutal luxury, presents us with an easy method of reducing taxes, which reduction would at once release the people, and stop the progress of political corruption. The grandeur of nations consists, not, as Kings pretend, in the splendor of thrones, but in a conspicuous sense of their own dignity, and in a just disdain of those barbarous follies and crimes, which, under the sanction of royalty have hitherto desolated Europe.
"As to the personal safety of Louis Capet, it is so much the more confirmed, as France will not stoop to degrade herself by a spirit of revenge against a wretch who has dishonored himself. In defending a just and glorious cause, it is not possible to degrade it, and the universal tranquillity which prevails is an undeniable proof, that a free people know how to respect themselves."
Malouet, a leading royalist member, tore down the handbill, and, having ascertained its author, demanded the prosecution of Thomas Paine and Achille Duchatelet. He was vehemently supported by Martineau, deputy of Paris, and for a time there was a tremendous agitation. The majority, not prepared to commit themselves to anything at all.
* "How great is a calm, couchant people! On the morrow menwill say to one another, 'We have no king, yet we sleptsound enough.' On the morrow Achille Duchatelet, and ThomasPaine, the rebellious needleman, shall have the walls ofParis profusely plastered with their placard, announcingthat there must be a republic."—Carlyle.
Dumont ("Recollections of Mirabeau") gives a particular account of this paper, which Duchatelet wished him to translate. "Paine and he, the one an American, the other a young thoughtless member of the French nobility, put themselves forward to change the whole system of government in France." Lafayette had been sounded, but said it would take twenty years to bring freedom to maturity in France. "But some of the seed thrown out by the audacious hand of Paine began to bud forth in the minds of many leading individuals." (E. g. Condorcet, Brissot, Petion, Claviere.) voted the order of the day, affecting, says Henri Martin, a disdain that hid embarrassment and inquietude.
This document, destined to reappear in a farther crisis, and the royalist rage, raised Paine's Republican Club to vast importance. Even the Jacobins, who had formally declined to sanction republicanism, were troubled by the discovery of a society more radical than themselves. It was only some years later that it was made known (by Paine) that this formidable association consisted of five members, and it is still doubtful who these were. Certainly Paine, Achille Duchatelet, and Condorcet; probably also Brissot, and Nicolas Bonneville. In order to avail itself of this tide of fame, the Société Républicaine started a journal,—The Republican.* The time was not ripe, however; only one copy appeared; that, however, contained a letter by Paine, written in June, which excited considerable flutter. To the reader of to-day it is mainly interesting as showing Paine's perception that the French required instruction in the alphabet of republicanism; but, amid its studied moderation, there was a paragraph which the situation rendered pregnant:
* "Le Republicain; on le defenseur du gouvernementRepresentatif; par une Société des Républicans. A Paris.July 1791. No. 1."
"Whenever the French Constitution shall be rendered conformable to its declaration of rights, we shall then be enabled to give to France, and with justice, the appellation of aCivic Empire; for its government will be the empire of laws, founded on the great republican principles ofelective representationand the rights of man. But monarchy and hereditary succession are incompatible with thebasisof its Constitution."
Now this was the very constitution which Paine, in his answer to Burke, had made comparatively presentable; to this day it survives in human memory mainly through indulgent citations in "The Rights of Man." Those angels who, in the celestial war, tried to keep friendly with both sides, had human counterparts in France, their constitutional oracle being the Abbé Sievès. He had entered warmly into the Revolution, invented the name "National Assembly," opposed the veto power, supported the Declaration of Rights. But he had a superstitious faith in individual executive, which, as an opportunist, he proposed to vest in the reigning house. This class of "survivals" in the constitution were the work of Sieyès, who was the brain of the Jacobins, now led by Robespierre, and with him ignoring republicanism for no better reason than that their title was "Société des Amis de la Constitution."* Sieyès petted his constitution maternally, perhaps because nobody else loved it, and bristled at Paine's criticism. He wrote a letter to theMoniteur, asserting that there was more liberty under a monarchy than under a republic He announced his intention of maintaining monarchical executive against the new party started into life by the King's flight. In the same journal (July 8th,) Paine accepts the challenge "with pleasure."** Paine himself was something of an opportunist; as in America he had favored reconciliation with George III. up to the Lexington massacre, so had he desired amodus vivendiwith Louis XVI. up to his flight.* But now he unfurls the anti-monarchical flag.
* The club, founded in 1789, was called "Jacobin," becausethey met in the hall of the Dominicans, who had been calledJacobins from the street St. Jacques in which they werefirst established, anno 1219.** It was probably this letter that Gouverneur Morrisalludes to in his "Diary," when, writing of a Fourth of Julydinner given by Mr. Short (U. S. Chargé d'Affaires), hementions the presence of Paine, "inflated to the eyes andbig with a letter of Revolutions."*** In this spirit was written Part I. of "The Rights ofMan" whose translation by M. Lanthenas, with new preface,appeared in May. Sieyès agreed that "hereditaryship" wastheoretically wrong, "but," he said, "refer to the historiesof all elective monarchies and principalities: is there onein which the elective mode is not worse than the hereditarysuccession?" For notes on this incident see Professor F. A.Aulard's important work, "Les Orateurs de l'AssembleeConstituante," p. 411. Also Henri Martin's "Histoire deFrance," i., p. 193.
"I am not the personal enemy of Kings. Quite the contrary. No man wishes more heartily than myself to see them all in the happy and honorable state of private individuals; but I am the avowed, open, and intrepid enemy of what is called monarchy; and I am such by principles which nothing can either alter or corrupt—by my attachment to humanity; by the anxiety which I feel within myself for the dignity and honor of the human race; by the disgust which I experience when I observe men directed by children and governed by brutes; by the horror which all the evils that monarchy has spread over the earth excite within my breast; and by those sentiments which make me shudder at the calamities, the exactions, the wars, and the massacres with which monarchy has crushed mankind: in short, it is against all the hell of monarchy that I have declared war."
In reply Sieyès used the terms "monarchy" and "republic" in unusual senses. He defines "republic" as a government in which the executive power is lodged in more than one person, "monarchy" as one where it is entrusted to one only. He asserted that while he was in this sense a monarchist Paine was a "polycrat." In a republic all action must finally lodge in an executive council deciding by majority, and nominated by the people or the National Assembly. Sieyès did not, however, care to enter the lists. "My letter does not announce that I have leisure to enter into a controversy with republicanpolycrats."
Paine now set out for London. He travelled with Lord Daer and Etienne Dumont, Mirabeau's secretary. Dumont had a pique against Paine, whose republican manifesto had upset a literary scheme of his,—to evoke Mirabeau from the tomb and make him explain to the National Assembly that the King's flight was a court plot, that they should free Louis XVI. from aristocratic captivity, and support him. But on reading the Paine placard, "I determined," says Dumont, "for fear of evil consequences to myself, to make Mirabeau return to his tomb."* Dumont protests that Paine was fully convinced that the world would be benefited if all other books were burned except "The Rights of Man," and no doubt the republican apostle had a sublime faith in the sacred character of his "testimonies" against kings. Without attempting to determine whether this was the self-reliance of humility or egoism, it may be safely affirmed that it was that which made Paine's strokes so effective.
* "Souvenirs sur Mirabeau." Par Etienne Dumont.
It may also be remarked again that Paine showed a prudence with which he has not been credited. Thus, there is little doubt that this return to London was in pursuance of an invitation to attend a celebration of the second anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. He arrived at the White Bear, Piccadilly, the day before (July 13th), but on finding that there was much excitement about his republican manifesto in France he concluded that his presence at the meeting might connect it with movements across the Channel, and did not attend. Equal prudence was not, however, displayed by his opponents, who induced the landlord of the Crown and Anchor to close his doors against the advertised meeting. This effort to prevent the free assemblage of Englishmen, and for the humane purpose of celebrating the destruction of a prison whose horrors had excited popular indignation, caused general anger. After due consideration it was deemed opportune for those who sympathized with the movement in France to issue a manifesto on the subject. It was written by Paine, and adopted by a meeting held at the Thatched House Tavern, August 20th, being signed by John Home Tooke, as Chairman. This "Address and Declaration of the Friends of Universal Peace and Liberty," though preceded by the vigorous "Declaration of the Volunteers of Belfast," quoted in its second paragraph, was the earliest warning England received that the revolution was now its grim guest.
"Friends and Fellow Citizens: At a moment like the present, when wilful misrepresentations are industriously spread by partizans of arbitrary power and the advocates of passive obedience and court government, we think it incumbent upon us to declare to the world our principles, and the motives of our conduct.
"We rejoice at the glorious event of the French revolution. If it be asked, 'What is the French revolution to us?' we answer as has already been answered in another place, 'It is much—much to us as men; much to us as Englishmen. As men, we rejoice in the freedom of twenty-five millions of men.
"We rejoice in the prospect which such a magnificent example opens to the world.'
"We congratulate the French nation for having laid the ax; to the root of tyranny, and for erecting government on the sacred hereditary rights of man; rights which appertain to all, and not to any one more than another.
"We know of no human authority superior to that of a whole nation; and we profess and claim it as our principle that every nation has at all times an inherent and indefeasable right to constitute and establish such government for itself as best accords with its disposition, interest, and happiness.
"As Englishmen we also rejoice, because we are immediately interested in the French Revolution.
"Without inquiring into the justice, on either side, of the reproachful charges of intrigue and ambition which the English and French courts have constantly made on each other, we confine ourselves to this observation,—that if the court of France only was in fault, and the numerous wars which have distressed both countries are chargeable to her alone, that court now exists no longer, and the cause and the consequence must cease together. The French therefore, by the revolution they have made, have conquered for us as well as for themselves, if it be true that this court only was in fault, and ours never.
"On this side of the case the French revolution concerns us immediately: we are oppressed with a heavy national debt, a burthen of taxes, an expensive administration of government, beyond those of any people in the world.
"We have also a very numerous poor; and we hold that the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty, is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance, ambition, and intrigue.
"We believe there is no instance to be produced but in England, of seven millions of inhabitants, which make but little more than one million families, paying yearly seventeen millions of taxes.
"As it has always been held out by the administrations that the restless ambition of the court of France rendered this ex-pences necessary to us for our own defence, we consequently rejoice, as men deeply interested in the French revolution; for that court, as we have already said, exists no longer, and consequently the same enormous expences need not continue to us.
"Thus rejoicing as we sincerely do, both as men and Englishmen, as lovers of universal peace and freedom, and as friends to our national prosperity and reduction of our public expences, we cannot but express our astonishment that any part or any members of our own government should reprobate the extinction of that very power in France, or wish to see it restored, to whose influence they formerly attributed (whilst they appeared to lament) the enormous increase of our own burthens and taxes. What, then, are they sorry that the pretence for new oppressive taxes, and the occasion for continuing many old taxes, will be at an end? If so, and if it is the policy of courts and court government to prefer enemies to friends, and a system of war to that of peace, as affording more pretences for places, offices, pensions, revenue and taxation, it is high time for the people of every nation to look with circumspection to their own interest.
"Those who pay the expences, and not those who participate in the emoluments arising from them, are the persons immediately interested in inquiries of this kind. We are a part of that national body on whom this annual expence of seventeen millions falls; and we consider the present opportunity of the French revolution as a most happy one for lessening the enormous load under which this nation groans. If this be not done we shall then have reason to conclude that the cry of intrigue and ambition against other courts is no more than the common cant of all courts.
"We think it also necessary to express our astonishment that a government desirous of being called free, should prefer connexion with the most despotic and arbitrary powers in Europe. We know of none more deserving this description than those of Turkey and Prussia, and the whole combination of German despots.
"Separated as we happily are by nature from the tumults of the continent, we reprobate all systems and intrigues which sacrifice (and that too at a great expence) the blessings of our natural situation. Such systems cannot have a natural origin.
"If we are asked what government is, we hold it to be nothing more than a national association; and we hold that to be the best which secures to every man his rights and promotes the greatest quantity of happiness with the least expence. We live to improve, or we live in vain; and therefore we admit of no maxims of government or policy on the mere score of antiquity or other men's authority, the old whigs or the new.
"We will exercise the reason with which we are endued, or we possess it unworthily. As reason is given at all times, it is for the purpose of being used at all times.
"Among the blessings which the French revolution has produced to that nation we enumerate the abolition of the feudal system, of injustice, and of tyranny, on the 4th of August, 1789. Beneath the feudal system all Europe has long groaned, and from it England is not yet free. Game laws, borough tenures, and tyrannical monopolies of numerous kinds still remain amongst us; but rejoicing as we sincerely do in the freedom of others till we shall haply accomplish our own, we intended to commemorate this prelude to the universal extirpation of the feudal system by meeting on the anniversary of that day (the 4th of August) at the Crown and Anchor: from this meeting we were prevented by the interference of certain unnamed and sculking persons with the master of the tavern, who informed us that on their representation he would not receive us. Let those who live by or countenance feudal oppressions take the reproach of this ineffectual meanness and cowardice to themselves: they cannot stifle the public declaration of our honest, open, and avowed opinions. These are our principles, and these our sentiments; they embrace the interest and happiness of the great body of the nation of which we are a part. As to riots and tumults, let those answer for them who by wilful misrepresentations endeavour to excite and promote them; or who seek to stun the sense of the nation, and lose the great cause of public good in the outrages of a mis-informed mob. We take our ground on principles that require no such riotous aid.
"We have nothing to apprehend from the poor for we are pleading their cause; and we fear not proud oppression for we have truth on our side.
"We say and we repeat it that the French revolution opens to the world an opportunity in which all good citizens must rejoice, that of promoting the general happiness of man, and that it moreover offers to this country in particular an opportunity of reducing our enormous taxes: these are our objects, and we will pursue them."
A comparative study of Paine's two republican manifestos—that placarded in Paris July 1st, and this of August 20th to the English—reveals the difference between the two nations at that period. No break with the throne in England is suggested, as none had been declared in France until the King had fled, leaving behind him a virtual proclamation of war against all the reforms he had been signing since 1789. The Thatched House address leaves it open for the King to take the side of the Republic, and be its chief. The address is simply an applied "Declaration of Rights." Paine had already maintained, in his reply to Burke, that the English monarch was an importation unrelated to the real nation, "which is left to govern itself, and does govern itself, by magistrates and juries, almost on its own charge, on republican principles." His chief complaint is that royalty is an expensive "sinecure." So far had George III. withdrawn from his attempt to govern as well as reign, which had ended so disastrously in America. The fall of the French King who had aided the American "rebellion" was probably viewed with satisfaction by the English court, so long as the revolution confined itself to France. But now it had raised its head in England, and the alarm of aristocracy was as if it were threatened with an invasion of political cholera.
The disease was brought over by Paine. He must be isolated. But he had a hold on the people, including a large number of literary men, and Nonconformist preachers. The authorities, therefore, began working cautiously, privately inducing the landlords of the Crown and Anchor and the Thatched House to refuse their rooms to the "Painites," as they were beginning to be called But this was a confession of Paine's power. Indeed all opposition at that time was favorable to Paine. Publicola's reply to "The Rights of Man," attributed to Vice-President Adams, could only heighten Paine's fame; for John Adams' blazing court-dress, which amused us at the Centenary (1889), was not forgotten in England; and while his influence was limited to court circles, the entrance of so high an official into the arena was accepted as homage to the author. The publication at the same time of the endorsement of Paine's "Rights of Man" by the Secretary of State, the great Jefferson, completed the triumph. The English government now had Paine on its hands, and must deal with him in one way or another.
The closing of one door after another of the usual places of assembly to sympathizers with the republican movement in France, being by hidden hands, could not be charged upon Pitt's government; it was, however, a plain indication that a free expression through public meetings could not be secured without risk of riots. And probably there would have been violent scenes in London had it not been for the moderation of the Quaker leader. At this juncture Paine held a supremacy in the constitutional clubs of England and Ireland equal to that of Robespierre over the Jacobins of Paris. He had the giant's strength, but did not use it like a giant. He sat himself down in a quiet corner of London, began another book, and from time to time consulted his Cabinet of Reformers.
His abode was with Thomas Rickman, a bookseller, his devoted friend. He had known Rickman at Lewes, as a youthful musical genius of the club there, hence called "Clio." He had then set some song of Paine's to music, and afterwards his American patriotic songs, as well as many of his own. He now lived in London with wife and children—these bearing names of the great republicans, beginning with Thomas Paine,—and with them the author resided for a time. A particular value, therefore, attaches to the following passages in Rickman's book:
"Mr. Paine's life in London was a quiet round of philosophical leisure and enjoyment. It was occupied in writing, in a small epistolary correspondence, in walking about with me to visit different friends, occasionally lounging at coffee-houses and public places, or being visited by a select few. Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the French and American ambassadors, Mr. Sharp the engraver, Romney the painter, Mrs. Wolstonecraft, Joel Barlow, Mr. Hull, Mr. Christie, Dr. Priestley, Dr. Towers, Col. Oswald, the walking Stewart, Captain Sampson Perry, Mr. Tuffin, Mr. William Choppin, Captain De Stark, Mr. Home Tooke, &c. &c. were among the number of his friends and acquaintance; and of course, as he was my inmate, the most of my associates were frequently his. At this time he read but little, took his nap after dinner, and played with my family at some game in the evening, as chess, dominos, and drafts, but never at cards; in recitations, singing, music, &c; or passed it in conversation: the part he took in the latter was always enlightened, full of information, entertainment, and anecdote. Occasionally we visited enlightened friends, indulged in domestic jaunts and recreations from home, frequently lounging at the White Bear, Picadilly, with his old friend the walking Stewart, and other clever travellers from France, and different parts of Europe and America. When by ourselves we sat very late, and often broke in on the morning hours, indulging the reciprocal interchange of affectionate and confidential intercourse. 'Warm from the heart and faithful to its fires' was that intercourse, and gave to us the 'feast of reason and the flow of soul.'"
"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 does not appear to have ever learned that his name had been pressed for a place in Washington's Cabinet, and apparently he did not know until long after it was over what a tempest in Jefferson's teapot his book had innocently caused. The facts came to him while he was engaged on his next work, in which they are occasionally reflected. In introducing an English friend to William Short, U. S. Chargé d'Affaires at Paris, under date of November 2d, Paine reports progress:
"I received your favour conveying a letter from Mr. Jefferson and the answers to Publicola for which I thank you. I had John Adams in my mind when I wrote the pamphlet and it has hit as I expected.
"M. Lenobia who presents you this is come to pass a few days at Paris. He is a bon republicain and you will oblige me much by introducing him among our friends of bon foi. I am again in the press but shall not be out till about Christmas, when the Town will begin to fill. By what I can find, the Government Gentry begin to threaten. They have already tried all the under-plots of abuse and scurrility without effect; and have managed those in general so badly as to make the work and the author the more famous; several answers also have been written against it which did not excite reading enough to pay the expence of printing.
"I have but one way to be secure in my next work which is, to go further than in my first. I see thatgreat roguesescape by the excess of their crimes, and, perhaps, it may be the same in honest cases. However, I shall make a pretty large division in the public opinion, probably too much so to encourage the Government to put it to issue, for it will be rather like begging them than me.
"By all the accounts we have here, the french emigrants are in a hopeless condition abroad; for my own part I never saw anything to fear from foreign courts—they are more afraid of the french Revolution than the revolution needs to be of them; and the same caution which they take to prevent the french principles getting among their armies, will prevent their sending armies among the principles.
"We have distressing accounts here from St. Domingo. It is the natural consequence of Slavery and must be expected every where. The Negroes are enraged at the opposition made to their relief and are determined, if not to relieve themselves to punish their enemies. We have no new accounts from the East Indies, and people are in much doubt. I am, affectionately yours, Thomas Paine."
The "scurrility" referred to may have been that of George Chalmers, elsewhere mentioned. Two days after this letter to Short was written Paine received a notable ovation.
There was a so-called "Revolution Society" in London, originally formed by a number of prominent dissenters. The Society had manifested its existence only by listening to a sermon on the anniversary of the Revolution of 1688 (November 4th) and thereafter dining together. It had not been supposed to interest itself in any later revolution until 1789. In that year the annual sermon was delivered by Dr. Richard Price, the Unitarian whose defence of the American Revolution received the thanks of Congress. In 1776 Price and Burke stood shoulder to shoulder, but the sermon of 1789 sundered them. It was "On the Love of our Country," and affirmed the constitutional right of the English people to frame their own government, to choose their own governors, and to cashier them for misconduct. This was the "red rag" that drew Burke into the arena. Dr. Price died April 19, 1791, and his great discourse gathered new force from the tributes of Priestley and others at his grave. He had been a staunch friend of Paine, and at the November festival of this year his place was accorded to the man on whom the "Constitutionalists" beheld the mantle of Price and the wreath of Washington. The company at this dinner of 1791 at the London Tavern, included many eminent men, some of them members of Parliament. The old Society was transformed—William and Mary and 1688 passed into oblivion before Thomas Paine and 1791. It was probably for this occasion that the song was written (by whom I know not)—"Paine's Welcome to Great Britain."
"He comes—the great Reformer comes!Cease, cease your trumpets, cease, cease your drums!Those warlike sounds offend the ear,Peace and Friendship now appear:Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome,Welcome, thou Reformer, here!"Prepare, prepare, your songs prepare,Freedom cheers the brow of care;The joyful tidings spread around,Monarchs tremble at the sound!Freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom,—Rights of Man, and Paine resound!"
Mr. Dignum sang (to the tune of "The tear that bedews sensibility's shrine.")
"Unfold, Father Time, thy long records unfold,Of noble achievements accomplished of old;When men, by the standard of Liberty led,Undauntedly conquered or chearfully bled:But now 'midst the triumphs these moments reveal,Their glories all fade and their lustre turns pale,While France rises up, and proclaims the decreeThat tears off their chains, and bids millions be free."As spring to the fields, or as dew to the flowers.To the earth parched with heat, as the soft dropping showers,As health to the wretch that lies languid and wan,Or rest to the weary—is Freedom to man!Where Freedom the light of her countenance gives,There only he triumphs, there only he lives;Then seize the glad moment and hail the decreeThat tears off their chains, and bids millions be free."Too long had oppression and terror entwinedThose tyrant-formed chains that enslaved the free mind;While dark superstition, with nature at strife,For ages had locked up the fountain of life;But the daemon is fled, the delusion is past,And reason and virtue have triumphed at last;Then seize the glad moments, and hail the decree,That tears off their chains, and bids millions be free."France, we share in the rapture thy bosom that fills,While the Genius of Liberty bounds o'er thy hills:Redundant henceforth may thy purple juice flow,Prouder wave thy green woods, and thine olive trees grow!While the hand of philosophy long shall entwine,Blest emblems, the laurel, the myrtle and vine,And heaven through all ages confirm the decreeThat tears off their chains, and bids millions be free!"
Paine gave as his toast, "The Revolution of the World," and no doubt at this point was sung "A New Song," as it was then called, written by Paine himself to the tune of "Rule Britannia":
"Hail, Great Republic of the world,The rising empire of the West,Where famed Columbus, with a mighty mind inspired,Gave tortured Europe scenes of rest.Be thou forever, forever great and free,The Land of Love and Liberty."Beneath thy spreading mantling vine,Beside thy flowery groves and springs,And on thy lofty, thy lofty mountains' brow,May all thy sons and fair ones sing.Chorus."From thee may rudest nations learnTo prize the cause thy sons began;From thee may future, may future tyrants knowThat sacred are the Rights of Man."From thee may hated discord fly,With all her dark, her gloomy train;And o'er thy fertile, thy fertile wide domainMay everlasting friendship reign."Of thee may lisping infancyThe pleasing wondrous story tell,And patriot sages in venerable moodInstruct the world to govern well."Ye guardian angels watch around,From harm protect the new-born State;And all ye friendly, ye friendly nations join,And thus salute the Child of Fate.Be thou forever, forever great and free,The Land of Love and Liberty!"
Notwithstanding royal tremors these gentlemen were genuinely loyal in singing the old anthem with new words:
"God save the Rights of Man!Give him a heart to scanBlessings so dear;Let them be spread around,Wherever Man is found,And with the welcome soundRavish his ear!"
No report is preserved of Paine's speech, but we may feel sure that in giving his sentiment "The Revolution of the World" he set forth his favorite theme—that revolutions of nations should be as quiet, lawful, and fruitful as the revolutions of the earth.
The Abbé Sieyès did not escape by declining to stand by his challenge of the republicans. In the second part of "The Rights of Man" Paine considers the position of that gentleman, namely, that hereditary monarchy is an evil, but the elective mode historically proven worse. That both are bad Paine agrees, but "such a mode of reasoning on such a subject is inadmissible, because it finally amounts to an accusation of providence, as if she had left to man no other choice with respect to government than between two evils." Every now and then this Quaker Antæus touches his mother earth—the theocratic principle—in this way; the invigoration is recognizable in a religious seriousness, which, however, makes no allowance for the merely ornamental parts of government, always so popular. "The splendor of a throne is the corruption of a state." However, the time was too serious for the utility of bagatelles to be much considered by any. Paine engages Sieyès on his own ground, and brings historic evidence to prove that the wars of succession, civil and foreign, show hereditary a worse evil than elective headship, as illustrated by Poland, Holland, and America. But he does not defend the method of either of these countries, and clearly shows that he is, as Sieyès said, a "poly-crat," so far as the numerical composition of the Executive is concerned.* He affirms, however, that governing is no function of a republican Executive. The law alone governs. "The sovereign authority in any country is the power of making laws, and everything else is an official department."