Rev. Dr. E. L. Rexford: "If Paine were now living he would be looked upon by all enlightened clergymen and laymen as a very conservative critic of the Christian religion."
Rev. George Burman Foster (Gottingen and Chicago Universities): "What was radical in regard to the Bible in his day would be conservative today."
Rev. S. Fletcher Williams (England): "His principles were right, and today an increasing number of religious teachers and religious minded men stand only where he stood a century ago."
Dr. T. A. Bland: "The principles of the 'Age of Reason' are embodied in sermons—orthodox and radical—all over the country."
John Maddock:—
"The work of Paine was done so wellThe Church is now the Infidel.""He triumphed—Bibles are revised,Creeds change, and faiths decay,The facts his bitter foes despisedTheir children prize today."—C. Fannie Aliyn.
Rev. William Channing Gannett, D.D.: "What wonder Thomas Paine wrote his strong rank sarcasm! People should remember why he wrote it."
Moncure D. Conway, LL.D.: "It ['Age of Reason'] represents, as no elaborate treatise could, the agony and bloody sweat of a heart breaking in the presence of crucified Humanity. What dear heads, what noble hearts had that man seen laid low; what shrieks had he heard in the desolate homes of the Condorcets, the Brissots; what Canaanite and Midianite massacres had be seen before the altar of Brotherhood, erected by himself! And all because every human being had been taught from his cradle that there is something more sacred than humanity, and to which man should be sacrificed. Of all those massacred thinkers not one voice remains: they have gone silent: over their reeking guillotine sits the gloating Apollyon 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."
Edgar W. Howe: "The storm that arose over this book was never before equaled: it will never be equaled again."
Dr. Bond (A surgeon belonging to General O'Hara's staff): "Mr. Paine while hourly expecting to die, read to me parts of his 'Age of Reason'; and every night when I left him, to be separately locked up, and expected not to see him alive in the morning, he always expressed his firm belief in the principles of that book, and begged I would tell the world such were his dying opinions."
"The doctrines and sentiments which it contains may justly be regarded as the expressions of a dying man."—D. M. Bennett.
"When it [first part] appeared he was a prisoner; his life in Couthon's hands. He had personally nothing to gain by its publication—neither wife, child, nor relative to reap benefit by its sale. It was published as purely for the good of mankind as any work ever written."—Dr. Conway.
"While in prison he composed the second part, and as he expected every day to be guillotined it was penned in the very presence of death."—George W. Foote.
"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."—Sir Leslie Stephen.
Thomas Nixon and Captain Daniel Pelton: "All you have heard of his recanting is false. Being aware that such reports would be raised after his death by fanatics who infested his house at the time it was expected he would die, we, intimate acquaintances of Thomas Paine, since the year 1776, went to his house—he was sitting up in a chair, and apparently in the full vigor and use of all his mental faculties. We interrogated him on his religious opinions, and if he had changed his mind or repented of anything he had said or written on that subject. He answered, 'Not at all.'"
Hon. Francis O. Smith, M. C.: "I have just parted with Hon. Richard M. Johnson, now a member of the House of Representatives [afterwards Vice-President of the United States], who told me that he visited Thomas Paine within the fortnight next preceding Paine's death; that he conversed with Paine and expressed a hope that he might recover; that Paine replied that he should shortly die, that he should never go out of his room again, and requested him to say to Mr. Jefferson that he had not changed his religious opinions in the slightest degree."
Walter Morton (with Paine when he died): "In his religious opinions he continued to the last as steadfast and tenacious as any sectarian to the definition of his own creed."
Dr. Philip Graves: "He [Amasa Woodsworth] told me that he nursed Thomas Paine in his last illness and closed his eyes when he was dead. I asked him if he recanted and called upon God to save him. He replied, 'No. He died as he had taught.'"
John Randel, Jr. (orthodox Christian): "The very worthy mechanic, Amasa Woodsworth, who saw Paine daily, told me there was no truth in such report."
Gilbert Vale, who interviewed Mr. Woodsworth, says: "As an act of kindness, Mr. Woodsworth visited Mr. Paine every day for six weeks before his death; he frequently sat up with him, and did so on the last two nights of his life.... Mr. Woodsworth assures us that he neither heard nor saw anything to justify the belief of any mental change in the opinions of Mr. Paine previous to his death."
The English writer, William Cobbett, a believer in Christianity, who lived for a time in this country, and who made a thorough investigation of the Paine calumnies, says: "Among other things said against this famous man is that he recanted before he died; and that in his last illness he discovered horrible fears of death.... It is a pure, unadulterated falsehood."
Cobbett, in 1819, announced his intention of publishing a biography of Paine. Soon after a pious fanatic of New York, named Collins, attempted to persuade him that Paine had recanted and begged him to state the fact in his book. He had induced a disreputable woman, Mary Hinsdale, an opium fiend, notorious for her lying propensities, to promise that she would tell Cobbett that she had visited Paine during his illness and that he had confessed to her his disbelief in the "Age of Reason" and expressed regret for having published it. Cobbett saw at once that the whole thing was a fraud. Collins, he says, "had a sodden face, a simper, and maneuvered his features precisely like the most perfidious wretch that I have known." However, he called on the woman. But her courage had forsaken her. Concerning the result of his visit he says: "She shuffled; she evaded; she equivocated; she warded off; she affected not to understand me." It was afterward proven that she had not conversed with Paine; that she had never seen him. But it did not need Cobbett's publication of the lie to secure its acceptance by the church. The occupant of nearly every orthodox pulpit was only too willing to publish it. This was the origin of the recantation calumny.
"Had Thomas Paine recanted, every citizen of New York would have heard of it within twenty-four hours. The news of it would have spread to the remotest confines of America and Europe as rapidly as the human agencies of that time could have transmitted it. It took ten years for this startling revelation to reach the ears of his sickbed attendants."—The Fathers of Our Republic.
Rev. Willet Hicks: "I was with him every day during the latter part of his sickness. He died as easy as any one I ever saw die, and I have seen many die."
"Paine died quietly and at peace."—Ellery Sedgwick.
"He died placidly and almost without a struggle."—Gilbert Vale.
"He spent the night in tranquility, and expired in the morning."—Madame Bonneville.
Noble L. Prentiss: "Paine's death-bed terrors were used in the pulpit for a long time. It is probable that they never existed. It is living not dying, that troubles most of us. When the inevitable hour comes; when the lights are being put out, the shutters closed, the end is peace."
Concerning Paine's recanting Colonel Ingersoll says: "He died surrounded by those who hated and despised him,—who endeavored to wring from the lips of death a recantation. But, dying as he was, his soul stood erect to the last moment. Nothing like a recantation could be wrung from the brave lips of Thomas Paine."
Col. John Fellows: "It [the recantation story] was considered by the friends of Mr. Paine generally to be too contemptible to controvert."
"Thomas Paine did not recant. But the church is recanting. On her death-bed tenet after tenet of the absurd and cruel creed which Paine opposed is being renounced by her. Time will witness the renunciation of her last dogma and her death. Then will the vindication of Thomas Paine and the 'Age of Reason' be complete."—The Fathers of Our Republic.
Royal Tyler: "That head which worked such mickle woe to courts and kings."
Dr. Edmund Robinet: "A wise and lucid intellect."
James Thompson Callender: "He possesses both, talent and courage."
Walter Savage Landor:
"Few dared such homely truths to tell,Or wrote our English half so well."
Zells Encyclopedia: "He early distinguished himself by his literary abilities."
Cyclopedia of American Literature: "The merits of Paine's style as a prose writer are very great."
B. F. Underwood: "Thomas Paine's style as a writer, in some respects, has never been equaled. Every sentence that he wrote was suffused with the light of his own luminous mind, and stamped with his own intense individuality of character."
"There is a peculiar originality in his style of thought and expression, his diction is not vulgar or illiterate, but nervous, simple and scientific.... Paine, like the young Spartan warrior, went into the field stripped bare to the last thread of prudent conventional disguise; and thus not only fixed the gaze of men upon his intrepid singularity, but exhibited the vigor of his faculties in full play."—Rev. George Croly.
John Lendrum: "The style, manner, and language of the author is singular and fascinating."
"He was a magnificent writer of the English language."—Henry Frank.
"He is the best English writer we know."—Gilbert Vale.
"Ease, fluidity, grace, imagination, energy, earnestness, mark his style."—Elbert Hubbard.
"Paine is the first American writer who has a literary style, and we have not had so many since but that you may count them on the fingers of one hand."—Ibid.
L. Carroll Judson: "His intellectual powers suddenly burst into a blaze of light."
John Horne Tooke: "You are like Jove coming down upon us in a shower of gold."
"The man who coined the intellectual gold of the Eighteenth Century was Thomas Paine."—L. K. Washburn.
Ebenezer Elliott: "Paine is the greatest master of metaphor I have ever read."
"He was not only master of metaphor, he was master of principles. He imparted life to great ideas."—George Jacob Holyoake.
"The keenness of his intellect was matched by the brilliancy of his imagination. He stated a truth in a way that men could see, hear, and feel it. Take the following epigram: 'To argue with a man who has renounced the use of Reason is like administering medicine to the dead.'"—George W. Foote.
Prof. William Smyth: "Paine is a writer to be numbered with those few who are so supereminently fitted to address the great mass of mankind."
Dr. Charles Botta: "No writer, perhaps, ever possessed in a higher degree the art of moving and guiding the public at his will."
Elroy McKendree Avery: "No writer ever had a greater influence upon the events of his own time than he."
"He threw the charms of poetry over the statue of reason," says Stephen Simpson, "and made converts to liberty as if a power of fascination presided over his pen."
John Adolphus: "He took with great judgment, a correct aim at the feelings and prejudices of those whom he intended to influence."
Hezekiah Butterworth: "He had a surprising power of direct forcible argument."
William Hazlitt: "Paine affected to reduce things to first principles, to announce self-evident truths."
W. J. Fox, M. P.: "A keen and powerful intellect, and a philosophical mind going to the foundation of every question; bringing first principles forward in a luminous and impressive manner.
Robert James Mackintosh: "His strong coarse sense and bold dogmatism conveyed in an instinctively popular style made Paine a dangerous enemy always."
M. Gerard: "You know too well the prodigious effects produced by the writings of this celebrated personage."
Madame Roland: "The boldness of his conceptions, the originality of his style, the striking truths which he boldly throws out in the midst of those whom they offend, must necessarily have produced great effects."
Edward C. Reichwald: "He was an intellectual gladiator who won his victories upon the field of thought."
Boston Herald: "There is no better illustration in all history than exists in Paine's writings of Bulwer's aphorism, 'The pen is mightier than the sword.'"
Hon. John J. Lentz, M. C.: "The pen of the author of 'Common Sense' and the 'Crisis' did more to liberate the Colonies than did the sword of the commander in chief of the Colonial armies."
Prof. William Denton: "The pen of Paine accomplished more for American liberty than the sword of Washington."
General Lee of Revolutionary fame says: "The pen of Thomas Paine did more to achieve our Independence than did the sword of Washington." Joel Barlow, one of the most popular literary men of his time, a chaplain in the American Revolution and a fellow-worker of Paine for political liberty, both in England and France, says: "We may venture to say, without fear of contradiction, that the great American cause owed as much to the pen of Paine as to the sword of Washington." Even Paine's vilest calumniator, Cheetham, makes this admission: "His pen was an appendage to the army as necessary and as formidable as its cannon."
Reuben Post Halleck, L.L. D.: "Some have said that the pen of Thomas Paine was worth more to the cause of liberty than twenty thousand men. In the darkest hours he inspired the colonists with hope and enthusiasm... He had an almost Shakespearean intuition of what would appeal to the exigencies of each case."
"The real man back of the American Revolution was the man who had the ideas and not the man behind the guns.... Paine fought with the weapon of the future, and he was one of the very first that made it powerful. Paine's weapon was the pen, not the sword. Washington conquered small groups of men that had been living twenty or thirty years, but Thomas Paine conquered the prejudices of thousands of years."—Herbert N. Casson.
Thomas Jefferson: "These two persons [Lord Bolingbroke and Thomas Paine] differed remarkably in the style of their writings, each leaving a model of what is most perfect in both extremes of the simple' and the sublime. No writer has exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of style, in perspicuity of expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple and unassuming language."
Abraham Lincoln: "I never tire of reading Paine."
Capel Lofft: "I am glad Paine is living: he cannot be even wrong without enlightening mankind, such is the vigor of his intellect, such the acuteness of his research, and such the force and vivid perspicuity of his expression."
Augustine Birrell, M. P.: "Paine was without knowing it, a born journalist. His capacity for writing on the spur of the moment was endless, and his delight in doing so was boundless."
Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott: "He was perhaps the most popular pamphleteer of the country."
Library of The World's Best Literature: "The pamphlets of Thomas Paine were doubtless in their time 'half battles.' Clear, logical, homely, by turns warning, appealing, commanding, now sharply satirical, now humorous, now pathetic, always desperately in earnest, always written in admirably simple English, they constituted their author, in the judgment of many, the foremost pamphleteer of the eighteenth century."
Lord Brougham: "The most remarkable spirit in pamphlet literature was Thomas Paine.... His style was a model of terseness and force."
"This singular power of clear, vigorous exposition made him unequaled as a pamphleteer."—Sir Leslie Stephen.
London Times (June 8, 1909): "Paine was the greatest of pamphleteers; more potent in influence on affairs than Swift, Beaumarchais, or Courier, more varied in his activity than any of them; his words influencing the actors in two of the chief political revolutions of the world and prime movers in a religious revolution scarcely less important."
"Perhaps someone, even in far off times, digging in the past, will come upon his books and will say, 'These were not words; they were events, in political history. This was a born leader who could make men march to victory or defeat.'"
Manchester Guardian (June 8, 1909): "He and his works became the great influence which set up everywhere constitutional societies and encouraged political and religious freedom of thought. He became the interpreter to England of the principles of the two Revolutions, and his words and ideas leavened speculations among the masses of the English people, and still leaven them today. We may forget him or remember him awry, but the very stuff of our brains is woven in the loom of his devising."
James K. Hosmer, LL. D.: "Few writers have exerted a more powerful influence since the world began, if the claim set forth at the time and never refuted be just, that his 'Common Sense' made possible the Declaration of Independence and therefore the United States of America."
Constitutional Gazette (Feb. 24, 1776): "The author introduces [in 'Common Sense'] a new system of polices as widely different from the old as the Copernican system is from the Ptolemaic. This extraordinary performance contains as surprising a discovery in politics as the works of Sir Isaac Newton do in philosophy."
"It would be difficult to name any human composition which has had an effect at once so instant, so extended and so lasting."—Sir George Trevelyan.
Paul Louis Courrier (1824): "Never did any portly volume effect so much for the human race. Rallying all hearts and minds to the party of Independence, it decided the issue of that great conflict which, ended for America, is still proceeding all over the rest of the world."
"Incisive sentences,... as direct and vivid in their appeal as any sentences of Swift."—Woodrow Wilson.
"Like a thunderbolt from the sky came Paine's magnificent argument for liberty... No pamphlet ever written sold in such vast numbers, nor did any ever before or since produce such marvelous results."—Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
"Who could with almost one stroke of his pen, turn the people in a radically new direction? Who must exert an influence that had never, in any crisis of history, been exerted by one man before? The American Republic today, with its illimitable glory and belting a continent, can only reply: Thomas Paine!"—Samuel P. Putnam.
"The soul of Thomas Paine went forth in that book. Every line of it glittered with the fires of his brain. It was written as a poet writes his song.... It was like the flowing of a fountain, the sweep of a wind, the rush of a comet."—Ibid.
The publication of Thomas Paine's immortal pamphlet, 'Common Sense,' will ever deserve to rank among the supremely important events of history. The farther we are removed from it in time the larger it will loom."—Rev. Thomas B. Gregory.
"This work marks an era in the history of the world. Its interest will last longer than nations."—Hon. Elizur Wright.
Universal Magazine (April, 1793. From a review of the "Rights of Man."): "And now courteous reader, we leave Mr. Paine entirely to thy mercy; what wilt thou say of him? Wilt thou address him? 'Thou art a troubler of privileged orders—we will tar and feather thee; nobles abhor thee, and kings think thee mad!' Or wilt thou put on thy spectacles, study Mr. Paine's physiognomy, purchase his print, hang it over thy chimney-piece, and, pointing to it, say: 'this is no common man!'"
"Those who know the book ['Rights of Man'] only by hearsay as the work of a furious incendiary would be surprised at the dignity, force and temperance of the style."—Encyclopedia Britannica.
"The 'Rights of Man' is acknowledged to be the greatest work ever written for political freedom. This masterpiece gave free speech, and a free press to England and America."—Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
"The thinking men of England now revere the memory of Thomas Paine for his great work in the nation's behalf. The most important of the many reforms England has undertaken in the century that has elapsed since it outlawed Paine have been brought about by Paine's masterly work."—Elbert Hubbard.
"The 'Rights of Man' will never die so long as men have rights."—Alice Hubbard.
Richard Henry Lee: "It is a performance of which any man might be proud."
"The 'Rights of Man' will be more enduring than all the piles of marble and granite man can erect."—Andrew Jackson.
Dr. Frank Crane: "It deserves a place among the dozen epoch-making books of the race.... It is a milestone in human development that marks a point of progress that never can be retraced."
General Arthur O'Connor:
"I prize above all earthly thingsThe 'Rights of Man' and Common Sense.'"
Prof. Edward McChesney Sait: "Many names which were famous in the revolutionary period of the eighteenth century are heard no more; but the name of Thomas Paine still lives. It will never die; those noble writings, 'Common Sense' and 'Rights of Man,' like the verses of the Roman poet, are more lasting than bronze."
Marie Joseph Chenier: "Notable epoch in the life of this philosopher who opposed the arms of 'Common Sense' to the sword of tyranny, 'the 'Rights of Man' to the machiavelism of English politicians; and who by two immortal works has deserved well of the human race."
Victor Robinson: "Another immortal work was being penned behind French prison-bars and the hand which held the pen was the hand of Thomas Paine."
"There shone on Paine's cell in the Luxembourg a great and imperishable vision, which multitudes are still following."—Dr. Conway.
M. M. Mangasarian: "In his dungeon his pen dropped light into the darkness of Europe and America by writing the 'Age of Reason.'"
"One of the most wonderful books ever written."Edgar W. Howe.
"The 'Age of Reason' defies the grave where other books of his generation sleep."—George E. Macdonald.
"Not only the one great skeptical work of his time, but the only one which seems destined to live for all time."—J. P. Bland.
"Paine's 'Age of Reason' is a masterpiece of Rationalistic literature."—William H. Maple.
"It is a masterpiece in every particular—sound, logical and truthful."—Sir Hiram Maxim.
"There are the most varied graces of literary style, a profound and gentle philosophy, and a genuine love of humanity."—William Heaford.
Mimnermus (England): "Out of the charnel-vault of Kingcraft and Priestcraft, Rousseau and the other great French Freethinkers saw in vision the ideal society of the future. Of this new evangel Paine was the prophet and Shelley was the poet.... In the 'Rights of Man' and the 'Age of Reason,' no less than in the 'Revolt of Islam' and 'Prometheus Unbound,' the expression glows with the solemn and majestic inspiration of prophecy."
John M. Robertson, M. P.: "The enduring popularity of the chief works of Thomas Paine is not the least remarkable fact in the history of opinion. It is given to few controversial writers to keep a large audience during a hundred years."
"In Paine's public life there are three great tidal periods—the period when he was helping more than any other to make the Revolution in America; the period when, having come to Europe, after the American Revolution, he published the 'Rights of Man' and laid in England the foundations of a new democracy in the very teeth of the great reaction of which Burke was the prophet; and lastly, the period when, after his hopes from the French Revolution had substantially failed, and he expected death as his own meed, he wrote his 'Age of Reason,' significantly making his last blow the most deadly of all his strokes at the reign of tradition."
New York World: "The man whose 'Common Sense,' by Washington's testimony, 'worked a powerful change in the minds of men' toward American independence; who in the 'Rights of Man' demolished Burke's attack on the French Revolution so completely that the British government resorted to its suppression, and who in France set the world aflame with persecution mania by the 'Age of Reason,' certainly made good in three countries his title to literary rank and political power." "The three mightiest contributions of political and religious freedom which mankind had known came from the brain of Thomas Paine. What he wrote changed the whole civilized world."—L. K. Washburn.
Rev. E. P. Powell (referring to the "Crisis"): "Words of fire and logic that rang like a berserker's sword on his shield."
"The 'Crisis' is contained in sixteen numbers. They comprise a truer history of that event [American Revolution] than does any professed history of it yet written. They comprise the soul of it."—Calvin Blanchard.
"Of utterances by the pen none have achieved such vast results as Paine's 'Common Sense' and his first 'Crisis.'"—Dr. Conway.
In addition to his three literary masterpieces and the "Crisis" Paine wrote many remarkable books and pamphlets, the more important of which are the following: "Public Good," Philadelphia, 1780; "Letter to Abbé Raynal," Philadelphia, 1782; "Dissertation on Government," Philadelphia, 1786; "Prospects on the Rubicon," London, 1787; "Address of Société Républicaine," Paris, 1791; "Address to the Adressers," London, 1792; "Plea for Life of Louis Capet," "French Constitution of '93," Paris, 1793; "On First Principles of Government," Paris, 1795; "Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance," published in all the languages of Europe. 1796; "Agrarian Justice," "Letter to Camille Jordan, Paris, 1797; "Essay on Dreams," "Examination of Prophecies," New York, 1807; "Reply to Bishop of Llandaff," New York, 1810; "Miscellaneous Poems,"'London, 1819.
"These [Paine's books] were battles, victories—the simplest, yet the grand and notorious facts of that wondrous war and age."—T. B. Wakeman.
M. de Bonneville, the noted French journalist and Revolutionary leader, and the almost constant companion of Paine during the ten or more years that he resided in Paris, says: "All his pamphlets have been popular and powerful. He wrote with composure and steadiness, as if under the guidance of a tutelary genius. If, for an instant, he stopped, it was always in the attitude of a man who listens. The Saint Jerome of Raphael would give a perfect idea of his contemplative recollection, to listen to the voice from on high which makes itself heard in the heart."
"When the old traditions of prejudice have passed, away, Paine's name will have its due place not only in our political but in our literary history, as that of a man of native genius whose prose bears being read beside that of Burke on the same theme, and who found in sincerity the secret of a nobler eloquence than his antagonists could draw from their stores of literature or the fountain of their ill-will."—John M. Robertson.
"He was a great writer. Cobbett knew it, Hazlitt knew it, and Landor knew it."—George W. Foote.
George Brandes: "One of the largest figures in our literary history."
Mrs. M. E. Cadwallader: "His writings have become classics. They Will live when those who vilified him are forgotten."
Pittsburgh Press: "The science of criticism, like the spectrum analysis which reveals the composition of the stars, points unerringly to Thomas Paine as the only man who could have indited that greatest of literary masterpieces, the Declaration of Independence."
That the Declaration of Independence is, in its entirety, the work of Paine probably can not be proven. That he had much to do with its composition, however, can scarcely be doubted. The circumstances attending its adoption warrant the assumption, and the style of the document confirms it. Knowing the marvelous power of Paine's pen, knowing that with it he had led the people to demand independence, to suppose that he would not be consulted, that his services would not be solicited in regard to its preparation is incredible. Had he been a member of the Continental Congress he certainly would have been selected to draft the document. He was the soul of the movement and its literary leader. The historian Gaspey says: "The Government took no steps of importance without consulting him." The fact that his name was not mentioned in connection with its authorship at the time argues nothing. Had he written every word of it neither he nor the Committee could with propriety have divulged its authorship. The authorship of state papers and other public documents is assumed by, and credited to, the officials issuing them and not to the persons who may have been employed to draft them.
"There is much evidence, both internal and external, in the Declaration, that some other person than Jefferson was the writer. There is much evidence, internal and external, that the author was Thomas Paine."—W. M. van der Weyde.
A noted writer, Albert Payson Terhune, presents the following as the principal arguments that have been adduced in support of Paine's authorship of the Declaration of Independence:
"The Declaration's first draft contained the phrase: 'Scotch and foreign mercenaries.' Jefferson was fond of the Scotch, and had two Scotch tutors; whereas Paine openly hated Scotland and its people.
"The first draft contained the word 'hath' This word is said to be found nowhere else in Jefferson's writings, while it abounds in Paine's.
"There was also in this draft a sharp rebuke to the British king for his introducing slavery into his provinces. Jefferson was a slave-holder; Paine hated slavery.
"That Jefferson, an owner of slaves, should have declared 'all men to be equal' and 'entitled to liberty,' has always seemed inconsistent.
"Though unjust taxation was one of the Revolution's chief causes, it receives very slight mention in the Declaration. Jefferson was supposedly a foe to such taxation. Paine considered the taxation problem merely as a side issue.
"Paine's notions concerning government as set forth in his 'Common Sense' are largely embodied in the Declaration.
"Jefferson's style of writing was easy and graceful. Paine's was forceful, terse, pointed. The Declaration is couched far more in the latter style than in the former.
"Phrases and words dear to Paine are scattered broadcast through the document.
"The expression 'Nature and Nature's God' fit in with Paine's favorite theory that God was to be found in Nature."
"Almost a century ago an American newspaper claimed to have proof that Jefferson did not write the Declaration, and strongly hinted that Paine wrote it.
"Jefferson, it is said, never formally claimed the authorship until after Paine's death, and was always reticent on the subject."
Walton Williams: "Ever since the Revolution there has been a tradition in certain parts of the country that the real author of the Declaration of Independence was Thomas Paine. The storm of opprobrium that beat upon Paine's name because af his religious writings almost eradicated this tradition."
Jefferson lived fifty years after the Declaration appeared. During all this time—and his silence is significant—he never claimed the authorship of the document except in the epitaph which he is said to have prepared for his tombstone. He was its accredited author and in an official sense was its author, and in this sense the claim made in his epitaph is admissible.
Nearly seventy years ago George M. Dallas, then Vice President of the United States, and an admirer of Jefferson, contended that Paine wrote the Declaration.
"Whoever may have written the Declaration, Paine was its author."—William Cobbett.
New York Sun: "In addition to his great responsibility for the literary form of the Declaration of Independence, he contributed to literature a number of phrases which have held a place."
"His phrase, 'These are the times that try men's souls,' illuminates that gigantic struggle [American Revolution] and has become one of the shibboleths of liberty."—Michael Monahan.
"No life was ever attuned to a nobler sentiment—'Where liberty is not there is my home.'"—Dr. Lucy Waite.
"'The world is my country, to do good my religion." Was ever nobler thought conceived than this?"—Eva Ingersoll Brown.
"Had Paine given to the world nothing more than that matchless phrase which he adopted as his motto, 'The world is my country; to do good is my religion,' I should still feel that he was indeed entitled to a supernal position in the galleries of Fame."—Elbert Hubbard.
"A jewel which sparkles forever on the outstretched forefinger of Time."—George W. Foote.
Peter Eckler: "Paine's political and religious writings exerted an immense influence in America, England and France during his life, and since his death that beneficent influence has increased and extended throughout the civilized world."
Horace Seaver: "Paine's writings are a noble monument to the loftiness of his aims, the brilliancy of his genius, the wealth of benevolence in his heart, and the breadth and power of his intellect."
Horace Traubel: "He will always stand there, immortal in history, a contemporary giant in whose aggressiveness and fortitude political literature discovered a new epoch. He will ever be ranked with the masters in theological innovation."
General Nathaniel Greene: "Your fame for your writings will be immortal."
Ella Wheeler Wilcox: "Paine was not only a great author and statesman, but he was distinctly a pioneer, an originator, an inventor and creator. To him we are indebted for many of the world's greatest ideas and reforms."
Winwood Reade: "One of Thomas Paine's first productions was an article against slavery."
Universal Cyclopedia: "Published in Bradford'sPennsylvania Journal [Magazine]in March, 1775, an article entitled 'African Slavery in America,' which probably hastened the first American Anti-Slavery Society, April 14, 1775."
Referring to this article Dr. Conway, one of the apostles of anti-slavery, says: "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."
In the very month that Paine lay down in his last illness there was born the man who was to complete the work he had begun. On the first of January, 1863, Abraham Lincoln pronounced the doom of slavery. In this essay of Paine and in the Emancipation Proclamation of Lincoln we have the beginning and the end—the prologue and the epilogue—of the Anti-Slavery drama in America.
"It is a significant fact that a paragraph in favor of the abolition of slavery in America, which is surmised to haye been inserted through Paine's influence, in the Declaration of Independence was struck out.... Had Paine's humane suggestion been adopted the United States would have been saved the agony and bloody sweat of the Civil. War."—Hector Macpherson, Scotland.
"In sorrow and bitterness and bloodshed Lincoln wrought the cure for the evil which Paine tried peacefully to prevent."—Mrs. Bradlaugh-Bonner, England.
George W. Foote: "In America the first to publicly demand the liberation of the slaves was Thomas Paine. Paine also partly drafted and signed the Act of Pennsylvania abolishing slavery—the first of its kind in the whole of Christendom."
Paine was not only the first to advocate the abolition of domestic slavery in America, he was also a pioneer in the movement which secured the abolition of the slave trade in America and Great Britain.
When Louisiana demanded statehood with "the right to continue the importation of slaves," from Paine came this stinging rebuke: "Dare you put up a petition to Heaven for such power, without fearing to be struck from the earth by its justice? Why, then, do you ask it of man against man? Do you want to renew in Louisiana the horrors of Domingo?"
Alfred E. Fletcher: "Paine was the first man in America to demand freedom for the slave, to urge international arbitration, justice for women and more rational ideas as to marriage and divorce."
"In his August (1775) number[Pennsylvania Magazine]is found the earliest American plea for woman."—Dr. Conway.
"His pen is unmistakable in 'Reflections on Unhappy Marriages' (June 1775)."—Ibid.
"The first man in history to speak in clear cut tones for the rights of woman."—Josephine K. Henry.
"Today we dare to affirm that women as well as men have rights. Paine was the pioneer of this thought."—Alice Hubbard.
Hon. Robert A. Dague: "If I am asked to whom are women indebted for the enlarged liberty they now enjoy, my answer is, to Thomas Paine, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, and to the Universalists, Unitarians, Spiritualists and Agnostics."
London Daily News: "He was always a man of peace, and to him is due the first project of international arbitration. He was the first publicist in America to declare for the emancipation of slaves, the first to champion the cause of woman, to insist upon the rights of animals, and to expose the criminal folly of dueling."
"He condemned dueling, and the deliberate or thoughtless ill-treatment of animals. He spoke up against negro slavery quite as emphatically as against hereditary privileges and religious intolerance. He advocated international arbitration; international and internal copyright."—Sir George Trevelyan.
George H. Putxam: "Paine wrote on the necessity of a copyright law in 1782, a year before Noah Webster canvassed the legislatures of the New England states in behalf of such a law.... In 1792, as a member of the French Convention, Paine made a statement of the principles of international copyright of the author's right in literary work."
Nannie McCormick Coleman: "In 1783, while a member of Congress, Hamilton urgently sought to have a [Constitutional] Convention called. In the same year... Thomas Paine contributed addresses to the public to the same effect."
Paine proposed a constitutional government and a constitutional convention as early as 1776.
Referring to our Constitutional Convention Prof. Alexander Johnston of Princeton University says: "Thomas Paine had suggested it as long ago as his 'Common Sense' pamphlet: 'Let a continental conference to be held to frame a continental charter.'"
Not only was Paine the first to propose a constitutional government for the United States, the framers of the Constitution adopted to a large extent his political ideas. Referring to the principles advocated in his "Dissertation on Government" Dr. Conways says: "In the next year those principles were embodied in the Constitution; and in 1792, when a State pleaded its sovereign right to repudiate a contract the Supreme Court affirmed every contention of Paine's pamphlet, using his ideas and sometimes his very phrases."
Bankers' Magazine: "The Bank of North America, at Philadelphia, organized to assist the government during the War of Independence, is admitted to be the first bank in the United States, but it is not generally known that Thomas Paine was the man in whose brain the bank was born and who was the first subscriber to its stock."
Columbia Encyclopedia: "Paine was chosen by Napoleon to introduce a popular form of government into Britain after the Frenchman should have invaded and conquered the island."
William Milligan Sloane, LL. D.: "Thomas Paine exercised his power as a pamphleteer on the theme of England's approaching bankruptcy, while the public crowded one of the theatres [in Paris] to stare at stage pictures representing the invasion of England."
Paine prepared plans for this invasion which were adopted by the French Directory. Two hundred and fifty gun-boats were speedily built for the purpose. Then Napoleon abandoned the expedition against England for the one against Egypt.
Paine's approval of this proposed invasion of England was not inspired by a spirit of revenge because of his persecution by the English Government, but by a sincere love of its people, seeing in it the only means of delivering them from the intolerable tyranny of George III. and his Ministry. Napoleon at this time had not manifested that insatiable thirst for blood which at a later period made him the scourge of Europe.
James A. Edgerton, A. M.: "Thomas Paine first suggested American Independence. He first suggested the Federal Union of the States. He first proposed the abolition of negro slavery. He first suggested [in Christendom] protection for dumb animals. He first suggested equal rights for women. He first proposed old age pensions. He first suggested the education of poor children at public expense. He first proposed arbitration and international peace. He suggested a great republic of all the nations of the world."
To the claims made in behalf of Paine by Mr. Edgerton and others the following may be added: He was one of the founders, if not the real founder, of modern journalism. He labored to provide better facilities for the education of young women. His contributions to hygienic science were invaluable. His knowledge of astronomy was profound; he affirmed the belief that the fixed stars were suns twenty years before Herschel. His views regarding taxation were wise and just. He was an advocate of land reform. He was recognized as the ablest authority of his time on paper money. He was one of the framers of the Constitution of Pennsylvania.
Not only was Paine the real founder of our Republic; he was largely instrumental in securing for it the greatest of its subsequent acquisitions of territory. He shares with Jefferson the honor of being the first to propose the purchase from Napoleon of the province of Louisiana, an empire in extent—reaching from Florida to the Pacific and to what is now British Columbia, a distance of three thousand miles—a territory three times as large as the original United States of America and from which have been formed, wholly or in part, eighteen of the most important states in the Union.
Nearly half a century before Comte, Paine taught the Religion of Humanity.
"In 1778 he wrote his sublime sentence about the 'Religion of Humanity.'"—Dr. Conway.
"I have discovered that Paine not only wrote those words, 'the Religion of Humanity,'... but he was the real author by this discovery of all laws of social science which is called sociology, now the queen of the sciences.... If Paine was the real leader in that discovery he stands by the side of Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Comte, Spencer and Ward, and the beneficent results and glory of this discovery, and its discoverer, are beyond the words of any mind at present to describe."—Prof. T. B. Wakeman.
"That his Religion of Humanity took the deistical form was an evolutionary necessity."—Dr. Conway.
"The prophet of the Religion of Humanity and the precursor of our modern Monism."—Prof. Ernst Haeckel.
"How few there are who realize that Thomas Paine anticipated Spencer's thought [equal liberty] by many decades, that, more briefly and graphically, he formulated the only principle that can weave enduring order and peace into the fabric of society."—Edwin C. Walker.
Leonard Abbott: "Paine's mind was germinal: in it were the seeds of all modern religious, economical, and political movements."
William H. Maple: "The light of truth fell in such grand refulgence upon this man as to enable him to utter truisms enough to furnish texts for reformers for a thousand years to come."
"The moral originality and courage of his teaching in every direction is astonishing."—John M. Robertson.
Stephen Pearl Andrews: "The true chief-priest of humanity is the man who solves the greatest obstacles in the progress of mankind; and you must not be surprised if I rank Thomas Paine not only as a priest, but as perhaps the real chief-priest, or pontifex-maximus of his age."
Joel Barlow: "The biographer of Thomas Paine should not forget his mathematical acquirements and his mechanical genius. His invention of the iron bridge, which led him to Europe in 1787, has procured him a great reputation in that branch of science in France and England."
M. Chaptal: "They [plans for iron bridge over Seine] will be of the greatest utility to us when the new kind of construction goes to be executed for the first time.... You have rights of more than one kind to the gratitude of nations."
International Encyclopedia: "In 1787 Paine went to France, where he exhibited his bridge to the Academy of Science in Paris. He also visited England, and was lionized in London by the party of Burke and Fox. He set up the model of his bridge in Addington Green, and huge crowds went to see it."
"This [model of iron bridge] was publicly exhibited in Paris and London and attracted great crowds."—Encyclopedia Britannica.
Sir Ralph Milbank: "With respect to the bridge over the river Wear at Sunderland, it certainly is a work well deserving admiration both for its structure, durability, and utility, and I have good grounds for saying that the first idea was taken from Mr. Paine's bridge exhibited at Paddington."
Mr. Foljambe, M. P.: "I saw the rib of your [Paine's] bridge. In point of elegance and beauty it far exceeded my expectations and is certainly beyond anything I ever saw."
George Stephenson: "If we are to consider Paine as its [the iron bridge's] author, his daring in engineering certainly does full justice to the fervor of his political career."
When the building of the Brooklyn bridge was celebrated the Rev. Robert Collyer called attention to the fact that to Thomas Paine belonged the credit of inventing the iron bridge and deplored the ignorance and prejudice which had caused the speakers to ignore it.
Sir Richard Phillips: "In 1778 Thomas Paine proposed, in America, this application of steam [the steamboat]."
Watson's Annals of Philadelphia: "In June, 1785, John Fitch called on the ingenious William Henry, Esq., of Lancaster, to take his opinion of his draughts, who informed him that he (Fitch) was not the first person who had thought of applying steam to vessels, for that Thomas Paine, author of 'Common Sense,' had suggested the same to him (Henry) in the winter of 1778."
Concerning Paine's connection with this invention Dr. Conway says: "Among his intimate friends at this time [about 1796] was Robert Fulton, then residing in Paris. Paine's extensive studies of the steam engine and his early discovery of its adaptability to navigation had caused Rumsey to seek him in England and Fitch to consult him both in, America and Paris. Paine's connection with the invention of the steamboat was recognized by Fulton as, indeed, by all of his scientific contemporaries. To Fulton he freely gave his ideas" (Life of Paine, vol. ii, p. 280). "In the controversy between Rumsey and Fitch, Paine's priority to both is conceded" (Ibid).
"A machine for planing boards was his next invention."—Madame Bonneville.
James Parton: "A benefactor... who conceived the planing machine and the iron bridge. A glorious monument to his honor swells aloft in many of our great towns. The principle of his arch now sustains the marvelous railroad depots that half abolish the distinction between in-doors and out."
In a letter to Jefferson, in 1801, Paine anticipates and suggests the explosive engine of today.
"The explosive engines which now drive machines over highways and waters and through the air are the perfection of Paine's explosive power."—A. Outram Sherman.
One of Paine's minor inventions which attracted the attention and received the approval of Franklin was an improved light.
Another invention, an improved carriage wheel, was greatly admired. After Paine's death Robert Fulton made a drawing of the model and deposited it at Washington.
Robert R. Livingston (to Paine in Paris): "Make your will; leave the mechanics, the iron bridge, the wheels, etc., to America."
Joseph N. Moreau: "The Archimedes of the eighteenth century."
Elihu Palmer: "Probably the most useful man that ever lived."
Refutation of Charges of Immorality.
Louis Masquerier: