Thomas Paine

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Title:     Thomas Paine
Author: Augustine Birrell [More Titles by Birrell]

Proverbs are said to be but half-truths, but 'give a dog a bad name and hang him' is a saying almost as veracious as it is felicitous; and to no one can it possibly be applied with greater force than to Thomas Paine, the rebellious staymaker, the bankrupt tobacconist, the amazing author of Common-sense, The Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason.

Until quite recently Tom Paine lay without the pale of toleration. No circle of liberality was constructed wide enough to include him. Even the scouted Unitarian scouted Thomas. He was 'the infamous Paine,' 'the vulgar atheist.' Whenever mentioned in pious discourse it was but to be waved on one side as thus: 'No one of my hearers is likely to be led astray by the scurrilous blasphemies of Paine.'

I can well remember when an asserted intimacy with the writings of Paine marked a man from his fellows and invested him in children's minds with a horrid fascination. The writings themselves were only to be seen in bookshops of evil reputation, and, when hastily turned over with furtive glances, proved to be printed in small type and on villainous paper. For a boy to have bought them and taken them inside a decent home would have been to run the risk of fierce wrath in this life and the threat of it in the next. If ever there was a hung dog, his name was Tom Paine.

But History is, as we know, for ever revising her records. None of her judgments are final. A life of Thomas Paine, in two portly and well-printed volumes, with gilt tops, wide margins, spare leaves at the end, and all the other signs and tokens of literary respectability, has lately appeared. No President, no Prime Minister--nay, no Bishop or Moderator--need hope to have his memoirs printed in better style than are these of Thomas Paine, by Mr. Moncure D. Conway. Were any additional proof required of the complete resuscitation of Paine's reputation, it might be found in the fact that his life is in two volumes, though it would have been far better told in one.

Mr. Conway believes implicitly in Paine--not merely in his virtue and intelligence, but that he was a truly great man, who played a great part in human affairs. He will no more admit that Paine was a busybody, inflated with conceit and with a strong dash of insolence, than he will that Thomas was a drunkard. That Paine's speech was undoubtedly plain and his nose undeniably red is as far as Mr. Conway will go. If we are to follow the biographer the whole way, we must not only unhang the dog, but give him sepulture amongst the sceptred Sovereigns who rule us from their urns.

Thomas Paine was born at Thetford, in Norfolk, in January, 1737, and sailed for America in 1774, then being thirty-seven years of age. Up to this date he was a rank failure. His trade was staymaking, but he had tried his hand at many things. He was twice an Excise officer, but was twice dismissed the service, the first time for falsely pretending to have made certain inspections which, in fact, he had not made, and the second time for carrying on business in an excisable article--tobacco, to wit--without the leave of the Board. Paine had married the tobacconist's business, but neither the marriage nor the business prospered; the second was sold by auction, and the first terminated by mutual consent.

Mr. Conway labours over these early days of his hero very much, but he can make nothing of them. Paine was an Excise officer at Lewes, where, so Mr. Conway reminds us, 'seven centuries before Paine opened his office in Lewes, came Harold's son, possibly to take charge of the Excise as established by Edward the Confessor, just deceased.' This device of biographers is a little stale. The Confessor was guiltless of the Excise.

Paine's going to America was due to Benjamin Franklin, who made Paine's acquaintance in London, and, having the wit to see his ability, recommended him 'as a clerk or assistant-tutor in a school or assistant-surveyor.' Thus armed, Paine made his appearance in Philadelphia, where he at once obtained employment as editor of an intended periodical called the Pennsylvanian Magazine or American Museum, the first number of which appeared in January, 1775. Never was anything luckier. 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 boundless. He had no difficulty for 'copy', though in those days contributors were few. He needed no contributors. He was 'Atlanticus'; he was 'Vox Populi'; he was 'Aesop.' The unsigned articles were also mostly his. Having at last, after many adventures and false starts, found his vocation, Paine stuck to it. He spent the rest of his days with a pen in his hand, scribbling his advice and obtruding his counsel on men and nations. Both were usually of excellent quality.

Paine was also happy in the moment of his arrival in America. The War of Independence was imminent, and in April, 1775, occurred 'the massacre of Lexington.' The Colonists were angry, but puzzled. They hardly knew what they wanted. They lacked a definite opinion to entertain and a cry to asseverate. Paine had no doubts. He hated British institutions with all the hatred of a civil servant who has had 'the sack.'

In January, 1776, he published his pamphlet Common-sense, which must be ranked with the most famous pamphlets ever written. It is difficult to wade through now, but even The Conduct of the Allies is not easy reading, and yet between Paine and Swift there is a great gulf fixed. The keynote of Common-sense was separation once and for ever, and the establishment of a great Republic of the West. It hit between wind and water, had a great sale, and made its author a personage and, in his own opinion, a divinity.

Paine now became the penman of the rebels. His series of manifestoes, entitled The Crisis, were widely read and carried healing on their wings, and in 1777 he was elected Secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs. Charles Lamb once declared that Rousseau was a good enough Jesus Christ for the French, and he was capable of declaring Tom Paine a good enough Milton for the Yankees. However that may be, Paine was an indefatigable and useful public servant. He was a bad gauger for King George, but he was an admirable scribe for a revolution conducted on constitutional principles.

To follow his history through the war would be tedious. What Washington and Jefferson really thought of him we shall never know. He was never mercenary, but his pride was wounded that so little recognition of his astounding services was forthcoming. The ingratitude of Kings was a commonplace; the ingratitude of peoples an unpleasing novelty. But Washington bestirred himself at last, and Paine was voted an estate of 277 acres, more or less, and a sum of money. This was in 1784.

Three years afterwards Thomas visited England, where he kept good company and was very usefully employed engineering, for which excellent pursuit he would appear to have had great natural aptitude. Blackfriars Bridge had just tumbled down, and it was Paine's laudable ambition to build its successor in iron. But the Bastille fell down as well as Blackfriars Bridge, and was too much for Paine. As Mr. Conway beautifully puts it: 'But again the Cause arose before him; he must part from all--patent interests, literary leisure, fine society--and take the hand of Liberty undowered, but as yet unstained. He must beat his bridge-iron into a key that shall unlock the British Bastille, whose walls he sees steadily closing around the people.' 'Miching mallecho--this means mischief;' and so it proved.

Burke is responsible for the Rights of Man. This splendid sentimentalist published his Reflections on the Revolution in France in November, 1790. Paine immediately sat down in the Angel, Islington, and began his reply. He was not unqualified to answer Burke; he had fought a good fight between the years 1775 and 1784. Mr. Conway has some ground for his epigram, 'where Burke had dabbled, Paine had dived.' There is nothing in the Rights of Man which would now frighten, though some of its expressions might still shock, a lady-in-waiting; but to profess Republicanism in 1791 was no joke, and the book was proclaimed and Paine prosecuted. Acting upon the advice of William Blake (the truly sublime), Paine escaped to France, where he was elected by three departments to a seat in the Convention, and in that Convention he sat from September, 1792, to December, 1793, when he was found quarters in the Luxembourg Prison.

This invitation to foreigners to take part in the conduct of the French Revolution was surely one of the oddest things that ever happened, but Paine thought it natural enough so far, at least, as he was concerned. He could not speak a word of French, and all his harangues had to be translated and read to the Convention by a secretary, whilst Thomas stood smirking in the Tribune. His behaviour throughout was most creditable to him. He acted with the Girondists, and strongly opposed and voted against the murder of the King. His notion of a revolution was one by pamphlet, and he shrank from deeds of blood. His whole position was false and ridiculous. He really counted for nothing. The members of the Convention grew tired of his doctrinaire harangues, which, in fact, bored them not a little; but they respected his enthusiasm and the part he had played in America, whither they would gladly he had returned. Who put him in prison is a mystery. Mr. Conway thinks it was the American Minister in Paris, Gouverneur Morris. He escaped the guillotine, and was set free after ten months' confinement.

All this time Washington had not moved a finger in behalf of the author of Common-sense and The Crisis. Amongst Paine's papers this epigram was found:

'ADVICE TO THE STATUARY WHO IS TO EXECUTE THE
STATUE OF WASHINGTON.

Take from the mine the coldest, hardest stone;
It needs no fashion--it is Washington.
But if you chisel, let the stroke be rude,
And on his heart engrave--"Ingratitude."'

This is hard hitting.

So far we have only had the Republican Paine, the outlaw Paine; the atheist Paine has not appeared. He did so in the Age of Reason, first published in 1794-1795. The object of this book was religious. Paine was a vehement believer in God and in the Divine government of the world, but he was not, to put it mildly, a Bible Christian. Nobody now is ever likely to read the Age of Reason for instruction or amusement. Who now reads even Mr. Greg's Creed of Christendom, which is in effect, though not in substance, the same kind of book? Paine was a coarse writer, without refinement of nature, and he used brutal expressions and hurled his vulgar words about in a manner certain to displease. Still, despite it all, the Age of Reason is a religious book, though a singularly unattractive one.

Paine remained in France advocating all kinds of things, including a descent on England, the abduction of the Royal Family, and a Free Constitution. Napoleon sought him out, and assured him that he (Napoleon) slept with the Rights of Man under his pillow. Paine believed him.

In 1802 Paine returned to America, after fifteen years' absence.

'Thou stricken friend of man,' exclaims Mr. Conway in a fine passage, 'who hast appealed from the God of Wrath to the God of Humanity, see in the distance that Maryland coast which early voyagers called Avalon, and sing again your song when first stepping on that shore twenty-seven years ago.'

The rest of Paine's life was spent in America without distinction or much happiness. He continued writing to the last, and died bravely on the morning of June 8, 1809.

The Americans did not appreciate Paine's theology, and in 1819 allowed Cobbett to carry the bones of the author of Common-sense to England, where--'as rare things will,' so, at least, Mr. Browning sings--they vanished. Nobody knows what has become of them.

As a writer Paine has no merits of a lasting character, but he had a marvellous journalistic knack for inventing names and headings. He is believed to have concocted the two phrases 'The United States of America' and 'The Religion of Humanity.' Considering how little he had read, his discourses on the theory of government are wonderful, and his views generally were almost invariably liberal, sensible, and humane. What ruined him was an intolerable self-conceit, which led him to believe that his own productions superseded those of other men. He knew off by heart, and was fond of repeating, his own Common-sense and the Rights of Man. He was destitute of the spirit of research, and was wholly without one shred of humility. He was an oddity, a character, but he never took the first step towards becoming a great man.

[The end]
Augustine Birrell's essay: Thomas Paine

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