Thomas Paine
| |
|---|---|
Portrait by Laurent Dabos (c. 1792)
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| Born |
Thomas Pain
February 9, 1737 |
| Died | June 8, 1809 (aged 72)
New York City, United States
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| Spouse(s) |
Mary Lambert (m. 1759)
,
Elizabeth Ollive
(m. 1771; separated 1774) |
| Era | Age of Enlightenment |
| School | Enlightenment, liberalism, republicanism |
Main interests
| Politics, ethics, religion |
| Signature | |
 | |
Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain) (February 9, 1737 [O.S. January 29, 1736] – June 8, 1809) was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist and revolutionary. One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, he authored the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution and inspired the patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Britain.
His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era ideals of transnational human rights. Saul K. Padover described him as "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination".
Born in Thetford in the English county of Norfolk, Paine migrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution. Virtually every rebel read (or listened to a reading of) his powerful pamphlet Common Sense (1776), proportionally the all-time best-selling American title, which crystallized the rebellious demand for independence from Great Britain. His The American Crisis (1776–1783) was a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series. Common Sense was so influential that John Adams said: "Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain".
Paine lived in France for most of the 1790s, becoming deeply involved in the French Revolution. He wrote Rights of Man (1791), in part a defense of the French Revolution against its critics. His attacks on Irish conservative writer Edmund Burke led to a trial and conviction in absentia in England in 1792 for the crime of seditious libel.
The British government of William Pitt the Younger, worried by the possibility that the French Revolution might spread to England, had begun suppressing works that espoused radical philosophies. Paine's work, which advocated the right of the people to overthrow their government, was duly targeted, with a writ for his arrest issued in early 1792. Paine fled to France in September where, rather immediately and despite not being able to speak French, he was elected to the French National Convention. The Girondists regarded him as an ally. Consequently, the Montagnards, especially Maximilien Robespierre, regarded him as an enemy.
In December 1793, he was arrested and was taken to Luxembourg Prison in Paris. While in prison, he continued to work on The Age of Reason (1793–1794). Future President James Monroe used his diplomatic connections to get Paine released in November 1794. He became notorious because of his pamphlets. The Age of Reason, in which he advocated deism, promoted reason and free thought and argued against institutionalized religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular. He published the pamphlet Agrarian Justice (1797), discussing the origins of property and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income. In 1802, he returned to the U.S. where he died on June 8, 1809. Only six people attended his funeral as he had been ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity.
Early life and education
Thomas Paine was born on January 29, 1736 (NS February 9, 1737), the son of Joseph and Frances (née Cocke) Pain, in Thetford, Norfolk, England. Joseph was a Quaker and Frances an Anglican. Despite claims that Thomas changed the spelling of his family name upon his emigration to America in 1774, he was using "Paine" in 1769, while still in Lewes, Sussex.
Old School at Thetford Grammar School, where Paine was educated
He attended Thetford Grammar School (1744–1749), at a time when there was no compulsory education.
At the age of 13, he was apprenticed to his stay-maker father. Paine
researchers contend his father's occupation has been widely
misinterpreted to mean that he made the stays in ladies' corsets, which
likely was an insult later invented by his political foes. The father and apprentice son actually made the thick rope stays (also called stay ropes) used on sailing ships. Thetford historically had maintained a brisk trade with the downriver, then major, port town of King's Lynn.
A connection to shipping and the sea explains why, in late adolescence, Thomas enlisted and briefly served as a privateer, before returning to Britain in 1759. There, he became a master stay-maker, establishing a shop in Sandwich, Kent.
On September 27, 1759, Thomas Paine married Mary Lambert. His
business collapsed soon after. Mary became pregnant; and, after they
moved to Margate, she went into early labor, in which she and their child died.
In July 1761, Paine returned to Thetford to work as a supernumerary officer. In December 1762, he became an Excise Officer in Grantham, Lincolnshire; in August 1764, he was transferred to Alford,
also in Lincolnshire, at a salary of £50 per annum. On August 27, 1765,
he was dismissed as an Excise Officer for "claiming to have inspected
goods he did not inspect". On July 31, 1766, he requested his
reinstatement from the Board of Excise, which they granted the next day,
upon vacancy. While awaiting that, he worked as a stay-maker. Again, he
was making stay ropes for shipping, not stays for corsets.
Thomas Paine's house in Lewes
In 1767, he was appointed to a position in Grampound, Cornwall. Later he asked to leave this post to await a vacancy, and he became a schoolteacher in London.
On February 19, 1768, he was appointed to Lewes in Sussex,
a town with a tradition of opposition to the monarchy and
pro-republican sentiments since the revolutionary decades of the 17th
century. Here he lived above the 15th-century Bull House, the tobacco shop of Samuel Ollive and Esther Ollive.
Paine first became involved in civic matters when he was based in
Lewes. He appears in the Town Book as a member of the Court Leet, the
governing body for the town. He was also a member of the parish vestry,
an influential local church group whose responsibilities for parish
business would include collecting taxes and tithes to distribute among
the poor. On March 26, 1771, at age 34, he married Elizabeth Ollive, his
landlord's daughter.
Plaque at the White Hart Hotel, Lewes, East Sussex, south east England
From 1772 to 1773, Paine joined excise officers asking Parliament for
better pay and working conditions, publishing, in summer of 1772, The Case of the Officers of Excise,
a 12-page article, and his first political work, spending the London
winter distributing the 4,000 copies printed to the Parliament and
others. In spring 1774, he was again dismissed from the excise service
for being absent from his post without permission; his tobacco shop
failed, too. On April 14, to avoid debtors' prison,
he sold his household possessions to pay debts. On June 4, 1774, he
formally separated from his wife Elizabeth and moved to London, where,
in September, mathematician, Fellow of the Royal Society, and
Commissioner of the Excise George Lewis Scott introduced him to Benjamin Franklin,
who suggested emigration to British colonial America, and gave him a
letter of recommendation. In October, Paine emigrated to the American
colonies, arriving in Philadelphia on November 30, 1774.
Pennsylvania Magazine
Paine barely survived the transatlantic voyage. The ship's water supplies were bad and typhoid fever
killed five passengers. On arriving at Philadelphia, he was too sick to
disembark. Benjamin Franklin's physician, there to welcome Paine to
America, had him carried off ship; Paine took six weeks to recover. He
became a citizen of Pennsylvania "by taking the oath of allegiance at a
very early period". In March 1775, he became editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, a position he conducted with considerable ability.
Before Paine's arrival in America, sixteen magazines had been
founded in the colonies and ultimately failed, each featuring
substantial content and reprints from England. In late 1774,
Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken announced his plan to create what he called an "American Magazine" with content derived from the colonies.
Paine contributed two pieces to the magazine's inaugural issue in
February 1775, and Aitken hired Paine as the Magazine's editor one month
later. Under Paine's leadership, the magazine's readership rapidly
expanded, achieving a greater circulation in the colonies than any
American magazine up until that point.
While Aiken had conceived of the magazine as nonpolitical, Paine
brought a strong political perspective to its content, writing in its
first issue that "every heart and hand seem to be engaged in the
interesting struggle for American Liberty."
Paine wrote in the Pennsylvania Magazine that such a
publication should become a "nursery of genius" to help America "outgrow
the state of infancy," exercising and educating American minds, and
shaping American morality.
On March 8, 1775, the Pennsylvania Magazine published an unsigned abolitionist essay titled African Slavery in America. The essay is often attributed to Paine on the basis of a letter by Benjamin Rush, recalling Paine's claim of authorship to the essay. The essay attacked slavery as an "execrable commerce" and "outrage against Humanity and Justice."
Consciously appealing to a broader and more working class
audience, Paine also used the magazine to discuss worker rights to
production. This shift in the conceptualization of politics has been
described as a part of "the 'modernization' of political consciousness,"
and the mobilization of ever greater sections of society into political
life.
American Revolution
Common Sense, published in 1776
Common Sense (1776)
Paine has a claim to the title The Father of the American Revolution, which rests on his pamphlets, especially Common Sense, which crystallized sentiment for independence in 1776. It was published in Philadelphia
on January 10, 1776, and signed anonymously "by an Englishman". It
became an immediate success, quickly spreading 100,000 copies in three
months to the two million residents of the 13 colonies. During the
course of the American Revolution, a total of about 500,000 copies were
sold, including unauthorized editions. Paine's original title for the pamphlet was Plain Truth, but Paine's friend, pro-independence advocate Benjamin Rush, suggested Common Sense instead.
The pamphlet came into circulation in January 1776, after the
Revolution had started. It was passed around and often read aloud in
taverns, contributing significantly to spreading the idea of
republicanism, bolstering enthusiasm for separation from Britain, and
encouraging recruitment for the Continental Army. Paine provided a new and convincing argument for independence by advocating a complete break with history. Common Sense
is oriented to the future in a way that compels the reader to make an
immediate choice. It offers a solution for Americans disgusted with and
alarmed at the threat of tyranny.
Paine's attack on monarchy in Common Sense is essentially an attack on George III.
Whereas colonial resentments were originally directed primarily against
the king's ministers and Parliament, Paine laid the responsibility
firmly at the king's door. Common Sense was the most widely read
pamphlet of the American Revolution. It was a clarion call for unity
against the corrupt British court, so as to realize America's
providential role in providing an asylum for liberty. Written in a
direct and lively style, it denounced the decaying despotism of Europe
and pilloried hereditary monarchy as an absurdity. At a time when many
still hoped for reconciliation with Britain, Common Sense demonstrated to many the inevitability of separation.
Paine was not on the whole expressing original ideas in Common Sense,
but rather employing rhetoric as a means to arouse resentment of the
Crown. To achieve these ends, he pioneered a style of political writing
suited to the democratic society he envisioned, with Common Sense
serving as a primary example. Part of Paine's work was to render
complex ideas intelligible to average readers of the day, with clear,
concise writing unlike the formal, learned style favored by many of
Paine's contemporaries.
Scholars have put forward various explanations to account for its
success, including the historic moment, Paine's easy-to-understand
style, his democratic ethos, and his use of psychology and ideology.
Common Sense was immensely popular in disseminating to a
very wide audience ideas that were already in common use among the elite
who comprised Congress and the leadership cadre of the emerging nation,
who rarely cited Paine's arguments in their public calls for
independence. The pamphlet probably had little direct influence on the Continental Congress' decision to issue a Declaration of Independence, since that body was more concerned with how declaring independence would affect the war effort. One distinctive idea in Common Sense
is Paine's beliefs regarding the peaceful nature of republics; his
views were an early and strong conception of what scholars would come to
call the democratic peace theory.
Loyalists vigorously attacked Common Sense; one attack, titled Plain Truth (1776), by Marylander James Chalmers, said Paine was a political quack and warned that without monarchy, the government would "degenerate into democracy". Even some American revolutionaries objected to Common Sense; late in life John Adams
called it a "crapulous mass". Adams disagreed with the type of radical
democracy promoted by Paine (that men who did not own property should
still be allowed to vote and hold public office) and published Thoughts on Government in 1776 to advocate a more conservative approach to republicanism.
Sophia Rosenfeld argues that Paine was highly innovative in his
use of the commonplace notion of "common sense". He synthesized various
philosophical and political uses of the term in a way that permanently
impacted American political thought. He used two ideas from Scottish Common Sense Realism:
that ordinary people can indeed make sound judgments on major political
issues, and that there exists a body of popular wisdom that is readily
apparent to anyone. Paine also used a notion of "common sense" favored
by philosophes
in the Continental Enlightenment. They held that common sense could
refute the claims of traditional institutions. Thus, Paine used "common
sense" as a weapon to delegitimize the monarchy and overturn prevailing
conventional wisdom. Rosenfeld concludes that the phenomenal appeal of
his pamphlet resulted from his synthesis of popular and elite elements
in the independence movement.
According to historian Robert Middlekauff, Common Sense
became immensely popular mainly because Paine appealed to widespread
convictions. Monarchy, he said, was preposterous and it had a heathenish
origin. It was an institution of the devil. Paine pointed to the Old Testament,
where almost all kings had seduced the Israelites to worship idols
instead of God. Paine also denounced aristocracy, which together with
monarchy were "two ancient tyrannies." They violated the laws of nature,
human reason, and the "universal order of things," which began with
God. That was, Middlekauff says, exactly what most Americans wanted to
hear. He calls the Revolutionary generation "the children of the
twice-born". because in their childhood they had experienced the Great Awakening,
which, for the first time, had tied Americans together, transcending
denominational and ethnic boundaries and giving them a sense of
patriotism.
The American Crisis (1776)
In late 1776, Paine published The American Crisis
pamphlet series to inspire the Americans in their battles against the
British army. He juxtaposed the conflict between the good American
devoted to civic virtue and the selfish provincial man. To inspire his soldiers, General George Washington had The American Crisis, first Crisis pamphlet, read aloud to them. It begins:
These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.
Foreign affairs
In
1777, Paine became secretary of the Congressional Committee on Foreign
Affairs. The following year, he alluded to secret negotiation underway
with France in his pamphlets. His enemies denounced his indiscretions.
There was scandal; together with Paine's conflict with Robert Morris and Silas Deane it led to Paine's expulsion from the Committee in 1779.
However, in 1781, he accompanied John Laurens
on his mission to France. Eventually, after much pleading from Paine,
New York State recognized his political services by presenting him with
an estate at New Rochelle,
New York and Paine received money from Pennsylvania and from Congress
at Washington's suggestion. During the Revolutionary War, Paine served
as an aide-de-camp to the important general, Nathanael Greene.
The Silas Deane affair
In
what may have been an error, and perhaps even contributed to his
resignation as the secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs, Paine
was openly critical of Silas Deane,
an American diplomat who had been appointed in March 1776 by the
Congress to travel to France in secret. Deane's goal was to influence
the French government to finance the colonists in their fight for
independence. Paine largely saw Deane as a war profiteer who had little
respect for principle, having been under the employ of Robert Morris, one of the primary financiers of the American Revolution and working with Pierre Beaumarchais,
a French royal agent sent to the colonies by King Louis to investigate
the Anglo-American conflict. Paine labelled Deane as unpatriotic, and
demanded that there be a public investigation into Morris' financing of
the Revolution, as he had contracted with his own company for around
$500,000.
Unfortunately, Paine's criticisms turned against him. Among his criticisms, he had written in the Pennsylvania Packet that France had "prefaced [their] alliance by an early and generous friendship,"
referring to aid that had been provided to American colonies prior to
the recognition of the Franco-American treaties. This was effectively an
embarrassment to France, which potentially could have jeopardised the
alliance. John Jay,
the President of the Congress who had been a fervent supporter of
Deane, immediately spoke out against Paine's comments. The controversy
eventually became public, and Paine was then denounced as unpatriotic
for criticizing an American revolutionary. He was even physically
assaulted twice in the street by Deane supporters. This much added
stress took a large toll on Paine, who was generally of a sensitive
character and he resigned as secretary to the Committee of Foreign
Affairs in 1779.
Funding the Revolution
Paine accompanied Col. John Laurens to France and is credited with initiating the mission. It landed in France in March 1781 and returned to America in August with 2.5 million livres
in silver, as part of a "present" of 6 million and a loan of
10 million. The meetings with the French king were most likely conducted
in the company and under the influence of Benjamin Franklin.
Upon returning to the United States with this highly welcomed cargo,
Thomas Paine and probably Col. Laurens, "positively objected" that
General Washington should propose that Congress remunerate him for his
services, for fear of setting "a bad precedent and an improper mode".
Paine made influential acquaintances in Paris and helped organize the
Bank of North America to raise money to supply the army. In 1785, he was given $3,000 by the U.S. Congress in recognition of his service to the nation.
Henry Laurens (father of Col. John Laurens) had been the ambassador to the Netherlands, but he was captured by the British on his return trip there. When he was later exchanged for the prisoner Lord Cornwallis
(in late 1781), Paine proceeded to the Netherlands to continue the loan
negotiations. There remains some question as to the relationship of
Henry Laurens and Thomas Paine to Robert Morris as the Superintendent of
Finance and his business associate Thomas Willing who became the first
president of the Bank of North America (in January 1782). They had
accused Morris of profiteering in 1779 and Willing had voted against the
Declaration of Independence. Although Morris did much to restore his
reputation in 1780 and 1781, the credit for obtaining these critical
loans to "organize" the Bank of North America for approval by Congress
in December 1781 should go to Henry or John Laurens and Thomas Paine
more than to Robert Morris.
In Fashion before Ease; —or,— A good Constitution sacrificed for a Fantastick Form (1793), James Gillray caricatured Paine tightening the corset of Britannia and protruding from his coat pocket is a measuring tape inscribed "Rights of Man"
Paine bought his only house in 1783 on the corner of Farnsworth Avenue and Church Streets in Bordentown City,
New Jersey and he lived in it periodically until his death in 1809.
This is the only place in the world where Paine purchased real estate.
In 1787, a bridge of Paine's design was built across the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia. At this time his work on single-arch iron bridges led him back to Paris, France. Because Paine had few friends when arriving in France aside from Lafayette
and Jefferson, he continued to correspond heavily with Benjamin
Franklin, a long time friend and mentor. Franklin provided letters of
introduction for Paine to use to gain associates and contacts in France.
Later that year, Paine returned to London from Paris. He then released a pamphlet on August 20 called Prospects
on the Rubicon: or, an investigation into the Causes and Consequences
of the Politics to be Agitated at the Meeting of Parliament.
Tensions between England and France were increasing, and this pamphlet
urged the British Ministry to reconsider the consequences of war with
France. Paine sought to turn the public opinion against the war to
create better relations between the countries, avoid the taxes of war
upon the citizens, and not engage in a war he believed would ruin both
nations.
Rights of Man
Back in London by 1787, Paine would become engrossed in the French
Revolution after it began in 1789, and decided to travel to France in
1790. Meanwhile, conservative intellectual Edmund Burke launched a counterrevolutionary blast against the French Revolution, entitled Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), which strongly appealed to the landed class, and sold 30,000 copies. Paine set out to refute it in his Rights of Man
(1791). He wrote it not as a quick pamphlet, but as a long, abstract
political tract of 90,000 words which tore apart monarchies and
traditional social institutions. On January 31, 1791, he gave the
manuscript to publisher Joseph Johnson. A visit by government agents dissuaded Johnson, so Paine gave the book to publisher J.S. Jordan, then went to Paris, per William Blake's advice. He charged three good friends, William Godwin, Thomas Brand Hollis, and Thomas Holcroft,
with handling publication details. The book appeared on March 13, 1791
and sold nearly a million copies. It was "eagerly read by reformers,
Protestant dissenters, democrats, London craftsman, and the skilled
factory-hands of the new industrial north".
Undeterred by the government campaign to discredit him, Paine issued his Rights of Man, Part the Second, Combining Principle and Practice
in February 1792. It detailed a representative government with
enumerated social programs to remedy the numbing poverty of commoners
through progressive tax
measures. Radically reduced in price to ensure unprecedented
circulation, it was sensational in its impact and gave birth to reform
societies. An indictment for seditious libel
followed, for both publisher and author, while government agents
followed Paine and instigated mobs, hate meetings, and burnings in
effigy. A fierce pamphlet war also resulted, in which Paine was defended
and assailed in dozens of works. The authorities aimed, with ultimate success, to chase Paine out of Great Britain. He was then tried in absentia and found guilty, although never executed. The French translation of Rights of Man, Part II
was published in April 1792. The translator, François Lanthenas,
eliminated the dedication to Lafayette, as he believed Paine thought too
highly of Lafayette, who was seen as a royalist sympathizer at the
time.
The Friends of the People caricatured by Isaac Cruikshank, November 15, 1792, Joseph Priestley and Thomas Paine are surrounded by incendiary items
In summer of 1792, he answered the sedition and libel charges thus:
"If, to expose the fraud and imposition of monarchy ... to promote
universal peace, civilization, and commerce, and to break the chains of
political superstition, and raise degraded man to his proper rank; if
these things be libellous ... let the name of libeller be engraved on my
tomb."
Paine was an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution, and was granted honorary French citizenship alongside prominent contemporaries such as Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and others. Paine's honorary citizenship was in recognition of the publishing of his Rights of Man, Part II and the sensation it created within France. Despite his inability to speak French, he was elected to the National Convention, representing the district of Pas-de-Calais.
Several weeks after his election to the National Convention,
Paine was selected as one of nine deputies to be part of the
Convention's Constitutional Committee, who were charged to draft a
suitable constitution for the French Republic. He subsequentially participated in the Constitutional Committee in drafting the Girondin constitutional project. He voted for the French Republic, but argued against the execution of Louis XVI, saying the monarch should instead be exiled
to the United States: firstly, because of the way royalist France had
come to the aid of the American Revolution; and secondly, because of a
moral objection to capital punishment in general and to revenge killings
in particular. However, Paine's speech in defense of Louis XVI was
interrupted by Jean-Paul Marat,
who claimed that as a Quaker, Paine's religious beliefs ran counter to
inflicting capital punishment and thus he should be ineligible to vote.
Marat interrupted a second time, stating that the translator was
deceiving the convention by distorting the meanings of Paine's words,
prompting Paine to provide a copy of the speech as proof that he was
being correctly translated.
Regarded as an ally of the Girondins, he was seen with increasing disfavor by the Montagnards, who were now in power; and in particular by Maximilien Robespierre. A decree was passed at the end of 1793 excluding foreigners from their places in the Convention (Anacharsis Cloots was also deprived of his place). Paine was arrested and imprisoned in December 1793.
Paine wrote the second part of Rights of Man on a desk in Thomas 'Clio' Rickman's house, with whom he was staying in 1792 before he fled to France. This desk is currently on display in the People's History Museum in Manchester.
The Age of Reason
Title page from the first English edition of Part I
Oil painting by Laurent Dabos, circa 1791
Paine was arrested in France on December 28, 1793. Joel Barlow was unsuccessful in securing Paine's release by circulating a petition among American residents in Paris. Sixteen American citizens were allowed to plead for Paine's release to the Convention, yet President Marc-Guillaume Alexis Vadier
of the Committee of General Security refused to acknowledge Paine's
American citizenship, stating he was an Englishman and a citizen of a
country at war with France.
Paine himself protested and claimed that he was a citizen of the
U.S., which was an ally of Revolutionary France, rather than of Great
Britain, which was by that time at war with France. However, Gouverneur Morris,
the American minister to France, did not press his claim, and Paine
later wrote that Morris had connived at his imprisonment. Paine narrowly
escaped execution. A chalk mark was supposed to be left by the jailer
on the door of a cell to denote that the prisoner inside was due to be
removed for execution. In Paine's case, the mark had accidentally been
made on the inside of his door rather than the outside; this was due to
the fact that the door of Paine's cell had been left open whilst the
gaoler was making his rounds that day, since Paine had been receiving
official visitors. But for this quirk of fate, Paine would have been
executed the following morning. He kept his head and survived the few
vital days needed to be spared by the fall of Robespierre on 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794).
Paine was released in November 1794 largely because of the work of the new American Minister to France, James Monroe, who successfully argued the case for Paine's American citizenship.
In July 1795, he was re-admitted into the Convention, as were other
surviving Girondins. Paine was one of only three députés to oppose the
adoption of the new 1795 constitution because it eliminated universal suffrage, which had been proclaimed by the Montagnard Constitution of 1793.
In 1796, a bridge he designed was erected over the mouth of the Wear River at Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England. This bridge, the Sunderland arch, was after the same design as his Schuylkill River Bridge in Philadelphia and it became the prototype for many subsequent voussoir arches made in iron and steel.
In addition to receiving a British patent for the single-span iron bridge, Paine developed a smokeless candle and worked with inventor John Fitch in developing steam engines.
In 1797, Paine lived in Paris with Nicholas Bonneville
and his wife. As well as Bonneville's other controversial guests, Paine
aroused the suspicions of authorities. Bonneville hid the Royalist Antoine Joseph Barruel-Beauvert at his home. Beauvert had been outlawed following the coup of 18 Fructidor on September 4, 1797. Paine believed that the United States under President John Adams had betrayed revolutionary France. Bonneville was then briefly jailed and his presses were confiscated, which meant financial ruin.
In 1800, still under police surveillance, Bonneville took refuge with his father in Evreux.
Paine stayed on with him, helping Bonneville with the burden of
translating the "Covenant Sea". The same year, Paine purportedly had a
meeting with Napoleon. Napoleon claimed he slept with a copy of Rights of Man
under his pillow and went so far as to say to Paine that "a statue of
gold should be erected to you in every city in the universe".
Paine discussed with Napoleon how best to invade England. In December
1797, he wrote two essays, one of which was pointedly named Observations
on the Construction and Operation of Navies with a Plan for an Invasion
of England and the Final Overthrow of the English Government,
in which he promoted the idea to finance 1,000 gunboats to carry a
French invading army across the English Channel. In 1804, Paine returned
to the subject, writing To the People of England on the Invasion of England advocating the idea.
However, upon noting Napoleon's progress towards dictatorship, he
condemned him as "the completest charlatan that ever existed". Paine remained in France until 1802, returning to the United States only at President Jefferson's invitation.
Criticism of George Washington
Paine
believed that U.S. President George Washington had conspired with
Robespierre to imprison him. He had felt largely betrayed that
Washington, who had been a lifelong friend, did nothing while Paine
suffered in prison. While staying with Monroe, he planned to send
Washington a letter of grievance on the former President's birthday.
Monroe stopped the letter from being sent just in time and after Paine's
criticism of the Jay Treaty Monroe suggested that Paine reside somewhere else.
Still embittered by the perceived betrayal, Paine tried to ruin
Washington's reputation by calling him a treacherous man who was
unworthy of his fame as a military and political hero. He sent a
stinging letter to Washington, in which he described him as an
incompetent commander and a vain and ungrateful person. Paine never
received a reply, so he contacted his lifelong publisher, the
anti-Federalist Benjamin Bache to publish this Letter to George Washington
in 1796. In this scathing publication, Paine wrote that "the world will
be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor;
whether you have abandoned good principles or whether you ever had any".
He further wrote that without the aid of France, Washington could not
have succeeded in the Revolution and had "but little share in the glory
of the final event". He also commented on Washington's poor character,
saying that Washington had no sympathetic feelings and was a hypocrite.
Later years
In 1802 or 1803, Paine left France for the United States, also paying the passage for Bonneville's wife Marguerite Brazier and the couple's three sons, Benjamin, Louis and Thomas Bonneville, to whom Paine was godfather. Paine returned to the United States in the early stages of the Second Great Awakening and a time of great political partisanship. The Age of Reason
gave ample excuse for the religiously devout to dislike him and the
Federalists attacked him for his ideas of government stated in Common Sense,
for his association with the French Revolution and for his friendship
with President Jefferson. Also still fresh in the minds of the public
was his Letter to Washington published six years before his return. This was compounded when his right to vote was denied in New Rochelle on the grounds that Gouverneur Morris did not recognize him as an American and Washington had not aided him.
Brazier took care of Paine at the end of his life and buried him
after his death on June 8, 1809. In his will, Paine left the bulk of his
estate to Marguerite, including 100 acres (40.5 ha) of his farm so she
could maintain and educate Benjamin and his brother Thomas. In 1814, the
fall of Napoleon finally allowed Bonneville to rejoin his wife in the
United States where he remained for four years before returning to Paris
to open a bookshop.
Death
Paine's death mask, in the People's History Museum in Manchester
On the morning of June 8, 1809, Paine died, aged 72, at 59 Grove Street in Greenwich Village, New York City Although the original building is no longer there, the present building has a plaque noting that Paine died at this location.
After his death, Paine's body was brought to New Rochelle, but
the Quakers would not allow it to be buried in their graveyard as per
his last will, so his remains were buried under a walnut tree on his
farm. In 1819, English agrarian radical journalist William Cobbett, who in 1793 had published a hostile continuation of Francis Oldys (George Chalmer)'s The Life of Thomas Paine,
dug up his bones and transported them back to England with the
intention to give Paine a heroic reburial on his native soil, but this
never came to pass. The bones were still among Cobbett's effects when he
died over twenty years later, but were later lost. There is no
confirmed story about what happened to them after that, although various
people have claimed throughout the years to own parts of Paine's
remains, such as his skull and right hand.
At the time of his death, most American newspapers reprinted the obituary notice from the New York Evening Post that was in turn quoting from The American Citizen,
which read in part: "He had lived long, did some good, and much harm".
Only six mourners came to his funeral, two of whom were black, most
likely freedmen. Many years later the writer and orator Robert G. Ingersoll wrote:
Thomas Paine had passed the legendary limit of life. One by one most of his old friends and acquaintances had deserted him. Maligned on every side, execrated, shunned and abhorred – his virtues denounced as vices – his services forgotten – his character blackened, he preserved the poise and balance of his soul. He was a victim of the people, but his convictions remained unshaken. He was still a soldier in the army of freedom, and still tried to enlighten and civilize those who were impatiently waiting for his death. Even those who loved their enemies hated him, their friend – the friend of the whole world – with all their hearts. On the 8th of June 1809, death came – Death, almost his only friend. At his funeral no pomp, no pageantry, no civic procession, no military display. In a carriage, a woman and her son who had lived on the bounty of the dead – on horseback, a Quaker, the humanity of whose heart dominated the creed of his head – and, following on foot, two negroes filled with gratitude – constituted the funeral cortege of Thomas Paine.
Ideas
Biographer Eric Foner
identifies a utopian thread in Paine's thought, writing: "Through this
new language he communicated a new vision—a utopian image of an
egalitarian, republican society".
Paine's utopianism combined civic republicanism,
belief in the inevitability of scientific and social progress and
commitment to free markets and liberty generally. The multiple sources
of Paine's political theory all pointed to a society based on the common
good and individualism. Paine expressed a redemptive futurism or
political messianism. Writing that his generation "would appear to the future as the Adam of a new world", Paine exemplified British utopianism.
Later, his encounters with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas made a deep impression. The ability of the Iroquois
to live in harmony with nature while achieving a democratic
decision-making process helped him refine his thinking on how to
organize society.
Portrait of Thomas Paine by Matthew Pratt, 1785–1795
Slavery
On March 8, 1775, one month after Paine became the editor of The Pennsylvania Magazine,
the magazine published an anonymous article titled "African Slavery in
America", the first prominent piece in the colonies proposing the
emancipation of African-American slaves and the abolition of slavery.
Paine is often credited with writing the piece, on the basis of later testimony by Benjamin Rush, cosigner of the Declaration of Independence. Citing a lack of further evidence of Paine's authorship however, scholars Eric Foner and Alfred Owen Aldridge no longer consider this one of his works. By contrast, journalist John Nichols writes that Paine's "fervent objections to slavery" led to his exclusion from power during the early years of the Republic.
Agrarian Justice
His last pamphlet, Agrarian Justice, published in the winter of 1795, opposed to agrarian law and to agrarian monopoly and further developed his ideas in the Rights of Man
about how land ownership separated the majority of people from their
rightful, natural inheritance and means of independent survival. The
U.S. Social Security Administration recognizes Agrarian Justice as the first American proposal for an old-age pension and basic income or citizen's dividend. Per Agrarian Justice:
In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity ... [Government must] create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property. And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.
Note that £10 and £15 would be worth about £800 and £1,200 ($1,200
and $2,000) when adjusted for inflation (2011 British pounds sterling).
Lamb argues that Paine's analysis of property rights marks a
distinct contribution to political theory. His theory of property
defends a libertarian concern with private ownership that shows an
egalitarian commitment. Paine's new justification of property sets him
apart from previous theorists such as Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf and John Locke. It demonstrates Paine's commitment to foundational liberal values of individual freedom and moral equality.
Religious views
Before
his arrest and imprisonment in France, knowing that he would probably
be arrested and executed, following in the tradition of early eighteenth-century British deism Paine wrote the first part of The Age of Reason, an assault on organized "revealed" religion combining a compilation of the many inconsistencies he found in the Bible.
About his own religious beliefs, Paine wrote in The Age of Reason:
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.
Though there is no evidence Paine himself was a Freemason,
upon his return to America from France he also penned "An Essay on the
Origin of Free-Masonry" (1803–1805) about Freemasonry being derived from
the religion of the ancient Druids.
In the essay, he stated: "The Christian religion is a parody on the
worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place
of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally paid to the sun".
Marguerite de Bonneville published the essay in 1810 after Paine's
death, but she chose to omit certain passages from it that were critical
of Christianity, most of which were restored in an 1818 printing.
While Paine never described himself as a deist, he did write the following:
The opinions I have advanced ... are the effect of the most clear and long-established conviction that the Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world, that the fall of man, the account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation, by that strange means, are all fabulous inventions, dishonorable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty; that the only true religion is Deism, by which I then meant, and mean now, the belief of one God, and an imitation of his moral character, or the practice of what are called moral virtues – and that it was upon this only (so far as religion is concerned) that I rested all my hopes of happiness hereafter. So say I now – and so help me God.
Legacy
In 1969, a Prominent Americans series stamp honoring Paine was issued.
Paine's writing greatly influenced his contemporaries and especially
the American revolutionaries. His books provoked an upsurge in deism in
the United States, but in the long term inspired philosophic and working-class radicals in the United Kingdom and United States. Liberals, libertarians, left-libertarians, feminists, democratic socialists, social democrats, anarchists, free thinkers and progressives
often claim him as an intellectual ancestor. Paine's critique of
institutionalized religion and advocacy of rational thinking influenced
many British free thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
such as William Cobbett, George Holyoake, Charles Bradlaugh, Christopher Hitchens and Bertrand Russell.
The quote "Lead, follow, or get out of the way" is widely but
incorrectly attributed to Paine. This can be found nowhere in his
published works.
Abraham Lincoln
In 1835, when Abraham Lincoln
was 26 years old, he wrote a defense of Paine's deism. A political
associate, Samuel Hill, burned the manuscript to save Lincoln's
political career. Historian Roy Basler, the editor of Lincoln's papers, said Paine had a strong influence on Lincoln's style:
No other writer of the eighteenth century, with the exception of Jefferson, parallels more closely the temper or gist of Lincoln's later thought. In style, Paine above all others affords the variety of eloquence which, chastened and adapted to Lincoln's own mood, is revealed in Lincoln's formal writings.
Thomas Edison
The inventor Thomas Edison said:
I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic ... It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine's works in my boyhood ... it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker's views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me, then, about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember, very vividly, the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine's writings, and I recall thinking, at that time, 'What a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!' My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days.
South America
In
1811, Venezuelan translator Manuel Garcia de Sena published a book in
Philadelphia which consisted mostly of Spanish translations of several
of Paine's most important works.
The book also included translations of the Declaration of Independence,
the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Constitution and the
constitutions of five U.S. states.
It subsequently circulated widely in South America and through it Uruguayan national hero José Gervasio Artigas became familiar with and embraced Paine's ideas. In turn, many of Artigas's writings drew directly from Paine's, including the Instructions of 1813,
which Uruguayans consider to be one of their country's most important
constitutional documents. It was one of the earliest writings to
articulate a principled basis for an identity independent of Buenos
Aires.
Memorials
The first and longest-standing memorial to Paine is the carved and inscribed 12 foot marble column in New Rochelle, New York
organized and funded by publisher, educator and reformer Gilbert Vale
(1791–1866) and raised in 1839 by the American sculptor and architect John Frazee – the Thomas Paine Monument (see image below).
New Rochelle is also the original site of Thomas Paine's Cottage,
which along with a 320-acre (130 ha) farm were presented to Paine in
1784 by act of the New York State Legislature for his services in the
American Revolution.
The same site is the home of the Thomas Paine Memorial Museum.
Thomas Edison helped to turn the first shovel of earth for the museum
which serves as a museum to display both Paine relics as well as others
of local historical interest. A large collection of books, pamphlets and
pictures is contained in the Paine library, including many first
editions of Paine's works as well as several original manuscripts. These
holdings, the subject of a sell-off controversy, were temporarily
relocated to the New-York Historical Society and have since been more permanently archived in the Iona College library nearby.
Paine was originally buried near the current location of his
house and monument upon his death in 1809. The site is marked by a small
headstone and burial plaque even though his remains were removed years
later.
In the 20th century, Joseph Lewis,
longtime president of the Freethinkers of America and an ardent Paine
admirer, was instrumental in having larger-than-life-sized statues of
Paine erected in each of the three countries with which the
revolutionary writer was associated. The first, created by Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum, was erected in Paris just before World War II began, but not formally dedicated until 1948. It depicts Paine standing before the French National Convention to plead for the life of King Louis XVI. The second, sculpted in 1950 by Georg J. Lober, was erected near Paine's one time home in Morristown, New Jersey. It shows a seated Paine using a drum-head as a makeshift table. The third, sculpted by Sir Charles Wheeler, President of the Royal Academy, was erected in 1964 in Paine's birthplace, Thetford, England. With quill pen in his right hand and an inverted copy of The Rights of Man in his left, it occupies a prominent spot on King Street. Thomas Paine was ranked No. 34 in the 100 Greatest Britons 2002 extensive Nationwide poll conducted by the BBC.
A bronze plaque attached to the wall of Thetford's Thomas Paine hotel gives details of Paine's life.
It was placed there in 1943 by voluntary contributions from U.S. airmen
from a nearby bomber base. Texas folklorist and freethinker J. Frank Dobie, then teaching at Cambridge University, participated in the dedication ceremonies.
In New York City, the Thomas Paine Park is marked by a fountain called The Triumph of the Human Spirit. Located in downtown Manhattan, near City Hall, the 300-ton-plus monument was dedicated on October 12, 2000.
Bronx Community College includes Paine in its Hall of Fame of Great Americans and there are statues of Paine in Morristown and Bordentown, New Jersey and in the Parc Montsouris, in Paris.
In Paris, there is a plaque in the street where he lived from
1797 to 1802 that says: "Thomas PAINE / 1737–1809 / Englishman by birth /
American by adoption / French by decree".
Yearly, between July 4 and 14, the Lewes Town Council in the United Kingdom celebrates the life and work of Paine.
In the early 1990s, largely through the efforts of citizen
activist David Henley of Virginia, legislation (S.Con.Res 110 and H.R.
1628) was introduced in the 102nd Congress by ideological opposites Sen.
Steve Symms (R-ID) and Rep. Nita Lowey
(D-NY). With over 100 formal letters of endorsement by United States
and foreign historians, philosophers and organizations, including the
Thomas Paine National Historical Society, the legislation garnered 78
original co-sponsors in the Senate and 230 original co-sponsors in the
House of Representatives, and was consequently passed by both houses'
unanimous consent. In October 1992, the legislation was signed into law
(PL102-407 and PL102-459) by President George H. W. Bush authorizing the construction by using private funds of a memorial to Thomas Paine in "Area 1" of the grounds of the U.S. Capitol. As of January 2011, the memorial has not yet been built.
The University of East Anglia's Norwich Business School is housed in the Thomas Paine Study Centre on its Norwich campus in Paine's home county of Norfolk.
The Cookes House is reputed to have been his home during the Second Continental Congress at York, Pennsylvania.
John Frazee's Thomas Paine Monument in New Rochelle
Statue in Bordentown, New Jersey
Plaque honoring Paine at 10 rue de l'Odéon, Paris
Plaque on Thomas Paine Hotel, Thetford
Commemorative plaque on the site of the former residence of Paine in Greenwich Village, New York City
In popular culture
- The 1982 French-Italian film That Night in Varennes is about a fictional meeting of Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt (played by Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni), Nicolas Edmé Restif de la Bretonne, Countess Sophie de la Borde and Thomas Paine (played by American actor Harvey Keitel) as they ride in a carriage a few hours behind the carriage carrying the King and Queen of France, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, on their attempt to escape from revolutionary France in 1791.
- Jack Shepherd's stage play In Lambeth dramatized a visit by Thomas Paine to the Lambeth home of William and Catherine Blake in 1789.
- In 1995, English folk singer Graham Moore, from Dorset, wrote "Tom Paine's Bones" which he recorded on his album of the same name. In 2001, the Scottish musician Dick Gaughan included the song on his album Outlaws and Dreamers.
- In 2005, Trevor Griffiths published These are the Times: A Life of Thomas Paine, originally written as a screenplay for Richard Attenborough Productions. Although the film was not made, the play was broadcast as a two-part drama on BBC Radio 4 in 2008, with a repeat in 2012. In 2009, Griffiths adapted the screenplay for a production entitled A New World at Shakespeare's Globe theatre on London's South Bank.
- In 2009, Paine's life was dramatized in the play Thomas Paine Citizen of the World, produced for the "Tom Paine 200 Celebrations" festival
- Paine's role in the foundation of the United States is depicted in a pseudo-biographical fashion in the educational animated series Liberty's Kids produced by DIC Entertainment.
- Paine is a character in the Bob Dylan song "As I Went Out One Morning", featured on Dylan's 1968 album, John Wesley Harding.
- A fictional version of Paine is featured in the Deborah Harkness book "Time's Convert".
