Welfare capitalism is capitalism that includes social welfare policies.
Welfare capitalism is also the practice of businesses providing welfare
services to their employees. Welfare capitalism in this second sense,
or industrial paternalism, was centered on industries that employed skilled labor and peaked in the mid-20th century.
Today, welfare capitalism is most often associated with the
models of capitalism found in Central Mainland and Northern Europe, such
as the Nordic model, social market economy and Rhine capitalism. In some cases welfare capitalism exists within a mixed economy, but welfare states can and do exist independently of policies common to mixed economies such as state interventionism and extensive regulation.
Language
"Welfare
capitalism" or "welfare corporatism" is somewhat neutral language for
what, in other contexts, might be framed as "industrial paternalism",
"industrial village", "company town", "representative plan", "industrial betterment", or "company union".
History
In the
19th century, some companies—mostly manufacturers—began offering new
benefits for their employees. This began in Britain in the early 19th
century and also occurred in other European countries, including France
and Germany. These companies sponsored sports teams, established social clubs,
and provided educational and cultural activities for workers. Some
offered housing as well. Welfare corporatism in the United States
developed during the intense industrial development of 1880 to 1900 which was marked by labor disputes and strikes, many violent.
Cooperatives and model villages
Robert Owen
was a utopian socialist of the early 19th century, who introduced one
of the first private systems of philanthropic welfare for his workers at
the cotton mills of New Lanark. He embarked on a scheme in New Harmony, Indiana to create a model cooperative, called the New Moral World, (pictured). Owenites fired bricks to build it, but construction never took place.
One of the first attempts at offering philanthropic welfare to workers was made at the New Lanark mills in Scotland by the social reformerRobert Owen. He became manager and part owner of the mills in 1810, and encouraged by his success in the management of cotton mills in Manchester (see also Quarry Bank Mill),
he hoped to conduct New Lanark on higher principles and focus less on
commercial profit. The general condition of the people was very
unsatisfactory. Many of the workers were steeped in theft and
drunkenness, and other vices were common; education and sanitation were
neglected and most families lived in one room. The respectable country
people refused to submit to the long hours and demoralising drudgery of
the mills. Many employers also operated the truck system,
whereby payment to the workers was made in part or totally by tokens.
These tokens had no value outside the mill owner's "truck shop". The
owners were able to supply shoddy goods to the truck shop and charge top
prices. A series of "Truck Acts" (1831–1887) eventually stopped this abuse, by making it an offence not to pay employees in common currency.
Owen opened a store where the people could buy goods of sound
quality at little more than wholesale cost, and he placed the sale of
alcohol under strict supervision. He sold quality goods and passed on
the savings from the bulk purchase of goods to the workers. These
principles became the basis for the cooperative stores
in Britain that continue to trade today. Owen's schemes involved
considerable expense, which displeased his partners. Tired of the
restrictions on his actions, Owen bought them out in 1813. New Lanark
soon became celebrated throughout Europe, with many leading royals,
statesmen and reformers visiting the mills. They were astonished to find
a clean, healthy industrial environment with a content, vibrant
workforce and a prosperous, viable business venture all rolled into one.
Owen’s philosophy was contrary to contemporary thinking, but he was
able to demonstrate that it was not necessary for an industrial
enterprise to treat its workers badly to be profitable. Owen was able to
show visitors the village’s excellent housing and amenities, and the
accounts showing the profitability of the mills.
Owen and the French socialist Henri de Saint-Simon were the fathers of the utopian socialist
movement; they believed that the ills of industrial work relations
could be removed by the establishment of small cooperative communities.
Boarding houses were built near the factories for the workers'
accommodation. These so-called model villages
were envisioned as a self-contained community for the factory workers.
Although the villages were located close to industrial sites, they were
generally physically separated from them and generally consisted of
relatively high quality housing, with integrated community amenities and
attractive physical environments.
The first such villages were built in the late 18th century, and
they proliferated in England in the early 19th century with the
establishment of Trowse, Norfolk in 1805 and Blaise Hamlet, Bristol in 1811. In America, boarding houses were built for textile workers in Lowell, Massachusetts in the 1820s.
The motive behind these offerings was paternalistic—owners were
providing for workers in ways they felt was good for them. These
programs did not address the problems of long work hours, unsafe
conditions, and employment insecurity that plagued industrial workers
during that period, however. Indeed, employers who provided housing in
company towns (communities established by employers where stores and
housing were run by companies) often faced resentment from workers who
chafed at the control owners had over their housing and commercial
opportunities. A noted example was Pullman, Illinois—a
site of a strike that destroyed the town in 1894. During these years,
disputes between employers and workers often turned violent and led to
government intervention.
Welfare as a business model
The Cadbury factory at Bournville, c.1903, where workers worked in conditions that were very good for the time
In the early years of the 20th century, however, business leaders began embracing a different approach. The Cadbury family of philanthropists and business entrepreneurs set up the model village at Bournville,
England in 1879 for their chocolate making factory. Loyal and
hard-working workers were treated with great respect and relatively high
wages and good working conditions; Cadbury pioneered pension schemes, joint works committees and a full staff medical service. By 1900, the estate included 313 'Arts and Crafts' cottages and houses; traditional in design but with large gardens and modern interiors, they were designed by the resident architectWilliam Alexander Harvey.
The Cadburys were also concerned with the health and fitness of
their workforce, incorporating park and recreation areas into the
Bournville village plans and encouraging swimming, walking and indeed all forms of outdoor sports. In the early 1920s, extensive football and hockey
pitches were opened together with a grassed running track. Rowheath
Pavilion served as the clubhouse and changing rooms for the acres of
sports playing fields, several bowling greens, a fishing lake and an
outdoor swimming lido, a natural mineral spring forming the source for
the lido's
healthy waters. The whole area was specifically for the benefit of the
Cadbury workers and their families with no charges for the use of any of
the sporting facilities by Cadbury employees or their families.
Port Sunlight in Wirral, England was built by the Lever Brothers
to accommodate workers in its soap factory in 1888. By 1914, the model
village could house a population of 3,500. The garden village had
allotments and public buildings including the Lady Lever Art Gallery, a cottage hospital, schools, a concert hall, open air swimming pool, church, and a temperance
hotel. Lever introduced welfare schemes, and provided for the education
and entertainment of his workforce, encouraging recreation and
organisations which promoted art, literature, science or music.
Lever's aims were "to socialise and Christianise business
relations and get back to that close family brotherhood that existed in
the good old days of hand labour." He claimed that Port Sunlight was an
exercise in profit sharing,
but rather than share profits directly, he invested them in the
village. He said, "It would not do you much good if you send it down
your throats in the form of bottles of whisky, bags of sweets, or fat
geese at Christmas. On the other hand, if you leave the money with me, I
shall use it to provide for you everything that makes life
pleasant—nice houses, comfortable homes, and healthy recreation."
In America in the early 20th century, businessmen like George F. Johnson and Henry B. Endicott
began to seek new relations with their labor by offering the workers
wage incentives and other benefits. The point was to increase
productivity by creating good will with employees. When Henry Ford
introduced his $5-a-day pay rate in 1914 (when most workers made $11 a
week), his goal was to reduce turnover and build a long-term loyal labor
force that would have higher productivity.
Turnover in manufacturing plants in the U.S. from 1910 to 1919 averaged
100%. Wage incentives and internal promotion opportunities were
intended to encourage good attendance and loyalty.
This would reduce turnover and improve productivity. The combination of
high pay, high efficiency and cheap consumer goods was known as Fordism, and was widely discussed throughout the world.
Led by the railroads and the largest industrial corporations such as the Pullman Car Company, Standard Oil, International Harvester, Ford Motor Company and United States Steel,
businesses provided numerous services to its employees, including paid
vacations, medical benefits, pensions, recreational facilities, sex
education and the like. The railroads, in order to provide places for
itinerant trainmen to rest, strongly supported YMCA hotels, and built railroad YMCAs. The Pullman Car Company build an entire model town, Pullman, Illinois. The Seaside Institute is an example of a social club built for the particular benefit of women workers. Most of these programs proliferated after World War I—in the 1920s.
The economic upheaval of the Great Depression in the 1930s
brought many of these programs to a halt. Employers cut cultural
activities and stopped building recreational facilities as they
struggled to stay solvent. It wasn't until after World War II that many
of these programs reappeared—and expanded to include more blue-collar
workers. Since this time, programs like on-site child care and
substance abuse treatment have waxed and waned in use/popularity, but
other welfare capitalism components remain. Indeed, in the U.S., the
health care system is largely built around employer-sponsored plans.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Germany and Britain
created "safety nets" for their citizens, including public welfare and unemployment insurance. These government operated welfare systems is the sense in which the term 'welfare capitalism' is generally understood today.
Modern welfare capitalism
The 19th century German economist, Gustav von Schmoller,
defined welfare capitalism as government provision for the welfare of
workers and the public via social legislation. Western Europe,
Scandinavia, Canada and Australasia are regions noted for their welfare state provisions, though other countries have publicly financed universal healthcare and other elements of the welfare state as well.
Esping-Andersen categorized three different traditions of welfare provision in his 1990 book 'The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism'; Social Democracy, Christian Democracy (conservatism) and Liberalism.
Though increasingly criticized, these classifications remain the most
commonly used in distinguishing types of modern welfare states, and
offer a solid starting point in such analysis. It has been argued that
these typologies remain a fundamental heuristic tool for welfare state
scholars, even for those who claim that in-depth analysis of a single
case is more suited to capture the complexity of different social policy
arrangements. Welfare typologies have the function to provide a
comparative lens and place even the single case into a comparative
perspective (Ferragina and Seeleib-Kaiser 2011).
The ideal Social-Democratic welfare state
is based on the principle of universalism granting access to benefits
and services based on citizenship. Such a welfare state is said to
provide a relatively high degree of autonomy, limiting the reliance of
family and market (Ferragina and Seeleib-Kaiser 2011). In this context, social policies are perceived as 'politics against the market' (Esping-Andersen 1985). Christian-democratic welfare states
are based on the principle of subsidiarity and the dominance of social
insurance schemes, offering a medium level of decommodification and a
high degree of social stratification. The liberal regime
is based on the notion of market dominance and private provision;
ideally, the state only interferes to ameliorate poverty and provide for
basic needs, largely on a means-tested basis. Hence, the
decommodification potential of state benefits is assumed to be low and
social stratification high (Ferragina and Seeleib-Kaiser 2011).
Based on the decommodification index Esping-Andersen divided into
the following regimes 18 OECD countries (Esping-Andersen 1990: 71):
Liberal: Australia, Canada, Japan, Switzerland and the US;
Social democratic: Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden
Not clearly classified: Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
These 18 countries can be placed on a continuum from the most purely
social-democratic, Sweden, to the most liberal country, the United
States (Ferragina and Seeleib-Kaiser 2011).
European welfare capitalism is typically endorsed by Christian democrats and social democrats. In contrast to social welfare provisions found in other industrialized countries (especially countries with the Anglo-Saxon model
of capitalism), European welfare states provide universal services that
benefit all citizens (social democratic welfare state) as opposed to a
minimalist model that only caters to the needs of the poor.
In Northern European countries, welfare capitalism is often combined with social corporatism and national-level collective bargaining arrangements aimed at balancing the power between labor and business. The most prominent example of this system is the Nordic model,
which features free and open markets with limited regulation, high
concentrations of private ownership in industry, and tax-funded
universal welfare benefits for all citizens.
An alternative model of welfare exists in Continental European countries, known as the social market economy or German model,
which includes a greater role for government interventionism into the
macro-economy but features a less generous welfare state than is found
in the Nordic countries.
In France, the welfare state exists alongside a dirigiste mixed economy.
In the United States
Welfare capitalism in the United States refers to industrial relations policies of large, usually non-unionized, companies that have developed internal welfare systems for their employees. Welfare capitalism first developed in the United States in the 1880s and gained prominence in the 1920s.
Promoted by business leaders during a period marked by widespread
economic insecurity, social reform activism, and labor unrest, it was
based on the idea that Americans should look not to the government or to
labor unions but to the workplace benefits provided by private-sector
employers for protection against the fluctuations of the market economy.
Companies employed these types of welfare policies to encourage worker
loyalty, productivity and dedication. Owners feared government
intrusion in the Progressive Era,
and labor uprisings from 1917 to 1919—including strikes against
"benevolent" employers—showed the limits of paternalistic efforts.
For owners, the corporation was the most responsible social
institution and it was better suited, in their minds, to promoting the
welfare of employees than government. Welfare capitalism was their way of heading off radicalism and regulation then.
The benefits offered by welfare capitalist employers were often
inconsistent and varied widely from firm to firm. They included minimal
benefits such as cafeteria plans,
company-sponsored sports teams, lunchrooms and water fountains in
plants, and company newsletters/magazines—as well as more extensive
plans providing retirement benefits, health care, and employee
profit-sharing. Examples of companies that have practiced welfare capitalism include Kodak, Sears, and IBM,
with the main elements of the employment system in these companies
including permanent employment, internal labor markets, extensive
security and fringe benefits, and sophisticated communications and
employee involvement.
Anti-unionism
Welfare
capitalism was also used as a way to resist government regulation of
markets, independent labor union organizing, and the emergence of a
welfare state. Welfare capitalists went to great lengths to quash
independent trade union organizing, strikes,
and other expressions of labor collectivism—through a combination of
violent suppression, worker sanctions, and benefits in exchange for
loyalty.
Also, employee stock-ownership programs meant to tie workers to the
success of companies (and accordingly to management). Workers would
then be actual partners with owners—and capitalists themselves. Owners
intended these programs to ward off the threat of "Bolshevism" and
undermine the appeal of unions.
The least popular of the welfare capitalism programs were the
company unions created to stave off labor activism. By offering
employees a say in company policies and practices and a means for
appealing disputes internally, employers hoped to reduce the lure of
unions. They dubbed these employee representation plans "industrial
democracy."
Efficacy
In the end, welfare capitalism programs benefited white-collar workers far more than those on the factory floor in the early 20th century. The average annual bonus payouts at U.S. Steel Corporation from 1929 to 1931 were approximately $2,500,000; however, in 1929, $1,623,753 of that went to the president of the company.
Real wages for unskilled and low-skilled workers grew little in the
1920s, while long hours in unsafe conditions continued to be the norm.
Further, employment instability due to layoffs
remained a reality of work life. Welfare capitalism programs rarely
worked as intended, company unions only reinforced that authority of
management over the terms of employment.
Wage incentives (merit raises and bonuses) often led to a speed-up in production for factory lines.
As much as these programs meant to encourage loyalty to the company,
this effort was often undermined by continued layoffs and frustrations
with working conditions. Employees
soured on employee representation plans and cultural activities, but
they were eager for opportunities to improve their pay with good work
and attendance and to gain benefits like medical care. These programs
gave workers new expectations for their employers. They were often
disappointed in the execution of them but supported their aims. The post-World War II
era saw an expansion of these programs for all workers, and today,
these benefits remain part of employment relations in many countries.
Recently, however, there has been a trend away from this form of welfare
capitalism, as corporations have reduced the portion of compensation
paid with health care, and shifted from defined benefit pensions to
employee-funded defined contribution plans.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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 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 RoyalistAntoine 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
