|
A WINDICATION
—OF—
THOMAS PAINE,
. BY
FOBEFT G. INGERSOLL,
—AND—
THOMAS PA IN E.
A CRITICISM,
*.
BY
MONCURE D. CONWAY.
“To ARGUE witH A MAN who H.As RENounced THE USE AND AUTHORITY OF
REASON, IS LIKE ADMINISTERING MEDICINE TO THE
DEAD.”—THOMAS PAINE.
O’ HIO A G O -
BELFORDS, CLARKE & CO.
1879.
-->
Over Twenty thousand copies of this book already sold.
The Gods,
A N D
OTHER LECTURES.
B Y P O B E H T G. I N G E R S O L L.
A new edition of Ingersoll's Lectures is now ready for distribution. This edition
contains “The Gods,” “Humboldt,” “Thomas Paine,” “Individuality,” and “Heretics and
IIeresies.” These Lectures have just been revised, and many changes, additions and
corrections made by the author.
This volume is handsomely printed on tinted paper, and substantially bound.
These Lectures are the most radical ever delivered in the United States. The most
important theological questions are discussed from a perfectly rational point of view.
The existence of the supernatural is denied, and reason, observation and—experience are
shown to be the only basis upon which man can securely build.
There is an effort in these Lectures to drive from the heart the shadow of supersti-
tion—to enable man to enjoy this life, and to do away with the tyranny of the Church.
The author takes the ground that man belongs to himself; that each individual
should, at all hazards, maintain his intellectual freedom; and reject with scorn every
religion that demands the sacrifice of his individuality. x
Price, $1.50. A liberal discount to the trade.
º: C. P. FARRELL, Publisher,
WASHINGTON, D. C.
\v.
ºtá,
A WINDICATION
THOMAS PAIN E.
By
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL •
AND
THOMAS PAINE.
A C R IT I C Is M.
BY
MONCURE D. CONWAY
“To ARGUE WITH A MAN who HAS RENou NCEE THE USE AND AUTHORITY of REASON,
ls LIKE ADMINIST-RING MEDICINE TO THE DEAD.”—THOMAS PAINE.
CHICAGO AND TORONTO :
B E L F O R D S, C L A R K E & C O
1 8 7 9.
“THE WINDICATION of THOMAS PAINE” is published by arrange-
ment with Mr. Robt. G. Ingersoll. Mr. Conway's Article is
e-published from our edition of The Fortnightly Review.
WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE.
“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, is
ik, administering medicine to the dead.”—THOMAS PAINE
&
PEORLA, ILL., October 8th, 1877.
To the Editor of the New York Observer:
SIR : Last June, in San Francisco, Ioffered a thousand dollars
in gold—not as a wager, but as a gift—to any one that would
substantiate the absurd story that Thomas Paine died in agony
and fear, frightened by the clanking chains of devils. I also
offered the same amount to any minister that would prove that
Woltaire did not pass away as Serenely as the coming of the dawn.
Afterwards, I was informed that you had accepted the offer, and
called upon me to deposit the money. Acting upon this infor-
mation, I sent you the following letter:
“PEORIA, ILL., August 31st, 1877.
“To the Editor of the New York Observer:
“I have been informed that you have accepted, in your paper,
an offer made by me to any clergyman in San Francisco. That
offer was, that I would pay one thousand dollars in gold to any
minister in that city, who would prove that Thomas Paine died
in terror because of religious opinions he had expressed, or that
TVoltaire did not pass away serenely as the coming of the dawn.
“For many years, religious journals and ministers have been
circulating certain pretended accounts of the frightful agonies
endured by Paine and Voltaire when dying; that these great men,
at the moment of death, were terrified because they had given
their honest opinions on the subject of religion to their fellowmen.
The imagination of the religious world has been taxed to the
utmost in inventing absurd and infamous accounts of the last
moments of these intellectual giants. Every Sunday-paper,
thousands of idiotic tracts, and countless stupidities, called ser-
mons, have been filled with these calumnies.
4. WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE.
“Paine and Woltaire both believed in God—both hoped for
immortality—both believed in special providence; but both
denied the inspiration of the Scriptures—both denied the divinity
of Jesus Christ. While theologians most cheerfully admit that
most murderers die without fear, they deny the possibility of any
man who has expressed his disbelief in the inspiration of the
bible, dying except in an agony of terror. These stories are used
in revivals and in Sunday schools, and have long been considered
of great value.
“I am anxious that these slanders shall cease. I am desirous
of seeing justice done, even at this late day, to the dead.
“For the purpose of ascertaining the evidence upon which
these death-bed accounts really rest, I make to you the following
proposition:
“First.—As to THOMAS PAINE : I will deposit with the First
National Bank of Peoria, Illinois, one thousand dollars in gold,
upon the following conditions: This money shall be subject to
your order when you shall, in the manner hereinafter provided,
substantiate that Thomas Paine admitted the bible to be an
inspired book, or that he recanted his infidel opinions—or that he
died regretting that he had disbelieved the bible—or that he died
calling upon Jesus Christ in any religious sense whatever.
“In order that a tribunal may be created to try this question,
you may select one man, I will select another, and the two thus
chosen shall select a third, and any two of the three may decide
the matter.
“As there will be certain costs and expenditures on both sides,
such costs and expenditures shall be paid by the defeated party.
“In addition to the one thousand dollars in gold, I will deposit
a bond with good and sufficient security in the sum of two
thousand dollars, conditioned for the payment of all costs, in
case I am defeated. I shall require of you a like bond.
“From the date of accepting this offer, you may have ninety
days to collect and present your testimony, giving me notice of
time and place of taking depositions. I shall have a like time
to take evidence upon my side, giving you like notice, and you
shall then have thirty days to take further testimony in reply to
what I may offer. The case shall then be argued before the
persons chosen; and their decision shall be final as to us.
“If the arbitrator chosen by me shall die, I shall have the right
to chose another. You shall have the same right. If the third
one, chosen by our two, shall die, the two shall choose another;
and all vacancies, from whatever cause, shall be filled upon the
same principle.
“The arbitrators shall sit when and where a majarity shall
WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE. 5
determine, and shall have full power to pass upon all questions
arising as to competency of evidence and upon all subjects.
“Second.—As to WULTAIRE: I make the same proposition:-
If you will substantiate that Woltaire died expressing remorse, or
showing, in any way, that he was in mental agony because he
had attacked Catholicism—or because he had denied the inspira-
tion of the bible—or because he had denied the divinity of Christ.
“I make these propositions because I want you to stop slander-
ing the dead.
“If the propositions do not suit you in any particular, please
state your objections, and I will modify them in any way con-
sistent with the object in view.
“If Paine and Woltaire died filled with childish and silly fear,
I want to know it, and I want the world to know it. On the
other hand, if the believers in superstition have made and circu-
lated these cruel slanders concerning the mighty dead, I want the
world to know that.
“As soon as you notify me of the acceptance of these proposi-
tions, I will send you the certificate of the bank that the money
has been deposited upon the foregoing conditions, together with
copies of bonds for costs. “R. G. INGERSOLL.”
In your paper of September 27th, 1877, you acknowledge the
the receipt of the foregoing letter, and, after giving an outline of
its contents, say:
“As not one of the affirmations, in the form stated in this letter,
was contained in the offer we made, we have no occasion to sub-
stantiate them. But we are prepared to produce the evidence of
the truth of our own statement, and even to go further: to show
not only ‘that Tom Paine died a drunken, cowardly, and beastly
death, but that for many years previous, and up to that event,
be lived a drunken and beastly life.”
In order to refresh your memory as to what you had published,
I call your attention to the following, which appeared in the
New York Observer, the 19th of July, 1877:
“ PUT DOWN THE MONEY.
“Col. Bob Ingersoll, in a speech full of ribaldry and blasphemy,
made in San Francisco recently, said:
“‘I will give $1,000 in gold coin to any clergyman who can
substantiate that the death of Woltaire was not as peaceful as the
dawn; and of Tom Paine, whom they assert died in fear and
agony, frightened by the clanking chains of devils—in fact,
6 VIOijLUATION OF THOMAS PAINE.
frightened to death by God. I will give $1,000 likewise to any
one who can substantiate this “absurd story’—a story without a
word of truth in it.’
“We have published the testimony, and the witnesses are
on hand to prove that Tom Paine died a drunken, cowardly and
beastly death. Let the Colonel deposit the money with any honest
mam, and the absurd story, as he terms it, shall be shown to be an
‘ower true’ tale. But he won't do it. His talk is infidel ‘bum.combe,’
and mothing more.”
On the 31st of August I sent you my letter, and on the 27th of
September you say in your paper: “As not one of the affirma-
tions in the form stated in this letter was contained in the offer
we made, we have no occasion to substantiate them.”
What were the affirmations contained in the offer you made 2
I had offered a thousand dollars in gold to any, one who would
substantiate “the absurd story” that Thomas Paime died in fear
and agony, frightened by the clanking chains of devils—in fact,
frightened to death by God.”
In response to this offer you said: Let the Colonel deposit the
money with an honest man, and the ‘absurd story, as he terms
it, shall be shown to be an ‘ower true ' tale. But he won’t do it.
His talk is infidel ‘bnncombe, and nothing more.”
Did you not offer to prove that Paine died in fear and agony,
frightened by the clanking chains of devils 2 Did you not
ask me to deposit the money that you might prove the
“absurd story” to be an “ower true” tale, and obtain the money :
Did you not, in your paper of the 27th of September, in effect
deny that you had offered to prove this “absurd story !” As
soon as I offered to deposit the gold and give bonds besides, to
cover costs, did you not publish a falsehood 2
You have eaten your own words, and for my part, I would
rather have dined with Ezekiel than with you. You have not
met the issue. You have knowingly avoided it. The question
was not as to the personal habits of Paine. The real question
was, and is, whether Paine was filled with fear and horror at the
time of his death on account of his religious opinions. That is
the question. You avoid this. In effect, you abandon that
charge, and make others.
To you belongs the honor of having made the most cruel and
WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE. 7
infamous charges against Thomas Paine that have ever been made.
Of what you have said you cannot prove the truth of one word.
You say that Thomas Paine died a drunken, cowardly and
beastly death.
I pronounce this charge to be a cowardly and beastly falsehood.
Have you any evidence. that he was in a drunken condition
when he died ?
What did he say or do of a cowardly character just before, or
at about the time of his death ?
In what way was his death cowardly 2 You must answer
these questions, and give your proof, or all honest men will hold
you in abhorrence. You have made these charges. The man
against whom you make them is dead. He cannot answer you.
I can. He cannot compel you to produce your testimony, or
admit by your silence that you have cruelly slandered the de-
fenseless dead. I can, and I will. You say that his death was
cowardly. In what respect 2 Was it cowardly in him to hold
the Thirty-nine Articles in contempt 2 Was it cowardly not to
call on your Lord 2 Was it cowardly not to be afraid You say
that his death was beastly. Again I ask, in what respect 2 Was
it beastly to submit to the inevitable with tranquility ? Was it
beastly to look with composure upon the approach of death 2
Was it beastly to die without a complaint, without a murmur—
to pass from life without a fear?
DID THOMAS PAINE RECANT 2
Mr. Paine had prophesied that fanatics would crawl and
cringe around him during his last moments. He believed that
they would put a lie in the mouth of death.
When the shadow of the coming dissolution was upon him, two
clergymen, Messrs. Milledollar and Cunningham, called to annoy
the dying man. Mr. Cunningham had the politeness to say:
“You have now a full view of death; you cannot live long; and
whosoever does not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ will assur-
edly be damned.” Mr. Paine replied: “Let me have none of
your popish stuff. Get away with you. Good morning.”
On another occasion a Methodist minister obtruded himself
when Willet Hicks was present. The minister declared to Mr.
8 VINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE.
Paine, “that unless he repented of his unbelief he would be
damned.” Paine, although at the door of death, rose in his bed
and indignantly requested the clergyman to leave the room. On
another occasion, two brothers by the name of Pigott sought to
convert him. He was displeased, and requested their departure.
Afterwards, Thomas Nixon and Capt. Daniel Pelton visited him
for the express purpose of ascertaining whether he had, in any
manner, changed his religious opinions. They were assured by
the dying man that he still held the principles he had expressed
in his writings.
Afterwards, these gentlemen, hearing that William Cobbett
was about to write a life of Paine, sent him the following note:
“NEW YORK, April 24th, 1818.
“Sir : Having been informed that you have a design to write
a history of the life and writings of Thomas Paine, if you have
been furnished with materials in respect to his religious opinions,
or rather of his recantation of his former opinions before his
death, all you have heard of his recanting is false. Being aware
that such reports would be raised after his death by fanatics who
infested his house at the time it was expected he would die, we,
the subscribers, intimate acquaintances of Thomas Paine since the
year 1776, went to his house. He was sitting up in a chair, and
apparently in full vigor and use of all his mental faculties. We
interrogated him upon his religious opinions, and if he had
changed his mind, or repented of anything he had said or wrote
on that subject. He answered, “Not at all,” and appeared rather
offended at our supposition that any change should take place in
his mind. We took down in writing the questions put to him,
and his answers thereto, before a number of persons then in his
room, among whom were his doctor, Mrs. Bonneville, etc. This
paper is mislaid and cannot be found at present, but the above is .
the substance, which can be attested by many living witnesses.
“THOMAS NIXON,
* DANIEL PELTON.”
Mr. Jarvis, the artist, saw Mr. Paine one or two days before his
death. To Mr. Jarvis he expressed his belief in his written
opinions upon the subject of religion. B. F. Haskin, an attorney
of the city of New York, also visited him, and inquired as to his
religious opinions. Paine was then upon the threshold of death
but he did not tremble. He was not a coward. He expressed
WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE. 9
his firm and unshaken belief in the religious ideas he had given
to the world.
Dr. Manley was with him when he spoke his last words. Dr.
Manley asked the dying man if he did not wish to believe that
Jesus was the Son of God, and the dying philosopher answered:
“I have no wish to believe on that subject.” Amasa Woodsworth
sat up with Thomas Paine the night before his death. In 1839
Gilbert Wale, hearing that Mr. Woodsworth was living in or near
Boston, visited him for the purpose of getting his statement.
The statement was published in the Beacon of June 5, 1839,
while thousands who had been acquainted with Mr. Paine were
living.
The following is the article referred to :
“We have just returned from Boston. One object of our visit
to that city was to see a Mr. Amasa Woodsworth, an engineer,
now retired in a handsome cottage and garden at East Cambridge,
Boston. This gentleman owned the house occupied by Paine at
his death—while he lived next door. As an act of kindness, Mr.
Woodworth visited Mr. Paine every day for six weeks before his
death. He frequently sat up with him, and did so on the last
two nights of his life. He was always there with Dr. Manley,
the physician, and assisted in removing Mr. Paine while his bed
was prepared. He was present when Dr. Manley asked Mr.
Paine ‘if he wished to believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of
God.' He says that lying on his back he used some action, and,
with much emphasis, replied: “I have no wish to believe on that
subject.’ He lived some time after this, but was not known to
speak, for he died tranquilly. He accounts for the insinuating
style of Dr. Manley's letter, by stating that that gentleman, just
after its publication, joined a church. He informs us that he has
openly reproved the doctor for the falsity contained in the spirit
of that letter, boldly declaring before Dr. Manley, who is yet liv-
ing, that nothing which he saw justified the insinuations. Mr.
Woodsworth assures us that he neither heard nor saw anything
to justify the belief of any mental change in the opinions of Mr.
Paine previous to his death; but that being very ill and in pain,
chiefly arising from the skin being removed in some parts by long
lying, he was generally too uneasy to enjoy conversation on
abstract subjects. This, then, is the best evidence that can be
procured on this subject, and we publish it while the contravening
parties are yet alive, and with the authority of Mr. Woodsworth.
* GIDBERT WALE.”
10 WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE.
A few weeks ago I received the following letter, which con-
firms the statement of Mr. Wale:
“NEAR STOCKTON, CAL, GREENwooD COTTAGE, July 9, 1877.
“Col. INGERSOLL: In 1842 I talked with a gentleman in
Boston. I have forgotten his name; but he was then an engin-
eer of the Charlestown navy yard. I am thus particular, so that
you can find his name on the books. He told me that he nursed
Thomas Paine in his last illness, and closed his eyes when dead.
I asked him if he recanted and called upon God to save him. He
replied : “No ; he died as he had taught. He had a sore upon
his side, and when we turned him it was very painful, and he
would cry out, “O God,” or something like that.” “But,” said
the narrator, “That was nothing, for he believed in a God.” I
told him that I had often heard it asserted from the pulpit that
Mr. Paine had recanted in his last moments. The gentleman said
that it was not true, and he appeared to be an intelligent, truth-
ful man. With respect I remain, &c.,
“PHILIP GRAVES, M.D.”
The next witness is Willet Hicks, a Quaker preacher. He says
that during the last illness of Mr. Paine he visited him almost
daily, and that Paine died firmly convinced of the truth of the
religious opinions he had given to his fellow men. It was to this
same Willet Hicks that Paine applied for permission to be buried
in the cemetery of the Quakers. Permission was refused. This
refusal settles the question of recantation. If he had recanted,
of course there could have been no objection to his body being
buried by the side of the best hypocrites in the earth. If Paine
recanted, why should he be denied “a little earth for charity ?”
Had he recanted, it would have been regarded as a vast and
splendid triumph for the Gospel. It would, with much noise
and pomp and ostentation, have been heralded about the world.
I received the following letter to-day. The writeris well known
in this city, and is a man of high character:
PEORIA, IL.L., October 8th, 1877.
ROBERT G., INGERSOLL–Esteemed Friend : My parents were
Friends (Quakers). My father died when I was very young.
The elderly and middle-aged Friends visited at my mother's
house. We lived in the city of New York. Among the number,
I distinctly remember Elias Hicks, Willet Hicks, and a Mr.
sº
WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE. 1].
Day, who was a book-seller in Pearl street. There were many
others, whose names I do not now remember. The subject of the
recantation of Thomas Paine of his views about the bible in his
last illness, or at any other time, was discussed by them, in my
presence, at different times. I learned from them that some of
them had attended upon Thomas Paine in his last sickness, and
ministered to his wants up to the time of his death. And upon
the question of whether he did recant there was but one expres-
sion. They all said that he did not recant in any manner. I
often heard them say that they wished he had recanted. In fact,
according to them, the nearer he approached death the more posi-
tive he appeared to be in his convictions.
These conversations were from 1820 to 1822. I was at that
time from ten to twelve years old, but these conversations im-
pressed themselves upon me because many thoughtless people
then blamed the Society of Friends for their kindness to that
“arch-infidel,” Thomas Paine. Truly yours,
“A. C. HANKINSON.”
A few days ago I received the following:
“ALBANY, NEW YORK, September 27th, 1877.
“DEAR SIR: It is over twenty years ago that, professionally,
I made the acquaintance of John Hogeboom, a justice of the
peace of the County of Rensselaer, New York. He was then
over seventy years of age, and had the reputation of being a man
of candor and integrity. He was a great admirer of Paine. He
told me he was personally acquainted with him, and used to see
him frequently during the last years of his life in the city of New
York, where Hogeboom then resided. I asked him if there was
any truth in the charge that Paine was in the habit of getting
drumk. He said that it was utterly false; that he never heard
of such a thing during the life time of Mr. Paine, and did not
believe any one else did. I asked him about the recantation of
his religious opinions on his death-bed, and the revolting death-
bed scenes that the world had heard so much about. He said
there was no truth in them; that he had received his information
from persons who attended Paine in his last illness, “and that
he passed peacefully away, as we may say, in the sunshine of a
great soul.” “ ” * Yours truly,
“W. J. HILTON.”
The witnesses by whom I substantiate the fact that Thomas
Paine did not recant, and that he died holding the religious opin-
ions he had published, are
12 VINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE.
First.—Thomas Nixon, Captain Daniel Pelton, B. F. Haskin.
These gentlemen visited him during his last illness for the pur-
pose of ascertaining whether he had, in any respect, changed his
views upon religion. He told them that he had not.
Second.—Jas. Cheetham. This man was the most malicious
enemy Mr. Paine had, and yet he admits that “Thomas Paine
died placidly, and almost without a struggle.”—Life of Thomas
Paime, by James Cheetham.
Third.—The ministers, Milledollar and Cunningham. These
gentlemen told Mr. Paine that if he died without believing in the
Lord Jesus Christ, he would be damned, and Paine replied: “Let
me have none of your popish stuff. Good morning.”—Sherwin's
Life of Paine, page 220.
Fourth.-Mrs. Hedden. She told these same preachers, when
they attempted to obtrude themselves upon Mr. Paine again, that
the attempt to convert Mr. Paine was useless; “that if God did
not change his mind, no human power could.”
Fifth.-Andrew A. Dean. This man lived upon Paine's farm,
at New Rochelle, and corresponded with him upon religious sub-
jects.-Paine's Theological Works, page 308.
Siath.-Mr. Jarvis, the artist with whom Paine lived. He gives
an account of an old lady coming to Paine, and telling him that
God Almighty had sent her to tell him that unless he repented
and believed in the blessed Saviour he would be damned. Paine
replied that God would not send such a foolish old woman with
such an impertinent message.—Clio Rickman's Life of Paine.
Seventh-William Carver, with whom Paine boarded. Mr.
Carver said again and again that Paine did not recant. He knew
him well, and had every opportunity of knowing—Life of Paine
by Vale.
Eighth-Dr. Manley, who attended him in his last sickness,
and to whom Paine spoke his last words. Dr. Manley asked him
if he did not wish to believe in Jesus Christ, and he replied: “I
have no wish to believe on that subject.”
Ninth-Willet Hicks and Elias Hicks, who were with him
frequently during his last sickness, and both of whom tried to
persuade him to recant. According to their testimony Mr. Paine
died as he lived—a believer in God and a friend of man. Willet
WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE. 13
Hicks was offered money to say something false against Paine.
He was even offered money to remain silent, and allow others to
slander the dead. Mr. Hicks, speaking of Thomas Paine, said:
“He was a good man—an honest man.”—Vale's Life of Paine.
Tenth.—Amasa Woodsworth, who was with him every day for
some six weeks immediately preceding his death, and sat up with
him the last two nights of his life. This man declares that Paine
did not recant, and that he died tranquilly. The evidence of Mr.
Woodsworth is conclusive.
Elevemth.-Thomas Paine himself. The will of Mr. Paine,
written by himself, commences as follows: “The last will and
testament of me the subscriber, Thomas Paine, reposing confi-
dence in my creator, God, and in no other being, for I know of
no other, nor believe in any other;” and closes with these words:
“I have lived an honest and useful life to mankind; my time
has been spent in doing good; and I die in perfect composure
and resignation to the will of my creator, God.”
Twelfth-If Thomas Paine recanted why do you pursue him
If he recanted he died substantially in your belief; for what
reason, then, do you denounce his death as cowardly 2 If, upon
his death-bed, he renounced the opinions he had published, the
business of defaming him should be done by infidels, not by
christians.
I ask you if it is honest to throw away the testimony of his
friends—the evidence of fair and honorable men—and take the
putrid words of avowed and malignant enemies?
When Thomas Paine was dying, he was infested by fanatics—
by the snaky spies of bigotry. In the shadows of death were
the unclean birds of prey waiting to tear, with beak and claw,
the corpse of him who wrote the “Rights of Man;” and there,
lurking and crouching in the darkness, were the jackals and
hyenas of superstition ready to violate his grave.
These birds of prey—these unclean beasts—are the witnesses
produced and relied upon by you.
One by one the instruments of torture have been wrenched
from the cruel clutch of the church, until within the armory of
orthodoxy there remains but one weapon—Slander.
Against the witnesses that I have produced you can bring just
14 WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE,
two—Mary Roscoe and Mary Hinsdale. The first is referred to
in the memoir of Stephen Grellet. She had once been a servant
in his house. Grellet tells what happened between this girl and
Paine. According to this account, Paine asked her if she had
ever read any of his writings, and on being told that she had
read very little of them, he inquired what she thought of them,
adding that from such an one as she he expected a correct answer.
Let us examine this falsehood. Why would Paine expect a
correct answer about his writings from one who had read very
little of them 2 Does not such a statement devour itself 2 This
young lady further said that the “Age of Reason” was put in
her hands, and that the more she read in it, the more dark and
distressed she felt, and that she threw the book into the fire.
Whereupon Mr. Paine remarked: “I wish all had done as you
did, for if the devil ever had any agency in any work, he had it
in my writing that book.”
The next is Mary Hinsdale. She was a servant in the family
of Willet Hicks. She, like Mary Roscoe, was sent to carry some
delicacy to Mr. Paine. To this young lady Paine, according to
her account, said precisely the same that he did to Mary Roscoe,
and she said the same thing to Mr. Paine.
My own opinion is that Mary Roscoe and Mary Hinsdale are
one and the same person, or the same story has been, by mistake,
put in the mouths of both.
It is not possible that the identical conversation should have
taken place between Paine and Mary Roscoe, and between him
and Mary Hinsdale.
Mary Hinsdale lived with Willet Hicks, and he pronounced
her story a pious fraud and fabrication. He said that Thomas
Paine never said any such thing to Mary Hinsdale.—Vale's Life
of Paine.
Another thing about this witness. A woman by the name of
Mary Lockwood, a Hicksite Quaker, died. Mary Hinsdale met
her brother about that time and told him that his sister had
recanted, and wanted her to say so at her funeral. This turned
out to be false.
It has been claimed that Mary Hinsdale made her statement to
Charles Collins. Long after the alleged occurrence Gilbert Wale,
WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE. I5
one of the biographers of Paine, had a conversation with Collins
concerning Mary Hinsdale. Vale asked him what he thought of
her. He replied that some of the Friends believed that she used
opiates, and that they did not give credit to her statements. He
also said that he believed what the Friends said, but thought
that when a young woman, she might have told the truth.
In 1818 William Cobbett came to New York. He began col-
lecting materials for a life of Thomas Paine. In this way he
became acquainted with Mary Hinsdale and Charles Collins. Mr.
Cobbett gave a full account of what happened in a letter addressed
to the Norwich Mercury in 1819. From this account it seems
that Charles Collins told Cobbett that Paine had recanted.
Cobbett called for the testimony, and told Mr. Collins that he
must give time, place and circumstances. He finally brought a
statement that he stated had been made by Mary Hinsdale.
Armed with this document, Cobbett, in October of that year,
called upon the said Mary Hinsdale, at No. 10 Anthony street,
New York, and showed her the statement. Upon being ques-
tioned by Mr. Cobbett, she said, “that it was so long ago that
she could not speak positively to any part of the matter—that
she would not say that any part of the paper was true—that she
had never seen the paper—and that she had never given Charles
Collins authority to say anything about the matter in her name.”
And so in the month of October, in the year of grace, 1818, in
the mist and fog of forgetfulness, disappeared forever one Mary
Hinsdale, the last and only witness against the intellectual hon-
esty of Thomas Paine.
DID THOMAS PAINE DIE IN DESTITUTION AND WANT 2
The charge has been made, over and over again, that Thomas
Paine died in want and destitution; that he was an abandoned
pauper—an outcast, without friends and without money. This
charge is just as false as the rest.
Upon his return to this country, in 1802, he was worth $30,000
according to his own statement, made at that time, in the follow-
ing letter, addressed to Clio Rickman:
MY DEAR FRIEND: Mr. Monroe who is appointed minister
16 WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE.
extraordinary to France, takes charge of this, to be delivered to
Mr. Este, banker, in Paris, to be forwarded to you.
I arrived in Baltimore, 30th of October, and you can have no
idea of the agitation which my arrival occasioned. From New
Hampshire to Georgia (an extent of 1,500 miles), every news-
paper was filled with applause or abuse.
My property in this country has been taken care of by my
friends, and is now worth six thousand pounds sterling, which,
put in the funds, will bring me £400 sterling a year.
Remember me, in affection and friendship, to vour wife and
family, and in the circle of your friends.
THOMAS PAINE.
A man, in those days, worth thirty thousand dollars was not a
pauper. That amount would bring an income of at least two
thousand dollars per annum. Two thousand dollars then, would
be fully equal to five thousand dollars now.
On the 12th of July, 1809, the year in which he died, Mr.
Paine made his will. From this instrument we learn that he was
the owner of a valuable farm within twenty miles of New York.
He also was the owner of thirty shares in the New York Phoenix
Insurance Company, worth upwards of fifteen hundred dollars.
Besides this, some personal property and ready money. By his
will he gave to Walter Morton and Thomas Addis Emmet, brother
of Robert Emmet, two hundred dollars each, and one hundred
dollars to the widow of Elihu Palmer.
Is it possible that this will was made by a pauper—by a desti-
tute outcast—by a man who suffered for the ordinary necessaries
of life 2
But suppose, for the sake of the argument, that he was poor,
and that he died a beggar, does that tend to show that the bible
is an inspired book, and that Calvin did not burn Servetus 2 Oo
you really regard poverty as a crime ! If Paine had died a mil-
lionaire, would you have accepted his religious opinions 2 If
Paine had drank nothing but cold water, would you have repu-
diated the five cardinal points of Calvinism 2 Does an argument
depend for its force upon the pecuniary condition of the person
making it ! As a matter of fact, most reformers—most men and
women of genius—have been acquainted with poverty. Beneath
WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE, 17
a covering or rags have been found some of the tenderest and
bravest hearts.
Owing to the attitude of the churches for the last fifteen
hundred years, truth-telling has not been a very lucrative busi-
ness. As a rule, hypocrisy has worn the robes, and honesty the
rags. That day is passing away. You cannot now answer the
argument of a man by pointing at the holes in his coat. Thomas
Paine attacked the church when it was powerful—when it had
what is called honors to bestow—when it was the keeper of the
public conscience—when it was strong and cruel. The church
waited till he was dead, and then attacked his reputation and
his clothes.
Once upon a time a donkey kicked a lion. The lion was
dead.
DID THOMAS PAINE LIVE THE LIFE OF A DRUNKEN BEAST, AND
DID HE DIE A DRUNKEN, COWARDLY AND BEASTLY DEATH 2
Upon you rests the burden of substantiating these infamous
charges.
You have, I suppose, produced the best evidence in your pos-
session, and that evidence I will now proceed to examine. Your
first witness is Grant Thorburn. He mades three charges against
Thomas Paine. 1st. That his wife obtained a divorce from him
in England for cruelty and neglect. 2nd. That he was a defaulter,
and fled from England to America. 3rd. That he was a drunkard.
These three charges stand upon the same evidence—the word of
Grant Thorburn. If they are not all true, Mr. Thorburn stands
impeached.
The charge that Mrs. Paine obtained a divorce on account of
the cruelty and neglect of her husband is utterly false. There is
no such record in the world, and never was. Paine and his wife
separated by mutual consent. Each respected the other. They
remained friends. This charge is without any foundation in fact.
I challenge the christian world to produce the record of this de-
cree of divorce. According to Mr. Thorburn, it was granted in
England. In that country public records are kept of all such
decrees. Have the kindness to produce this decree, showing that
B
Y 8 WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE.
it was given on account of cruelty, or admit that Mr. Thorburn
was mistaken.
Thomas Paine was a just man. Although separated from his
wife, he always spoke of her with tenderness and respect, and
frequently sent her money without letting her know the source
from whence it came. Was this the conduct of a drunken beast 2
The second charge, that Paine was a defaulter in England and
fled to America, is equally false. He did not flee from England.
He came to America, not as a fugitive, but as a free man. He
came with a letter of introduction, signed by another infidel,
Benjamin Franklin. He came as a soldier of Freedom—an apos-
tle of Liberty.
In this second charge there is not one word of truth.
He held a small office in England. If he was a defaulter, the
records of that country will show that fact.
Mr. Thorburn, unless the records can be produced to substan-
tiate him, stands convicted of at least two mistakes.
Now as to the third : He says that in 1802 Paine was an
“old remnant of mortality, drunk, bloated and half asleep.”
Can any one believe this to be a true account of the personal
appearance of Mr. Paine in 1802? He had just returned from
France. He had been welcomed home by Thomas Jefferson, who
had said that he was entitled to the hospitality of every American.
In 1802 Mr. Paine was honored with a public dinner in the
city of New York. He was called upon and treated with kind-
ness and respect by such men as De Witt Clinton.
In 1806 Mr. Paine wrote a letter to Andrew A. Dean upon the
subject of religion. Read that letter and then say that the writer
of it was an old remnant of mortality, drunk, bloated and half
asleep. Search the files of the New York Observer from the first
issue to the last, and you will find nothing superior to this letter.
In 1803 Mr. Paine wrote a letter of considerable length, and of
great force, to his friend Samuel Adams. Such letters are not
written by drunken beasts, nor by remnants of old mortality, nor
by drunkards. It was about the same time that he wrote his
“Remarks on Robert Hall's Sermons.” These “Remarks” were
not written by a drunken beast, but by a clear-headed and
thoughtful man
VINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE. $9
In 1804, he published an essay on the invasion of England, and
a treatise on gun-boats, full of valuable maritime information; in
1805, a treatise on yellow fever, suggesting modes of prevention.
In short, he was an industrious and thoughtful man. He sympa-
thized with the poor and oppressed of all lands. He looked upon
monarchy as a species of physical slavery. He had the goodness
to attack that form of government. He regarded the religion of
his day as a kind of mental slavery. He had the courage to give
his reasons for his opinion. His reasons filled the churches with
hatred. Instead of answering his arguments they attacked him.
Men who were not fit to blacken his shoes blackened his character.
There is too much religious cant in the statement of Mr.
Thorburn. He exhibits too much anxiety to tell what Grant
Thorburn said to Thomas Paine. He names Thomas Jefferson as
one cf the disreputable men who welcomed Paine with open
arms. The testimony of a man who regarded Thomas Jefferson
as a disreputable perscn, as to the character of anybody, is utterly
without value.
In my judgment, the testimony of Mr. Thorburn should be
thrown aside as wholly unworthy of belief.
Your next witness is the Rev. J. D. Wickham, D.D., who tells
what an elder in his church said. This elder said that Paine
passed his last days on his farm at New Rochelle, with a solitary
female attendant. This is not true. He did not pass his last
days at New Rochelle; consequently, this pious elder did not see
him during his last days at that place. Upon this elder we prove
an alibi. Mr. Paine passed his last days in the city of New
York, in a house upon Columbia street. The story of the Rev.
J. D. Wickham, D.D., is simply false.
The next competent false witness is the Rev. Charles Hawley,
D.D., who proceeds to state that the story of the Rev. J. D.
Wickham, D.D., is corroborated by older citizins of New Rochelle.
The names of these ancient residents are withheld. According
to these unknown witnesses, the account given by the deceased
elder was entirely correct. But as the particulars of Mr. Paine's
conduct “were too loathsome to be described in print,” we are
left entirely in the dark as to what he really did.
While at New Rochelle, Mr. Paine lived with Mr. Purdy, with
20 WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE.
Mr. Dean, with Capt. Pelton, and with Mr. Staple. It is worthy
of note that all of these gentlemen give the lie direct to the state-
ments of “older residents” and ancient citizens spoken of by
the Rev. Charles Hawley, D.D., and leave him with the “loath-
some particulars” existing only in his own mind. -
The next gentleman you bring upon the stand is W. H. Ladd,
who quotes from the memoirs of Stephen Grellett. This gentle-
man also has the misfortune to be dead. According to his account,
Mr. Paine made his recantation to a servant girl of his by the
name of Mary Roscoe. To this girl, according to the account,
Mr. Paine uttered the wish that all who read his book had
burned it. I believe there is a mistake in the name of this girl.
Her name was probably Mary Hinsdale, as it was once claimed
that Paine made the same remark to her, but this point I shall
notice hereafter.
These are your witnesses, and the only ones you bring forward
to support your charge that Thomas Paine lived a drunken and
beastly life, and died a drunken, cowardly and beastly death.
All these calumnies are found in a life of Paine by James Cheet-
ham, the convicted libeller already referred to. Mr. Cheetham
was an enemy of the man whose life he pretended to write.
In order to show you the estimation in which this libeller was
held by Mr. Paine, I will give you a copy of a letter that throws
light upon this point:
“OCTOBER 27th, 1807.
“MR. CHEETHAM: Unless you make a public apology for the
abuse and falsehood in your paper of Tuesday, October 27th, res-
pecting me, I will prosecute you for lying. # % #
“THOMAS PAINE.”
In another letter, speaking of this same man, Mr. Paine says:
“If an unprincipled bully cannot be reformed, he can be pun-
ished.” “ Cheetham has been so long in the habit of giving false
information, that truth is to him like a foreign language.”
Mr. Cheetham wrote the life of Paine to gratify his malice and
to support religion. He was prosecuted for libel—was convicted
and fined. -
Yet the life of Paine, written by this man, is referred to by the
christian world as the highest authority. *
WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE, 21
As to the personal habits of Mr. Paine we have the testimony
of William Carver, with whom he lived ; of Mr. Jarvis, the artist,
with whom he lived; of Mr. Purdy, who was a tenant of Paine's;
of Mr. Burger, with whom he was intimate; of Thomas Nixon
and Capt. Daniel Pelton, both of whom knew him well; of Amasa
Woodsworth, who was with him when he died; of John Fellows,
who boarded at the same house; of James Wilburn, with whom
he boarded; of B. F. Haskin, a lawyer, who was well acquainted
with him, and called upon him during his last illness; of Walter
Morton, President of the Phoenix Insurance Company; of Clio
Rickman, who had known him for many years; of Willet and
Elias Hicks, Quakers, who knew him intimately and well; of
Judge Hertell, H. Margary, Elihu Palmer and many others. All
these testified to the fact that Mr. Paine was a temperate man.
In those days nearly everybody used spirituous liquors. Paine
was not an exception ; but he did not drink to excess. Mr.
Lovett who kept the City Hotel, where Paine stopped, in a note
to Caleb Bingham, declared that Paine drank less than any
boarder he had.
Against all this evidence you produce the story of Grant
Thorburn—the story of the Rev. J. D. Wickham, that an elder in
his church told him that Paine was a drunkard, corroborated by
the Rev. Charles Hawley, and an extract from Lossing's history
to the same effect. The evidence is overwhelmingly against you.
Will you have the fairness to admit it ! Your witnessess are
merely the repeaters of the falsehoods of James Cheetham, the
convicted libeller.
After all, drinking is not as bad as lying. An honest drunk-
ard is better than a calumniator of the dead. “A remnant of old
mortality, drunk, bloated and half asleep,” is better than a per-
fectly sober defender of human slavery.
To become drunk is a virtue compared with stealing a babe
from the breast of its mother.
Drunkenness is one of the beatitudes, compared with editing a
religious paper devoted to the defence of slavery upon the ground
that it is a divine institution.
Do you really think that Paine was a drunken beast when he
wrote “Common Sense”—a pamphlet that aroused three millions
22 WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE,
of people as people were never aroused by words before ? Was
he a drunken beast when he wrote the “Crisis 2 ” Was
it to a drunken beast that the following letter was addressed:
“RocKY HILL, September 10, 1783.
“I have learned, since I have been at this place, that you are
at Bordentown. Whether for the sake of retirement or economy
I know not. Be it for either, or both, or whatever it may, if
you will come to this place and partake with me, I shall be ex-
ceedingly happy to see you at it. Your presence may remind
congress of your past services to this country; and if it is in my
power to impress them, command my best exertions with free-
dom, as they will be rendered cheerfully by one who entertains
a lively sense of the importance of your works, and who, with
much pleasure, subscribes himself
“Your sincere friend,
* GEORGE WASHINGTON.”
Did any of your ancestors ever receive a letter like that ?
Do you think that Paine was a drunken beast when the follow-
ing letter was received by him:
“You express a wish in your letter to return to America in a
national ship. Mr. Dawson, who brings over the treaty, and who
will present you with this letter, is charged with orders to the
captain of the Maryland to receive and accommodate you back,
if you can be ready to depart at such a short warning. You will,
in general, find us returned to sentiments worthy of former times;
in these it will be your glory to have steadily labored, amd with
as much effect as any man living. That you may live long to
continue your useful labors, and reap the reward in the thankfull-
mess of nations, is my sincere prayer. Accept the assurances of
my high esteem and affectionate attachment.
“THOMAS JEFFERSON.”
Did any of your ancestors ever receive a letter like that ?
“It has been very generally propagated through the continent
that I wrote the pamphlet ‘Common Sense.’ I could not have
written anything in so manly and striking a style.
“JOHN ADAMS.”
“A few more such flaming arguments as were exhibited at
Falmouth and Norfolk, added to the sound doctrine and unanswer-
VINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE. 23.
able reasoning contained in the pamphlet ‘Common Sense,” will not
leave numbers at a loss to decide on the propriety of a separation.
“GEORGE WASHINGTON.”
“It is not necessary for me to tell you how much all your
countrymen—I speak of the great mass of the people—are inter-
ested in your welfare. They have not forgotten the history of
their own revolution, and the difficult scenes through which they
passed; nor do they review its several stages without reviving in
their bosoms a due sensibility of the merits of those who served
them in that great and arduous conflict. The crime of ingrati-
tude has not yet stained, and, I trust, never will stain, out national
character. You are considered by them as not only having ren-
dered important services in our revolution, but as being on a.
more extensive scale the friend of human rights and a distin-
guished and able advocate in favor of public liberty. To the
welfare of Thomas Paine, the Americans are not, nor can they be,
indifferent. JAMES MONTOE.”
Did any of your ancestors ever receive a letter like that ?
“No writer has exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of
style, in perspicuity of expression, happiness of elucidation, and
in simple and unassuming language.
“THOMAS JEFFERSON.”
Was ever a letter like that written about an editor of the New
York Observer ?
Was it in consideration of the services of a drunken beast that
the legislature of Pennsylvania presented Thomas Paine with five
hundred pounds sterling 2
Did the State of New York feel indebted to a drunken beast,
and confer upon Thomas Paine an estate of several hundred
acres 2
Did the congress of the United States thank him for his ser-
vices because he had lived a drunken and beastly life 2
Was he elected a member of the French convention because he
was a drunken beast 2 Was it the act of a drunken beast to put
his own life in jeopardy by voting against the death of the king f
Was it because he was a drunken beast that he opposed the
“reign of terror”—that he endeavored to stop the shedding of
blood, and did all in his power to protect even his own enemies?
24 WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE.
Do the following extracts sound like the words of a drunken
beast:
“I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious
duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to
make our fellow creatures happy.”
“My own mind is my own church.”
“It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally
faithful to himself.”
“Any system of religion that shocks the mind of a child can-
not be a true system.”
“The word of God is the creation which we behold.”
“The age of ignorance commenced with the christian system.”
“It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action—it begets a
calamitous necessity of going on.”
“To read the bible without horror, we must undo everything
that is tender, sympathizing and benevolent in the heart of
man.”
“The man does not exist who can say I have persecuted him,
or that I have, in any case, returned evil for evil.”
“Of all the tyrants that afflict mankind, tyranny in religion is
the worst.”
“The belief in a cruel god makes a cruel man.”
“My own opinion is, that those whose lives have been spent in
doing good, and endeavoring to make their fellow-mortals happy,
will be happy hereafter.”
“The intellectual part of religion is a private affair between
every man and his maker, and in which no third party has any
right to interfere. The practical part consists in our doing good
to each other.”
“No man ought to make a living by religion. One person can-
not act religion for another—every person must perform it for
himself.”
“One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred
priests.”
“Let us propagate morality, unfettered by superstition.”
WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE. 25
“God is the power, or first cause, nature is the law, and matter
is the subject acted upon.”
“I believe in one God and no more, and I hope for happiness
beyond this life.”
“The key of happiness is not in the keeping of any sect, nor
ought the road to it to be obstructed by any.”
“My religion, and the whole of it, is, the fear and love of the
Deity, and universal philanthropy.”
“I have yet, I believe, some years in store, for I have a good
state of health and a happy mind. I take care of both, by nourish-
ing the first with temperance and the latter with abundance.”
“He lives immured within the Bastile of a word.”
How perfectly that sentence describes you. The Bastile in
which you are immured is the word “Calvinism.”
“Man has no property in man.”
What a splendid motto that would have made for the New
York Observer in the olden time !
“The world is my country—to do good, my religion.”
I ask you again, whether these splendid utterances came from
the lips of a drunken beast !
CONCLUSION,
From the persistence with which the orthodox have charged,
for the last sixty-eight years, that Thomas Paine recanted, and
that when dying he was filled with remorse and fear; from the
malignity of the attacks upon his personal character, I had
concluded that there must be some evidence of some kind to
support these charges. Even with my ideas of the average honor
of believers in superstition—the disciples of fear, I did not quite
believe that all these infamies rested solely upon poorly attested
lies. I had charity enough to suppose that something had been
said or done by Thomas Paine capable of being tortured into a
foundation for these calumnies. And I was foolish enough to
think that even you would be willing to fairly examine the pre-
tended evidence, said to sustain these charges, and give your
honest conclusion to the world. I supposed that you, being
26 VINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE.
acquainted with the history of your country, felt under a certain
obligation to Thomas Paine for the splendid services rendered by
him in the darkest days of the Revolution. It was only reason-
able to suppose that you were aware that in the midnight of
Valley Forge, the “Crisis,” by Thomas Paine, was the first star
that glittered in the wide horizon of despair. I took it for
granted that you knew the bold stand taken, and the brave words
spoken by Thomas Paine in the French convention, against the
death of the king. I thought it probable that you, being an
editor, had read the “Rights of Man;” that you knew that
Thomas Paine was a champion of human liberty; that he was
one of the founders and fathers of this republic ; that he was one of
the foremost men of his age ; that he had never written a word in
favour of injustice; that he was a despiser of slavery; that he ab-
horred tyranny in all its forms; that he was in the widest and
highest sense a friend of his race; that his head was as clear as his
heart was good, and that he had the courage to speak his honest
thoughts. Under these circumstances I had hoped that you
would, for the moment, forget your religious prejudices and sub-
mit to the enlightened judgment of the world the evidences you
had, or could obtain, affecting in any way the character of so
great and so generous a man. This you have refused to do. In
my judgment you have mistaken the temper of even your own
readers. A large majority of the religious people of this country
have, to a considerable extent, outgrown the prejudices of their
fathers. They are willing to know the truth, and the whole
truth, about the life and death of Thomas Paine. They will not
thank you for having presented to them the moss-covered, the
maimed and distorted traditions of ignorance, prejudice and
credulity. By this course you will convince them, not of the
wickedness of Paine, but of your own unfairness.
What crime had Thomas Paine committed that he should have
feared to die 2 The only answer you can give us, that he denied
the inspiration of the scriptures. If this is a crime, the civilized
world is filled with criminals. The pioneers of human thought—
the intellectual leaders of the world—the foremost men in every
science—the kings of literature and art—those who stand in the
front rank of investigation—the men who are civilizing, elevat-
WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE. 27
ing, instructing and refining mankind, are to-day unbelievers in
the dogma of inspiration. Upon this question the intellect of
christendom agrees with the conclusion reached by the genius of
Thomas Paine. Centuries ago a noise was made for the purpose
of frightening mankind. Orthodoxy is the echo of that noise.
The man who now regards the old testament as, in any sense,
a sacred or inspired book, is, in my judgment, an intellectual
and moral deformity. There is in it so much that is cruel,
ignorant and ferocious, that it is to me a matter of amazement
that it was ever thought to be the work of a most merciful Deity.
Upon the question of inspiration, Thomas Paine gave his
honest opinion. Can it be that to give an honest opinion causes
one to die in terror and despair? Have you, in your writings,
been actuated by the fear of such a consequence? Why should
it be taken for granted that Thomas Paine, who devoted his life
to the sacred cause of freedom, should have been hissed at in the
hour of death by the Snakes of conscience, while editors of
Presbyterian papers, who defended slavery as a divine institu-
tion, and cheerfully justified the stealing of babes from the
breasts of mothers, are supposed to have passed smilingly from
earth to the embraces of angels? Why should you think that
the heroic author of the “Rights of Man” should shudderingly
dread to leave this “bank and shoal of time,” while Calvin,
dripping with the blood of Servetus, was anxious to be judged
of God? Is it possible that the persecutors; the instigators of
the massacre of St. Bartholomew; the inventors and users of
thumb-screws, and iron boots, and racks; the burners and tearers
of human flesh; the stealers, whippers and enslavers of men;
the buyers and beaters of babes and mothers; the founders of
inquisitions; the makers of chains; the builders of dungeons;
the slanderers of the living and the calumniators of the dead;
all died in the odor of sanctity, with white, forgiven hands
folded upon the breasts of peace, while the destroyers of preju-
dice; the apostles of humanity; the soldiers of liberty; the
breakers of fetters; the creators of light; died surrounded by
the fierce fiends of fear !
In your attempt to destroy the character of Thomas Paine you
have failed, and have succeeded only in leaving a stain upon
28 WINDICATION OF THOMAS PAINE.
your own. You have written words as cruel, bitter and heart-
less as the creed of Calvin. Hereafter you will stand in the
pillory of history as a defamer—a calumniator of the dead. You
will be known as the man who said that Thomas Paine, the
“Author Her J, lived a drunken and beastly life, and died a
drunken, cowardly and beastly death. These infamous words
will be branded upon the forehead of your reputation. They
will be remembered against you, when all else you may have
uttered shall have passed from the memory of men.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL.
\
|

T H O M A S P A IN E.

T H 0 M A S P A IN E.
MONCURE D CONWAY.
DURING the International Exposition at Philadelphia, by which
the hundredth year of American independence was celebrated, a
number of eminent citizens of the United States presented to that
city a bust of Thomas Paine. The offer was promptly declined.
After a century of progress in a republic founded in religious
freedom by freethinkers the odium theologicum was still strong
enough, when the list of revolutionary heroes was unrolled for
national homage, to single out for insult the man who in the year
commemorated was idolised beyond all others, above even Wash-
ington himself. A recent writer in the Atlantic Monthly remarks
that “his (Paine's) career was wonderful, even for the age of
miraculous events he lived in.” This is literally true, but one
may now add that even the wonders of his career while living
are eclipsed by those which have attended his name and fame.
It would be impossible to find in the eighteenth century a name
surrounded with brighter halo by those of his contemporaries
whom the world now honors; it would be equally impossible to
find in the nineteenth century a name more covered with obloquy.
Nor is this obloquy found in theological quarters alone. There is
a purely mythological Paine still industriously circulated in
pictorial tracts, which show him recanting his opinions, and dying
“in fear and agony, frightened by the clanking chains of devils—
in fact, frightened to death by God.” But there is also a conven-
tionalised Paine whose actuality is admitted even by scholars,
and who is denied a place of honor among independent minds as
contemptuously as the bust was refused a niche in the Indepen-
dence Hall at Philadelphia.
At a time when even such a liberal thinker as Mr. Leslie
Stephen is found contributing his assent to the schwarmerei of
32 THOMAS PAINE.
traditions and denunciations gathered around the reputation of
Paine, an attempt to secure a rehearing of his case may meet little
favor. Many of the unorthodox may properly repudiate any-
thing looking like an admission that the works or character of
Paine form any part of their case. What matters it if he was a
lax thinker, an ignorant, tipsy vagabond 2 Concesswm sit. His
writings are of no importance to our questions, his political
opinions and deeds have no relation to present emergencies. But
even conceding this, it may be claimed that the man whom, above
all others, theological hatred has distinguished by the persistency
of its invective has some title to the consideration of a tolerant
age; and further, that polemical writings which elicited more
volumes in reply from eminent theologians than any others of
their time can hardly be without historical interest, if no other.
However, I am induced to submit the present study not by any
desire to vindicate Paine's opinions, nor even primarily to vindi-
cate Paine himself, but by a conviction that beneath the conven-
tionalised and vulgarised notion of this man lies obscured a
remarkable chapter of modern history, and altogether hidden one
the best types of English mind and character.
The pious mythology that has gathered around Paine may be
briefly dismissed. All the morning-stars become rebellious and
diabolical Lucifers to those on whose darkness they bring the
light. The light which Paine brought upon the bald dogmas of
a hundred years ago has so far faded to the light of common day,
that many who regard his name with abhorrence are nearer to
him in belief than to those with whom their notions of the man
originated. To such his reign of terror is generally explained
by the theory that he must have been a blasphemer, and an
atheist of an especially vulgar type. The late Lord Dalling, in
his essay on Cobbett, speaks of Paine as “an atheist; ” whereas
his theism was pronounced and almost passionate. The Bishop
of Llandaff, in replying to Paine, said, “There is a philosophical
sublimity in some of your ideas when speaking of the Creator of
the universe.” It seems to have been part of the evidences of
such Christianity as Paine opposed that its assailants should die
in agony and terror. The same imagination that invented the
horrors of Faust's end is, however, somewhat tempered in the
THOMAS PAINE. 33
sensational pulpit pictures of the death-beds of Voltaire and
Paine; and all may be favorably contrasted with the realistic
scenes attending the last moments of Bruno and some others
which they succeeded. But in Paine's case an amusing solecism
is presented in the twofold character of the myth, which equally
insists that he recanted his heresies and was nevertheless carried
off by devils. The denunciations which have pursued him have
been directed against a man Who is yet declared to have died in
the true faith. In truth, poor Paine did have a hard time of it
in his closing days. No sooner was it known that his end was
near than fanatical preachers and women managed to gain en-
trance to his room and tried to convert him. To the ministers.
who told him that if he died without believing on the Lord
Jesus Christ he would be damned, Paine replied, “Let me have
none of your popish stuff. Good morning.” A woman came
saying that God had sent her to tell him that unless he repented
and believed in the blessed Saviour he would be damned. Paine
replied that God would not send a foolish old woman with such
an impertinent message. One after another these obtrusive
zealots were dismissed, and finally, in the words of his relentless
enemy, Cheetham, “Thomas Paine died placidly, and almost
without a struggle.” In the year of his death, 1809, Paine wrote
his will, at the close of which he says: “I have lived an honest,
and useful life to mankind; my time has been spent in doing
good; and I die in perfect composure and resignation to the will
of my Creator, God.” *
In the biography of Cobbett, recently published,” there are
several allusions to Paine, and the efforts made by Cobbett to
repair the wrong he had done to the good name of Paine are indi-
cated, though with less fulness than the facts admit of. While
Paine was in France, amid revolutionary scenes and perils, there
appeared in London The Life of Thomas Paine, the Author of
Rights of Man. By Francis Oldys, A.M., of the University of
Pennsylvania. Printed for John Stockdale, Piccadilly, 1791.
Mr. Edward Smith justly characterises it as “one of the most
horrible collections of abuse which even that venal day pro-
* The Life of William Cobbett. By Edward Smith. (Sampson Low & Co.)
C
34 THOMAS PAINE.
duced.” It is now known to have been written by George Chal-
mers, who fled from America and became a Government clerk and
pamphleteer in England. Paine probably did not see this libel
until long after it was written. The malice displayed in every
line, and its political animus, rendered a reply unnecessary; and
the pamphlet was sinking into oblivion when William Cobbett
reprinted it in his Censor. He lamented his mistake, and carried
his desire to make reparation to the extent of bringing Paine's
bones to England in hope that they might be entombed with
honor. The welcome which Cobbett and Paine's bones received
may be judged from the fact that the Bolton town-crier was im-
prisoned ten weeks for announcing their arrival. And now, sixty
years later, for mere mention of these bones with honor, Cobbett's
biographer has received a sentence of corresponding severity from
a weekly reviewer, who, to the growing Paine-myth, adds the
unique charge of venality
There are several good biographies of Paine,—such as those
written by Vale, Sherwin, Rickman, Linton, yet in an impor-
tant public library in London the only books concerning him are
the political libel of George Chalmers and the pious libel of
Cheetham, for which he was convicted in a court of Christians.
Cheetham was a Manchester man who went to New York and
edited a paper. No sooner had the grave closed over Paine than
Cheetham, in the same year, published his accusations. The
worst of these involved the honor of a lady, Madame Bonneville,
who promptly prosecuted the accused for slander; and though
the judge reminded the jury that the defendant's book was calcu-
lated to aid Christianity, they brought in a verdict against him
with damages. It is important, however, to state that the most
eminent Christian writers in America were not deceived by these
libels. Thus, the Rev. Solomon Southwick, editor of the Chris-
tian Visitor when Cheetham's book appeared, wrote: “Had
Thomas Paine been guilty of any crime, we should be the last to
eulogise his memory. But we cannot find he was ever guilty of
any other crime than that of advancing his opinions freely upon
all subjects connected with public liberty and happiness. . . . .
We may safely affirm that Paine's conduct in America was that
of a real patriot. In the French Convention he displayed the
THOMAS PAINE. 35
same pure and disinterested spirit. . . . . His life, it is true, was
written by a ministerial hireling, who strove in vain to blacken
his moral character. The late James Cheetham likewise wrote
bis life, and we have no hesitation in saying that we knew per-
fectly well at the time the motives of that author for writing and
publishing a work which, we have every reason to believe, is a
libel almost from beginning to end. In fact, Cheetham had be-
come tired of this country, and had formed a plan to return to
England and become a ministerial editor in opposition to Cob-
bett, and his Life of Paine was written to pave his way back
again.”
Although the authorities of Philadelphia have refused to admit
the bust of Paine to a place in Independence Hall, his portrait is
there, and it is near that of George III. This juxtaposition is
proper enough. To these two men may be fairly ascribed the
revolution and its event, of which Independence Hall is the his.
toric memorial. It was at a time when those American leaders
from whose statuesque company Paine is rejected, sat in the same
place anxious and dismayed, without any clear idea of whither
the storm was bearing them and the country, that there appeared
among them that Englishman and his Quaker coat who was the
first to pronounce the word “Independence.” Not for a long
time after the struggle had begun, did the idea of complete separ.
ation from England enter the question. The leaders regarded
themselves as resisting a special wrong; and at any time before
Paine began his appeals the English Ministry might have ended
the difficulty by conceding to the colonies immunity from certain
taxes. There is even reason to believe that submission rather
than separation was beginning to be the question in the minds of
many influential Americans at the close of that dark year, 1774,
when Paine arrived in America. “Independence was a doctrine
scarce and rare even towards the conclusion of the year 75. All
our politicks had been founded on the hope or expectation of mak-
ing the matter up; a hope which, though general on the side of
America, had never entered the head or heart of the British
* Testimonials, dºc., compiled by J. N. Moreau. 1861
3( TEIOMAS PAINE.
court.” ” On the 8th of July, 1775, the American Congress
humbly petitioned the king “that your royal authority and influ-
ence may be graciously interposed to procure us relief from our
afflicting fears and jealousies, and to settle peace through every
part of your dominions; with all humility submitting to your
Majesty's wise consideration, whether it may not be expedient,
for facilitating these important purposes, that your Majesty be
pleased to direct some mode by which the united applications of
your faithful colonists to the throne, may be improved into a
happy and permanent reconciliation.”f Mr. Penn, who carried
this petition to England, presented it on the 1st of September in
the same year, and on the 4th was informed by Lord Dartmouth
that “no answer would be given to it;” and, although this
haughty attitude induced the revolutionary leaders to listen more
favorably to Paine's arguments, even then they persuaded him
to strike out of his first pamphlet on the subject a sentence
which seemed to burn their ships. The sentence erased from
Common Sense was:–“A greater absurdity cannot be conceived
of than three millions of people running to their sea-coast every
time a ship arrived from London, to know what portion of liberty
they should enjoy.”:
It is probable that even Franklin, who introduced Paine to the
chiefs of the revolution as a friend he had met in London, knew
little of the moral region from which the man had come, or how
much of England he bore with him. No individual of that time
was more related to the feelings and convictions which stirred
the genuine heart of the English people. He went from those
humble clubs which had no constitutions, and met in public-
houses and small rooms, wherein were uttered in the ear many
things that have since been proclaimed from the housetops, One
such circle was that which met at the White Hart in Lewes
every evening. Its central figure was the exciseman, Thomas
Paine (then about thirty years of age), who generally had in his
possession the “Headstrong Book,”—an old volume of Homer
* Crisis No. 3. Paine himself appears to have reached the conclusion that com-
plete and final separation was necessary only after the battle at Concord and Lex-
ington, April 19, 1775.-Common Sense, p. 28.
+ Journals of Congress. £ Rush's Letter, July 17, 1809.
THOMAS PAINE, 37
which was delivered to the wrangler who most obstinately and
successfully defended his position in an evening's debate. It
would not be a little curious if, as Clio Rickman seems to think,
it was while as yet Paine had no reputation beyond the village,
that one of the White Hart company wrote verses to him such as
the following:
“Thy logic vanquished error, and thy mind
No bounds but those of right and truth confined.
Thy soul of fire must sure ascend the sky,
Immortal Paine, thy fame can never die.”
Paine was not then, indeed, a mere radical in the rough. His
father (a stay-maker) was the son of a respectable Quaker farmer;
his mother the daughter of a lawyer in Thetford, where Paine was
born (1736), and they made sacrifices to secure him the best edu-
cation within their reach. He studied well in the Thetford
grammer-school, whose master was the Rev. William Knowles;
and, at any rate, he appears to have given satisfaction as teacher
of English in an academy in London, where he was employed in
1765. He had also considerable experience of various sides of
life, having served for a time on “the King of Prussia privateer.”
married, and held the office of exciseman in several places. Paine
possessed some qualities not so common in his countrymen; first
of all, a profoundly religious nature, which at first was manifested
in a tendency to apply scriptural phrases to real things, but ulti-
mately expressed itself in those earnest negations which gained
him the name of infidel; secondly, he was morally a man of the
world, entirely without that insularity which is sometimes con-
fused with patriotism. Franklin having said, “Where liberty is,
there is my country,” Paine amended the saying with, “Where
liberty is not, there is mine.”
Such was the man, and with such antecedents, who emigrated
to America at the moment when the colonists were fighting
against the powers which were even more hated, because more
hopelessly, by poor men like himself in England. T',e third
Georgian reign, with its corruptions and its unconquerable stupid-
ities, could hardly be seen through three thousand miles, as they
were seen by English radicals who read the speeches of Pitt
38 THOMAS PAINE.
aud the invectives of Junius. Paine was a sort of English
ambassador of this sentiment to which Transatlantic independence
was a dream, while in America it was a dread. In the preface of
that work which literally electrified the American people are these
words, “The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of
all mankind.”
The work referred to is that entitled Common Sense. It was
published January 1, 1776, and was the first work of Paine's
which reached the entire nation. The circulation speedily ran to
a hundred thousand. Concerning the effect it produced there can
be no question. Upon this point his admirers and enemies agree.
Rush, who refused to renew acquaintance with him because of his
infidelity, at the same time (1809) wrote, “Common Sense burst
from the press with an effect which has rarely been produced by
types and paper in any age or country.” Washington writes to
General Reed, March, 1776, “By private letters which I have
lately received from Virginia, I find that Common Sense is work-
ing a powerful change in the minds of many men.” And again,
“A few more such flaming arguments as were exhibited at Fal-
mouth and Norfolk, added to the sound doctrine and unanswerable
reasoning contained in the pamphlet Common Sense, will not
leave numbers at a loss to decide on the propriety of a separation.”
General Lee writes to Washington, “Have you seen the pamph-
let Common Sense ? I never saw such a masterly irresistible
performance. It will, if I mistake not, in concurrence with the
trancendent folly and wickedness of the Ministry, give the coup
de grâce to Great Britain. In short, I own myself convinced by
the arguments of the necessity of separation.” But there is no
need to accumulate such quotations. John Adams (who detested
Paine), Jefferson, Franklin, the contemporary historians Gordon
and Ramsay, and all cognisant of the facts, even including Cheet-
ham, unite in the testimony that this first appeal for American
independence did more than anything else to unite the colonies
around that aim, and render any subsequent compromise impos-
sible. Among the many examples of its effect one may be men-
tioned. By request of General Scott, a leading member of the
New York Assembly, who was alarmed at the still semi-treason-
able position of Paine, a number of distinguished members of that
THOMAS PAINE. 39
body met to read the pamphlet and prepare an answer. They
met several evenings. When the readings were ended they unani-
mously concluded to attempt no answer.
That Thomas Paine was a charlatan, and his writings shams,
is now so often assumed, that perhaps one may, without arro-
gance, express concurrence with the estimate of the American
statesmen and generals. If an essay is to be judged, like an
organism in nature, by its degree of adequacy to its own ends,
Paine's Common Sense may be numbered among the few perfect
works; and those who regard the detachment of the English
colonies in America, and their constitution as a republic, in the
light of a necessary world-event, may further regard as a great
work the pamphlet so adapted to a great purpose. To that pur-
pose, if it were to succeed, it was necessary to unite thirteen
colonies, representing several centres of various history, interest,
religion, and even, to some extent, of race. The people of New
England, severely trained in the religion of obedience to rulers,
and rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; the Dutch
population of New York, so slow to arouse; the Quakers of
Pennsylvania, with their already loud testimonies against armed
resistance; the old English families of Maryland, Virginia, and
elsewhere, whose pride as well as sentiment clung to “the mother
country,” as so many in Canada now do; all these must be com-
bined and concentrated upon an aim which, if it should fail,
would be treason, if it should succeed, would but launch them
upon an unknown Sea, whose farther shore was haunted by dan-
gers more formidable than their pilgrim fathers had encountered.
Paine begins by penetrating the superstition about Government.
It is the expedient of men living in society to defend themselves
against the wickedness of exceptional persons. They prudently
surrender part of their property to protect the rest. “Society in
every state is a blessing, but Government in its best state is but
a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ; for when
we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a Government,
which we might expect in a country without a Government, our
calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means
by which we suffer.” There follows an illustration likely to tell
upon the colonial mind—a small number of people in some
40 THOMAS PAINE.
sequestrated region; their co-operation under common difficulties,
their decrease of reciprocal attachment when prosperity did away
with dangers which had bound them in a common cause; the
appearance of vice, followed by the need of regulations. “Some
convenient tree will afford them a state-house, under the branches
of which the whole colony may assemble to deliberate on public
matters. . . . In this first Parliament every man by natural
right will have a seat.” But with increase of the colony general
convenience will require the selection of a few from the whole
body. This is all very simple, and says Paine, “the more simple
anything is, the less liable is it to be disordered, and the easier
repaired when disordered.” With which maxim in view he
reaches, on the fourth page, the Constitution of England. “Abso-
lute Governments (through the disgrace of human nature) have
this advantage with them, that they are simple; if the people
suffer they know the head from which their sufferings springs,
know likewise the remedy, and are not bewildered by a variety
of causes and cures. But the Constitution of England is so ex-
ceedingly complex that the nation may suffer for years together,
without being able to discover in which part the fault lies; some
will say in one and some in another, and every political physician
will advise a different medicine.”
The English Constitution, he says, is compounded of—1. The
remains of Monarchical Tyranny in the person of the King; 2.
The remains of Aristocratical Tyranny in the persons of the
Peers; 3. The new Republican Materials in the persons of the
Commons, on whose virtue depends the freedom of England.
“To say that the Constitution of England is a union of three
powers, reciprocally checking each other, is farcical.” How came
the King by a power which the People are afraid to trust and
always obliged to check 2 This question, which it is always so
easy for a peaceful and prosperous people to answer, was put by
Paine to a nation who knew none of those practical advantages
of monarchy which are its only real arguments. A power, he
says, that needs checking, cannot be from God, nor could it be the
gift of a wise people. Nor, he adds, is the check adequate, while
the King is giver of places and pensions. “Though we have been
wise enough to shut and lock a door against absolute Monarchy,
THOMAS PAINE. 41
we at the same time have been foolish enough to put the Crown
in possession of the key.” General principles like these are fol-
lowed by a scriptural argument. It is presented with entire
sincerity—for the Age of Reason is yet fifteen years away—and
makes such use of the divine reproofs of the Israelites for wishing
a king as could not have been answered by any pulpit in the
land at that day.
Samuel's diatribe (I. viii. 10) plentifully interlarded with
applications, ending with “Ye shall cry out in that day because
of your King which ye shall have chosen, and the Lord will not
hear you in that day,” passed from the pen of Paine to the
pulpits as the voice of prophecy. With equal force did the
author touch every variety of sentiment. Did the Quakers long
for peace Kings and civil wars go together. “Thirty kings
and two minors have reigned in that distracted kingdom (Eng-
land) since the Conquest, in which time there have been (includ-
ing the Revolution) no less than eight civil wars and nineteen
rebellions.” Did the old gentleman talk tenderly of the old
home and mother country 2 There lay the dead of Concord and
Lexington, there was the cold, unnatural disdain of every petition;
“wherefore since nothing but blows will do, for God's sake let
us come to a final separation, and not leave the next generation
to the cutting of throats under the violated unmeaning names of
parent and child.” Were some £aint-hearted ? He reminded
them how many allies they might expect as an independent
country; how America was without an enemy in the world
except as being a part of Great Britain. He awakened the poor
by tracing poverty to dependence, and pointing out the vast
resources of the country which, could America trade directly
with foreign nations, would make them the richest of nations.
He also enlisted the pride of the non-English settlers by his
sentence—“Europe, and not England, is the parent country of
America.” Nay, even the Reconciliationists he convinced by his
argument to show the perils of their plan, even were it possible
—an argument which the King was rendering final by his speech
on the same day that Paine's pamphlet was published. In addi-
tion to this there was a remarkably clear outline of a colonial
republic such as might be formed, and a demonstration of the
42 THOMAS PAINE.
presence of both the men and means to conduct the same. “No
writer,” wrote Jefferson, “has exceeded Paine in ease and famili-
arity of style, in perspicuity of expression, happiness of elucida-
tion, and in simple and unassuming language.” This is eminently
true of Common Sense, which is almost as free from suggestion
of the writer's personality as the Declaration of Independence.
The man is utterly merged in the cause he has espoused, and
the result is a style never arrogant, yet strangely authentic. Its
wonderful effect was much enhanced by their knowledge that its
author had devoted the copyright to the colonies.
The year which gave the Colonies the Declaration of Inde-
pendence on paper, brought them mainly reverses on the field.
Things went from bad to worse, until, late in the winter, Wash-
ington wrote to a Congress which had fled for safety, “Ten days
more will put an end to this army.” At that time Paine was
serving under Washington as a common soldier, and every night,
while others tried to snatch a little repose, he was writing his,
next great production, that number of The Crisis whose vast
effect has made it historic. It was a little piece, afterwards
printed in eight pages, written by the light of camp-fires during
Washington's retreat through the Jerseys with only 2,600 men,
his best arms in the hands of the enemy. The last sentence was
written on the 23rd of December (1776), and Washington sum-
moned together his dismayed and shivering soldiers to hear it
read. It opened with these words:–“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 his country; but he
that stands it now, deserves the thanks of man and woman.”
On the Christmas night after this was read to the remnant of
his army, Washington recrossed the Delaware, and on the follow-
ing day encountered the British forces at Trenton. It was the
first victory of the Americans. The soldiers rushed into battle
with the cry, “These are the times that try men's souls,” and the
nation ascribed their triumph to the pen of Paine. He speedily
became the most popular man in America. Public expressions
of gratitute poured in upon him from Congress and the State
legislatures, with testimonials in money—it being found that he
had impoverished himself by giving his copyright to the national
THOMAS PAINE, 43
cause—and the University of Pennsylvania awarded him the
degree of A. M. The United States Congress elected him
Secretary of its most important Committee, that of Foreign
Affairs. And though he presently lost this by his “imprudence”
in attacking a fraudulent claim urged against the nation by one
Silas Deane, who was backed by an American clique and the
French Government, the State of Pennsylvania made him Clerk
of its Legislature. While serving in this capacity, it became
Paine's duty on one occasion (1780) to read to the Legislature a
letter from Washington describing the deplorable situation
caused by the capture of Charleston by the British. “A despair-
ing silence pervaded the House” when this letter had been read,
for the treasury was empty. Paine at once drew his salary, and,
proposing a subscription, headed it with five hundred dollars.
He was the poorest man present, and the others at once came
forward with their contributions which, taken up by Congress,
surinounted the emergency.
Paine had for some years indulged the hope of influencing affairs
in England. “I was strongly impressed with the idea that if I
could get over to England without being known, and only remain
in safety till I could get out a publication, I could open the eyes
of the country with respect to the madness and stupidity of the
government.” Full of this hope he went to Paris in 1787, bear-
ing with him letters of introduction to eminent men there, and,
after a brief sojourn, the same year crossed to England, and
hastened to Thetford. His father was dead; he settled on his
mother a weekly allowance of nine shillings. At this time he
appears to have been mainly occupied with an iron bridge which
he had invented, a model of which had been exhibited to the
Academy of Sciences in Paris and received its approbation. The
bridge was cast and erected at Rotherham, Yorkshire, in 1790.
* Journals of Congress, Jan. 7-16, 1779. A similar disregard of his own inter-
ests was shown by Paine in a pamphlet written by him against certain cherished
territorial claims of Virginia, at a time when a bill was pending in the Legislature
of that State to offer him a sum of money. As he was forewarned, his pamphlet
defeated the bill. (Letter of Lee to Washington, 23rd July, 1784.) In the
Deane affair, Congress showed its appreciation of the patriotic character of
Paine's “impradence” by voting him three thousand dollars.
44 THOMAS PAINE.
At the close of the same year Paine was engaged writing, at the
Angel, Islington, his Rights of Mam. Part I. appeared in 1791,
Part II. in 1792. And now Paine's collaborateurs, so far as his
literary success was concerned—the Ministry—came to his
aid again. The work reached a circulation of nearly forty
thousand, on its merits as an answer to Burke. Ferocious de-
nunciations of it, culminating in a prosecution and outlawry of
the author, secured for it a reading hardly less than that which
Common Sense had enjoyed in America. “Paine's Rights of
Man,” says Hazlitt, “was the only really powerful reply [to
Burke's Reflections]; and, indeed, so powerful and explicit that
the government undertook to crush it by an ea:-officio informa-
tion, and by a declaration of war against France, to still the
ferment and excite an oduim against its admirers, as taking part
with a foreign enemy against their prince and country.”
Paine had a sixpenny edition of the work printed, from which
the profit on each copy was twopence; nevertheless it speedily
earned £1,000, which Paine, though still poor, gave to the Society
of Constitutional Information, in London, to be distributed as
they should see best. This society circulated vast numbers of
Paine's works, and among other things 12,000 copies of his Letter
to Mr. Secretary Dundas, one of the most effective things Paine
ever wrote. Dundas (May 25, 1792) had opened the debate in
the House of Commons on the proclamation against “wicked and
seditious publications,” and had especially directed the epithets
against the Rights of Man. This gave Paine an opportunity
which he was not likely to disregard, and his reply took the form
of a contrast between the then uncomfortable state of financial
and other affairs in England, and the prosperity which was
already springing up in America.
Legal proceedings were instituted against Paine for his book,
May 21, and he resolved to defend himself in person at the trial,
which was appointed for the following December. This deter-
mination was changed by a deputation which came from France
to inform him of his election by the department of Calais to
represent them in the National Convention. The government
did not detain him, probably were glad to be rid of him; at any
rate, in the state of public feeling at the time, an arrest of an
THOMAS PAINE. 45
American citizen and member of the French Convention might
have been attended with serious complications.
While Paine was the theme of a new national anthem with
One party, and was being burnt in effigy by another in his native
land, he passed to Calais to be welcomed as a hero, and thence
made a sort of triumphal journey to France. But he had left
behind him the times that tried men's souls. During the whole
of the year 1793 the Government was mainly employed in trying
to trample out the works of Paine. Taking the last six months of
that year, we find in the Cambridge Independent, the only paper
audacious enough even to print full reports of the proceedings,
paragraphs which reveal the extent of the crusade. The religi-
ous heresies of Paine had not yet been printed in England, and
the work mainly prosecuted was The Rights of Man. On July
18 Mr. Cook, a baker at Cambridge, was sentenced to three
months' imprisonment for having, three years and a half previ-
ously, said that “he wished all the churches were pulled down
to mend the roads with ; and as to the King's Chapel, he should
like to see it turned into a stable.” In the ardour of ferreting
out Paine's works, this ancient offence, like many others, was
brought to light and punished. At Nottingham, Daniel Holt, for
selling a volume by Paine, was sentenced to £50 fine, two years'
imprisonment, with two sureties for good behavior afterwards.
The Messrs. Robinson, publishers, were fined £200 for selling a
copy, though the firm had published “A Protest against Mr.
Paine's Works.” A boy named Sutton, at Ashfield, was fined
£20, with a year's imprisonment, for “avowing himself a Pain-
ite.” George Eden, for the same offence, was fined one shilling
and imprisoned six months. Peart and Belcher, at Warwick,
Phillips, at Leicester, and many other booksellers, were fined and
imprisoned; among these being Mr. Spence, “in Little Turnstile,
Holborn,” which cannot be far from where Mr. Truelove has so
long freely sold the works of Paine, and others much more radi-
cal, beside the little table on which Paine wrote The Rights of
Mam. In the few cases where gentlemen were found distribut-
ing the books the penalties were very severe. Thus Mr. Fische
Palmer was sentenced at Perth to seven years’ transportation for
assisting the publication and circulation of Paine's works, in the
46 THOMAS PAINE.
interest of parliamentary reforms to which he had been for
many years devoted. Mr. Thomas Muir, of Huntershill, for
having advised persons to read “the works of that wretched
outcast Paine” (to quote the Lord Advocate's words), was actually
sentenced to fourteen years' transportation. The sentence was
received amid hisses from the gallery. The tipstaff being ordered
by the Lord Justice Clerk to take those who hissed into custody,
replied, “My lord, they're all hissing.” There were, indeed, large
numbers of people who viewed these proceedings with indigna-
tion, but something like an apparent suppression was at length
reached. The famous town-crier of Bolton who reported to his
masters that he had been round that place, “and found neither
the Rights of Man nor Common Sense in it,” made a statement
characteristic of the time. Yet at that time there were in the
country more than a hundred thousand volumes of Paine in
circulation among the people. They were read in secret, and the
race of old Radicals has hardly run out which remembers reading
the books on Sundays in fields—in groups, whose numbers
alternately read, listened, and went off to keep a look-out for
the police.
For a little time after his arrival in Paris, Paine enjoyed what
to the majority of the republicans in his time would have been
all that the heart of man could desire. It was a year of sun-
shine, but Paine never outgrew his Quakerism, and hated all the
fuss and pomp with which the Parisians insisted on lionising
“the author hero of the Revolution.” Possibly he might have
adapted himself to such things better had he been able to speak
the French language; but as he did not, he was probably em-
barrassed by the attentions he received. Madame Roland has
expressed, in her Appeal, the regret she felt at being unable to
converse with Paine; but she listened carefully to his discourse
with others, and being able to understand English, she was im-
pressed by “the boldness of his conceptions, the originality of
his style, the striking truths he throws out bravely among those
whom they offend.” Paine was described by Aaron Burr, hyper-
crititical in such matters, as a gentleman; and the sense in which
he was so may be understood from a passage in one of Lord
Edward Fitzgerald's letters from Paris to his mother-" I lodge
THOMAS PAINE. 47
with my friend Paine; we breakfast, dine, and sup together. The
more I see of his interior the more I like and respect him. I
cannot express how kind he has been to me. There is a simpli-
city of manner, a goodness of heart, and a strength of mind in
him that I never knew a man before to possess.” Paine was,
however, deficient in the dexterities of general society; he could
not comprehend the pride that infuses what is called loyalty, nor
such transmitted instincts as those which make the moral accent
of words like infidel and miscreant. That was good arable
soil to him which to some around him was burning lava, for
instance to that young aristocrat, Captain Grimstone, who once
leaped from the table at a dinner-party and struck him on the
head, calling him an incendiary and traitor to his country. The
old man of sixty only resented this by Saving the young man's
life—it being punishable with death to strike a deputy—and pro-
viding him with money to leave the country.
This was not the only instance of Paine's personal kindness
to members of the high English circle, whose ordinary toast in
those days was “Damnation to Thomas Paine !” He gave £200
to General O’Hara, who was his fellow-prisoner. These incidents,
however, made little impressions in his favor, and it was, per-
haps, the only glad tidings which had reached the ruling class in
England from Paris for many a day when it was announced by
the London journals that Paine had been guillotined. The fact
that Paine must have suffered under sentence of revolutionists
for mercy to a fallen monarch seemed only to sweeten their
revenge.
Coming as the rumor of his death did along with the terrible
Age of Reason, it was easily shown to be a divine judgment.
But, in fact, it was Paine who could felicitate himself on provi-
dential intervention. The facts are sufficiently striking. Neither
soldiering under Washington, agitating revolutions, nor lionising
at republican courts, had destroyed the Quaker of Thetford;
and when it was proposed to execute the King, it was he who rose
up in the French Convention and testified against capital punish-
ment, begging them to kill the King, but spare the man. He
pleaded that Louis Capet should be banished to America—for his
education “He may learn from the constant aspect of public
48 THOMAS PAINE,
prosperity that the true system of government consists not in
kings, but in fair, equal and honorable representation.” The
angry radicals of the Robespierre faction were utterly unable to
comprehend this language in the supposed arch-firebrand of
America, and it looks as if they suspected that the English had
bought him; at any rate, after he had been thrown into prison,
the Americans in Paris went in a body to demand his release,
and were refused on the ground that Paine was an English
citizen.
It was also stated to the American deputation that the Ame-
rican Minister, Morris, had taken no interest in the case, which
unhappily was true. Paine could understand that ; there were
private reasons for the hostility of Morris; but neither he nor
any American in Europe doubted that when the tidings had
reached the United States that nation would be indignant, and
that Washington, now President, would instantly demand his
friend's release. In that, too, he was disappointed. Washington
gave no sign, but left Paine to languish in prison for nearly a
year. This was equivalent to a death sentence coming from
Washington. Though Monroe came as Minister, superseding
Morris, and exerted himself to the utmost to secure Paine's
release, it was soon discovered by Robespierre that he had
brought no instruction favorable to Paine; and the sentence of
death was passed. On the night when a chalk-mark was put on
the door of each prisoner who was to be executed in the morning,
Paine's door happened to be open, so that when closed the mark
was on the inside. By this accident his life was preserved. A
few days after, Robespierre fell. But though that fall occurred
on the 27th July, it was not until the 4th November (1794) that
Paine was set at liberty—the continued silence of Washington
causing the belief that the imprisonment was agreeable to him.
This was a terrible humiliation. Washington was now a hero
in the eyes of all Europe, and his published praises of Paine
were known to the world. Paine had dedicated to Washington
his first work on the Rights of Man, and to Lafayette his
second; and it was to him that Lafayette had entrusted the key
of the Bastile to be presented to Washington. After all this
Washington delivers him up silently to death ! Whatever may
THOMAS PAINE. 49
have been the cause, no one can wonder at the bitterness of the
letter which Paine wrote to Washington after it, and it would
seem to require a great deal of partiality to judge the passionate
words of the aggrieved prisoner aw pied de la lettre, while
putting indulgent constructions on the deliberate and never-
explained action of Washington.
On his way to prison Paine had managed to call at the rooms
of one of the most eminent American writers of that time, Joel
Barlow, and entrust to him the manuscript of a work on which
he had for some time been engaged—the Age of Reason. Even
..in childhood, Paine tells us, he had rebelled against some features
of the popular theology; but the long struggle with poverty, the
American revolution, political controversies, prevented his giving
much attention to the subjects treated in the Age of Reason
until later life; and there are evidences in his earlier works that,
while abandoning the more familiar dogmas of orthodoxy, he
had not specially considered such subjects as supernaturalism and
the general value of the Bible until after the American revolu-
tion had ceased. There was, indeed, in most of the political
leaders in that revolution a sceptical spirit, as was only natural
when it is remembered that George III. was the visible head of
the Church. The late Hon. Jared Sparks, while President of
Harvard University, showed me some letters which passed be-
tween Jefferson and Paine on religious subjects. I believe they
are still withheld from the public, and no doubt more for the
sake of the great Virginian's reputation than for that of Paine,
who, as I remember, was by no means the more unorthodox of
the two. It was indeed the earnest way in which Paine regarded
all matters of human interest, his religious sense of the duty of
testifying against what he considered public errors and wrongs,
even at such cost as Fox, Barclay, and other Saints of the Thet-
ford household had paid before him, which led to the Age of
Reason, and the author's impalement. Even as regards positive
beliefs, Paine was nearer to the received standards than many
who now join in the hue and cry against him. On the first page
of his denounced work he says, “I believe in one God, and no
more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe the
equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in
ID
50 THOMAS PAINE.
doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our
fellow-creatures happy.” There is no action or word in Paine's
life or writings which impeaches the sincerity of this creed. But
he further believed what many liberal thinkers yet do not, that
“it is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally
faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consistin believing, or in
disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does
not believe.” The negative positions of the Age of Reason are
still exercising a profound influence on innumerable minds, de-
spite the repeated announcement that the book is dead and
buried. It would be difficult to find in any modern work more
forcible popular statements than those found on nearly every
page. “Admitting that something has been revealed to a certain
person, it is revelation to the first person only and hearsay to
every other.” “The trinity of gods was no other than a reduc-
tion of the former plurality, which was about twenty or thirty
thousand; the statue of Mary succeeded the statue of Diana of
Ephesus; the deification of heroes changed into the canoni-
sation of Saints; the mythologists had gods for everything;
the Christian mythologists had saints for everything; the Church
became as crowded with the one as the Pantheon had been with
the other; and Rome was the place of both.” “The morality
that he (Christ) preached and practised was of the most benevo-
lent kind; and though similar systems of morality had been
preached by Confucius, and by some of the Greek philosophers,
many years before, by the Quakers since, and by many good men
in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any.” “The Christian
mythologists tell us that then Satan made war against the
Almighty, who defeated him and confined him afterwards . . . .
in a pit; . . . . the fable of Jupiter and the Giants was told
many hundred years before that of Satan.” “They represent
him (Satan) as having compelled the Almighty to the direct
necessity either of surrendering the whole of the creation to the
govenment and sovereignty of this Satan, or of capitulating for
its redemption by coming down upon earth, and exhibiting
himself upon a cross in the shape of a man. . . . . They make
the transgressor triumph and the Almighty fall.” “Is the gloomy
pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it
THOMAS PAINE. 51
but a sacrifice of the Creator 7” “When we contemplate the
immensity of that Being who directs and governs the incompre-
hensible WHOLE, of which the utmost ken of human sight can
discover but a part, we ought to feel shame at calling such
paltry stories (e.g. that of Samson and Delilah, the foxes, &c.)
the Word of God.” “It (the Church) has set up a religion of
pomp and of revenue, in pretended imitation of a person whose
life was humility and poverty.” “The Word of God is the
Creation we behold . . . . which no human invention can coun-
terfeit or alter.” “The Creation speaketh an universal language.”
What homage should we have heard if, in any orthodox work
of the last century, had occurred the far-seeing astronomic specu-
lations of the Age of Reason 1 It was from the humble man who
in early life studied his globes, purchased at cost of many a din-
ner, and attended the lectures of Martin, Ferguson, and Bevis,
that there came twenty-one years before Herschel's famous paper
on the Nebulae, the sentence,—“The probability, therefore, is that
each of those fixed stars is also a Sun, round which another sys-
tem of worlds or planets, though too remote for us to discover,
performs its revolutions.”
It has been so often said as to have become a general belief,
that the Age of Reason is a mass of ribaldry. The work, how-
ever, is a very serious one, and the sentences I have quoted are
characteristic of its spirit. In patiently going through the Old
and New Testaments, and examining narratives for which literal
inspiration was claimed, it was impossible not to point out primi-
tive features which seem grotesque when made salient amid
modern customs and ideas. There are a few instances in which
Paine dwells upon the absurdity which is presented to his mind,
—in one or two cases with questionable taste, as in his picture of
the people coming out of their graves and walking about Jeru-
salem, according to Matthew, but I know of no similar investi-
gation in which the writer's mind is so generally fixed upon the
simple question of truth and falsehood, and so rarely addicted to
ridicule. Few will deny the difficulty, however reverent the
reciter, of relating the story of Jonah and the whale without
causing a smile. Paine's smile is in two sentences; in one place
he says it would have been nearer to the idea of a miracle if
52 THOMAS PAINE.
Jonah had swallowed the whale, elsewhere that if credulity could
swallow Jonah and the whale it could swallow anything. But
after this, for him, unusual approach to the ribaldry of which he
is so freely accused, Paine gives over three pages of criticism on
the Book of Jonah, not only grave and careful, but presenting
perhaps the earliest appreciation of the moral elevation and large
aim of that much-neglected legend. &
A great many sneers have been directed against Paine because
of the fact mentioned by himself, with his usual naiveté, that
when he wrote Part I. of the Age of Reason he had not a copy of
the Bible in his room. But the circumstance is not without its
more impressive significance. Paine had already received intima-
tion that his arrest was certain and near. The guillotine was
within the shadow closing about him. There was but one
anxiety it brought—the remembrance that he had not yet written
a sentence of that testimony against superstition, which had been
gathering the importance of his final duty to mankind. For
ordinary purposes he had no need of a Bible; he had been in all
his early life fed on little else; he had now to run a race with
the faction of Robespierre. This book was written during the
few days of liberty remaining to him, and six hours after the last
sentence was penned he was on his way to prison. He addressed
it “to the protection of the citizens of the United States,” man-
aged to get it into the hands of Joel Barlow, and so soon as he
could get pen and paper began in prison Part II. of the same
work. The greater part, therefore, of the book was written by a
man who believed that death was near and certain. Part II. was
destined, however, to be published when he had become free, and
was able to refer to chaptºr and verse with a fulness and accu-
racy which his opponents liked far less than the more vague and
reserved allusions of the first production. Mr. Yorke, a well-
known Englishman of the time, who visited him in Paris, wrote:
“The Bible is the only book which he has studied, and there is
not a verse in it that is not familiar to him.”
Paine's life abounds in such curious incidents, and instances of
luck, that at a somewhat earlier period he would probably have
been supposed under the protection of the devil for a term. The
incident of the chalk mark which had saved him from the guil-
THOMAS PAINE. 53
lotine was followed by a long fever, during which his insensibility
for a month prevented further proceedings against him; and,
when he was at liberty, he engaged a passage for America in a
vessel commanded by Commodore Barney, but was detained by
some slight circumstance which saved his life, for the vessel sank
at Sea.
Paine had become utterly disgusted with French politics. He
was receiving every day reproaches from England because of his
Age of Reason, many of his former friends having turned against
him. The echoes from America were as yet few. The neglect of
him in his distress by Washington was counterbalanced by the
friendship of the new President, Jefferson, who had offered him
an American ship in which to return. The sufferings and fever
which he had undergone in prison had seriously impaired his
health and strength; indeed he never recovered them again. He
more than ever pictured America as the one perfect land. To a
lady who wrote to him from New York, he replied:—“You touch
me on a very tender point when you say that my friends on your
side of the water cannot be reconciled to the idea of my abandon-
ing America, even for my native England. They are right. Ihad
rather see my horse, Button, eating the grass of Bordertown, or
Morrisiana, than see all the pomp and show of Europe.” But a
terrible disenchantment awaited him. When he returned to
America it was to find most of his old friends turned to enemies.
The very lady who had so written, and her husband, refused to
receive the author of the Age of Reason, which now had become
the horror of every pulpit ; Samuel Adams, Benjamin Rush, and
of course Washington, would have nothing to do with him. The
Federalists of the North who wished to make the United States
another England, and hated everything French, dreaded him; the
slaveholders of the South had been alarmed at his having written
about the abolition of slavery—“We must push that matter
further on your side of the water. I wish that a few well-instruct-
ed negroes could be sent among their brethren in bondage; for,
until they are enabled to take their own part, nothing will be
done.” The nation which he had left glorified by enthusiasm
* Written to a friend in Philadelphia from Paris, March 16, 1789.
54 THOMAS PAINE.
for liberty, had sunk to the work of protecting slavery; sectarian-
ism and dogmatism, having lost their ancient supports in the
State, were industriously replacing them with a revival of intoler-
ance before which great men were bowing who used to talk more
heresy than Paine. The poor man was almost abandoned. It
need hardly excite wonder if in the solitude to which he was
forced, and in his enfeebled health, the old man drank enough
for pious imagination to turn him into a sot. There is not the
least doubt that Paine was a temperate man up to the time when,
close upon seventy, his friends began to turn from him. The
weakness that followed his imprisonment first led him to use
stimulants in any noticeable degree, but there is no doubt that
Barlow is the truest witness in saying that Paine was a temperate
man “till he conceived himself neglected and despised by his for-
mer friends in the United States.” But, admitting that during
the closing three years of his life—he was over seventy-two at
death—Paine drank more than was good for him, it is certain
that it was not enough to prevent his writing during those years
many able essays, and also that it would not have been heard of
but for that heterodoxy which exposeth a multitude of sins.
Whether the one fault which undertook this old man, Thomas
Paine, so warm-hearted and faithful, casts the darker shadow
over his own career or over those who gave him up to be the
scape-goat demanded by defeated bigotry and oppression, is a
question on which future critics may have something to say.
For the present it is enough to know that Thomas Paine has been
selected for special odium, not because he was an immoral man,
for he was not that, the only charge of that kind ever made
recoiled on the accuser, and proved the singular generosity of the
accused to a deserted family; not because he was irreligious, he
was the reverse of that by episcopal testimony; not even because
he was unorthodox, for he was chief founder of the society of
Theo-philanthropists in Paris (1797) in opposition to the atheistic
opinions which found many adherents not only there, but in Eng-
land, whose fame, however, has suffered far less than that of this
devout theist and admirer of Christ; but because he wrote for the
people and had the power of convincing them, and this brought
on a panic among those interested in the existing theological and
THOMAS PAINE. 55
political order. It was on the works of Paine that the battle of a
free press, and that of free thought, were fought and won in Eng-
land. The battle did indeed rage for many years after Paine was
dead. I have before me a printed paragraph taken from an
English newspaper of the year 1823, which tells a significant
story:-" Some persons have, we are informed, purchased the
lease of a house in Fleet Street, near St. Bride's Church, which
they have underlet to Richard Carlile, for the purpose of enabling
him to vend his numerous publications. This is one of the con-
sejuences of vindictive persecutions for opinions. Persecute
truth, and it will be seen to flourish: persecute error, and many
will be induced to embrace it from sympathy with the sufferers.
Carlile was sentenced to three years' imprisonment and fines of
£1,500. The three years expired in November last, and he has
since been and now is held in Dorchester jail for the fine. His
sister was also sentenced to two years' imprisonment and a fine
of £500. Her two years' imprisonment expired also in November,
and she, who states in her petition to the House of Commons that
she never possessed any property, has also been and still is de-
tained for her fine. The consequence of these absurd persecutions
has been the propagating of infidel opinions to an extent which
they could not otherwise have reached, and at length to the in-
terference of persons in a way calculated to call public attention
more closely to matters which those who promoted the prosecu-
tions wished should be suppressed. These facts speak for them-
selves.”
Subsequent facts spoke even more loudly in the same way.
The Carlisles were soon released under the feeling that Miss Car-
lile's petition awakened in the House of Commons and in the
country, and they and their successors continued to sell the works
of Paine and other heresiarchs without molestation. The recent
attempts to interfere with the freedom so secured, were rendered
possible by the complication of the principle with moral questions
which were not involved in the original struggle; but their one
success—the imprisonment of Mr. Truelove—as well as their
several failures, equally confess the impregnable security of the
Imain principle for which Paine and his comrades suffered.
HOLIDAY NUMBER
-OF-
LONDON SOCIETY.
EDITED BY JAMES HOGG.
C O N T E N T S.
PAGE.
A Romance of THE PRINCE of WALEs GARDEN-PARTY. By Mrs. J. H.
Riddell, author of “George Geith,” &c. Illustrated by M. Ellen Edwards - I
BALMORAL, ABERGELDIE, AND DEESIDE * - - - - - 24
THE Four Voices - - - ſº - - - * - 36
MY SHELL AND SHARK STORY. By a Naval Officer - - - - 37
A Cool, HAND. By R. E. Francillon. Illustrated by Arthur Hopkins - - 49
FLOATING FLow ERs - - - - - - - - - 72
THE SULPHUR PEAK OF GUADALOUPE. Illustrated by J. Mahoney * - 73
LITTLE CoquETTE - - - - - - - - - 79
SUMMER. Illustrated by W. Allen - * - - - * - 8O
A WALK THROUGH THE ARDENNEs to THE MoseLLE. With Too Illustrations by
Alfred Chasemore - - - - - - - - - 8I
THE BOATMAN - - - - - - - s - - 90
A WET DAY AND ITs CoNSEQUENCEs - - - • - - 9I
FAMILY CREEDS,
AUTHOR OF “EXETER HALL,” “HEATHENS OF THE HEATH,” &c., &c.
Crown 8vo., Cloth, $1.50; Paper Cover, 75 cts.
Public Opinion, of London, England, says:—“Sparing no pains to produce facts, deeply versed in
religious history, with a strong imaginative mind, Mr. McDonnell has indeed produced an interesting
book. His characters are mostly simple and delightful, while his descriptions of scenery are painted
by the tenderest hand.”
The Wew York Times says:—“The volume just issued is eminently a bold book. . - . The
characters are drawn with fidelity. - º e A book showing a large research, a careful handling
of a delicate subject, and reasoning which is more than ordinarily forcible, the book is deserving
of much attention.”
For Sale by all Booksellers, or mailed Postpaid on receipt of price, by
BELFORDS, CLARKE & CO., Públishers,
CIEHIC-A-G-O II,IA-


IBIS IN/I-A-TER, CIE-
—IN THE-
Franco-German War.
By DR. MORITZ BUSCH.
C LOT I I,
The Times of Nov. 21st says: “The publication of Bismarck's after-dinner talk, whether discreet
or not, will be of priceless biographical value; and Englishmen, at least, will not be disposed to .
with Dr. Busch for giving a pićture, as true to life as Boswell's ‘Johnson,’ of the foremost practica
genius that Germany has produced since Frederick the Great.”
NEEMESIS OF FAITH.
By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.
CLOTH, Gilt Top.
“Intensely heart-searching and practical, and terribly severe in its denunciation of every kind of
hypocrisy and cant.—London Wesleyan Methodist Magazine.
IHOW TO SUCCEED IN LIFE
A BOOK FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.
By PRINCIPAL TULLOCH, D.D.
CLOTH, EXTRA.
‘’Forcibly written, and cannot be too widely read by the young men of the present day.”—Literary
World.
“We have seldom come across a book which has given us so much pleasure.”—The Spectator.
S0Cialism and Utilitarianism.
By JOHN STUART MILL.
CLOT He
HELEN TAYLOR, in the Preface to this work, says: “It appears to me to possess great intrinsic
value, as well as special application to the problems now forcing themselves on public attention. It
will not, I believe, detract even from the mere literary reputation of the author, but will rather form an
example of the patient labour with which good work is done.”
The Cat and Battledore,
By HONORE DE BALZAC.
C LOTE I and PAI PIE R.
“Written in his quaint and humorous style.”—London Spectator.
For Sale by all Booksellers, or Mailed Postpaid on receipt of price, by
BELFORDS, CLARKE & CO., Publishers,
CHICAG-O, ILL.
PROSPECTUS.
RE-ISSUE OF
IONDON SOCIETY,
BELFORDS, CLARKE & CO.,
PUBLISHERs,
CHICAGO AND TORONTO.
Of the many ventures in periodical literature
which the enterprise of either the Old or the
New World has, of late years, brought into
existence, few have been more successful than
LONDON SOCIETY, and it may be said that none
ał
º has more satisfactorily won its way to public
favor. Uniting certain striking popular features,
- Ilºilº § | . . .” in illustrations and in text, the Magazine has
- •. ##| appealed to a class which in England is a very
\ |...} : large and influential one—those who desire to
º Jºº. be interested, instructed, and amused in the lit-
erature they read, and who have the taste to
appreciate the art that illustrates it.
As a Society Magazine, the products in liter-
ature and art of the home of both, no periodical
has better reflected the mode and fashion of
modern society life, or more fittingly represents
its culture and its wealth. In variety and range
of matter, and in beauty and liberality of illus-
tration, LONDON SOCIETY presents that attract-
iveness of character that gives it special interest
to the cultivated and appreciative reader, and
should secure for it a wider field of sale than the society circles of England.
Influenced by the motive to supply to the Magazine-reading community of the New
World such a periodical as LoNDON SocIETY is, and impressed by the fact of its suitability,
and its many attractions, as a high-class Illustrated Magazine; the Publishers have arranged
with its English proprietors for a Duplicate set of Electrotype Plates, which will enable them
to reproduce an exact facsimile of the original edition monthly from their Publishing House
in Chicago, the first issue to commence with the current number for July, and to include all
the illustrations that enrich the Magazine in its original issue.
They have also to announce that Subscriptions to the Periodical will include the extra
Midsummer, Holiday and Christmas numbers of the publication which, in the artistic beauty
of their illustrations and in their attractive literary features, have made the issues welcome
in a hundred thousand of English homes.
To bring it within the means of every reader it has been considered desirable to put the
price at the low figure of $3.50 per year, including Christmas and Midsummer Numbers, or
single copies can be obtained from any of the Booksellers, or at the News-stands, in the
United States, at 25 cents a copy. This is lower than the English edition is sold for there,
and $3.50 per year less than it can be procured for in America.
Each number of LoNDoN SocIETY contains a continued Novel, by one of the leading
English Novelists; Monthly Stories of Society, with illustrations, each complete in one No.,
by writers that command the highest price paid in the world; and Sketches of singular
interest, entitled, “The Fortunes made in Business,” of the Moneyed Men of Europe and
America, introducing numerous memoirs, fresh, anecdotic, and practical, of Leading Men
amongst the Merchants, Manufacturers, Chemists, Inventors, Engineers and Capitalists of
Europe and America. Besides, every number is richly illustrated with several full-page
illustrations and numerous small ones. The Christmas and Midsummer numbers contain
no continued stories, each number being complete in itself.
BELFORDS, CLARKE & CO., Publishers,
CTEITC ALG-O-

NEW PUBLICATIONS.
BELFORDS, CLARKE & CO., Chicago.
THE THEOLOGICAL WORKS
— O F —
*T*EHCOTMLAs IEP.A-IINTIE,
CONTAINING
The Age of Reason; Ea'amination of Prophecies ; Reply to
the Bishop of Llandaff; Essay on Dreams ; and
Other Essays and Lectures.
The whole pre c e de d by a
LIFE OF PAINE, BY CALVIN BLANCHARD
12mo. CL DTH, $1.50.
The Political Works Of Thomas Paine.
CONTAINING:
The Rights cf Man; Common Sense; The Crisis; and Other Essays,
13mo. CILOTH, $1.50.
THE AGE OF REASON,
Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology.
By THOMAS PAINE.
“There needs but to have the light of truth shine fully upon the real character of Thomas Paine to
prove him to have een a far greater man than his most ardent admirers have hitherto given him credit
for being.”—CALVIN BLANCHARD.
12 mmo. CELO TH, 50 cents; PAPER COWERS, 25 cents.
A WINDICATION Of THOMAS PAINE
BY E.O BEERT G-. IN G-EBSOTLL.
AND
THC MAS PAIN E : A Criticism,
PY MON CURE D. CONWAY.
12 mo. PAP ER. 25 cents. [AUTHORIZED EDITION.]
BISMARCK IN THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR,
BY DR. MORITZ. BUSCH.
CLOTH, $1.00.
The Times of Nov. 21st says: “The publication of Bismarck's after-dinner talk, whether discreet
or not, will be of priceless biographical value; and Englishmen, at least, will not be disposed to quarrel
with Dr. Busch for giving a picture, as true to life, as Boswell's “Johnson,’ of the foremost practical
genius that Germany has produced since Frederick the Great.”
INTEIMIESIs CIF" E-A-I*T*E*L,
By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.
Cloth, Gilt Top, $1.00.
“Intensely heart-searching and practical, and terribly severe in its denunciation of every kind of
hypocrisy and cant.”—London Wesleyan Methodist Magazine.
Over Twenty thousand copies of this book already sold,
The Ghosts,
A N D OTHER LECTURES.
By ROBERT G. INGERSOLL.
“The idea of immortality, that like a sea, has ebbed and flowed in the human heart,
with its countless waves of hope and fear, beating against the shores and rocks of time
and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was born
of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of
doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death.”
C O N T E N T S.
THE GHOSTS. •e
flet the Ghosts Go. We will worship them no more. Let them cover their eyeless
sockets with their fleshless hands and fade forever from the imaginations of
In Meiji. *
THE LIBERTY OF MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD.
Liberty sustains the same relation to Mind that Space does to Matter.
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
One hundred years ago our Fathers retired the Gods from politics.
ABOUT FARMING IN IILLINOIS-
To Plow is to Pray—to Plant is to Prophesy, and the Harvest answers and fulfills.
SPEECH AT CINCIN NATI.
s Nominating James G. Blaine for the Presidency, June, 1876.
THE PAST RISES BEFORE ME LIKE A DREAM.
Extract from a speech delivered at the Soldiers' Reunion at Indianapolis, Sept. 21,
1876. *
Price, $1.50. C. P. FARRELL, Publisher,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
i
&ºſ
§ 3.
tº §
Gâr İſlâga;inf aſ ſlaga;ints.T
ENGLISH EDITION, - - - $9.00 per Year.
OUR EDITION, - - - only 5.00 per Year.
(An exact fac simile from duplicate plates.)
T EL TED
ForTNightly REVIEW,
Edited by JOHN MORLEY.
“The FortNIGHTLY REv1Ew, which is edited by John Morley, is the most vigorous,
the ablest and most advanced of all the Reviews.”—New York Nation. e
CONTRIBUTORS.
MIATTHEW ARNOLD, FREDERICK HARRISON.
HERBERT SIPIENCER. PROF. TYINIDAILL.
PROF. GOLIDWIN SMITH. PROF. HUXILEY.
LIONEL, A, TOLLEMACHIE.
M. E. GRANT DUFE, M. P. AUTHOR OF * SUPERNATURAL
RELIGION.”
#ºwn. SIR JOIHIN LTUBEOCK.
JOHN MIORLEY (The Editor.) ANTHONY TROLLOPE.
ALFRED R. WALLACE. SIR DAVID WEDDERBURN.
PROF. HENRY FAVCETT, EMILE DE LAVELEYE.
And many other Able Thinkers.
Single Copies, 50 cents; Per Annum, $5.00.
BELFORDS, CLARIKE & CO
CHICAGO AND TORONTO.
* 3