"When tidings came of the king's trial and execution, whatever glimpses
they [Paine's adherents in England] gained of their outlawed leader
showed him steadfast as a star caught in one wave and another of that
turbid tide. Many, alas, needed apologies, but Paine required none. That
one Englishman, standing on the tribune for justice and humanity, amid
three hundred angry Frenchmen in uproar, was as sublime a sight as
Europe witnessed in those days."--_Dr. Conway._
"The rank and file followed their Thomas Paine with a faith that crowned
heads might envy. The London men knew Paine thoroughly. The treasures of
the world would not draw him, nor any terrors drive him, to the side
of cruelty and inhumanity. Their eye was upon him. Had Paine, after the
king's execution, despaired of the republic there might have ensued some
demoralization among his followers in London. But they saw him by the
side of the delivered prisoner of the Bastile, Brissot, an author well
known in England, by the side of Condorcet and others of Franklin's
honored circle engaged in a death struggle with the fire-breathing
dragon called 'The Mountain.' That was the same unswerving man they
had been following, and to all accusations against the revolution their
answer was--Paine is still there."--_Ibid._
While Paine allied himself to no particular faction of the convention,
his sympathies were with the Girondins. Lamartine says: "Paine, the
friend of Madame Roland, Condorcet and Brissot, had been elected by
the town of Calais; the Girondins consulted him and placed him on the
committee of surveyance." The Girondins comprised, for the most part,
the wisest and the best of France's legislators. Had they remained in
power the excesses of the revolution would, to a great extent, have
been avoided. But in an evil hour the Jacobins gained the ascendancy and
while they ruled madness reigned supreme. The Girondins were slaughtered
or expelled. In one night twenty-two of them--every one a noted
statesman or orator--the very flower of French manhood, "the eloquent,
the young, the beautiful, the brave," as Riouffe, their fellow prisoner,
lovingly describes them, were taken before a Jacobin tribunal and
condemned to death. Carlyle thus graphically and pathetically tells us
how they died:
"All Paris is out; such a crowd as no man had seen. The death-carts,
Valaze's cold corpse [he had committed suicide] stretched among the yet
living twenty-one, roll along. Bareheaded, hands bound, in their shirt
sleeves, coat flung loosely round the neck; so fare the eloquent of
France; bemurmured, beshouted. To the shouts of Vive la Republique,
some of them keep answering with counter shouts of Vive la Republique.
Others, as Brissot, sit sunk in silence. At the foot of the scaffold
they again strike up, with appropriate variations, the hymn of the
Marseilles. Such an act of music; conceive it well! The yet living chant
there; the chorus so rapidly wearing weak! Samson's axe is rapid; one
head per minute, or a little less. The chorus is wearing weak; the
chorus is worn out; farewell, forevermore, ye Girondins. Te-Deum Fauchet
has become silent; Valaze's dead head is lopped; the sickle of the
guillotine has reaped the Girondins all away."
"How Paine loved those men--Brissot, Condorcet, Lasource, Duchatel,
Vergniaud, Gensonne! Never was man more devoted to his intellectual
comrades. Even across a century one may realize what it meant to him,
that march of his best friends to the scaffold."--_Dr. Conway._
Eight days after the execution of the Girondins another of Paine's
friends, Madame Roland, the "Inspiring Soul" of the Girondins--one of
the greatest, one of the fairest, one of the bravest, and one of the
noblest women that ever came to brighten our planet--died on the same
scaffold. Beautiful in life, Madame Roland rose to sublimity in death.
Standing on the scaffold, robed in white, she seemed like a lovely bride
before the altar. She asked for pen and paper to record "the strange
thoughts that were rising in her" as she gazed into the eyes of death.
This request denied, she turned toward the statue of liberty and, with
tearful eyes, exclaimed, "O Liberty, what crimes are committed in
thy name!" Then, seeing the one who was to have preceded her to the
guillotine trembling with fear, she begged and obtained permission to
take his place--to die first--that she might soften the terrors of death
by showing him "how easy it is to die." This is her picture--painted by
Carlyle: "Noble white vision, with its high queenly face, its soft proud
eyes, long black hair flowing down to the girdle; and as brave a heart
as ever beat in woman's bosom! Like a white Grecian statue, serenely
complete, she shines in that black wreck of things;--long memorable."
"What with the arrestations and flights Paine found himself, in June,
almost alone. In the convention he was sometimes the solitary figure
left on the plain, where but now sat the brilliant statesmen of France.
They, his beloved friends, have started in procession towards the
guillotine, for even flight must end there; daily others are pressed
into their ranks; his own summons, he feels, is only a question of a few
weeks or days."--_Dr. Conway._
Madame Roland died in November; Paine was imprisoned in December.
Dictionary of Religious Knowledge: "Here [trial of Louis XVI] his
honorable moderation won the enmity of Robespierre, who marked him for a
victim."
Scheaf's Religious Encyclopedia: "He had the courage to vote against the
execution of Louis XVI., and thus incurred the anger of Robespierre, who
threw him into prison."
Chambers' Encyclopedia of English Literature: "He offended the
Robespierre faction, and in 1794 [December 28, 1793], possibly by the
procurement of the American minister, Gouverneur Morris--who disliked
the French revolution and the alliance between the new republics--he was
imprisoned."
Col. Thomas W. Higginson: "They urged him (he was in personal danger) to
go back to America, the country he had served so long. 'Go there,' they
said; 'it is your country,' 'No,' he said, 'for the time, this is my
country.'... So said Thomas Paine, and the doors of the Bastile closed
around him."
Rev. John W. Chadwick: "A prisoner deserted by the young Republic at
whose birth he had assisted so efficiently, his life in jeopardy for the
humanity of his opinions."
Morning Advertiser (England, Feb. 8, 1794): "His arrest was a species of
triumph to all the tyrants on earth. His papers had been examined, and
far from finding any dangerous propositions the committee had traced
only the characters of that burning zeal for liberty--of that eloquence
of nature and philosophy--and of those principles of public morality
which had through life procured him the hatred of despots and the love
of his fellow citizens."
"His arrest and imprisonment, without charges preferred or even the
pretense of crime, were acts of perfidy without a parallel except in the
history of the French revolution."--_Hon. E. B. Washburne_.
Major W. Jackson (and other Americans in Paris): "As a countryman of
ours, as a man above all so dear to the Americans; who like ourselves
are earnest friends of liberty, we ask you in the name of that goddess
cherished by the only two republics of the world, to give back Thomas
Paine to his brethren."
Achille Audibert: "A friend of mankind is groaning in chains--Thomas
Paine.... But for Robespierre's villainy the friend of man would now be
free."
At the beginning of the revolution Robespierre was recognized as one
of the most moderate and humane of men. In the National Assembly he
advocated the abolition of the death penalty. Describing his advent to
leadership, Paine's biographer says: "Mirabeau was on his deathbed, and
Paine witnessed that historic procession, four miles long, which bore
the orator to his shrine.... With others he strained his eyes to see the
coming man; with others he sees formidable Danton glaring at Lafayette;
and presently sees advancing softly between them the sentimental,
philanthropic--Robespierre."
M. Danton: "What thou hast done for the happiness and liberty of thy
country I have in vain attempted to do for mine. They are sending us to
the scaffold."
"It was a strange scene; these two constitution makers, Paine and
Danton, and for the last time in the prison of the Luxembourg, both
equally destined for the scaffold."--_Hon. E. B. Washburne_.
Danton was taken to the guillotine; Paine, by mistake, was left.
The manner of Paine's escape, as related by Carlyle, was as follows:
"The tumbrils move on. But in this set of tumbrils there are two other
things notable: one notable person; and one want of a notable person.
The notable person is Lieu-tenant-General Loiserelles, a nobleman by
birth and by nature; laying down his life for his son. In the prison of
Saint-Lazare, the night before last, hurrying to the grate to hear the
death-list read, he caught the name of his son. The son was asleep at
the moment. 'I am Loiserelles,' cried the old man.... The want of the
notable person, again, is that of Deputy Paine! Paine has set in the
Luxembourg since January; and seemed forgotten; but Fouquier had pricked
him at last. The turnkey, list in hand, is marking with chalk the outer
doors of to-morrow's fournee. Paine's outer door happened to be open,
turned back on the wall; the turnkey marked it on the side next him, and
hurried on; another turnkey came and shut it; no chalkmark now visible,
the fournee went without Paine. Paine's life lay not there."
In a letter to Washington, Paine thus narrates the inhuman slaughter of
his fellow-prisoners, from whose fate he so narrowly escaped: "The state
of things in the prisons [for over four months] was a continued scene
of horror. No man could count upon life for twenty-four hours. To such a
pitch of rage and suspicion were Robespierre and his committee arrived,
that it seemed as if they feared to leave a man to live. Scarcely a
night passed in which ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more were
not taken out of the prison, carried before a pretended tribunal in the
morning, and guillotined before night. One hundred and sixty-nine were
taken out of the Luxembourg one night in July, and one hundred and sixty
of them guillotined, of whom I know I was to have been one. A list of
two hundred more, according to the report in the prison, was preparing
a few days before Robespierre fell. In this last list I have good reason
to believe I was included."
Concerning this reign of terror Guizot says: "Two thousand four hundred
prisoners were registered in Paris on the books of the prison, at the
moment of the deaths of the Girondins; three [four] months later, on the
1st of March, 1794, the number reached six thousand; on the 2d of May,
eight thousand unfortunate persons waited for death. From June 10th to
July 27th, two thousand, two hundred and eighty-five perished on the
scaffold." (_History of France, Vol. VI, pp. 178, 196_.) Menzies says:
"The queen, Marie Antoinette, her sister, Madame Elizabeth, Bailly, the
Girondin chiefs, the Duke of Orleans, General Custine, Madame Roland,
Lavoisier, Malesherbes, and a thousand other illustrious heads fell by
the guillotine."
"The light of burning rafters flashed luridly over scenes of blood; soon
all that is grotesque, or terrible, or loathsome in murder, was enacted
in the streets of Paris. The lantern posts bore their ghastly fruit;
the streets flowed with crimson rivers, the life-blood of ten thousand
hearts, down even to the waters of the Seine. Lafayette and Paine and
all the heroes were gone from the councils of France, but in their
place, aye, in the place of poetry, enthusiasm and eloquence, spoke a
mighty orator--King Guillotine."--_George Lippard_.
With Danton died another of Paine's cherished friends--Hérault de
Sechelles. Hérault, president of the National Assembly, and, for a time,
president of the National Convention, was the first to welcome Paine to
Paris when he came to take his seat in the convention. He was physically
and intellectually one of France's most magnificent men. He was a
ripe scholar and a superb orator. He possessed great wealth and a most
fascinating address. He and Paine and Danton had from the first been
members of the Convention; they had served together on the Committee of
the Constitution, Hérault as Paine's suppliant, and they had occupied
the same prison, the prison set apart for the most illustrious victims
of the Revolution. I quote from Washburne. I desire to present one of the
ten thousand tragic and pathetic scenes which compose this mighty and
immortal drama. "Tragedy walks hand in hand with History and the eyes of
Glory are wet with tears:"
"More victims were now demanded, and, at this time, the oldest children
of the Revolution were claimed. They were the 'Dantonists,' among whom
was included Hérault.... Hérault was unmarried. When imprisoned at
the Luxembourg awaiting his trial he appeared sad and preoccupied. On
arriving at the guillotine, on the Place de la Revolution on the day
of his execution, all his looks were turned toward the hotel of the
Garde-Meuble, hoping evidently to exchange glances with one with whom
were all his thoughts at that supreme moment. Behind the shutters, half
closed, was a beautiful woman who sent to the condemned a last adieu and
waved a last sigh of tenderness to the dying man: _Je t'aime_ (I love
thee). It was a beautiful day of the springtime, and the crowd that had
assembled to witness the execution of Danton, the great Apostle of the
Revolution, and his associates was enormous. The splendid figure of
Hérault de Sechelles seemed to take new life, and the serenity of
courage replaced the inquietude and sadness which had settled upon him.
The first one to mount the scaffold, he showed himself calm, resolute
and unmoved. As he was about to lay his head under the knife, he wished
to present his cheek to the cheek of Danton [their hands were bound],
as a last farewell. The aids of Samson, the executioner, prevented it.
'Imbeciles!' indignantly exclaimed Danton, 'it will be but a moment
before our heads will meet in the basket in spite of you.'"
"Declared an outlaw by the same Convention which he had so long used as
an instrument of his private vengeance, Robespierre was killed like a
dog.... The death of Paine's mortal enemy saved his life."--_Ibid._
Madame Lafayette: "The news of your being set at liberty,... has given
me a moment's consolation in the midst of this abyss of misery."
Madame Lafayette, like Thomas Paine, was a prisoner, daily expecting
death. Her mother, grandmother and sister, prominent members of the
French nobility, all died together on the scaffold. Lafayette himself
was at this time confined in an Austrian dungeon.
Glorious was the freedom born of the French Revolution, but terrible was
the travail.
Daniel Coit Gilman, LL.D.: "His [Minister Monroe's] effort to secure the
release of Thomas Paine from imprisonment was a noteworthy transaction."
"Released from prison at Monroe's intercession."--_Richard Hildreth._
Stanislaus Murray Hamilton: "Paine was liberated by the Committee of
General Surety in consequence of Monroe's assertion of his American
citizenship, and demand for his release; but he had suffered an
imprisonment of ten months and nine days before Monroe's generous and
manly aid reached him."
We owe a debt of gratitude to James Monroe.
He rescued Paine from prison and from death. When Paine was thought to
be dying, as a result of his imprisonment, the Monroes tenderly cared
for him in their own home and nursed him back to life and health.
Washington's apparent neglect of Paine, which for nearly a century
rested as a deep stain upon an otherwise fair name, filled Paine with
astonishment and grief and caused him to write that bitter letter of
reproach. It is now known that this seeming indifference of Washington
was due to the treachery of Monroe's predecessor, Gouverneur Morris.
A. Outram Sherman: "It is a long story, how his secret instructions
conflicted with Paine's hearty and open love for America's ally, how
Morris virtually acquiesced in his imprisonment by Robespierre as a
foreigner, how Morris misled Washington to believe he had demanded
Paine's release as an American, and how he misled Paine to believe that
Washington had given no directions that Paine be so reclaimed."
Nelson's Encyclopedia, in its article on Paine, says: "It seems clear
that his imprisonment was in part the result of a discreditable intrigue
to which Gouverneur Morris, the American minister, was a party."
Madison, in a letter to Jefferson, dated January 10, 1796, referring
to Paine's letter to Washington, says: "It appears that the neglect to
claim him as an American citizen when confined by Robespierre, or even
to interfere in any way whatever in his favor, has filled him with
an indelible rancor against the President, to whom it appears he has
written on the subject. His letter to me is in the style of a dying one,
and we hear that he is since dead of the abscess in his side, brought on
by his imprisonment."
Referring to his letter to Washington, Dr. Conway says: "It was the
natural outcry of an ill and betrayed man to one whom we now know to
have been also betrayed. Its bitterness and wrath measure the greatness
of the love that was wounded."
Rev. Eugene Rodman Shippen: "That he was estranged from Washington
through the malicious representations of others is one of the sad
episodes of our national life."
M. Thibaudeau: "It yet remains for the Convention to perform an act of
justice. I reclaim one of the most zealous defenders of liberty--Thomas
Paine. My reclamation is for a man who has honored his age by his
energy in defense of the rights of humanity, and who is so gloriously
distinguished by his part in the American Revolution....I demand that he
be recalled to the bosom of this Convention."
"He was unanimously restored to his seat in the
Convention."--_International Encyclopedia._
Samuel P. Putnam: "Paine was self-centered. He could stand alone, like
a mighty rock, with seas and storms breaking upon him. Not Mirabeau, not
Danton, shone with a more brilliant genius, nor towered with more rugged
strength and grandeur.
"Paine represented the immortal part of the Revolution.... Voltaire
emphasized justice, Rousseau emphasized liberty; Paine emphasized both
liberty and justice."
One of the strongest proofs of Paine's transcendent greatness is
the fact that while nearly all the leaders of the Revolution--even
Danton--were swept from their moorings by this volcanic upheaval,
Paine's career throughout was characterized by wisdom, moderation, and a
moral courage that was truly sublime.
Thomas Curtis:
"When France shall lift her banners fair,
And brighter hopes shall dawn once more,
In counting up her jewels rare
She'll not forget the days of yore.
For when the name of Lafayette
Shall summon others in its train,
There's one she never will forget--
The author-hero, Thomas Paine."
Prof. Isaac F. Russell, LL.D.: "Paine was one of the immortals who
worked for liberty in three countries, America, France and England."
Frederick May Holland: "He sought to establish the rights of man
in France and England as well as in America. In two of these three
countries his work seemed almost fruitless a hundred years ago; but the
nineteenth century has given him as complete a victory in England and
France as he achieved in the United States. These three great nations
now stand side by side as the bulwarks of freedom."
Hon. George W. Julian: "If any man among the illustrious characters'
of 'the times that tried men's souls' is to be singled out as the real
father of American Democracy, it is Thomas Paine."
Lord Beaconsfield (to Gladstone): "How does your reform government
differ from that of Thomas Paine, except that the sovereign is left in
name?"
"Today the student of political history may find... in Paine's ['Rights
of Man'] the living Constitution of Great Britain."--Dr. Conway.
Alexander Dumas: "It is not the liberty of France alone that I [Dr.
Gilbert, i. e., Paine] dream of; it is the liberty of the whole world."
Alice Hubbard: "England, France and America were made more noble, more
intelligent, more civilized, by the work Thomas Paine did for each
country and for all countries."
T. B. Wakeman: "The Father of Republics." "All these glories of three
great peoples were obtained by revolutions that were fought by a war of
feelings and thoughts before they came to arms; and in that primal war
of thoughts and words Thomas Paine was the most known of men and the
actual leader--the Author Hero."
"The republic--as we now all use that word--the true modern republic, in
and by which government based upon the consent of all, and administered
by the cooperation of all, for the protection and benefit of all, was
not known among men until it was originated by Thomas Paine."
"The so-called 'republics' of antiquity and the Middle Ages were only
oligarchies resting upon the slavery or serfdom of the masses, and in
fact the reverse of republics."
National Encyclopedia (England): "Paine, from his first starting in
public life, was a Republican, uniformly consistent and apparently
sincere."
"The Democratic movement of the last eighty years, be it a finality or
only a phase of progress toward a more perfect state, is the grand
historic fact of modern times, and Paine's name is intimately connected
with it."--_Atlantic Monthly, July, 1859_.
"After contributing by one publication to the establishment of a
transatlantic republic in North America, he introduced, with astonishing
effect the doctrines of democratic government into the first states of
Europe."--_Edward Baines, LL.D._
"'Invent printing,' wrote Carlyle, 'and you invent democracy.' Not quite
so! Invent a sort of writing which when printed shall be understood by
the people, then you invent democracy. And this, earlier and better than
any other man, is what Thomas Paine did."--_The Nation, London_.
"As the champion of popular power in opposition to the abuses of
monarchical government, Paine will always stand pre-eminent in the
world."--_William Cobbett._
Mrs. Marilla M. Ricker: "Thomas Paine dreamed the most glorious dream
of human freedom that ever enchanted the mind of man; fairer and sweeter
than lay under the broken marbles of Greece, brighter and better than
was buried with the dead eagles of Rome."
"Paine stands between two epochs: the epoch of Kings and the epoch of
Man. To the King he said, 'The night is coming'; to Man he said, 'The
day is dawning.'"
"AGE OF REASON" AND RECANTATION CALUMNY.
L. K. Washburn: "Paine knew that he was marked for death. What did
he do? Did he try to escape? No! He sat down and wrote the 'Age of
Reason.'"
Paine found the world cursed with two great evils, kingcraft and
priestcraft, twin vultures that from the earliest ages have fed upon the
vitals of humanity. In his "Common Sense" and "Rights of Man" kingcraft
was dealt the deadliest blows that it has yet received. He had resolved
to strike a blow at priestcraft before he died. Seeing imprisonment and
death approaching he hurried to his task. The first part of his immortal
work was finished six hours before the summons came.
The second part, it is generally believed, was written during his
confinement in the Luxembourg. And here, undoubtedly, it was planned
and at least a part of it composed. It was probably finished, and it
was published, while he lived with James Monroe, after his release from
prison. This, briefly, is the history of the conception and birth
of this, the last and greatest of Paine's three great intellectual
children.
"Just before his arrest he had finished the first part of the 'Age
of Reason.'... While in prison he worked upon the second
part."--_International Encyclopedia._
Encyclopedia Americana: "It [first part] was published in London and in
Paris in 1794. On the fall of Robespierre he was released, and in 1795
published at Paris the second part of the 'Age of Reason.'"
Dr. Francois Lanthenas: "I delivered to Merlin de Thionville a copy of
the last work of T. Paine, formerly our colleague.... I undertook its
translation before the Revolution [Reign of Terror] against priests, and
it was published in French about the same time."
People's Cyclopedia: "During his imprisonment he wrote the 'Age of
Reason' (second part) against Atheism and against Christianity, and in
favor of Deism."
"A second part, written during his ten months' imprisonment, which
was published after his release, represents the Deism of the 18th
century."--_Encyclopedia Britannica._
McClintock and Strong's Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical
Cyclopedia: "The religion which Paine [in his 'Age of Reason'] proposed
to substitute for Christianity was the belief in one God as revealed by
science; in immortality as the continuance of conscious existence; in
the natural equality of man; and in the obligation of justice and mercy
to one's neighbor."
Rufus Rockwell Wilson: "Of all epoch-making books the one most
persistently misrepresented and misunderstood."
W. M. van der Weyde: "The total knowledge possessed by many persons
concerning Paine is that 'he was an Atheist'--which he was not."
Hon. William J. Gaynor: "What a strange thing it is that that
extraordinary man was so long set down as an Atheist. Some people still
think that he was an Atheist. And yet no man ever had a fuller belief in
the existence of God, or a greater reliance upon him."
Washington Times: "It is not at all difficult to find out whether or not
Thomas Paine was an Atheist. All one has to do to discover his opinion
on the subject is to go to any bookstore or circulating library, ask for
his best known work, the 'Age of Reason,' and read the first page:"'I
believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this
life.'"
"He was, in fact, no more an Atheist than William Penn, Roger Williams
or Ralph Waldo Emerson."--_New York World._
In his "Age of Reason" the recognition of a Supreme Being is made more
than two hundred times.
Rev. Daniel Freeman: "There has never been a believer in God if Thomas
Paine was not a believer in God."
Rev. Charles Alfred Martin (Roman Catholic): "Thomas Paine while not a
Christian, was not an Atheist. His biographers declare that he penned
his most famous book to stem with its Deism the tide of Atheism which
flooded France at the time of the Revolution."
Major J. Weed Cory: "Thomas Paine was not an Atheist. He wrote against
Atheism, and Trinitarians will soon be appealing to his works to prove
the existence of a God."
Henry C. Wright: "Thomas Paine had a clear idea of God. This Being
embodied his highest conception of truth, love, wisdom, mercy, liberty
and power."
"Paine was accursed as an Atheist and hunted and maligned by
institutional religion for writing a book in defense of God."--_W. M.
van der Weyde._
Henry Rowley: "His 'Age of Reason' was written as much in defense of God
as in opposition to the church. He could not believe that God was guilty
of the cruelties and crimes which the writers of the Bible attributed to
him."
"The 'Age of Reason' was the protest of a highly moral man against the
doings of a deeply immoral God."