Capel Lofft: "I am glad Paine is living: he cannot be even wrong without
enlightening mankind, such is the vigor of his intellect, such the
acuteness of his research, and such the force and vivid perspicuity of
his expression."
Augustine Birrell, M. P.: "Paine was without knowing it, a born
journalist. His capacity for writing on the spur of the moment was
endless, and his delight in doing so was boundless."
Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott: "He was perhaps the most popular pamphleteer of
the country."
Library of The World's Best Literature: "The pamphlets of Thomas Paine
were doubtless in their time 'half battles.' Clear, logical, homely,
by turns warning, appealing, commanding, now sharply satirical, now
humorous, now pathetic, always desperately in earnest, always written in
admirably simple English, they constituted their author, in the judgment
of many, the foremost pamphleteer of the eighteenth century."
Lord Brougham: "The most remarkable spirit in pamphlet literature was
Thomas Paine.... His style was a model of terseness and force."
"This singular power of clear, vigorous exposition made him unequaled as
a pamphleteer."--_Sir Leslie Stephen._
London Times (June 8, 1909): "Paine was the greatest of pamphleteers;
more potent in influence on affairs than Swift, Beaumarchais, or
Courier, more varied in his activity than any of them; his words
influencing the actors in two of the chief political revolutions of
the world and prime movers in a religious revolution scarcely less
important."
"Perhaps someone, even in far off times, digging in the past, will come
upon his books and will say, 'These were not words; they were events,
in political history. This was a born leader who could make men march to
victory or defeat.'"
Manchester Guardian (June 8, 1909): "He and his works became the
great influence which set up everywhere constitutional societies and
encouraged political and religious freedom of thought. He became the
interpreter to England of the principles of the two Revolutions, and his
words and ideas leavened speculations among the masses of the English
people, and still leaven them today. We may forget him or remember
him awry, but the very stuff of our brains is woven in the loom of his
devising."
James K. Hosmer, LL. D.: "Few writers have exerted a more powerful
influence since the world began, if the claim set forth at the time
and never refuted be just, that his 'Common Sense' made possible the
Declaration of Independence and therefore the United States of America."
Constitutional Gazette (Feb. 24, 1776): "The author introduces [in
'Common Sense'] a new system of polices as widely different from the old
as the Copernican system is from the Ptolemaic. This extraordinary
performance contains as surprising a discovery in politics as the works
of Sir Isaac Newton do in philosophy."
"It would be difficult to name any human composition which has had an
effect at once so instant, so extended and so lasting."--_Sir George
Trevelyan._
Paul Louis Courrier (1824): "Never did any portly volume effect so
much for the human race. Rallying all hearts and minds to the party of
Independence, it decided the issue of that great conflict which, ended
for America, is still proceeding all over the rest of the world."
"Incisive sentences,... as direct and vivid in their appeal as any
sentences of Swift."--_Woodrow Wilson._
"Like a thunderbolt from the sky came Paine's magnificent argument for
liberty... No pamphlet ever written sold in such vast numbers, nor did
any ever before or since produce such marvelous results."--_Ella Wheeler
Wilcox._
"Who could with almost one stroke of his pen, turn the people in a
radically new direction? Who must exert an influence that had never,
in any crisis of history, been exerted by one man before? The American
Republic today, with its illimitable glory and belting a continent, can
only reply: Thomas Paine!"--_Samuel P. Putnam._
"The soul of Thomas Paine went forth in that book. Every line of it
glittered with the fires of his brain. It was written as a poet writes
his song.... It was like the flowing of a fountain, the sweep of a wind,
the rush of a comet."--Ibid.
The publication of Thomas Paine's immortal pamphlet, 'Common Sense,'
will ever deserve to rank among the supremely important events of
history. The farther we are removed from it in time the larger it will
loom."--_Rev. Thomas B. Gregory._
"This work marks an era in the history of the world. Its interest will
last longer than nations."--_Hon. Elizur Wright._
Universal Magazine (April, 1793. From a review of the "Rights of Man."):
"And now courteous reader, we leave Mr. Paine entirely to thy mercy;
what wilt thou say of him? Wilt thou address him? 'Thou art a troubler
of privileged orders--we will tar and feather thee; nobles abhor thee,
and kings think thee mad!' Or wilt thou put on thy spectacles, study Mr.
Paine's physiognomy, purchase his print, hang it over thy chimney-piece,
and, pointing to it, say: 'this is no common man!'"
"Those who know the book ['Rights of Man'] only by hearsay as the work
of a furious incendiary would be surprised at the dignity, force and
temperance of the style."--_Encyclopedia Britannica._
"The 'Rights of Man' is acknowledged to be the greatest work ever
written for political freedom. This masterpiece gave free speech, and a
free press to England and America."--_Ella Wheeler Wilcox._
"The thinking men of England now revere the memory of Thomas Paine for
his great work in the nation's behalf. The most important of the many
reforms England has undertaken in the century that has elapsed since
it outlawed Paine have been brought about by Paine's masterly
work."--_Elbert Hubbard_.
"The 'Rights of Man' will never die so long as men have rights."--_Alice
Hubbard._
Richard Henry Lee: "It is a performance of which any man might be
proud."
"The 'Rights of Man' will be more enduring than all the piles of marble
and granite man can erect."--_Andrew Jackson_.
Dr. Frank Crane: "It deserves a place among the dozen epoch-making books
of the race.... It is a milestone in human development that marks a
point of progress that never can be retraced."
General Arthur O'Connor:
"I prize above all earthly things
The 'Rights of Man' and Common Sense.'"
Prof. Edward McChesney Sait: "Many names which were famous in the
revolutionary period of the eighteenth century are heard no more; but
the name of Thomas Paine still lives. It will never die; those noble
writings, 'Common Sense' and 'Rights of Man,' like the verses of the
Roman poet, are more lasting than bronze."
Marie Joseph Chenier: "Notable epoch in the life of this philosopher who
opposed the arms of 'Common Sense' to the sword of tyranny, 'the 'Rights
of Man' to the machiavelism of English politicians; and who by two
immortal works has deserved well of the human race."
Victor Robinson: "Another immortal work was being penned behind French
prison-bars and the hand which held the pen was the hand of Thomas
Paine."
"There shone on Paine's cell in the Luxembourg a great and imperishable
vision, which multitudes are still following."--_Dr. Conway_.
M. M. Mangasarian: "In his dungeon his pen dropped light into the
darkness of Europe and America by writing the 'Age of Reason.'"
"One of the most wonderful books ever written." _Edgar W. Howe_.
"The 'Age of Reason' defies the grave where other books of his
generation sleep."--_George E. Macdonald._
"Not only the one great skeptical work of his time, but the only one
which seems destined to live for all time."--_J. P. Bland_.
"Paine's 'Age of Reason' is a masterpiece of Rationalistic
literature."--_William H. Maple_.
"It is a masterpiece in every particular--sound, logical and
truthful."--_Sir Hiram Maxim_.
"There are the most varied graces of literary style, a profound and
gentle philosophy, and a genuine love of humanity."--_William Heaford_.
Mimnermus (England): "Out of the charnel-vault of Kingcraft and
Priestcraft, Rousseau and the other great French Freethinkers saw in
vision the ideal society of the future. Of this new evangel Paine was
the prophet and Shelley was the poet.... In the 'Rights of Man' and the
'Age of Reason,' no less than in the 'Revolt of Islam' and 'Prometheus
Unbound,' the expression glows with the solemn and majestic inspiration
of prophecy."
John M. Robertson, M. P.: "The enduring popularity of the chief works of
Thomas Paine is not the least remarkable fact in the history of opinion.
It is given to few controversial writers to keep a large audience
during a hundred years."
"In Paine's public life there are three great tidal periods--the period
when he was helping more than any other to make the Revolution in
America; the period when, having come to Europe, after the American
Revolution, he published the 'Rights of Man' and laid in England the
foundations of a new democracy in the very teeth of the great reaction
of which Burke was the prophet; and lastly, the period when, after
his hopes from the French Revolution had substantially failed, and
he expected death as his own meed, he wrote his 'Age of Reason,'
significantly making his last blow the most deadly of all his strokes at
the reign of tradition."
New York World: "The man whose 'Common Sense,' by Washington's
testimony, 'worked a powerful change in the minds of men' toward
American independence; who in the 'Rights of Man' demolished Burke's
attack on the French Revolution so completely that the British
government resorted to its suppression, and who in France set the world
aflame with persecution mania by the 'Age of Reason,' certainly made
good in three countries his title to literary rank and political power."
"The three mightiest contributions of political and religious freedom
which mankind had known came from the brain of Thomas Paine. What he
wrote changed the whole civilized world."--_L. K. Washburn_.
Rev. E. P. Powell (referring to the "Crisis"): "Words of fire and logic
that rang like a berserker's sword on his shield."
"The 'Crisis' is contained in sixteen numbers. They comprise a truer
history of that event [American Revolution] than does any professed
history of it yet written. They comprise the soul of it."--_Calvin
Blanchard._
"Of utterances by the pen none have achieved such vast results as
Paine's 'Common Sense' and his first 'Crisis.'"--_Dr. Conway_.
In addition to his three literary masterpieces and the "Crisis" Paine
wrote many remarkable books and pamphlets, the more important of which
are the following: "Public Good," Philadelphia, 1780; "Letter to Abbé
Raynal," Philadelphia, 1782; "Dissertation on Government," Philadelphia,
1786; "Prospects on the Rubicon," London, 1787; "Address of Société
Républicaine," Paris, 1791; "Address to the Adressers," London, 1792;
"Plea for Life of Louis Capet," "French Constitution of '93," Paris,
1793; "On First Principles of Government," Paris, 1795; "Decline and
Fall of the English System of Finance," published in all the languages
of Europe. 1796; "Agrarian Justice," "Letter to Camille Jordan, Paris,
1797; "Essay on Dreams," "Examination of Prophecies," New York,
1807; "Reply to Bishop of Llandaff," New York, 1810; "Miscellaneous
Poems,"'London, 1819.
"These [Paine's books] were battles, victories--the simplest, yet
the grand and notorious facts of that wondrous war and age."--_T. B.
Wakeman_.
M. de Bonneville, the noted French journalist and Revolutionary leader,
and the almost constant companion of Paine during the ten or more years
that he resided in Paris, says: "All his pamphlets have been popular
and powerful. He wrote with composure and steadiness, as if under the
guidance of a tutelary genius. If, for an instant, he stopped, it was
always in the attitude of a man who listens. The Saint Jerome of Raphael
would give a perfect idea of his contemplative recollection, to listen
to the voice from on high which makes itself heard in the heart."
"When the old traditions of prejudice have passed, away, Paine's name
will have its due place not only in our political but in our literary
history, as that of a man of native genius whose prose bears being read
beside that of Burke on the same theme, and who found in sincerity the
secret of a nobler eloquence than his antagonists could draw from their
stores of literature or the fountain of their ill-will."--_John M.
Robertson_.
"He was a great writer. Cobbett knew it, Hazlitt knew it, and Landor
knew it."--_George W. Foote_.