Ella Wheeler Wilcox: "Paine was not only a great author and statesman,
but he was distinctly a pioneer, an originator, an inventor and creator.
To him we are indebted for many of the world's greatest ideas and
reforms."
Winwood Reade: "One of Thomas Paine's first productions was an article
against slavery."
Universal Cyclopedia: "Published in Bradford's _Pennsylvania Journal
[Magazine]_ in March, 1775, an article entitled 'African Slavery in
America,' which probably hastened the first American Anti-Slavery
Society, April 14, 1775."
Referring to this article Dr. Conway, one of the apostles of
anti-slavery, says: "It is a most remarkable article. Every argument and
appeal, moral, religious, military, economic, familiar in our
subsequent anti-slavery struggle is here found stated with eloquence and
clearness."
In the very month that Paine lay down in his last illness there was
born the man who was to complete the work he had begun. On the first of
January, 1863, Abraham Lincoln pronounced the doom of slavery. In this
essay of Paine and in the Emancipation Proclamation of Lincoln we
have the beginning and the end--the prologue and the epilogue--of the
Anti-Slavery drama in America.
"It is a significant fact that a paragraph in favor of the abolition
of slavery in America, which is surmised to haye been inserted through
Paine's influence, in the Declaration of Independence was struck out....
Had Paine's humane suggestion been adopted the United States would
have been saved the agony and bloody sweat of the Civil. War."--_Hector
Macpherson, Scotland_.
"In sorrow and bitterness and bloodshed Lincoln wrought the cure for the
evil which Paine tried peacefully to prevent."--_Mrs. Bradlaugh-Bonner,
England_.
George W. Foote: "In America the first to publicly demand the liberation
of the slaves was Thomas Paine. Paine also partly drafted and signed
the Act of Pennsylvania abolishing slavery--the first of its kind in the
whole of Christendom."
Paine was not only the first to advocate the abolition of domestic
slavery in America, he was also a pioneer in the movement which secured
the abolition of the slave trade in America and Great Britain.
When Louisiana demanded statehood with "the right to continue the
importation of slaves," from Paine came this stinging rebuke: "Dare you
put up a petition to Heaven for such power, without fearing to be struck
from the earth by its justice? Why, then, do you ask it of man against
man? Do you want to renew in Louisiana the horrors of Domingo?"
Alfred E. Fletcher: "Paine was the first man in America to demand
freedom for the slave, to urge international arbitration, justice for
women and more rational ideas as to marriage and divorce."
"In his August (1775) number _[Pennsylvania Magazine]_ is found the
earliest American plea for woman."--_Dr. Conway_.
"His pen is unmistakable in 'Reflections on Unhappy Marriages' (June
1775)."--_Ibid_.
"The first man in history to speak in clear cut tones for the rights of
woman."--_Josephine K. Henry_.
"Today we dare to affirm that women as well as men have rights. Paine
was the pioneer of this thought."--_Alice Hubbard._
Hon. Robert A. Dague: "If I am asked to whom are women indebted for
the enlarged liberty they now enjoy, my answer is, to Thomas Paine,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, and to the Universalists,
Unitarians, Spiritualists and Agnostics."
London Daily News: "He was always a man of peace, and to him is due the
first project of international arbitration. He was the first publicist
in America to declare for the emancipation of slaves, the first to
champion the cause of woman, to insist upon the rights of animals, and
to expose the criminal folly of dueling."
"He condemned dueling, and the deliberate or thoughtless ill-treatment
of animals. He spoke up against negro slavery quite as emphatically as
against hereditary privileges and religious intolerance. He advocated
international arbitration; international and internal copyright."--_Sir
George Trevelyan_.
George H. Putxam: "Paine wrote on the necessity of a copyright law in
1782, a year before Noah Webster canvassed the legislatures of the New
England states in behalf of such a law.... In 1792, as a member of
the French Convention, Paine made a statement of the principles of
international copyright of the author's right in literary work."
Nannie McCormick Coleman: "In 1783, while a member of Congress, Hamilton
urgently sought to have a [Constitutional] Convention called. In the
same year... Thomas Paine contributed addresses to the public to the
same effect."
Paine proposed a constitutional government and a constitutional
convention as early as 1776.
Referring to our Constitutional Convention Prof. Alexander Johnston of
Princeton University says: "Thomas Paine had suggested it as long ago as
his 'Common Sense' pamphlet: 'Let a continental conference to be held to
frame a continental charter.'"
Not only was Paine the first to propose a constitutional government for
the United States, the framers of the Constitution adopted to a large
extent his political ideas. Referring to the principles advocated in his
"Dissertation on Government" Dr. Conways says: "In the next year those
principles were embodied in the Constitution; and in 1792, when a State
pleaded its sovereign right to repudiate a contract the Supreme Court
affirmed every contention of Paine's pamphlet, using his ideas and
sometimes his very phrases."
Bankers' Magazine: "The Bank of North America, at Philadelphia,
organized to assist the government during the War of Independence,
is admitted to be the first bank in the United States, but it is not
generally known that Thomas Paine was the man in whose brain the bank
was born and who was the first subscriber to its stock."
Columbia Encyclopedia: "Paine was chosen by Napoleon to introduce a
popular form of government into Britain after the Frenchman should have
invaded and conquered the island."
William Milligan Sloane, LL. D.: "Thomas Paine exercised his power as a
pamphleteer on the theme of England's approaching bankruptcy, while the
public crowded one of the theatres [in Paris] to stare at stage pictures
representing the invasion of England."
Paine prepared plans for this invasion which were adopted by the French
Directory. Two hundred and fifty gun-boats were speedily built for the
purpose. Then Napoleon abandoned the expedition against England for the
one against Egypt.
Paine's approval of this proposed invasion of England was not inspired
by a spirit of revenge because of his persecution by the English
Government, but by a sincere love of its people, seeing in it the only
means of delivering them from the intolerable tyranny of George III. and
his Ministry. Napoleon at this time had not manifested that insatiable
thirst for blood which at a later period made him the scourge of Europe.
James A. Edgerton, A. M.: "Thomas Paine first suggested American
Independence. He first suggested the Federal Union of the States. He
first proposed the abolition of negro slavery. He first suggested [in
Christendom] protection for dumb animals. He first suggested equal
rights for women. He first proposed old age pensions. He first suggested
the education of poor children at public expense. He first proposed
arbitration and international peace. He suggested a great republic of
all the nations of the world."
To the claims made in behalf of Paine by Mr. Edgerton and others the
following may be added: He was one of the founders, if not the real
founder, of modern journalism. He labored to provide better facilities
for the education of young women. His contributions to hygienic science
were invaluable. His knowledge of astronomy was profound; he affirmed
the belief that the fixed stars were suns twenty years before Herschel.
His views regarding taxation were wise and just. He was an advocate of
land reform. He was recognized as the ablest authority of his time
on paper money. He was one of the framers of the Constitution of
Pennsylvania.
Not only was Paine the real founder of our Republic; he was largely
instrumental in securing for it the greatest of its subsequent
acquisitions of territory. He shares with Jefferson the honor of being
the first to propose the purchase from Napoleon of the province of
Louisiana, an empire in extent--reaching from Florida to the Pacific and
to what is now British Columbia, a distance of three thousand miles--a
territory three times as large as the original United States of America
and from which have been formed, wholly or in part, eighteen of the most
important states in the Union.
Nearly half a century before Comte, Paine taught the Religion of
Humanity.
"In 1778 he wrote his sublime sentence about the 'Religion of
Humanity.'"--_Dr. Conway_.
"I have discovered that Paine not only wrote those words, 'the Religion
of Humanity,'... but he was the real author by this discovery of all
laws of social science which is called sociology, now the queen of the
sciences.... If Paine was the real leader in that discovery he stands by
the side of Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Comte, Spencer and Ward, and the
beneficent results and glory of this discovery, and its discoverer,
are beyond the words of any mind at present to describe."--_Prof. T. B.
Wakeman_.
"That his Religion of Humanity took the deistical form was an
evolutionary necessity."--_Dr. Conway_.
"The prophet of the Religion of Humanity and the precursor of our modern
Monism."--_Prof. Ernst Haeckel_.
"How few there are who realize that Thomas Paine anticipated Spencer's
thought [equal liberty] by many decades, that, more briefly and
graphically, he formulated the only principle that can weave enduring
order and peace into the fabric of society."--_Edwin C. Walker_.
Leonard Abbott: "Paine's mind was germinal: in it were the seeds of all
modern religious, economical, and political movements."
William H. Maple: "The light of truth fell in such grand refulgence upon
this man as to enable him to utter truisms enough to furnish texts for
reformers for a thousand years to come."
"The moral originality and courage of his teaching in every direction is
astonishing."--_John M. Robertson_.
Stephen Pearl Andrews: "The true chief-priest of humanity is the man who
solves the greatest obstacles in the progress of mankind; and you must
not be surprised if I rank Thomas Paine not only as a priest, but as
perhaps the real chief-priest, or pontifex-maximus of his age."
Joel Barlow: "The biographer of Thomas Paine should not forget his
mathematical acquirements and his mechanical genius. His invention of
the iron bridge, which led him to Europe in 1787, has procured him a
great reputation in that branch of science in France and England."
M. Chaptal: "They [plans for iron bridge over Seine] will be of the
greatest utility to us when the new kind of construction goes to be
executed for the first time.... You have rights of more than one kind to
the gratitude of nations."
International Encyclopedia: "In 1787 Paine went to France, where he
exhibited his bridge to the Academy of Science in Paris. He also visited
England, and was lionized in London by the party of Burke and Fox. He
set up the model of his bridge in Addington Green, and huge crowds went
to see it."
"This [model of iron bridge] was publicly exhibited in Paris and London
and attracted great crowds."--_Encyclopedia Britannica_.
Sir Ralph Milbank: "With respect to the bridge over the river Wear at
Sunderland, it certainly is a work well deserving admiration both for
its structure, durability, and utility, and I have good grounds for
saying that the first idea was taken from Mr. Paine's bridge exhibited
at Paddington."
Mr. Foljambe, M. P.: "I saw the rib of your [Paine's] bridge. In point
of elegance and beauty it far exceeded my expectations and is certainly
beyond anything I ever saw."
George Stephenson: "If we are to consider Paine as its [the iron
bridge's] author, his daring in engineering certainly does full justice
to the fervor of his political career."
When the building of the Brooklyn bridge was celebrated the Rev. Robert
Collyer called attention to the fact that to Thomas Paine belonged
the credit of inventing the iron bridge and deplored the ignorance and
prejudice which had caused the speakers to ignore it.
Sir Richard Phillips: "In 1778 Thomas Paine proposed, in America, this
application of steam [the steamboat]."
Watson's Annals of Philadelphia: "In June, 1785, John Fitch called on
the ingenious William Henry, Esq., of Lancaster, to take his opinion of
his draughts, who informed him that he (Fitch) was not the first person
who had thought of applying steam to vessels, for that Thomas Paine,
author of 'Common Sense,' had suggested the same to him (Henry) in the
winter of 1778."
Concerning Paine's connection with this invention Dr. Conway says:
"Among his intimate friends at this time [about 1796] was Robert Fulton,
then residing in Paris. Paine's extensive studies of the steam engine
and his early discovery of its adaptability to navigation had caused
Rumsey to seek him in England and Fitch to consult him both in, America
and Paris. Paine's connection with the invention of the steamboat
was recognized by Fulton as, indeed, by all of his scientific
contemporaries. To Fulton he freely gave his ideas" (Life of Paine,
vol. ii, p. 280). "In the controversy between Rumsey and Fitch, Paine's
priority to both is conceded" (Ibid).
"A machine for planing boards was his next invention."--_Madame
Bonneville_.
James Parton: "A benefactor... who conceived the planing machine and the
iron bridge. A glorious monument to his honor swells aloft in many of
our great towns. The principle of his arch now sustains the marvelous
railroad depots that half abolish the distinction between in-doors and
out."
In a letter to Jefferson, in 1801, Paine anticipates and suggests the
explosive engine of today.
"The explosive engines which now drive machines over highways and waters
and through the air are the perfection of Paine's explosive power."--_A.
Outram Sherman_.
One of Paine's minor inventions which attracted the attention and
received the approval of Franklin was an improved light.
Another invention, an improved carriage wheel, was greatly admired.
After Paine's death Robert Fulton made a drawing of the model and
deposited it at Washington.
Robert R. Livingston (to Paine in Paris): "Make your will; leave the
mechanics, the iron bridge, the wheels, etc., to America."