Paine left England in October and arrived in America November 30, 1774.
He bore a letter of introduction from Dr. Franklin to Richard Bache, his
son-in-law, dated September 30, 1774:
"The bearer Mr. Thomas Paine is very well recommended to me as an
ingenious worthy young man. He goes to Pennsylvania with a view
of settling there. I request you to give him your best advice and
countenance, as he is quite a stranger there. If you can put him in a
way of obtaining employment as a clerk, or assistant tutor in a school,
or assistant surveyor, of all of which I think him very capable, so that
he may procure a subsistence at least, till he can make acquaintance
and obtain a knowledge of the country, you will do well, and much oblige
your affectionate father."
{1775}
On March 4, 1775, Paine writes Franklin from Philadelphia:
"Your countenancing me has obtained for me many friends and much
reputation, for which please accept my sincere thanks. I have been
applied to by several gentlemen to instruct their sons on very
advantageous terms to myself, and a printer and bookseller here, a
man of reputation and property, Robert Aitkin, has lately attempted a
magazine, but having little or no turn that way himself, he has applied
to me for assistance. He had not above six hundred subscribers when I
first assisted him. We have now upwards of fifteen hundred, and daily
increasing. I have not entered into terms with him This is only the
second number. The first I was not concerned in."
It has been often stated that Paine was befriended by Dr. Rush, but
there is no indication of this. Their acquaintance was casual.
"About the year 1773 [says Dr. Rush--the date is an error for 1774] I
met him accidentally in Mr. Aitkin's bookstore, and was introduced to
him by Mr. Aitkin. We conversed a few minutes, and I left him. Soon
afterwards I read a short essay with which I was much pleased, in one of
Bradford's papers, against the slavery of the Africans in our country,
and which I was informed was written by Mr. Paine. This excited my
desire to be better acquainted with him. We met soon afterwards in Mr.
Aitkin's bookstore, where I did homage to his principles and pen upon
the subject of the enslaved Africans. He told me the essay to which I
alluded was the first thing he had ever published in his life. After
this Mr. Aitkin employed him as the editor of his Magazine, with a
salary of fifty pounds currency a year. This work was well supported by
him. His song upon the death of Gen. Wolfe, and his reflections upon the
death of Lord Clive, gave it a sudden currency which few works of the
kind have since had in our country."
As the anti-slavery essay was printed March 8, 1775, it appears that
Paine had been in America more than three months before Rush noticed
him.
The first number of the _Pennsylvania Magazine_, or _American Museum_,
appeared at the end of January, 1775. Though "not concerned" in it
pecuniarily, not yet being editor, his contributions increased the
subscription list, and he was at once engaged. For eighteen months Paine
edited this magazine, and probably there never was an equal amount of
good literary work done on a salary of fifty pounds a year. It was
a handsome magazine, with neat vignette--book, plough, anchor, and
olive-twined shield,--the motto, _Juvat in sylvis kabitare_. The
future author of the "Rights of Man" and "Age of Reason" admonishes
correspondents that religion and politics are forbidden topics! The
first number contains a portrait of Goldsmith and the picture of a
new electrical machine. A prefatory note remarks that "the present
perplexities of affairs" have "encompassed with difficulties the first
number of the magazine, which, like the early snowdrop, comes forth in
a barren season, and contents itself with modestly foretelling that
choicer flowers are preparing to appear." The opening essay shows a fine
literary touch, and occasionally a strangely modern vein of thought.
"Our fancies would be highly diverted could we look back and behold a
circle of original Indians haranguing on the sublime perfections of the
age; yet 't is not impossible but future times may exceed us as much as
we have exceeded them."
Here is a forerunner of Macaulay's New Zea-lander sketching the ruins
of St. Paul's. It is followed by a prediction that the coming American
magazine will surpass the English, "because we are not exceeded in
abilities, have a more extended field for inquiry, and whatever may be
our political state, our happiness will always depend upon ourselves."
A feature of the magazine was the description, with plates, of recent
English inventions not known in the new world--threshing-machine,
spinning-machine, etc.,--such papers being by Paine. These attracted the
members of the Philosophical Society, founded by Franklin, and Paine was
welcomed into their circle by Rittenhouse, Clymer, Rush, Muhlenberg, and
other representatives of the scientific and literary metropolis. Many a
piece composed for the Headstrong Club at Lewes first saw the light in
this magazine,--such as the humorous poems, "The Monk and the Jew," "The
Farmer and Short's Dog, Porter"; also the famous ballad "On the Death of
General Wolfe." printed March, 1775, with music. Lewes had not, indeed,
lost sight of him, as is shown by a communication in April from Dr.
Matthew Wilson, dated from that town, relating to a new kind of fever
raging in England.
The reader who has studied Paine's avowed and well-known works finds no
difficulty in tracking him beneath the various signatures by which
he avoided an appearance of writing most of the articles in the
_Pennsylvania Magazine_, though he really did. He is now "Atlanticus,"
now "Vox Populi," or "AEsop," and oftener affixes no signature. The
Thetford Quaker is still here in "Reflections on the Death of Lord
Clive" (reprinted as a pamphlet in England), "A New Anecdote of
Alexander the Great," and "Cursory Reflections on the Single Combat or
Modern Duel." The duel was hardly yet challenged in America when Paine
wrote (May, 1775)
"From the peculiar prevalence of this custom in countries where the
religious system is established which, of all others, most expressly
prohibits the gratification of revenge, with every species of outrage
and violence, we too plainly see how little mankind are in reality
influenced by the precepts of the religion by which they profess to be
guided, and in defence of which they will occasionally risk even their
lives."
But with this voice from Thetford meeting-house mingles the testimony of
"common sense." In July, 1775, he writes:
"I am thus far a Quaker, that I would gladly agree with all the world
to lay aside the use of arms, and settle matters by negotiations; but,
unless the whole world wills, the matter ends, and I take up my musket,
and thank heaven he has put it in my power.... We live not in a world
of angels. The reign of Satan is not ended, neither can we expect to be
defended by miracles."
Titles he sees through (May, 1775):
"The Honourable plunderer of his country, or the Right Honourable
murderer of mankind, create such a contrast of ideas as exhibit a
monster rather than a man. The lustre of the Star, and the title of My
Lord, overawe the superstitious vulgar, and forbid them to enquire
into the character of the possessor: Nay more, they are, as it were,
bewitched to admire in the great the vices they would honestly condemn
in themselves.... The reasonable freeman sees through the magic of a
title, and examines the man before he approves him. To him the honours
of the worthless seem to write their masters' vices in capitals, and
their Stars shine to no other end than to read them by. Modesty forbids
men separately, or collectively, to assume titles. But as all honours,
even that of kings, originated from the public, the public may justly be
called the true fountain of honour. And it is with much pleasure I
have heard the title 'Honourable' applied to a body of men, who nobly
disregarding private ease and interest for public welfare, have justly
merited the address of _The Honourable Continental Congress_."
He publishes (May, 1775), and I think wrote, a poetical protest against
cruelty to animals, to whose rights Christendom was then not awakened.
His pen is unmistakable in "Reflections on Unhappy Marriages" (June,
1775): "As extasy abates coolness succeeds, which often makes way for
indifference, and that for neglect. Sure of each other by the nuptial
bond, they no longer take any pains to be mutually agreeable. Careless
if they displease, and yet angry if reproached; with so little relish
for each other's company that anybody else's is more welcome, and more
entertaining." It is a more pointed statement of the problem already
suggested, in the April magazine, by his well-known fable "Cupid and
Hymen," whose controversies are now settled in the Divorce Court.
In his August (1775) number is found the earliest American plea for
woman. It is entitled "An Occasional Letter on the Female Sex,"
and unsigned, but certainly by Paine. His trick of introducing a
supposititious address from another person, as in the following extract,
appears in many examples.
"Affronted in one country by polygamy, which gives them their rivals for
inseparable companions; inslaved in another by indissoluble ties, which
often join the gentle to the rude, and sensibility to brutality: Even
in countries where they may be esteemed most happy, constrained in their
desires in the disposal of their goods, robbed of freedom of will by the
laws, the slaves of opinion, which rules them with absolute sway, and
construes the slightest appearances into guilt, surrounded on all sides
by judges who are at once their tyrants and seducers, and who after
having prepared their faults, punish every lapse with dishonour--nay
usurp the right of degrading them on suspicion!--who does not feel for
the tender sex? Yet such I am sorry to say is the lot of woman over the
whole earth. Man with regard to them, in all climates and in all ages,
has been either an insensible husband or an oppressor; but they have
sometimes experienced the cold and deliberate oppression of pride, and
sometimes the violent and terrible tyranny of jealousy. When they are
not beloved they are nothing; and when they are they are tormented.
They have almost equal cause to be afraid of indifference and love. Over
three quarters of the globe Nature has placed them between contempt and
misery."
"Even among people where beauty receives the highest homage we find
men who would deprive the sex of every kind of reputation. 'The most
virtuous woman,' says a celebrated Greek, 'is she who is least talked
of.' That morose man, while he imposes duties on women, would deprive
them of the sweets of public esteem, and in exacting virtues from them
would make it a crime to aspire to honour. If a woman were to defend the
cause of her sex she might address him in the following manner:
"'How great is your injustice! If we have an equal right with you to
virtue, why should we not have an equal right to praise? The public
esteem ought to wait upon merit. Our duties are different from yours,
but they are not less difficult to fulfil, or of less consequence to
society: They are the foundations of your felicity, and the sweetness
of life. We are wives and mothers. 'T is we who form the union and the
cordiality of families; 't is we who soften that savage rudeness which
considers everything as due to force, and which would involve man with
man in eternal war. We cultivate in you that humanity which makes you
feel for the misfortunes of others, and our tears forewarn you of your
own danger. Nay, you cannot be ignorant that we have need of courage not
less than you: More feeble in ourselves, we have perhaps more trials to
encounter. Nature assails us with sorrow, law and custom press us with
constraint, and sensibility and virtue alarm us by their continual
conflict. Sometimes also the name of citizen demands from us the tribute
of fortitude. When you offer your blood to the state, think that it
is ours. In giving it our sons and our husbands we give it more than
ourselves. You can only die on the field of battle, but we have the
misfortune to survive those whom we love the most. Alas! while your
ambitious vanity is unceasingly laboring to cover the earth with
statues, with monuments, and with inscriptions to eternize, if possible,
your names, and give yourselves an existence when this body is no more,
why must we be condemned to live and to die unknown? Would that the
grave and eternal forgetfulness should be our lot. Be not our tyrants in
all: Permit our names to be sometime pronounced beyond the narrow circle
in which we live: Permit friendship, or at least love, to inscribe its
emblems on the tomb where our ashes repose; and deny us not the public
esteem which, after the esteem of one's self, is the sweetest reward of
welldoing.'"
Thus the Pennsylvania Magazine, in the time that Paine edited it, was
a seed-bag from which this sower scattered the seeds of great reforms
ripening with the progress of civilization. Through the more popular
press he sowed also. Events selected his seeds of American independence,
of republican equality, freedom from royal, ecclesiastical, and
hereditary privilege, for a swifter and more imposing harvest; but the
whole circle of human ideas and principles was recognized by this
lone wayfaring man. The first to urge extension of the principles of
independence to the enslaved negro; the first to arraign monarchy, and
to point out the danger of its survival in presidency; the first to
propose articles of a more thorough nationality to the new-born States;
the first to advocate international arbitration; the first to expose
the absurdity and criminality of duelling; the first to suggest more
rational ideas of marriage and divorce; the first to advocate national
and international copyright; the first to plead for the animals; the
first to demand justice for woman: what brilliants would our modern
reformers have contributed to a coronet for that man's brow, had he not
presently worshipped the God of his fathers after the way that
theologians called heresy! "Be not righteous overmuch," saith cynical
Solomon; "neither make thyself over-wise: why shouldest thou destroy
thyself?"