The influence of Paine's Quaker training has been traced in his
constructive politics, but its repressive side had more perhaps to do
with his career. "I had some turn," he said, "and I believe some talent,
for poetry; but this I rather repressed than encouraged." It is your
half-repressed poets that kindle revolutions. History might be different
had Paine not been taught fear of music and poetry. He must have epical
commonwealths. The American Republic having temporarily filled his ideal
horizon in the political direction, the disguised Muse turned his eye
upon the possibilities of nature. Morally utilitarian, he yet rarely
writes about physics without betraying the poetic passion for nature of
a suppressed Wordsworth. Nature is his Aphrodite and his Madonna.
"Bred up in antediluvian notions, she has not yet acquired the European
taste of receiving visitors in her dressing-room; she locks and bolts up
her private recesses with extraordinary care, as if not only resolved to
preserve her hoards but conceal her age, and hide the remains of a face
that was young and lovely in the days of Adam."
Defining for Jefferson the distinction between attraction and cohesion,
he says:
"I recollect a scene at one of the theatres which very well explains the
difference. A condemned lady wishes to see her child and the child its
mother: that is Attraction. They were admitted to meet, but when ordered
to part threw their arms around each other and fastened their persons
together: this is Cohesion."
All the atoms or molecules are little mothers and daughters and lovers
clasping each other; it is an interlocking of figures; "and if our eyes
were good enough we should see how it was done." He has a transcendental
perception of unity in things dissimilar. On his walks to Challiot he
passes trees and fountains, and writes a little essay, with figures,
explaining to his friend that the tree is also a fountain, and that by
measuring diameters of trunks and tubes, or branches, the quantity of
timber thrown up by sap-fountains might be known. Some of his casual
speculations he calls "conceits." They are the exuberance of a
scientific imagination inspired by philanthropy and naturalistic
religion. The "inner light" of man corresponds to an "inner spirit" of
nature. The human mind dimmed by ignorance, perverted by passion, turns
the very gifts of nature to thorns, amid which her divine beauty sleeps
until awakened by the kiss of science.
It would be difficult to find anything in the literature of mechanical
invention more naively picturesque than this Quaker, passed through
furnaces of two revolutions, trying to humanize gunpowder. Here is a
substance with maximum of power and minimum of bulk and weight.
"When I consider the wisdom of nature I must think that she endowed
matter with this extraordinary property for other purposes than that of
destruction. Poisons are capable of other uses than that of killing. If
the power which an ounce of gunpowder contains could be detailed out as
steam or water can be it would be a most commodious natural power."
Having failed to convert revolutions to Quakerism, Paine tries to soften
the heart of gunpowder itself, and insists that its explosiveness may be
restrained and detailed like strokes on a boy's top to obtain continual
motion. The sleeping top, the chastened repose of perfect motion, like
the quiet of the spinning worlds, is the Quaker inventor's ideal, and
he begs the President of the United States to try the effect of the
smallest pistol made--the size of a quill--on a wheel with peripheral
cups to receive the discharges.*
* I am reluctantly compelled to give only the main ideas of
several theses of this kind by Paine, found among
Jefferson's papers. The portion of the "Jefferson Papers"
at Washington written by Paine would fill a good volume.
"The biographers of Paine," wrote his friend, Joel Barlow, "should not
forget his mathematical acquirements and his mechanical genius." But it
would require a staff of specialists, and a large volume, to deal with
Paine's scientific studies and contrivances--with his planing machine,
his new crane, his smokeless candle, his wheel of concentric rim, his
scheme for using gunpowder as a motor, above all his iron bridge. As for
the bridge, Paine feels that it is a sort of American revolution
carried into mechanics; his eagle cannot help spreading a little in the
wondering eyes of the Old World. "Great scenes inspire great ideas," he
writes to Sir George Staunton.
"The natural mightiness of America expands the mind, and it partakes
of the greatness it contemplates. Even the war, with all its evils, had
some advantages. It energized invention and lessened the catalogue of
impossibilities. At the conclusion of it every man returned to his home
to repair the ravages it had occasioned, and to think of war no more.
As one amongst thousands who had borne a share in that memorable
revolution, I returned with them to the re-enjoyment of quiet life, and,
that I might not be idle, undertook to construct a single arch for this
river [Schuylkill]. Our beloved General had engaged in rendering another
river, the Potowmac, navigable. The quantity of iron I had allowed in my
plan for this arch was five hundred and twenty tons, to be distributed
into thirteen ribs, in commemoration of the Thirteen United States."
It is amusing after this to find Paine, in his patent, declaring
his special license from "His Most Excellent Majesty King George the
Third."* Had poor George been in his right senses, or ever heard of
the invention, he might have suspected some connection between this
insurrection of the iron age and the American "rebellion." However,
Paine is successful in keeping America out of his specification, albeit
a poetic touch appears.
* "No. 1667. Specification of Thomas Paine. Constructing
Arches. Vaulted Roofs, and Ceilings." The specification,
dated August 28, 1788, declares his invention to be "on
principles new and different to anything hitherto
practised." The patents for England, Scotland, and Ireland
were granted in September. An iron arch of one hundred feet
was designed by Pritchard and erected by Darby at Coalbrook
Dale, Shropshire, in 1779, but it did not anticipate the
invention of Paine, as may be seen by the article on "Iron
Bridges" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which also well
remarks that Paine's "daring in engineering does full
justice to the fervour of his political career." (Eighth
edition; it is omitted in the ninth.)
"The idea and construction of this arch is taken from the figure of
a spider's circular web, of which it resembles a section, and from a
conviction that when nature empowered this insect to make a web she also
instructed her in the strongest mechanical method of constructing it.
Another idea, taken from nature in the construction of this arch, is
that of increasing the strength of matter by dividing and combining it,
and thereby causing it to act over a larger space than it would occupy
in a solid state, as is seen in the quills of birds, bones of animals,
reeds, canes, &c. The curved bars of the arch are composed of pieces
of any length joined together to the whole extent of the arch, and take
curvature by bending."
Paine and his bridge came to England at a fortunate moment. Blackfriars
Bridge had just given way, and two over the Tyne, one built by Smeaton,
had collapsed by reason of quicksands under their piers. And similarly
Pitt's policy was collapsing through the treacherous quicksands on which
it was based. Paper money and a "sinking fund" at home, and foreign
alliances that disregarded the really controlling interests of nations,
Paine saw as piers set in the Channel.* He at once took his place
in England as a sort of institution. While the engineers beheld with
admiration his iron arch clearing the treacherous river-beds, statesmen
saw with delight his prospective bridges spanning the political
"Rubicon." Nothing could be more felicitous than the title of his
inaugural pamphlet, "Prospects on the Rubicon." It remembered an
expression in Parliament at the beginning of the war on America. "'The
Rubicon is passed,' was once given as a reason for prosecuting the most
expensive war that England ever knew. Sore with the event, and groaning
beneath a galling yoke of taxes, she has again been led ministerially on
to the shore of the same delusive and fatal river." The bridge-builder
stretches his shining arches to France, Holland, Germany,--free commerce
and friendship with all peoples, but no leagues with the sinking piers
called thrones.
* It is droll to find even Paine's iron bridge resting
somewhat on a "paper "pier. "Perhaps," he writes Jefferson,
"the excess of paper currency, and the wish to find objects
for realizing it, is one of the motives for promoting the
plan of the Bridge."
At Rotherham, in Yorkshire, where Messrs. Walker fitted up a workshop
for Paine, he was visited by famous engineers and political personages.
There and in London he was "lionized," as Franklin had been in Paris. We
find him now passing a week with Edmund Burke, now at the country-seat
of the Duke of Portland, or enjoying the hospitalities of Lord
Fitzwilliam at Wentworth House. He is entertained and consulted on
public affairs by Fox, Lord Lansdowne, Sir George Staunton, Sir Joseph
Banks; and many an effort is made to enlist his pen. Lord Lansdowne,
it appears, had a notion of Paine's powers of political engineering so
sublime that he thought he might bridge the Atlantic, and re-connect
England and America! All of this may be gathered from the Jefferson
papers, as we shall presently see; but it should be remarked here that
Paine's head was not turned by his association with the gentry and
aristocracy. The impression he made on these eminent gentlemen was
largely due to his freedom from airs. They found him in his workshop,
hammer in hand, proud only of free America and of his beautiful arch.
Professor Peter Lesley of Philadelphia tells me that when visiting in
early life the works at Rotherham, Paine's workshop and the very tools
he used were pointed out. They were preserved with care. He conversed
with an aged and intelligent workman who had worked under Paine as a
lad. Professor Lesley, who had shared some of the prejudice against
Paine, was impressed by the earnest words of this old man. Mr. Paine, he
said, was the most honest man, and the best man he ever knew. After he
had been there a little time everybody looked up to him, the Walkers and
their workmen. He knew the people for miles round, and went into their
homes; his benevolence, his friendliness, his knowledge, made him
beloved by all, rich and poor. His memory had always lasted there.
{1789}
In truth Paine, who had represented the heart of England, in America,
was now representing the heart of America to England. America was
working by his hand, looking through his eyes, and silently publishing
to the people from whom he sprung what the new nation could make out
of a starving English staymaker. He was a living Declaration of
Independence. The Americans in London--the artists West and Trumbull,
the Alexanders (Franklin's connections), and others--were fond of him as
a friend and proud of him as a countryman.
The subjoined letter to Benjamin West (afterwards P. R. A.) shows
Paine's pleasant relations with that artist and with Trumbull. It is
dated March 8, 1789.
"I have informed James of the matter which you and I talked of on
Saturday, and he is much rejoiced at an opportunity of shewing his
gratitude to you for the permission you indulged him with in attending
Mr. Trumbull at your rooms. As I have known his parents upwards of
twenty years, and the manners and habits he has been educated in, and
the disposition he is of, I can with confidence to myself undertake to
vouch for the faithful discharge of any trust you may repose in him;
and as he is a youth of quick discernment and a great deal of silent
observation he cannot be easily imposed upon, or turned aside from his
attention, by any contrivance of workmen. I will put him in a way
of keeping a diary of every day's work he sees done, and of any
observations he may make, proper for you to be informed of, which he can
send once or twice a week to you at Windsor; and any directions you may
have to give him in your absence can be conveyed through Mr. Trumbull,
or what other method you please, so that James is certified they come
from you.
"James has made a tender of his service to Mr. Trumbull, if it should be
of any use, when his picture is to be exhibited; but that will probably
not be till nearly the time the impressions will be struck off. James
need not entirely omit his drawing while he is attending the plates.
Some employment will, in general, fix a person to a place better than
having only to stand still and look on. I suppose they strike off about
three impressions in an hour, and as James is master of a watch he will
find their average of works,--and also how fast they can work when they
have a mind to make haste,--and he can easily number each impression,
which will be a double check on any being carried off. I intend visiting
him pretty often, while he is on duty, which will be an additional
satisfaction to yourself for the trust you commit to him."
This chapter may well close with a letter from Paine in London
(January 6, 1789) to his young friend "Kitty Nicholson,"--known at the
Borden-town school, and in New York,--on the occasion of her marriage
with Colonel Few.** Let those who would know the real Thomas Paine read
this letter!
* I have not been able to find anything more of Paine's
protege James, whose parents were known to him before his
departure for American. I am indebted to Mr. W. E. Benjamin
for the letter.
** To a representative of this family I am indebted for the
letter. Concerning the Nicholsons, see page 212.
"I sincerely thank you for your very friendly and welcome letter. I was
in the country when it arrived and did not receive it soon enough to
answer it by the return of the vessel.
"I very affectionately congratulate Mr. and Mrs. Few on their happy
marriage, and every branch of the families allied by that connection;
and I request my fair correspondent to present me to her partner, and
to say, for me, that he has obtained one of the highest Prizes on the
wheel. Besides the pleasure which your letter gives me to hear you
are all happy and well, it relieves me from a sensation not easy to
be dismissed; and if you will excuse a few dull thoughts for obtruding
themselves into a congratulatory letter I will tell you what it is. When
I see my female friends drop off by matrimony I am sensible of something
that affects me like a loss in spite of all the appearances of joy.
I cannot help mixing the sincere compliment of regret with that of
congratulation. It appears as if I had outlived or lost a friend.
It seems to me as if the original was no more, and that which she is
changed to forsakes the circle and forgets the scenes of former society.
Felicities are cares superior to those she formerly cared for, create to
her a new landscape of Life that excludes the little friendships of
the past. It is not every lady's mind that is sufficiently capacious to
prevent those greater objects crowding out the less, or that can spare a
thought to former friendships after she has given her hand and heart
to the man who loves her. But the sentiment your letter contains has
prevented these dull Ideas from mixing with the congratulation I present
you, and is so congenial with the enlarged opinion I have always formed
of you, that at the time I read your letter with pleasure I read it with
pride, because it convinces me that I have some judgment in that most
difficult science--a Lady's mind. Most sincerely do I wish you all the
good that Heaven can bless you with, and as you have in your own family
an example of domestic happiness you are already in the knowledge
of obtaining it. That no condition we can enjoy is an exemption from
care--that some shade will mingle itself with the brightest sunshine
of Life--that even our affections may become the instruments of our
sorrows--that the sweet felicities of home depend on good temper as well
as on good sense, and that there is always something to forgive even
in the nearest and dearest of our friends,--are truths which, tho' too
obvious to be told, ought never to be forgotten; and I know you will not
esteem my friendship the less for impressing them upon you.
"Though I appear a sort of wanderer, the married state has not a
sincerer friend than I am. It is the harbour of human life, and is, with
respect to the things of this world, what the next world is to this. It
is home; and that one word conveys more than any other word can express.
For a few years we may glide along the tide of youthful single life and
be wonderfully delighted; but it is a tide that flows but once, and what
is still worse, it ebbs faster than it flows, and leaves many a hapless
voyager aground. I am one, you see that have experienced the fate, I am
describing.* I have lost my tide; it passed by while every thought of my
heart was on the wing for the salvation of my dear America, and I have
now as contentedly as I can, made myself a little bower of willows on
the shore that has the solitary resemblance of a home. Should I always
continue the tenant of this home, I hope my female acquaintance will
ever remember that it contains not the churlish enemy of their sex,
not the inaccessible cold hearted mortal, nor the capricious tempered
oddity, but one of the best and most affectionate of their friends.
* Paine's marriage and separation from his wife had been
kept a secret in America, where the "Tories" would have used
it to break the influence of his patriotic writings. It may
be stated here, in addition to what is said on p. 32, that,
in the absence of any divorce law in England, a separation
under the Common Law was generally held as pronouncing the
marriage a nullity ab initio. According to Chalmers Paine
was dissatisfied with articles of separation drawn up by an
attorney, Josias Smith, May 24, 1774, and insisted on new
ones, to which the clergyman was a party. The "common
lawyers" regarded the marriage as completely annulled, and
Paine thus free to marry again. However, he evidently never
thought of doing so, and that his relations with ladies were
as chaste as affectionate appears in this letter to Mrs.
Few, and in his correspondence generally.
"I did not forget the Dunstable hat, but it was not on wear here when
I arrived. That I am a negligent correspondent I freely confess, and I
always reproach myself for it. You mention only one letter, but I
wrote twice; once by Dr. Derby, and another time by the Chevalier St.
Triss--by whom I also wrote to Gen. Morris, Col. Kirkbride, and several
friends in Philadelphia, but have received no answers. I had one letter
from Gen. Morris last winter, which is all I have received from New York
till the arrival of yours.
"I thank you for the details of news you give. Kiss Molly Field for
me and wish her joy,--and all the good girls of Borden Town. How is
my favorite Sally Morris, my boy Joe, and my horse Button? pray let me
know. Polly and Nancy Rogers,--are they married? or do they intend to
build bowers as I have done? If they do, I wish they would twist their
green willows somewhere near to mine.
"I am very much engaged here about my Bridge--There is one building of
my Construction at Messers. Walker's Iron Works in Yorkshire, and I have
direction of it. I am lately come from thence and shall return again in
two or three weeks.
"As to news on this side the water, the king is mad, and there is great
bustle about appointing a Regent. As it happens, I am in pretty close
intimacy with the heads of the opposition--the Duke of Portland, Mr. Fox
and Mr. Burke. I have sent your letter to Mrs. Burke as a specimen of
the accomplishments of the American Ladies. I sent it to Miss Alexander,
a lady you have heard me speak of, and I asked her to give me a few of
her thoughts how to answer it. She told me to write as I felt, and I
have followed her advice.
"I very kindly thank you for your friendly invitation to Georgia and
if I am ever within a thousand miles of you, I will come and see you;
though it be but for a day.
"You touch me on a very tender part when you say my friends on your side
the water 'cannot be reconciled to the idea of my resigning my adopted
America, even for my native England.' They are right. Though I am in as
elegant style of acquaintance here as any American that ever came over,
my heart and myself are 3000 miles apart; and I had rather see my
horse Button in his own stable, or eating the grass of Bordentown or
Morrisania, than see all the pomp and show of Europe.
"A thousand years hence (for I must indulge in a few thoughts) perhaps
in less, America may be what England now is! The innocence of her
character that won the hearts of all nations in her favor may sound like
a romance, and her inimitable virtue as if it had never been. The ruins
of that liberty which thousands bled for, or suffered to obtain, may
just furnish materials for a village tale or extort a sigh from
rustic sensibility, while the fashionable of that day, enveloped in
dissipation, shall deride the principle and deny the fact.
"When we contemplate the fall of Empires and the extinction of nations
of the ancient world, we see but little to excite our regret than
the mouldering ruins of pompous palaces, magnificent monuments, lofty
pyramids, and walls and towers of the most costly workmanship. But when
the Empire of America shall fall, the subject for contemplative sorrow
will be infinitely greater than crumbling brass or marble can inspire.
It will not then be said, here stood a temple of vast antiquity,--here
rose a Babel of invisible height, or there a palace of sumptuous
extravagance; but here, ah painful thought! the noblest work of human
wisdom, the grandest scene of human glory, the fair cause of freedom
rose and fell!
"Read this and then ask if I forget America--But I 'll not be dull if I
can help it, so I leave off, and close my letter tomorrow, which is the
day the mail is made up for America.
"January 7th. I have heard this morning with extreme concern of the
death of our worthy friend Capt. Read. Mrs. Read lives in a house of
mine at Bordentown, and you will much oblige me by telling her how much
I am affected by her loss; and to mention to her, with that delicacy
which such an offer and her situation require, and which no one knows
better how to convey than yourself, that the two years' rent which is
due I request her to accept of, and to consider herself at home till she
hears further from me.
"This is the severest winter I ever knew in England; the frost has
continued upwards of five weeks, and is still likely to continue. All
the vessels from America have been kept off by contrary winds. The
'Polly' and the 'Pigeon' from Philadelphia and the 'Eagle' from
Charleston are just got in.
"If you should leave New York before I arrive (which I hope will not be
the case) and should pass through Philadelphia, I wish you would do
me the favor to present my compliments to Mrs. Powell, the lady whom I
wanted an opportunity to introduce you to when you were in Philadelphia,
but was prevented by your being at a house where I did not visit.
"There is a Quaker favorite of mine at New York, formerly Miss Watson of
Philadelphia; she is now married to Dr. Lawrence, and is an acquaintance
of Mrs. Oswald: be so kind as to make her a visit for me. You will like
her conversation. She has a little of the Quaker primness--but of the
pleasing kind--about her.
"I am always distressed at closing a letter, because it seems like
taking leave of my friends after a parting conversation.--Captain
Nicholson, Mrs. Nicholson, Hannah, Fanny, James, and the little ones,
and you my dear Kitty, and your partner for life--God bless you all! and
send me safe back to my much loved America!
"Thomas Paine--aet. 52.
"or if you better like it 'Common Sense.'"
"This comes by the packet which sails from Falmouth, 300 miles from
London; but by the first vessel from London to New York I will send
you some magazines. In the meantime be so kind as to write to me by the
first opportunity. Remember me to the family at Morrisania, and all my
friends at New York and Bordentown. Desire Gen. Morris to take another
guinea of Mr. Constable, who has some money of mine in his hands, and
give it to my boy Joe. Tell Sally to take care of 'Button,' Then direct
for me at Mr. Peter Whiteside's London. When you are at Charleston
remember me to my dear old friend Mrs. Lawrence, Col. and Mrs. L.
Morris, and Col. Washington; and at Georgia, to Col. Walton. Adieu."