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CHAPTER                                                                                                                                                          PAGE
I. ------- "KILL THE KING, BUT NOT THE MAN" - 1793 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .       1
II. ------ AN OUTLAWED ENGLISH AMBASSADOR - 1793 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     17
III. ----- REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION - 1793. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     32
IV. ----- A GARDEN IN THE FAUBOURG ST. DENIS - 1793. . . . . . . . . . . . . .     61
V. ------ A CONSPIRACY - 1793 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     77
VI. ----- A TESTIMONY UNDER THE GUILLOTINE - 1793-1794  . . . . . . . . .     97
VII. ---- A MINISTER AND HIS PRISONER - 1794 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   111
VIII. --- SICK AND IN PRISON - 1794 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   128
IX. ----- A RESTORATION - 1795 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   152
X. ------ THE SILENCE OF WASHINGTON - 1795-1796  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   165
XI. ----- "THE AGE OF REASON" - 1794-1795 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   181
XII. ---- FRIENDSHIPS - 1795-1796  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   223
XIII. --- THEOPHILANTHROPY - 1796-1797  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   241
XIV. --- THE REPUBLICAN ABDIEL - 1797-1800 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   270
XV. ---- THE LAST YEAR IN EUROPE - 1801-1802 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   293
XVI. --- THE AMERICAN INQUISITION - 1802-1803  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   308
XVII. -- NEW ROCHELLE AND THE BONNEVILLES - 1803-1805  . . . . . . .   328
XVIII. - A NEW YORK PROMETHEUS - 1805-1807  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   360
XIX. --- PERSONAL TRAITS - 1806-1808 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   388
XX. ---- DEATH AND RESURRECTION - 1908-1809. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   405
APPENDIX A. -- THE COBBETT PAPERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   429
APPENDIX B. -- THE HALL MANUSCRIPTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   460
APPENDIX C. -- PORTRAITS OF PAINE  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   473
APPENDIX D. -- BRIEF LIST OF PAINE'S WORKS  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   482
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   485

p.1

DUMAS' hero, Dr. Gilbert (in "Ange Pitou" ), an idealization of Paine, interprets his hopes and horrors on the opening of the fateful year 1793.   Dr. Gilbert's pamphlets had helped to found liberty in the New World, but sees that it may prove the germ of total ruin to the Old World.
 

"A new world," repeated Gilbert; "that is to say, a vast open space, a clear table to work upon, -- no laws, but no abuses; no ideas, but no prejudices [1].   In France, thirty thousand square leagues of territory for thirty millions of people; that is to say, should the space be equally divided, scarcely room for a cradle or a grave for each.   Out yonder, in America, two hundred thousand square leagues for three millions of people; frontiers which are ideal, for they border on the desert, which is to say, immensity.   In those two hundred thousand leagues, navigable rivers, having a course of a thousand leagues; virgin forests, of which God alone knows the limits, -- that is to say, all the elements of life, of civilization, and of a brilliant future.   Oh, how easy it is, Billot, when a man is called Lafayette, and is accustomed to wield a sword; when a man is called Washington, and is accustomed to reflect deeply, -- how easy is it to combat against walls of wood, of earth, of stone, of human flesh!   But

[1]     Sampson Perry, who in 1796 published an interesting "History of the French Revolution," has left an account of his visit to Paine in January, 1793:

"I breakfasted with Paine about this time at the Philadelphia Hotel, and asked him which province in America he     conceived the best calculated for a fugitive to settle in, and, as it were, to begin the world with no other means or     pretensions than common sense and common honesty.  Whether he saw the occasion and (p.xiv) felt the tendency of this question I know not; but be turned it aside by the political news of the day, and added that he was going to dine with Petion, the mayor, and that he knew I should be welcome and be entertained.   We went to the mayoralty in a hackney coach, and were seated at a table about which were placed the following persons: Petion, the mayor of Paris, with his female relation who did the honour of the table; Dumourier, the commander-in-chief of the French forces, and one of his aides-de-camp; Santerre, the commandant of the armed force of Paris, and an aide-de-camp; Condorcet; Brissot; Gaudet; Gensonnet; Danton; Kersaint; Clavière; Vergniaud; and Syèyes Sieyès]; which, with three other persons, whose names I do not now recollect, and including Paine and myself, made in all nineteen."

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when, instead of founding, it is necessary to destroy; when we see in the old order things that we are obliged to attack, walls of bygone, crumbling ideas; and that behind the ruins even of these walls crowds of people and of interests still take refuge; when, after having found the idea, we find that in order to make the people adopt it, it will be necessary perhaps to decimate that people, from the old who remember to the child who has still to learn; from the recollection which is the monument to the instinct that is its germ -- then, oh then, Billot, it is a task that will make all shudder who can see beneath the horizon . . . .  I shall, however, persevere, for although I see obstacles, I can perceive the end; and that end is splendid, Billot.   It is not the liberty of France alone that I dream of; it is the liberty of the whole world.   It is not the physical equality; it is equality before the law, -- equality of rights.   It is not only the fraternity of our own citizens, but of all nations . . . .   Forward, then, and over the heaps of our dead bodies may one day march the generations of which this boy here is in the advanced guard!"

Though Dr. Gilbert has been in the Bastille, though he barely escapes the bullet of a revolutionist, he tries to unite the throne and the people.   So, as we have seen, did Paine struggle until the King took flight, and, over his own signature, branded all his pledges as extorted lies.   Henceforth for the King personally he has no respect; yet the whole purpose of his life is now to save, that of the prisoner.   Besides his humane horror of capital punishment, especially in a case which involves the heads of thousands, Paine foresees Nemesis fashioning her wheels in every part of Europe, and her rudder across the ocean, -- where America beholds in Louis XVI. her deliverer.

Paine's outlawry, announced by Kersaint in Convention, January 1st, was more eloquent for wrath

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than he for clemency.   Under such menaces the majority for sparing Louis shrank with the New Year; French pride arose, and with Danton was eager to defy despots by tossing to them the head of a king.   Poor Paine found his comrades retreating.   What would a knowledge of the French tongue have been worth to this leading republican of the world, just then the one man sleeplessly seeking to save a King's life!   He could not plead with his enraged republicans, who at length over powered even Brissot, so far as to draw him into the fatal plan of voting for the King's death, coupled with submission to the verdict of the people.   Paine saw that there was at the moment no people, but only an infuriated clan.   He was now defending a forlorn hope, but he struggled with a heroism that would have commanded the homage of Europe had not its courts been also clans.   He hit on a scheme which he hoped might; in that last extremity, save the real revolution from a suicidal inhumanity.   It was the one statesmanlike proposal of the time that the King should be held as a hostage for the peaceful behavior of other kings, and, when their war on France had ceased, banished to the United States.

On January 15th, before the vote on the King's punishment was put, Paine gave his manuscript address to the president: debate closed before it could be read, and it was printed.   He argued that the Assembly, in bringing back Louis when he had abdicated and fled, was the more guilty; and against his transgressions it should be remembered that by his aid the shackles of America were broken.

p.4 -- "KILL THE KING, BUT NOT THE MAN"    [1793]
 

"Let then those United States be the guard and the asylum of Louis Capet [1].   There, in the future, remote from the miseries and crimes of royalty, he may learn, from the constant presence of public prosperity, that the true system of government consists not in monarchs, but in fair, equal, and honorable representation.   In recalling this circumstance, and submitting this proposal, I consider myself a citizen of both countries.   I submit it as an American who feels the debt of gratitude he owes to every Frenchman.   I submit it as a man, who, albeit an adversary of kings, forgets not that they are subject to human frailties.   I support my proposal as a citizen of the French Republic, because it appears to me the best and most politic measure that can be adopted.   As far as my experience in public life extends, I have ever observed that the great mass of people are always just, both in their intentions and their object; but the true method of attaining such purpose does not always appear at once.   The English nation had groaned under the Stuart despotism.   Hence Charles I. was executed; but Charles II. was restored to all the powers his father had lost.   Forty years later the same family tried to re-establish their oppression; the nation banished the whole race from its territories.   The remedy was effectual; the Stuart family sank into obscurity, merged itself in the masses, and is now extinct."

He reminds the Convention that the king had two brothers out of the country who might naturally desire his death: the execution of the king might make them presently plausible pretenders to the throne, around whom their foreign enemies would rally: while the man recognized by foreign powers as the rightful monarch of France was living there could be no such pretender.
 

"It has already been proposed to abolish the penalty of death, and it is with infinite satisfaction that I recollect the humane and excellent oration pronounced by Robespierre on the subject, in the constituent Assembly.    Monarchical

[1]     Among the manuscripts of Genêt, the first Minister sent by the Convention to the United States, confided to me by his (p.xii) son, George Clinton Genêt of New York, I find a memorandum of great historical interest, which may be inserted here in advance of the monograph I hope to prepare concerning that much-wronged ambassador.   In this memorandum Genêt -- a brother of Madame Campan -- states that his appointment to the United States was in part because of the position his family had held at Court, and with a view to the banishment of the royal family to that country.   (It had already been arranged that Paine should move for this in the Convention.) I now quote Genêt:

"Roux Facillac, who had been very intimate in my father's family at Versailles, met me one morning [January 14, 1793] and wished me to spend the evening at Le Brun's, where I had been invited.   He accompanied me there and we met Brissot, Guadet, Leonnet, Ducos, Fauchet, Thomas Paine, and most of the Gironde leaders. . . .   Tom Paine, who did not pretend to understand French, took no part in the conversation, and sat quietly sipping his claret.   "Ask Paine, Genêt," said Brissot, "what effect the execution of Capet would have in America?   "Paine replied to my enquiry by simply saying "bad, very bad."    The next day Paine presented to the Convention his celebrated letter demanding in the name of Liberty, and the people of the United States, that Louis should be sent to the United States.   Vergniaux enquired of me what effect I thought it would have in Europe, I replied in a few words that it would gratify the enemies of France who had not forgiven Louis the acceptance of the Constitution nor the glorious results of the American Revolution. . . .   'Genêt,' continued Le Brun, 'how would you like to go to the United States and take Capet and his family with you?' "

The next day, January 15, Genêt was appointed by Le Brun (Minister of Foreign Affairs), and Paine's appeal was made in the Convention; but there is reason to believe that Le Brun's servant was a spy; and the conversation, reported to the Jacobins soon after its occurrence, "contributed," Genêt believed, "to the early fall of Louis." -- Conway, The Writings of Thomas Paine, vol. iv, Introduction, p.xi-xii.

p.5 -- "KILL THE KING, BUT NOT THE MAN"    [1793]

governments have trained the human race to sanguinary punishments, but the people should not follow the examples of their oppressors in such vengeance.   As France has been the first of European nations to abolish royalty, let her also be the first to abolish the punishment of death, and to find out a milder and more effectual substitute."

This was admirable art.   Under shelter of Robespierre's appeal against the death penalty, the "Mountain," [1] could not at the moment break the force of Paine's plea by reminding the Convention of his Quaker sentiments.   It will be borne in mind that up to this time Robespierre was not impressed, nor Marat possessed, by the homicidal demon.   Marat had felt for Paine a sort of contemptuous kindness, and one day privately said to him: "It is you, then, who believe in a republic; you have too much sense to believe in such a dream."   Robespierre, according to Lamartine, "affected for the cosmopolitan radicalism of Paine the respect of a neophite for ideas not understood."   Both leaders now suspected that Paine had gone over to the "Brissotins," as the Girondists were beginning to be called.   However, the Brissotins, though a majority, had quailed before the ferocity with which the Jacobins had determined on the king's death.   M. Taine declares that the victory of the minority in this case was the familiar one of reckless violence over the more civilized the wild beast over the tame.   Louis Blanc denies that the Convention voted, as one of them said, under poignards; but the signs of fear are unmistakable.

[1]    So called from the high benches on which these members sat.   The seats of the Girondists on the floor were called the "Plain," and after their overthrow the "Marsh."

p.6 -- "KILL THE KING, BUT NOT THE MAN"    [1793]

Vergniaud had declared it an insult for arty one to suppose he would vote for the king's death, but he voted for it.   Villette was threatened with death if he did not vote for that of the king.   Sieyès, who had attacked Paine for republicanism, voted death.   "What," he afterward said, "what were the tribute of my glass of wine in that torrent of brandy?"   But Paine did not withhold his cup of cold water.   When his name was called he cried out: "I vote for the detention of Louis till the end of the war, and after that his perpetual banishment."   He spoke his well prepared vote in French, and may have given courage to others.   For even under poignards -- the most formidable being liability to a charge of royalism -- the vote had barely gone in favor of death [1].

The fire-breathing Mountain felt now that its supremacy was settled.   It had learned its deadly art of conquering a thinking majority by recklessness.   But suddenly another question was sprung upon the Convention: Shall the execution be immediate, or shall there be delay?   The Mountain groans and hisses as the question is raised, but the dictation had not extended to this point, and the question must be iscussed.   Here is one more small chance for Paine's poor royal client.   Can the execution only be postponed it will probably never be executed.   Unfortunately Marat, whose

[1]    Upwards of three hundred voted with Paine, who says that the majority by which death was carried, unconditionally, was twenty-five.   As a witness who had watched the case, his testimony may correct the estimate of Carlyle

"Death by a small majority of Fifty-three.   Nay, if we deduct from the one side, and add to the other, a certain Twenty-six who said Death but coupled some faintest ineffectual surmise of mercy with it, the majority will be but One."   See also Paine's "Mémoire, etc., à Monroe."

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thirst for the King's blood is almost cannibalistic, can read on Paine's face his elation.   He realizes that this American, with Washington behind him, has laid before the Convention a clear and consistent scheme for utilizing the royal prisoner.   The king's neck under a suspended knife, it will rest with the foreign enemies of France whether it shall fall or not; while the magnanimity of France and its respect for American gratitude will prevail.   Paine, then, must be dealt with somehow in this new debate about delay.

He might, indeed, have been dealt with summarily had not the Moniteur done him an opportune service; on January 17th and 18th it printed Paine's unspoken argument for mercy, along with Erskine's speech at his trial in London, and the verdict.   So on the 19th, when Paine entered the Convention, it was with the prestige not only of one outlawed by Great Britain for advocating the Rights of Man, but of a representative of the best Englishmen and their principles.   It would be vain to assail the author's loyalty to the Republic.   That he would speak that day was certain, for on the morrow (20th) the final vote was to be taken.   The Mountain could not use on Paine their weapon against Girondins; they could not accuse the author of the "Rights of Man" of being royalist.   When he had mounted the tribune, and the clerk (Bancal, Franklin's friend) was beginning to read his speech, Marat cried, "I submit that Thomas Paine is incompetent to vote on this question; being a Quaker his religious principles are opposed to the death-penalty."   There was

p.8 -- "KILL THE KING, BUT NOT THE MAN"    [1793]

great confusion for a time.   The anger of the Jacobins was extreme, says, Guizot, and "they refused to listen to the speech of Paine, the American, till respect for his courage gained him a hearing:" [1]   Demands for freedom of speech gradually subdued the interruptions, and the secretary proceeded:
 

"Very sincerely do I regret the Convention's vote of yesterday for death.   I have the advantage of some experience; it is near twenty years that I have been engaged in the cause of liberty, having contributed something to it in the revolution of the United States of America.   My language has always been that of liberty and humanity, and I know by experience that nothing so exalts a nation as the union of these two principles, under all circumstances.   I know that the public mind of France, and particularly that of Paris, has been heated and irritated by the dangers to which they have been exposed; but could we carry our thoughts into the future, when the dangers are ended, and the irritations forgotten, what to-day seems an act of justice may then appear an act of vengeance.   [Murmurs.]   My anxiety for the cause of France has become for the moment concern for its honor.   If, on my return to America, I should employ myself on a history of the French Revolution, I had rather record a thousand errors dictated by humanity, than one inspired by a justice too severe.   I voted against an appeal to the people, because it appeared to me that the Convention was needlessly wearied on that point; but I so voted in the hope that this Assembly would pronounce against death, and for the same punishment that the nation would have voted, at least in my opinion, that is, for reclusion during the war and banishment thereafter.   That is the punishment most efficacious, because it includes the whole family at once, and none other can so operate.   I am still against the appeal to the primary assemblies, because there is a better method.   This Convention has been elected to form a Constitution, which will be submitted to the primary assemblies.   After its acceptance a necessary consequence will be an election, and another Assembly.   We cannot suppose that the

[1]    "History of France,"  vi., p.136.

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present Convention will last more than five or six months.   The choice of new deputies will express the, national opinion on the propriety or impropriety of your sentence, with as much efficacy as if those primary assemblies had been consulted on it.   As the duration of our functions here cannot be long, it is a part of our duty to consider the interests of those who shall replace us.   If by any act of ours the number of the nation's enemies shall be needlessly increased, and that of its friends diminished, -- at a time when the finances may be more strained than to-day, -- we should not be justifiable for having thus unnecessarily heaped obstacles in the path of our successors.   Let us therefore not be precipitate in our decisions.

"France has but one ally -- the United States of America.   That is the only nation that can furnish France with naval provisions, for the kingdoms of northern Europe are, or soon will be, at war with her.   It happens, unfortunately, that the person now under discussion is regarded in America as a deliverer of their country.   I can assure you that his execution will there spread universal sorrow, and it is in your power not thus to wound the feelings of your ally.   Could I speak the French language I would descend to your bar, and in their name become your petitioner to respite the execution of the sentence on Louis."

Here were loud murmurs from the "Mountain," answered with demands for liberty of opinion.   Thuriot sprang to his feet crying, "This is not the language of Thomas Paine."   Marat mounted the tribune and asked Paine some questions, apparently in English, then descending he said to the Assembly in French: "I denounce the interpreter, and I maintain that such is not the opinion of Thomas Paine.   It is a wicked and faithless translation." [1]   These words, audacious as mendacious,

[1]    "Venant d'un démocrate tel que Thomas Paine, d'un homme qui avait vécu parmi les Américains, d'un penseur, cette déclaration parut si dangereuse à Marat que, pour en détruire l'effet, il n'hésita pas à s'écrier: 'Je dénonce le truchement.   Je soutiens que ce n'est point là l'opinion de Thomas Paine.   C'est une traduction infidèle.' " ["The coming of a democrat such as Thomas Paine, of a man who had lived among the Americans, of a thinker, this declaration appeared so dangerous to Marat that, to destroy the effect of it, he didn't hesitate to exclaim: 'I denounce the interpreter.   I maintain that it is not the opinion of Thomas Paine.   It is an unfaithful translation.' " -- Digital Editor's Translation.] -- Louis Blanc.   See also "Histoire Parliamentaire,"  xxiii., p. 250.

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caused a tremendous uproar. Garran came to the rescue of the frightened clerk, declaring that he had read the original, and the translation was correct.   Paine stood silent and calm during the storm.   The clerk proceeded:
 

"Your Executive Committee will nominate an ambassador to Philadelphia; my sincere wish is that he may announce to America that the National Convention of France, out of pure friendship to America, has consented to respite Louis.   That people, your only ally, have asked you by my vote to delay the execution.

"Ah, citizens, give not the tyrant of England the triumph of seeing the man perish on a scaffold who helped my dear brothers of America to break his chains!"

At the conclusion of this speech Marat "launched himself into the middle of the hall" and cried out that Paine had "voted against the punishment of death because he was a Quaker."   Paine replied, "I voted against it both morally and politically."

Had the vote been taken that day perhaps Louis might have escaped.   Brissot, shielded from charges of royalism by Paine's republican fame, now strongly supported his cause.   "A cruel precipitation," he cried, "may alienate our friends in England, Ireland, America.   Take care!   The opinion of European peoples is worth to you armies!"   But all this only brought out the Mountain's particular kind of courage; they were ready to defy the world -- Washington included -- in order to prove that a King's neck was no more than any other man's.   Marat's clan -- the "Nihilists" of the time, whose strength was that they stopped at nothing

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-- had twenty-four hours to work in; they surrounded the Convention next day with a mob howling for "justice!"   Fifty-five members were absent; of the 690 present a majority of seventy decided that Louis XVI. should die within twenty-four hours.

A hundred years have passed since that tragedy of poor Louis; graves have given up their dead; secrets of the hearts that then played their part are known.   The world can now judge between England's Outlaw and England's King of that day.   For it is established, as we have seen, both by English and French archives, that while Thomas Paine was toiling night and day to save the life of Louis that life lay in the hand of the British Ministry.   Some writers question the historic truth of the offer made by Danton, but none can question the refusal of intercession, urged by Fox and others at a time when (as Count d'Estaing told Morris) the Convention was ready to give Pitt the whole French West Indies to keep him quiet.   It was no doubt with this knowledge that Paine declared from the tribune that George III.   Would triumph in the execution of the King who helped America to break England's chains.   Brissot also knew it when with weighed words he reported for his Committee (January 12th): "The grievance of the British Cabinet against France is not that Louis is in judgment, but that Thomas Paine wrote `The Rights of Man.' "   "The militia were armed," says Louis Blanc, "in the south-east of England troops received order to march to London, the meeting of Parliament was advanced forty days, the Tower

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was reinforced by a new garrison, in fine there was unrolled a formidable preparation of war against -- Thomas Paine's book on the Rights of Man!" [1]

Incredible as this may appear the debates in the House of Commons, on which it is fairly founded, would be more incredible were they not duly reported in the "Parliamentary History." [2]   In the debates on the Alien Bill, permitting the King to order any foreigner out of the country at will, on making representations to the French Convention in behalf of the life of Louis, on augmenting the military forces with direct reference to France, the recent trial of Paine was rehearsed, and it was plainly shown that the object of the government was to suppress freedom of the press by Terror.   Erskine was denounced for defending Paine and for afterwards attending a meeting of the "Society of Friends of the Liberty of the Press," to whose resolutions on Paine's case his name was attached.   Erskine found gallant defenders in the House, among them Fox, who demanded of Pitt: "Can you not prosecute Paine without an army?"   Burke at this time enacted a dramatic scene.   Having stated that three thousand daggers had been ordered at Birmingham by an Englishman, he drew from his pocket a dagger, cast it on the floor of the House of Commons, and cried: "That is what we are to get from an alliance with France!"   Paine -- Paine -- Paine -- was the burden laid on Pitt, who had said to Lady Hester Stanhope: "Tom Paine is quite right."   That Thomas Paine and his

[1]    "Histoire de la Révolution,"  vol. viii., p.96.

[2]    vol. xxv.

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"Rights of Man" were the actual cause of the English insults to which their declaration of war replied was so well understood in the French Convention that its first answer to the menaces was to appoint Paine and Condorcet to write an address to the English people [1].

It is noticeable that on the question whether the judgment on the King's fate should be submitted to the people, Paine voted "No."   His belief in the right of all to representation implied distrust of the immediate voice of the masses.   The King had said that if his case were referred to the people "he should be massacred."   Gouverneur Morris had heard this, and no doubt communicated it to Paine, who was in consultation with him on his plan of sending Louis to America [2].   Indeed, it is probable that popular suffrage would have ratified the decree.   Nevertheless, it was a fair "appeal to the people" which Paine made, after the fatal verdict, in expressing to the Convention his belief that the people would not have done so.   For after the decree the helplessness of the prisoner appealed to popular compassion, and on the fatal day the tide had turned.   Four days after the execution the American Minister writes to Jefferson: "The greatest care was taken to prevent a concourse of people.   This proves a conviction that the majority was not favorable to that severe measure.   In fact the great mass of the people mourned the fate of their unhappy prince."

[1]    "Le Département des Affaires Étrangères pendant la Révolution, 1787-1809."   Par Frédéric Masson, Bibliothécaire du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères. Paris, 1877, p, 273.

[2]    Morris' "Diary,"  ii., pp.19, 27, 32.

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To Paine the death of an "unhappy prince" was no more a subject for mourning than that of the humblest criminal -- for, with whatever extenuating circumstances, a criminal he was to the republic he had sworn to administer.   But the impolicy of the execution, the resentment uselessly incurred, the loss of prestige in America, were felt by Paine as a heavy blow to his cause -- always the international republic.   He was, however, behind the scenes enough to know that the blame rested mainly on America's old enemy and his league of foreign courts against liberated France.   The man who, when Franklin said "Where liberty is, there is my country," answered "Where liberty is not, there is mine," would not despair of the infant republic because of its blunders.   Attributing these outbursts to maddening conspiracies around and within the new-born nation, he did not believe there could be peace in Europe so long as it was ruled by George III. He therefore set himself to the struggle, as he had done in 1776.   Moreover, Paine has faith in Providence [1].

At this time, it should be remembered, opposition to capital punishment was confined to very

[1]    "The same spirit of fortitude that insured success to America will insure it to France, for it is impossible to conquer a nation determined to be free . . . .   Man is ever a stranger to the ways by which Providence regulates the order of things.   The interference of foreign despots may serve to introduce into their own enslaved countries the principles they come to oppose.   Liberty and equality are blessings too great to be the inheritance of France alone.   It is honour to her to be their first champion; and she may now say to her enemies, with a mighty voice,

'O, ye Austrians, ye Prussians!
 ye who now turn your bayonets against us,
 it is for you, it is for all Europe,
 it is for all mankind, and not for France alone,
 that she raises the standard of Liberty and Equality!' "

p.15 -- "KILL THE KING, BUT NOT THE MAN"    [1793]

few outside of the despised sect of Quakers.   In the debate three, besides Paine, gave emphatic expression to that sentiment, Manuel, Condorcet, -- Robespierre!   The, former, in giving his vote against death, said: "To Nature belongs the right of death.   Despotism has taken it from her; Liberty will return it."   As for Robespierre, his argument was a very powerful reply to Paine, who had reminded him of the bill he had introduced into the old National Assembly for the abolition of capital punishment.   He did, indeed, abhor it, he said; it was not his fault if his views had been disregarded.   But why should men who then opposed him suddenly revive the claims of humanity when the penalty happened to fall upon a King?   Was the penalty good enough for the people, but not for a King?   If there were any exception in favor of such a punishment, it should be for a royal criminal.

This opinion of Robespierre is held by some humane men.   The present writer heard from Professor Francis W. Newman -- second to none in philanthropy and compassionateness -- a suggestion that the death penalty should be reserved for those placed at the head of affairs who betray their trust, or set their own above the public interests to the injury of a Commonwealth.

The real reasons for the execution of the King closely resemble those of Washington for the execution of Major André, notwithstanding the sorrow of the country, with which the Commander sympathized.   The equal nationality of the United States, repudiated by Great Britain, was in question.

p.16 -- "KILL THE KING, BUT NOT THE MAN"    [1793]

To hang spies was, however illogically, a conventional usage among nations.   Major André must die, therefore, and must be refused the soldier's death for which he petitioned.   For a like reason Europe must be shown that the French Convention is peer of their scornful Parliaments; and its fundamental principle, the equality of men, could not admit a King's escape from the penalty which would be unhesitatingly inflicted on a "Citizen."   The King had assumed the title of Citizen, had worn the republican cockade; the apparent concession of royal inviolability, in the moment of his betrayal of the compromise made with him, could be justified only on the grounds stated by Paine, -- impolicy of slaying their hostage, creating pretenders, alienating America; and the honor of exhibiting to the world, by a salient example, the Republic's magnanimity in contrast with the cruelty of Kings.
 
 

p.17

SOON after Paine had taken his seat in the Convention, Lord Fortescue wrote to Miles, an English agent in Paris, a letter fairly expressive of the feelings, fears, and hopes of his class.

"Tom Paine is just where he ought to be -- a member of the Convention of Cannibals.   One would have thought it impossible that any society upon the face of the globe should have been fit for the reception of such a being until the late deeds of the National Convention have shown them to be most fully qualified.   His vocation will not be complete, nor theirs either, till his head finds its way to the top of a pike, which will probably not be long first." [1]

[1]    This letter, dated September 26, 1792, appears in the Miles Correspondence (London, 1890).   There are indications that Miles was favorably disposed towards Paine, and on that account, perhaps, was subjected to influence by his superiors.   As an example of the way in which just minds were poisoned towards Paine, a note of Miles may be mentioned.   He says he was "told by Col. Bosville, a declared friend of Paine, that his manners and conversation were coarse, and he loved the brandy bottle."   But just as this Miles Correspondence was appearing in London, Dr. Grece found the manuscript diary of Rickman, who had discovered (as two entries show) that this "declared friend of Paine," Col. Bosville, and professed friend of himself, was going about uttering injurious falsehoods concerning him (Rickman), seeking to alienate his friends at the moment when he most needed them.   Rickman was a bookseller engaged in circulating Paine's works.   There is little doubt that this wealthy Col. Bosville was at the time unfriendly to the radicals.   He was staying in Paris on Paine's political credit, while depreciating him.

p.18 -- AN OUTLAWED ENGLISH AMBASSADOR    [1793]

But if Paine was so fit for such a Convention, why should they behead him?   The letter betrays a real perception that Paine possesses humane principles, and an English courage, which would bring him into danger.   This undertone of Fortescue's invective represented the profound confidence of Paine's adherents in England.   When tidings came of the King's trial and execution, whatever glimpses they 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.   To the English radical the outlawry of Paine was as the tax on light, which was presently walling up London windows, or extorting from them the means of war against ideas [1].   The trial of Paine had elucidated nothing, except that, like Jupiter, John Bull had the thunderbolts, and Paine the arguments.   Indeed, it is difficult to discover any other Englishman who at the moment pre-eminently stood for principles now proudly called English.

But Paine too presently held thunderbolts.   Although his efforts to save Louis had offended the

"God made the Light, and saw that it was good
 Pitt laid a tax on it, -- G_d -- his blood!"

p.19 -- AN OUTLAWED ENGLISH AMBASSADOR    [1793]

"Mountain," and momentarily brought him into the danger Lord Fortescue predicted, that party was not yet in the ascendant.   The Girondists were still in power, and though some of their leaders had bent before the storm, that they might not be broken, they had been impressed both by the courage and the tactics of Paine.   "The Girondists consulted Paine," says Lamartine, "and placed him on the Committee of Surveillance."   At this moment many Englishmen were in France, and at a word from Paine some of their heads might have mounted on the pike which Lord Fortescue had imaginatively prepared for the head that wrote "The Rights of Man."   There remained, for instance, Mr. Munro, already mentioned.   This gentleman, in a note preserved in the English Archives, had written to Lord Grenville (September 8, 1792) concerning Paine: "What must a nation come to that has so little discernment in the election of their representatives, as to elect such a fellow?"   But having lingered in Paris after England's formal declaration of war (February 11th), Munro was cast into prison.   (He owed his release to that "fellow" Paine, and must be duly credited with having acknowledged it, and changed his tone for the rest of his life, -- which he probably owed to the English committeeman.   Had Paine met with the fate which Lords Gower and Fortescue hoped, it would have gone hard with another eminent countryman of theirs, -- Captain Grimstone, R.A.   This personage, during a dinner party at the Palais Égalité, got into a controversy with Paine, and, forgetting that the English Jove could not in Paris

p.20 -- AN OUTLAWED ENGLISH AMBASSADOR    [1793]

safely answer argument with thunder, called Paine a traitor to his country and struck him a violent blow.   Death was the penalty of striking a deputy, and Paine's friends were not unwilling to see the penalty inflicted on this stout young Captain who had struck a man of fifty-six.   Paine had much trouble in obtaining from Barrère, of the Committee of Public Safety, a passport out of the country for Captain Grimstone, whose travelling expenses were supplied by the man he had struck.

In a later instance, related by Walter Savage Landor, Paine's generosity amounted to quixotism.   The story is finely told by Landor, who says in a note: "This anecdote was communicated to me at Florence by Mr. Evans, a painter of merit, who studied under Lawrence, and who knew personally (Zachariah) Wilkes and Watt.   In religion and politics he differed widely from Paine."
 

"Sir;" said he, "let me tell you what he did for me.   My name is Zachariah Wilkes.   I was arrested in Paris and condemned to die.   I had no friend here; and it was a time when no friend would have served me: Robespierre ruled.   'I am innocent!' I cried in desperation.   'I am innocent, so help me God!   I am condemned for the offence of another.'   I wrote a statement of my case with a pencil; thinking at first of addressing it to my judge, then of directing it to the president of the Convention.   The jailer, who had been kind tome, gave me a gazette, and told me not to mind seeing my name, so many were there before it.

" `O!' said I 'though you would not lend me your ink, do transmit this paper to the president.'

" `No, my friend!' answered he gaily.   'My head is as good as yours, and looks as well between the shoulders, to my liking. - Why not send it (if you send it anywhere) to the deputy Paine here?' pointing to a column in the paper.

p.21 -- AN OUTLAWED ENGLISH AMBASSADOR    [1793]

" `O God! he must hate and detest the name of Englishman: pelted, insulted, persecuted, plundered . . . '

" `I could give it to him,' said the jailer.

" 'Do then!' said I wildly.   'One man more shall know my innocence.'   He came within the half hour.   I told him my name, that my employers were Watt and Boulton of Birmingham, that I had papers of the greatest consequence, that if I failed to transmit them, not only my life was in question, but my reputation.   He replied: `I know your employers by report only; there are no two men less favourable to the principles I profess, but no two upon earth are honester.   You have only one great man among you: it is Watt; for Priestley is gone to America.   The church-and-king men would have japanned him.   He left to these philosophers of the rival school his house to try experiments on; and you may know, better than I do, how much they found in it of carbon and calx, of silex and argilla.'

"He examined me closer than my judge had done; he required my proofs.   After a long time I satisfied him.   He then said, 'The leaders of the Convention would rather have my life than yours.   If by any means I can obtain your release on my own security, will you promise me to return within twenty days?'   I answered, 'Sir, the security I can at present give you, is trifling . . . I should say a mere nothing.'

" 'Then you do not give me your word?' said he.

" `I give it and will redeem it.'

"He went away, and told me I should see him again when he could inform me whether he had succeeded.   He returned in the earlier part of the evening, looked fixedly upon me, and said, 'Zachariah Wilkes! if you do not return in twenty-four days (four are added) you will be the most unhappy of men; for had you not been an honest one, you could not be the agent of Watt and Boulton.   I do not think I have hazarded much in offering to take your place on your failure: such is the condition.'   I was speechless; he was unmoved. Silence was first broken by the jailer.   'He seems to get fond of the spot now he must leave it.'   I had thrown my arms upon the table towards my liberator, who sat opposite, and I rested my head and breast upon it too, for my temples ached and tears

p.22 -- AN OUTLAWED ENGLISH AMBASSADOR    [1793]

had not yet relieved them.   He said, 'Zachariah! follow me to the carriage.'   The soldiers paid the respect due to his scarf, presenting arms, and drawing up in file as we went along.   The jailer called for a glass of wine, gave it me, poured out another, and drank to our next meeting [1]."

Another instance may be related in Paine's own words, written (March 20, 1806) to a gentleman in New York.
 

"SIR,

"I will inform you of what I know respecting General Miranda, with whom I first became acquainted at New York, about the year 1783.   He is a man of talents and enterprise, and the whole of his life has been a life of adventures.

"I went to Europe from New York in April, 1787.   Mr. Jefferson was then Minister from America to France, and Mr. Littlepage, a Virginian (whom Mr. Jay knows), was agent for the king of Poland, at Paris.   Mr. Littlepage was a young man of extraordinary talents, and I first met with him at Mr. Jefferson's house at dinner.   By his intimacy with the king of Poland, to whom also he was chamberlain, he became well acquainted with the plans and projects of the Northern Powers of Europe.   He told me of Miranda's getting himself introduced to the Empress Catharine of Russia, and obtaining a sum of money from her, four thousand pounds sterling; but it did not appear to me what the object was for which the money was given; it appeared a kind of retaining fee.

"After I had published the first part of the `Rights of Man' in England, in the year 1791, I met Miranda at the house of Turnbull and Forbes, merchants, Devonshire Square, London.   He had been a little before this in the employ of Mr. Pitt, with respect to the affair of Nootka Sound, but I did not at that time know it; and I will, in the course of this letter, inform you how this connection between Pitt and Miranda ended; for I know it of my own knowledge.

[1]    Zachariah Wilkes did not fail to return, or Paine to greet him with safety, and the words, "There is yet English blood in England."   But here Landor passes off into an imaginative picture of villages rejoicing at the fall of Robespierre.   Paine himself had then been in prison seven months; so we can only conjecture the means by which Zachariah was liberated. -- Landor's Works, London, 1853, i., p. 296.

p.23 -- AN OUTLAWED ENGLISH AMBASSADOR    [1793]
 

''I published the second part of the 'Rights of Man' in London, in February, 1792, and I continued in London till I was elected a member of the French Convention, in September of that year; and went from London to Paris to take my seat in the Convention, which was to meet the 20th of that month.   I arrived in Paris on the 19th.   After the Convention met, Miranda came to Paris, and was appointed general of the French army, under General Dumouriez.   But as the affairs of that army went wrong in the beginning of the year 1793, Miranda was suspected, and was brought under arrest to Paris to take his trial.   He summoned me to appear to his character, and also a Mr. Thomas Christie, connected with the house of Turnbull and Forbes.   I gave my testimony as I believed, which was, that his leading object was and had been the emancipation of his country, Mexico, from the bondage of Spain; for I did not at that time know of his engagements with Pitt.   Mr. Christie's evidence went to show that Miranda did not come to France as a necessitous adventurer; but believed he came from publicspirited motives, and that he had a large sum of money in the hands of Turnbull and Forbes.   The house of Turnbull and Forbes was then in a contract to supply Paris with flour.   Miranda was acquitted.

"A few days after his acquittal he came to see me, and in a few days afterwards I returned his visit.   He seemed desirous of satisfying me that he was independent, and that he had money in the hands of Turnbull and Forbes.   He did not tell me of his affair with old Catharine of Russia, nor did I tell him that I knew of it.   But be entered into conversation with respect to Nootka Sound, and put into my hands several letters of Mr. Pitt's to him on that subject; amongst which was one which I believe he gave me by mistake, for when I had opened it, and was beginning to read it, he put forth his hand and said, 'O, that is not the letter I intended'; but as the letter was short I soon got through with it, and then returned it to him without making any remarks upon it.   The dispute with Spain was then compromised; and Pitt compromised with Miranda for his services by giving him twelve hundred pounds sterling, for this was the contents of the letter.

"Now if it be true that Miranda brought with him a credit upon certain persons in New York for sixty thousand pounds

p.24 -- AN OUTLAWED ENGLISH AMBASSADOR    [1793]

sterling, it is not difficult to suppose from what quarter the money came; for the opening of any proposals between Pitt and Miranda was already made by the affair of Nootka Sound.   Miranda was in Paris when Mr. Monroe arrived there as Minister; and as Miranda wanted to get acquainted with him, I cautioned Mr. Monroe against him, and told him of the affair of Nootka Sound, and the twelve hundred pounds.

"You are at liberty to make what use you please of this letter, and with my name to it."

Here we find a paid agent of Pitt calling on outlawed Paine for aid, by his help liberated from prison; and, when his true character is accidentally discovered, and he is at the outlaw's mercy, spared, -- no doubt because this true English ambassador, who could not enter England, saw that at the moment passionate vengeance had taken the place of justice in Paris.   Lord Gower had departed, and Paine must try and shield even his English enemies and their agents, where, as in Miranda's case, the agency did not appear to affect France.   This was while his friends in England were hunted down with ferocity.

In the earlier stages of the French Revolution there was much sympathy with it among literary men and in the universities.   Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, were leaders in the revolutionary cult at Oxford and Cambridge.   By 1792, and especially after the institution of Paine's prosecution, the repression became determined.   The memoir of Thomas Poole, already referred to, gives the experiences of a Somerset gentleman, a friend of Coleridge. After the publication of Paine's "Rights of Man" (1791) he became a "political Ishmaelite."

p.25 -- AN OUTLAWED ENGLISH AMBASSADOR    [1793]
 

"He made his appearance amongst the wigs and powdered locks of his kinsfolk and acquaintance, male and female, without any of the customary powder in his hair, which innocent novelty was a scandal to all beholders, seeing that it was the outward and visible sign of a love of innovation, a well-known badge of sympathy with democratic ideas."

Among Poole's friends, at Stowey, was an attorney named Symes, who lent him Paine's "Rights of Man."    After Paine's outlawry Symes met a cabinet-maker with a copy of the book, snatched it out of his hand, tore it up, and, having learned that it was lent him by Poole, propagated about the country that he (Poole) was distributing seditious literature about the country.   Being an influential man, Poole prevented the burning of Paine in effigy at Stowey.   As time goes on this country-gentleman and scholar finds the government opening his letters, and warning his friends that he is in danger.

"It was," he writes to a friend, "the boast an Englishman was wont to make that he could think, speak, and write whatever he thought proper, provided he violated no law, nor injured any individual.   But now an absolute controul exists, not indeed over, the imperceptible operations of the mind, for those no power of man can controul; but, what is the same thing, over the effects of those operations, and if among these effects, that of speaking is to be checked, the soul is as much enslaved as the body in a cell of the Bastille.   The man who once feels, nay fancies, this, is a slave.   It shows as if the suspicious secret government of an Italian Republic had replaced the open, candid government of the English laws."

As Thomas Poole well represents the serious and cultured thought of young England in that

p.26 -- AN OUTLAWED ENGLISH AMBASSADOR    [1793]

time, it is interesting to read his judgment on the king's execution and the imminent war.
 

"Many thousands of human beings will be sacrificed in the ensuing contest, and for what?   To support three or four individuals, called arbitrary kings, in the situation which they have usurped.   I consider every Briton who loses his life in the war us much murdered as the King of France, and every one who approves the war, as signing the deathwarrant of each soldier or sailor that falls . . . .   The excesses in France are great; but who are the authors of them?   The Emperor of Germany, the King of Prussia, and Mr. Burke.   Had it not been for their impertinent interference, I firmly believe the King of France would be at this moment a happy monarch, and that people would be enjoying every advantage of political liberty . . . .   The slave-trade, you will see, will not be abolished, because to be, humane and honest now is to be a traitor to the constitution, a lover of sedition and licentiousness?   But this universal depression of the human mind cannot last long."

It was in this spirit that the defence of a free press was undertaken in England.   That thirty years' war was fought and won on the works of Paine.   There were some "Lost Leaders": the king's execution, the reign of terror, caused reaction in many a fine spirit; but 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

p.27 -- AN OUTLAWED ENGLISH AMBASSADOR    [1793]

of the delivered prisoner of the Bastille, Brissot, an author well known in England, by the side of Condorcet and others of Franklin's honored circle, engaged in 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!

A reign of terror in England followed the outlawry of Paine.   Twenty-four men, at one time or another, were imprisoned, fined, or transported for uttering words concerning abuses such as now every Englishman would use concerning the same.   Some who sold Paine's works were imprisoned before Paine's trial, while the seditious character of the books was not yet legally settled.   Many were punished after the trial, by both fine and imprisonment.   Newspapers were punished for printing extracts, and for having printed them before the trial [1].   For this kind of work old statutes passed for other purposes were impressed, new statutes framed, until Fox declared the Bill of Rights repealed, the

[1] (p.27-28)    The first trial after Paine's, that of Thomas Spence (February 26, 1793), for selling "The Rights of Man," failed through a flaw in the indictment, but the mistake did not occur again.   At the same time William Holland was awarded a year's imprisonment and £100 fine for selling "Letter to the Addressers."   H. D. Symonds, for publishing "Rights of Man," £20 fine and two years; for "Letter to the Addressers," one year, £100 fine, with sureties in £1,000 for three years, and imprisonment till the fine be paid and sureties given.   April 17, 1793, Richard Phillips, printer, Leicester, eighteen months.   May 8th, J. Ridgway, London, selling "Rights of Man," £100 and one year; "Letter to the Addressers," one year, £100 fine; in each case sureties in £1,000, with imprisonment until fines paid and sureties given.   Richard Peart, "Rights" and "Letter," three months.   William Belcher, "Rights" and "Letter," three months.   Daniel Holt, £50 four years.   Messrs. Robinson, £200.   Eaton and Thompson, the latter in Birmingham, were acquitted.   Clio Rickman escaped punishment (p.28) by running over to Paris.   Dr. Currie (1793 ) writes: "The prosecutions that are commenced all over England against printers, publishers, etc., would astonish you; and most of these are for offences committed many months ago.   The printer of the Manchester Herald has had seven different indictments preferred against him for paragraphs in his paper; and six different indictments for selling or disposing of six different copies of Paine, -- all previous to the trial of Paine.   The man was opulent, supposed worth £20,000; but these different actions will ruin him, as they were intended to do.' -- "Currie's Life," i., p.185.   See Buckle's "History of Civilisation," etc., American ed., p.352.   In the cases where "gentlemen" were found distributing the works the penalties were ferocious. Fische Palmer was sentenced to seven years' transportation.   Thomas Muir, for advising persons to read "the works of that wretched outcast Paine " (the Lord Advocate's words) was sentenced to fourteen years' transportation.   This sentence was hissed.   The tipstaff being ordered to take those who hissed into custody, replied: "My lord, they're all hissing."

p.28 -- AN OUTLAWED ENGLISH AMBASSADOR    [1793]

constitution cut up by the roots, and the obedience of the people to such "despotism" no longer "a question of moral obligation and duty, but of prudence."'

From his safe retreat in Paris bookseller Rickman wrote his impromptu:
 

"Hail Briton's land! Hail freedom's shore!
     Far happier than of old;
 For in thy blessed realms no more
     The Rights of Man are sold!

The famous town-crier of Bolton, who reported to his masters that he had been round that place "and found in it neither the right of man nor common sense," made a statement characteristic of the time.   The aristocracy and gentry had indeed lost their humanity and their sense under a disgraceful panic.   Their serfs, unable to read, were fairly represented by those who, having burned Paine in effigy, asked their employer if there was "any other gemman he would like burnt, for a

[1]    "Parl. Hist.,"  xxxii., p.383.

p.29 -- AN OUTLAWED ENGLISH AMBASSADOR    [1793]

glass o' beer."   The White Bear (now replaced by the Criterion Restaurant) no longer knew its little circle of radicals. A symbol of how they were trampled out is discoverable in the "T. P." shoenails.   These nails, with heads so lettered, were in great request among the gentry, who had only to hold up their boot-soles to show how they were trampling on Tom Paine and his principles.   This at any rate was accurate. Manufacturers of vases also devised ceramic anathemas [1].

In all of this may be read the frantic fears of the King and aristocracy which were driving the Ministry to make good Paine's aphorism, "There is no English Constitution."   An English Constitution was, however, in process of formation, -- in prisons, in secret conclaves, in lands of exile, and chiefly in Paine's small room in Paris. Even in that time of Parisian turbulence and peril the hunted liberals of

[1]    There are two Paine pitchers in the Museum at Brighton, England.   Both were made at Leeds, one probably before Paine's trial, since it presents a respectable full-length portrait, holding in his hand a book, and beneath, the words: "Mr. Thomas Paine, Author of The Rights of Man."   The other shows a serpent with Paine's head, two sides being adorned with the following lines:

"God save the King, and all his subjects too,
 Likewise his forces and commanders true,
 May he their rights forever hence Maintain
 Against all strife occasioned by Tom Paine."

"Prithee Tom Paine why wilt thou meddling be
 In others' business which concerns not thee;
 For while thereon thou dost extend thy cares
 Thou dost at home neglect thine own affairs."

"God save the King!"

"Observe the wicked and malicious man
 Projecting all the mischief that he can."

p.30 -- AN OUTLAWED ENGLISH AMBASSADOR    [1793]

England found more security in France than in their native land [1].   For the eyes of the English reformer of that period, seeing events from prison or exile, there was a perspective such as time has now supplied to the historian.   It is still difficult to distribute the burden of shame fairly.   Pitt was unquestionably at first anxious to avoid war.   That the King was determined on the war is certain; he refused to notice Wilberforce when he appeared at court after his separation from Pitt on that point.

When William Pitt died in 1806, -- crushed under disclosures in the impeachment of Lord Melville, -- the verdict of many sufferers was expressed in an "Epitaph Impromptu" (MS.) found among the papers of Thomas Rickman.   It has some historic interest.
 

"Reader! with eye indignant view this bier;
 The foe of all the human race lies here.
 With talents small, and those directed, too,
 Virtue and truth and wisdom to subdue,
 He lived to every noble motive blind,
 And died, the execration of mankind.

"Millions were butchered by his damnéd plan
 To violate each sacred right of man;
 Exulting he o'er earth each misery hurled,
 And joyed to drench in tears and blood, the world.

"Myriads of beings wretched he has made
 By desolating war, his favourite trade,
 Who, robbed of friends and dearest ties, are left
 Of every hope and happiness bereft.

"In private life made up of fuss and pride,
 Not e 'en his vices leaned to virtue's side;
 Unsound, corrupt, and rotten at the core,
 His cold and scoundrel heart was black all o'er;
 Nor did one passion ever move his mind
 That bent towards the tender, warm, and kind.

"Tyrant, and friend to war! we hail the day
 When Death, to bless mankind, made thee his prey,
 And rid the earth of all could earth disgrace,
 The foulest, bloodiest scourge of man's oppressed race."

p.31 -- AN OUTLAWED ENGLISH AMBASSADOR    [1793]

But the three attempts on his life, and his mental infirmity, may be pleaded for George III.   Paine, in his Letter To Mr. Secretary Dundas, June 6, 1792, wrote "Madjesty"; when Rickman objected, he said: "Let it stand."   And it stands now as the best apology for the King, while it rolls on Pitt's memory the guilt of a twenty-two years' war for the subjugation of thought and freedom.   In that last struggle of the barbarism surviving in civilization, it was shown that the madness of a populace was easily distanced by the cruelty of courts.   Robespierre and Marat were humanitarian beside George and his Ministers the Reign of error, and all the massacres of the French Revolution put together, were child's-play compared with the anguish and horrors spread through Europe by a war whose pretext was an execution England might have prevented.
 

p.32

THE French revolutionists have long borne responsibility for the first declaration of war in 1793.   But from December 13, 1792 [1], when the Painophobia Parliament began its debates, to February 1st, when France proclaimed itself at war with England, the British government had done little else than declare war -- and prepare war -- against France.   Pitt, having to be re-elected, managed to keep away from Parliament for several days at its opening, and the onslaught was assumed by Burke.   He began by heaping insults on France.   On December 15th he boasted that he had not been cajoled by promise of promotion or pension, though he presently, on the same evening, took his seat for the first time on the Treasury bench.   In the "Parliamentary History" (vols. xxx. and xxxi.) may be found Burke's epithets on France, -- the "republic of assassins," "Cannibal Castle," "nation of murderers," "gang of plunderers," "murderous atheists," "miscreants," "scum of the earth."   His vocabulary grew in grossness, of course, after the King's execution and the declaration of war, but from the first it was ribaldry and abuse.   And this did not come from a private

[1]    Paine found warm welcome in the home of Achille Duchâtelet, who with him had first proclaimed the Republic, and was now a General.   Madame Duchâtelet was an English lady of rank, Charlotte Comyn, and English was fluently spoken in the family.   They resided at Auteuil, not far from the Abbé Moulet, who preserved an arm-chair with the inscription, Benjamin Franklin hic sedebat.    Paine was a guest of the Duchâtelets soon after he got to work in the Convention, as I have just discovered by a letter addressed "To Citizen Le Brun, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Paris."

"Auteuil, Friday, the 4th December, 1792.

"I enclose an Irish newspaper which has been sent me from Belfast.   It contains the Address of the Society of United Irishmen of Dublin (of which Society I am a member) to the volunteers of Ireland.   None of the English newspapers that I have seen have ventured to republish this Address, and as there is no other copy of it than this which I send you, I request you not to let it go out of your possession.   Before I received this newspaper I had drawn up a statement of the affairs of Ireland, which I had communicated to my friend General Duchâtelet at Auteuil, where I now am.   I wish to confer with you on that subject, but as I do not speak French, and as the matter requires confidence, General Duchâtelet has desired me to say that if you can make it convenient to dine with him and me at Auteuil, he will with pleasure do the office of (p.xv) interpreter.   I send this letter by my servant, but as it may not be convenient to you to give an answer directly, I have told him not to wait.
 

       THOMAS  PAINE."

It will be noticed that Paine now keeps his servant, and drives to the Mayor's dinner in a hackney coach.   A portrait painted in Paris about this time, now owned by Mr. Alfred Howlett of Syracuse, N. Y., shows him in elegant costume

It is mournful to reflect, even at this distance, that only a little later both Paine and his friend General Duchâtelet were prisoners.   The latter poisoned himself in prison (1794). -- Conway, The Writings of Thomas Paine, vol. iii, Introduction, p.xiv-xv.

I have a little scrap of his writing (early 1792) which appears to be from the draft of a note to one of the associations in London, respecting the Society of United Irishmen, whose Declaration was issued in October, 1791:

"I have the honor of presenting the Gentlemen present a letter I have received from the United Irishmen of Dublin informing me of my having been elected an honorary member of their Society.   By this adoption of me as one of their body I have the pleasure of considering myself on their" -- [cætera desunt].

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member, but from the Treasury bench.   He was supported by a furious majority which stopped at no injustice.   Thus the Convention was burdened with guilt of the September massacres, though it was not then in existence.   Paine's works being denounced, Erskine reminded the House of the illegality of so influencing a trial not yet begun.   He was not listened to.   Fox and fifty other earnest men had a serious purpose of trying to save the King's life, and proposed to negotiate with the Convention.   Burke fairly foamed at the motions to that end, made by Fox and Lord Lansdowne.   What, negotiate with such villains!   To whom is our agent to be accredited?   Burke draws a comic picture of the English ambassador entering the Convention, and, when he announces himself as from "George Third, by the grace of God," denounced by Paine.   "Are we to humble ourselves before Judge Paine?"   At this point Whetstone made a disturbance and was named.   There were some who found Burke's trifling intolerable.   Mr. W. Smith reminded the House that Cromwell's ambassadors had been received by Louis XIV.   Fox drew a parallel between the contemptuous terms used toward the French, and others about "Hancock and his crew," with whom Burke advised treaty, and with whom His Majesty did treat.   All this was answered by further insults to France, these corresponding with a series of practical injuries.   Lord Gower had been recalled August 17th, after the formation of a republic, and all intercourse with the French Minister in London, Chauvelin, was terminated.   In violation of the treaty

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of 1786, the agents of France were refused permission to purchase grain and arms in England, and their vessels loaded with provisions seized.   The circulation of French bonds, issued in 1790, was prohibited in England.   A coalition had been formed with the enemies of France, the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia. Finally, on the execution of Louis XVI., Chauvelin was ordered (January 24th) to leave England in eight days.   Talleyrand remained, but Chauvelin was kicked out of the country, so to say, simply because the Convention had recognized him.   This appeared a plain casus belli, and was answered by the declaration of the Convention in that sense (February 1st), which England answered ten days later [1].

In all this Paine recognized the hand of Burke.   While his adherents in England, as we have seen, were finding in Pitt a successor to Satan, there is a notable absence from Paine's writings and letters of any such animosity towards that Minister.   He

[1]    "It was stipulated in the treaty of commerce between France and England, concluded at Paris (1786) that the sending away an ambassador by either party, should be taken as an act of hostility by the other party.   The declaration of war (February, 1793) by the Convention . . . was made in exact conformity to this article in the treaty; for it was not a declaration of war against England, but a declaration that the French republic is in war with England; the first act of hostility having been committed by England.   The declaration was made on Chauvelin's return to France, and in consequence of it." -- Paine's "Address to the People of France" (1797).   The words of the declaration of war, following the list of injuries, are: "La Convention Nationale déclaré, au nom de la nation Française, qu'attendu les actes multipliés et d'agressions ci-dessus mentionnés, la république Française est en guerre avec le roi d'Angleterre." ["The National Convention declared, in the name of the French nation, that for the above mentioned multiplied acts of aggression, the French Republic is in war with the king of England." --  Digital Editor's Translation.]   The solemn protest of Lords Lauderdale, Lansdowne, and Derby, February 1st, against the address in answer to the royal message, before France had spoken, regards that address as a demonstration of universal war.   The facts and the situation are carefully set forth by Louis Blanc, "Histoire de la Révolution," tome viii., p.93 seq.

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regarded Pitt as a victim.   "The father of Pitt," he once wrote, "when a member of the House of Commons, exclaiming one day, during a former war, against the enormous and ruinous expense of German connections, as the offspring of the Hanover succession, and borrowing a metaphor from the story of Prometheus, cried out: `Thus, like Prometheus, is Britain chained to the barren rock of Hanover, whilst the imperial eagle preys upon her vitals."   It is probable that on the intimations from Pitt, at the close of 1792, of his desire for private consultations with friendly Frenchmen, Paine entered into the honorable though unauthorized conspiracy for peace which was terminated by the expulsion of Chauvelin.   In the light of later events, and the desertion of Dumouriez, these overtures of Pitt made through Talleyrand (then in London) were regarded by the French leaders, and are still regarded by French writers, as treacherous.   But no sufficient reason is given for doubting Pitt's good faith in that matter.   Writing to the President (Washington), December 28, 1792, the American Minister, Gouverneur Morris, states the British proposal to be:
 

"France shall deliver the royal family to such branch of the Bourbons as the King may choose, and shall recall her troops from the countries they now occupy.   In this event Britain will send hither a Minister and acknowledge the Republic, and mediate a peace with the Emperor and King of Prussia.   I have several reasons to believe that this information is not far from the truth."

It is true that Pitt had no agent in France whom he might not have disavowed, and that after the

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fury with which the Painophobia Parliament, under lead of Burke, inspired by the King, had opened, could hardly have maintained any peaceful terms.   Nevertheless, the friends of peace in France secretly acted on this information, which Gouverneur Morris no doubt received from Paine.   A grand dinner was given by Paine, at the Hôtel de Ville, to Dumouriez, where this brilliant General met Brissot, Condorcet, Santerre, and several eminent English radicals, among them Sampson Perry.   At this time it was proposed to send Dumouriez secretly to London, to negotiate with Pitt, but this was abandoned.   Maret went, and be found Pitt gracious and pacific.   Chauvelin, however, advised the French government of this illicit negotiation, and Maret was ordered to return. Such was the situation when Louis was executed.   That execution, as we have seen, might have been prevented had Pitt provided the money; but it need not be supposed that, with Burke now on the Treasury bench, the refusal is to be ascribed to anything more than his inability to cope with his own majority, whom the King was patronizing.   So completely convinced of Pitt's pacific disposition were Maret and his allies in France that the clandestine ambassador again departed for London:   But on arriving at Dover, he learned that Chauvelin had been expelled, and at once returned to France [1].

Paine now held more firmly than ever the first article of his faith as to practical politics: the chief

[1]    See Louis Blanc's "Histoire," etc., tome viii,, p.100, for the principal authorities concerning this incident.   Annual Register, 1793, ch. vi.; "Mémoires tirés des papiers d'un homme d'État.," ii., p.157; "Mémoires de Dumouriez," t. iii., p.384.

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task of republicanism is to break the Anglo-German sceptre.   France is now committed to war; it must be elevated to that European aim.   Lord North and America reappear in Burke and France.

Meanwhile what is said of Britain in his "Rights of Man" was now more terribly true of France -- it had no Constitution.   The Committee on the Constitution had declared themselves ready to report early in the winter, but the Mountaineers managed that the matter should be postponed until after the King's trial.   As an American who prized his citizenship, Paine felt chagrined and compromised at being compelled to act as a legislator and a judge because of his connection with a Convention elected for the purpose of framing a legislative and judicial machinery.   He and Condorcet continued to add touches to this Constitution, the Committee approving, and on the first opportunity it was reported again.   This was February 15, 1793.   But, says the Moniteur, "the struggles between the Girondins and the Mountain caused the examination and discussion to be postponed."   It was, however, distributed.

Gouverneur Morris, in a letter to Jefferson (March 7th), says this Constitution "was read to the Convention, but I learnt the next morning that a Council had been held on it overnight, by which it was condemned."   Here is evidence in our American archives of a meeting or "Council" condemning the Constitution on the night of its submission.   It must have been secret, for it does not appear in French histories, so far as I can discover.   Durand de Maillane says that "the exclusion

p.38 -- REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION    [1793]

of Robespierre and Couthon from this eminent task framing a Constitution was a new matter for discontent and jealousy against the party of Pétion" -- a leading Girondin, -- and that Robespierre and his men desired "to render their work useless." [1]   No indication of this secret condemnation of the Paine-Condorcet Constitution, by a conclave appeared on March 1st, when the document was again submitted.   The Convention now set April 15th for its discussion, and the Mountaineers fixed that day for the opening of their attack on the Girondins.   The Mayor of Paris appeared with a petition, adopted by the Communal Council of the thirty-five sections of Paris, for the arrest of twenty-two members of the Convention, as slanderers of Paris, -- "presenting the Parisians to Europe as men of blood," -- friends of Roland, accomplices of the traitor Dumouriez, enemies of the clubs.   The deputies named were: Brissot, Guadet, Vergniaud, Gensonné, Grangeneuve, Buzot, Barbaroux, Salles, Biroteau, Pontécoulant, Pétion, Lanjuinais, Valaze, Hardy, Louvet, Lehardy, Gorsas, Abbé Fauchet, Lanthenas, Lasource, Valady, Chambon.   Of this list five were members of the Committee on the Constitution, and two supplementary members [2].   Besides this, two of the arraigned -- Louvet and Lasource -- had been especially active in pressing forward the Constitution.   The Mountaineers turned the discord they thus

[1]    "Histoire de la Convention Nationale," p.50.   Durand-Maillane was "the silent member" of the Convention, but a careful observer and well-informed witness.   I follow him and Louis Blanc in relating the fate of the Paine-Condorcet Constitution.

[2]    See vol. i., p.357.

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caused into a reason for deferring discussion of the Constitution.   They declared also that important members were absent, levying troops, and especially that Marat's trial had been ordered.   The discussion on the petition against the Girondins, and whether the Constitution should be considered, proceeded together for two days, when the Mountaineers were routed on both issues.   The Convention returned the petition to the Mayor, pronouncing it "calumnious," and it made the Constitution the order of the day.   Robespierre, according to Durand-Maillane, showed much spite at this defeat.   He adroitly secured a decision that the preliminary "Declaration of Rights" should be discussed first, as there could be endless talk on those generalities [1].

[1] (p.39-41)    This Declaration, submitted by Condorcet, April 17th, being largely the work of Paine, is here translated:  The end of all union of men in society being maintenance of their natural rights, civil and political, these rights should be the basis of the social pact: their recognition and their declaration ought to precede the Constitution which secures and guarantees them.

1.   The natural rights, civil and political, of men are liberty, equality, security, property, social protection, and resistance to oppression.

2.   Liberty consists in the power to do whatever is not contrary to the rights of others; thus, the natural rights of each man has no limits other than those which secure to other members of society enjoyment of the same rights.

3.   The preservation of liberty depends on the sovereignty of the Law, which is the expression of the general will.   Nothing unforbidden by law can be impeached, and none may be constrained to do what it does not command.

4.   Every man is free to make known his thought and his opinions.

5.   Freedom of the press (and every other means of publishing one's thoughts) cannot be prohibited, suspended, or limited.

6.   Every citizen shall be free in the exercise of his worship [culte].

7.   Equality consists in the power of each to enjoy the same rights.

8.   The Law should be equal for all, whether in recompense, punishment, or restraint.

9.   All citizens are admissible to all public positions, employments, and functions.   Free peoples can recognise no grounds of preference except talents and virtues.

10.   Security consists in the protection accorded by society to each citizen for the preservation of his person, property, and rights.

11.   None should be sued, accused, arrested, or detained, save in cases determined by the law, and in accordance with forms prescribed by it.   Every other act against a (p.40) citizen is arbitrary and null.

12.   Those who solicit, promote, sign, execute or cause to be executed such arbitrary acts are culpable, and should be punished.

13.   Citizens against whom the execution of such acts is attempted have the right of resistance by force.   Every citizen summoned or arrested by the authority of law, and in the forms prescribed by it, should instantly obey; he renders himself guilty by resistance.

14.   Every man being presumed innocent until declared guilty, should his arrest be judged indispensable, all rigor not necessary to secure his person should be severely repressed by law.

15.   None should be punished save in virtue of a law established and promulgated previous to the offence, and legally applied.

16.   A law that should punish offences committed before its existence would be an arbitrary Act.   Retroactive effect given to any law is a crime.

17.   Law should award only penalties strictly and evidently necessary to the general security; they should be proportioned to the offence and useful to society.

18.   The right of property consists in a man's being master in the disposal, at his will, of his goods, capital, income, and industry.

19.   No kind of work, commerce, or culture can be interdicted for any one; he may make, sell, and transport every species of production.

20.   Every man may engage his services, and his time; but he cannot sell himself; his person is not an alienable property.

21.   No one may be deprived of the least portion of his property without his consent, unless because of public necessity, legally determined, exacted openly, and under the condition of a just indemnity in advance.

22.   No tax shall be established except for the general utility, and to relieve public needs. All citizens have the right to co-operate, (p.41) personally or by their representatives, in the establishment of public contributions.

23.   Instruction is tire need of all, and society owes it equally to all its members.

24.   Public succors are a sacred debt of society, and it is for the law to determine their extent and application.

25.   The social guarantee of the rights of man rests on the national sovereignty.

26.   This sovereignty is one, indivisible, imprescriptible, and inalienable.

27.   It resides essentially in the whole people, and each citizen has an equal right to co-operate in its exercise.

28.   No partial assemblage of citizens, and no individual may attribute to themselves sovereignty, to exercise authority and fill any public function, without a formal delegation by the law.

29.   Social security cannot exist where the limits of public administration are not clearly determined by law, and where the responsibility of all public functionaries is not assured.

30.   All citizens are bound to co-operate in this guarantee, and to enforce the law when summoned in its name.

31.   Men united in society should have legal means of resisting oppression.   In every free government the mode of resisting different acts of oppression should be regulated by the Constitution.

32.   It is oppression when a law violates the natural rights, civil and political, which it should ensure.   It is oppression when the law is violated by public officials in its application to individual cases.   It is oppression when arbitrary acts violate the rights of citizens against the terms of the law.

33.   A people has always the right to revise, reform, and change its Constitution.   One generation has no right to bind future generations, and all heredity is offices is absurd and tyrannical.

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It now appears plain that Robespierre, Marat, and the Mountaineers generally were resolved that there should be no new government.   The difference between them and their opponents was fundamental: to them the Revolution was an end, to the others a means.   The Convention was a purely revolutionary body.   It had arbitrarily absorbed all legislative and judicial functions, exercising them without responsibility to any code or constitution.   For instance, in State Trials French law required three fourths of the voices for condemnation; had the rule been followed Louis XVI. would not have perished. Lanjuinais had pressed the point, and it was answered that the sentence on Louis was political, for the interest of the State; salus pobuli supremo lex. This implied that the Convention,

p.41 -- REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION    [1793]

turning aside from its appointed functions, had, in anticipation of the judicial forms it meant to establish, constituted itself into a Vigilance Committee to save the State in an emergency.   But it never turned back again to its proper work.   Now when the Constitution was framed, every possible obstruction was placed in the way of its adoption, which would have relegated most of the Mountaineers to private life.

Robespierre and Marat were in luck.   The Paine-Condorcet Constitution omitted all mention of a Deity.   Here was the immemorial and infallible recipe for discord, of which Robespierre made the most.   He took the "Supreme Being" under his protection; he also took morality under his protection, insisting that the PaineCondorcet Constitution

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gave liberty even to illicit traffic.   While these discussions were going on Marat gained his triumphant acquittal from the charges made against him by the Girondins.   This damaging blow further demoralized the majority which was eager for the Constitution.   By violence, by appeals against atheism, by all crafty tactics, the Mountaineers secured recommitment of the Constitution.   To the Committee were added Hérault de Séchelles, Ramel, Mathieu, Couthon, Saint-Just, -- all from the Committee of Public Safety.   The Constitution as committed was the most republican document of the kind ever drafted, as remade it was a revolutionary instrument; but its preamble read: "In the presence and under the guidance (auspices) of the Supreme Being, the French People declare," etc.

God was in the Constitution; but when it was reported (June Loth) the Mountaineers had their opponents en route for the scaffold.   The arraignment of the twenty-two, declared by the Convention "calumnious" six weeks before, was approved on June 2d.   It was therefore easy to pass such a constitution as the victors desired.   Some had suggested, during the theological debate, that "many crimes had been sanctioned by this King of kings," -- no doubt with emphasis on the discredited royal name.   Robespierre identified his "Supreme Being" with NATURE, of whose ferocities the poor Girondins soon had tragical evidence [1].

[1]    "Les rois, les aristocrates, les tyrants qu'ils soient, sont des esclaves révoltés contre le souverain de la terre, qui est le genre humain, et contre le législateur de l'univers, qui est la nature." ["The kings, the aristocrats, the tyrants that they are, are slaves revolted against the sovereigns of the earth who are human kind, and against the legislator of the universe who is nature." -- Digital Editor's Translation.] -- Robespierre's final article of "Rights," adopted by the Jacobins, April 21,1793.   Should not slaves revolt?

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The Constitution was adopted by the Convention on June 25th; it was ratified by the Communes August 10th.   When it was proposed to organize a government under it, and dissolve the Convention, Robespierre remarked: That sounds like a suggestion of Pitt!   Thereupon the Constitution was suspended until universal peace, and the Revolution superseded the Republic as end and aim of France [1].

Some have ascribed to Robespierre a phrase he borrowed, on one occasion, from Voltaire, Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer  [If God didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him. -- Digital Editor's Translation.]   Robespierre's originality was that he did invent a god, made in his own image, and to that idol offered human sacrifices, -- beginning with his own humanity.   That he was genuinely superstitious is suggested by the plausibility with which his enemies connected him

[1]    "I observed in the French revolutions that they always proceeded by stages, and made each stage a stepping stone to another.   The Convention, to amuse the people, voted a constitution, and then voted to suspend the practical establishment of it till after the war, and in the meantime to carry on a revolutionary government.   When Robespierre fell they proposed bringing forward the suspended Constitution, and apparently for this purpose appointed a committee to frame what they called organic laws, and these organic laws turned out to be a new Constitution (the Directory Constitution which was in general a good one).   When Bonaparte overthrew this Constitution he got himself appointed first Consul for ten years, then for life, and now Emperor with an hereditary succession." -- Paine to Jefferson. MS. (Dec. 27, 1804).   The Paine-Condorcet Constitution is printed in Æuvres Complètes de Condorcet, vol. xviii.   That which superseded it may be read (the Declaration of Rights omitted) in the "Constitutional History of France," By Henry C. Lockwood.   (New York, 1890).   It is, inter alia, a sufficient reason for describing the latter as revolutionary, that it provides that a Convention, elected by a majority of the departments, and a tenth part of the primaries, to revise or alter the Constitution, shall be "formed in like manner as the legislatures, and unite in itself the highest power."   In other words, instead of being limited to constitutional revision, may exercise all legislative and other functions, just as the existing Convention was doing.

p.44 -- REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION    [1793]

with the "prophetess," Catharine Théot, who pronounced him the reincarnate "Word of God."   Certain it is that he revived the old forces of fanaticism, and largely by their aid crushed the Girondins, who were rationalists.   Condorcet had said that in preparing a Constitution for France they had not consulted Numa's nymph or the pigeon of Mahomet; they had found human reason sufficient.

Corruption of best is worst. In the proportion that a humane deity would be a potent sanction for righteous laws, an inhuman deity is the sanction of inhuman laws.   He who summoned a nature-god to the French Convention let loose the scourge on France.   Nature inflicts on mankind, every day, a hundred-fold the agonies of the Reign of Terror.   Robespierre had projected into nature a sentimental conception of his own, but he had no power to master the force he had evoked.   That had to take the shape of the nature-gods of all time, and straightway dragged the Convention down to the savage plane where discussion becomes an exchange of thunder-stones.   Such relapses are not very difficult to effect in revolutionary times.   By killing off sceptical variations, and cultivating conformity, a cerebral evolution proceeded for ages by which kind-hearted people were led to worship jealous and cruel gods, who, should they appear in human form, would be dealt with as criminals.   Unfortunately, however, the nature-god does not so appear; it is represented in euphemisms, while at the same time it coerces the social and human standard.   Since the nature-god punishes hereditarily, kills every man at last,

p.45 -- REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION    [1793]

and so tortures millions that the suggestion of hell seems only too probable to those sufferers, a political system formed under the legitimacy of such a superstition must subordinate crimes to sins, regard atheism as worse than theft, acknowledge the arbitrary principle, and confuse retaliation with justice.   From the time that the shekinah of the nature-god settled on the Mountain, offences were measured, not by their injury to man, but as insults to the Mountain-god, or to his anointed.   In the mysterious counsels of the Committee of Public Safety the rewards are as little harmonious with the human standard as in the ages when sabbath-breaking and murder met the same doom.   Under the paralyzing splendor of a divine authority, any such considerations as the suffering or death of men become petty.   The average Mountaineer was unable to imagine that those who tried to save Louis had other than royalist motives.   In this Armageddon the Girondins were far above their opponents in humanity and intelligence, but the conditions did not admit of an entire adherence to their honorable weapons of argument and eloquence.   They too often used deadly threats, without meaning them; the Mountaineers, who did mean them, took such phrases seriously, and believed the struggle to be one of life and death.   Such phenomena of bloodshed, connected with absurdly inadequate causes, are known in history only where gods mingle in the fray.   Reign of Terror?   What is the ancient reign of the god of battles, jealous, angry every day, with everlasting tortures of fire prepared for the unorthodox,

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however upright, even more than for the immoral?   In France too it was a suspicion of unorthodoxy in the revolutionary creed that plunged most of the sufferers into the lake of fire and brimstone.

From the time of Paine's speeches on the King's fate he was conscious that Marat's evil eye was on him.   The American's inflexible republicanism had inspired the vigilance of the powerful journals of Brissot and Bonneville, which barred the way to any dictatorship.   Paine was even propagating a doctrine against presidency, thus marring the example of the United States, on which ambitious Frenchmen, from Marat to the Napoleons, have depended for their stepping-stone to despotism.   Marat could not have any doubt of Paine's devotion to the Republic, but knew well his weariness of the Revolution.   In the simplicity of his republican faith Paine had made a great point of the near adoption of the Constitution, and dissolution of the Convention in five or six months, little dreaming that the Mountaineers were concentrating themselves on the aim of becoming masters of the existing Convention and then rendering it permanent.   Marat regarded Paine's influence as dangerous to revolutionary government, and, as he afterwards admitted, desired to crush him.   The proposed victim had several vulnerable points: he had been ultimate with Gouverneur Morris, whose hostility to France was known; he had been intimate with Dumouriez, declared a traitor; and he had no connection with any of the Clubs, in which so many found asylum.   He might have joined one of them had he known the French language,

p.47 -- REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION    [1793]

and perhaps it would have been prudent to unite himself with the "Cordeliers," in whose esprit de corps some of his friends found refuge.

However, the time of intimidation did not come for two months after the King's death, and Paine was busy with Condorcet on the task assigned them, of preparing an Address to the People of England concerning the war of their government against France.   This work, if ever completed, does not appear to have been published.   It was entrusted (February 1st) to Barrère, Paine, Condorcet, and M. Faber.   As Frederic Masson, the learned librarian and historian of the Office of Foreign Affairs, has found some trace of its being assigned to Paine and Condorcet, it may be that further research will bring to light the Address.   It could hardly have been completed before the warfare broke out between the Mountain and the Girondins, when anything emanating from Condorcet and Paine would have been delayed, if not suppressed.   There are one or two brief essays in Condorcet's works notably "The French Republic to Free Men " -- which suggest collaboration with Paine, and may be fragments of their Address [1].

[1]    "Æuvres Complètes de Condorcet," Paris, 1801, t. xvi., p.16: "La République Française aux hommes libres" ["The French Republic to Free Men."]   In 1794, when Paine was in prison, a pamphlet was issued by the revolutionary government, entitled "An Answer to the Declaration of the King of England, respecting his Motives for Carrying on the Present War, and his Conduct towards France."   This anonymous pamphlet, which is in English, replies to the royal proclamation of October 29th, and bears evidence of being written while the English still occupied Toulon or early in November, 1793.   There are passages in it that suggest the hand of Paine, along with others which he could not have written.   It is possible that some composition of his, in pursuance of the task assigned him and Condorcet, was utilized by the Committee of Public Safety in its answer to George III.

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At this time the long friendship between Paine and Condorcet, and the Marchioness too, had become very intimate.   The two men had acted together on the King's trial at every step, and their speeches on bringing Louis to trial suggest previous consultations between them.

Early in April Paine was made aware of Marat's hostility to him.   General Thomas Ward reported to him a conversation in which Marat had said: "Frenchmen are mad to allow foreigners to live among them.   They should cut off their ears, let them bleed a few days, and then cut off their heads."   "But you yourself are a foreigner,"   Ward had replied, in allusion to Marat's Swiss birth [1].   The answer is not reported.   At length a tragical incident occurred, just before the trial of Marat (April 13th), -- which brought Paine face to face with this enemy.   A wealthy young Englishman, named Johnson, with whom Paine had been intimate in London, had followed him to Paris, where he lived in the same house with his friend.   His love of Paine amounted to worship.   Having heard of Marat's intention to have Paine's life taken, such was the young enthusiast's despair, and so terrible the wreck of his republican dreams, that he resolved on suicide.   He made a will bequeathing his property to Paine, and stabbed himself.   Fortunately he was saved by some one who entered just as he was about to give himself the third blow.   It may have been Paine himself who then saved his friend's life; at any rate, he did so eventually.

[1]    "Englishmen in the French Revolution." By John G. Alger.   London, 1889, p.176.   (A book of many blunders.)

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The decree for Marat's trial was made amid galleries crowded with his adherents, male and female ("Dames de la Fraternité"), who hurled cries of wrath on every one who said a word against him.   All were armed, the women ostentatious of their poignards.   The trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal was already going in Marat's favor, when it was determined by the Girondins to bring forward this affair of Johnson.   Paine was not, apparently, a party to this move, though he had enjoined no secrecy in telling his friend Brissot of the incident, which occurred before Marat was accused.   On April 16th there appeared in Brissot's journal Le Patriote Français, the following paragraph:
 

"A sad incident has occurred to apprise the anarchists of the mournful fruits of their frightful teaching.   An Englishman, whose name I reserve, had abjured his country because of his detestation of kings; he came to France hoping to find there liberty; he saw only its mask on the hideous visage of anarchy.   Heart-broken by this spectacle, he determined on self-destruction.   Before dying, he wrote the following words, which we have read, as written by his own trembling hand, on a paper which is in the possession of a distinguished foreigner: -- 'I had come to France to enjoy Liberty, but Marat has assassinated it.   Anarchy is even more cruel than despotism.   I am unable to endure this grievous sight, of the triumph of imbecility and inhumanity over talent and virtue.' "

The acting editor of Le Patriote Françis, Girey-Dupré, was summoned before the Tribunal, where Marat was on trial, and estified that the note published had been handed to him by Brissot, who assured him that it was from the original, in the hands of Thomas Paine.   Paine deposed that he

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had been unacquainted with Marat before the Convention assembled; that he had not supposed Johnson's note to have any connection with the accusations against Marat.
 

President. -- Did you give a copy of the note to Brissot?

Paine. -- I showed him the original.

President. -- Did you send it to him as it is printed?

Paine. -- Brissot could only have written this note after what I read to him, and told him.   I would observe to the tribunal that Johnson gave himself two blows with the knife after he had understood that Marat would denounce him.

Marat. -- Not because I would denounce the youth who stabbed himself, but because I wish to denounce Thomas Paine [1].

Paine (continuing). -- Johnson had for some time suffered mental anguish.   As for Marat, I never spoke to him but once.   In the lobby of the Convention he said to me that the English people are free and happy; I replied, they groan under a double despotism [2].

No doubt it had been resolved to keep secret the fact that young Johnson was still alive.   The moment was critical; a discovery that Brissot had written or printed "avant de mourir" of one still alive might have precipitated matters.

It came out in the trial that Marat, addressing a club ("Friends of Liberty and Equality"), had asked them to register a vow to recall from the Convention "all of those faithless members who had betrayed their duties in trying to save a tyrant's life," such deputies being "traitors, royalists, or fools."

Meanwhile the Constitution was undergoing discussion in the Convention, and to that Paine now

[1]    It would appear that Paine had not been informed until Marat declared it, and was confirmed by the testimony of Choppin, that the attempted suicide was on his account.

[2]    Moniteur, April 24, 1793.

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gave his entire attention.   On April 20th the Convention, about midnight, when the Moderates had retired and the Mountaineers found themselves masters of the field, voted to entertain the petition of the Parisian sections against the Girondins.   Paine saw the star of the Republic sinking.   On "April 20th, 2d year of the Republic," he wrote as follows to Jefferson:
 

"My dear Friend,

"The gentleman (Dr. Romer) to whom I entrust this letter is an intimate acquaintance of Lavater; but I have not had the opportunity of seeing him, as he had set off for Havre prior to my writing this letter, which I forward to him under cover from one of his friends, who is also an acquaintance of mine.

"We are now in an extraordinary crisis, and it is not altogether without some considerable faults here.   Dumouriez, partly from having no fixed principles of his own, and partly from the continual persecution of the Jacobins, who act without either prudence or morality, has gone off to the Enemy, and taken a considerable part of the Army with him.   The expedition to Holland has totally failed and all Brabant is again in the hands of the Austrians.

"You may suppose the consternation which such a sudden reverse of fortune has occasioned, but it has been without commotion.   Dumouriez threatened to be in Paris in three weeks.   It is now three weeks ago; he is still on the frontier near to Mons with the Enemy, who do not make any progress.   Dumouriez has proposed to re-establish the former Constitution, in which plan the Austrians act with him.   But if France and the National Convention act prudently this project will not succeed.   In the first place there is a popular disposition against it, and there is force sufficient to prevent it.   In the next place, a great deal is to be taken into the calculation with respect to the Enemy.   There are now so many powers accidentally jumbled together as to render it exceedingly difficult to them to agree upon any common object.

"The first object, that of restoring the old Monarchy, is

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evidently given up by the proposal to re-establish the late Constitution.   The object of England and Prussia was to preserve Holland, and the object of Austria was to recover Brabant; while those separate objects lasted, each party having one, the Confederation could hold together, each helping the other; but after this I see not how a common object is to be formed.   To all this is to be added the probable disputes about opportunity, the expense, and the projects of reimbursements.   The Enemy has once adventured into France, and they had the permission or the good fortune to get back again.   On every military calculation it is a hazardous adventure, and armies are not much disposed to try a second time the ground upon which they have been defeated.

"Had this revolution been conducted consistently with its principles, there was once a good prospect of extending liberty through the greatest part of Europe; but I now relinquish that hope.   Should the Enemy by venturing into France put themselves again in a condition of being captured, the hope will revive; but this is a risk that I do not wish to see tried, lest it should fail.

"As the prospect of a general freedom is now much shortened, I begin to contemplate returning home.   I shall await the event of the proposed Constitution, and then take my final leave of Europe.   I have not written to the President, as I have nothing to communicate more than in this letter.   Please to present to him my affection and compliments, and remember me among the circle of my friends.

Your sincere and affectionate friend,
 

        "THOMAS  PAINE.

"P.  S.   I just now received a letter from General Lewis Morris, who tells me that the house and barn on my farm at N. Rochelle are burnt down.   I assure you I shall not bring money enough to build another."

Four days after this letter was written Marat, triumphant, was crowned with oak leaves.   Foufrede in his speech (April 16th) had said: "Marat has formally demanded dictatorship."   This was the mob's reply: Bos locutus est.

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With Danton, Paine had been on friendly terms, though he described as "rose water" the author's pleadings against the guillotine.   On May 6th, Paine wrote to Danton a letter brought to light by Taine, who says: "Compared with the speeches and writings of the time, it produces the strangest effect by its practical good sense [1]."   Dr. Robinet also finds here evidence of "a lucid and wise intellect." [2]
 

"PARIS, May 6th, 2nd year of the Republic (1793).

"CITOYEN DANTON:

"As you read English, I write this letter to you without passing it through the hands of a translator.   I am exceedingly disturbed at the distractions, jealousies, discontents and uneasiness that reign among us, and which, if they continue, will bring ruin and disgrace on the Republic.   When I left America in the year 1787, it was my intention to return the year following, but the French Revolution, and the prospect it afforded of extending the principles of liberty and fraternity through the greater part of Europe, have induced me to prolong my stay upwards of six years.   I now despair of seeing the great object of European liberty accomplished, and my despair arises not from the combined foreign powers, not from the intrigues of aristocracy and priestcraft, but from the tumultuous misconduct with which the internal affairs of the present revolution is conducted.

"All that now can be hoped for is limited to France only, and I agree with your motion of not interfering in the government of any foreign country, nor permitting any foreign country to interfere in the government of France.   This decree was necessary as a preliminary toward terminating the war.   But while these internal contentions continue, while the hope remains to the enemy of seeing the Republic fall to pieces, while not only the representatives of the departments but representation itself is publicly insulted, as it has lately

[1]    "La Révolution,''  ii., pp.382, 413, 414.

[2]    "Danton Emigré," p.177.

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been and now is by the people of Paris, or at least by the tribunes, the enemy will be encouraged to hang about the frontiers and await the issue of circumstances.

"I observe that the confederated powers have not yet recognised Monsieur, or D'Artois, as regent, nor made any proclamation in favour of any of the Bourbons; but this negative conduct admits of two different conclusions.   The one is that of abandoning the Bourbons and the war together; the other is that of changing the object of the war and substituting a partition scheme in the place of their first object, as they have done by Poland.   If this should be their object, the internal contentions that now rage will favour that object far more than it favoured their former object.   The danger every day increases of a rupture between Paris and the departments.   The departments did not send their deputies to Paris to be insulted, and every insult shown to them is an insult to the departments that elected and sent them.   I see but one effectual plan to prevent this rupture taking place, and that is to