Truth I t's time forJustice

It's time for

It's time for Thomas Paine to receive recognition for creating the American Revolution and the first phase of the American Republic. The Spirit of 76 has arisen and the American Republic will be completed this time. Bonnie Lange Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009
THOMAS PAINE Goupilgravure from an Engraving by William Sharp of the Original Painting by George Romney

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The Resurrection of Thomas Paine

Resurrection = The action or fact of rising again from sleep, disuse, revival; restoring to previous status or vogue. (The Oxford Universal Dictionary, Third Edition, 1933, and the Clarendon Press).

T H E RE S U R RE C T IO N O F THOMAS PAINE
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EASTER SUNDAY, APRIL 12, 2009

titled this issue of Truth Seeker, The Resurrection of Thomas Paine, not as a parody to Christianity but as a way to bring Paines ideas back to life. In my quote on the back cover I declare, Its time for Truth, it's time for Justice...its time for Thomas Paine to receive recognition for creating the American Republic. By his pen through Common Sense and with a great deal of persuasion, he was the driving force behind the separation from England, followed by The Declaration of Independence and the formation of the American Republic. Unfortunately, we have to realize that this was Phase One of establishing freedom for and of the individual on this continent. After Paine left and returned to England in 1789,

everything started going off the rails and by 1793 there was no longer the idea of the individual living in freedom as postulated in The Declaration. Slowly over the decades the Federalists and the Bank of England and of course the politicians and their kin, crept in like a cancer cell takes over the human body and totally destroys the life force; they destroyed the idea of the Individual expressing their Freedom to create and pursue happiness as long as their pursuit of happiness didnt interfere with another. We are now in Phase Two, and the Spirit of 76 and the ideas which were born by Paine in 1776, have arisen and the American Republic will be completed this time as a model to the world of what Freedom really is and what it is for. This is my gift to you. Bonnie Lange, publisher

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IN APPRECIATION
To all those men and women who at the moment of their times have been the first to see . . . Which makes it easier for the rest of us to follow. Bonnie Lange

The Journal of Independent Thought World's Oldest Freethought Publication Since 1873 VOLUME 135 2009

Published by Truth Seeker Copyright 2009 ISSN 0041-3712 ISBN 978-0-939040-16-2. Publishing Office 239 S. Juniper St., Escondido, CA 92025 Tel: (760) 489-5211 Fax: (760) 489-5311 http://www.truthseeker.com Publisher/Editor Bonnie Lange TSeditor@aol.com Associate Editor William B. Lindley TSlindley@aol.com

Computer Editor Nancy Melton TSmelton@aol.com Webmaster Felix Castillo webmaster@truthseeker.com Page Design and Layout Sam Warren of Bookwarren Publishing Services Cover Design Bonnie Lange and Sam Warren All rights reserved. Writers retain their copyrights. Truth Seeker Company is funded by the Truth Seeker Foundation and William B. Lindley.

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CONTENTS
DEDICATION TO THOMAS PAINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 THOMAS PAINE TODAY by Bob Johnson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 FROM PAINE'S PEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 A DAY FOR FREETHINKERS by Rod Bradford . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 FREETHINKER'S DAY JAN. 29 CELEBRATE IT! by Marti Kranzberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE, A BIOGRAPHY by Thomas Clio Rickman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE by Daniel Edwin Wheeler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 EXCERPTS FROM THOMAS PAINE AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE by Joseph Lewis Thomas Paine Writes The Declaration of Independence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 The Slavery Clause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 AFRICAN SLAVERY IN AMERICA by Thomas Paine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 EXCERPT FROM 140TH BIRTHDAY OF THOMAS PAINE, a Speech by D. M. Bennett. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 DOES ANYONE REMEMBER THOMAS PAINE by Robert Williams. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 EASTER SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON by William B. Lindley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 LIBERTY OF THE PRESS by Thomas Paine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 END NOTE by Bonnie Lange. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 EPILOGUE: The Central Vision by Jon Rappoport. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
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THIS ISSUE OF Truth Seeker

is dedicated to the memory of Thomas Paine (January 29, 1737 June 8, 1809) on the occasion of the 200th Anniversary of his death.

Photogravure from the copy by Bass Otis of the Painting by John Wesley Jarvis This portrait shows Paine in the prime of life, and is considered one of the finest likenesses of him. The Bass Otis reproduction hangs in Independence Hall, Philadelphia

PAINE'S CREED
I believe in one God and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. The Age of Reason, 1794
Editor's Note: Paine was a Deist and defined God as Nature.

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THOMAS P A I N E TO D A Y
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Bob Johnson

ot enough people know who Thomas Paine is and what he stood for. Thankfully, that can be corrected due to the fact that Thomas Paine made himself an example for all of us to emulate. By his honesty, courage and altruism he made himself an undying icon for all who truly value liberty, freethought and progress! Paines honesty is made evident by his Deism. He was not content to robotically mimic prayers and hymns of Christianity as too many people did in his day and continue to do in ours. Thomas Paine not only believed in God, he loved God. The mindless reciting of Christian prayers, the blind acceptance of the Bible as the word of God and the thoughtless embracing of man-made Christian dogma was to have no part in this revolutionarys life! He respected and loved God too much to be a Christian or any type of revealed religionist as this quote from his outstanding book The Age of Reason makes clear: Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet, as if the way to God was not open to every man alike. Each of those churches show certain books, which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say, that their word of God

was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that their word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say, that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all. Paine pushes us to be brutally and beautifully honest with ourselves and with each other. He wrote, Is it because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honor of your Creator, that ye listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference? . . . It is incumbent on every man who reverences the character of the Creator, and who wishes to lessen the catalogue of artificial miseries, and remove the cause that has sown persecutions thick among mankind, to expel all ideas of revealed religion, as a dangerous heresy and an impious fraud. Paines exceptional courage shone through on many occasions. One in particular was his heroic fight to save the lives of the king and queen of France during the French Revolution. Instead of going with the flow, Paine openly wrote and spoke out against the powerful emotion based Robespierre and the Jacobins who were demanding the executions of the king and queen. Thomas Paine called for the end of monarchy and wanted Louis XVI to be put on trial, not as king, but as the commoner Louis Capet. For punishment for his abuses of the people, Paine wanted Louis Capet exiled to the Republic of America. This brave, humane and reasonable stand by Paine helped bring about his arrest and imprisonment where he came very, very close to being executed by having his head cut off. The American Revolution could not have been won without profound altruism. This can

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be seen by the wealthy revolutionaries like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson who had much and risked it all for their ideals. Thomas Paine, who was born poor, was on the other end of the income and wealth spectrum. However, when he came into his first real money from writing Common Sense, he donated his entire share of the profits to the fight for freedom through revolution by buying

mittens for American Revolutionary soldiers stationed in Canada. Thomas Paines words followed up by his actions have made him a powerful example for everyone of us. If we are serious about changing the world for the better, about ushering in a new cycle of the ages, we must follow the example of Thomas Paine in both word and action!

FROM PAINES PEN

I believe in one God and no more and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy. I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind and monopolize power and profit. I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it comes in professing to believe what he does not believe. The Age of Reason Editors Note: Its from this book and words like the above which wrote Paine out of our history and denied him the honor and gratitude that he is due.

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A D A Y F O R F R E E TH I N KE R S
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Photo by Randall Rumsby

Reprint from the Truth Seeker, Volume 124, Number 2

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Photo by Randall Rumsby

F R E E TH I N KE R S ' DA Y J A N . 29 C E L E B RA T E I T!
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reethinker's Day is a long overdue holiday. It honors Thomas Paine and is celebrated on his birthday, January 29. It gives Freethinkers an opportunity to promote their philosophy.; This holiday is celebrated simply by giving and displaying a white rose with thorns. The simple beauty and purity, the fragility, yet not without the danger of drawing blood by a thorn prick, makes this an excellent icon for those freethinkers who will want to reflect on reason and coercion and promote the ideas of personal liberty as expressed in the Bill of Rights.. Here is a holiday that celebrated the concept of liberty, honoring the man who helped America declare her independence by first giving us Common Sense and later The Age of Reason. The following list of Paine's other contributions to American history was provided to us by Gary Berton of the Bordentown Historical Society. First to call for independence from England, and provide the tone and much of the content of the Declaration of Independence. First to publicity advocate the abolition of slavery, and wrote the first law regarding emancipation.

First to publicly call for

complete equality for women. Organized the first bank in America to fund the Revolution. First advocate of free public education.

First to call for a Constitutional

convention in 1778 for the Articles of the Confederation. Coined the phrase United States of America. Served as the first Secretary of the State for Pennsylvania. Took the lead in funding the Revolution, organized supplies and donated all proceeds of Common Sense for the cause. Instrumental in the first victory of the Revolution at Trenton when the first of his Crisis Papers inspired the troops. First to delineate the social welfare system, including social security. First to propose an international peace organization, arbitration and copyright. First to advocate the Louisiana Purchase. Invented the single-span iron bridge Father of American journalism.

Bonnie Lange admires Thomas Paine

Reprint from the Truth Seeker, Volume 124, Number 2

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Photo by Randall Rumsby

L IFE
OF

T HOMAS P AINE
Written by Thomas Clio Rickman in 1811 Two years after the death of Paine
Editor's Note: Every once in a while you come upon an idea, picture, book . . . something that gives you delight and joy. That's what happened to me when I recently discovered this biography of Paine in the 10 Volume collection Writings of Thomas Paine by Daniel Edwin Wheeler, 1915. It is also available on CD by www. BankOf Wisdom.com. Clio Rickman was a personal friend and probably knew and understood Paine better than anyone else who has written about him. This discovery was the stimulus for this issue of Truth Seeker. These are the times to really know who this man was and what he has done for us.

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Thomas Clio Rickman

Publisher and friend of Thomas Paine, with whom Paine lived in London. In his house, Paine wrote Rights of Man, Part II. Rickman was prosecuted by the British Government for publishing some of Paine's writings, but made his escape to Paris. William M. Van der Weyde, The Life and Works of Thomas Paine, Vol. V, Frontpiece.

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P R E FA C E T O RICKMAN S LIFE
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HE two following letters are explanatory of the reasons why the publication of the life of Mr. Paine has been so long delayed, and are so well calculated to excite the candor of the reader toward the work, that no apology is offered for making them a part of the preface.

To the Editor of the Universal Magazine:

[November, 1811.]

ON MR. CLIO RICKMANS SUPPOSED UNDERTAKING OF THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE SIR: The public has been, within the last year or two, led to expect a Life of the celebrated Thomas Paine, from the pen of Mr. Clio Rickman, well known, on various accounts, to be more thoroughly qualified for that task than any other person in this country. This information, however, I repeat as I received it, uncertain whether it came abroad in any authenticated shape; and can only add, that no doubt need be entertained of sufficient attention from the public in times like the present, to a well-written life of that extraordinary character, whose principles and precepts are at this moment in full operation over the largest and richest portion of the habitable globe, and which in regular process of time may, from the efficacious influence of the glorious principles of freedom, become the grand theater of civilization. I have often desired to make a communication of this kind to your magazine, but am particularly impelled thereto at this moment, from observing in some periodical publications devoted to political and religious bigotry, a sample of their usual sophistical

accounts of the last moments of men who have been in life eminent for the independence and freedom of their opinions; but the whole that the bigot to whom I allude has been able to effect in the case of Mr. Paine, amounts to an acknowledgment that the philosopher died steadfast to those opinions of religion in which he had lived; and the disappointment is plain enough to be seen, that similar forgeries could not, with any prospect of success, be circulated concerning Paines tergiversation and death-bed conversion, which were so greedily swallowed for a length of time by the gulls of fanaticism respecting Voltaire, DAlembert, and others, until the Monthly Review, in the real spirit of philosophy, dispelled the imposition. The late Life of Thomas Paine by Cheetham of New York, gave rise to the above magazine article. Cheetham, humph! Now should it not rather be spelled CHEATEM, as applicable to every reader of that farrago of imposition and malignity, miscalled the Life of Paine? Probably it may be but a traveling name in order to set another book a-traveling, for the purpose of scandalizing and maligning the reputation of a defunct public man, instead of the far more difficult task of confuting his principles. Nothing can be more in course than this conjecture, authorized indeed by the

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following fact, with which I believe the public is, to this day, unacquainted ; namely, that Mr. Chalmers publicly at a dinner acknowledged himself the author of that very silly and insipid catchpenny, formerly sent abroad under the misnomer of a Life of Thomas Paine, by F. Oklys, of America. The chief view of this application is to ascertain whether or not Mr. Rickman really intends to undertake the work in question. I am, Sir, etc., etc. POLITICUS. Universal Magazine, December, 1811 MR. CLIO RICKMANS REPLY TO POLITICUS Sir: If you had done me the favor of a call, I would readily have satisfied all your inquiries about the Life of Mr. Paine. It is true I had the memoirs of that truly wise and good man in a great state of forwardness about a year ago; but a series of the most severe and dreadful family distresses since that time have rendered me incapable of completing them. Though an entire stranger to me (for I have not the least idea from whom the letter I am replying to came), I feel obliged to you for the liberal opinion therein expressed of me and of my fitness for the work. I have taken great pains that the life of my friend should be given to the world as the subject merits; and a few weeks, whenever I can sit down to it, will complete it. Unhappily, Cheetham is the real name of a real apostate. He lived, when Mr. Paine was my inmate in 1792, at Manchester, and was a violent and furious idolater of his.

That Mr. Paine died in the full conviction of the truth of the principles he held when living I shall fully prove, and should have answered the contemptible trash about his death, so industriously circulated, but that the whole account exhibited on the face of it fanatical fraud ; and it was pushed forward in a mode and manner so ridiculous and glaringly absurd, as to carry with it its own antidote. Such Christians would be much better employed in mending their own lives, and showing in them an example of good manners and morals, than in calumniating the characters and in detailing silly stories of the deaths of those Deists who have infinitely outstripped them, in their journey through life, in every talent and virtue, and in diffusing information and happiness among their fellowmen. I again beg the favor of a call, as the circumstances attached to the query of yours, and the delays and hindrances, which are of a family and distressing nature, to the publication of Mr. Paines life, are better adapted for private than for public discussion. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, CLIO RICKMAN.

It may not be necessary for me to promise anything further than to say, that I affect not to rank with literary men, nor, as they rise, do I wish it; that authorship is neither my profession nor pursuit; and that, except in an undeviating attention to truth, and a better acquaintance with Mr. Paine and his life than any other man, I am perhaps the most unfit to arrange it for the public eye.

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What I have hitherto written and published has arisen out of the moment, has been composed on the spur of the occasion, inspired by the scenery and circumstances around me, and produced abroad and at home, amid innumerable vicissitudes, the hurry of travel, business, pleasure, and during a life singularly active, eventful and checkered. Latterly, too, that life has been begloomed by a train of ills which have trodden on each others heel, and which, added to the loss of my inspirer, my guide, my genius, and my muse; of HER, the most highly qualified and best able to assist me, have rendered the work peculiarly irksome and oppressive. In the year 1802, on my journey from France, I had the misfortune to lose my desk of papers-a loss I have never lamented more than on the present occasion. Among these were Mr. Paines letters to me, particularly those from France in the most interesting years to Europe, 1792,1798. Not a scrap of these, together with some of his poetry, could I ever recover. By this misfortune the reader will lose much entertaining and valuable matter. These memoirs [1819] have remained untouched from 1811 till now, and have not received any addition of biographical matter since. They were written by that part of my family who were at hand, as I dictated them; by those loved beings of whom death has deprived me, and from whom other severe ills have separated me. The manuscript, on these and many other accounts, awakens busy meddling MEMORY, and tortures me with painful remembrances; and save that it is a duty I owe to the public and to the memory

and character of a valued friend, I should not have set about its arrangement. My heart is not in it. There are literary productions, which, like some children, though disagreeable to everybody else, are still favorites with the parent: this offspring of mine is not of this sort, it hath no such affection. Thus surrounded, and every way broken in upon by the most painful and harassing circumstances, I claim the readers candor; and I now literally force myself to the publication of Mr. Paines Life, lest it should again be improperly done, or not be done at all, and the knowledge of so great and good a man be thereby lost to the world. The engraving of Mr. Paine, prefixed to this work, is the only true likeness of him ; it is from his portrait by Romney, and is perhaps the greatest likeness ever taken by any painter: to that eminent artist I introduced him in 1792, and it was by my earnest persuasion that he sat to him. Mr. Paine in his person was about five feet ten inches high; and rather athletic; he was broad-shouldered, and latterly stooped a little. His eye, of which the painter could not convey the exquisite meaning, was full, brilliant, and singularly piercing; it had in it the muse of fire. In his dress and person he was generally very cleanly, and wore his hair cued, with side curls, and powdered, so that he looked altogether like a gentleman of the old French school. His manners were easy and gracious; his knowledge was universal and boundless ; in private company and among friends his

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conversation had every fascination that anecdote, novelty and truth could give it. In mixed company and among strangers he said little, and was no public speaker. Thus much is said of him in general, and in this place, that the reader may the better bear us company in his Life.

writer is common to all, it is here attempted to be gratified. The Life of Mr. Paine by Francis Oldys was written seventeen years before Mr. Paines death; and was in fact, drawn up by a person employed by a certain lord, and who was to have five hundred pounds for the job, if he calumniated and belied him to his lordships and the Ministrys satisfaction. A continuation of this Life, printed at Philadelphia in 1796, is in the same strain as the above, and equally contemptible. A most vile and scandalous memoir of Paine, with the name of William Cobbett as the author, though we hope he was not so, appeared in London about the year 1795 with this motto: A life thats one continued scene Of all thats infamous and mean. Mr. James Cheethams Life of Mr. Paine, published at New York after Mr. Paines death in 1809, is a farrago of still more silly, trifling, false and malicious matter. It is an outrageous attack upon Paine which bears upon the face of it, idle gossiping and gross misrepresentation. The critique of this Life, in the British Review for June, 1811, consists of more corrupt trash about Mr. Paine than even Cheethams book and is in its style inflated and bombastic to a laughable excess. Whence this came, and for what purpose published, the candid will readily discern and cannot but lament the too frequent abuse, ,both by the tongue and by the pen, of characters entirely unknown to those who libel them, and by whom, if they were known, they would be approved and esteemed.

L I FE O F THOMAS PAINE
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Thomas Clio Rickman

HE following memoirs of Mr. Paine, if they have no other merit, at least have that of being true.

Europe and America have for years been in possession of his works: these form the most important part of his life, and these are publicly sold and generally read; nor will the spirit of inquiry and sound reasoning, which the publication of them is so well calculated to promote, be long confined to any part of the world; for, to use his own words, An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot. It will succeed where diplomatic management would fail. It is neither the Rhine, the Channel, nor the Ocean, that can arrest its progress. It will march on the horizon of the world, and it will conquer. What manner of man Mr. Paine was, his works will best exhibit, and from these his public, and much of his private character, will be best ascertained. But, as solicitude about the life of a great man and an extraordinary

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Indeed the whole of these works are so ridiculously over strained in their abuse that they carry their own antidote with them. The Life by Cheetham is so palpably written to distort, disfigure, mislead, and vilify, and does this so bunglingly, that it defeats its own purposes, and becomes entertaining from the excess of its labored and studied defamation. It is indeed guilts blunder, and subverts all it was intended to accomplish. It is filled with long details of uninteresting American matter, bickering letters of obscure individuals, gossiping stories of vulgar fanatics, prejudiced political cant and weak observations on theology. It may be supposed, from my long and affectionate intercourse with Mr. Paine, that these memoirs will have an opposite bias, and portray a too flattering and exalted character of him. To this I reply, that I am not disposed to advocate the errors or irregularities of any man, however intimate with him, nor to suffer the partialities of friendship to prevent the due appreci-ation of character, or induce me to disregard the hallowed dictates of truth. Paine was of those
Who, wise by centuries before the crowd, Must by their novel systems, though correct, Of course offend the wicked, weak and proud Must meet with hatred, calumny, neglect.

prejudice, and who from the principle was a Deist. Of all wrath, fanatical wrath is the most intense; nor can it be a matter of surprise that Mr. Paine received from great numbers in America, an unwelcome reception, and was treated with neglect and illiberality. It is true on his return to that country in 1802, he received great attention from many of those who remembered the mighty influence of his writings in the gloomy period of the Revolution; and from others who had since embraced his principles; but these attentions were by many not long continued. Thousands, who had formerly looked up to Mr. Paine as the principal founder of the Republic, had imbibed a strong dislike to him on account of his religious principles; and thousands more, who were opposed to his political principles, seized hold of the mean and dastardly expedient of attacking those principles through the religious feelings and prejudices of the people. The vilest calumnies were constantly vented against him in the public papers, and the weak-minded were afraid to encounter the popular prejudice. The letter he wrote to General Washington also estranged him from many of his old friends, and has been to his adversaries a fruitful theme of virulent accusation, and a foundation on which to erect a charge of ingratitude and intemperance. It must certainly be confessed that his naturally warm feelings, which could ill brook any slight, particularly where he was conscious he so little deserved it, appear to have led him to form a somewhat precipitate judgment of the conduct of the American President, with regard to his (Mr. Paines) imprisonment in France, and to attribute to design and wilful neglect what was probably only the result of inattention or

In his retirement to America, toward the close of his life, Mr. Paine was particularly unfortunate; for, as the author of The Age of Reason, he could not have gone to so unfavorable a quarter of the world. A country abounding in fanatics, could not be a proper one for him whose mind was bold, inquiring, liberal and soaring, free from

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perhaps of misinformation; and under the influence of this incorrect impression he seems to have indulged, rather too hastily, suspicions of Washingtons political conduct with respect to England. But surely some little allowance should be made for the circumstances under which he wrote; just escaped from the horrors of a prison where he had been for several months confined under the sanguinary reign of Robespierre, when death strode incessantly through its cells, and the guillotine floated in the blood of its wretched inhabitants ; and if, with the recollection of these scenes of terror fresh in his memory, and impressed with the idea that it was by Washingtons neglect that his life had been thus endangered, he may have been betrayed into a style of severity which was perhaps not quite warranted, we can only lament, without attaching blame to either, that anything jarring should have occurred between two men who were both stanch supporters of the cause of freedom, and thus have given the enemies of liberty occasion to triumph because its advocates were not more than mortal. The dark and troublous years of the Revolution having passed away, and a government being firmly established, wealth possessed more influence than patriotism ; and, a large portion of the people consisting of dissenters, fanaticism was more predominant than toleration, candor and charity. These causes produced the shameful and ungrateful neglect of Mr. Paine in the evening of his days; of that Paine who by his long, faithful, and disinterested services in the Revolution, and afterwards by inculcating and enforcing correct principles, deserved, above all other men, the most kind and unremitting

attention from, and to be held in the highest estimation by, the American people. There were indeed a chosen and enlightened few, who, like himself bold enough to be honest and honest enough to be bold, feeling his value, continued to be his friends to his last hour. Paine was not one of the great men who live amid great events, and forward and share their splendor ; he created them ; and, in this point of view, he was a very superior character to Washington. Mr. Paine having ever in his mind the services he had rendered the United States, of whose independence he was the principal author and means, it cannot be a matter of wonder that he was deeply hurt and affected at not being recognized and treated by the Americans as he deserved, and as his labors for their benefit merited. Shunned where he ought to have been caressed, coldly neglected where he ought to have been cherished, thrown into the background where he ought to have been prominent, and cruelly treated and calumniated by a host of ignorant and canting fanatics, it cannot be a subject of surprise, though it certainly must of regret, that he sometimes, toward the close of his life, fell into the too frequent indulgence of stimulants, neglected his appearance, and retired, mortified and disgusted, from an ill-judging, unkind, unjust world, into obscurity, and the association of characters in an inferior social position. In this place it is absolutely necessary to observe that during his residence with me in London, in and about the year 1792, and in the course of his life previous to that time, he was not in the habit of drinking to excess; he was clean in his person, and in his manners polite

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and engaging; and ten years after this, when I was with him in France, he did not drink spirits, and wine he took moderately; he even objected to any spirits being laid in as a part of his sea stock, observing to me, that though sometimes, borne down by public and private affliction, he had been driven to excesses in Paris, the cause and effect would cease together, and that in America he should live as he liked, and as he ought to live. That Mr. Paine had his failings is as true as that he was a man, and that some of them grew on him at a very advanced time of life, arising from the circumstances before detailed, there can be no doubt: but to magnify these, to give him vices he had not, and seek only occasions of misrepresenting and vilifying his character, without bringing forward the great and good traits in it, is cruel, unkind, and unjust. Let those who stand take heed lest they fall. They too, when age debilitates the body and mind, and unexpected trials and grievances assail them, may fall into errors that they now vauntingly value themselves in not having. Singularly blest are they who are correct in their conduct; they should be happy and thankful that they are so; and instead of calumniating and being hard upon, should compassionate those who are not. The throwers of the first stone would indeed be few if the condition were complied with on which it should be cast. That Mr. Paine in his declining years became careless of his personal appearance, and maybe, somewhat parsimonious, is in some measure true; but, to these errors of his old age, we ought to oppose his being the principal agent in creating the government of the American States; and that through his efforts millions have now the happiness of sitting at ease under

their own vines and their own fig trees; his fair and upright conduct through life, his honest perseverance in principles which he might have had immense sums for relinquishing, or for being silent about, his never writing for money or making his works matter of pecuniary advantage to himself, but, on the contrary, as will be exemplified in these memoirs, his firmness in resisting all such emolument and in not listening to the voice of the briber. Even amidst the violent party abuse of the day there were contemporary writers who knew how to appreciate Mr. Paines talents and principles, and to speak of him as he deserved.* We are now, says one of these, to treat of a real great man, a noble of nature, one whose mind is enlarged and wholly free from prejudice; one who has most usefully and honorably devoted his pen to support the glorious cause of general liberty and the rights of man. In his reply to Mr. Burkes miserable rhapsody in favor of oppression, popery, and tyranny, he has urged the most lucid arguments, and brought forward truths the most convincing. Like a powerful magician he touches with his wand the hills of error and they smoke; the mountains of inhumanity and they melt away. Had Thomas Paine, says another most enlightened writer in 1795, in reply to Cheetham, Cobbett, Oldys, etc., been nothing superior to a vagabond seaman, a bankrupt stay-maker, a discarded exciseman, a porter in the streets of Philadelphia, or whatever else the insanity of Grub Street chooses to call him, hundreds of thousands of copies of his writing had never announced his name in every village on the globe where the English language is spoken, and very extensively where it is not;

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nor would the rays of royal indignation have illuminated that character which they cannot scorch. Even Mr. Burke, writing on one of Mr. Paines works, Common Sense, says, that celebrated pamphlet, which prepared the minds of the people for independence. It has been a fashion among the enemies of Mr. Paine, when unable to cope with his arguments, to attack his style, which they charge with inaccuracy and want of elegance; and some, even of those most friendly to his principles have joined in this captious criticism. It had not, perhaps, all the meretricious ornaments and studied graces that glitter in the pages of Burke, which would have been so many obscurities in the eyes of that part of the community for whose perusal his writings were principally intended, but it is singularly nervous and pointed; his arguments are always forcibly stated, nor does a languid line ever weary the attention of the reader. It is true, he never studied variety of phrase at the expense of perspicuity. His object was to enlighten, not to dazzle; and often, for the sake of more forcibly impressing an idea on the mind of the reader, he has made use of verbal repetitions which to a fastidious ear may perhaps sound unmusical. But although, in the opinion of some, his pages may be deficient in elegance, few will deny that they are copious in matter; and, if they sometimes fail to tickle the ear, they will never fail to fill the mind. Distinctness and arrangement are the peculiar characteristics of his writings : this reflection brings to mind an observation once made to him by an American girl, that his head was like an orange - it had a separate apartment for everything it contained. Notwithstanding this general character of his writings, the bold and original style of

thinking which everywhere pervades them often displays itself in a luxuriance of imagery, and a poetic elevation of fancy, which stand unrivaled in the pages of our English classics. Thomas Paine was born at Thetford in the County of Norfolk in England, on the twenty-ninth of January, 1736. His father, Joseph Paine, who was the son of a reputable farmer, followed the trade of a stay-maker, and was by religious profession a Quaker. His mothers maiden name was Frances Cocke, a member of the Church of England, and daughter of an attorney at Thetford. They were married at the parish church of Euston, near Thetford, the twentieth of June, 1734. His father, by this marriage out of the Society of Quakers, was disowned by that community. Mr. Paine received his education at the grammar school at Thetford, under the Rev. William Knowles, master; and one of his schoolmates at that time was the late Counsellor Mingay. He gave very early indication of talents and strong abilities, and addicted himself when a mere boy, to reading poetical authors; but this disposition his parents endeavored to discourage. When a child he composed some lines on a fly being caught in a spiders web, and produced when eight years of age, the following epitaph on a crow which he buried in the garden:
Here lies the body of John Crow, Who once was high but now is low: Ye brother Crows take warning all, For as you rise, so must you fall.

At this school his studies were directed merely to the useful branches of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and he left it at

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thirteen years of age, applying, though he did not like it, to his fathers business for nearly five years. In the year 1756, when about twenty years of age, he went to London, where he worked some time in Hanover Street, Long Acre, with Mr. Morris, a noted stay-maker. He continued but a short time in London, and it is probable about this time made his seafaring adventure of which he thus speaks: At an early age, raw and adventurous, and heated with the false heroism of a master Rev. Mr. Knowles, master of the grammar school at Thetford who had served in a man-of-war, I began my fortune, and entered on board the Terrible, Captain Death. From this adventure I was happily prevented by the affectionate and moral remonstrances of a good father, who from the habits of his life, being of the Quaker profession, looked on me as lost; but the impression, much as it affected me at the time, wore away, and I entered afterwards in the King of Prussia privateer, Captain Mendez, and went with her to sea. This way of life Mr. Paine soon left, and about the year 1758, worked at his trade for near twelve months at Dover. In April, 1759, he settled as a master stay-maker at Sandwich; and the twenty-seventh of September following married Mary Lambert, the daughter of an exciseman of that place. In April, 1760, he removed with his wife to Margate, where she died shortly after, and he again mingled with the crowds of London. In July, 1761, disgusted with the toil and little gain of his late occupation, he renounced it for ever, and determined to apply himself to the profession of an exciseman, toward which, as his wifes father was of that calling, he had some time turned his thoughts.

At this period he sought shelter under his fathers roof at Thetford, that he might prosecute, in quiet and retirement, the object of his future course. Through the interest of Mr. Cocksedge, the recorder of Thetford, after fourteen months of study, he was established as a supernumerary in the excise, at the age of twenty-five. In this situation at Grantham and Alford, etc., he did not continue more than two or three years, when he relinquished it in August, 1765, and commenced it again in July, 1766. In this interval he was teacher at Mr. Nobles academy in Leman Street, Goodmans Fields, at a salary of twenty-five pounds a year. In a similar occupation he afterwards lived for a short time, at Kensington, with a Mr. Gardner. I remember when once speaking of the improvement he gained in the above capacities and some other lowly situations he had been in, he made this observation. Here I derived considerable information; indeed I have seldom passed five minutes of my life, however circumstanced, in which I did not acquire some knowledge. During this residence in London, Mr. Paine, attended the philosophical lectures of Martin and Ferguson, and became acquainted with Dr. Bevis of the Temple, a great astronomer. In these studies and in the mathematics he soon became a proficient. In March, 1768, he was settled as an exciseman at Lewes, in Sussex, and there, on the twenty-sixth of March, 1771, married Elizabeth Ollive, shortly after the death of her father, whose trade of a tobacconist he entered into and carried on. In this place he lived several years in habits of intimacy with a very respectable, sensible, and convivial set of acquaintance,

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who were entertained with his witty sallies, and informed by his more serious conversations. In politics he was at this time a Whig, and notorious for that quality which has been defined perseverance in a good cause and obstinacy in a bad one. He was tenacious of his opinions, which were bold, acute, and independent, and which he maintained with ardor, elegance, and argument. At this period, at Lewes, the White Hart Evening Club was the resort of a social and intelligent circle who, out of fun, seeing that disputes often ran very warm and high, frequently had what they called the Headstrong Book. This was no other than an old Greek Homer which was sent the morning after a debate vehemently maintained, to the most obstinate haranguer of the club: this book had the following title, as implying that Mr. Paine the best deserved and most frequently obtained it.
___________________________________________________________________________

My friend Mr. Lee, of Lewes, in communicating this to me in September, 1810, said: This was manufactured nearly forty years ago, as applicable to Mr. Paine, and I believe you will allow, however indifferent the manner, that I did not very erroneously anticipate his future celebrity. During his residence at Lewes, he wrote several excellent little pieces in prose and verse, and among the rest the celebrated song on the death of General Wolfe, beginning In a mouldering cave where the wretched retreat. It was about this time he wrote The Trial of Farmer Carters Dog Porter, in the manner of a drama, a work of exquisite wit and humor. In 1772 the excise officers throughout the kingdom formed a design of applying to Parliament for some addition to their salaries. Upon this occasion Mr. Paine, who, by this time, was distinguished among them as a man of talent, was fixed upon as a fit person, and solicited to draw-up their case, and this he did in a very succinct and masterly manner. This case makes an octavo pamphlet, and four thousand copies were printed by Mr. William Lee, of Lewes. It is entitled The Case of the Salary of the Officers of Excise, and Thoughts on the Corruption Arising from the Poverty of Excise Officers. No application, however, notwithstanding this effort, was made to Parliament. In April, 1774, the goods of his shop were sold to pay his debts. As a grocer, he trafficked in excisable articles, and being suspected of unfair practises, was dismissed the excise after being in it twelve years. Whether this reason was a just one or not never was ascertained; it was, however, the ostensible one. Mr. Paine might perhaps have been in the habit of smuggling, in common with his

THE HEADSTRONG BOOK, OR ORIGINAL BOOK OF OBSTINACY, WRITTEN BY **** ****, OF LEWES, IN SUSSEX, AND REVISED AND CORRECTED BY THOMAS PAINE.
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EULOGY ON PAINE.
Immortal PAINE, while mighty reasoners jar, We crown thee General of the Headstrong War; Thy logic vanishd error, and thy mind No bounds, but those of right and truth, confined. Thy soul of fire must sure ascend the sky, Immortal PAINE, thy fame can never die; For men like thee their names must ever save From the black edicts of the tyrant grave.

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neighbors. It was the universal custom along the coast, and more or less the practise of all ranks of people, from lords and ladies, ministers and magistrates, down to the cottager and laborer. As Mr. Paines being dismissed the excise has been a favorite theme with his abusers it may be necessary here to relate the following fact: At the time he was an exciseman at Lewes, he was so approved for doing his duty that Mr. Jenner, principal clerk in the excise office, London, had several times occasion to write letters from the Board of Excise, thanking Mr. Paine for his assiduity in his profession, and for his information and calculations forwarded to the office. In May following Mr. Paine and his wife separated by mutual agreement, articles of which were finally settled on the fourth of June. Which of them was in this instance wrong, or whether either of them was so, must be left undetermined, as on this subject no knowledge or judgment can be formed. They are now both removed, where, as we are told, none are either married or given in marriage, and where, consequently, there can be no disagreements on this score. This I can assert, that Mr. Paine always spoke tenderly and respectfully of his wife, and several times sent her pecuniary aid, without her knowing even whence it came. Toward the end of the year 1774, he was strongly recommended to the great and good Dr. Franklin, the favor of whose friendship, he says, I possessed in England and my introduction to this part of the world [America] was through his patronage. Mr. Paine now formed the resolution of quitting his native country, and soon crossed the Atlantic; and, as he himself relates, arrived

in Philadelphia in the winter, a few months before the battle of Lexington, which was fought in April, 1775. It appears that his first employment in the new world was with Mr. Aitken, a book-seller, as editor of the Pennsylvanian Magazine; and his introduction to that work, dated January 24, 1775, is thus concluded: Thus encompassed with difficulties, this first number of the Pennsylvanian Magazine entreats a favorable reception, of which we shall only say, that like the early snow-drop it comes forth in a barren season, and contents itself with foretelling the reader that choicer flowers are preparing to appear. Soon after his return [sic] to America, as foreign supplies of gunpowder were stopped, he turned his attention to chemistry, and set his fertile talents to work in endeavoring to discover some cheap and expeditious method of furnishing Congress with saltpeter, and he proposed, in the Pennsylvanian Journal, November 2, 1775, the plan of a saltpeter association for voluntarily supplying the national magazines with gunpowder. His popularity in America now increased daily, and from this era he became a great public character and an object of interest and attention in the world. In 1776, on the tenth of January, he published the celebrated and powerfully discriminating pamphlet, Common Sense. Perhaps the greatest compliment that can be paid to this work is the effect it so rapidly had on the people, who had before no predisposition toward its principles. Even Mr. Cheetham, whom no one will suspect of flattering Mr. Paine, thus forcibly describes the effects of Common Sense on the people of America: This pamphlet of forty octave pages, holding out relief by proposing independence

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to an oppressed and despairing people, was published in January, 1776, speaking a language which the colonists had felt, but not thought of. Its popularity, terrible in its consequences to the parent country, was unexampled in the history of the press. At first involving the colonists, it was thought, in the crime of rebellion, and pointing to a road leading inevitably to ruin, it was read with indignation and alarm, but when the reader, (and everybody read it), recovering from the first shock, re-perused it, its arguments nourishing his feelings, and appealing to his pride, reanimated his hopes and satisfied his understanding, that Common Sense, backed up by the resources and force of the colonies, poor and feeble as they were, could alone rescue them from the unqualified oppression with which they were threatened. The unknown author, in the moments of enthusiasm which succeeded, was an angel sent from heaven to save from all the horrors of slavery by his timely, powerful and unerring councils, a faithful but abused, a brave but misrepresented people. Common Sense, it appears, was universally read and approved; the first edition sold almost immediately, and the second with very large additions was before the public soon after. Owing to this disinterested conduct of Mr. Paine, it appears that though the sale of Common Sense was so great, he was in debt to the printer 29 12s ld. This liberality and conscientious discharge of his duty with respect to his serviceable writings, as he called them, he adopted through life. When I bring out my poetical and anecdotical works, he would often say to me, which will be little better than amusing, I shall sell them; but I must have no gain in view, must make no

traffic of my political and theological writings. They are with me a matter of principle and not a matter of money; I cannot desire to derive benefit from them or make them the subject to attain it. In the course of this year, 1776, Mr. Paine accompanied the army with General Washington, and was with him in his retreat from the Hudson River to the Delaware. At this period our author stood undismayed, amid a flying Congress, and the general terror of the land. The Americans, he loudly asserted, were in possession of resources sufficient to authorize hope, and he labored to inspire others with the same sentiments which animated himself. To effect this, on the nineteenth of December he published The Crisis, wherein, with a masterly hand, he stated every reason for hope, and examined all the motives for apprehension. This work he continued at various intervals, till the Revolution was established. The last number appeared on the nineteenth of April, 1783, the same day a cessation of hostilities was proclaimed. In 1777, Congress unanimously, and unknown to Mr. Paine, appointed him Secretary in the Foreign Department, and from this time a close friendship continued between him and Dr. Franklin. From his office went all letters that were officially written by Congress, and the correspondence of Congress rested afterwards in his hands. This appointment gave Mr. Paine an opportunity of seeing into foreign courts, and their manner of doing business and conducting themselves. In this office, which obliged him to reside with Congress wherever it fled, or however it was situated, Mr. Paine deserved the highest praise for the clearness, firmness and magnanimity of his conduct. His uprightness and entire fitness

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for this office did not, however, prevent intrigue and interestedness, or defeat cabal; for a difference being fomented between Congress and him, respecting one of their commissioners then in Europe (Mr. Silas Deane), he resigned his secretaryship on the eighth of January, 1779, and declined, at the same time, the pecuniary offers made him by the ministers of France and Spain, M. Geard and Don Juan Mirralles. This resignation of, or dismissal from his situation as Secretary for Foreign Affairs, has been so variously mentioned and argued upon, that the reader is referred to the tedious detail of it in the journals of the day, if he has patience to wade through so much American temporary and party political gossip. Mr. Paines own account in his letter to Congress shortly is, I prevented Deanes fraudulent demand being paid, and so far the country is obliged to me, but I became the victim of my integrity. The party junto against him say he was guilty of a violation of his official duty, etc. And here I shall leave it, as the bickerings of parties in America, in the year 1779, cannot be worth a Europeans attention; and as to the Americans themselves they have various means, by their legislatural records, registers of the day, and pamphlets, then and since, to go into the subject if they think it of importance enough. About this time Mr. Paine had the degree of Master of Arts conferred on him by the University of Philadelphia, and in 1780 was chosen a member of the American Philosophical Society, when it was revived by the Legislature of the Province of Pennsylvania. In February, 1781, Colonel Laurens, amidst the financial distress of America, was

sent on a mission to France in order to obtain a loan, and Mr. Paine, at the solicitation of the Colonel, accompanied him. Mr. Paine, in his letter to Congress, intimates that this mission originated with himself, and takes upon himself the credit of it. They arrived in France the following month, obtained a loan of ten millions of livres and a present of six millions, and landed in America the succeeding August with two millions and a half in silver. His value, his firmness, his independence, as a political character, were now universally acknowledged; his great talents, and the high purposes to which he devoted them, made him generally sought after and looked up to, and General Washington was foremost to express the great sense he had of the excellence of his character and the importance of his services, and would himself have proposed to Congress a great remuneration of them, had not Mr. Paine positively objected to it as a bad precedent and an improper mode. In August, 1782, he published his spirited letter to the Abbe Raynal; of this letter a very sensible writer observes, that it displays an accuracy of judgment and strength of penetration that I would do honor to the most enlightened philosopher. It exhibits proofs of knowledge so comprehensive, and discrimination so acute, as must in the opinion of the best judges place the author in the highest ranks of literature. On the twenty-ninth of October he brought out his excellent letter to the Earl of Shelburne, on his speech in the House of Lords, July 10, 1782. To get an idea of the speech of this Earl it may not be necessary to quote more than the following sentence : When Great Britain

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acknowledges American independence the sun of Britains glory is set forever. When the war ended, says Mr. Paine, I went from Philadelphia to Borden Town on the East end of the Delaware, where I have a small place. Congress was at this time at Prince Town, fifteen miles distant, and General Washington had taken his headquarters at Rocky Hill, within the neighborhood of Congress, for the purpose of resigning his commission, the object for which he had accepted it being accomplished, and of retiring to private life. While he was on this business he wrote me the letter which I here subjoin: ROCKY HILL, September 10, 1783. I have learned since I have been at this place that you are at Borden Town. Whether for the sake of retirement or economy I know not; be it for either, for both, or whatever it may, if you will come to this place and partake with me, I shall be exceedingly happy to see you at it. Your presence may remind Congress of your past services to this country, and if it is in my power to impress them, command my best services with freedom; as they will be rendered cheerfully by one who entertains a lively sense of the importance of your works, and who with much pleasure, subscribes himself, Your sincere friend, G. WASHINGTON. In 1785, Congress granted Mr. Paine three thousand dollars for his services to the people of America, as may be seen by the following document : Friday, August 26,1785. On the report of a committee consisting of Mr. Gerry, Mr. Petet and Mr. King, to whom

was referred a letter of the thirteenth from Thomas Paine, Resolved, That the early, unsolicited, and continued labors of Mr. Thomas Paine, in explaining the principles of the late Revolution, by ingenious and timely publications upon the nature of liberty and civil government, have been well received by the citizens of these states, and merit the approbation of Congress; and that in consideration of these services, and the benefits produced thereby, Mr. Paine is entitled to a liberal gratification from the United States. On a report of a committee consisting of Mr. Gerry, Mr. Howell and Mr. Long, to whom were referred sundry letters from Mr. Thomas Paine, and a report on his letter of the fourteenth of September, Resolved, That the Board of Treasury take order for paying to Mr. Thomas Paine, the sum of three thousand dollars, for the considerations of the twenty-third of August last.- Journals of Congress. The State of Pennsylvania, in which he first published Common Sense and the Crisis, in 1785, presented him, by an act of Legislature, five hundred pounds currency. New York gave him the estate at New Rochelle, in the county of Westchester, consisting of more than three hundred acres of land in high cultivation. On this estate was an elegant stone house, 125 by 28 feet, besides outhouses; the latter property was farmed much to his advantage, during his long stay in Europe, by some friends, as will hereafter be more fully noticed. Mr. Monroe, when Ambassador in England, once speaking on this subject at my house, said that Mr. Paine would have received a very large remuneration from the State of

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Virginia, but that while the matter was before the Assembly, and he was extremely popular and in high favor, he published reasons against some proceedings of that State which he thought improper, and thereby lost, by a majority of one, the high reward he would otherwise have received ;a memorable instance of the independence of his mind, and of his attachment to truth and right above all other considerations. A conduct exactly opposite to that of the pensioned Burke, whose venality cannot be better pointed out than in the following conversation with Mr. Paine, after dining together at the Duke of Portlands at Bulstrode. Burke was very inquisitive to know how the Americans were disposed toward the King of England, when Mr. Paine, to whom the subject was an ungracious one, and who felt teased, related the following anecdote: At a small town, in which was a tavern bearing the sign of the Kings head, it was insisted on by the inhabitants that a memento so odious should not continue up, but there was no painter at hand to change it into General Washington, or any other favorite, so the sign was suffered to remain, with this inscription under it: This is the sign of the Loggerhead! Burke, who at this moment was a concealed pensioner, though a public oppositionist, replied, peevishly : Loggerhead or any other head, he has many good things to give away, and I should be glad of some of them. This same Mr. Burke, in one of his speeches in the House of Commons, said, kings were naturally fond of low company, and that many of the nobility act the part of flatterers, parasites, pimps and buffoons, etc.,

but his character will be best appreciated by reading Mr. Paines Letter to the Addressers. In 1786 he published in Philadelphia Dissertation on Government, the Affairs of the Bank, and Paper Money, an octave pamphlet of sixty-four pages. The bank alluded to is the Bank of North America, of which he thus speaks: In the year 1780, when the British Army, having laid waste the Southern States, closed its ravages by the capture of Charleston, when the financial sources of Congress were dried up, when the public treasury was empty, and the army of independence paralyzed by want, a voluntary subscription for its relief was raised in Philadelphia. This voluntary fund, amounting to three hundred thousand pounds, afterwards converted into a bank by the subscribers, headed by Robert Morris, supplied the wants of the army; probably the aids which it furnished enabled Washington to carry into execution his well-concerted plan against Cornwallis. Congress, in the year 1781, incorporated the subscribers to the fund, under the title of the Bank of North America. In the following year it was further incorporated by an Act of the Pennsylvanian Assembly. Mr. Paine liberally subscribed five hundred dollars to this fund. After the establishment of the independence of America, of the vigorous and successful exertions to attain which glorious object he had been the animating principle, soul and support; feeling his exertions no longer requisite in that country, he embarked for France, and arrived in Paris early in 1787, carrying with him his fame as a literary man, an acute philosopher, and most profound politician. At this time he presented to the Academy of Science the model of a bridge which he

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invented, the principle of which has been since so highly celebrated and approved. From Paris he arrived in England the third of September, just thirteen years after his departure for Philadelphia. Prompted by that filial affection which his conduct had ever manifested, he hastened to Thetford to visit his mother, on whom he settled an allowance of nine shillings a week. Of this comfortable solace she was afterwards deprived by the bankruptcy of the merchant in whom the trust was vested. Mr. Paine resided at Rotherham in Yorkshire during part of the year 1788, where an iron bridge upon the principle alluded to was cast and erected, and obtained for him among the mathematicians of Europe a high reputation. In the erection of this, a considerable sum had been expended, for which he was hastily arrested by the assignees of an American merchant, and thrown into confinement. From this, however, and the debt, he cleared himself in about three weeks. The publication of Mr. Burkes Reflections on the French Revolution, produced in reply from Mr. Paine his great, universally known, and celebrated work, Rights of Man. The first part of this work was written partly at the Angel, of Islington, partly in Harding Street, Fetter Lane, and finished at Versailles. In February, 1791, this book made its appearance in London, and many hundred thousand copies were rapidly sold. In May following he went again to France and was at Paris at the time of the flight of the King, and also on his return. On this memorable occasion he made this observation: You see the absurdity of your system of government; here will be a whole nation disturbed by the folly of one man. Upon this subject also he made the following reply to the Marquis Lafayette, who

came into his bedroom before he was up, saying, The birds are flown. Tis well; I hope there will be no attempt to recall them. On the thirteenth of July he returned to London, but did not attend the celebration of the anniversary of the French Revolution the following day, as has been falsely asserted. On the twentieth of August he drew up the address and declaration of the gentlemen who met at the Thatched House Tavern. The language of this address is bold and free, but not more so than that of the late Lord Chatham, or of that once violent advocate of reform, the late Mr. Pitt, better known by the title of the Enemy of the Human Race. On the subject of the address at the Thatched House Tavern, which Mr. Paine did write, it is impossible not to quote Cheethams Life, just to exhibit his blindness and ignorance, and to show how prejudice had warped this once idolizer of Mr. Paine: Home Tooke, perhaps the most acute man of his age, was at this meeting; and as it was rumored, Paine observes, that the great grammarian was the author of the address, he takes the liberty of mentioning the fact, that he wrote it himself. I never heard of the rumor, which was doubtless a fiction formed and asserted by Paine merely to gratify his egotism. No one could mistake the uncouth and ungrammatical writings of one, for the correct and elegant productions of the other. But what can be expected from him who calls Common Sense a wretched work; the Rights of Man a miserable production ; and Burkes Reflections a book of the proudest sagacity? What can be expected from him who a few years before writing the above, in England deified Mr. Paine, and called his writings immortal?

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Mr. Paines life in London was a quiet round of philosophical leisure and enjoyment. It was occupied in writing, in a small epistolary correspondence, in walking about with me to visit different friends, occasionally lounging at coffee-houses and public places, or being visited by a select few. Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the French and American ambassadors, Mr. Sharp the engraver, Ronmey the painter, Mrs. Wollstonecraft, Joel Barlow, Mr. Hull, Mr. Christie, Dr. Priestley, Dr. Towers, Colonel Oswald, the walking Stewart, Captain Sampson Perry, Mr. Tuffin, Mr. William Choppin, Captain DeStark, Mr. Horne Tooke, etc., etc., were among the number of his friends and acquaintance; and of course, as he was my inmate, the most of my associates were frequently his. At this time he read but little, took his nap after dinner, and played with my family at some game in the evening, as chess, dominos, and drafts, but never at cards; in recitations, singing, music, etc., or passed it in conversation; the part he took in the latter was always enlightened, full of information, entertainment and anecdote. Occasionally we visited enlightened friends, indulged in domestic jaunts, and recreations from home, frequently lounging at the White Bear, Piccadilly, with his old friend, the walking Stewart, and other clever travelers from France, and different parts of Europe and America. When by ourselves we sat very late, and often broke in on the morning hours, indulging the reciprocal interchange of affectionate and confidential intercourse. Warm from the heart and faithful to its fires, was that intercourse, and gave to us the feast of reason and the flow of soul.

The second part of Rights of Man, which completed the celebrity of its author, and placed him at the head of political writers, was published in February, 1792. Never had any work so rapid and extensive a sale; and it has been calculated that near a million and a half of copies were printed and published in England. From this time Mr. Paine generally resided in London, and principally with me, till the twelfth of September, 1792, when he sailed for France with Mr. Achilles Audibert, who came express from the French Convention to my house to request his personal assistance in their deliberations. On his arrival at Calais a public dinner was provided, a royal salute was fired from the battery, the troops were drawn out, and there was a general rejoicing throughout the town. He has often been heard to remark that the proudest moment of his life was that in which, on this occasion, he set foot upon the Gallic shore. In his own country he had been infamously treated, and at the time of his quitting Dover most rudely dealt with both by the officers who ransacked his trunks, and a set of hirelings who were employed to hiss, hoot and maltreat, and it is strongly suspected, to destroy him. It depressed him to think that his endeavors to cleanse the Augaean stable of corruption in England should have been so little understood, or so ill appreciated as to subject him to such ignominious, such cowardly treatment. Yet seven hours after this, those very endeavors obtained him an honorable reception in France, and on his landing he was respectfully escorted, amidst the loud plaudits of the multitude, to the house of his friend, Mr. Audibert, the chief

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magistrate of the place, where he was visited by the commandant and all the municipal officers in form, who afterwards gave him a sumptuous entertainment in the town hall. The same honor was also paid him on his departure for Paris. About the time of his arrival at Paris the National Convention began to divide itself into factions ; the Kings friends had been completely subdued by the suppression of the Feuillans, the affair of the tenth of August, and the massacre of the second and third of September; while the Jacobins, who had been hitherto considered as the patriotic party, became in their turns divided into different cabals, some of them wishing a federative government, others, the enrages, desiring the death of the King, and of all allied to the nobility; but none of those were republicans. Those few deputies who had just ideas of a commonwealth, and whose leader was Paine, did not belong to the Jacobin Club. I mention this, because Mr. Paine took infinite trouble to instil into their minds the difference between liberty and licentiousness, and the danger to the peace, good order, and well-doing of society, that must arise from letting the latter encroach upon the prerogatives of the former. He labored incessantly to preserve the life of the King, and he succeeded in making some converts to his opinions on this subject; and his life would have been saved but for Barrere, who, having been appointed by Robespierre to an office he was ambitious of obtaining, and certainly very fit for, his influence brought with it forty votes; so early was corruption introduced into this assembly. For Calais, Mr. Paine was returned deputy to the Convention; he was elected as well for Versailles, but as the former town first did him the honor he became

its representative. He was extremely desirous and expected to be appointed one of the deputies to Holland ; a circumstance that probably would have taken place had not the Committee of Constitution delayed so long the production of the new form that the Jacobins anticipated them, and published proposals for a new constitution before the committee. This delay was owing to the jealousy of Condorcet, who had written the preface, part of which some of the members thought should have been in the body of the work. Brissot and the whole party of the Girondites lost ground daily after this; and with them died away all that was national, just and humane: they were, however, highly to blame for their want of energy. In the beginning of April, 1793, the Convention received the letter from Dumourier that put all France in a panic: in this letter he mentioned the confidence the army had in him, and his intention of marching to Paris to restore to France her constitutional King: this had the strongest effect, as it was accompanied by an address from the Prince of Coburg, in which he agreed to cooperate with Dumourier. Mr. Paine, who never considered the vast difference between the circumstances of the two countries, France and America, suggested an idea that Dumourier might be brought about by appointing certain deputies to wait on him coolly and dispassionately, to hear his grievances, and armed with powers to redress them. On this subject he addressed a letter to the Convention, in which he instanced the case of an American general who receded with the army under his command in consequence of his being dissatisfied with the proceedings of Congress. The Congress were panic-struck by

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this event, and gave up all for lost; and when the first impression of alarm subsided they sent a deputation from their own body to the general, who with his staff gave them the meeting; and thus matters were again reinstated. But there was too much impetuosity and faction in the French Convention to admit of such temperate proceedings. Mr. Paine, however, had written the letter, and was going to Brissots in order to meet Barrere for the purpose of proposing an adjustment, when he met a friend who had that moment left the Convention, who informed him that a decree had been passed offering one hundred thousand crowns for Dumouriers head, and another making it high treason to propose anything in his favor. What the consequence of Mr. Paines project might have been I do not know, but the offer of the Convention made hundreds of desperate characters leave Paris as speedily as possible, in hopes of the proffered reward; it detached the affection of the soldiers from their general, and made them go over to the enemy. Toward the close of 1792 his Letter to the Addressers was published, which was sought after with the same avidity as his other productions. Of this letter, which, with many other things, he wrote at my house, I have the original manuscript, and the table on which they were written is still carefully preserved by me. It has a brass plate in the center with this inscription, placed there by my direction on his quitting England: This Plate is inscribed by Thomas Clio Rickman, in remembrance of his dear friend, THOMAS PAINE, who on this Table in the Year 1792, wrote several of his invaluable Works.

The Letter to the Addressers possesses all Mr. Paines usual strength of reasoning, and abounds also in the finest strokes of genuine satire, wit and humor. About this time a prosecution took place against the publishers of Rights of Man. As the Proclamation which gave rise to the Letter to the Addressers is a curious document, and evinces the temper of the powers that were of that day, it is for the entertainment of the reader here inserted: The London Gazette, published by authority, from Saturday, May nineteenth, to Tuesday, May twenty-second. By the King, a Proclamation. George R. Whereas, Divers wicked and seditious writings have been printed, published, and industriously dispersed, tending to excite tumult and disorder, by endeavoring to raise groundless jealousies and discontents in the minds of our faithful and loving subjects respecting the laws and happy constitution of government, civil and religious, established in this kingdom, and endeavoring to vilify, and bring into contempt, the wise and wholesome provisions made at the time of the glorious Revolution, and since strengthened and confirmed by subsequent laws for the preservation and security of the rights and liberties of our faithful and loving subjects: and whereas divers writings have also been printed, published, and industriously dispersed, recommending the said wicked and seditious publications to the attention of all our faithful and loving subjects: And whereas we have also reason to believe that correspondencies have been entered into with sundry persons in foreign parts with a view to forward the criminal and wicked purposes above mentioned: and whereas the wealth, happiness and prosperity

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of this kingdom do, under Divine Providence, chiefly depend upon a due submission to the laws, a just confidence in the integrity and wisdom of Parliament, and a continuance of that zealous attachment to that government and constitution of the kingdom which has ever prevailed in the minds of the people thereof: and whereas there is nothing which we so earnestly desire as to secure the public peace and prosperity, and to preserve to all our loving subjects the full enjoyment of their rights and liberties, both religious and civil: We, therefore, being resolved, as far as in us lies, to repress the wicked and seditious practices aforesaid, and to deter all persons from following so pernicious an example, have thought fit, by the advice of our Privy Council, to issue this our Royal Proclamation, solemnly warning all our loving subjects, as they tender their own happiness, and that of their posterity, to guard against all such attempts, which aim at the subversion of all regular government within this kingdom, and which are inconsistent with the peace and order of society: and earnestly exhorting them at all times, and to the utmost of their power, to avoid and discourage all proceedings, tending to produce tumults and riots: and we do strictly charge and command all our magistrates in and throughout our kingdom of Great Britain, that they do make diligent inquiry, in order to discover the authors and printers of such wicked and seditious writings as aforesaid, and all others who shall disperse the same: and we do further charge and command all our sheriffs, justices of the peace, chief magistrates in our cities, boroughs and corporations, and all other our officers and magistrates throughout our kingdom of Great Britain.

That they do, in their several and respective stations, take the most immediate and effectual care to suppress and prevent all riots, tumults and other disorders, which may be attempted to be raised or made by any person or persons, which, on whatever pretext they may be grounded, are not only contrary to law, but dangerous to the most important interests of this kingdom: and we do further require and command all and every our magistrates aforesaid that they do from time to time transmit to one of our principal secretaries of state due and full information of such persons as shall be found offending as aforesaid, or in any degree aiding or abetting therein: it being our determination, for the preservation of the peace and happiness of our faithful and loving subjects, to carry the laws vigorously into execution against such offenders as aforesaid. Given at our Court at the Queens House, the twenty-first day of May, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two, in the thirty-second year of our reign.- God save the King. Soon after this, Mr. Paines excellent Letters to Lord Onslow, to Mr. Dundas, and the Sheriff of Sussex were published. Mr. Paines trial for the second part of Rights of Man took place on the eighteenth of December, 1792, and he being found guilty, the booksellers and publishers who were taken up and imprisoned previously to this trial forbore to stand one themselves, and suffered judgment to o by default, for which they received the sentence of three years imprisonment each. Of these booksellers and publishers I was one, but by flying to France I eluded this merciful sentence. On the subject of these prosecutions I wrote to Mr. Fox, whom I well knew, and my intimate friend for years, Lord Stanhope, as I

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was myself the subject of two of them, and was well acquainted with the party factions of the day, and the iniquitous intrigues of the opposing leaders, in and out of office; for the writings of Mr. Paine, which were as broad as the universe, and having nothing to do with impure elections and augerhole politics, gave equal offense to all sides. In the course of these letters, which are still extant, it was impossible not to dwell on the absurdity of trial by jury in matters of opinion, and the folly of any body of men deciding for others in science and speculative discussion, in politics and religion. Is it not applying the institution of juries to purposes for which they were not intended, to set up twelve men to judge and determine for a whole nation on matters that relate to systems and principles of government? A matter of fact may be cognizable by a jury, and certainly ascertained with respect to offenses against common law and in the ordinary intercourses of society; but on matters of political opinion, of taste, of metaphysical inquiry, and of religious belief, everyone must be left to decide as his inquiries, his experience, and his conviction impel him. If the arm of power in every country and on every doctrine could have enforced its tyranny, almost all we now possess, and that is valuable, would have been destroyed; and if all the governments and factions that have made the world miserable could have had their way, everything desirable in art, science, philosophy, literature, politics and religion, would have been by turns obliterated, and the Bible, the Testament, the Alcoran, the writings of Locke, Erasmus, Helvetius, Mercier, Milton, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Swift, Bolanger, Hume, Penn, Tucker, Paine, Bacon, Bolingbroke, and of thousands of

others on all sides would have been burned; nor would there be a printing press in the world. It has happened happily for many years past, thanks to the art of printing and the means adopted to crush the circulation of knowledge, that the very modes employed to accomplish this end have not only proved abortive, but have given wings to truth, and diffused it into every corner of the universe. The publication of trials containing quotations from the works to be put down have disseminated their contents infinitely wider than they would else have reached, and have excited inquiries that would otherwise have lain dormant. So ludicrously did this strike Mr. Paine that his frequent toast was, The best way of advertising good books-by prosecution. As the attorney-generals attacks upon prosecuted works of a clever and profound description, and the judges charges upon them contain nothing like argument or refutation, but follow up the criminating and absurd language of the indictment or ex-officio information, and breathe only declamation and ignorant abuse, they by their weakness expose the cause they espouse, and strengthen the truths they affect to destroy. I shall close these observations by quoting two old and good humored lines: Treason does never prosper-whats the reason? When it prospers-it is never treason ! This trial of Mr. Paine, and these sentences, subverted of course the very end they were intended to effect. Mr. Paine was acknowledged deputy for Calais the twenty-first of September, 1792. In France, during the early part of the Revolution, his time was almost wholly occupied as a deputy of the Convention and as a member of

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the Committee of Constitution. His company was now coveted and sought after universally among every description of people, and by many who for some reasons never chose to avow it. With the Earl of Lauderdale and Dr. Moore, whose company he was fond of, he dined every Friday till Lord Gowers departure made it necessary for them to quit France, which was early in 1793. About this period he removed from Whites Hotel to one near the Rue de Richelieu, where he was so plagued and interrupted by numerous visitors, and sometimes by adventurers, that in order to have some time to himself he appropriated two mornings in a week for his levee days. To this indeed he was extremely averse, from the fuss and formality attending it, but he was nevertheless obliged to adopt it. Annoyed and disconcerted with a life so contrary to his wishes and habits, and so inimical to his views, he retired to the Faubourg St. Denis, where he occupied part of the hotel that Madame de Pompadour once resided in. Here was a good garden well laid out, and here, too, our mutual friend, Mr. Choppin, occupied apartments: at this residence, which for a town one was very quiet, he lived a life of retirement and philosophical ease, while it was believed he was gone into the country for his health, which by this time indeed was much impaired by intense application to business, and by the anxious solicitude he felt for the welfare of public affairs. Here, with a chosen few, he unbent himself; among whom were Brissot, the Marquis de Chatelet le Roi, of the galerie de honore, and an old friend of Dr. Franklins, BanCal, and sometimes General Miranda. His English associates were Christie and family,

Mrs. Wollstonecraft, Mr. and Mrs. Stone, etc. Among his American friends were Captain Imlay, Joel Barlow, etc.,etc. To these parties the French inmates were generally invited. Joel Barlow was for many years Mr. Paines intimate friend, and it was from Mr. Paine he derived much of the great knowledge and acuteness of talent he possessed. Joel Barlow was a great philosopher, and a great poet; but there are spots in the sun, and I instance the following littleness in his conduct as a warning, and to prove how much of honest fame and character is lost by anything like tergiversation. Joel Barlow has omitted the name of Mr. Paine in his very fine poem, The Columbiad; a name essential to the works, as the principal founder of the American Republic and of the happiness of its citizens. Omitting the name of Mr. Paine in the history of America, and where the amelioration of the human race is so much concerned, is like omitting the name of Newton in writing the history of his philosophy, or that of God when creation is the subject; yet this, Joel Barlow has done, and done so, lest the name of Paine, combined with his theological opinions, should injure the sale of the poem. Mean and unhandsome conduct! He usually rose about seven, breakfasted with his friends, Choppin, Johnson, and two or three other Englishmen, and a Monsieur La Borde, who had been an officer in the ci-devante garde du corps, an intolerable aristocrat, but whose skill in mechanics and geometry brought on a friendship between him and Paine: for the undaunted and distinguished ability and firmness with which he ever defended his own opinions when controverted, do not reflect higher honor upon him than that unbounded liberality toward the opinions of

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others which constituted such a prominent feature in his character, and which never suffered mere difference of sentiment, whether political or religious, to interrupt the harmonious intercourse of friendship, or impede the interchanges of knowledge and information. After breakfast he usually strayed an hour or two in the garden, where he one morning pointed out the kind of spider whose web furnished him with the first idea of constructing his iron bridge; a fine model of which, in mahogany, is preserved at Paris. The little happy circle who lived with him here will ever remember these days with delight: with these select friends he would talk of his boyish days, play at chess, whist, piquet, or cribbage, and enliven the moments by many interesting anecdotes: with these he would play at marbles, scotch hops, battledores, etc., on the broad and fine gravel walk at the upper end of the garden, and then retire to his boudoir, where he was up to his knees in letters and papers of various descriptions. Here he remained till dinner time; and unless he visited Brissots family, or some particular friend in the evening, which was his frequent custom, he joined again the society of his favorrites and fellow-boarders, with whom his conversation was often witty and cheerful, always acute and improving, but never frivolous. Incorrupt, straightforward and sincere, he pursued his political course in France, as everywhere else, let the government or clamor or faction of the day be what it might, with firmness, with clearness, and without a shadow of turning. In all Mr. Paines inquiries and conversations he evinced the strongest attachment to the investigation of truth, and

was always for going to the fountain head for information. He often lamented we had no good history of America, and that the letters written by Columbus, the early navigators, and others, to the Spanish Court, were inaccessible, and that many valuable documents, collected by Philip II, and deposited with the national archives at Simania, had not yet been promulgated. He used to speak highly of the sentimental parts of Raynals History. It is not intended to enter into an account of the French Revolution, its progress, the different colors it took and aspects it assumed. The history of this most important event may be found at large detailed by French writers as well as those of other nations, and the world is left to judge of it. It is unfortunate for mankind that Mr. Paine by imprisonment and the loss of his invaluable papers, was prevented giving the best, most candid, and philosophical account of these times. These papers contained the history of the French Revolution, and were no doubt a most correct, discriminating, and enlightened detail of the events of that important era. For these papers the historian, Gibbon, sent to France, and made repeated application, upon a conviction that they would be impartial, profound, and philosophical documents. It is well known that Mr. Paine always lamented the turn affairs took in France, and grieved at the period we are now adverting to, when corrupt influence was rapidly infecting every department of the state. He saw the jealousies and animosities that were breeding, and that a turbulent faction was forming among the people that would first enslave and ultimately overwhelm even the Convention itself.

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On the day of the trial of Marat, Mr. Paine dined at Whites Hotel with Mr. Milnes, a gentleman of great hospitality and profusion, who usually gave a public dinner to twenty or thirty gentlemen once a week. At table, among many others besides Mr. Paine, was a Captain Grimstone, who was a lineal descendant from Sir Harbottle Grimstone, who was a member of Cromwells Parliament and an officer in his army. This man was a high aristocrat, a great gambler, and it was believed could not quit France on account of his being much in debt. He took little pains to conceal his political principles, and when the glass had freely circulated, a short time after dinner he attempted, loudly and impertinently, to combat the political doctrines of the philosopher; this was, to be sure, the viper biting at the file. Mr. Paine, in few words, with much acuteness and address, continued exposing the fallacy of his reasoning, and rebutting his invectives. The Captain became more violent, and waxed so angry, that at length, rising from his chair, he walked round the table to where Mr. Paine was sitting, and here began a volley of abuse, calling him incendiary, traitor to his country, and struck him a violent blow that nearly knocked him off his seat. Captain Grimstone was a stout young man about thirty, and Mr. Paine at this time nearly sixty. The company, who suspected not such an outrage against everything decent, mannerly, and just, and who had occasion frequently during dinner to call him to order, were now obliged to give him in charge of the National Guard. It must be remembered that an act of the Convention had made it death to strike a deputy, and every one in company with the person committing the assault refusing to give

up the offender was considered as an accomplice. But a short period before this circumstance happened, nine men had been decapitated, one of whom had struck Bourdeur de Loise, at Orleans. The other eight were walking with him in the street at the time. Paine was extremely agitated when he reflected on the danger of his unprovoked enemy, and immediately applied to Barrere, at that time president of the Committee of Public Safety, for a passport for the unhappy man, who must otherwise have suffered death; and though he found the greatest difficulty in effecting this, he however persevered and at length accomplished it, at the same time sending Grimstone money to defray his traveling expenses; for his passport was of so short a duration that he was obliged to go immediately from his prison to the messagerie nationale. Of Mr. Paines arrest by Robespierre and his imprisonment, etc., we cannot be so well informed as by himself in his own affecting and interesting letters. While Mr. Paine was in prison he wrote much of his Age of Reason, and amused himself with carrying on an epistolary correspondence with Lady S*** under the assumed name of THE CASTLE IN THE AIR, and her ladyship answered under the signature of THE LITTLE CORNER OF THE WORLD. This correspondence is reported to be extremely beautiful and interesting. At this period a deputation of Americans solicited the release of Thomas Paine from prison; and as this document, and the way in which it is introduced in Mr. Sampson Perrys History of the French Revolution, bear much interest, and are highly honorable to Mr. Paine,

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the deputation, and Mr. Perry, I give it in his own words: As an historian does not write in conformity to the humors or caprice of the day, but looks to the mature opinions of a future period, so the humble tracer of these hasty sketches, though without pretensions himself to live in after times, is nevertheless at once desirous of proving his in difference to the unpopularity of the moment, and his confidence in the justice posterity will exercise toward one of the greatest friends of the human race. The author is the more authorized to pass this eulogium on a character already sufficiently renowned, having had the means and the occasion of exploring his mind and his qualities, as well with suspicion as with confidence. The name of Thomas Paine may excite hatred in some, and inspire terror in others. It ought to do neither, he is the friend of all; and it is only because reason and virtue are not sufficiently prevalent, that so many do not love him: he is not the enemy of those even who are eager to have his fate at their disposal. The time may not be far off when they will be glad their fate were at his; but the cowardly as well as the brave have contributed to fill England with dishonor for silently allowing the best friends of the human race to be persecuted with a virulence becoming the darkest ages only. The physical world is in rapid movement, the moral advances perhaps as quick; that part of it which is dark now will be light; when it shall have but half revolved, men and things will be seen more clearly, and he will be most esteemed by the good who shall have made the largest sacrifice to truth and public virtue. Thomas Paine was suspected of having checked the aspiring light

of the public mind by opinions not suitable to the state France was in. He was for confiding more to the pen, and doubting the effect of the guillotine. Robespierre said, that method would do with such a country as America, but could avail nothing in one highly corrupted like France. To disagree in opinion with a mind so heated was to incur all the resentment it contained. Thomas Paine had preserved an intimacy with Brissot from an acquaintance of long date, and because he spoke the English language; when Brissot fell, Paine was in danger, and, as his preface to the second part of the Rights of Man, shows, he had a miraculous escape. The Americans in Paris saw the perilous situation of their fellow-citizen, of the champion of the liberty of more than one-quarter of the world; they drew up an address and presented it at the bar of the Convention; it was worded as follows: Citizens! the French nation had invited the most illustrious of all foreign nations to the honor of representing her. Thomas Paine, the apostle of liberty in America, a profound and valuable philosopher, a virtuous and esteemed citizen, came to France and took a seat among you. Particular circumstances rendered necessary the decree to put under arrest all the English residing in France. Citizens! representatives ! we come to demand of you Thomas Paine, in the name of the friends of liberty, in the name of the Americans your brothers and allies; was there anything more wanted to obtain our demand we would tell you. Do not give to the leagued despots the pleasure of seeing Paine in irons. We shall inform you that the seals put upon the papers of Thomas Paine have been taken off,

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that the Committee of General Safety examined them, and far from finding among them any dangerous propositions, they only found the love of liberty which characterized him all his lifetime, that eloquence of nature and philosophy which made him the friend of mankind, and those principles of public morality which merited the hatred of kings and the affection of his fellow-citizens. In short, citizens! if you permit us to restore Thomas Paine to the embraces of his fellow-citizens we offer to pledge ourselves as security for his conduct during the short time he shall remain in France. After his liberation he found a friendly asylum at the American Ministers house, Mr. Monroe, and for some years before Mr. Paine left Paris, he lodged at M. Bonnevilles, associating occasionally with the great men of the day, Condorcet, Volney, Mercier, Joel Barlow, etc., etc., and sometimes dining with Bonaparte and his generals. He now indulged his mechanical turn, and amused himself in bridge and ship modeling, and in pursuing his favorite studies, the mathematics and natural philosophy. These models, says a correspondent of that time, exhibit an extraordinary degree not only of skill but of taste in mechanics, and are wrought with extreme delicacy entirely by his own hands. The largest of these, the model of a bridge, is nearly four feet in length : the iron-works, the chains, and every other article belonging to it were forged and manufactured by himself. It is intended as a model of a bridge which is to be constructed across the Delaware, extending 480 feet with only one arch. The other is to be erected over a narrower river, whose name I forget, and is likewise a single arch, and of his own workmanship excepting the chains, which instead of iron are cut out of pasteboard, by

the fair hands of his correspondent, THE LITTLE CORNER OF THE WORLD, whose indefatigable perseverance is extraordinary. He was offered 3,000 for these models and refused it. He also forged himself the model of a crane of a new description, which when put together exhibited the power of the lever to a most surprising degree. During this time he also published his Dissertation on First Principles of Government, his Essay on Finance, his first and second part of the Age of Reason, his Letter to Washington, his Address to the Theophilanthropists, Letter to Erskine, etc., etc. Poetry, too, employed his idle hours, and he produced some fine pieces, which the world will probably one day see. Wearied with the direction things took in France, which he used to say, was the promised land, but not the land of promise, he had long sighed for his own dear America. It is, he would say, the country of my heart and the place of my political and literary birth. It was the American Revolution made me an author, and forced into action the mind that had been dormant and had no wish for public life, nor has it now. Mr. Paine made many efforts to cross the Atlantic, but they were ineffectual. In July, 1802, Mr. Jefferson, the then President of America, in a letter to Mr. Paine writes thus: You express a wish in your letter to return to America by a national ship. Mr. Dawson, who brings over the treaty, and who will present you this letter, is charged with orders to the captain of the Maryland, to receive and accommodate you back if you can be ready to return at such a short warning. You will in general find us returned to sentiments worthy of former times; in these it will be your

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glory to have steadily labored, and with as much effect as any man living. That you may live long to continue your useful labors, and reap the reward in the thankfulness of nations, is my sincere prayer. Accept the assurance of my high esteem and affectionate attachment. THOMAS JEFFERSON. Washington, July, 1802. By the Maryland, as Mr. Paine states, he did not go; and it was not till the first of September, 1802, after spending some time with him at Havre de Grace, that I took leave of him on his departure for America, in a ship named the London Pacquet, just ten years after his leaving my house in London. The ardent desire which Mr. Paine ever had to retire to and dwell in his beloved America is strongly portrayed in the following letter to a female friend in that country, written some years before. You touch me on a very tender point when you say that my friends on your side of the water cannot be reconciled to the idea of my abandoning America even for my native England. They are right, I had rather see my horse Button eating the grass of Borden Town or Morrisania, than see all the pomp and show of Europe. A thousand years hence, for I must indulge a few thoughts, perhaps in less, America may be what Europe now is. The innocence of her character that won the hearts of all nations in her favor may sound like a romance, and her inimitable virtue as if it had never been. The ruins of that liberty for which thousands bled may just furnish materials for a village tale, or extort a sigh from rustic sensibility, while the fashionable of that day,

enveloped in dissipation, shall deride the principles and deny the fact. When we contemplate the fall of empires and the extinction of the nations of the ancient world we see but little more to excite our regret than the moldering ruins of pompous palaces, magnificent monuments, lofty pyramids, and walls and towers of the most costly workmanship; but when the empire of America shall fall, the subject for contemplative sorrow will be infinitely greater than crumbling brass or marble can inspire. It will not then be said, here stood a temple of vast antiquity, here rose a babe1 of invisible height, or there a palace of sumptuous extravagance; but here (ah! painful thought!) the noblest work of human wisdom, the grandest scene of human glory, and the fair cause of freedom, rose and fell! Read this, and then ask if I forget America. There is so uncommon a degree of interest, and that which conveys an idea of so much heart intercourse in this letter, that the reader may be led to desire some knowledge of the person to whom it was addressed. This ladys name was I believe Nicholson, and afterwards the wife of Colonel Few; between her and Mr. Paine a very affectionate attachment and sincere regard subsisted, and it was no small mortification on his final return to New York to be totally neglected by her and her husband. But against the repose of Mr. Paines dying moments there seems to have been a conspiracy, and this lady after years of disregard and inattention sought Mr. Paine on his death bed. Mr. Few was with her, but Mr. Paine, refusing to shake hands with her, said firmly and very impressively, You have neglected me, and I beg you will leave the room.

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Mrs. Few went into the garden, and wept bitterly. Of Mr. Paines reception in America and some interesting account of his own life and its vicissitudes, his Letters to the Citizens of America, before noticed, speak better than I can. These letters, under the care of Mr. Monroe, he sent me in 1804, and I published them, with the following one of his own accompanying them. My dear Friend, Mr. Monroe, who is appointed Minister Extraordinary to France, takes charge of this, to be delivered to Mr. Este, banker in Paris, to be forwarded to you. I arrived at Baltimore, thirtieth of October, and you can have no idea of the agitation which my arrival occasioned. From New Hampshire to Georgia (an extent of 1,500 miles) every newspaper was filled with applause or abuse. My property in this country has been taken care of by my friends, and is now worth six thousand pounds sterling; which put in the funds will bring me 400 sterling a year. Remember me in friendship and affection to your wife and family, and in the circle of our friends. I am but just arrived here, and the Minister sails in a few hours, so that I have just time to write you this. If he should not sail this tide I will write to my good friend Colonel Bosville, but in any case I request you to wait on him for me. Yours in friendship, THOMAS PAINE. What course he meant to pursue in America, his own words will best tell, and best

characterize his sentiments and principles: they are these: As this letter is intended to announce my arrival to my friends, and my enemies if I have any, for I ought to have none in America, and as introductory to others that will occasionally follow, I shall close it by detailing the line of conduct I shall pursue. I have no occasion to ask, nor do I intend to accept, any place or office in the Government. There is none it could give me that would in any way be equal to the profits I could make as an author (for I have an established fame in the literary world) could I reconcile it to my principles to make money by my politics or religion; I must be in everything as I have ever been, a disinterested volunteer. My proper sphere of action is on the common floor of citizenship, and to honest men I give my hand and my heart freely. I have some manuscript works to publish, of which I shall give proper notice, and some mechanical affairs to bring forward, that will employ all my leisure time. I shall continue these letters as I see occasion, and as to the low party prints that choose to abuse me, they are welcome; I shall not descend to answer them. I have been too much used to such common stuff to take any notice of it.
THOMAS PAINE City of Washington

From this period to the time of his death, which was the ninth of June, 1809, Mr. Paine lived principally at New York, and on his estate at New Rochelle; publishing occasionally some excellent things in the Aurora newspaper, also An Essay on the Invasion of England, On the Yellow Fever, On Gun-Boats, etc., etc., and in 1807, An

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Examination of the Passages in the New Testament, Quoted from the Old, and Called Prophecies Concerning Jesus Christ, etc. This is a most acute, profound, clear, argumentative, and entertaining work, and may be considered and is now entitled The Third Part of the Age of Reason. In the course of Mr. Paines life, he was often reminded of a reply he once made to this observation of Dr. Franklins, Where liberty is, there is my country : Mr. Paines retort was, Where liberty is not, there is my country. And, unfortunately, he had occasion for many years in Europe to realize the truth of his axiom. Soon after Mr. Paines arrival in America, he invited over Mr. and Mrs. Bonneville and their children. At Bonnevilles house at Paris he had for years found a home, a friendly shelter, when the difficulty of getting supplies of money from America, and other and many ills assailed him. Bonneville and his family were poor, and sunk in the world; Mr. Paine therefore, though he was not their inmate without remuneration, offered them an asylum with him in America. Mrs. Bonneville and her three boys, to whom he was a friend during his life and at his death, soon joined him there. The particulars of Mr. Paine being shot at while sitting by his fireside at New Rochelle are given in his own letters. The bullet from the fire-arm shattered the glass over the chimneypiece very near to him. I find a letter in reply to one of mine, in which he writes, the account you heard of a mans firing into my house is true the grand jury found the bill against him, and he lies over for trial. In January, 1809, Mr. Paine became very feeble and infirm, so much so, as to be scarcely capable of doing anything for himself.

During this illness he was pestered on every hand with the intrusive and impertinent visits of the bigoted, the fanatic, and the designing. To entertain the reader, some specimens of the conduct of these intruders are here given. He usually took a nap after dinner, and would not be disturbed let who would call to see him. One afternoon a very old lady dressed in a large, scarlet, hooded cloak knocked at the door and inquired for Thomas Paine. Mr. Jarvis, with whom Mr. Paine resided, told her he was asleep. I am very sorry, she said, for that, for I want to see him particularly. Thinking it a pity to make an old woman call twice, Mr. Jarvis took her into Mr. Paines bed room, and awoke him. He rose upon one elbow, and then, with an expression of eye that made the old woman stagger back a step or two, he asked, What do you want? Is your name Paine? Yes. Well then, I come from Almighty God to tell you that if you do not repent of your sins, and believe in our Blessed Saviour Jesus Christ, you will be damned, and- Poh, poh, it is not true, replied Paine, you were not sent with any such impertinent message. Jarvis make her go away: pshaw ! He would not send such a foolish, ugly old woman about with His messages; go away, go back, shut the door. The old lady retired, raised both her hands, kept them so, and without saying another word walked away in mute astonishment. The following is a curious example of a friendly, neighborly visit. About two weeks before his death he was visited by the Rev. Mr. Milledollar, a

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Presbyterian minister of great eloquence, and the Rev. Mr. Cunningham. The latter gentleman said: Mr. Paine, we visit you as friends and neighbors. You have now a full view of death, you cannot live long, and whoever does not believe in Jesus Christ will assuredly be damned. Let me, said Paine, have none of your popish stuff. Get away with you. Good morning, Sir, good morning. The Rev. Mr. Milledollar attempted to address him but he was interrupted in the same language. When they were gone, he said to Mrs. Hedden, his housekeeper, do not let them come here again, they intrude upon me. They soon renewed their visit, but Mrs. Hedden told them they could not be admitted, and that she thought the attempt useless, for if God did not change his mind, she was sure no human power could. They retired. Among others, the Rev. Mr. Hargrove, minister of a new sect called the New Jerusalemites, once accosted him with this impertinent stuff: My name is Hargrove, Sir; I am a minister of the New Jerusalem Church. We, Sir, explain the Scripture in its true meaning; the key has been lost these four thousand years, and we have found it. Then, said Paine in his own neat way, it must have been very rusty. In his last moments he was very anxious to die, and also very solicitous about the mode of his burial; for as he was completely unchanged in his theological sentiments, he would on no account, even after death, countenance ceremonies he disapproved, containing doctrines and expressions of a belief which he conscientiously objected to,

and had spent a great part of his life in combating. He wished to be interred in the Quakers burying ground, and on this subject he requested to see Mr. Willet Hicks, a member of the Society, who called on him in consequence. Mr. Paine, after the usual salutations, said, As I am going to leave one place it is necessary to provide another; I am now in my seventy-third year, and do not expect to live long; I wish to be buried in your burying ground. He said his father was a Quaker, and that he thought better of the principles of that Society than any other, and approved their mode of burial. This request of Mr. Paine was refused, very much to the discredit of those who did so; and as the Quakers are not unused to grant such indulgences, in this case it seemed to arise from very little and unworthy motives and prejudices on the part of those who complied not with this earnest and unassuming solicitation. The above named Quaker in a conversation of a serious nature with Mr. Paine, a short time before his death, was assured by him that his sentiments respecting the Christian religion were now precisely the same as when he wrote the Age of Reason. About the fourth of May, symptoms of approaching dissolution became very evident to himself, and he soon fell off his milk-punch, and became too infirm to take anything; complaining of much bodily pain. On the eighth of June, 1809, about nine in the morning, he placidly, and almost without a struggle, died, as he had lived, a Deist. Why so much consequence should be attached to what is called a recantation in a mans last moments of a belief or opinion held

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through life, a thing I never witnessed nor knew anyone who did, it is difficult to say, at least with any credit, to those who harp so much upon it. A belief or an opinion is none the less correct or true even if it be recanted, and I strenuously urge the reader to reflect seriously, how few there are who really have any fixed belief and conviction through life of a metaphysical or religious nature; how few who devote any time to such investigation, or who are not the creatures of form, education, and habit; and take upon trust tenets, instead of inquiring into their truth and rationality. Indeed it appears that those who are so loud about the recantation of philosophers, are neither religious, moral, or correct themselves, and exhibit not in their own lives, either religion in belief, or principle in conduct. Paine was aged seventy-two years and five months. At nine of the clock in the forenoon of the ninth of June, the day after his decease, he was taken from his house at Greenwich, attended by seven persons, to New Rochelle; where he was afterwards interred on his own farm. A stone has been placed at the head of his grave according to the direction in his will, with the following inscription: THOMAS PAINE, AUTHOR OF COMMON SENSE, Died June 8, 1809, Aged 72 Years and 5 Months. The reader must from the foregoing pages be persuaded how unkindly teased and obtrusively tormented were the closing hours of Mr. Paines life; hours that always should be soothed by tenderness, quietude, and every kind attention, and in which the mind generally loses all its strength and energy, and is as unlike its former self as its poor suffering companion the body.

Infirmity doth still neglect all office, Whereto our health is bound; we are not ourselves. When nature, being oppressd, commands the mind To suffer with the body Shakespeare. To a rational man it should seem that a Deist, if he be so from principle, and he is as likely to be so as any other religionist, is no more to be expected to renounce his principles on his deathbed or to abandon his belief at that moment, than the Christian, the Jew, the Mahometan, or any other religionist. It will be seen that Mr. Paine very early, when a mere child, was inspired as it were with the anti-Christian principles which he held religiously through life. His philosophical and astronomical pursuits could not but confirm him in the most exalted, the most divine ideas of a supreme being, and in the purity and sublimity of Deism. A belief in millions of millions of inhabited worlds, millions of millions of miles apart, necessarily leads the mind to the worship of a God infinitely above the one described by those religionists who speak and write of Him as they do, and as if He were only the maker of our earth, and as alone being interested in what concerns it. In contemplating the immense works of God, the creation is the only book of revelation in which the Deist can believe; and his religion consists in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of God in His glorious works, and endeavoring to imitate Him in everything moral, scientific and mechanical. It cannot be urged too strongly, so much wrongheadedness if not wrongheartedness is there on this subject, that the religion of the Deist no more

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precludes the blessed hope of salvation than that of the Christian or of any other religion. We see through different mediums, and in our pursuits and experience are unlike. How others have felt after reading maturely the Age of Reason and the Rights of Man, and pursuing fairly, coolly, and assiduously the subjects therein treated, I leave to them ; but for myself I must say, these works carried perfect conviction with them to my mind, and the opinions they contain are fully confirmed by much reading, by long, honest, unwearied investigation and observation. The best and wisest of human beings both male and female that I have known through life have been Deists, nor did anything in the shape of their recantation either in life or death ever come to my knowledge, nor can I understand how a real, serious, and long-adopted belief can be recanted. That Mr. Paines religious belief had been long established and was with him a deep-rooted principle, may be seen by his conduct when imprisoned and extremely ill in the Luxembourg prison in 1794. Mr. Bond, an English surgeon who was confined there at the same time, though by no means a friend to Mr. Paines political or theological doctrines, gave me the following testimony of Mr. Paines sentiments: Mr. Paine, while hourly expecting to die, read to me parts of his Age of Reason; and every night when I left him to be separately locked up, and expected not to see him alive in the morning, he always expressed his firm belief in the principles of that book, and begged I would tell the world such were his dying opinions. He often said that if he lived he should prosecute further that work, and print it. Mr. Bonds frequent observation

when speaking of Mr. Paine was, that he was the most conscientious man he ever knew. While upon this subject, it will probably occur to the reader, as well as to the writer, how little belief from inquiry and principle there is in the world; and how much oftener religious profession is adopted from education, form, prudence, fear, and a variety of other motives, than from unprejudiced inquiry, a love of truth, of free discussion, and from entire conviction. Reasoning thus, it may fairly be inferred that men like Mr. Paine, a pious Deist, of deep research, laborious inquiry, and critical examination, are the most likely from disinterested motives to adopt opinions, and of course the least likely to relinquish them. Before I quit the subject I give the following authentic document, received in a letter from New York: Sir: I witnessed a scene last night which occasioned sensations only to be felt, not to be described; the scene alluded to was no less extraordinary than the beholding the well-known Thomas Paine struggling to retain a little longer in connection his soul and body. For near an hour 1 sat by the bedside of that well-known character, to whom I was introduced by one of his friends. Could the memory have retained the suggestions of my mind in the moments when I was reviewing the pallid looks of him who had attempted to overthrow kingdoms and monarchies, of him who had astonished the world with the fruits of a vast mind, whose works have caused a great part of mankind to think and feel as they never did before, such suggestions would not be uninteresting to you. I could not contemplate the approaching dissolution of such a man, see him gasping for breath, without feelings of a peculiar nature. Poor

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Paines body has given way before his mind, which is yet firm; mortification seems to have taken up its dwelling in his frame, and he will soon be no more. With respect to his principles he will die as he has lived; they are unaltered. Some Methodists went to him a few days ago to endeavor to make a convert of him, but he would not listen to their entreaties. Before I take leave of my reader I would press upon his mind the necessity of candor; and if he be a Christian I must tell him he will cease to be so the moment he appeals to coercion and resorts to prosecution and to persecution in matters of belief and opinion: such conduct his own New Testament is decidedly against. It is better not to believe in a God than to believe unworthily of Him, and the less we make Him after our image the less we blaspheme Him. Let inquiry supersede calumny and censure, and let it be ever remembered that those systems in government and religion which will not bear discussion and investigation are not worth solicitude. Ignorance is the only original sin; spread information and knowledge, and virtue and truth will follow. Oppose argument to argument, reason to reason, opinion to opinion, book to book, truth must prevail; and that which is of divine origin will bring itself through.

Set not attorney-generals and human laws at work, nor pay any religion which boasts an heavenly origin so bad a compliment, or libel its founders, by endeavoring to support it by such infamous means. How paltry, how detestable, is that criticism which only seeks to find out and dwell on errors and inaccuracies; passing over in silence, what is grand, sublime, and useful! How still more paltry, and detestable, is that disposition, which seeks only to find out and dwell on the defects and foibles of character! While Mr. Paines enemies have labored, and are still laboring, to detect vices and errors in his life and manners, shall not his friends dwell on the immense good he has done in public life, on the happiness he has created for myriads, in private? Shall they not point to the abodes of delight and comfort, where live and flourish the blessings of domestic bliss; affections dear intercourses, friendships solaces, and loves sacred enjoyments? And there are millions of such abodes originating in his labors. Why seek occasion, surly critics and detractors! to maltreat and misrepresent Mr. Paine? He was mild, unoffending, sincere, gentle, humble, and unassuming; his talents were soaring, acute, profound, extensive, and original; and he possessed that charity, which covers a multitude of sins.

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___________________________________________________________________________

WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE

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He outlined an industrial and wage system more practical than the socialist schemes of latter days. He invented the first iron bridge used in Europe. He inferred that the fixed stars were suns, twenty years before Herschel. He rightfully surmised the cause of, and thereby pointed to the remedy for yellow fever. He devised the plan to utilize small explosions of gun powder to run an engine. He was on of the first to suggest the application of steam to vessels in fact, had made plans for steamboats seven years before John Fitch. He forged a model of a crane with an improved lever; invented a planning machine; and experimented on a smokeless candle. Does this man not deserve the honor of being called the Eighteenth Century Archimedes, as well as its political and religious prophet? History continually revises her statements at the command of truth and the latter is slowly, certainly rehabilitating the name and fame of Paine. The slime of a mythology which has for over a century stained his reputation is disappearing and the prophet pamphleteer is coming ;into his own.
Source: Bank of Wisdom. www,bankofwisdom.com. CD#3,The Life and Writings of Thomas Paine, 10 volumes, 1908, Edited by Daniel Edwin Wheeler, Volume 1, Life and Appreciation of Thomas Paine.

ut let us, as an epilogue to our rapidly sketched drama, recapitulate the undeniable and undying

thoughts and activities of Thomas Paine. He was the first to advocate the emancipation of the Negro in America. He was first to say the American nation, the Free and Independent States of America. He was first to propose constitutional government to the United States. He was first to form a plan of international arbitration. He was a pioneer in national and international copyright. He was an early supporter of the plan to purchase Louisiana from France. He was a pioneer in the question of the rights of women. He was first to propose and see the advantages of commercial alliance between the great countries of Europe and the United States. He was largely responsible for the organization of the Bank of North America. Had France heeded him, the Reign of Terror would never have come to pass. Had the United States heeded him, the Civil War could not have happened. He projected land reforms more practical than those of Henry George.

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T H O M A S P A I N E WR I TE S T H E DE C L A RA T I O N O F I N D E PE N D E N C E
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N THE Introduction of Common Sense, Paine said:

Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. It was quite natural that those whose interests were at stake and whose position depended upon the English government, should come forward and defend the conventional order, uphold the rights of monarchy, and argue for the subordination of the Colonies to the British Crown. Only one such defender, however, was worthy of Paines attention. The Reverend Dr. William Smith, President of Pennsylvania College and a Scotch clergy-man of the English Church, writing under the nom de plume, Cato, sought to answer Common Sense. Cato cried : We consider our connection with Great Britain as our chief happiness we flourished, grew rich, and populous to a degree not to be paralleled in history. How fallacious was such an argument in the face of subsequent events, yet how convincing it was to those unimaginative,

indifferent and selfish people of the time, who preferred to cling to humiliating serfdom, rather than sacrifice ever so little to achieve so much. If only all false argument could be exposed so easily when first uttered, instead of waiting for events tragic in consequence to prove them wrong! The minds of those convinced by Cato could not comprehend these words of Common Sense: The birth of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the events of a few months. The reflection is awful and in this point of view, how trifling, how ridiculous, do the little paltry caviling of a few weak or interested men appear, when weighed against the business of a world. When Cato compared the quarrels between England and the Colonies to a lovers quarrel, Paine replied in his famous Forester Letters with this literary gem of matchless logic: This I cannot help looking on as one of the most unnatural and distorted similes that can be drawn. Come hither ye that are lovers, or ye that have been lovers, and decide the controversy between us What comparison is there between the soft murmurs of an heart mourning in secret, and the loud horrors of

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war between the silent tears of pensive sorrow, and rivers of wasted blood between the sweet strife of affection, and the bitter strife of death between the curable calamities of pettish lovers, and the sad sight of a thousand slain I Get thee behind me Cato, for thou hast not the feelings of a man. Nor could Cato stand this deadly dart.. After exhausting all specious argument, he resorted to abuse, and in this he made his fatal error. Paine fired back: Remember, thou hast thrown me the glove, Cato, and either thee or I must retire. I fear not the field of fair debate, but thou hast stepped aside and made it personal. Thou hast tauntingly called me by name; and if I cease to hunt thee from every lane and lurking hole of mis-chief, and bring thee not a trembling culprit before the public bar, then brand me with reproach by naming me in the list of your confederates. And again Paine struck with devastating results: Cato seems to be possessed of that Jesuitical cunning which always endeavors to disgrace what it cannot disprove. . . Having answered Cato and demolished all the arguments that the forces of reaction brought against In-dependence, Paine concluded with these final. words addressed TO THE PEOPLE for an irrevocable stand against reconciliation: It is not a time to trifle. Men, who know they deserve nothing from their country, and whose hope is on the arm that hath fought to enslave ye, may hold out to you, as Cato hath done, the false light of reconciliation. There is no such thing. Tis gone I Tis. past I The grave hath parted us and death, in the

persons of the slain, hath cut the thread of life between Britain and America. Conquest, and not reconciliation is the plan of Britain. But admitting even the last hope of the Tories to happen, which is, that our enemies after a long succession of losses, wearied and disabled, should despairingly throw down their arms and propose a reunion; in that case, what is to be done? Are defeated and disappointed tyrants to be considered like mistaken and converted friends? Or would it be right, to receive those for Governors, who, had they been conquerors, would have hung us up as traitors ? Certainly not. Reject the offer then, and propose another; which is, we will make peace with you as with enemies, but we will never reunite with you as friends. This effected, and ye secure to yourselves the pleasing prospect of an eternal peace. America, remote from all the wrangling world, may live at ease. Bounded by the ocean, and backed by the wilderness, who hash she to fear, but her GOD?. Bear in mind that it was June loth, exactly five months to the day after the publication of Common Sense, and the Continental Congress had just appointed a committee composed of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston to draw up a declaration of the intention of the Colonies declaring their independence of Great Britain. This was done, exactly in accordance with the words of Common Sense! Paine admonished: Were a manifesto to be published, and despatched to foreign Courts, setting forth the miseries we have endured, and the peaceful methods, which we have ineffectually used for redress; declaring at the same time, that not

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being able any longer to live happily or safely under the cruel disposition of the British Court, we had been driven to the necessity of breaking off all connections with her; at the same time, assuring all such Courts of our peaceable disposition towards them, and of our desire of entering into trade with them : such a memorial would produce more good effects to this Continent, than if a ship were freighted with petitions to Britain. From June loth, the day that the Continental Congress approved the bill creating this committee, until June 28th when it was submitted to Congress, Paine was in direct and intimate touch with the members of the Committee. Certainly he met and exchanged confidences with Franklin and was, obviously, in close touch with Adams at this time. Otherwise, how would Adams have known that Paine was the author of Common Sense and the Forester Letters, which is indicated in a letter he wrote his wife and which contains this passage : The writer of Common Sense and the Forester letters is the same person. His name is Paine, a gentleman about two years ago from England, a man who, General Lee says, has genius in his eyes. In fact, it is my firm conviction that Jefferson, who was appointed to draft the document, sought not only Paines advice but actually asked him to write The Declaration of Independence, if Paine had not already done so! There is much evidence in existence to prove that this was the case. None of the members of the committee had ever written anything like the Declaration. Only one member of that committee was

capable of doing it that man was Benjamin Franklin, and he did not write itl Did Paine, who was acquainted with rapidly moving events, have the manifesto prepared. and ready for the moment it was to be announced? Fortunately, there still exists a vitally important pamphlet which Thomas Paine wrote at this psychological moment which was published shortly after the Committee was appointed to draft a Declaration of Independence. In my opinion, it was written because, at the last, some still believed that if reconciliation was no longer a possible solution to the troubles of the Colonies, it would certainly be inadvisable to antagonize the people of Britain by such a declaration of independence. Jefferson himself wrote: It appearing in the course of these debates, that the colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina were not yet matured for falling from the parent stem, but that they were fast advancing to that state, it was thought most prudent to wait a while for them, and to postpone the final. decision to July 1st; but, that this might occasion as little delay as possible, a committee was appointed to prepare a declaration of independence. Do the above sentiments, taken in conjunction with the secret letter in which Jefferson spoke in hushed tones for reconciliation, sound like the man who had already written the greatest, the most daring and revolutionary document ever issued from the brain of man? Certainly not! Paine, on the other hand, had brought the battle to the very door of the Continental Congress and wanted to make sure that at the

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last moment lack of courage on the part of some would not prevent a successful culmination of his efforts. This premise is substantiated by the words of Jefferson himself, which offered proof of the reason for Paines pamphlet 9 as a last and final argument against reconciliation, and which is indisputable evidence that Paine was in constant communication with the members of the Committee during that critical period. Otherwise, how could he have been so thoroughly familiar with these particular facts? It was for the purpose of counteracting this opposition that Paine wrote the pamphlet entitled : A DIALOGUE Between the GHOST of General MONTGOMERY just arrived from the Elysian Fields; and an American DELEGATE, in the wood near PHILADELPHIA. The following, which is the concluding dialogue of the pamphlet, is vital and convincing evidence not only as to Paines familiarity with all the phases of controversies then taking place both in committee and in Congress, but as to his actual authorship of the Declaration. Read it carefully and well : Delegate: Will not a declaration of independence lessen the number of our friends, and increase the rage of our enemies in Britain? Gen. Mont. Your friends (as you call them) are too few too divided and too interested to help you. And as for your enemies, they have done their worst. They have called upon Russians Hanoverians Hessians Canadians Savages and Negroes to assist them in burning your towns desolating your country and in butchering your wives and children. You have nothing

further to fear from them. Go, then, and awaken the Congress to a sense of their importance; you have no time to lose. France waits for nothing but a declaration of your independence to revenge the injuries they sustained from Britain in the last war. But I forbear to reason any further with you. The decree is finally gone forth. Britain and America are now distinct empires. (Italics mine.) Your country teems with patriots heroes and legislators, who are impatient to burst forth into light and importance. Let me repeat the statement found in the foregoing words of General Montgomery : But I forbear to reason any further with you. The decree is finally gone forth. Britain and America are now distinct empires. How did Paine know that the decree is finally gone forth, unless he himself had written it? Could anything be more positive, could anything be more convincing? When Paine wrote that the decree is finally gone forth, and that Britain and America are now distinct empires, he must have already completed the draft of The Declaration of Independence and given it to Jefferson, or perhaps Adams, because no two men, if only one had actual knowledge of the official events, could so accurately have described the secret arguments and objections to the minutest detail as Paine did in this pamphlet. I say that no other explanation is plausible for the prophetic words that Paine put into the. mouth of General Montgomery when he said, The decree has finally gone f orth. What else could he have meant other than The Declaration of Independence?

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There was no other, there could be no other decree, because that decree meant that Britain and America are now distinct empires. Let us conclude with Paines final words which offer additional evidence that HE KNEW THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE HAD BEEN WRITTEN AND THAT THE STRUGGLE WAS ON! Read this prophetic statement: Hereafter your achievements shall no more swell the pages of British history. God did not excite the attention of all Europe of the whole world nay of angels themselves to the present controversy for nothing. The inhabitants of Heaven long to see the ark finished, in which all the liberty and true religion of the world are to be deposited. The day in which the Colonies declare their independence will be a jubilee to Hampden Sidney Russell Warren Gardiner Macpherson Cheeseman, and all other heroes who have offered themselves as sacrifices upon the altar of liberty. It was no small mortification to me when I fell upon the Plains of Abraham, to reflect that I did not expire like a brave General Wolfe, in the arms of victory. But I now no longer envy him his glory. I would rather die in attempting to obtain permanent freedom for a handful of people, than survive a conquest which would serve only to extend the empire of despotism. A band of heroes now beckon to me. I can only add that America is the theatre where human nature will soon receive its greatest military, civil, and literary honors. The italicized word SOON is further evidence that Paine was aware that the Declaration had been written and would soon be announced.

This was the result of his labors, and he would not have trusted mere hearsay in so important and so delicate a matter. He had already been schooled by bitter experience not to rely upon others for performance where courage and ability were involved. Paine first made sure of his facts. He would not let the fruits of Common Sense die upon the tree. Let us recall Paines advice that a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the Charter!. What Charter could it be but the Charter of Freedom The Declaration of Independence? And it was done! It was proclaimed July 4th, 1776. Thomas Paine was right when he said that The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. Tis not the affair of a City, a County, a Province, or a Kingdom; but of a Continent of at least one eighth part of the habitable Globe. Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected even to the end of time, by the proceedings now . . . Thomas Paine had written The Declaration of Independence, and the Continental Congress had proclaimed it to the world I America was now a distinct empire. The Original Text of The Declaration of Independence

ERE IS the Charter. Here is the Manifesto. Here is the Decree that was finally gone forth, and that made Britain and America distinct empires. It is The Declaration of Independence.

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The extracts which we have just quoted from Com . mon Sense contain sufficient material to show how perfectly The Declaration of Independence is a reflection of its principles, sentiments, composition, and mode of expression. Even to the casual observer this fact is strikingly apparent. The text of the Declaration to follow is taken from the Adams copy of that immortal document, rarely made public and is, in my opinion, the text as it was originally written Read it carefully. Read it with deliberation. Read it not only for the purpose of seeing the close kinship between it and Common Sense, but read it also for what it is THE GREATEST POLITICAL DOCUMENT AND CHARTER OF FREEDOM EVER WRITTEN BY THE HAND OF MAN Here it is: A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in general Congress assembled. When in the Course of human Events it becomes necessary for a People to advance from that Subordination, in which they have hitherto remained and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the equal and independent Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Natures God entitle them, a decent Respect to the opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the Causes, which impel them to the Change. We hold these Truths to be Self evident; that all Men are created equal and independent; that from that equal Creation they derive Rights inherent and unalienable; among which are the Preservation of Life, and Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness ; that to Secure these Ends, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from

the Consent of the Governed; that whenever, any form of Government, Shall become destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter, or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on Such Principles, and organizing its Powers in Such Form, as to them Shall Seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence indeed will dictate that Government long established Should not be changed for light and transient Causes : and accordingly all Experience hah shown, that Mankind are more disposed to Suffer, while Evils are Sufferable, than to right themselves, by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, begun at a distinguished Period, and pursuing invariably, the Same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Power, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off Such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and Such is now the Necessity, which constrains them to expunge their former Systems of Government. The History of his present Majesty, is a History, of unremitting Injuries and Usurpations, among which no one Fact Stands Single or Solitary to contradict the Uniform Tenor of the rest, all of which have in direct object, the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be Submitted to a candid World, for the Truth of which we pledge a Faith, as yet unsullied by Falsehood. He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation, till his

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Assent should be obtained; and when So suspended he has neglected utterly to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large Districts of People, unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature, a Right inestimable to them, and formidable to Tyrants only. He has dissolved Representative Houses, repeatedly, and continually, for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions, on the Right of the People. He has refused, for a long Space of Time after Such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their Exercise, the State remaining in the mean Time, exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion, from without, and Convulsions within He has endeavored to prevent the Population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither; and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. He has Suffered the Administration of Justice totally to cease in Some of these Colonies, refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing judiciary Powers. He has made our Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their offices, and amount of their Salaries : He has erected a Multitude of new Offices by a Self Assumed Power, and Sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People and eat out their Substance. He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies and Ships of War.

He has affected to render the military, independent of, and Superior to, the civil Power : He has combined with others to Subject Us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their pretended Acts of Legislation; for quartering large Bodies of armed Troops among Us; for protecting them by a Mock Trial from Punishment for any Murders they Should commit on the Inhabitants of these States; for cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World; for imposing Taxes on us without our Consent; for depriving Us Of the Benefits of Trial by Jury; for transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences: for taking away our Charters, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments; for Suspending our own Legislatures and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, withdrawing his Governors, and declaring us, out of his Allegiance and Protection. He has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People. He is at this Time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the Works of death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with Circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation. He has endeavored to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare is an undistinguished Destruction of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions of Existence.

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He has incited treasonable Insurrections of our Fellow Citizens, with the Allurement of Forfeiture and Confiscation of our Property. He has waged cruel War against human Nature itself, violating its most Sacred Right of Life and Liberty in the Persons of a distant People who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into Slavery in another Hemisphere, or to incur miserable Death, in their Transportation thither. This piratical Warfare, the opprobrium of infidel Powers, is the Warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. He has prostituted his Negative for Suppressing every legislative Attempt to prohibit or to restrain an execrable Commerce, determined to keep open a Market where Men Should be bought and Sold, and that this Assemblage of Horrors might want no Fact of distinguished Die. He is now exciting those very People to rise in Arms among us, and to purchase that Liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the People upon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former Crimes committed against the Liberties of one People, with Crimes which he urges them to commit against the Lives of another. In every Stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress, in the most humble Terms; our repeated Petitions have been answered by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every Act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a People who mean to be free, future ages will Scarce believe, that the Hardiness of one Man, adventured, within the Short Compass of twelve years only, on So many Acts of Tyranny, without a Mask, over a People, fostered and fixed in the Principles of Liberty.

Nor have we been wanting in Attentions to our British Brethren. We have warned them from Time to Time of attempts of their Legislature, to extend a Jurisdiction over these our States. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here, no one of which could warrant So Strange a Pretension. That these were effected at the Expense of our own Blood and Treasure, unassisted by the Wealth or the Strength of Great Britain; that in constituting indeed, our Several Forms of Government, We had adopted one common King, thereby laying a Foundation for perpetual League and Amity with them: but that Submission to their Parliament, was no Part of our Constitution, nor ever in Idea, if History may be credited : and we appealed to their Native Justice and Magnanimity, as well as to the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which were likely to interrupt our Correspondence and Connection. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and of Consanguinity, and when occasions have been given them by the regular Course of their Laws of removing from their Councils, the disturbers of our Harmony, they have by their free Election, reestablished them in Power. At this very Time too, they are permitting their Chief Magistrate to send over not only Soldiers of our common Blood, but Scotch and foreign Mercenaries, to invade and deluge Us in Blood. These Facts have given the last Stab to agonizing Affection, and manly Spirit bids us to renounce forever these unfeeling Brethren. We must endeavor to forget our former Love for them, and to hold them as we hold the rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. We might have been a free and a great People Together; but a Communication of Grandeur and of Freedom it seems is below

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their Dignity. Be it So, Since they will have it : The Road to Happiness and to Glory is open to Us too; We will climb it, apart from them, and acquiesce in the Necessity which denounces our eternal Separation. We therefore the Representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these States, reject and renounce all Allegiance and Subjection to the Kings of Great Britain, and all others, who may hereafter claim by, through, or under them; We utterly dissolve and break off all political Connections which may have heretofore Subsisted between us and the People or Parliament of Great Britain, and finally We do assert and declare these Colonies to be free and independent States, and that as free and independent States they Shall hereafter have Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which independent States may of Right do. And for the Support of this Declaration, We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honour. Now that you have read the Declaration, as it was originally written, is there any doubt in your mind that it was conceived and written by the author of Common Sense? Is it not a perfect summation of the aims and principles of that famous pamphlet? Could an imitator have caught the spirit, enunciated the doctrine of Independence, and proclaimed the equality of man and the freedom of the individual so perfectly as did the one author of both Common Sense and The Declaration of Independence? The one reflects the other as perfectly as the architects plans mirror the building to be erected.

It is as close a relationship as the artist and his picture , or the composer and his music. Yes, The Declaration of Independence is the very crescendo of Common Sense. In fact, The Declaration of Independence could have been produced only in the crucible of a great emotional passion by one who had dedicated his life to the momentous cause of Freedom. Only one consumed by the fire of a self-sacrificing devotion could have produced such a monumental masterpiece. In addition to all this, the Declaration is written in the same language and in the same style of writing, with the same sentiments and principles, and possesses the same inimitable characteristics found only in the writings of the author of Common Sense. The pity of it is that The Declaration of Independence did not remain as it was originally written. If it had, then the name of Thomas Paine could not have been disassociated from it because it is this copy, when studied in its entirety, that reveals that Thomas Paine is its author. The majority of people do not know that The Declaration of Independence was not adopted as it was originally written. They do not know that it went through many stages of correction and changes, and that when finally adopted it contained but seventyfive percent of the original text. It was my intention in this chapter to place in parallel columns the sentiments and principles of Common Sense to show that these sentiments and principles were incorporated into The Declaration of Independence. But I believe that after reading the extracts from Common Sense in the previous chapter and The Declaration of

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Independence as it was originally, these similarities become so obvious that such a comparison is unnecessary. It is equally obvious that Thomas Jefferson did not write it. Because, during the period that Common Sense was spreading over the Colonies, Thomas Jefferson did not write a single book or pamphlet either in favor of Independence or in defense of Common Sense. Not only did he not write The Declaration of Independence, but he was not sufficiently stirred emotionally to have produced such a document. Only the man who said, Let the names of whig and tory be extinct; and let none other be heard among us, than those of a good citizen, and an open and resolute friend, and a virtuous supporter of the RIGHTS OF MANKIND, and of the FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES OF AMERICA, could be the author of the

manifesto that gave determination to that plea and conviction to the fact that a new and separate government had been born. Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense. It was a plea for independence. It provoked the Colonies to appoint a committee to draft a declaration of independence. Thomas Paine wrote that Declaration of Independence. Thomas Paine gave a name to that new government. It was THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. But we have just started upon our task of assembling the evidence so unmistakable. Paine was the author of The Declaration of Independence. It is evidence in abundance. It is actual, factual, and conclusive.

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__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

E X C E R P T F RO M T H O M A S P A I N E AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION O F I N D E P E N D EN C E

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THE SLAVERY CLAUSE

f no other evidence were in existence that Thomas Paine was the author of The Declaration of Independence, the Slavery Clause in the original draft of The Declaration of Independence would alone be sufficient evidence to justify the claim to his authorship of that immortal document. And at the same time, the elimination of that Clause from the final draft of The Declaration more than justifies the conclusion that Thomas Jefferson could not have been the writer of it. The Slavery Clause was not put into The Declaration to be taken out. It was not a catch phrase. It was not a piece of political bait. It was written by one whose soul was aflame with the fire of indignation. It struck deep into the heart of one of the greatest evils that afflicted society, and it was written to cure that evil forever among men who considered themselves civilized. It was meant to proclaim to the world that Man had no property right in Man. The Declaration of Independence, as originally written, could not be the great fundamental Charter of Human Freedom it was intended to be, if the Slavery Clause were omitted! And if Thomas Jefferson were the author of the phrase all men are created equal and independent . . .and possess rights inherent and unalienable . . . he never would have

permitted the Slavery Clause to be eliminated regardless of the opposition arrayed against it. By permitting the elimination of this Clause, The Declaration became a mutilated document, and only the precious blood spilled in the Civil War, and the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of men, finally restored it to its original grandeur as an eternal monument to the equality of man. Only one man in America at that time looked upon slavery as the most abhorrent institution that existed in society, a violation of all human rights, and who sought to abolish it. This was the ingenious worthy young man whom Franklin had urged to go to America and to whom he had given a letter of introduction. The horror and brutality of slavery affected him so that it was indelibly impressed upon his heart. So strongly did he feel this great evil, that it was the subject of one of his first articles which appeared in public print soon after he had landed upon these shores in the latter part of 1774. Thus began the campaign in this country for the abolition of Negro slavery. HIS was the first voice raised upon the American Continent in behalf of these defenseless people. Thomas Paine saw an opportunity to emancipate the enslaved Negro at the same time American Independence was won, and that was why the Slavery Clause was

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made an important part of The Declaration of Independence! Paines first article was entitled, An Essay on African Slavery in America, and it appeared in the Pennsylvania Journal, March 8th, 1775. In this article appears not only every sentiment and every argument, but almost the same words of the Slavery Clause that appear in the original draft of The Declaration of Independence. They are so nearly alike in phrase, thought, expression, and composition that it is impossible for any but the one mind and brain to have been the author of both, despite the fact that one is an argument and a plea, and the other a manifesto of that plea. It is significant to remember that this article was not signed by Thomas Paine. Knowing the opposition he would surely encounter, he was not yet ready to reveal that he was the author, for fear that his recent arrival in this country might destroy the effectiveness of his labors and injure the cause that had so stirred his soul. He concluded the article with these words: These are the sentiments of JUSTICE AND HUMANITY . And it was quite some time after the article had been publicly discussed and lauded that Paine finally acknowledged his authorship of it. No less a person of that time than the eminent Dr. Benjamin Rush said of Paines Essay on Slavery: It excited my desire to be better acquainted with him. We met soon afterwards in Mr. Aitkins bookstore, where I did homage to his principles and pen upon the subject of the enslaved Africans. Shortly after the appearance of this Essay, the first American Anti-Slavery Society was organized. It was founded in Philadelphia in the Sun Tavern on Second Street in April 1775, under the title of The Society for the

Relief of Free Negroes, Unlawfully Held in Bondage. There is little doubt that Paine, if not the founder of this organization, was at least one of its prominent members, and as this society became the first organized effort for the immediate abolition of Negro slavery in this country, the honor of being the first American Abolitionist belongs to Thomas Paine. In view of these preliminary facts and in the absence of any such sentiments, acts or articles in behalf of Negro slavery ever being associated with Thomas Jefferson, we will proceed to an examination of this important Slavery Clause of The Declaration of Independence by a comparison with Thomas Paines plea for the Abolition of Negro Slavery.

Extract From The Essay on African Slavery in America

That some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave men by violence and murder for gain is rather lamentable than strange. These inoffensive people are brought into slavery, by stealing them, tempting Kings to sell subjects, which they can have no right to do, and hiring one tribe to war against another, in order to catch prisoners. Our traders in MEN (an unnatural commodity!) must know the wickedness of that SLAVE TRADE, if they attend to reasoning, or the dictates of their own hearts; and such as shun and stifle all these, willfully sacrifice Conscience, and the character of integrity to that golden Idol. To go to nations ... purely to catch inoffensive people, like wild beasts, for slaves, is an height of outrage against Humanity and Justice, that seems left by Heathen nations to

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be practised by pretended Christians. How shameful are all attempts to colour and excuse it!

The Paragraphs Deleted From the Declaration of Independence, as They Appear in the Adams Copy
He has waged cruel War against human Nature itself, violating its most Sacred Rights of Life and Liberty in the Persons of a distant People who never offended him, captivating and carrying Them into Slavery in another Hemisphere, or to incur miserable Death in their Transportation thither. This piratical Warfare, the opprobrium of Infidel Powers, is the Warfare of the CHRISTIAN King of Great Britain. He has prostituted his Negative for Suppressing every legislative Attempt to prohibit or to restrain an execrable Commerce, determined to keep open a Market where MEN Should be bought and Sold, and that this assemblage of Horrors might Want no Fact of distinguished Die.

From Common Sense

There are thousands ... who would think it glorious to expel from the Continent, that barbarous and hellish power, which hath stirred up the Indians and the Negroes to destroy us; the cruelty hath a double guilt, it is dealing brutally by us, and treacherously by them. He is now exciting those very People to rise in Arms among us, and to purchase that Liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the People upon whom he has obtruded them; thus paying off former Crimes committed against the Liberties of our People, with Crimes which he urges them to commit against the Lives of another.

Can anyone doubt for a moment, after reading the text of the Essay on Slavery and the Slavery Clause in The Declaration of Independence, that they are the product of the same mind and the same author? They are as alike as an image and its reflection. The very words themselves seem to echo each other. They are as identifiable as ones own fingerprints, and no magnifying glass is needed to prove their outlines. They stand out in bold relief to the naked eye. I have made a painstaking examination of Jeffersons writings from before the appearance of Paines Essay on Slavery in March, 1775, and the publication of Common Sense in 1776, up to the time The Declaration was submitted to the Committee appointed to draw it up on June 28th, 1776, and I cannot find a single instance showing that the Slavery Clause was a reflection of the thoughts and sentiments of Thomas Jefferson, the other members of the Committee, or anyone else in America at that time other than Thomas Paine. In all the writings of Thomas Jefferson not a single paragraph appears that even remotely resembles the sentiments, the style of writing, the mode of expression, or the manner of composition appearing in the Slavery Clause of The Declaration. Professor Carl Becker is forced to admit that the language of the Slavery Clause introduces the wholly incongruous note of snarling sarcasm, and is unlike Jefferson because it speaks with derision of the CHRISTIAN King of Great Britain, reminding him for all the world of Shylocks retort, these be the Christian husbands. And why not? Despite Beckers condemnation, that was the intended meaning of these words. Yes,

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snarling sarcasm was necessary to condemn the man responsible for the horrors and injustices of slavery. And such snarling sarcasm could have been written only by one stirred to burning indignation by the existence of this abhorrent institution as was Thomas Paine. Becker further states that the language of The Declaration ... in both form and substance is characterized by a peculiar felicity, but hastens to admit that the peculiar felicity was Jeffersons only so far as it was peculiar. However, that peculiar felicity of expression abounds throughout Paines writings and is typical of his inimitable style. This, too, we shall prove. Thomas Jefferson himself said that Paines style of writing was most perfect in both extremes of the simple and the sublime, and that no writer has exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of style, in perspicuity of expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple and unassuming language. And W. E. Woodward was so struck by Paines forceful literary style that he said: Observe the simplicity of Paines style: it was one of his most outstanding literary characteristics. In that era it stood out like a white wall on a brown hillside, for the writers of the time took pride in presenting their ideas in tortuous, involved sentences. Certainly this snarling sarcasm was not Jeffersons ideas and sentiments. He rarely referred to the King of England except as His Majesty, while the opinion of the King of England as expressed in the Slavery Clause is found again and again in the pages of Common Sense!

Paine wrote: ... I rejected the hardened, sullen-tempered Pharaoh of England for ever, and disdain the wretch, that with the pretended title of FATHER OF HIS PEOPLE can unfeelingly hear of their slaughter, and composedly sleep with their blood upon his soul. He calls the King of England . . . the Royal Brute of Great Britain, and says that the naked and untutored Indian, is less Savage than the King of Britain. And that ye would tell the Royal Wretch his sins, and warn him of eternal ruin. Certainly in all of Jeffersons writings he does not express any similar opinions about the King of Britain. Professor Becker then proceeds to characterize The Declaration both in form and substance as possessing the virtues of simplicity, clarity, logical order.... If one were to analyze Common Sense, it could not be described more perfectly than in the above words. There is almost an apology for Jefferson in the words of Becker when he says, Jefferson touches the emotions as little in other parts of The Declaration as in the philippic against slavery. On the contrary. The whole Declaration is one great and grand emotional outburst against all forms of tyranny and in behalf of Freedom. If ever a document fairly bristled with emotion, it is The Declaration of Independence. It is typical of all of Paines writings. Here are Paines own words of what motivated his writings:

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What I write is pure nature, and my pen and soul have ever gone together.... I have never courted fame or interest, and my manner of life, to those who know it, will justify what I say. My study is to be useful .. . The Declaration of Independence is a document of emotional indignation, because it is a document of conviction. It is a masterpiece of sustained power and vigor and courage. It is a manifesto of Freedom for ALL peoples. A Declaration that we fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in. Paine was right. Had it not been for America, there had been no such thing as freedom left throughout the whole universe. Do not the following passages from the Declaration bristle with emotion, as equally as the philippic against slavery exhibits snarling sarcasm? The History of his present Majesty, is a History, of unremitting injuries and Usurpations, among which no one Fact Stands Single or Solitary to contradict the Uniform Tenor of the rest, all of which have in direct object, the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. He has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People. He is at this Time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the Works of death, Desolation and Tyranny, already begun with Circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation. And still there is more evidence besides these comparisons of sentiments and language

to prove that the Slavery Clause is the work of Thomas Paine. You will recall how important the Forester Letters were in showing Paines direct contact with the members of the Committee before the announcement of The Declaration, and the arguments he had presented for Independence when there was still serious opposition to it. Now we find in those same letters another significant piece of testimony indicating that Paine was aware of the opposition to the proposed emancipation of Negro slaves at the same time that American Independence was proclaimed. The principles embodied in Common Sense had been accepted, and now his final plea was for the Negro slaves. That accounts for the significant inference which Paine makes in his appeal TO THE PEOPLE in the third of his Forester Letters. In this letter he pleads that NOW is the time to lay the firm foundation for a real government; that NOW is the time to correct all mistakes, and provide justice for all. These letters were written not only to answer all opposition to Independence, particularly those of Cato and Plain Truth, but also to resolve the opposition of those members of the Continental Congress who were too timid to make a clean and complete break with the British Crown, and to start a new government based upon the principles of real Justice and Freedom. So logical and unanswerable were Paines words that by merely putting the question he gave the answer. He asked: Can America be happy under a government of her own? The answer is short and simple, viz., As happy as she pleases, she hath a blank sheet to write upon.

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Could anything be plainer? Start the slate afresh, he tells America. Leave no mark of Injustice upon it. And as a further warning, because he knew that sooner or later it would have to be done, he continued his admonition by shouting: Put it not off too long. Put not what off too long? Forget not the hapless African, he cried. Let us recall these words from Common Sense: Now is the seedtime of Continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters. What a prophetic statement, and what tragic results have followed the ignoring of itl Was not slavery at that time like a point of a pin upon the tender rind of a young oak? And did it not enlarge with the tree, and did not posterity read it in full grown characters until it became a menace to our own liberty and freedom? When will man learn that it is better to correct a mistake while it is still a small matter, instead of waiting until precious blood must be spilled to wipe out its injury and horror and atone for the misery unnecessarily suffered? Put it not off too long. Forget not the hapless African. It was necessary to fight the Civil War with all its horrors and bloodshed to blot out this terrible stain on the blank sheet upon which America started to write. If only the Slavery Clause had remained in The Declaration as Paine originally wrote it!

JEFFERSON and SLAVERY

The Declaration of Independence

THE ARGUMENT of Contrast is sometimes as effective in demonstrating truth as if the indisputable evidence itself were actually presented to us. And there is no more striking and convincing example of this than in the comparison between the attitudes of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson on the question of slavery. The contrast which is perhaps the most noteworthy lies in the fact that Jefferson possessed neither the conviction nor the sentiments necessary to write the Slavery Clause into The Declaration of Independence. As Governor of Virginia in the year 1796, Jefferson said :
The bill of the subject of slaves was a mere digest of the existing laws respecting them, without any intimation of a plan for a future and general emancipation. It was thought better that this should be kept back, and attempted only by way of amendment, whenever the bill should be brought on. The principles of the amendments, however, were agreed on, that is to say, the freedom of all born after a certain day, and deportation at a proper age. But it was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition, nor will it bear it even at this day (1796). (Italics mine.)'

Here Jefferson presumes too much, as we shall show as we proceed with this study. If these were Jefferson's sentiments, how he possibly have been the author of the amendment which he so unceremoniously and so emphatically stated was not ready for adoption? How could a man like Jefferson have written the Slavery Clause into The Declaration of Independence when he held such sentiments about the Negro twenty years after the establishment of this Republic?

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I must again take issue with Mr. Jefferson that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition, nor will it bear it even at this day (1796) because I shall shortly prove that the provisions of the very amendment of which he speaks had already been adopted seventeen years before by one of the thirteen original states through the efforts of Thomas Paine! But to continue with Jefferson's own statements:
. . . Yet the day is not distant when it must bear it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, can not live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion have drawn in delible lines of distinction between them. (Italics mine.)

the Pursuit of Happiness, regardless of race, color, or creed? Important in revealing Jeffersons attitude on the question of Slavery and Negro equality is the article in his Notes on Virginia, first printed in 1784 eight years after the adoption of The Declaration of Independence and entitled, The particular customs and manners that may happen to be received in that State.. This article clearly shows that Jeffersons opposition to slavery was based only upon the detrimental influence of slavery on the minds of children rather than upon a belief in the fundamental and basic rights of all mankind. ****
Source: Thomas Paine, Author of the Declaration of Independence by Joseph Lewis.Freethought Press Asso. 1947.

It hardly seems possible that these are the words and sentiments of the man who, we have been taught, wrote The Declaration of Independence. They sound much more like the arguments used by those responsible for the elimination of the slavery Clause from the Declaration. Certainly a man who held the conviction that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government would definitely oppose the emancipation of the Negro at the very time that our government was .founded. And to make matters worse, he said : Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible lines of distinction between us. If that is true, then of what benefit is the , .Bill of Rights, of which we so proudly boast? Of what value is our claim that each and every one possesses rights inherent and unalienable; among which are the Preservation of Life, and Liberty, and

Editors Note: Joseph Lewis dedicated this book: To Helen Keller The Most Remarkable Woman in the World Who Fervently Wishes with the Author that the Principles and Philosophy of Thomas Paine May Spread over the Face of the Earth and Peace, Freedom and Happiness May Be the Lot of All Mankind.

From the pen of Thomas Paine he wrote in The Rights of Man, Chapter 5, The world is my country, All mankind are my brethren, To do good is my religion, I believe in one God and no more. Could a human being who makes such a testament as this...consider owning another human being? Of course not. Bonnie Lange

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A F R IC A N S LA V E R Y IN A M E R I CA
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Thomas Paine To AMERICANS: That some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave men by violence and murder for gain, is rather lamentable than strange. But that many civilized, nay, Christianized people should approve, and be concerned in the savage practice, is surprising; and still persist, though it has been so often proved contrary to the light of nature, to every principle of justice and humanity, and even good policy, by a succession of eminent men, and several late publications. Our traders in men (an unnatural commodity!) must know the wickedness of that Slave-Trade, if they attend to reasoning, or the dictates of their own hearts; and such as shun and stiffle all these, wilfully sacrifice conscience, and the character of integrity to that golden idol. The managers of that trade themselves, and others, testify, that many of these African nations inhabit fertile countries, are industrious farmers, enjoy plenty, and lived quietly, averse to war, before the Europeans debauched them with liquors, and bribing them against one another; and that these inoffensive people are brought into slavery, by stealing them, tempt-ins, kings to sell subjects, which they can have no right to do, and hiring one tribe to war against another, in order to catch prisoners. By such wicked and inhuman ways the English are said to enslave towards one hundred thousand yearly; of which thirty thousand are supposed to die by barbarous treatment in the first year; besides all that are slain in the unnatural wars excited to take them. So much innocent blood have the managers and supporters of this inhuman trade to answer for to the common Lord of all! Many of these were not prisoners of war, and redeemed from savage conquerors, as some plead; and they who were such prisoners, the English, who promote the war for that very end, are the guilty authors of their being so; and if they were redeemed, as is alleged, they would owe clothing to the redeemer but what he paid for them. They show as little reason as conscience who put the matter by with saying Men, in some cases, are lawfully made slaves, and why may not these? So men, in some cases, are lawfully put to death; deprived of their goods, without their consent; may any man, therefore, be treated so, without any conviction of desert? Nor is this plea mended by adding They are set forth to us as slaves, and we buy them without farther inquiry, let the sellers see to it. Such men may as well join with a known band of robbers, buy their ill-got goods, and help on the trade; ignorance is no more pleadable in one case than the other; the sellers plainly own how they obtain them. But none can lawfully buy without evidence that they are not concurring with men-stealers; and as the true owner has a right to reclaim his goods that were stolen, and sold; so the slave,

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who is proper owner of his freedom, has a right to reclaim it, however often sold. Most shocking of all is alleging the sacred scriptures to favor this wicked practice. One would have thought none but infidel cavillers would endeavor to make them appear contrary to the plain dictates of natural light, and conscience, in a matter of common justice and humanity; which they cannot be. Such worthy men, as referred to before, judged otherways; Mr. Baxter declared, the slave-traders should be called devils, rather than Christians and that it is a heinous crime to buy them. But some say, the practice was permitted to the Jews. To which may be replied. 1. The example of the Jews, in many things, may not be imitated by us; they had not only orders to cut off several nations altogether, but if they were obliged to war with others, and conquered them, to cut off every male; they were suffered to use polygamy and divorces, and other things utterly unlawful to us under clearer light. 2. The plea is, in a great measure, false; they had no permission to catch and enslave people who never injured them. 3. Such arguments ill become us, since the time of reformation came, under gospel light. All distinctions of nations, and privileges of one above others, are ceased; Christians are taught to account all men their neighbors; love their neighbors as themselves; and do to all men as they would, be done by; to do good to all men; and man-stealing, is ranked with enormous crimes. Is the barbarous enslaving our inoffensive neighbors, and treating them like wild beasts subdued by force, reconcilable with all these divine precepts? Is this doing to them as we would desire they should do to us? If they could carry off and enslave some thousands of us,

would we think it just?One would almost wish they could for once; it might convince more than reason, or the bible. As much in vain, perhaps, will they search ancient history for examples of the modern slave-trade. Too many nations enslaved the prisoners they took in war. But to go to nations with whom there is no war, who have no way. provoked, without farther design of conquest, purely to catch inoffensive people, like wild beasts, for slaves, is an height of outrage against humanity and justice, that seems left by heathen nations to be practiced by pretended Christians. How shameful are all attempts to color and excuse it! As these people are not convicted of forfeiting freedom, they have still a natural, perfect right to it; and the governments whenever they come should, in justice set them free, and punish those who hold them in slavery. So monstrous is the making and keeping them slaves at all, abstracted from the barbarous usage they suffer, and the many evils attending the practice; as selling husbands away from wives, children from parents, and from each other, in violation of sacred and natural ties; and opening the way for adulteries, incests, and many shocking consequences, for all of which the guilty masters must answer to the final Judge. If the slavery of the parents be unjust, much more is their childrens; if the parents were justly slaves, yet the children are born free; this is the natural, perfect right of all mankind; they are nothing but a just recompense to those who bring them up: And as much less is commonly spent on them than others, they have a right, in justice, to be proportionably sooner free.

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Certainly one may, with as much reason and decency, plead for murder, robbery, lewdness, and barbarity, as for this practice. They are not more contrary to the natural dictates of conscience, and feelings of humanity; nay, they are all comprehended in it. But the chief design. of this paper is not to disprove it, which many have sufficiently done; but to entreat Americans to consider. 1. With that consistency, or decency they complain so loudly of attempts to enslave them, while they hold so many hundred thousands in slavery; and annually enslave many thousands more, without any pretense of authority, or claim upon them? 2. How just, how suitable to our crime is the punishment with which providence threatens us? We have enslaved multitudes, and shed much innocent blood in doing it; and now are threatened with the same. And while other evils are confessed, and bewailed, why not this especially, and publicly; than which no other vice, if all others, has brought so much guilt on the land? 3. Whether, then, all ought not immediately to discontinue and renounce it, with grief and abhorrence? Should not every society bear testimony against it, and account obstinate persisters in it bad men, enemies to their country, and exclude them from, fellowship; as,they often do for much lesser faults? 4. The great question may be What should, be done with those who are enslaved already? To turn the old and infirm free, would be injustice and cruelty; they who enjoyed the labors of their better days should keep, and

treat them humanely. As to the rest, let prudent men, with the assistance of legislatures, determine what is practicable for masters, and best for them. Perhaps some could give them lands upon reasonable rent, some, employing them in their labor still, might give them some reasonable allowances for it; so as all may have some property, and fruits of their labors at their own disposal, and be encouraged to industry; the family may live together, and enjoy the natural satisfaction of exercising relative affections and duties, with civil protection, and other advantages, like fellow men. Perhaps they might sometime form useful barrier settlements on the frontiers. Thus they may become interested in the public welfare, and assist in promoting it; instead of being dangerous, as now they are, should any enemy promise them a better condition. 5. The past treatment of Africans must naturally fill them with abhorrence of Christians; lead them to think our religion would make them more inhuman savages, if they embraced it; thus the gain of that trade has been pursued in opposition to the Redeemers cause, and the happiness of men. Are we not, therefore, bound in duty to him and to them to repair these injuries, as far as possible, by taking some proper measures to instruct, not only the slaves here, but the Africans in their own countries? Primitive Christians labored always to spread their divine religion; and this is equally our duty while there is an heathen nation. But what singular obligations are we under to these injured people!

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Excerpt from 140th Anniversary of Thomas Paine's Birthday

Speech by D.M. Bennett, January 29, 1877

I have had the privilege of conversing with those who knew Thomas Paine in his life-time. I saw two aged men, Mr. Barker and Major A. Coutant, who remembered Paine distinctly, and had often listened to his conversation when he lived at his home in New Rochelle. Major Coutant, I believe, is the only surviving person who remembers Paine. I have listened to this mans description of Paine, when he vividly portrayed the heros manner and appearance when in conversation, particularly of his sharp, penetrating but pleasant eye. With pleasure I visited Paines farm, his monument, the spot where his bones were buried, and the house and the room in which he passed much of his time. I sat in the chair which he once sat in to read and write. I saw descendants of the family with whom he boarded, and I enquired particularly of the habits and manners of the great man. Everybody spoke in the highest terms of him. The work which may well be regarded as his greatest is the Age of Reason. And this is the work which brought down upon his devoted head the anathema of a paid, calculating priesthood in this country and in Europe. They answered his clear, forcible arguments, his sound reasoning and his telling truths, with slander and abuse. It was the only way they could answer him. Up to this day I claim that not one of his arguments has been proved defective, not one of his positions has been shown to be mistaken, not one of his assertions has been proved to be false. Not one of the many who have attempted to answer him have done so effectually. Those who have not read the Age of Reason ought to do so. It has been greatly misrepresented and maligned. Thousands have been made to believe that it contains much that

is terrible. This is not so. There is nothing in it untrue. There is not an immoral nor an improper sentence within its lids. There is nothing in it that will harm any man, woman, or child. But thousands upon thousands have derived comfort and consolation from its pages. Kind friends, let us long emulate the virtues of Thomas Paine. Like him let us be willing to spend our time, our strength, and our lives in promoting the good of those of our kind around us. Like him let us be fearless in avowing our honest sentiments and convictions. Like him let us be true to the best light we can gain. Let us not be governed by the opinions of deluded fanatics or narrow-minded bigots. Under all circumstances and conditions let us aim to discharge our duty to ourselves, and to our fellow beings. Besides doing all we can to secure our own happiness, let us try to increase the happiness of others. If in the progress and evolution of the human mind, the light of science and truth leads us farther along in the road of progression than Paine traveled during his life-time, let us go cheerfully where truth leads us. Let us strive to know all we can of the truths of Nature, and the laws of the Universe. But in all that we do let us not forget the great services of Thomas Paine, and the importance of his efforts in behalf of our race. His grand utterances will live forever. It was he who said: The world is my country; and to do good my religion. ****
D. M. Bennett was the founder of the Truth Seeker in 1873. As the leading freethinker of his day, he is remembered for his many articles challenging the dogmas of his times. As the first editor of the Truth Seeker, he laid a foundation that has lasted into the twenty-first century. William B. Lindley, Associate Editor

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DOES ANYONE REMEMBER T O M P A IN E ?

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by Robert L. Williams

any years ago, before I came to my senses and left public education for good, I was teaching on a college campus when one of the administrators approached me and asked the topic of my lecture that day. Tom Paine and the Rights of Man, I told him. The administrator sneered, managed a look of utter contempt, and asked, Do you mean to tell me that you are still defiling the minds of our students with the lightweight works of that filthy little atheist? Thinking of Rousseaus comment that the Holy Roman Empire was an appropriate title except that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, I responded, Your description of Paine is correct except that he was not lightweight, little, filthy, nor an atheist. I went on to add that Tom Paine was, according to no less an authority than George Washington, the man who single-handedly did more to help win the American Revolution than any other person on this continent. He was also, I said, for better or worse, the man who started the Bank of North America, invented the metal suspension bridge, gave us the idea for a selective service draft system, suggested medicare and social security and pension retirement plans. He

urged the establishment of a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, campaigned vigorously for international copyright laws, and donated to the cause of the American Revolution the money that was earned from Common Sense, Americas first genuine best-seller in literature. Before my prey could escape, I added, And, incidentally, he was the man who named this country. He was the first person to use, so far as anyone knows, the phrase, The United States of America. He was still an atheist, the administrator added, walking away with the smug assurance of all authoritarian leaders who remain convinced that whatever they say or do has the blessings of God and the approval of the Congress. And today, two hundred years after the appearance of Rights of Man, on February 17,1992, most Americans have never even heard of Tom Paine, and the few who have cannot tell you anything about him except that he was a filthy little atheist and enemy of Christianity whose writings defile the minds of all who read him. To clear the air, Paine was not an atheist in any sense of the word, and it would have been perfectly all right if he had been one in every sense of the word. In point of fact, he wrote in Age of Reason I believe in one God and no more, and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy. Strange words, indeed, from a man who allegedly hated Christianity and harbored no beliefs in God! What Tom Paine did hate, and passionately, was Big Government. He wrote,

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Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one. He hated the idea of an uncontrolled welfare state and stated his feelings, clearly when he wrote, Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. When American troops were being soundly defeated on nearly all fronts during the American Revolution, Paine, who was serving without pay as aide-de-camp to Nathanael Greene, became impatient with the complaints of the soldiers who did not win the war as easily as they had hoped. And Tom Paine then wrote some of the most memorable lines in the history of the English language: These are the times that try mens souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet, we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly ... Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated. Paine describes a prosperous American businessman who held a child by the hand and, after expounding on his reasons not to fight for this nation and its freedom, concluded by saying, Give me peace in my day. Paine fairly bristled with anger as he retaliated. Not a man lives on the continent but fully believes that a separation (of America from England) must some time or other take place, and a generous parent should have said,

If there must be war, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. Amen, and amen! On the topic of religion, he insisted that he did not believe in the creed espoused by any church that he knew of. My own mind is my own church, he wrote, and later he established a brick and mortar church of his own, the Theophilanthropic Church, whose major creed was that the greatest religious faith is that of good works to our fellow creatures. He disliked organized religion and held firmly to the faith that the right not to embrace an organized church is at least as sacred as the right to attend the church of ones choice. All national institutions of churches, he wrote, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind and monopolize power and profit. Jim Bakker should be thankful that Paine is not alive today. Tom would attack the televangelists in their own pulpits. At the same time he denounced national religious organizations, he modified his position by saying that he did not condemn those who disagreed with him: They have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing or disbelieving; it consists in profession to believe what he does not believe. In his Rights of Man Paine set forth the arguments that civil rights are merely an extension of the natural rights of man as they existed in pre-governmental status. He argued that these natural rights include the maximum freedom compatible with the rights of others and that civil government should not interfere with the freedom of man except to insure and

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protect the happiness of the majority of the people. Not long after his declarations of human rights, Paine was arrested and sentenced to die for his role in the French Revolution. In a bizarre turn of events, he was spared because of chronic diarrhea. His jail cell door was marked with a charcoal X so the executioner would know whom to behead the following day, and Paines cell smelled so bad that the door was left open and the X was turned to the wall and Paine was spared until Jefferson and other friends could help him escape to America. Then, in the land he named and helped to free, he was denounced by ministers as an atheist and died in disgrace. He was buried on his farm in New Rochelle, New York, but enemies continued to denounce him until finally he was exhumed and his bones were taken to England. A friend at the exhumation snapped off the final joint of the little finger of Paines right hand and slipped the bone back in the grave so that some part of Paine would

remain on American soil. The remainder of his remains were eventually lost. And today, exactly two hundred years after Paine published his Rights of Man he is among the most neglected writers and thinkers of the Revolutionary period. High school history books, if they mention Paine at all, award him a vague mention of a propagandist. Preachers continue to vilify him, and everyone else neglects him totally. Only a few hack writers (like me) who admire and appreciate Paines mastery of the English language and his dedication to the cause of individual freedom of thought and actions scribble articles like this to remind others that if it had not been for Tom Paine, America as we know it today might never have existed. So, thanks, Tom, two hundred years late but from the bottoms of our hearts and the depths of our souls, for making us free and inspiring us to try to stay that way. ****
Reprinted with permission from Backwood Home Magazine, January/February 1993, No. 19.

Praise for Thomas Paine And The Promise of America and its author Harvey Kaye, 2005
If the rights of man are to be upheld in a dark time, we shall require an age of reason. Harvey Kaye's lucid work helps to create the free citizens memorial to Thomas Paine, who is still shamefully unacknowledged by the democratic republic that he lived and died to bring about. Christopher Hitchens In this fascinating study, Harvey Kaye rediscovers Thomas Paine's central place in an American radical tradition stretching from the Revolution to the present, and reminds us how Paine's words still resonate in American society. Eric Foner, Columbia University For two centuries, Americans have fought for possession of Tom Paine's soul at least as vigorously as our ancestors fought over his literal bones. Harvey Kaye tells the tale well, and along the way demonstrates how much, in this time that tries men's soul and women's soul, the resurrection of Paine will still do for America's flagging radical imagination. Todd Gitlin, author of The Intellectuals and the Flag. I couldn't put the thing down! The story of Thomas Paine then and now, for the man and his ideas are very much alive today stirs the heart, moves the mind, and the demon of despair. The best political book of the year. Bill Moyers

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EASTER SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON

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William B. Lindley

n his book, The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine examined the story of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, reviewing the four Gospels. His comments on the story are to be found there. In the spirit of free and open inquiry, we offer a study guide based upon his findings. We have recast his comments in the form of ten questions. We recommend that you first study the Bible itself before going on to Paines other commentaries. Only this way will it truly be a lesson. The Questions: The Crucifixion At what time of day was Jesus crucified? What inscription was put on the cross? What, if any, spectacular events accompanied the crucifixion? The Resurrection Mary Magdalene went to Jesus tomb early Easter Sunday morning. What time did she go, more specifically? When she arrived at the tomb, she found that the stone had been rolled away. At least one angel was at the site. How many? Specifically where was he (were they) situated?

Engraving by William Sharp of the Original Painting by George Romney

Where did the Ascension take place? Check all four Gospels to make sure that you have the right answer. (For the Crucifixion, Matthew 77, Mark 15, Luke 23, John 19; for the Resurrection, Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, John 20,21.) Then go to The Age of Reason and compare your findings with Paines. As you study the account, other questions may occur to you, and you may find that Paine did not address them. You are now ready for the advanced course, to be found in Dan Barkers, No Stone Unturned, in The Book Your Church Doesnt Want You to Read and in other places. **** Reprinted from Truth Seeker, Vol. 123, #1.

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___________________________________________________________________________

LIBERTY OF THE PRE SS

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Liberty of the Press is adopted in this country without being understood, I will state the origin of it, and show what it means. The term comes from England, and the case was as follows: Prior to what is in England called The Revolution, which was in 1685, no work could be published in that country without first obtaining the permission of an officer appointed by the government for inspecting works intended for publication. The same was the case in France, except that in France there were forty who were called Censors, and in England there was but one, called Imprimateur. At the Revolution, the office of Imprimateur was abolished, and as works could then be published without first obtaining the permission of the government officer, the press was, in consequence of that abolition, said to be free, and it was from this circumstance that the term Liberty of the Press arose. The press, which is a tongue to the eye, was then put exactly in the case of the human tongue. A man does not ask liberty beforehand to say something he has a mind to say, but he becomes answerable afterwards for the atrocities he may utter. In like manner, if a man makes the press utter atrocious things, he becomes as answerable for them as if he had uttered them by word of mouth. Mr. Jefferson has said in his inaugural speech, that error of opinion might be tolerated, when reason was le, ft to combat it. This is sound philosophy in cases of error. But there is a difference between error and licentiousness. Some lawyers in defending their clients, (for the generality of lawyers, like Swiss soldiers, will fight on either side,) have often given their opinion of what they defined the liberty of the press to be. One said it was this,

Thomas Paine

he writer of this remembers a remark made to him by Mr. Jefferson concerning the English newspapers, which at that time, 1787, while Mr. Jefferson was Minister at Paris, were most vulgarly abusive. The remark applies with equal force to the Federal papers of America. The remark was, that the licentiousness of the press produces the same effect as the restraint of the press was intended to do if the restraint was to prevent things being told, and the licentiousness of the press prevents things being believed when they are told. We have in this state an evidence of the truth of this remark. The number of Federal papers in the city and state of New York are more than five to one to the number of Republican papers, yet the majority of the elections go always against the Federal papers; which is demonstrative evidence that the licentiousness of those papers is destitute of credit. Whoever has made observation on the characters of nations will find it generally true that the manners of a nation, or of a party, can be better ascertained from the character of its press than from any other public circumstance. If its press is licentious, its manners are not good. Nobody believes a common liar, or a common defamer. Nothing is more common with printers, especially of newspapers, than the continual cry of the Liberty of the Press. As if because they are printers they are to have more privileges than other people. As the term

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another said it was that, and so on, according to the case they were pleading. Now these men ought to have known that the term liberty of the press arose from a FACT, the abolition of the office of Imprimateur, and that opinion has nothing to do in the case. The term refers to the fact of printing free from prior restraint, and not at all to the matter printed, whether

good or bad. The public at large, or in case of prosecution, a jury of the country will be judges of the matter. ****
From the writings of Thomas Paine edited by Moncure Conway, AMS Press, Inc., New York 1964. This piece is from the American Citizen, October 20, 1806. Paine had witnessed in France the terrible effects of personal libels shielded under the liberty of press.

END NOTE

homas Paine wrote in Common Sense, We have it in our Power to begin the World over again. He was speaking of Independence from the control of England and the King and of the Individual being supreme in the new Republic. Truer words have not been written which applies to our times and this grand transition that we are going through. A few people are aware that we are in a major change and have begin the world over again, ... not only for our Selves but for the Planet as a whole. Everything is New and we are facing a blank canvas which is ready to be painted upon with the principles which were established for the first time in 1776. As I said in my opening remarks in this Truth Seeker, Unfortunately, we have to realize that the American Revolution was Phase One of establishing Freedom for and of the Individual on this continent. So, now we must consider what wasn't included in Phase One that set the grand idea off to one side. Or as I said off the rails. We need to ask our Selves some probing questions. What was Freedom for? How would we protect it? What was the Individual to do with it? These probing questions will be addressed and answered in Phase Two of the American Revolution. It's time to be creative. It's time to begin the World over again. It's time for the humanistic viewpoint to be expressed by each individual taking responsibility for their own actions and being self governed. That was the original meaning of democracy as it was first postulated in Ancient Greece. It all began with Thomas Paine and is considered as Phase One, and will be completed by resurrecting his ideas and building upon them. Phase Two, of the American Republic, has begun in the EPILOGUE. Read the essay,The Central Vision, by Jon Rappoport.

Bonnie Lange, Publisher

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EPILO GUE
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THE CENTRAL VISION

Jon Rappoport After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future of the world hangs. Wallace Stevens

ery simple questions: what would happen if the world were enveloped by art? And if we were the artists? And if we owed nothing to any hierarchy or external authority? Is it possible that an outpouring of art, creation, invention, coming from millions and millions of people, would bring about a sea change in the conducting of human affairs? Would such a tide affect the obsession to wage war? Ive worked as a reporter for 25 years, and so I know the value of making a case in a reasonable fashion. Point A, point B, and then you hit them with C. Nice and neat. But the subject of magic, and its source the creative force within the individual cant be approached that way. First of all, lets get rid of the preposterous notion that magic resides in certain families, certain bloodlines. Thats just plain stupid. Some people are attracted to the concept, because it makes a good story, and in Europe there is long tradition of viewing magic as something nasty and evil, and with elite bloodlines. It seems to fit. Secret power. Secret societies. Caves under castles. Vampires. Bats. Reptiles.

All that is coming from a collective3 memory about what European royalty and their minions have done in their conquest for empire. Make war, kill inferior peoples, rule them, amass gargantuan profits, claim God is at the head of the troops. Little lapses of judgment like that. If you research these royal bloodlines, youre much more likely to come across histories of crazy people inbreeding than you are to discover a few hints of real magic. Kings and queens like to lock away cousins who are demented or who see through the self-inflating propaganda of the ruling class. Magic is not about arcane crests and codes and symbols. Oh, there are people who would like you to think so, but its nonsense. All those symbols and seals are just a way of invoking mystery and a front of supposed privilege. Remember, all the old royal families of Europe claimed the divine right to rule. That should tell you something. They needed to sell the idea that God was speaking through them as they were killing millions. Wouldnt you? Youd have to come up with a compelling reason; otherwise, the peasants might realize youre simply bloodthirsty and are staying on top of the pile through any means necessary. For every Charles the Great, there were four or five Charles the Insane, and thats just what we know from the public record. The French Revolution may have been laid on, at some level, by Illuminati types, but there were a few good ideas in there. Freedom of the individual was one of them. It may

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have been dreamed up as a ruse, but it actually worked later on. I mention that because, in contemporary times, if youre looking for magic, youre looking at individuals, not at pedigree. Pedigree is now for dogs. There are some people who hear the word CREATE and wake up, as if a new flashing music has begun. This lone word makes them see something majestic and untamed and astonishing. They feel the sound of a Niagara approaching. They suddenly know why they are alive. What people call The Spiritual is actually all wrapped up in the meaning of that word CREATE. People accept landscapes painted by a priesthood and they call those landscapes Spiritual, and hope these puerile inventions will somehow take them to bliss and final enlightenment and heaven. In other words, people want to exist inside a phony masterpiece designed by a class of authoritarians. In a nutshell, thats the story of this planet, and it always was. As a testament to the power of the hypnotic spiritual trance, when most people hear the words IMAGINATION and CREATE, they sidetrack those ideas and put them on the shelf: That doesnt apply to me. He must be talking about someone else. Creativity is all about genes. You have them or you dont. I can learn how to work within a system, but beyond that Id be hanging in mid-air without a net. If it isnt a system, it doesnt exist. All progress in life is about finding a better structure Ten years ago, I began an intense study of symbols. I wasnt so much interested in their meanings. I wanted to understand how

theyve been used. What I discovered was simple and stark: by barraging people with symbols, and by defining those images and phrases in narrow ways, you can limit the scope of consciousness. You can make people think they are living inside a system and that all their progress is going to take place within that constructed space. Symbols define a well-ordered space. A space that has already been explored and described. A space that is the fundamental operating arena. Of course, its arbitrary, but through the use of symbols, you can make people believe its not arbitrary at all. You can make them think its as real as a country on a map. Thats called mind control. Is it successful? Well, if you tell people there are other spaces in which consciousness can operate, theyll look at you as if youre crazy. So yes, the deception works. Yet, take two examples of creators at work. Michelangelo asserted that, in order to sculpt a human figure from stone, he simply had to chip away everything about that piece of stone that wasnt the figure, at which point the sculpture would emerge. Nikola Tesla stated that he could view a new machine, in all its details, with all its parts working, in his mind and therefore, the physical realization was, in a sense, anti-climactic. He knew everything about it before he built it. Had these men not made their inventions for all to see had they not actually performed their magic they would have been written off as quite insane. Yet all they were saying was: there are different spaces; there are different ways to operate in space; there are different ways to look at space. Lets pretend these two men had lived in the Middle Ages. Lets further imagine that

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Michelangelo wasnt working on contract to the Roman Church. Now, what do you think the reaction would have been, from the Church, if these artists had gone around spouting their ideas about imagination and invention? They would have been tortured and killed at the stake. Why? Because the Church was very busy painting its own portrait of the world, and in that portrait there was only one artist and creator: God. He did it all. There was nothing left over. A fait accompli. The next great period of history, the Renaissance, was in fact an outpouring of human creation. It was a rebound from the extraordinary repression of imagination carried out by the Church. These days, we have a new Church. We pray at the altar of consumerism. Millions of things are on sale. We buy them. We go into movie theaters and sit in the dark and give our imaginations over to the images on the screen. If we are told these movies are NOTHING unless we simultaneously imagine them as they unroll like a great carpet before us, we deny that. Were all at the movies most of the time. Were wrapped up in what were supposed to support and give ourselves to. Ive been writing about the creative life for some time. For me, that life is a far cry from the pallid oatmeal of spiritual movements where the essence of things is peace through avoidance an attempt to substitute one form of politeness for another, one form of sleep for another. When people strip away all the hogwash that has been passed off as spiritual enlightenment for centuries, what they are left with if they can feel it is creative fire. That fire IS the spiritual force. IS the real thing. Finally.

Most people dont want to travel to that grand arena. They have been trained like pets by some sector of this society to be good little girls and boys. There are all kinds of people around who SAY they want to create, but it turns out they want to play a little in the sandbox, and they tremble at the idea of using real power. 99% of the world has been educated like rats to adore systems. Give them a system and theyre ready to cuddle up and take it all in. If they have questions, or if they want to argue, its about how to tweak the pattern to make it a little better. And with every move they make, they put another blanket over the Fire Within. You cant really make THE CREATIVE into a debating society, because people will turn that into another system. You have to go for actual experience, and osmosis, and contagion. You have to bring people into direct contact with other people who have been creating with true intensity for a long time. Let me give you a crazy metaphor here. A very crazy metaphor. Imagine you are suddenly a singer in the middle of a choir. Thats your life. This choir has no sheet music and no plan. The choir just sings, all at once. There is no together and there is no leader and there is no imposed harmony. There is just the choir. Everyone sings. It makes no sense. But you do it anyway. Its chaos. Its titanic and bizarre. But eventually, out of the chaos emerges a wild beauty no one has ever heard before. It happens. And it makes the whole body and the whole mind and the whole consciousness go into a state of ecstasy. Magic. That would be a creative experience. No one would be able to walk away from it and analyze it or label it. No one would be able to

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devalue it by comparing it to something else. No one would be able to debate the fine points, because there were no fine points. Every person would feel the fire. (I believe that if you could go back through the mists of time to the beginnings of tai chi, the martial arts, yoga, and the like, you would find out they didnt start as systems. They were originally done as CREATIVE IMPROVISATIONS. That, in fact, was their deepest power. The systems came in later, not because improvements were made, but because the later students were not willing to be creative in a spontaneous way. They were afraid of that. So teachers arose who satisfied the impulse to be inside a system. These systems were then decorated with symbols and meanings all used to justify and rationalize the rote pattern and the protocol as THE thing.) Have you ever wondered why the people who are most embedded in the holiest of holy scriptures the ones who have had those lessons shoved down their throats go out and kill as many people as possible? Its simple. What theyve been taught is this: everything is created from Above already; there is no more room; the individual creates nothing. Armed with that pungent piece of cultural brainwashing, raised in that kind of family, they are cornered rats, and they kill anything in sight. Or if they cant kill, they go to sleep. They sleepwalk through life and say yes to everything. They promise everything and give nothing. Im always amused when people discuss art as if its some sort of perfumed and expensive turned-out fruitcake. As if art exists in a special drawing room where the initiated are permitted to make a few deft comments in

a vacuum. As if art is a few dollars more for something that hangs on a wall. Art (creation/magic) is a word that should be oceanic. It should shake and blow apart the foul smug boredom of the soul. Art is about what the individual invents when he is on fire and doesnt care about concealing it. Its about what the individual does when he has thrown off the false front that is slowly strangling him. Art is about the end of mindless postponement. Its about what happens when you burn up the pretty and petty little obsessions. Its about emerging from the empty suit and empty machine of society that goes around and around and sucks away the vital bloodstream. Art is about destroying the old order and the new order and the present order, with a glance. Its about spearing the old apple on the point of a glittering sword and opening up the whole rotting crust that has attached itself to the tree of life. Its about shrugging off the fake harmony of the living dead. Here is something else to imagine. The artist as gardener. I dont mean a cute little garden where every flower balances off every other flower and the stones look like polished fingernails. I mean a garden where the author digs into fallow ground and follows his nose, unearths stones and lays on topsoil and drops in seeds for many different flowers spontaneously where eventually his own growing hunger overtakes the process and makes it unique. The garden grows like a hurricane. It fills the heart many times. It marches out to the trees at the edge of the forest and into the

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canopy. It brings out cactus and rose and iris and magnolia. It explodes after the rain. Like Johnny Appleseed, the gardener goes wherever he can, as far as he can, until whole hillsides and roadsides and riverbanks are absorbed. Re-making the world. At night he dreams of new countries where he can lead the garden. Where chard and tomatoes and tulips and lilies and turnips and oak and maple and aspen and palm and plum and spinach and gardenias and goldenseal and lilacs and hydrangea and rhododendron and corn and flax and pine can sprint to the horizon. He is the general of this army and the foot soldier and the drummer and the hero. Stroller in the wind. Titan, dozer in the desert flower. The sailor along banks of green saplings. He surpasses every expectation. He has the answer to the question, what do I want to create, in his teeth. When this kind of creation overtakes the world, only then does the world become what it should be. The nasty little tale of Eden and the fall from some fictional grace of a pathological lunatic is a minor cymbal crash in the pages of a discarded book. Writing and painting for the last 45 years have kept my head on straight. Whenever I dipped down into some system that offered insight or progress, I found those involvements ended up being stifling. Why? Because I wasnt calling my own shots. I wasnt on a platform where I was putting my freedom and power and imagination on the line. I was subordinating all that. Any road that deserves to be called progress would have that quality: it would allow a persons own creative power to be the leading edge.

Anything else would be a compromise and a subtle (or not so subtle) form of submission and slavery. On an individual level, boredom has pretty much the same effect as concrete does in the landscape: it covers more and more territory, and once you lay it down it doesnt usually come up. It stays there. If you look closely, you can see that people are walking around with big signs on their necks: IM BORED. They pretend theyre not. Theyd rather say, I have a cold. Im worried about Aunt Sally. My shoes are tight. An asteroid could hit Earth in the next three hundred years. But theyre bored silly. Theyre driving themselves cuckoo. On the other hand: a dancer dances out all the moves he knows, and then suddenly leaves those familiar moves behind. He spontaneously does something new. He feels that. He feels his whole bloodstream oxygenating. Hes free for eight seconds, and those eight seconds of eternity are better than anything This is the kind of experience the world is dying to have. We can break the hypnotic supposition that some closed system of harmony is our eternal guide. We can break out of the idea that all we are supposed to do is contribute another piece to the system of harmony that has already been laid down. Lawrence Durrell, the author of The Alexandria Quartet: I imagine, therefore I belong and I am free. William Blake: Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable world is but a faint shadow. Some see nature all ridicule and deformityand some

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scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. Its time we gave our own creative core its due. Its time we stopped trying to avoid it by substituting notions which make us more passive. FINDING OUT WHAT YOU REALLY WANT TO CREATE, AND THEN CREATING IT, IS A PATH OF SPIRIT. People tend to stick with the familiar. They want to hold on to that and be that. They want to say and do what is familiar. They want to somehow gain pleasure and reward and satisfaction from dealing exclusively with the familiar. Eventually, they find this doesnt work. It has severe limits. They reach one dead end after another. Modern physics is, in a very important way, very old physics. Weve got this law which says no new energy is created or destroyed. Its just shifted around. Over time, more and more of it is somehow consigned to a bullpen where it languishes. Thats called entropy. Physics inevitably slops over into how people view the human race, how they view themselves. They think their own energy comes exclusively from the brain, or from food, or from their cells. Its all a process of taking in energy and then using it. Taking it in, using it. This is a very passive model. It has a neat little parallel to entropy: people get older and they have less energy and then they die. Its a roundabout version of the Big Sleep, the trance, slowly gaining ground until the person goes into the final sleep. But if you are creating full-bore, you know you create energy. FROM NOTHING.

Thats the secret. FROM NOTHING. You just invent it. Take the example of a little kid. Nine years old. Every day, when hes not in school, he jumps up out of bed in the morning and he eats a little bowl of cereal and milk, and he runs out of the house and plays with his friends for five hours. He runs and falls down and runs some more and pretends hes a space man or a cop or a robber. Hes inventing all these games and roles, and hes moving in and out of them freely. He doesnt care. Hes playing, heart and soul. There is no possible way that little bowl of corn flakes and half a cup of milk is producing the energy hes expending. Impossible. Hes creating energy. Hes creating it right out of his imagination. Hes creating it out of nothing. When I first started painting, in 1962, in New York, Id begin to work early in the morning, often on no breakfast, and sometimes Id look up and it would be four in the afternoon. I wasnt tired at all. Id go out and get a bite to eat, come back to the studio, start painting again, and the next time I looked up, it was dark. This was in the summer. It would be nine or ten at night. Creating energy. Out of nothing. If that isnt magic, nothing is. Full-bore creation of deep desire with great fire IS the definition of magic. Thats what magic is. It isnt anything else. I like to approach the great myth of Merlin from a different angle. First of all, as mentor and guide to King Arthur, Merlin was a promoter of magic. But what were all those knights doing? They were seeking the grail. And what was that? It was some sort of cup or other artifact that represented the final comprehension of the Christian ideal. Rather

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befuddling. Magic on the one hand, Jesus and the Church on the other. Well, for Merlin, that was the whole point. He was straddling two Ages the fading era of magic and the coming epoch of much more rationalized and centralized religion. And the new epoch was also already showing its first signs of real technology. Merlin stood outside the conventional time stream and saw it all. He pondered the march of human history. He knew his period was drawing to a close. Humans were ready to sublimate their own fire and re-direct it to an age of machines. Machines would be the new magic. And so they are. Merlin managed to deposit in the human consciousness, through his own myth, remnants that would become memories of the former time, the old time of magic. Eventually, hundreds of years later, when humans began to see what they had sacrificed, and for what gains, they would yearn for what they once had. Perhaps that moment is now. Perhaps now people are waking up to the need to feel that creative fire within them. What we call paranormal, when you really break it down, when you talk about telepathy and future-sight, and psycho-kinesis, and remote viewing all these and other abilities stream out of the basic creative impulse. A person, whether he knows it or not, is creating the capacity to engage in these magical phenomena. Ive told this story before. About ten years ago, I did some research into paranormal lab experiments. I interviewed people who had scored exceptionally well on various tests. I met a man, Fred, who had performed at a very high level in telepathic photograph studies. He was sealed in a room about eight

miles away from another sealed room, where a volunteer was handed a photo and then tried to transmit its image to Fred. Fred was shown a layout of six photos and had to pick the one that had just been sent to him. This sending and receiving process was repeated a number of times. I asked Fred how hed managed to pick out the right photo so often. He said, I imagined a secretary sitting in an office in Omaha, Nebraska. She would hold up a photo and show it to me. Thats the one Id pick from the set they gave me. I figured, in the Midwest, people are basically honest, so this secretary wouldnt lie to me. Shed give me the right one. Imagination, translating into fact. Into perception. Into telepathy. In Freds case, he was very straightforward about how he used imagination to perform on a paranormal level. In another case, Betty, the story was a little different. Betty had been a test subject in a university study where balls were rolled down through a central funnel into a large enclosed case with holes where the balls land. Probability dictates that half the balls will land in holes to the left of center, and half will land in holes to the right of center. Betty was tasked with trying to alter probability with her mind alone. She was quite successful. She made significantly more than half the balls land to the left of center. When I asked her how she had done that, she said, I meditated in front of the case, to quiet my mind, and then I focused on the area in the case to the left of center. It worked. But when I went a little deeper with her, she came out with this: Actually, I imagined the area to the left of center as a magnetic field. I created make-believe magnets in that

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part of the case. They attracted the balls. I imagined a green line of force that ran through all the magnets, and that line made the magnets exert all their force together, as One. Magic. Creative force. In many cultures, we find the myth of the labyrinth. It is meant to signify an inescapable course of life, a life that meshes with unsolvable problems. Nowhere is this more evident than in the attempt to unscramble and overcome the elites who try to control and dominate this planet. The secret of the labyrinth is this: as long as masses of people are trapped in their own acquiescence to a fictional spiritual and psychological existence, in which they are the passive receivers of wisdom and direction, all is lost. No matter how many liberation movements arise, no matter what degree of success they achieve, in the long run the winners (or their descendants) always fall back into a trance state in the center of their consciousness. They look for answers to come in to them from an external source. I say this as an investigative reporter who has spent 25 years researching these planetary elites along many fronts. Victory today becomes defeat tomorrow because the revolutionaries and the rebels eventually find some new authority on which to pin their hopes. I am not recommending that people stop fighting for freedom. Im saying something more is needed. Freedom always was and always is the platform from which individuals can freely create without limit. When the creative act is abandoned, its foundation, freedom, withers on the vine.

There is an old story about the famous mad genius, Antonio Gaudi (1852-1926). Gaudi was perhaps the most innovative architect of his time, and was certainly the most bizarre. Most of his works were built in Barcelona, including the Sagrada Familia, the massive church which, to this day, remains unfinished. Gaudi spent 43 years working on the project, during which time he also completed many other buildings in Barcelona. The story goes that Gaudi was so prolific, the city fathers eventually became frightened that, unleashed, he might literally take over the city with his works. For that reason, his commissions declined. I believe the story is accurate, in that Gaudi WOULD have taken over Barcelona. Although he was a devout Catholic, nothing he invented had precedent in the traditional design canon of the Church. Gaudi was an exemplar of the creative force unchained. It may sound strange to hear it, but if he had been permitted his full range of architectural expression, the city would have been transformed in its living spirit. It would have become a contagious disease of creativity. People, in its presence, would have become artists and innovators in droves. It is possible that so many artists, so many creative people, can gather in one place at one time that the entire consciousness of, say, a city, is imbued with that creative fire, at which point magic takes over. It, rather than mercantilism, becomes the core character of a locale. I do not believe that has ever happened on this planet, but it could. Mere physical location could undergo a radicalization that makes politics and all its crimes sink like a stone.

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Charles Ives, a brilliant American composer (1874-1964), operated with the same grand notion of space that Gaudi did. A pioneer in polytonal music, at the end of his life Ives began working on his Universe Symphony. It remains unfinished. Ives envisioned the symphony being played by a number of orchestras at once, outdoors, situated in valleys, on the sides of hills, on mountains. The overall space would be consumed by the music.

Imagination, re-making the world.

On the edge of the Gobi desert in China lie the Dun Huang Caves. For centuries, the greatest painters in China traveled there, and painted masterpieces and sculpted the walls of thousands of stone rooms. There is no coherent history of the communities that formed at Dun Huang. One can only wonder at the relationships that flourished among the artists as this gigantic creation grew and grew. The paintings of the Tang Dynasty at Dun Huang are every bit the equal of the output of the Italian Renaissance masters. Here and there throughout the history of the planet, we find examples of creative outpouring taking over the otherwise mundane existence of places. What would happen now if immense art spread out all over the world? Yes, its just a dream, but it has been realized to a degree before. I cite these examples (there are many others) just to hint at the flavor of what can be done. Suppose, for instance, a more enlightened version of the Roman Church itself had come into being as ancient Rome declined not a religion in the usual sense, but a unique institution in which the cathedrals were, each one, built by unique architects, as

living monuments to the creative force itself rather than as hypnotic temples housing the authority of a spiritual ruling class? What kind of magic would have taken hold? What new technologies might have been born? By now, how much of the paranormal would have become the norm? For that matter, suppose Tesla had been free (with adequate financial support) to explore his genius fully? What kind of world would we now be living in? I dont ask these questions as empty exercises in speculation. I propose them seriously. Because the future is always an open issue. And once again, the whole proposition comes back to: shall we be audience only, or creators? Shall we find our spiritual destinies through obedience to art made with mind control as the motive, or shall we embark on a much greater adventure, along a road where what WE individually create is the hallmark and the revelation of our power? Do we take the magic in our hands, or do we cede it to those who, by default, become our masters? The true illustration of the principle of universal abundance is embodied, finally, by what we create. When our fire is fully lit, when we swing into the most profound kind of action, all barriers fall. We eventually perceive, with great clarity, that this physical universe is, indeed, only one piece of art. One possible piece, out of an infinity of potential universes. Then, space and time and energy become, not walls and limitations, but raw material for what we fashion. It is only when we envision the fullest extent and power of our creations that we can grasp how we have duped ourselves into a smaller version of life. We have to see the

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very widest possibilities to fully comprehend the present ignorance of this place called Earth. In the repressive field of psychology, several positive towering figures stand out. One of my favorites is Dr. Jacob Levy Moreno, the founder of a therapeutic method called Psychodrama. I believe Moreno created the most advanced way of doing therapy the world has yet seen. Moreno visited people in their homes and constructed stages and plays for families to invent and enact. There is a story that goes this way: A teenager claimed he was Jesus. Rather than trying to deconstruct and tear apart and analyze this conviction, Moreno convinced the members of the boys large family to gather around the dinner table each night and play the roles of the apostles. The result? After a succession of nights, the boy simply gave up his idea of being Jesus. He wasnt disabused of the notion. He wasnt criticized. He wasnt considered a patient. There was nothing wrong with him. He was just given the opportunity to do what he couldnt do in real life: create and play the role of Jesus to the fullest. And eventually he became bored with it. It turned out to be a short-term dream, a short-term work of art. Can you imagine what would have happened to the boy if he had fallen into the hands of more conventional therapists or drug-wielding psychiatrists? Here is a quote from Dr. Morenos autobiography: Spontaneity and creativity are the propelling forces in human progress, beyond and independent of libido and socioeconomic motives [that] are frequently interwoven with

spontaneity-creativity, but [my assertion] does deny that spontaneity and creativity are merely a function and derivative of libido or socioeconomic motives Its no wonder that Moreno has been ignored by the vast proportion of working therapists. He is too right, too alive, and too much a visionary. Moreno is one of those people who broke free from the Freudian trap. In 1912, he met Freud at a lecture. Moreno writes: [Freud] had just finished an analysis of a telepathic dream. As the students filed out, he singled me out from the crowd and asked me what I was doing. I responded, Well, Dr. Freud, I start where you leave off. You meet people in the artificial setting of your office. I meet them on the street and in their homes, in their natural surroundings. You analyze their dreams. I give them the courage to dream again. You analyze and tear them apart. I let them act out their conflicting roles and help them to put the parts back together again. Those few moments with Freud summed up the whole psychological bifurcation of the 20th century. Would people regain their courage to dream and create their dreams, or would they become slaves to a new religion immolating self-analysis in the labyrinth? Moreno eventually developed a stage for the exploration of social problems. In front of an engaged local audience, several people enmeshed in community conflicts would act the roles that embodied the conflict. For example, a black man who wanted to rent an apartment in a white neighborhood would square off against a white racist landlord. But that was just the beginning. The black man would then play the role of the white landlord, and the landlord would become the frustrated black man. In their dialogues, a spontaneous

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happening would emerge: both people would say things and express emotions that had been bottled up. Essentially, the two actors would create both sides of the conflict as theater. They would become artists. They would elevate and expand and deepen the material and find a transcendent satisfaction from playing out dimensions of the drama they had been denied in real life. Like Gaudi and Ives, Moreno could have taken over enormous amounts of psychological and social territory. He could have raised, say, the life of a whole city to a kind of theater that would have transformed the chronic fixations and traps of the population. Isnt a major portion of life really theater? And arent people dying to play more roles? And wouldnt access to those roles, on stage, give birth to new energies that would spill out into the streets and crack the egg of various kinds of caste systems? Wouldnt the divide between actors and audience in our society undergo a spontaneous revolution? Why think small? Why invent small? Finally, looking through the correct end of the telescope, we can see that the true purpose of war, on a psychological level, is the postponement of this kind of theater, where instead of killing one another, people become one another long enough, on a stage, to realize that their core frustration has come from not finding a way to embody and create many roles. Art is not a little sandbox. It is THE revolution the psyche has been asking for. When one acts long enough, he realizes that the world could really be a stage, and the sound and fury would, in fact, signify something vital and deep.

When one paints long enough, he realizes this world and all the universe are but one painting out of an infinity of possible paintings. When one writes long enough, he realizes that so-called history is but one story and many other (better) stories could be told. When one plays music long enough, he realizes that emotion can be lifted out of petty concerns into realms where feeling becomes vast, oceanic. When one builds long enough, he realizes that the physical structure of civilization can be led out of mere functionality into dazzling new spaces. This is where we could go. And the stars in space would pale by comparison. In the early 1980s, in East Los Angeles, a group of formidable buildings once occupied by the Pabst Brewery was converted to artists studios. Initially, about 75 painters and sculptors moved in. Within a year or two, the first public show was laid on. Visitors would be permitted, for a day, to come to the site and stroll through these studios. I was there on that day. Several paintings of mine were up in a studio where two friends of mine lived. Fifteen hundred people showed up for the causal tour. I decided to visit all the studios myself. It was like an interplanetary trip. To come up against 75 vastly different work and living spaces and see vastly different art, in a matter of several hours, was perception-altering. The real world faded into obscurity. What took over was Imagination. As we were walking down a long corridor from one studio to another, a stranger said to me, Why cant the whole city be like this? Indeed.

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One of the more interesting features of the Brewery was its garbage. When Pabst had left the premises, workers dumped a huge amount of material in an open space: parts of refrigerators, motors, giant springs, sheet metal, large bolts, signs, spools of wire, wood beams, tires Promptly, artists began to visit this mountain of debris and take interesting objects back to their studios. There, they used them in new works. Then, the artists would take the refuse left over from their new output to large bins situated around the property. In turn, these castoff fragments became raw material for other artists, who would sift through the bins and remove what interested them. This creative form of recycling was communal investigation and discovery. Art built from scraps; new scraps becoming new art, over and over. One day as I was pouring over the Pabst mountain of material, a sculptor said to me, You know, if we took this far enough, we could suck up half the city and make it into art. A desire for the ages. At some point in such a vision, a critical mass would be reached. People, viewing an explosion of art, would themselves catch the thread and begin to flesh out their own dreams. The contagion would take hold. What was formerly viewed as an elitist activity would spill over all boundaries. And then? People at large would realize the connection between spirit and creative action. The propaganda machines of the world, aimed at control of the deadened masses of populations, would blow gaskets and become obsolete works of art. Drowned in a sea of creativity. That would be the answer to the question, What do I do after I see through the illusions of the puppet masters? Art unchained becomes titanic. It can spread out over the landscape and take over

the imagination. It can spawn and proliferate more art, until the emotional content of daily experience becomes transformed. Until we all live at a wider and deeper level. Here is yet another hint concerning this power, this potential: On May 29, 1913, in the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris, a riot broke out. After the curtain went up on the premiere of Stravinskys Rite of Spring, it took only a few minutes for the tumult to begin. Boos, hisses, catcalls, people throwing objects at the stage...The roar of the crowd quickly became so loud, the dancers lost their cues. And the music. It was a whisper, a pounding scream, sheets of brass. Cliffs gorgeously colliding in mid air. The police arrived and shut the program down. Stravinsky, at 28, had arrived on the world scene. Never again would he compose music so challenging. Later in life, after he had taken up a position as a champion of new classicism, he would conduct a recording of the Rite that was modulated to a bare shadow of its former self. But the revolution had happened. Much has been written about the premiere and the Rite. A great deal of programmatic explanation has been offered to make sense out of the piece of music: after all, it was a ballet with a plot, and the themes had to do with primitive ritual sacrifices in a fanciful pagan world. These explanations have been designed to water down the effect. But the fact is, to absorb a work of imagination, one has to use his own imagination. Since this is considered unlikely, pundits earnestly help us with step-down contexts, so that we can understand the music in pedestrian

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terms. In other words, so we can reduce it to nothing. However, the work itself resists such translations. Fundamentally, every outcome of great imagination is its own world. It immediately presents itself as a universe apart from easy references and tie-ins and links. So when you listen to the Rite, you are, gratefully, alone with it. (In this regard, I recommend one recording. The 1958 Leonard Bernstein-New York Philharmonic, available as Sony SMK 47629. Its the 1992 Bernstein Royal Edition. Le Sacre Du Printemps.) In 1912 and 1913, Stravinsky had composed the Rite in a reckless frame of mind. This did not mean he abandoned all he knew; it meant he wanted to show everyone how dim the perception of music had become. To hell with all of them, he had said. He took the large orchestra and shredded the conventional relationships between its various sections. Instead, he made it an ocean in a storm. He crossed all lines. He made something unique, something no one could have predicted. There are artists like Stravinsky, like Gaudi, like the composer Edgar Varese, like the often-reviled American writer Henry Miller, like Walt Whitman (who has been grotesquely co-opted into a Norman Rockwelllike prefect), like the several great Mexican muralists Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros all of whom transmit an oceanic quality. As in, The Flood. There is a fear that, if such artists were unleashed to produce their work on a grand scale, they would indeed take over the world. This is the real reason there was a riot at the Theatre des Champs Elysees on May 29, 1913. Even though Stravinsky was presenting a universe of his own making, people instinctively felt the music could spill over into the streets of Paris...and after that, where would it go? What would stop it?

Their fear was justified. Our world, contrary to all consensus, is meant to be revolutionized by art, by imagination, right down to its core. That this has not happened for the best is no sign that the process is irrelevant. It is only a testament to the collective resistance. Who knows how many such revolutions have been shunted aside and rejected, in favor of the consensus shape we now think of as central and eternal? We are living in a default structure, the one that has been left over after all the prior revolutions have been put to sleep. But creation is not neutral. It flows out into the atmosphere with all its subjective force. That is what happened on May 29, 1913. And that is what evoked the mass fear. Were you to embark on a uniquely passionate course of creation, enlarging the scope at every turn, you would launch out of the realm of the push-pull humdrum Earthside disintegrating disaster..and into the realm of what you INVENT.and as you inhabited this latter realm more fully, the SO-CALLED NATURAL LAWS OF THE FORMER REALM WOULD APPLY TO YOU LESS AND LESS, AND THE MORE FREE YOU WOULD BECOME. Magic. As more and more of us moved forward in this way, THAT would become the revolution we have been unconsciously hoping for. That would relentlessly make society over. That would eventually shatter the influence of all cartels and monopolies of physical and emotional and mental and spiritual experience. Jon Rappoport San Diego May 16, 2009 www.nomorefakenews.com

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A New Book on Deism:

Deism: A Revolution in Religion, A Revolution in You
Deism is a natural and rational bridge that unites our reason to our belief in God. It propels us from the false and destructive ancient myths to a space-age belief system that is in line with our God-given reason. This book, written in a concise and cogent style, introduces the reader to Deism, a way of life that is free of the old conflicts between reason and religion. The removal of these conflicts allows us to enjoy and appreciate a much more profound and satisfying belief in Natures God while helping us to live a more productive and meaningful life.

The Indispensable Book The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine, is Now Available From Truth Seeker and The World Union of Deists!
This powerful book set Deism in motion! It caused sincere people to think independently and caused charlatans to persecute Thomas Paine! This special edition is the COMPLETE The Age of Reason as it also contains Part III which Paine wrote after his return to America as well as 11 essays and letters written by Thomas Paine about God, Deism, religion, nature, Freemasonry, etc.! Order your copy now and open up an entire new world for yourself!

To order please specify which book and send $10.00, plus $3.95 for shipping, or order both for only $17.76 plus $3.95 for shipping, to: World Union of Deists, Box 4052, Clearwater, FL 33758. Or you can order online: www.deism.com/deismbook.htm
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Resurrecting Two Deist Classics!

Principles of Nature
Elihu Palmer was a former Christian minister who evolved into a Deist. Palmer was blinded by yellow fever and depended greatly on his wife to help him in every aspect of life, including writing. Perhaps his blindness made him realize the nonsensical promises of healing found in the Bible needed to be brought into question. This book does an outstanding job of doing that, plus it helps us achieve a more profound appreciation and understanding of Nature and Natures God through Deism.
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The Thought Provoking Book Reason: The Only Oracle of Man, by Ethan Allen, is Now Available From Truth Seeker and The World Union of Deists!
This powerful book will make you THINK and rejoice! It attacks superstition from every possible angle and shows us just how important our God-given reason really is! Ethan Allen, a revolutionary warrior and hero of the American Revolution, wrote this with his good friend and fellow revolutionary and medical doctor Thomas Young. This is a book that should be in every freethinkers library!

Principles of Nature is only $10.00, plus $3.95 for shipping! Reason: The Only Oracle of Man is only $17.76! Or you can order both powerful books for only $22.00 plus $3.95 for shipping! Send payment to: World Union of Deists, Box 4052, Clearwater, FL 33758. Or you can order online at

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The Society for Biblical Illumination

As you know, many Christians do not read their own Bible. They have been brainwashed by their families and society. They are so indoctrinated that they would never voluntarily log on to a site that would dispute their long held beliefs. In addition, there are many young people from fundamentalist families who have never been exposed to another way of thinking. When someone logs onto our website, instead of being given a sermon, they are given Biblical verses that show that the Bible is not error free and is not a moral guide for their lives. Log on and see for yourselves. If you agree and really want to help, don't send money but place the following ad in your local paper and send a link to all your Christian friend.
: WHAT DO YOU REALLY KNOW ABOUT THE BIBLE?

http://www.Biblical-illuminatin.org

The Priest, The Pastor and the Rabbi

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An intellectual study of 850 irreverent, politically incorrect, downright blasphemes religious jokes
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or by PayPal to: Sam@Bookwarren.com www.Bookwarren.com

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