Tom Paine - Crusader for Con
Tom Paine - Crusader for Con By Max Eastman |>aine'b subsidy of $800—on which be did >soman -* service in the cause of Union under • Federal Uovernment -ended when the war did in 1788. In 1784,...
...the boat puts off exactly twenty minutes ahead of a Home Office Agent who races in behind a soaking team of horses to arrest him...
...Misled by this false minister as I Washington's attitude, Robespierre condemned T« Paine to the guillotine "for the interests of Amerk as well ss of France...
...A...
...Washiug ton was their hero...
...In both countries liberals were in high places now...
...H seven months he would hear the struggles and screen 6r watch the brave strides of those led away by te# and hundreds to die under the blade of the guillotbsll ' 'anion bade him a large farewell on his way to death...
...The Virginia legislature regretfully remembered that Paine bad "written a pamphlet injurious to our claim of western I rri tory...
...And soon—indelibly soon—it arrived at its n>* ter...
...I do not know any scene in , Pondemonionr ensues, but Paine stands calm unti the reading can be finished...
...1 • .-» IN these days when-we have-seen another supposed!] libertarian revolution wndeTthreugh lakes of bieet to dictatorship,' those words carry a tragic loads meaning...
...he was lampooned and lambasted in all the newspapers...
...I The American ambassador,Gouverneur Morris, asw and a monarchist, instead of intervening for tl Father of American Independence, conspired to assuV his execution...
...But France was moving toward her violent revolution, and Kngland toward her fierce recoil...
...And he knew the French Revolution...
...whin they came for their victims it was clo* - the mark was on the inside...
...He did invent a bridge with its weight distributed in such a way as to make possible a very wide span, and one wax erected sahaequently in England...
...In Calais, lie was welcomed with a salute of .guns, und huzzahs and embraces from soldiers and highest otlieii'ls as well as the mob, and the whole town laid off and spent two days celebrating the arrival of a great French citizen...
...men were hired to hiss, hoot and jostle him when be appeared in public...
...And, of course, he was toasted as "The Great Keformer" by the radical in lelligentsia, and adored by enough thoughtful plain people to frighten the government almert to death...
...which we hi now contending...
...fan nothing- be dene in our assembly for poor Paine...
...puts his hand on Tom's shoulder, and says: "You must not go home, or you are « dead man...
...It chimed In the asflee way with a mounting wave of opinion...
...French King...
...However, Tom leased out the place at New Rochelle, and lived well in a small house in Bordentown, New Jersey, riding about on a lively horse named "Buttons," erect and in good health, loved and admired, and happy to give his mind at last to bis inventions...
...He was over in Paris with its leaders hnlf the time...
...Robespierre...
...and Paine was admired and hon ored by men of power...
...Paine meanwhile had fled to France,, urged to it against his impulse by more prudent friends...
...But still he was a private citizen—most of the time, in fact, a blacksmith, for he was dressed in a leather apron making a giant moil...
...And now yo-t will iaa aTom Pajjp s\and up for Kindness with the same audacity, the same hard clarity of character, with which he has stood up for Freedom and Reason...
...By the sheer clarity and audacity of his mind and style, without one political act or public appearance, he became a leader of iwo more revolutions...
...But suddenly there splashed forth on his sacred friends and principles, like a shower of very eloquent mud, Kdmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France...
...Tom rises to go...
...But here again Tom's habit of living in the future get in his way...
...A proclamation against Seditious Writings was issued for his special benefit, his publishers were indicted, his book sup pressed, his readers deported—one man got 14 years deportation for advising people to read him A scar ¦in biography was concocted to discredit him...
...that in a United siatrr...
...He lets Tom Paine through with a salute, and history more moving, or perhaps in the long run mem significant, than that in the French-Convention, was* this terrible and notorious outlaw author end arcs-agitator of American republicanism, scourge of tSt nobility and shaker of (he Throne of England, rises te defend against the sanguinary fury that he see* mounting among the Jacobins the life of the depose...
...of America, Virginia could not extend all the way to the other side of Wisconsin...
...He is not affected by the reality of distress teaching upon his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking bis rmagfaarhna...
...Forgetting his bridge, the completed model of which was now on exhibit in Paddington Green at a shilling a look—forgetting also a planing machine, a new kind of crane, a smokeless candle, an improved wheel, and n scheme he had in mind for a gunpowder motor — Tom Paine sat down to say what he thought of Edmund Burke, and also what he thought of kings and lords and the true ends of government...
...He was saved by a miracl The door of his cell stood open when the execution* marked it with a code sign indicating who should I taken...
...Far three more years he lived a peaceful life, passing back and forth between Ixmdon and Paris and really getting somewhere with his bridge...
...He pitiea the plaasage, but forgets the dyjng bird...
...Marat's hence shoots fee re % tribute to Paine's pre tige, but they were unnecessary...
...I have read the original and the « correct," Deputy Gaxran answers...
...I of his bridge with his own hands...
...He was feeling hie way toward a suepeeuuon bridge, und might wen have get there if be bad been able to abstain from politic* as prudently as he did from love...
...His handbag is opened...
...Sense...
...That which you did for the happiness and liberty 4F your country, I tried in vjin to do for mine...
...But Morris, meanwhile, was replaced hf democrat—the future President James Monroe...
...He had perceived, that is...
...Speaking of Burke's regret at the fall of the Bastille and his exaggerated sympathy for the French aristocracy, he w rote: "Not one glance of compassion, not one commiserating reflection, that i can find throughout his book, has he bestowed on those that lingered out the most wretched of lives, a life without hope, in the most miserable of prisons...
...The arse of the revolutionary billow of which Tom ralne's «t»*f» Of Umm fornW ih^-mrt ma> twjmsgner from the fact that when Pitt marched troops into Lon ilou, reinforced the garrison of the tower, and made other warlike gestures ostensibly against France, Fox, the Opposition Leader, asked him: "Can you not prosecute Tom Paine without an army...
...one of the first acts of the revolution had been to bestow French citi-/tnship upon Thomas Paine...
...It eoaveyed the state drive toward rational action...
...In 1784, Congress voted him $3,000, less than the cost if bis trip te France...
...He knew Burke, the great orator of Conciliation with the Colonies...
...Tom .takes a roundabout route that saine night to Dover, and buy.a a ticket for Calais...
...He has never made a speech and men-over he dees not eonaiaaad the French language Se he merely ascends the tribune and stand* there, silent, blender, Ineomrtable —with that glow in hi> eye, that no man who saw it ever fergot—while a French deputy reads hie epeeeh in translation "My language hae always area thst ef liberty and humanity, and J know that nothing a* exalts smallest as the anion of these two priwcipW Marat rises and shouts among the astonished deputies: "1 assert thai it is not Thomas Palae's opinio] it is a false translation...
...But all he achieved fa America was to get a committee appointed by the Pennsylvania Assembly to consider it Franklin suggested that he try his luck with the French Academy of Sciences — an innocent notion which together with a wish to aee his aged father, launched Tom Paine forth at the age of fifty to become the storm center of two mora revolutionary hurricanes, the moat notorious rebel In the world—outlawed in England, condemned la the guilloime in France...
...they had been week-end guests together not long before...
...It shows how specific und flexible Tom Paine's common sense was, that in his first utterance in this inflammable situation, his Addrens to the People of France, he WT^te: "In entering on this great scene, greater tiuti^sjayy nation has yet "been culled to act in, let us sajvia the mind, lie calm...
...He entered that tumultuous and terrible body amid deafening cheers on the day royalty was abolished in France, the firs' day of the "Year One of the Republic...
...the Pennsylvania Assembly voted him 600 podnds...
...Mast the merits and services of Common Sense continue to glide down ths stream of time, unrewarded by this country...
...For in Paris...
...Paine answers quietly: "1 voted against it free both moral and political motives...
...Paine, of course, was heart and soul for a French republic...
...Marat then leaps out inta the aisle and veil*, again st the top of his voice "Paux voted against the punishment ef death because he u i Quaker...
...TfHIS second book, Thm Rights of Aten, written ence " more at fever speed, had all the eloquent lucidity of...
...easterns official, on the watch for suspicious characters, delays him...
...And now, besides, he had been elected a deputy to the Convention by three different departments...
...The Terror was a the march, and Peine bjmaedf, tor his sin of far sighted merry, would soon be in a prison cell...
...and uuk.' uses too—Was it mystic intuition or just com men sense...
...M« roe not only obtained Tom Painer* release, but lei him into his house, and with nil wife's help aura him back-To health...
...The Terror march past...
...suppress "Paineism" was soon a major preocev pat ion of the British government...
...Paine lay unconscious in his cell while his capl was guillotined—sick to his own death, it seemed, «i n fever...
...Tom Paine - Crusader for Con By Max Eastman |>aine'b subsidy of $800—on which be did >soman -* service in the cause of Union under • Federal Uovernment -ended when the war did in 1788...
...Gentlemen wore TP nails in their shoe heels in order to stamp on him every step they took, and he was burned in effigy by ignorantly pa trietic mobs all over England...
...Again Tom Paine wee a best-seller—and again a classsic...
...It contains incriminating letters aplenty, but at the top of the pile, and not by accident—one from the greatest man in the world George Washington's thanks for the dedication' to him of The Right* of Man, though painstakingly vague and non-committal, are enough for the customs officer...
...It je not ten much tej gory ths**, toeseparatM of meejd {mm p»Ut kbj anoflvw•» the, baW miotea of the Bolsheviks, whose pleads, 'unleashed the torral of lying,crimes and cruelties again...
...History, aguin, it seemed, had a job for Torn Paine...
...and New York presented him a mansion and farm of 27T acres in New Rochelle Virginia was urged by Washington to chip in...
...When the Bastille fell be went to Paris to receive the keys from Lafayette for presentation to General Washington, and he wrote Washington that he was going to carry the American flag in the procession when the new constitution was proclaimed...
...We ratch a glimpse of him one night in London pouring forth "seditious libel" with reckless Wit In a small company of supposedly loyal friends, among th.ni the poet-mystic William Blake...
Vol. 27 • May 1944 • No. 2
