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f

BY MONCURE D. CONWAY

Omitted Chapters of History, Disclosed in the Life

and Papers of Edmond Randolph.— By Moncurb

D. Conway. With portrait, 8vo - - - $3 oo

" Mr. Conway is a thorough student, a careful thinker, and an eiact writer, and in this boolc ne lias produced an admirable mono- grKph.**^Ba0Jk Bufer.

The Life of Thomas Paine.— By Moncure D. Con- way, author of '* Omitted Chapters of History, Dis- closed in the Life and Papers of Edmund Randolph." 2 volumes, 8vo. Illustrated - • - - $5 oo

'* Biographical labors of this class are not too common In these timea Mr. Conway's volumes afford such ample testimony of thorough and onrestingf devotion that they stand somewhat aparL They make up a storehouse of facts from which alone any true estimate can be formed of the life of Paine. . . .*'— ^. K Times.

The Writings of Thomas Paine — Political, Sociological, Religious, and Literary. Edited by Moncure D. Con- way, with introduction and notes. Uniform with Mr. Conway's ** Life of Paine." 4 vols., 8vo, each, $2 50

fhe Rights of Man.— By Thomas Paine. Edited by M. D. Conway. Popular Edition. With frontispiece. 8vo - - - - - - - - -$ioo

rhe Age of Reason.— By Thomas Paine. Edited by M. D. Conway. Popular Edition, uniform with *' The Rights of Man." 8vo $i as

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York & London.

THE

LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE

WITH A HISTORY OF HIS LITERARY, POLITICAL

AND RELIGIOUS CAREER IN AMERICA

FRANCE, AND ENGLAND

MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY

AUTHOK OP ** OMITTKD CHAFTBltS OP HISTORY OISCLOSKD IN TUB LIPB AND PAPBKS OF

KDKUND RANDOLPH," ** GBORGS WASHINGTON AND MOUNT VBRNON,"

** WASHINGTON't * RVLBS OF CIVtUTV,' " BTC.

TO WHICH IS ADDED A SKETCH OF PAINE BY WILLIAM COBBETT

(hithbrto unpubuskrd)

VOLUME II.

G. p. PUTNAM'S SONS

KEW YORK LONDON

t7WBSTTWBNTV-'rHIRD 8TRRBT 94 BBOPORD STRBBT, STRAMO

Cb< MiwfhfrfFgfltft Bctii 1908

^

G. F. Ti^num't Som

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.

I. — " Kill the King, but not the Man " II. — An Outlawed English Ambassador III.— Revolution vs. Constitution IV. — A Garden in the Faubourg St. Denis

V. — A Conspiracy

VI. — A Testimony under the Guillotine VII. — A Minister and his Prisoner VIII. — Sick and in Prison IX. — A Restoration .... X. — The Silence of Washington XL— "The Age of Reason " .

XII. — Friendships

XIII. — Theophilanthropy XIV. — The Republican Abdiel XV. — The Last Year in Europe . XVI. — The American Inquisition . XVII. — New Rochelle and the Bonnevilles XVIII. — A New York Prometheus XIX. — Personal Traits .... XX. — Death and Resurrection Appendix A. — The Cobbett Papers . Appendix B. — The Hall Manuscripts Appendix C. — Portraits of Paine Appendix D. — Brief List of Paine's Works Index

m

17

77

97

III

128

181 223 241

270

«93 308 328 360 388

40s 429 460

473 482

485

•^'*,

j

I

1:^

***

r

4 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [ir9J

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

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

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

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

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

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

' So called from the high benches on which these members sat. The seats of the Gitondisli on the floor were called the " Plain," and after their over- throw the ** Bianh."

6 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAJNE. [1793

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

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

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

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

»793] '^KILL THE KING, BUT NOT THE MAN^ /

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

He might, indeed, have been dealt with sum- marily had not the Moniteur done him an opportune service ; on January 1 7th and i8th it printed Paine's unspoken argument for mercy, along with Erskine's speech at his trial in London, and the verdict So on the 19th, when Paine entered the Convention, it was with the prestige not only of one outlawed by Great Britain for advocating the Rights of Man, but of a representative of the best Englishmen and their principles. It would be vain to assail the author's loyalty to the republic. That he would speak that day was certain, for on the morrow (20th) the final vote was to be taken. The Mountain could not use on Paine their weapon against Girondins; they could not accuse the author of the " Rights of Man " of being royalist When he had mounted the tribune, and the clerk (Bancal, Franklin's friend) was beginning to read his speech, Marat cried, " I submit that Thomas Paine is incompetent to vote on this question ; being a Quaker his religious principles are opposed to the death-penalty." There was

8 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

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

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

* •• History of France," vi., p. 136,

1793] "A7ZZ THE KING, BUT NOT THE MAN.'' 9

present Convention will last more than five or six months. The choice of new deputies will express the national opinion on the propriety or impropriety of your sentence, with as much efficacy as if those primary assemblies had been consulted on it As the duration of our functions here cannot be long, it is a part of our duty to consider the interests of those who shall replace us. If by any act of ours the number of the nation's enemies shall be needlessly increased, and that of its friends diminished, — at a time when the finances may be more strained than to-day, — we should not be justifiable for having thus unnecessarily heaped obstacles in the path of our suc- cessors. Let us therefore not be precipitate in our decisions. ** France has but one ally — the United States of America. That is the only nation that can furnish France with naval provisions, for the kingdoms of northern Europe are, or soon will be, at war with her. It happens, unfortunately, that the person now under discussion is regarded in America as a deliverer of their country. I can assure you that his execution will there spread universal sorrow, and it is in your power not thus to wound the feelings of your ally. Could I speak the French language I would descend to your bar, and in their name become your petitioner to respite the execution of the sentence on Louis."

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

' " Venant d*un d^mocnte tel que Thomas Paine, d*un homme qui avait ▼^ parmi les Am^cains, d'un penseur, cette declaration parut si danger- ease i Marat que, pour en d^truire Tefifet, il nli^ita pas 4 s*toier : ' Je d^once le truchement. Je soutiens que ce n'est point li Topinion de Thomas Paine. Cest une traduction infid^e.' "^Louis Blanc. See alio *' Histoire Parliamentaire/' zxiii., p. 250.

lO THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

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

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

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

At the conclusion of this speech Marat " launched himself into the middle of the hall " and cried out that Paine had "voted against the punishment of death because he was a Quaker." Paine re- plied, '* I voted against it both morally and politi- cally."

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

1793] ""KILL THE KING, BUT NOT THE MAN:* II

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

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

13 TIfE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

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

1 " Histoire de la R^olution," voL viiL, p. 96. « VoL JBV.

«793] "'JCILL THE KING, BUT NOT THE MANr 1 3

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

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

' " Le D^jNUtement des Afftixes ^timng^res pendant U R^rolntion, 1787^ 1804. " Par FrWric Muson, Bibliotb^cure dn Ministte des Affaixet Atnagiras. Ftois, 1877, p. 375.

• ICofiiir •• Dmij," u., pp. xg. 27. 3*.

14 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

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

At this time, it should be remembered, opposi- tion to capital punishment was confined to very

' " The same spirit of fortitude that insured success to America will insure it to France, for it is impossible to conquer a nation determined to be free. . . . Man is ever a stranger to the ways by which Providence regulates the order of things. The interference of foreign despots may serve to intro* duce into their own enslaved countries the principles they come to oppose. Liberty and equality are blessings too great to be the inheritance of France alone. It is honour to her to be their first champion ; and she may now say to her enemies, with a mighty voice, * O, ye Austrians, ye Prussians ! ye who now turn your bayonets against us, it is for you, it is for all Europe, it is for all mankind, and not for France alone, that she raises the standard of Liberty and Equality ! ' " — Paine's address to the Convention (September 3$, Z792) after taking his seat.

1793] "-^/-^^ THE KING, BUT NOT THE MANr 1 5

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

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

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

l6 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

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

CHAPTER II.

AN OUTLAWED ENGLISH AMBASSADOIL

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

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

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

Vol. II.-«. X7

I8 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

But if Paine was so fit for such a Convention, why should they behead him ? The letter betrays a real perception that Paine possesses humane principles, and an English courage, which would bring him into danger. This undertone of For- tescue's invective represented the profound con- fidence of Paine's adherents in England. When tidings came of the King's trial and execution, whatever glimpses they gained of their outlawed leader showed him steadfast as a star caught in one wave and another of that turbid tide. Many, alas, needed apologies, but Paine required none. That one Englishman, standing on the tribune for justice and humanity, amid three hundred angry French- men in uproar, was as sublime a sight as Europe witnessed in those days. To the English radical the outlawry of Paine was as the tax on light, which was presently walling up London windows, or extorting from them the means of war against ideas. * The trial of Paine had elucidated nothing, except that, like Jupiter, John Bull had the thun- derbolts, and Paine the arguments. Indeed, it is difficult to discover any other Englishman who at the moment pre-eminently stood for principles now proudly called English.

But Paine too presently held thunderbolts. Al- though his efforts to save Louis had offended the

* In a copy of the first edition of " The Rights of Man," which I bought in London, I found, as a sort of book-mark, a bill for i/. 6f. 8^., two quarters' window-tax, due from Mr. Williamson, Upper Fitzroy Place. Windows closed with bricks are still seen in some of the gloomiest parts of London. I have in manuscript a bitter anathema of the time :

'* God made the Light, and saw that it was good x Pitt laid a tax on it,— G— d— his blood ! •*

1793] ^^ OUTLAWED ENGLISH AMBASSADOR. I9

"Mountain," and momentarily brought him into the danger Lord Fortescue predicted, that party was not yet in the ascendant. The Girondists were still in power, and though some of their leaders had bent before the storm, that they might not be broken, they had been impressed both by the cour- age and the tactics of Paine. "The Girondists consulted Paine," says Lamartine, "and placed him on the Committee of Surveillance." At this mo- ment many Englishmen were in France, and at a word from Paine some of their heads might have mounted on the pike which Lord Fortescue had imaginatively prepared for the head that wrote " The Rights of Man." There remained, for instance, Mr. Munro, already mentioned. This gentleman, in a note preserved in the English Archives, had written to Lord Grenville (September 8, 1792) concerning Paine : " What must a nation come to that has so little discernment in the election of their representatives, as to elect such a fellow ? " But having lingered in Paris after England's formal declaration of war (February nth), Munro was cast into prison. He owed his release to that "fellow" Paine, and must be duly credited with having acknowledged it, and changed his tone for the rest of his life, — ^which he probably owed to the English committeeman. Had Paine met with the fate which Lords Gower and Fortescue hoped, it would have gone hard with another eminent coun- tryman of theirs, — Captain Grimstone, R. A. This personage, during a dinner party at the Palais ]&galit4 got into a controversy with Paine, and, forgetting that the English Jove could not in Paris

ao THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

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

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

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

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

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

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'* ' O God 1 he must hate and detest the name of English- man : peltedy insulted, persecuted, plundered . . .'

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

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

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

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

" * I give it and will redeem it.'

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

22 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

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

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

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

" I went to Europe from New York in April, 1 787. Mr. Jeffer- son was then Minister from America to France, and Mr. Lit- tlepage, a Virginian (whom Mr. Jay knows), was agent for the king of Poland, at Paris. Mr. Littlepage was a young man of extraordinary talents, and I first met with him at Mr. Jeffer- son's house at dinner. By his intimacy with the king of Poland, to whom also he was chamberlain, he became well acquainted with the plans and projects of the Northern Powers of Europe. He told me of Miranda's getting himself introduced to the Empress Catharine of Russia, and obtaining a sum of money from her, four thousand pounds sterling ; but it did not appear to me what the object was for which the money was given ; it appeared a kind of retaining fee.

" After I had published the first part of the * Rights of Man ' in England, in the year 1791, 1 met Miranda at the house of TumbuU and Forbes, merchants, Devonshire Square, Lon- don. He had been a little before this in the employ of Mr. Pitt, with respect to the affair of Nootka Sound, but I did not at that time know it ; and I will, in the course of this letter, inform you how this connection between Pitt and Miranda ended ; for I know it of my own knowledge.

' Zachariah Wilkes did not fail to return, or Paine to greet him with safety, and the words, ** There is yet English blood in England." But here Landor passes off into an imaginative picture of villages rejoicing at the fall of Robespierre. Paine himself had then been in prison seven months ; so we can only conjecture the means by which Zachariah was liberated. — Lan- dor's Works, London, 1S53, i., p. 296.

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

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

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

24 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

26 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

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

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

It was in this spirit that the defence of a free press was undertaken in England. That thirty years' war was fought and won on the works of Paine. There were some " Lost Leaders " : the king's execution, the reign of terror, caused reac- tion in many a fine spirit ; but the rank and file followed their Thomas Paine with a faith that crowned heads might envy. The London men knew Paine thoroughly. The treasures of the world would not draw him, nor any terrors drive him, to the side of cruelty and inhumanity. Their eye was upon him. Had Paine, after the king's execution, despaired of the republic there might have ensued some demoralization among his fol- lowers in London. But they saw him by the side

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of the delivered prisoner of the Bastille, Brissot, an author well known in England, by the side of Condorcet and others of Franklin's honored circle, engaged in death-struggle with the fire-breathing dragon called " The Mountain." That was the same unswerving man they had been following, and to all accusations against the revolution their answer was — Paine is still there !

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

' The first trial after Paine's, that of Thomas Spence (February 26, 1793), for selling ** The Rights of Man," failed through a flaw in the indictment, but the mistake did not occur again. At the same time William Holland was awarded a year's imprisonment and £,iQO fine for selling ** Letter to the Addressers. " H. D. Symonds, for publishing * * Rights of Man, ** £,20 fine and two years ; for ** Letter to the Addressers," one year, £,\QO fine, with sure- ties in £\^OQO for three years, and imprisonment till th6 fine be paid and sureties given. April 17, 1793, Richard Phillips, printer, Leicester, eigh- teen months. May 8th, J. Ridgway, London, selling ** Rights of Man," £\QO and one year ; ** Letter to the Addressers," one year, £\QO fine ; in each case sureties in ;£'i,ooo, with imprisonment until fines paid and sureties given. Richard Peart, ** Rights" and ** Letter," three months. William Belcher, ••Rights" and "Letter," three months. Daniel Holt, ;f 50, four years. Messrs. Robinson, £,200. Eaton and Thompson. the latter in Birmingham, were acquitted. Clio Rickman escaped punish-

28 THB LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

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

From his safe retreat in Paris bookseller Rick- man wrote his impromptu :

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

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

ment by running over to Paris. Dr. Currie (1793) writes : ** The prosecu- tions that are commenced all over England against printers, publishers, etc., would astonish you ; and most of these are for offences committed many months ago. The printer of the Manchester Herald has had seven different indictments preferred against him for paragraphs in his paper ; and six differ- ent indictments for selling or disposing of six different copies of Paine, — all previous to the trial of Paine. The man was opulent, supposed worth 20,000 /. ; but these different actions will ruin him, as they were intended to do." — ** Currie's Life," i., p. 1S5. See Buckle's " History of Civilization," etc., American ed., p. 352. In the cases where ** gentlemen " were found distributing the works the penalties were ferocious. Fische Palmer was sentenced to seven years' transportation. Thomas Muir, for advising per- sons to read " the works of that wretched outcast Paine " (the Lord Advo- cate's words) was sentenced to fourteen years' transportation. This sentence was hissed. The tipstaff being ordered to take those who hissed into cus- tody, replied : " My lord, they 're all hissing."

» " Pari. Hist.," xxxii.. p. 383.

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

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

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

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

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

*• God save the King ! "

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

30 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1792

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER III.

REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION.

The French revolutionists have long borne re- sponsibility for the first declaration of war in 1 793. But from December 13, 1792, when the Painophobia Parliament began its debates, to February ist, when France proclaimed itself at war with England, the British government had done little else than declare war — and prepare war — against France. Pitt, having to be re-elected, managed to keep away from Parliament for several days at its open- ing, and the onslaught was assumed by Burke. He began by heaping insults on France. On Decem- ber 15th he boasted that he had not been cajoled by promise of promotion or pension, though he presently, on the same evening, took his seat for the first time on the Treasury bench. In the " Parliamentary History " (vols. xxx. and xxxl) may be found Burke's epithets on France, — the *' republic of assassins," " Cannibal Castle," " na- tion of murderers," " gang of plunderers," " mur- derous atheists," " miscreants," " scum of the earth." His vocabulary grew in grossness, of course, after the King's execution and the dec- laration of war, but from the first it was ribaldry and abuse. And this did not come from a private

32

1793] REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION. 33

member, but from the Treasury bench. He was supported by a furious majority which stopped at no injustice. Thus the Convention was burdened with guilt of the September massacres, though it was not then in existence. Paine's works being denounced, Erskine reminded the House of the illegality of so influencing a trial not yet begun. He was not listened to. Fox and fifty other earnest men had a serious purpose of trying to save the King s life, and proposed to negotiate with the Convention. Burke fairly foamed at the motions to that end, made by Fox and Lord Lansdowne. What, negotiate with such villains ! To whom is our agent to be accredited ? Burke draws a comic picture of the English ambassador entering the Convention, and, when he announces himself as from " George Third, by the grace of God," de- nounced by Paine. " Are we to humble ourselves before Judge Paine?" At this point Whetstone made a disturbance and was named. There were some who found Burke's trifling intolerable. Mr. W. Smith reminded the House that Cromwell's ambassadors had been received by Louis XIV. Fox drew a parallel between the contemptuous terms used toward the French, and others about " Hancock and his crew," with whom Burke ad- vised treaty, and with whom His Majesty did treat. All this was answered by further insults to France, these corresponding with a series of practical inju- ries. Lord Gower had been recalled August 1 7th, after the formation of a republic, and all inter- course with the French Minister in London, Chau- velin, was terminated. In violation of the treaty

VoL II.— 3

34 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

of 1 786, the agents of France were refused permis- sion to purchase grain and arms in England, and their vessels loaded with provisions seized. The circulation of French bonds, issued in 1790, was prohibited in England. A coalition had been formed with the enemies of France, the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia. Finally, on the execution of Louis XVI., Chauvelin was or- dered (January 24th) to leave England in eight days. Talleyrand remained, but Chauvelin was kicked out of the country, so to say, simply because the Convention had recognized him. This appeared a plain casus belli^ and was answered by the declara- tion of the Convention in that sense (February ist), which England answered ten days later.^

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

' *' It was stipulated in the treaty of commerce between France and Eng- land, concluded at Paris [1786] that the sending away an ambassador by either party, should be taken as an act of hostility by the other party. The declaration of war (February, 1793) by the Convention . . , was made in exact conformity to this article in the treaty ; for it was not a declaration of war against England, but a declaration that the French republic is in war with England ; the first act of hostility having been committed by England. The declaration was made on Chauvelin*s return to France, and in conse- quence of it." — Paine's " Address to the People of France" (1797). The words of the declaration of war, following the list of injuries, are : " La Convention Nationale d(fclar^, au nom de la nation Fran9aise, qu'attendu les actes multipli^ et d'agressions ci-dessus mentionn^, la r^ubliqne Fran9aise est en guerre avec le roi d*Angleterre.'* The solemn protest of Lords Lauderdale, Lansdowne, and Derby, February ist, against the address in answer to the royal message, before France had spoken, regards that address as a demonstration of universal war. The facts and the situation are carefully set forth by Louis Blanc, ** Histoire de la Revolution,*' tome viii., p. 93 seq.

1793] REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION. 35

regarded Pitt as a victim. " The father of Pitt," he once wrote, "when a member of the House of Commons, exclaiming one day, during a former war, against the enormous and ruinous expense of German connections, as the offspring of the Han* over succession, and borrowing a metaphor from the story of Prometheus, cried out : ' Thus, like Prometheus, is Britain chained to the barren rock of Hanover, whilst the imperial eagle preys upon her vitals/" It is probable that on the intima- tions from Pitt, at the close of 1 792, of his desire for private consultations with friendly Frenchmen, Paine entered into the honorable though unauthor- ized conspiracy for peace which was terminated by the expulsion of Chauvelin. In the light of later events, and the desertion of Dumouriez, these overtures of Pitt made through Talleyrand (then in London) were regarded by the French leaders, and are still regarded by French writers, as treacherous. But no sufficient reason is given for doubting Pitt's good faith in that matter. Writing to the President (Washington), December 28, 1792, the American Minister, Gouverneur Morris, states the British proposal to be :

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

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

36 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

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

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

* See Louis Blanc's " Histoire,** etc., tome viii., p. 100, for the principal authorities concerning this incident. — Annual Register^ 1793. ch. vi. ; •• Mtooires tires des papiers d*un homme d'etat.," ii., p. 157 ; ** Memdires de Dumouriez," t. iii., p. 384.

1793] REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION. 37

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

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

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

38 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

sion of Robespierre and Couthon from this eminent task [framing a Constitution] was a new matter for discontent and jealousy against the party of Po- tion " — ^a leading Girondin, — and that Robespierre and his men desired *' to render their work use- less." ^ No indication of this secret condemnation of the Paine-Condorcet Constitution, by a con- clave appeared on March ist, when the docu- ment was again submitted. The Convention now set April 15th for its discussion, and the Moun- taineers fixed that day for the opening of their attack on the Girondins. The Mayor of Paris ap- peared with a petition, adopted by the Communal Council of the thirty-five sections of Paris, for the arrest of twenty-two members of the Convention, as slanderers of Paris, — '* presenting the Parisians to Europe as men of blood," — friends of Roland, accomplices of the traitor Dumouriez, enemies of the clubs. The deputies named were : Brissot, Guadet, Vergniaud, Gensonn^, Grangeneuve, Buzot, Barbaroux, Salles, Biroteau, Pont^coulant, Potion, Lanjuinais, Valaze, Hardy, Lou vet, Lehardy, Gor- sas, Abb6 Fauchet, Lanthenas, Lasource, Valady, Chambon. Of this list five were members of the Committee on the Constitution, and two supple- mentary members.^ Besides this, two of the arraigned — Louvet and Lasource — had been espe- cially active in pressing forward the Constitution. The Mountaineers turned the discord they thus

* ** Histoire dc la Convention Nationale/' p. 50. Durand-Maillane was ** the silent member " of the Convention, but a careful observer and well- infonned witness. I follow him and Louis Blanc in relating the fate of the Paine-Condorcet Constitution.

• See vol. i., p. 357.

1793] REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION. 39

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

' This Declaration, submitted by Condorcet, April 17th, being largely the work of Paine, is here translated : The end of all union of men in society being maintenance of their natural rights, civil and political, these rights should be the basis of the social pact : their recognition and their declaration ought to precede the Constitution which secures and guarantees them. I. The natural rights, civil and political, of men are liberty, equality, security, property, social protection, and resistance to oppression. 2. Liberty con- sists in the power to do whatever is not contrary to the rights of others ; thus, the natural rights of each man has no limits other than those which secure to other members of society enjoyment of the same rights. 3. The preservation of liberty depends on the sovereignty of the Law, which is the expression of the general will. Nothing unforbidden by law can be impeached, and none may be constrained to do what it does not command. 4. Every man is free to make known his thought and his opinions. 5. Freedom of the press (and every other means of publishing one's thoughts) cannot be prohibited, suspended, or limited. 6. Every citizen shall be free in the exercise of his worship \culte\, 7. Equality consists in the power of each to enjoy the same rights. 8. The Law should be equal for all, whether in recompense, punishment, or restraint. 9. All citizens are admissible to all public positions, employments, and functions. Free peoples can recognise no grounds of preference except talents and virtues. xo. Security consists in the protection accorded by society to each citizen for the preservation of his person, property, and rights. 11. None should be sued, accused, arrested, or detained, save in cases determined by the law, and in accordance with forms prescribed by it. Every other act against a

40 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

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

citizen is arbitrary and null. 12. Those who solicit, promote, sign, execute or cause to be executed such arbitrary acts are culpable, and should be punished. 13. Citizens against whom the execution of such acts is attempted have the right of resistance by force. Every citizen summoned or arrested by the authority of law, and in the forms prescribed by it, should instantly obey ; he renders himself guilty by resistance. 14. Every man being pre- sumed innocent until declared guilty, should his arrest be judged indis- pensable, all rigor not necessary to secure his person should be severely repressed by law. 15. None should be punished save in virtue of a law es- tablished and promulgated previous to the offence, and legally applied. 16. A law that should punish offences committed before its existence would be an arbitrary Act. Retroactive effect given to any law is a crime. 17. Law should award only penalties strictly and evidently necessary to the gen- eral security ; they should be proportioned to the offence and useful to society. 18. The right of property consists in a man's being master in the disposal, at his will, of his goods, capital, income, and industry. 19. No kind of work, commerce, or culture can be interdicted for any one ; he may make, sell, and transport every species of production. 20. Every man may engage his services, and his time ; but he cannot sell himself ; his person is not an alienable property. 21. No one may be deprived of the least portion of his property without his consent, unless because of public necessity, legally determined, exacted openly, and under the condition of a just indem- nity in advance. 22. No tax shall be established except for the general utility, and to relieve public needs. All citizens have the right to co-operate.

1793] REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION, 4I

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

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

personally or by their representatives, in the establishment of public con- tributions. 33. Instruction is the need of all, and society owes it equally to all its members. 34. Public succors are a sacred debt of society, and it is for the law to determine their extent and application. 25. The social guarantee of the rights of man rests on the national sovereignty. 26. This sovereignty is one, indivisible, imprescriptible, and inalienable. 37. It resides essentially in the whole people, and each citizen has an equal right to co-operate in its exercise. 28. No partial assemblage of citizens, and no individual may attribute to themselves sovereignty, to exercise authority and fill any public function, without a formal delegation by the law. 29. Social security cannot exist where the limits of public administra- tion are not clearly determined by law, and where the responsibility of all public functionaries is not assured. 30. All citizens are bound to co-ope- rate in this guarantee, and to enforce the law when summoned in its name. 31. Men united in society should have legal means of resisting oppression. In every free government the mode of resisting different acts of oppression should be regulated by the Constitution. 32. It is oppression when a law violates the natural rights, civil and political, which it should ensure. It is oppression when the law is violated by public offi- cials in its application to individual cases. It is oppression when arbi- trary acts violate the rights of citizens against the terms of the law. 33. A people has always the right to revise, reform, and change its Constitu- tion. One generation has no right to bind future generations, and all heredity in offices is absurd and tyrannical.

42 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

gave liberty even to illicit traffic While these dis- cussions were going on Marat gained his triumphant acquittal from the charges made against him by the Girondins. This damaging blow further demoral- ized the majority which was eager for the Constitu- tion. By violence, by appeals against atheism, by all crafty tactics, the Mountaineers secured recom- mitment of the Constitution. To the Committee were added H^rault de Sdchelles, Ramel, Mathieu, Couthon, Saint-Just, — all from the Committee of Public Safety. The Constitution as committed was the most republican document of the kind ever drafted, as remade it was a revolutionary instru- ment ; but its preamble read : " In the presence and under the guidance {auspices) of the Supreme Being, the French People declare," etc.

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

' *'Les rois, les aristocrates, les tyrants qu'ils soient, sont des esclaves r^volt^ contre le souverain de la teire, qui est le genre humain^ et centre le l^gislateur de Tuniyers, qui est la nature," — Robespierre's final article of * * Rights, " adopted by the Jacobins, April 21,1 793 . Should not slaves revolt ?

1793] REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION. 43

The Constitution was adopted by the Conven- tion on June 25th ; it was ratified by the Com- munes August loth. When it was proposed to organize a government under it, and dissolve the Convention, Robespierre remarked : That sounds like a suggestion of Pitt / Thereupon the Consti- tution was suspended until universal peace, and the Revolution superseded the Republic as end and aim of France.^

Some have ascribed to Robespierre a phrase he borrowed, on one occasion, from Voltaire, Si Dieu fiexistait pasj il faudrait Finventer. Robespierre's originality was that he did invent a god, made in his own image, and to that idol offered human sac- rifices,— beginning with his own humanity. That he was genuinely superstitious is suggested by the plausibility with which his enemies connected him

* '* I observed in the french revolutions that they alwa3rs proceeded bf stages, and made each stage a stepping stone to another. The Convention, to amuse the people, voted a constitution, and then voted to suspend the practical establishment of it till after the war, and in the meantime to carry on a revolutionary government. When Robespierre fell they proposed bringing forward the suspended Constitution, and apparently for this pur- pose appointed a committee to frame what they called organic laws^ and these organic laws turned out to be a new Constitution (the Directory Constitution which was in general a good one). When Bonaparte overthrew this Consti- tution he got himself appointed first Consul for ten years, then for life, and now Emperor with an hereditary succession." — Paine to Jefferson. MS. (Dec. 27, 1804). The Paine-Condorcet Constitution is printed in CEuvres Completes de Condorcet^ vol. xviii. That which superseded it may be read (the Declaration of Rights omitted) in the " Constitutional History of France. By Henry C. Lockwood." (New York, 1890). It is, inter aUa, a sufficient reason for describing the latter as revolutionary, that it provides that a Convention, elected by a majority of the departments, and a tenth part of the primaries, to revise or alter the Constitution, shall be *' formed in like manner as the legislatures, and unite in itself the highest power." In other words, instead of being limited to constitutional revision, may exercise all legislative and other functions, just as the existing Con* vention was doing.

44 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

with the "prophetess," Catharine Th^ot, who pronounced him the reincarnate " Word of God." Certain it is that he revived the old forces of fanaticism, and largely by their aid crushed the Girondins, who were rationalists. Condorcet had said that in preparing a Constitution for France they had not consulted Numa's nymph or the pigeon of Mahomet ; they had found human reason sufficient Corruption of best is worst. In the proportion that a humane deity would be a potent sanction for righteous laws, an inhuman deity is the sanction of inhuman laws. He who summoned a nature-god to the French Convention let loose the scourge on France. Nature inflicts on mankind, every day, a hundred-fold the agonies of the Reign of Terror. Robespierre had projected into nature a senti- mental conception of his own, but he had no power to master the force he had evoked. That had to take the shape of the nature-gods of all time, and straightway dragged the Convention down to the savage plane where discussion becomes an exchange of thunder-stones. Such relapses are not very difficult to effect in revolutionary times. By kill- ing off sceptical variations, and cultivating con- formity, a cerebral evolution proceeded for ages by which kind-hearted people were led to wor- ship jealous and cruel gods, who, should they appear in human form, would be dealt with as criminals. Unfortunately, however, the nature- god does not so appear; it is represented in euphemisms, while at the same time it coerces the social and human standard. Since the nature- god punishes hereditarily, kills every man at last;

1793] REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION. 45

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

46 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

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

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

I793I REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION. 47

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

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

'"CEuvres Completes de Condorcet," Paris, 1804, t. xvi., p. 16 : "La Republique Fran^dse aux hommes libres." In 1794, when Paine was in prison, a pamphlet was issued by the revolutionary government, entitled : "An Answer to the Declaration of the King of England, respecting his Motives for Carrying on the Present War, and his Conduct towards France/* Hiis anonymous pamphlet, which is in English, replies to the royal proclamation of October 29th, and bears evidence of being written while the English still occupied Toulon or early in November, 1793. There are passages in it that suggest the hand of Paine, along with others which he could not have written. It is possible that some composition of his, in pursuance of the task assigned him and Condorcet, was utilized by the Committee of Public Safety in ite answer to George III.

48 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

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

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

* ** Englishmen in the French Revolution.'* By John G. Alger. London, T889, p. 176. (A book of many blunders.)

1793] REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION. 49

The decree for Marat's trial was made amid galleries crowded with his adherents, male and female ("Dames de la Fraternity"), who hurled cries of wrath on every one who said a word against him. All were armed, the women ostentatious of their poignards. The trial before the Revolu- tionary Tribunal was already going in Marat's favor, when it was determined by the Girondins to bring forward this affair of Johnson. Paine was not, apparently, a party to this move, though he had enjoined no secrecy in telling his friend Brissot of the incident, which occurred before Marat was accused. On April i6th there appeared in Bris- sot's journal Le Patriate FranfatSy the following paragraph :

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

The acting editor of Le Patriate Frangais, Girey- Dupr^, was summoned before the Tribunal, where Marat was on trial, and testified that the note pub- lished had been handed to him by Brissot, who assured him that it was from the original, in the hands of Thomas Paine. Paine deposed that he

VOL. n.— 4

so THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1795

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

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

Paine. — I showed him the original.

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

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

Marat. — Not because I would denounce the youth who stab- bed himself, but because I wish to denounce Thomas Paine.'

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

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

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

Meanwhile the Constitution was undergoing dis- cussion in the Convention, and to that Paine now

> It would appear that Paine had not been informed until Marat declared it, and was confirmed by the testimony of Choppin, that the attempted •uicide was on his account.

* Momteur^ April 24, 1793.

1793] REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION. SI

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

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

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

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

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

52 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

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

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

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

"Thomas Paine.

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

Four days after this letter was written Marat, triumphant, was crowned with oak leaves. Fou- frede in his speech (April i6th) had said : " Marat has formally demanded dictatorship. " This was the mob's reply : Bos locuius est.

1793] REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION, S3

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

** Paris, May 6th, 2nd year of the Republic (i793).

" CiTOYEN Danton :

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

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

* ** La R^olution," ii., pp. 382, 413, 414.

• "Danton Emigr^," p. 177.

54 THE UFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

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

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

" I saw, during the American Revolution, the exceeding in- convenience that arose by having the government of Congress within the limits of any Municipal Jurisdiction. Congress first resided in Philadelphia, and after a residence of four years it found it necessary to leave it. It then adjourned to the State of Jersey. It afterwards removed to New York ; it again removed from New York to Philadelphia, and after ex- periencing in every one of these places the great inconvenience of a government, it formed the project of building a Town, not within the limits of any municipal jurisdiction, for the future residence of Congress. In any one of the places where Congress resided, the municipal authority privately or openly opposed itself to the authority of Congress, and the people of each of those places expected more attention from Congress than their equal share with the other States amounted to. The same thing now takes place in France, but in a far greater excess.

'^I see also another embarrassing circumstance arising in Paris of which we have had full experience in America. I mean that of fixing the price of provisions. But if this meas-

1793] REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION. 55

ure is to be attempted it ought to be done by the Municipal- ity. The Convention has nothing to do with regulations of this kind ; neither can they be carried into practice. The people of Paris may say they will not give more than a cer- tain price for provisions, but as they cannot compel the coun- try people to bring provisions to market the consequence will be directly contrary to their expectations, and they will find deamess and famine instead of plenty and cheapness. They may force the price down upon the stock in hand, but after that the market will be empty.

"I will give you an example. In Philadelphia we under- took, among other regulations of this kind, to regulate the price of Salt ; the consequence was that no Salt was brought to market, and the price rose to thirty-six shillings sterling per Bushel. The price before the war was only one shilling and sixpence per Bushel ; and we regulated the price of flour (farine) till there was none in the market, and the people were glad to procure it at any price.

" There is also a circumstance to be taken into the account which is not much attended to. The assignats are not of the same value they were a year ago, and as the quantity increases the value of them will diminish. This gives the appearance of things being dear when they are not so in fact, for in the same proportion that any kind of money falls in value articles rise in price. If it were not for this the quantity of assignats would be too great to be circulated. Paper money in America fell so much in value from this excessive quantity of it, that in the year 1781 I gave three hundred paper dollars for one pair of worsted stockings. What I write you upon this sub- ject is experience, and not merely opinion.

" I have no personal interest in any of these matters, nor in any party disputes. I attend only to general principles.

'' As soon as a constitution shall be established I shall re- turn to America ; and be the future prosperity of France ever so great, I shall enjoy no other part of it than the happiness of knowing it. In the mean time I am distressed to see mat- ters so badly conducted, and so little attention paid to moral principles. It is these things that injure the character of the Revolution and discourage the progress of liberty all over the world.

56 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

'' When I began this letter I did not intend making it so lengthy, but since I have gone thus far I will fill up the re- mainder of the sheet with such matters as occur to me.

" There ought to be some regulation with respect to the spirit of denunciation that now prevails. If every individ- ual is to indulge his private malignacy or his private ambition, to denounce at random and without any kind of proof, all confidence will be undermined and all authority be destroyed. Calumny is a species of Treachery that ought to be punished as well as any other kind of Treachery. It is a private vice productive of public evils ; because it is possible to irritate men into disaffection by continual calumny who never intended to be disaffected. It is therefore, equally as necessary to guard against the evils of unfounded or malignant suspicion as against the evils of blind confidence. It is equally as nec- essary to protect the characters of public officers from calum- ny as it is to punish them for treachery or misconduct. For my own part I shall hold it a matter of doubt, until better evidence arises than is known at present, whether Dumouriez has been a traitor from policy or from resentment. There was certainly a time when he acted well, but it is not every man whose mind is strong enough to bear up against ingratitude, and I think he experienced a great deal of this before he re- volted. Calumny becomes harmless and defeats itself when it attempts to act upon too large a scale. Thus the denuncia- tion of the Sections [of Paris] against the twenty-two deputies falls to the ground. The departments that elected them are better judges of their moral and political characters than those who have denounced them. This denunciation will injure Paris in the opinion of the departments because it has the appearance of dictating to them what sort of deputies they shall elect. Most of the acquaintances that I have in the con- vention are among those who are in that list, and I know there are not better men nor better patriots than what they are.

*' I have written a letter to Marat of the same date as this but not on the same subject. He may show it to you if he chuse.

" Votre Ami,

'* Thomas Pains.

" Citoyen Danton."

1793] RBVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION. 57

It is to be hoped that Paine's letter to Marat may be discovered in France ; it is shown by the Cob- bett papers, printed in the Appendix, that he kept a copy, which there is reason to fear perished with General Bonneville's library in St. Louis. What- ever may be the letter's contents, there is no indi- cation that thereafter Marat troubled Paine. Pos- sibly Dan ton and Marat compared their letters, and the latter got it into his head that hostility to this American, anxious only to cross the ocean, could be of no advantage to him. Or perhaps he remem- bered that if a hue and cry were raised against "foreigners" it could not stop short of his own leaf-crowned Neufchatel head. He had shown some sensitiveness about that at his trial. Samson- Pegnet had testified that, at conversations in Paine's house, Marat had been reported as saying that it was necessary to massacre all the foreigners, espe- cially the English. This Marat pronounced an " atrocious calumny, a device of the statesmen [his epithet for Girondins] to render me odious." What- ever his motives, there is reason to believe that Marat no longer included Paine in his proscribed list. Had it been otherwise a fair opportunity of striking down Paine presented itself on the occa- sion, already alluded to, when Paine gave his testi- mony in favor of General Miranda. Miranda was tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal on May 1 2th, and three days following. He had served under Dumouriez, was defeated, and was suspected of connivance with his treacherous commander. Paine was known to have been friendly with Dumouriez, and his testimony in favor of Miranda might natu-

58 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

rally have been used against both men. Miranda was, however, acquitted, and that did not make Ma- rat better disposed towards that adventurer's friends, all Girondins, or, like Paine, who belonged to no party, hostile to Jacobinism. Yet when, on June 2d, the doomed Girondins were arrested, there were surprising exceptions : Paine and his literary coUaborateur, Condorcet. Moreover, though the translator of Paine's works, Lanthenas, was among the proscribed, his name was erased on Marat's motion.

On June 7th Robespierre demanded a more stringent law against foreigners, and one was soon after passed ordering their imprisonment. It was understood that this could not apply to the two for- eigners in the Convention — Paine and Anacharsis Clootz, — though it was regarded as a kind of warn- ing to them. I have seen it stated, but without authority, that Paine had been admonished by Dan- ton to stay away from the Convention on June 2d, and from that day there could not be the slightest utility in his attendance. The Mountaineers had it all their own way. For simply criticising the Con- stitution they brought forward in place of that of the first committee, Condorcet had to fly from prosecu- tion. Others also fled, among them Brissot and Duchatel. What with the arrestations and flights Paine found himself, in June, almost alone. In the Convention he was sometimes the solitary figure left on the Plain, where but now sat the brilliant states- men of France. They, his beloved friends, have started in procession towards the guillotine, for even flight must end there ; daily others are pressed into

1793] REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION. 59

their ranks ; his own summons, he feels, is only a question of a few weeks or days. How Paine loved those men — Brissot, Condorcet, Lasource, Ducha- tel, Vergniaud, Gensonn^ ! Never was man more devoted to his intellectual coihrades. Even across a century one may realize what it meant to him, that march of some of his best friends to the scaf- fold, while others were hunted through France, and the agony of their families, most of whom he well knew.

Alas, even this is not the worst ! For what were the personal fate of himself or any compared with the fearful fact that the harvest is past and the republic not saved ! Thus had ended all his labors, and his visions of the Commonwealth of Man. The time had come when many besides poor Johnson sought peace in annihilation. Paine, heartbroken, sought oblivion in brandy. Recourse to such anaesthetic, of which any affectionate man might fairly avail himself under such incredible agony as the ruin of his hopes and the approaching murder of his dearest friends, was hitherto unknown in Paine's life. He drank freely, as was the custom of his time ; but with the exception of the evidence of an enemy at his trial in England, that he once saw him under the influence of wine after a dinner party (1792), which he admitted was "unusual," no intimation of excess is discoverable in any con- temporary record of Paine until this his fifty-seventh year. He afterwards told his friend Rickman that, '* borne down by public and private affliction, he had been driven to excesses in Paris " ; and, as it was about this time that Gouvemeur Morris and Colonel

6o THE UFE OP THOMAS PAINE. [1793

BosviUe, who had reasons for disparaging Paine, reported stories of his drunkenness (growing ever since), we may assign the excesses mainly to June, It will be seen by comparison of the dates of events and documents presently mentioned that Paine could not have remained long in this pardonable refuge of mental misery. Charlotte Corday's poig- nard cut a rift in the black cloud. After that tremen- dous July 13th there is positive evidence not only of sobriety, but of life and work on Paine's part that make the year memorable.

Marat dead, hope springs up for the arrested Girondins. They are not yet in prison, but under " arrestation in their homes " ; death seemed inevi- table while Marat lived, but Charlotte Corday has summoned a new leader. Why may Paine s imper- illed comrades not come forth again ? Certainly they will if the new chieftain is Danton, who under his radical rage hides a heart. Or if Marat's man- tle falls on Robespierre, would not that scholarly lawyer, who would have abolished capital punish- ment, reverse Marat's cruel decrees ? Robespierre had agreed to the new Constitution (reported by Paine's friend, H^rault de S^chelles) and when even that dubious instrument returns with the popular sanction, all may be well. The Convention, which is doing everything except what it was elected to do, will then dissolve, and the happy Republic re- member it only as a nightmare. So Paine takes heart again, abandons the bowl of forgetfulness» and becomes a republican Socrates instructing dis^ eiples in an old French garden.

CHAPTER IV.

A GARDEN IN THE FAUBOURG ST. DENIS.

Sir George Trevelyan has written a pregnant passage, reminding the world of the moral burden which radicals in England had to bear a hundred years ago.

" When to speak or write one's mind on politics is to obtain the reputation, and render one's self liable to the punishment of a criminal, social discredit, with all its attendant moral dan- gers, soon attaches itself to the more humble opponents of a ministry. To be outside the law as a publisher or a pam- phleteer is only less trying to conscience and conduct than to be outside the law as a smuggler or a poacher ; and those who, ninety years ago, placed themselves within the grasp of the penal statutes as they were administered in England and bar- barously perverted in Scotland were certain to be very bold men, and pretty sure to be unconventional up to the uttermost verge of respectability. As an Italian Liberal was sometimes half a bravo, and a Spanish patriot often more than half a brigand, so a British Radical under George the Third had generally, it must be confessed, a dash of the Bohemian. Such, in a more or less mitigated form, were Paine and Cob- bett, Hunt, Hone, and Holcroft ; while the same causes in part account for the elfish vagaries of Shelley and the grim im- proprieties of Godwin. But when we recollect how these, and the like of these, gave up every hope of worldly prosperity, and set their life and liberty in continual hazard for the sake of that personal and political freedom which we now exercise as unconsciously as we breathe the air, it would be too exacting

6i

62 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1795

to require that each and all of them should have lived as deco- rously as Perceval, and died as solvent as Bishop Tomline." '

To this right verdict it may be added that, even at the earlier period when it was most applicable, the radicals-could only produce one rival in profli- gacy (John Wilkes) to their aristocratic oppressors. It may also be noted as a species of homage that the slightest failings of eminent reformers become historic. The vices of Burke and Fox are forgot- ten. Who remembers that the younger Pitt was brought to an early grave by the bottle ? But every fault of those who resisted his oppression is placed under a solar microscope. Although, as Sir George affirms, the oppressors largely caused the faults, this homage to the higher moral standard of the reformers may be accepted.'

It was, indeed, a hard time for reformers in Eng- land. Among them were many refined gentlemen who felt that it was no country for a thinker and scholar to live in. Among the pathetic pictures of the time was that of the twelve scholars, headed by Coleridge and Southey, and twelve ladies, who found the atmosphere of England too impure for

' " Early History of Charles James Fox/' American ed., p. 440.

* The following document was found among the papers of Mr. John Hall, originally of Leicester, England, and has been forwarded to me by his descendant, J. Dutton Steele, Jr., of Philadelphia.

*' A Copy of a Letter from the chairman of a meeting of the Gentry and Qergy at Atherstone, written in consequence of an envious schoolmaster and two or three others who informed the meeting that the Excise Officers of Polesworth were employed in distributing the Rights of Man ; but which was ▼ery false.

*' Sir : I should think it unnecessary to inform you, that the purport of his Majesty's proclamation in the Month of May last, and the numerous meetings which arc daily taking place both in Town and Country, are for the avowed purpose of suppressing treasonable and seditious writings amongst which

1793] ^ GARDEN IN THE FAUBOURG ST. DENIS. 63

any but slaves to breathe, and proposed to seek in America some retreat where their pastoral " pan- tisocrasy " might be realized. Lack of funds pre- vented the fulfilment of this dream, but that it should have been an object of concert and endeavor, in that refined circle at Bristol, is a memorable sign of that dreadful time. In the absence of means to form such communities, preserving the culture and charm of a society evolved out of barbarism, apart from the walls of a remaining political barbarism threatening it with their ruins, some scholars were compelled, like Coleridge, to rejoin the feudalists, and help them to buttress the crumbling castle. They secured themselves from the social deteriora- tion of living on wild "honey-dew" in a wilder- ness, at cost of wearing intellectual masks. Some fled to America, like Cobbett. But others fixed their abode in Paris, where radicalism was fashion- able and invested with the charm of the salon and the theatre.

Before the declaration of war Paine had been on friendly terms with some eminent Englishmen in Paris : he dined every week with Lord Lauder-

Mr. Payne's Rights of Man ranks most conspicuous. Were I not informed yon have taken some pains in spreading that publication, I write to say If yon don't from this time adopt a different kind of conduct you will be taken notice of in such way as may prove very disagreeable.

•• The Eyes of the Country are upon you and you will do well in future to ihew jrouiself faithful to the Master who employs you. ** I remain,

•• Your Hble servant,

'* (Signed) Jos. Boultbee. «' Bazterby, xsth Deer., '92.

"N. 6. The letter was written the next morning after the Meeting where most of the Loyal souls got drunk to an uncommon degree. They drank his Majesty's health so often the reckoning amounted to 7s. 6d. each. One of the informers threw down a shilling and ran away."

64 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

dale, Dr. John Moore, an author, and others in some restaurant. After most of these had followed Lord Gower to England he had to be more guarded. A British agent, Major Semple, approached him under the name of Major Lisle. He professed to be an Irish patriot, wore the green cockade, and desired introduction to the Minister of War. Paine fortunately knew too many Irishmen to fall into this snare.^ But General Miranda, as we have seen, fared better. Paine was, indeed, so overrun with visitors and adventurers that he appropriated two mornings of each week at the Philadelphia House for levees. These, however, became insuf- ficient to stem the constant stream of visitors, in- cluding spies and lion-hunters, so that he had little time for consultation with the men and women whose co-operation he needed in public affairs. He therefore leased an out-of-the-way house, reserving knowledge of it for particular friends, while still retaining his address at the Philadelphia Hotel, where the levees were continued.

The irony of fate had brought an old mansion of Madame de Pompadour to become the residence of Thomas Paine and his half dozen English dis- ciples. It was then, and still is, No. 63 Faubourg St. Denis. Here, where a King's mistress held her merry f6tes, and issued the decrees of her reign — sometimes of terror, — the little band of English humanitarians read and conversed, and sported in the garden. In a little essay on " Forgetfulness,'* addressed to his friend. Lady Smith, Paine described these lodgings.

^ Rickman, p. 139.

1793] ^ GARDEN IN THE FAUBOURG ST. DENIS. 65

" They were the most agreeable, for situation, of any I ever had in Paris, except that they were too remote from the Con- vention, of which I was then a member. But this was recom- pensed by their being also remote from the alarms and con- fusion into which the interior of Paris was then often thrown* The news of those things used to arrive to us, as if we were in a state of tranquillity in the country. The house, which was enclosed by a wall and gateway from the street, was a good deal like an old mansion farm-house, and the court-yard was like a farm yard, stocked with fowls, — ducks, turkies, and geese ; which, for amusement, we used to feed out of the par- lor window on the ground floor. There were some hutches for rabbits, and a sty with two pigs. Beyond was a garden of more than an acre of ground, well laid out, and stocked with excellent fruit trees. The orange, apricot, and greengage plum were the best I ever tasted ; and it is the only place where I saw the wild cucumber. The place had formerly been occupied by some curious person.

*' My apartments consisted of three rooms ; the first for wood, water, etc.; the next was the bedroom ; and beyond it the sitting room, which looked into the garden through a glass door ; and on the outside there was a small landing place railed in, and a flight of narrow stairs almost hidden by the vines that grew over it, by which I could descend into the garden without going down stairs through the house. ... I used to find some relief by walking alone in the garden, after dark, and cursing with hearty good will the authors of that terrible sys- tem that had turned the character of the Revolution I had been proud to defend. I went but little to the Convention, and then only to make my appearance, because I found it im- possible to join in their tremendous decrees, and useless and dangerous to oppose them. My having voted and spoken ex- tensively, more so than any other member, against the execu- tion of the king, had already fixed a mark upon me ; neither dared any of my associates in the Convention to translate and speak in French for me anything I might have dared to have written. . . . Pen and ink were then of no use to me ; no good could be done by writing, and no printer dared to print ; and whatever I might have written, for my private amusement, as

vou II.— 5

66 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

anecdotes of the times, would have been continually exposed to be examined, and tortured into any meaning that the rage of party might fix upon it. And as to softer subjects, my heart was in distress at the fate of my friends, and my harp hung upon the weeping willows.

'' As it was summer, we spent most of our time in the garden, and passed it away in those childish amusements that serve to keep reflection from the mind, — such as marbles, Scotch hops, battledores, etc., at which we were all pretty expert. In this retired manner we remained about six or seven weeks, and our landlord went every evening into the city to bring us the news of the day and the evening journal"

The " we " included young Johnson, Mr. and Mrs. Christie, Mr. Choppin, probably Mr. Shap- worth, an American, and M. Laborde, a scientific friend of Paine. These appear to have entered with Paine into co-operative housekeeping, though taking their chief meals at the restaurants. In the evenings they were joined by others, — the Brissots (before the arrest), Nicholas Bonneville, Joel Bar- low, Captain Imlay, Mary WoUstonecraft, the Rolands. Mystical Madame Roland dreaded Paine's power, which she considered more adapted to pull down than to build, but has left a vivid im- pression of "the boldness of his conceptions, the originality of his style, the striking truths he throws out bravely among those whom they offend." The Mr. Shapworth alluded to is mentioned in a manu- script journal of Daniel Constable, sent me by his nephew, Clair J. Grece, LL.D. This English gentleman visited Baton Rouge and Shapworth's plantation in 1822. "Mr. S.," he says, "has a daughter married to the Governor [Robin- son], has travelled in Europe, married a French

1793] ^ GARDEN IN THE FAUBOURG ST. DENIS. 67

lady. He is a warm friend of Thomas Paine, as is his son-in-law. He lived with Paine many months at Paris. He [Paine] was then a sober, correct gentleman in appearance and manner." The English refugees, persecuted for selling the " Rights of Man," were, of course, always welcomed by Paine, and poor Rickman was his guest during this summer of 1 793.^ The following reminiscence of Paine, at a time when Gouverneur Morris was (for reasons that presently appear) reporting him to his American friends as generally drunk, was written by Rickman :

" He usually rose about seven. 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 in Paris. The little happy circle who lived with him will ever remember those days with delight: with these select friends he would talk of his boyish days, played at chess, whist, piquet, or cribbage, and enliven the moments by many interesting anecdotes : with these he would

' Rickman appears to. have escaped from England in 1792, according to the following sonnet sent me by Dr. Grece. It is headed : " Sonnet to my Little Girl, 1792. Written at Calais, on being pursued by cruel prosecution and persecution. "

" Farewell, sweet babe ! and mayst thou never know. Like me, the pressure of exceeding woe. Some griefs (for they are human nature's right)

On life's eventful stage will be thy lot ; Some generous cares to clear thy mental sight,

Some pains, in happiest hours, perhaps, begot ; Bat mayst thou ne'er be, like thy father, driven

From a loved partner, family, and home, Snatched from each heart-felt bliss, domestic heaven !

From native shores, and all that 's valued, roam. Oh, may bad governments, the source of human woe. Ere thou becom'st mature, receive their deadly blow ; Then mankind's greatest curse thou ne'er wilt know.**

68 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. \M9Z

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 Brissot's family, or some particular friend, in the evening, which was his frequent cus- tom, he joined again the society of his favorites 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 polit- ical course in France, as everywhere else, let the government or clamor or faction of the day be what it might, with firm- ness, with clearness, and without a shadow of turning."

In the spring of 1890 the present writer visited the spot. The lower front of the old mansion is divided into shops, — a Fruiterer being appropri- ately next the gateway, which now opens into a wide thoroughfare. Above the rooms once occu- pied by Paine was the sign '* Ecrivain Publique," — placed there by a Mademoiselle who wrote letters and advertisements for humble neighbors not expert in penmanship. At the end of what was once the garden is a Printer's office, in which was a large lithograph portrait of Victor Hugo. The printer, his wife, and little daughter were folding publica- tions of the '* Extreme Left." Near the door re- mains a veritable survival of the garden and its living tenants which amused Paine and his friends. There were two ancient fruit trees, of which one was dying, but the other budding in the spring sun- shine. There were ancient coops with ducks, and pigeon-houses with pigeons, also rabbits, and some flowers. This little nook, of perhaps forty square feet, and its animals, had been there — so an old

1793] ^ GARDEN IN THE FAUBOURG ST. DENIS. 69

inhabitant told me — time out of mind. They be- longed to nobody in particular ; the pigeons were fed by the people around ; the fowls were probably kept there by some poultryman. There were eager groups attending every stage of the investigation. The exceptional antiquity of the mansion had been recognized by its occupants, — several families, — but without curiosity, and perhaps with regret Comparatively few had heard of Paine.

Shortly before I had visited the garden near Florence which Boccaccio's immortal tales have kept in perennial beauty through five centuries. It may be that in the far future some brother of Boccace will bequeath to Paris as sweet a legend of the garden where beside the plague of blood the prophet of the universal Republic realized his dream in microcosm. Here gathered sympathetic spirits from America, England, France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, freed from prejudices of race, rank, or nationality, striving to be mutually helpful, amus- ing themselves with Arcadian sports, studying nature, enriching each other by exchange of expe- riences. It is certain that in all the world there was no group of men and women more disinterestedly absorbed in the work of benefiting their fellow- beings. They could not, however, like Boccaccio's ladies and gentlemen " kill Death " by their witty tales ; for presently beloved faces disappeared from their circle, and the cruel axe was gleaming over them.

And now the old hotel became the republican capitol of Europe. There sat an international Premier with his Cabinet, concentrated on the work

70 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

of saving the Girondins. He was indeed treated by the Executive government as a Minister. It was supposed by Paine and believed by his adher- ents that Robespierre had for him some dislike. Paine in later years wrote of Robespierre as a "hypocrite," and the epithet may have a signifi- cance not recognized by his readers. It is to me probable that Paine considered himself deceived by Robespierre with professions of respect, if not of friendliness before being cast into prison ; a con- clusion naturally based on requests from the Min- isters for opinions on public affairs. The archives of the Revolution contain various evidences of this, and several papers by Paine evidently in re- ply to questions. We may feel certain that every subject propounded was carefully discussed in Paine's little cosmopolitan Cabinet before his opin- ion was transmitted to the revolutionary Cabinet of Committees. In reading the subjoined docu- ments it must be borne in mind that Robespierre had not yet been suspected of the cruelty presently associated with his name. The Queen and the Girondist leaders were yet alive. Of these leaders Paine was known to be the friend, and it was of the utmost importance that he should be suavely loyal to the government that had inherited these prison- ers from Marat's time.

The first of these papers is erroneously endorsed ''January 1793. Thom. Payne. Copie," in the French State Archives.^ Its reference to the defeat of the Duke of York at Dunkirk assigns its date to the late summer. It is headed, " Observa-

* £tats Unis. Vol. 37. Document 39.

1793] ^ GARDEN IN THE FAUBOURG ST. DENIS. 7I

tions on the situation of the Powers joined against France."

" It is always useful to know the position and the designs of one's enemies. It is much easier to do so by combining and comparing the events, and by examining the consequences which result from them, than by forming one's judgment by letters found or intercepted. These letters could be fabricated with the intention of deceiving, but events or circumstances have a character which is proper to them. If in the course of our political operations we mistake the designs of our enemy, it leads us to do precisely that which he desired we should dOy and it happens, by the fact, but against our inten- tions, that we work for him.

'' It appears at first sight that the coalition against France is not of the nature of those which form themselves by a treaty. It has been the work of circumstances. It is a heterogeneous mass, the parts of which dash against each other, and often neutralise themselves. They have but one single point of reunion, the re-establishment of the monarchical government in France. Two means can conduct them to the execution of this plan. The first is, to re-establish the Bourbons, and with them the Monarchy ; the second, to make a division similar to that which they have made in Poland, and to reign themselves in France. The political questions to be solved are, then, to know on which of these two plans it is most probable, the united Powers will act ; and which are the points of these plans on which they will agree or disagree.

'^ Supposing their aim to be the re-establishment of the Bourbons, the difficulty which will present itself, will be, to know who will be their Allies ?

'' Will England consent to the re-establishment of the com- pact of family in the person of the Bourbons, against whom she has machinated and fought since her existence ? Will Prussia consent to re-establish the alliance which subsisted between France and Austria, or will Austria wish to re-estab- lish the ancient alliance between France and Prussia, which was directed against her ? Will Spain, or any other maritime Power, allow France and her Marine to ally themselves to

72 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

England ? In fine, will any of these Powers consent to fur- nish forces which could be directed against herself ? However, all these cases present themselves in the hypothesis of the restoration of the Bourbons.

'' If we suppose that their plan be the dismemberment of France, difficulties will present themselves under another form, but not of the same nature. It will no longer be ques- tion, in this case, of the Bourbons, as their position will be worse ; for if their preser\'ation is a part of their first plan, their destruction ought to enter in the second ; because it is neces- sary for the success of the dismembering that not a single pre- tendant to the Crown of France should exist.

''As one must think of all the probabilities in political cal- culations, it is not unlikely that some of the united Powers, having in view the first of these plans, and others the second, — that this may be one of the causes of their disagreement. It is to be remembered that Russia recognised a Regency from the beginning of Spring ; not one of the other Pow- ers followed her example. The distance of Russia from France, and the different countries by which she is separated from her, leave no doubt as to her dispositions with regard to the plan of division ; and as much as one can form an opinion on the circumstances, it is not her scheme.

''The coalition directed against France, is composed of two kinds of Powers. The Maritime Powers, not having the same interest as the others, will be divided, as to the execution of the project of division.

" I do not hesitate to believe that the politic of the English Government is to foment the scheme of dismembering, and the entire destruction of the Bourbon family.

" The difficulty which must arise, in this last hypothesis, be- tween the united Maritime Powers proceeds from their views being entirely opposed.

" The trading vessels of the Northern Nations, from Hol- land to Russia, must pass through the narrow Channel, which lies between Dunkirk and the coasts of England ; and con- sequently not one of them, will allow this latter Power to have forts on both sides of this Strait. The audacity with which she has seized the neutral vessels ought to demon- strate to all Nations how much her schemes increase their

1793] ^ GARDEN IN THE FAUBOURG ST. DENIS. 73

danger, and menace the security of their present and future commerce.

'' Supposing then that the other Nations oppose the plans of England, she will be forced to cease the war with us ; or, if she continues it, the Northern Nations will become interested in the safety of France.

" There are three distinct parties in England at this moment: the Government party, the Revolutionary party, and an inter- medial party, — which is only opposed to the war on account of the expense it entails, and the harm it does commerce and manufacture. I am speaking of the People, and not of the Parliament The latter is divided into two parties : the Min- isterial, and the Anti-Ministerial. The Revolutionary party, the intermedial party and the Anti-Ministerial party will all rejoice, publicly or privately, at the defeat of the Duke of York's army, at Dunkirk. The intermedial party, because they hope that this defeat will finish the war. The Antimin- isterial party, because they hope it will overthrow the Minis- try. And all the three because they hate the Duke of Yort Such is the state of the different parties in England.

" Signed : Thomas Paine."

In the same volume of the State Archives (Paris) is the following note by Paine, with its translation :

" You mentioned to me that saltpetre was becoming scarce. I communicate to you a project of the late Captain Paul Jones, which, if successfully put in practice, will furnish you with that article.

'^ All the English East India ships put into St. Helena, off the coast of Africa, on their return from India to England. A great part of their ballast is saltpetre. Captain Jones, who had been at St. Helena, says that the place can be very easily taken. His proposal was to send off a small squadron for that purpose, to keep the English flag flying at port. The English vessels will continue coming in as usual. By this means it will be a long time before the Government of Eng- land can have any knowledge of what has happened. The success of this depends so much upon secrecy that I wish you would translate this yourself, and give it to Barr^re."

74 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

In the next volume (38) of the French Ar- chives, marked " fetats Unis, 1793," is a remarka- ble document (No. 39), entitled " A Citizen of America to the Citizens of Europe." The name of Paine is only pencilled on it, and it was probably written by him ; but it purports to have been writ- ten in America, and is dated " Philadelphia, July 28, 1793; 1 8th Year of Independence." It is a clerk's copy, so that it cannot now be known whether the ruse of its origin in Philadelphia was due to Paine or to the government It is an ex- tended paper, and repeats to some extent, though not literally, what is said in the " Observations " quoted above. Possibly the government, on receiv- ing that paper (Document 39 also), desired Paine to write it out as an address to the " Citizens of Europe." It does not appear to have been pub- lished. The first four paragraphs of this paper, combined with the " Observations," will suffice to show its character.

'' Understanding that a proposal is intended to be made at the ensuing meeting of the Congress of the United States of America, to send Commissioners to Europe to confer with the Ministers of all the Neutral Powers, for the purpose of nego- ciating preliminaries of Peace, I address this letter to you on that subject, and on the several matters connected therewith.

''In order to discuss this subject through all its circum- stances, it will be necessary to take a review of the state of Europe, prior to the French revolution. It will from thence appear, that the powers leagued against France are fighting to attain an object, which, were it possible to be attained, would be injurious to themselves.

'' This is not an uncommon error in the history of wars and governments, of which the conduct of the English government in the war against America is a striking instance. She com-

1793] ^ GARDEN IN THE FAUBOURG ST. DENIS. 7$

menced that war for the avowed purpose of subjugating America ; and after wasting upwards of one hundred millions sterling, and then abandoning the object, she discovered in the course of three or four years, that the prosperity of England was increased, instead of being diminished, by the indepen- dence of America. In short, every circumstance is pregnant with some natural effect, upon which intentions and opinions have no influence ; and the political error lies in misjudging what the effect nrfll be. En^and misjudged it in the American war, and the reasons I shall now offer will shew, that she mis- judges it in the present war. — In discussing this subject, I leave out of the question every thing respecting forms and S3rstems of government ; for as all the governments of Europe differ from each other, there is no reason that the government of France should not differ from the rest.

"The clamours continually raised in all the countries of Europe were, that the family of the Bourbons was become too powerful ; that the intrigues of the court of France endangered the peace of Europe. Austria saw with a jealous eye the con- nection of France with Prussia ; and Prussia, in her turn became jealous of the connection of France with Austria; England had wasted millions unsuccessfully in attempting to prevent the family compact with Spain ; Russia disliked the alliance between France and Turkey ; and Turkey became apprehensive of the inclination of France towards an alliance with Russia. Sometimes the quadruple alliance alarmed some of the powers, and at other times a contrary system alarmed others, and in all those cases the charge was always made against the intrigues of the Bourbons."

In each of these papers a plea for the imperilled Girondins is audible. Each is a reminder that he, Thomas Paine, friend of the Brissotins, is continu- ing their anxious and loyal vigilance for the Re- public And during all this summer Paine had good reason to believe that his friends were safe. Robespierre was eloquently deprecating useless effusion of blood. As for Paine himself, he was

^ THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. \M9Z

not only consulted on public questions, but trusted in practical affairs. He was still able to help Americans and Englishmen who invoked his aid. Writing to Lady Smith concerning two applications of that kind, he says :

'' I went into my chamber to write and sign a certificate for them, which I intended to take to the guard house to obtain their release. Just as I had finished it, a man came into my room, dressed in the Parisian uniform of a captain, and spoke to me in good English, and with a good address. He told me that two young men, Englishmen, were arrested and detained in the guard house, and that the section (meaning those who represented and acted for the section) had sent him to ask me if I knew them, in which case they would be liberated. This matter being soon settled between us, he talked to me about the Revolution, and something about the ' Rights of Man,' which he had read in English ; and at parting offered me, in a polite and civil manner, his services. And who do you think the man was who offered me his services ? It was no other than the public executioner, Samson, who guillotined the King and all who were guillotined in Paris, and who lived in the same street with me."

There appeared no reason to suppose this a domiciliary visit, or that it had any relation to any- thing except the two Englishmen. Samson was not a detective. It soon turned out, however, that there was a serpent creeping into Paine's little garden in the Faubourg St. Denis. He and his guests knew it not, however, until all their hopes fell with the leaves and blossoms amid which they had passed a summer to which Paine, from his prison, looked back with fond recollection.

CHAPTER V.

A CONSPIRACY.

" He sufifered under Pontius Pilate." Pilate's gallant struggle to save Jesus from lynchers sur- vives in no kindly memorial save among the peas- ants of Oberammergau. It is said that the im- pression once made in England by the Miracle Play has left its relic in the miserable puppet-play Punch and Judy {Pontius cum Judom) ; but mean- while the Church repeats, throughout Christen- dom, "He sufifered under Pontius Pilate." It is almost normal in history that the brand of infamy falls on the wrong man. This is the penalty of personal eminence, and especially of eloquence. In the opening years of the French Revolution the two men in Europe who seemed omnipotent were Pitt and Robespierre. By reason of their elo- quence, their ingenious defences, their fame, the columns of credit and discredit were begun in their names, and have so continued. English liberalism, remembering the imprisoned and flying writers, still repeats, " They sufifered under William Pitt." French republics transmit their legend of Condor- cet, Camille Desmoulins, Brissot, Malesherbes, ** They sufifered under Robespierre." The friends, disciples, biographers, of Thomas Paine have it

77

78 THE UFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

in their creed that he suflfered under both Pitt and Robespierre, It is certain that neither Pitt nor Robespierre was so strong as he appeared Their hands cannot be cleansed, but they are historic scapegoats of innumerable sins they never com- mitted.

Unfortunately for Robespierre's memory, in England and America especially, those who for a century might have been the most ready ta vindicate a slandered revolutionist have been con- fronted by the long imprisonment of the author of the " Rights of Man," and by the discovery of his virtual death-sentence in Robespierre's hand- writing. Louis Blanc, Robespierre's great vindi- cator, could not, we may assume, explain this ugly fact, which he passes by in silence. He has proved, conclusively as I think, that Robespierre was among the revolutionists least guilty of the Terror; that he was murdered by a conspiracy of those whose cruelties he was trying to restrain ; that, when no longer alive to answer, they bur- dened him with their crimes, as the only means of saving their heads. Robespierre's doom was sealed when he had real power, and used it to pre- vent any organization of the constitutional gov- ernment which might have checked revolutionary excesses. He then, because of a superstitious faith in the auspices of the Supreme Being, threw the reins upon the neck of the revolution he after- wards vainly tried to curb. Others, who did not wish to restrain it, seized the reins and when the precipice was reached took care that Robespierre should be hurled over it

1793] ^ CONSPIRACY. 79

Many allegations against Robespiene have been disproved He tried to save Danton and Camilla Desmoulins, and did save seventy-three deputies whose death the potentates of the Committee of Public Safety had planned. But against him still lies that terrible sentence found in his Note Book, and reported by a Committee to the Convention : ** Demand that Thomas Payne be decreed of accusation for the interests of America as much as of France,"^

The Committee on Robespierre's papers, and es- pecially Courtois its Chairman, suppressed some things favorable to him (published long after), and it can never be known whether they found any- thing further about Paine. They made a strong point of the sentence found, and added : " Why Thomas Payne more than another? Because he helped to establish the liberty of both worlds."

An essay by Paine on Robespierre has been lost, and his opinion of the man can be gathered only from occasional remarks. After the Courtois re- port he had to accept the theory of Robespierre's malevolence and hypocrisy. He then, for the first time, suspected the same hand in a previous act of hostility towards him. In August, 1 793, an address had been sent to the Convention from Arras, a town in his constituency, saying that they had lost confidence in Paine. This failed of success because a counter-address came from St. Omen Robespierre being a native of Arras, it now seemed clear that he had instigated the address. It was,

' " Demander que Thomas Pajne soit d^cr^te d'accusation pour les in- tMts de rAmerique antant que de la France/'

80 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

however, almost certainly the work of Joseph Le- bon, who, as Paine once wrote, '* made the streets of Arras run with blood." Lebon was his sup- pliant, and could not sit in the Convention until Paine left it.

But although Paine would appear to have as- cribed his misfortunes to Robespierre at the time, he was evidently mystified by the whole thing. No word against him had ever fallen from Robes- pierre's lips, and if that leader had been hostile to him why should he have excepted him from the accusations of his associates, have consulted him through the summer, and even after imprisonment, kept him unharmed for months ? There is a notable sentence in Paine's letter (from prison) to Monroe, elsewhere considered, showing that while there he had connected his trouble rather with the Com- mittee of Public Safety than with Robespierre.

"However discordant the late American Minister Gouv- emoeur Morris, and the late French Committee of Public Safety, were, it suited the purposes of both that I should be continued in arrestation. The former wished to prevent my return to America, that I should not expose his misconduct ; and the latter lest I should publish to the world the history of its wickedness. Whilst that Minister and that Committee continued, I had no expectation of liberty. I speak here of the Committee of which Robespierre was a member."

. Paine wrote this letter on September lo, 1794. 1 Robespierre, three months before that, had ceased to attend the Committee, disavowing responsibility for its actions : Paine was not released. Robes- pierre, when the letter to Monroe was written, had been dead more than six months : Paine was not

17931 ^ CONSPIRACY. 8l

released The prisoner had therefore good reason to look behind Robespierre for his enemies ; and although the fatal sentence found in the Note Book, and a private assurance of BarrSre, caused him to ascribe his wrongs to Robespierre, farther reflection convinced him that hands more hid- den had also been at worlc He knew that Robes- pierre was a man of measured words, and pondered the sentence that he should " be decreed of accusa- tion for the interests of America as much as of France." In a letter written in 1802, Paine said: " There must have been a coalition in sentiment, if not in fact, between the terrorists of America and the terrorists of France, and Robespierre must have known it, or he could not have had the idea of putting America into the bill of accusation against me." Robespierre, he remarks, assigned no reason /

for his imprisonment. /

The secret for which Paine groped has remained hidden for a hundred years. It is painful to reveal it now, but historic justice, not only to the memory of Paine, but to that of some eminent contem- poraries of his, demands that the facts be brought to light

The appointment of Gouvemeur Morris to be Minister to France, in 1792, passed the Senate by 16 to II votes. The President did not fail to ad- vise him of this reluctance, and admonish him to be more cautious in his conduct. In the same year Paine took his seat in the Convention. Thus the royalist and republican tendencies, whose struggles made chronic war in Washington's Cabinet, had their counterpart in Paris, where our Minister

VOL. n.— 6

82 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

Morris wrote royalist, and Paine republican, mani- festoes. It will have been seen, by quotations from his diary already given, that Gouvemeur Morris harbored a secret hostility towards Paine ; and it is here assumed that those entries and inci- dents are borne in mind. The Diary shows an ap- pearance of friendly terms between the two ; Morris dines Paine and receives information from him. The royalism of Morris and humanity of Paine brought them into a common desire to save the life of Louis.

But about the same time the American Minister's own position became a subject of anxiety to him. He informs Washington (December 28, 1 792) that Genfet's appointment as Minister to the United States had not been announced to him (Morris). " Perhaps the Ministry think it is a trait of repub- licanism to omit those forms which were anciently used to express good will." His disposition towards Paine was not improved by finding that it was to him Gen6t had reported. " I have not yet seen M. Gen6t," writes Morris again, "but Mr. Paine is to introduce him to me." Soon after this Morris became aware that the French Ministry had asked his recall, and had Paine also known this the event might have been dififerent The Minister's suspicion that Paine had instigated the recall gave deadliness to his resentment when the inevitable break came between them.

The occasion of this arose early in the spring. When war had broken out between England and France, Morris, whose sympathies were with Eng- land, was eager to rid America of its treaty obli-

1793] ^ CONSPIRACY. 83

gations to France. He so wrote repeatedly to Jefferson, Secretary of State. An opportunity presently occurred for acting on this idea. In re- prisal for the seizure by British cruisers of American ships conveying provisions to France, French cruisers were ordered to do the like, and there were presently ninety-two captured American ves- sels at Bordeaux. They were not allowed to re- load and go to sea lest their cargoes should be cap- tured by England. Morris pointed out to the French Government this violation of the treaty with America, but wrote to Jefferson that he would leave it to them in Philadelphia to insist on the treaty's observance, or to accept the ''unfettered" condition in which its violation by France left them. Consultation with Philadelphia was a slow business, however, and the troubles of the American vessels were urgent. The captains, not suspecting that the American Minister was satisfied with the treaty's violation, were angry at his indifference about their relief, and applied to Paine, Unable to move Morris, Paine asked him " if he did not feel ashamed to take the money of the country and do nothing for it" It was, of course, a part of Morris' scheme for ending the treaty to point out its viola- tion and the hardships resulting, and this he did ; but it would defeat his scheme to obtain the practical relief from those hardships which the un- theoretical captains demanded. On August 20th, the captains were angrily repulsed by the American Minister, who, however, after they had gone, must have reflected that he had gone too far, and was in an untenable position ; for on the same day he

84 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

wrote to the French Minister a statement of the complaint

"I do not [he adds] pretend to interfere in the internal concerns of the French Republic, and I am persuaded that the Convention has had weighty reasons for laying upon Americans the restriction of which the American captains complain. The result will nevertheless be that this prohibi- tion will severely aggrieve the parties interested, and put an end to the commerce between France and the United States."

The note is half-hearted, but had the captains known it was written they might have been more patient. Morris owed his subsequent humiliation partly to his bad manners. The captains went off to Paine, and proposed to draw up a public protest against the American Minister. Paine advised against this, and recommended a petition to the Convention. This was offered on August 2 2d. In this the captains said: "We, who know your political situation, do iiot come to you to demand the rigorous execution of the treaties of alliance which unite us to you. We confine ourselves to asking for the present, to carry provisions to your colonies." To this the Convention promptly and favorably responded.

It was a double humiliation to Morris that the first important benefit gained by Americans since his appointment should be secured without his help, and that it should come through Paine. And it was a damaging blow to his scheme of transfer- ring to England our alliance with France. A " violation " of the treaty excused by the only suf- ferers could not be cited as " releasing " the United States. A cruel circumstance for Morris was that

1793] ^ CONSPIRACY. 8$

the French Minister wrote (October 14th) : *' You must be satisfied, sir, with the manner in which the request presented by the American captains from Bordeaux, has been received " — and so forth. Four days before, Morris had written to Jefferson, speak- ing of the thing as mere " mischief," and belittling the success, which " only served an ambition so contemptible that I shall draw over it the veil of oblivion."

The " contemptible ambition " thus veiled from Paine's friend, Jefferson, was revealed by Morris to others. Some time before (June 25th), he had written to Robert Morris :

" I suspected that Paine was intriguing against me, although he put on a face of attachment. Since that period I am con- firmed in the idea, for he came to my house with Col. Oswald, and being a little more drunk than usual, behaved extremely ill, and through his insolence I discovered clearly his vain ambition."

This was probably written after Paine's rebuke al- ready quoted. It is not likely that Colonel Oswald would have taken a tipsy man eight leagues out to Morris' retreat, Sainport, on business, or that the tipsy man would remember the words of his rebuke two years after, when Paine records them in his letter to Washington. At any rate, if Morris saw no deeper into Paine's physical than into his mental condition, the " insolent " words were those of soberness. For Paine's private letters prove him ignorant of any intrigue against Morris, and under an impression that the Minister had himself asked for recall ; also that, instead of being ambi«

86 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

tious to succeed Morris, he was eager to get out of France and back to America. The first expression of French dissatisfaction with Morris had been made through De Ternant, (February 20th, 1 793,) whom he had himself been the means of sending as Minister to the United States. The positive recall was made through Gen6t.^ It would appear that Morris must have had sore need of a scape- goat to fix on poor Paine, when his intrigues with the King's agents, his trust of the King's money, his plot for a second attempt of the King to escape, his concealment of royalist leaders in his house, had been his main ministerial performances for some time after his appointment Had the French known half as much as is now revealed in Morris' Diary, not even his office could have shielded him from arrest. That the executive there knew much of it, appears in the revolutionary archives. There is reason to believe that Paine, instead of intriguing against Morris, had, in ignorance of his intrigues, brought suspicion on himself by continuing his in- tercourse with the Minister. The following letter

* On September i, 1792, Morris answered a request of the executive of the republic that he could not comply until he had received '* orders from his Court," {les ordres cU ma cour). The representatives of the new-bom repub- lic were scandalized by such an expression from an American Minister, and also by his intimacy with Lord and Lady Gower. They may have suspected what Morris' " Diary " now suggests, that he (Morris) owed his appointment to this English Ambassador and his wife. On August 17, 1792, Lord Gower was recalled, in hostility to the republic, but during the further weeks of his stay in Paris the American Minister frequented their house. From the recall Morris was saved for a year by the intervention of Edmund Randolph. (See my ** Omitted Chapters of History," etc, p. 149.) Randolph met with a Morrisian reward. Morris (** Diary," ii., p. 98) records an accusation of Randolph, to which he listened in the office of Lord GrenviUe, Secretary of State, which plainly meant his (Randolph's) ruin, which followed. He knew it to be untrue, but no defence is mentioned.

1793] ^ CONSPIRACY. %^

of Paine to Barr&re, chief Committeeman of Public Safety, dated September 5th, shows him protecting Morris while he is trying to do something for the American captains.

" I send you the papers you asked me for.

" The idea you have to send Commissioners to Congress, and of which you spoke to me yesterday, is excellent, and very necessary at this moment. Mr. Jefiferson, formerly Minister of the United States in France, and actually Minister for Foreign Afifairs at Congress, is an ardent defender of the in- terests of France. Gouvemeur Morris, who is here now, is badly disposed towards you. I believe he has expressed the wish to be recalled. The reports which he will make on his arrival will not be to the advantage of France. This event necessitates the sending direct of Commissioners from the Convention. Morris is not popular in America. He has set the Americans who are here against him, as also the Captains of that Nation who have come from Bordeaux, by his negli- gence with regard to the afifair they had to treat about with the Convention. Between us [jiV] he told them : * That they had thrown themselves into the lion's mouth, and it was for them to get out of it as best they could.' I shall return to America on one of the vessels which will start from Bordeaux in the month of October. This was the project I had formed, should the rupture not take place between America and Eng- land ; but now it is necessary for me to be there as soon as possible. The Congress will require a great deal of informa- tion, independently of this. It will soon be seven years that I have been absent from America, and my afifairs in that country have sufifered considerably through my absence. My house and farm buildings have been entirely destroyed through an accidental fire.

'^ Morris has many relations in America, who are excellent patriots. I enclose you a letter which I received from his brother. General Louis Morris, who was a member of the Con- gress at the time of the Declaration of Independence. You will see by it that he writes like a good patriot. I only men- tion this so that you may know the true state of things. It will

88 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

be fit to have respect for Gouvemeur Morris, on account of his relations, who, as I said above, are excellent patriots.

'' There are about 45 American vessels at Bordeaux, at the present ftioment. If the English Government wished to take revenge on the Americans, these vessels would be very much exposed during their passage. The American Captains left Paris yesterday. I advised them, on leaving, to demand a convoy of the Convention, in case they heard it said that the English had begun reprisals against the Americans, if only to conduct as far as the Bay of Biscay, at the expense of the American Government. But if the Convention determines to send Commissioners to Congress, they will be sent in a ship of the line. But it would be better for the Commissioners to go in one of the best American sailing vessels, and for the ship of the line to serve as a convoy ; it could also serve to convoy the ships that will return to France charged with flour. I am sorry that we cannot converse together, but if you could give me a rendezvous, where I could see Mr. Otto, I shall be happy and ready to be there. If events force the American captains to demand a convoy, it will be to me that they will write on the subject, and not to Morris, against whom they have grave reasons of complaint Your friend, etc.

Thomas Paine."*

This is the only letter written by Paine to any one in France about Gouvemeur Morris, so far as I can discover, and not knowing French he could only communicate in writing. The American Ar- chives are equally without anything to justify the Minister's suspicion that Paine was intriguing against him, even after his outrageous conduct about the captains. Morris had laid aside the functions of a Minister to exercise those of a treaty- making government. During this excursion into

> State Archives, Paris. 6tats Unis. Vol. 38, No. 93. Endorsed : *' No. 6. Translation of a letter from Thomas Payne to Citizen Barr^." It may be noted that Paine and Barr^, though they could read each other's language, could converse only in their own tongue.

1793] ^ CONSPIRACY. 89

presidential and senatorial power, for the injury of the country to which he was commissioned, his own countrymen in France were without an official Minister, and in their distress imposed ministerial duties on Paine. But so far from wishing to su- persede Morris, Paine, in the above letter to Bar- r^re, gives an argument for his retention, namely, that if he goes home he will make reports disadvan- tageous to France. He also asks respect for Mor- ris on account of his relations, ** excellent patriots." Barr^re, to whom Paine's letter is written, was chief of the Committee of Public Safety, and had held that powerful position since its establishment, April 6, 1793. To this all-powerful Committee of Nine Robespierre was added July 27th. On the day that Paine wrote the letter, September 5th, Barr&re opened the Terror by presenting a report in which it is said, " Let us make terror the order of the day ! " This Barr^re was a sensualist, a crafty orator, a sort of eel which in danger turned into a snake. His " supple genius," as Louis Blanc expresses it, was probably appreciated by Morris, who was kept well informed as to the secrets of the Committee of Public Safety. This omnipotent Committee had supervision of foreign affairs and appointments. At this time the Minister of For- eign Affairs was Deforgues, whose secretary was the M. Otto alluded to in Paine's letter to Barr^re. Otto spoke English fluently ; he had been in the American Legation. Deforgues became Minister June 5th, on the arrest of his predecessor (Lebrun), and was anxious lest he should follow Lebrun to prison also, — as he ultimately did. Deforgues and

90 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

his secretary, Otto, confided to Morris their strong desire to be appointed to America, Genfit having been recalled. ^

Despite the fact that Morris* hostility to France was well known, he had become an object of awe. So long as his removal was daily ex- pected in reply to a request twice sent for his recall, Morris was weak, and even insulted. But when ship after ship came in without such recall, and at length even with the news that the President had refused the Senate's demand for Morris' entire correspondence, everything was changed. '^ ** So long," writes Morris to Washington, " as they be- lieved in the success of their demand, they treated my representations with indifference and contempt ; but at last, hearing nothing from their minister on that subject, or, indeed, on any other, they took it into their heads that I was immovable, and made overtures for conciliation," It must be borne in mind that at this time America was the only ally of France ; that already there were fears that Wash- ington was feeling his way towards a treaty with England. Soon after the overthrow of the mon- archy Morris had hinted that the treaty between the United States and France, having been made with the King, might be represented by the Eng- lish Ministry in America as void under the revolu- tion ; and that " it would be well to evince a degree of good will to America." When Robespierre first became a leader he had particular charge of diplo-

> Morris' letter to Washington, Oct. 18, 1793. The passage is omitted from the letter as quoted in his *' Diary and Letters," ii., p. 53. * See my *' Life of Edmund Randolph/' p. 214.

1793] ^ CONSPIRACY, 9I

matic affairs. It is stated by Fr^d^ric Masson that Robespierre was very anxious to recover for the republic the initiative of the alliance with the United States, which was credited to the King ; and " although their Minister Gouvemeur Morris was justly suspected, and the American republic was at that time aiming only to utilize the condition of its ally, the French republic cleared it at a cheap rate of its debts contracted with the King." ^ Such were the circumstances which, when Wash- ington seemed determined to force Morris on France, made this Minister a power. Lebrun, the ministerial predecessor of Deforgues, may indeed have been immolated to placate Morris, who hav- ing been, under his administration, subjected to a domiciliary visit, had gone to reside in the country. That was when Morris' removal was supposed near; but now his turn came for a little reign of terror on his own account. In addition to Deforgues' fear of Lebrun's fate, should he anger Washing- ton's immovable representative, he knew that his hope of succeeding Genfit in America must depend on Morris. The terrors and schemes of Defor- gues and Otto brought them to the feet of Morris. About the time when the chief of the Committee of Public Safety, Barr^re, was consulting Paine about sending Commissioners to America, Defor- gues was consulting Morris on the same point The interview was held shortly after the humiliation which Morris had suffered, in the matter of the captains, and the defeat of his scheme for utilizing

* "Le D^partement des Affaires ^trang^res pendant la Revolution/ p. a95.

92 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

their grievance to release the United States from their alliance. The American captains had ap- pointed Paine their Minister, and he had been suc- cessful. Paine and his clients had not stood in awe of Morris ; but he now had the strength of a giant, and proceeded to use it like a giant

The interview with Deforgues was not reported by Morris to the Secretary of State (Paine's friend, Jefferson), but in a confidential letter to Washing- ton,— so far as was prudent

" I have insinuated [he writes] the advantages which might result from an early declaration on the part of the new minis- ter that, as France has announced the determination not to meddle with the interior affairs of other nations, he can know only the government of America. In union with this idea, I told the minister that I had observed an overruling influence in their affairs which seemed to come from the other side of the channel, and at the same time had traced the intention to excite a seditious spirit in America ; that it was impossible to be on a friendly footing with such persons, but that at present a different spirit seemed to prevail, etc. This declaration produced the effect I intended." *

In thus requiring that the new minister to America shall recognize only the "government" (and not negotiate with Kentucky, as Gen6t had done), notice is also served on Deforgues that the Convention must in future deal only with the American Minister, and not with Paine or sea-cap- tains in matters affecting his countrymen. The reference to an influence from the other side of the channel could only refer to Paine, as there were then no Englishmen in Paris outside his gar-

' Letter to Washington, Oct. 18, 1793.

»793]

A CONSPrRACY,

93

den in the Faubourg St Denis. By this ingenious phrase Morris already disclaims jurisdiction over Paine, and suggests that he is an Englishman wor- rying Washington through Genfit. This was a clever hint in another way. Genfet, now recalled, evidently for the guillotine, had been introduced to Morris by Paine, who no doubt had given him let- ters to eminent Americans. Paine had sympa- thized warmly with the project of the Kentuckians to expel the Spanish from the Mississippi, and this was patriotic American doctrine even after Ken- tucky was admitted into the Union (June i^ 1792). He had corresponded with Dn O'Fallon, a leading Kentuckian on the subject But things had changed, and when Gen^t went out with his blank commis- sions he found himself confronted with a proclama- tion of neutrality which turned his use of them to sedition. Paine*s acquaintance with Genfit, and his introductions, could now be plausibly used by Morris to involve him. The French Minister is shown an easy way of relieving his country from re- sponsibility for Genfit, by placing it on the deputy from '' the other side of the channel."

** This declaration produced the effect I intended,** wrote Morris. The effect was indeed swift. On October 3dp Amar, after the doors of the Conven- tion were locked, read the memorable accusation against the Girondins, four weeks before their exe- cution. In that paper he denounced Brissot for his effort to save the King, for his intimacy with the English, for injuring the colonies by his la- bors for negro emancipation! In this denuncia- tion Paine had the honor to be includei

94 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

''At that same time the Englishman Thomas Paine, called by the faction [Girondin] to the honor of representing the French nation, dishonored himself by supporting the opinion of Brissot, and by promising us in his fable the dissatisfaction of the United States of America, our natural allies, which he did not blush to depict for us as full of veneration and grati- tude for the tyrant of France."

On October 19th the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Deforgues, writes to Morris :

'^ I shall give the Council an account of the punishable con- duct of their agent in the United States [Gen^t], and I can assure you beforehand that they will regard the strange abuse of their confidence by this agent, as I do, with the liveliest indignation. The President of the United States has done justice to our sentiments in attributing the deviations of the citizen Gen^t to causes entirely foreign to his instructions, and we hope that the measures to be taken will more and more convince the head and members of your Government that so far from having authorized the proceedings and ma- noeuvres of Citizen Gen^t our only aim has been to maintain between the two nations the most perfect harmony."

One of " the measures to be taken " was the im- prisonment of Paine, for which Amar's denunciation had prepared the way. But this was not so easy. For Robespierre had successfully attacked Amar's report for extending its accusations beyond the Girondins. How then could an accusation be made against Paine, against whom no charge could be brought, except that he had introduced a French minister to his friends in America ! A deputy must be formally accused by the Convention before he could be tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal. ( An indirect route must be taken to reach the deputy secretly accused by the American Minister, and the

1793] ^ CONSPIRACY. 95

latter had pointed it out by alluding to Paine as an influence '* from across the channel." There was a law passed in June for the imprisonment of foreign- ers belonging to countries at war with France, This was administered by the Committees. Paine had not been liable to this law, being a deputy, and never suspected of citizenship in the country which had outlawed him, until Morris suggested it. Could he be got out of the Convention the law might be applied to him without necessitating any public accusation and trial, or anything more than an an- nouncement to the Deputies.

Such was the course pursued. Christmas day was celebrated by the terrorist Bourdon de TOise with a denunciation of Paine : *' They have boasted the patriotism of Thomas Paine. Eh bien / Since the Brissotins disappeared froni the bosom of this Convention he has not set foot in it. And I know that he has intrigued with a former agent of the bureau of Foreign Affairs." This accusation could only have come from the American Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs — from Gouverneur Morris and Deforgues. Genfit was the only agent of Deforgues' office with whom Paine could possi- bly have been connected ; and what that connec- tion was the reader knows. That accusation is associated with the terrorist's charge that Paine had declined to unite with the murderous decrees of the Convention.

After the speech of Bourdon de TOise, Benta- bole moved the "exclusion of foreigners from every public function during the war." Bentabole was a leading member of the Committee of General

g6 THE UFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

Surety. "The Assembly," adds The Moniteury " decreed that no foreigner should be admitted to represent the French people." The Committee of General Surety assumed the right to regard Paine as an Englishman ; and as such out of the Conven- tion, and consequently under the law of June against aliens of hostile nations. He was arrested next day, and on December 28th committed to the Luxembourg prison.

CHAPTER VI.

A TESTIMONY UNDER THE GUILLOTINE.

While Paine was in prison the English gentry were gladdened by a rumor that he had been guil- lotined, and a libellous leaflet of " The Last Dying Wofds of Thomas Paine " appeared in London. Paine was no less confident than his enemies that his execution was certain — after the denunciation in Amar's report, October 3d — and did indeed utter what may be regarded as his dying words — "The Age of Reason." This was the task which he had from year to year adjourned to his maturest powers, and to it he dedicates . what brief remnant of life may await him. That completed, it will be time to die with his comrades, awakened by his pen to a dawn now red with their blood.

The last letter I find written from the old Pom- padour mansion is to Jefferson, under date of Oc- tober 20th :

** Dear Sir, — I wrote you by Captain Dominick who was to sail from Havre about the 20th of this month. This will prob- ably be brought you by Mr. Barlow or Col. Oswald. Since my letter by Dominick I am every day more convinced and impressed with the propriety of Congress sending Com- missioners to Europe to confer with the Ministers of the

Jesuitical Powers on the means of terminating the war. The Vol n— 7

97

98 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

enclosed printed paper will shew there are a variety of sub- jects to be taken into consideration which did not appear at first, all of which have some tendency to put an end to the war. I see not how this war is to terminate if some inter- mediate power does not step forward. There is now no pros- pect that France can carry revolutions thro' Europe on the one hand, or that the combined powers can conquer France on the other hand. It is a sort of defensive War on both sides. This being the case how is the War to close ? Neither side will ask for peace though each may wish it. I believe that England and Holland are tired of the war. Their Commerce and Manufactures have suffered most exceedingly — and besides this it is to them a war without an object. Russia keeps her- self at a distance. I cannot help repeating my wish that Con- gress would send Commissioners, and I wish also that yourself wouM venture once more across the Ocean as one of them. If the Commissioners rendezvous at Holland they would then know what steps to take. They could call Mr. Pinckney to their Councils, and it would be of use, on many accounts, that one of them should come over from Holland to France. Per- haps a long truce, were it proposed by the neutral Powers, would have all the effects of a Peace, without the difficulties attending the adjustment of all the forms of Peace. — Yours affectionately Thomas Paine." '

Thus has finally faded the dream of Paine's life — an international republic.

It is notable that in this letter Paine makes no mention of his own danger. He may have done so in the previous letter, unfound, to which he alludes. Why he made no attempt to escape after Amar's report seems a mystery, especially as he was assist- ing others to leave the country. Two of his friends, Johnson and Choppin — the last to part from him in the old garden, — escaped to Switzerland. John-

1 1 am indebted for this letter to Dr. John S. H. Fogg, of Boston. Tho letter is endorsed by Jefferson, "Rec'd Mar. 3." [i 794*1

1793] ^ TESTIMONY UNDER THE GUILLOTINE. 99

son will be remembered as the young man who attempted suicide on hearing of Marat's menaces against Paine. Writing to Lady Smith of these two friends, he says :

" He [Johnson] recovered, and being anxious to get out of France, a passport was obtained for him and Mr. Choppin ; they received it late in the evening, and set ofif the next morn- ing for Basle, before four, from which place I had a letter from them, highly pleased with their escape from France, into which they had entered with an enthusiasm of patriotic devotion. Ah, France ! thou hast ruined the character of a revolution virtuously begun, and destroyed those who pro- duced it. I might also say like Job's servant, ' and I only am escaped/

" Two days after they were gone I heard a rapping at the gate, and looking out of the window of the bedroom I saw the landlord going with the candle to the gate, which he opened ; and a guard with muskets and fixed bayonets entered. I went to bed again and made up my mind for prison, for I was the only lodger. It was a guard to take up Johnson and Choppin, but, I thank God, they were out of their reach.

" The guard came about a month after, in the night, and took away the landlord, Georgeit. And the scene in the house finished with the arrestation of myself. This was soon after you called on me, and sorry I was that it was not in my power to render to Sir [Robert Smith] the service that you asked.''

All then had fled. Even the old landlord had been arrested. In the wintry garden this lone man — in whose brain and heart the republic and the religion of humanity have their abode — moves companionless. In the great mansion, where once Madame de Pompadour glittered amid her cour- tiers, where in the past summer gathered the Round Table of great-hearted gentlemen and ladies,

l66 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

Thomas Paine sits through the watches of the night at his devout task/

'^ My friends were falling as fast as the guillotine could cut their heads ofif, and as I expected, every day, the same fate, I resolved to begin my work. I appeared to myself to be on my death bed, for death was on every side of me, and I had no time to lose. This accounts for my writing at the time I did, and so nicely did the time and intention meet, that I had not finished the first part of the work more than six hours before I was arrested and taken to prison. The people of France were running headlong into atheism, and I had the work trans- lated in their own language, to stop them in that career, and fix them to the first article of every man's creed, who has any creed at all — I believe in God.** "

The second Christmas of the new republican era dawns. Where is the vision that has led this way- worn pilgrim ? Where the star he has followed so long, to find it hovering over the new birth of hu- manity ? It may have been on that day that, amid the shades of his slain friends, he wrote, as with

' It was a resumed task. Early in the year Paine had brought to his col- league Lanthenas a manuscript on religion, probably entitled " The Age of Reason/' Lanthenas translated it, and had it printed in French, though no trace of its circulation appears. At that time Lanthenas may have appre- hended the proscription which fell on him, with the other Girondins, in May, and took the precaution to show Paine's essay to Couthon, who, with Robespierre, had religious matters particularly in charge. Couthon frowned •on the work and on Paine, and reproached Lanthenas for translating it. There was no frown more formidable than that of Couthon, and the essay printed only in French) seems to have been suppressed. At the close of the year Paine wrote the whole work d^ novo. The first edition in English, now before me, was printed In Paris, by Barrois, 1794. In his preface to Part II., Paine implies a previous draft in saying : ** I had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it hcLs since appeared, before a guard came," etc. (The italics are mine.) The fact of the early translation appears in a letter of Lanthenas to Merlin de Thionville.

* Letter to Samuel Adams. The execution of the Girondins took place on October 31st.

1793] ^ TESTIMONY UNDER THE GUILLOTINE. 10 1

blood about to be shed, the tribute to one that was pierced In trying to benefit mankind.

" Nothing that is here said can apply, even with the most distant disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and amiable man. The morality that he preached and practised was of the most benevolent kind ; and though similar systems of morality had been preached by Con- fucius, and by some of the Greek philosophers, many years before, by the Quakers since, and by good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any. . . . He preached most excellent morality, and the equality of man ; but he preached also against the corruption and avarice of the Jewish priests, and this brought upon him the hatred and vengeance of the whole order of priesthood. The accusation which those priests brought against him was that of sedition and conspiracy against the Roman government, to which the Jews were then subject and tributary ; and it is not improbable that the Ro- man government might have some secret apprehension of the effect of his doctrine, as well as the Jewish priests ; neither is it improbable that Jesus Christ had in contemplation the de- livery of the Jewish nation from the bondage of the Romans. Between the two, however, this virtuous reformer and religion* ist lost his life. ... He was the son of God in like manner that every other person is — for the Creator is the Father of AIL . . . Jesus Christ founded no new system. He called men to the practice of moral virtues, and the belief of one God. The great trait in his character is philanthropy.*'

Many Christmas sermons were preached in 1 793, but probably all of them together do not contain so much recognition of the humanity of Jesus as these paragraphs of Paine. The Christmas bells ring in the false, but shall also ring in the true. While he is writing, on that Christmas nighty word comes that he has been denounced by Bourdon de rOise, and expelled from the Convention. He now enters the Dark Valley. " Conceiving, after

I02 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

this, that I had but a few days of liberty I sat down, and brought the work to a close as speedily as possible."

In the "Age of Reason" there is a page of personal recollections. I have a feeling that this little epi- sode marks the hour when Paine was told of his doom. From this overshadowed Christmas, likely to be his last, the lonely heart — as loving a heart as ever beat — here wanders across tempestuous I years to his early home in Norfolk. There is a grateful remembrance of the Quaker meeting, the parental care, the Grammar School ; of his pious aunt who read him a printed sermon, and the gar- den steps where he pondered what he had just heard, — a Father demanding his Son's death for the sake of making mankind happier and better. He " perfectly recollects the spot " in the garden where, even then, but seven or eight years of age, he felt sure a man would be executed for doing such a thing, and that God was too good to act in that way. So clearly come out the scenes of childhood under the shadow of death.

He probably had an intimation on December 27th that he would be arrested that night. The place of his abode, though well known to the au- thorities, was not in the Convention's Almanach. Officially, therefore, his residence was still in the Passage des Petits P&res. There the officers would seek him, and there he should be found. " For that night only he sought a lodging there," reported the officers afterwards. He may have feared, too, that his manuscript would be destroyed if he were taken in his residence.

»793] ^ TESTIMONY UNDER THE GUILLOTINE. I03

His hours are here traceable. On the evening of December 27th, in the old mansion, Paine reaches the last page of the "Age of Reason." They who have supposed him an atheist, may search as far as Job, who said " Though He slay me I will trust in Him," before finding an author who, caught in the cruel machinery of destructive nature, could write that last page.

''The creation we behold is the real and ever existing word of God, in which we cannot be deceived. It proclaim- eth his power, it demonstrates his wisdom, it manifests his goodness and beneficence. The moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God mani- fested in the creation towards all his creatures. That seeing, as we daily do, the goodness of God to all men, it is an ex- ample calling upon all men to practise the same towards each other, and consequently that everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty."

In what " Israel " is greater faith found ? Hav- ing written these words, the pen drops from our world-wanderer's hand It is nine o'clock of the night. He will now go and bend his neck under the decree of the Convention — provided by " the goodness of God to all men." Through the Fau- bourg, past Porte St. Martin, to the Rue Richelieu, to the Passage des Petits P&res, he walks in the wintry night. In the house where he wrote his appeal that the Convention would slay not the man in destroying the monarch, he asks a lodging " for that night only."

As he lays his head on the pillow, it is no doubt with a grateful feeling that the good God has pro- longed his freedom long enough to finish a defence

104 ^^^ ^^^^ OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

of true religion from its degradation by supersti- tion or destruction by atheism, — these, as he de- clares, being the two purposes of his work. It was providently if not providentially timed. " I had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it has since appeared, before a guard came, about three in the morning, with an order, signed by the two Committees of Public Safety and Surety Gen- eral, for putting me in arrestation as a foreigner, and conveying me to the prison of the Luxem- bourg."

The following documents are translated for this work from the originals in the National Archives of France.

"National Convention.

"Committee of General Surety and Surveillance of the National Convention.

" On the 7th Nivose [December 27th] of the 2d year of the French Republic, one and indivisible.

"To THE Deputies:

" The Committee resolves, that the persons named Thomas Paine and Anacharsis Clootz, fonnerly Deputies to the Na- tional Convention, be arrested and imprisoned, as a measure of General Surety ; that an examination be made of their papers, and those found suspicious put under seal and brought to the Committee of General Surety.

" Citizens Jean Baptiste Martin and Lamy, bearers of the present decree are empowered to execute it, — for which they ask the help of the Civil authorities and, if need be, of the army.

" The representatives of the nation, members of the Com- mittee of General Surety — Signed : M. Bayle, Voulland, Jagot, Amar, Vadier, £lie Lacoste, Guffroy, Louis (du bas Rhin) La Vicomterie, Panis."

" This day, the 8th Nivose of the 2d year of the French Republic, one and indivisible, to execute and fulfil the order

1793] ^ TESTIMONY UNDER THE GUILLOTINE. lOj

given us, we have gone to the residence of Citizen Thomas Paine, Passage des Petits P^res, number seven, Philadelphia House. Having requested the Commander of the [Police] post, William Tell Section, to have us escorted, according to the order we showed him, he obeyed by assigning us four privates and a corporal, to search the above-said lodging ; where we requested the porter to open the door, and asked him whether he knew all who lodged there ; and as he did not affirm it, we desired him to take us to the principal agent, which he did ; having come to the said agent, we asked him if he knew by name all the persons to whom he rented lod- gings ; after having repeated to him the name mentioned in our order, he replied to us, that he had come to ask him a lodging for that night only ; which being ascertained, we asked him to conduct us to the bedroom of Citizen Thomas Paine, where we arrived ; then seeing we could not be understood by him, an American, we begged the manager of the house, who knows his language, to kindly interpret for him, giving him notice of the order of which we were bearers ; whereupon the said Citizen Thomas Paine submitted to be taken to Rue Jacob, Great Britain Hotel, which he declared through his interpreter to be the place where he had his papers ; having recognized that his lodging contained none of them, we accompanied the said Thomas Paine and his interpreter to Great Britain Hotel, Rue Jacob, Unity Section ; the present minutes closed, after being read before the undersigned. "(Signed):

Thomas Paine. J. B. Martin.

DoRL^, Commissary.

GiLLET, Commissary.

F. Dellanav.

AcHiLLE AuDiBERT, Witness.'

Lamv."

"And as it was about seven or eight o'clock in the morning of this day 8th Nivose, being worn out with fatigue, and forced to take some food, we postponed the end of our proceeding till eleven o'clock of the same day, when, desiring to finish it, we

' It will be remembered that Audibert had carried to London Paine's in* vitation to the Convention.

I06 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1793

went with Citizen Thomas Paine to Britain House, where we found Citizen Barlow, whom Citizen Thomas Paine informed that we, the Commissaries, were come to look into the papers, which he said were at his house, as announced in our preced- ing paragraph through Citizen Dellanay, his interpreter ; We, Commissary of the Section of the Unity, undersigned, with the Citizens order-bearers, requested Citizen Barlow to declare whether there were in his house, any papers or correspondence belonging to Citizen Thomas Paine ; on which, complying with our request, he declared there did not exist any ; but wishing to leave no doubt on our way of conducting the matter, we did not think it right to rely on what he said ; resolving, on the contrary, to ascertain by all legal ways that there did not exist any, we requested Citizen Barlow to open for us all his cup- boards ; which he did, and after having visited them, we, the abovesaid Commissary, always in the presence of Citizen Thomas Paine, recognized that there existed no papers belonging to him; we also perceived that it was a subterfuge on the part of Citi- zen Thomas Paine who wished only to transfer himself to the house of Citizen Barlow, his native friend (son aminatcU) whom we invited to ask of Citizen Thomas Paine his usual place of abode ; and the latter seemed to wish that his friend might accompany him and be present at the examination of his papers. Which we, the said Commissary granted him, as Citizen Barlow could be of help to us, together with Citizen Etienne Thomas Dessous, interpreter for the English language, and Deputy Secretary to the Committee of General Surety of the National Convention, whom we called, in passing by the said Committee, to accompany us to the true lodging of the said Paine, Faubourg du Nord, Nro. 63. At which place we entered his rooms, and gathered in the Sitting-room all the papers found in the other rooms of the said apartment. The said Sitting-room receives light from three windows, looking, one on the Garden and the two others on the Courtyard ; and after the most scrupulous examination of all the papers, that we had there gathered, none of them has been found suspi- cious, neither in French nor in English, according to what was affirmed to us by Citizen Dessous our interpreter who signed with us, and Citizen Thomas Paine ; and we, the undersigned Commissary, resolved that no seal should be placed, after the

1794] ^ TESTIMONY UNDER THE GUILLOTINE. lO/

examination mentioned, and closed the said minutes, which we declare to contain the truth. Drawn up at the residence, and closed at 4 p.m. in the day and year abovenamed ; and we have all signed after having read the minutes. "(Signed):

Thomas Paine. Joel Barlow.

DoRL^, Commissary. Gillet, Commissary. Dessous. J. B. Martin. Lamy. " And after having signed we have requested, according to the order of the Committee of General Surety of the National Convention, Citizen Thomas Paine to follow us, to be led to jail ; to which he complied without any difficulty, and he has signed with us :

Thomas Paine. J. B. Martin.

DoRL^, Commissary. Lamy. Gillett, Commissary."

" I have received from the Citizens Martin and Lamy, Depu* ty-Secretaries to the Committee of General Surety of the National Convention, the Citizens Thomas Paine and Ana- charsis Clootz, formerly Deputies ; by order of the said Committee.

" At the Luxembourg, this day 8th Nivose, 2nd year of the French Republic, One and Indivisible.

" Signed : Benoit, Concierge**

" Foreign Ofpice — Received the 12th Ventose [March 2d]. Sent to the Committees of General Surety and Public Safety the 8th Pluviose [January 27th] this 2d year of the French Republic, One and indivisible.

" Signed : Bassol, Secretary**

"Citizens Legislators! — The French nation has, by a universal decree, invited to France one of our countrymen, most worthy of honor, namely, Thomas Paine, one of the political founders of the independence and of the Republic of America.

'^ Our experience of twenty years has taught America to know and esteem his public virtues and the invaluable services he rendered her.

*^ Persuaded that his character of foreigner and ex-Deputy is the only cause of his provisional imprisonment, we come in the

I08 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [l794

name of our country (and we feel sure she will be grateful to us for it), we come to you. Legislators, to reclaim our friend^ our countryman, that he may sail with us for America, where he will be received with open arms.

" If it were necessary to say more in support of the Petition which, as friends and allies of the French Republic, we submit to her representatives, to obtain the liberation of one of the most earnest and faithful apostles of liberty, we would beseech the National Convention, for the sake of all that is dear to the glory and to the heart of freemen, not to give a cause of joy and triumph to the allied tyrants of Europe, and above all to the despotism of Great Britain, which did not blush to out- law this courageous and virtuous defender of Liberty.

" But their insolent joy will be of short duration ; for we have the intimate persuasion that you will not keep longer in the bonds of painful captivity the man whose courageous and energetic pen did so much to free the Americans, and whose intentions we have no doubt whatever were to render the same services to the French Republic. Yes, we feel convinced that his principles and views were pure, and in that regard he is entitled to the indulgence due to human fallibility, and to the respect due to rectitude of heart ; and we hold all the more firmly our opinion of his innocence, inasmuch as we are in- formed that after a scrupulous examination of his papers, made by order of the Committee of General Surety, instead of any- thing to his charge, enough has been found rather to corrobo- rate the purity of his principles in politics and morals.

** As a countryman of ours, as a man above all so dear to the Americans, who like yourselves are earnest friends of Liberty, we ask you, in the name of that goddess cherished of the only two Republics of the World, to give back Thomas Paine to his brethren and permit us to take him to his country which is also ours.

" If you require it, Citizens Representatives, we shall make ourselves warrant and security for his conduct in France during the short stay he may make in this land.

''Signed: W. Jackson, of Philadelphia. J. Russell, of Boston. Peter Whiteside, of Philadelphia. Henry Johnson, of Boston. Thomas Carter, of Newbury Port. James Cooper of Phila-

1794] ^ TESTIMONY UNDER THE GUILLOTINE. IO9

delphia. John Willert Billopp, of New York. Thomas Waters Griffith, of Baltimore. Th. Ramsden, of Boston. Samuel P. Broome, of New York. A. Meaden worth, of Con- necticut. Joel Barlow, of Connecticut. Michael Alcorn, of Philadelphia. M. Onealy, of Baltimore. John McPherson, of Alexandria [Va.]. William Haskins, of Boston. J. Gregory, of Petersburg, Virginia. James Ingraham, of Boston." '

The following answer to the petitioning Ameri- cans was given by Vadier, then president of the Convention.

" Citizens : The brave Americans are our brothers in liberty ; like us they have broken the chains of despotism ; like us they have sworn the destruction of kings and vowed an eternal hatred to tyrants and their instruments. From this identity of principles should result a union of the two nations forever un- alterable. If the tree of liberty already flourishes in the two hemispheres, that of commerce should, by this happy alliance, cover the poles with its fruitful branches. It is for France, it is for the United States, to combat and lay low, in concert, these proud islanders, these insolent dominators of the sea and the commerce of nations. When the sceptre of despotism is falling from the criminal hand of the tyrants of the earth, it is necessary also to break the trident which emboldens the inso- lence of these corsairs of Albion, these modem Carthaginians. It is time to repress the audacity and mercantile avarice of these pirate tyrants of the sea, and of the commerce of nations.

'* You demand of us, citizens, the liberty of Thomas Paine ; you wish to restore to your hearths this defender of the rights of man. One can only applaud this generous movement. Thomas Paine is a native of England ; this is undoubtedly enough to apply to him the measures of security prescribed by the revolutionary laws. It may be added, citizens, that if Thomas Paine has been the apostle of liberty, if he has power- fully co-operated with the American Revolution, his genius has not understood that which has regenerated France ; he has regarded the system only in accordance with the illusions with

' The preceding documents connected with the arrest are in the Archives Natioiiales. F. 4641.

no THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [i794

which the false friends of our revolurion have invested it. You must with us deplore an error little reconcilable with the prin- ciples admired in the justly esteemed works of this republican author.

" The National Convention will take into consideration the object of your petition, and invites you to its sessions."

A memorandum adds : " Reference of this peti- tion is decreed to the Committees of Public Safety and General Surety, united."

It is said that Paine sent an appeal for interven- tion to the Cordeliers Club, and that their only reply was to return to him a copy of his speech in favor of preserving the life of Louis XVI. This I have not been able to verify.

On leaving his house for prison, Paine entrusted to Joel Barlow the manuscript of the "Age of Reason," to be conveyed to the printer. This was with the knowledge of the guard, whose kindness is mentioned by Paine.

CHAPTER VII.

A MINISTER AND HIS PRISONER.

Before resuming the history of the conspiracy against Paine it is necessary to return a little on our steps. For a year after the fall of monarchy in France (August lo, 1792), the real American Minister there was Paine, whether for Americans or for the French Executive. The Ministry would not confer with a hostile and presumably decapi- tated agent, like Morris. The reader has (Chaps. IV. and v., Vol. II.) evidence of their consultations with Paine. Those communications of Paine were utilized in Robespierre's report to the Convention, November 17, 1793, on the foreign relations of France. It was inspired by the humiliating tidings that Gen6t in America had reinforced the European intrigues to detach Washington from France. The President had demanded Genet's recall, had issued a proclamation of " impartiality " between France and her foes, and had not yet decided whether the treaty formed with Louis XVI. should survive his death. And Morris was not recalled !

In his report Robespierre makes a solemn appeal to the " brave Americans." Was it " that crowned automaton called Louis XVI." who helped to rescue them from the oppressor's yoke, or our arm

V

112 THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE. [1794

and armies ? Was it his money sent over or the taxes of French labor ? He declares that the Republic has been treacherously compromised in America,

''By a strange fatality the Republic finds itself still repre- sented among their allies by agents of the traitors she has punished : Brissot's brother-in-law is