CHAPTER XVI. RETURNING TO THE OLD HOME
Even now one can hardly repress regret that Paine did not remain in his beloved Bordentown. There he was the honored man; his striking figure, decorated with the noblest associations, was regarded with pride; when he rode the lanes on his horse Button, the folk had a pleasant word with him; the best homes prized his intimacy, and the young ladies would sometimes greet the old gentleman with a kiss. From all this he was drawn by the tender letter of a father he was never to see again. He sailed in April for a year's absence; he remained away fifteen,—if such years may be reckoned by calendar.
The French packet from New York had a swift voyage, and early in the summer Paine was receiving honors in Paris. Franklin had given him letters of introduction, but he hardly needed them.* He was already a hero of the progressives, who had relished his artistic dissection of the Abbé Raynal's disparagement of the American Revolution. Among those who greeted him was Auberteuil, whose history of the American Revolution Paine had corrected, an early copy having been sent him (1783) by Franklin for that purpose.
* "This letter goes by Mr. Paine, one of our principal
writers at the Revolution, being the author of 'Common
Sense,' a pamphlet that had prodigious effects."—Franklin
to M. de Veillard.
But Paine's main object in France was to secure a verdict from the Academy of Sciences, the supreme authority, on his bridge, a model of which he carried with him. The Academy received him with the honors due to an M.A. of the University of Pennsylvania, a member of the Philosophical Society, and a friend of Franklin. It appointed M. Leroy, M. Bossou, and M. Borda a committee to report on his bridge, On August 18th he writes to Jefferson, then Minister in Paris:
"I am much obliged to you for the book you are so kind to send me. The second part of your letter, concerning taking my picture, I must feel as an honor done to me, not as a favour asked of me—but in this, as in other matters, I am at the disposal of your friendship.
"The committee have among themselves finally agreed on their report; I saw this morning it will be read in the Academy on Wednesday. The report goes pretty fully to support the principles of the construction, with their reasons for that opinion."
On August 15th, a cheery letter had gone to George Clymer in Philadelphia, in which he says:
"This comes by Mr. Derby, of Massachusetts, who leaves Paris to-day to take shipping at L' [Orient] for Boston. The enclosed for Dr. Franklin is from his friend Mr. Le Roy, of the Academy of Sciences, respecting the bridge, and the causes that have delayed the completing report. An arch of 4 or 5 hundred feet is such an unprecedented thing, and will so much attract notice in the northern part of Europe, that the Academy is cautious in what manner to express their final opinion. It is, I find, their custom to give reasons for their opinion, and this embarrasses them more than the opinion itself. That the model is strong, and that a bridge constructed on the same principles will also be strong, they appear to be well agreed in, but to what particular causes to assign the strength they are not agreed in. The Committee was directed by the Academy to examine all the models and plans for iron bridges that had been proposed in France, and they unanimously gave the preference to our own, as being the simplest, strongest, and lightest. They have likewise agreed on some material points."*
Dr. Robinet says that on this visit (1787) Paine, who had long known the "soul of the people," came into relation with eminent men of all groups, philosophical and political,—Condorcet, Achille Duchâtelet, Cardinal De Brienne, and, he believes, also Danton, who, like the English republican, was a freemason.** This intercourse, adds the same author, enabled him to print in England his remarkable prophecy concerning the change going on in the French mind. Dr. Robinet quotes from a pamphlet presently noticed, partly written in Paris during this summer. Although it was Paine's grievous destiny soon to be once more a revolutionary figure, it is certain that he had returned to Europe as an apostle of peace and good-will. While the engineers were considering his daring scheme of an iron arch of five hundred feet, he was devising with the Cardinal Minister, De Brienne, a bridge of friendship across the Channel.
* For this letter I am indebted to Mr. Curtis Guild, of
Boston. The letter goes on to describe, with drawings, the
famous bridge at Schaffhausen, built by Grubenmann, an
uneducated carpenter, the model being shown Paine by the
King's architect, Perronet. The Academy's committee
presently made its report, which was even more favorable
than Paine had anticipated.
** "Danton Emigré," p. 7. Paine wrote a brief archaeological
treatise on freemasonry, but I have not met with the
statement that he was a freemason except in Dr. Robinet's
volume,—certainly high authority.
He drew up a paper in this sense, on which the Minister wrote and signed his approval. The bridge-model approved by the Academy he sent to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society; the proposal for friendship between France and England, approved by the Cardinal Minister, he carried by his own hand to Edmund Burke.
On his arrival in London Paine gave to the printer a manuscript on which he had been engaged, and straightway went to Thetford.* His father had died the year before.2 His mother, now in her ninety-first year, he found in the comfort his remittances had supplied. The house, with its large garden, stands in Guildhall (then Heathen-man) Street. I was politely shown through it by its present occupant, Mr. Brett Mr. Stephen Old-man, Sr., who went to school in the house, told me that it was identified by "old Jack Whistler," a barber, as the place where he went to shave Paine, in 1787. At this time Paine settled on his mother an allowance of nine shillings per week, which in the Thetford of that period was ample for her comfort. During this autumn with his mother he rarely left her side. As she lived to be ninety-four it may be that he sat beside her in the Quaker meeting-house, to which she had become attached in her latter years.
* The exact time of his arrival in England is doubtful.
Oldys says: "He arrived at the White Bear, Picadilly, on
the 3d of September, 1787, just thirteen years after his
departure for Philadelphia." Writing in 1803 Paine also says
it was in September. But his "Rubicon" pamphlet is dated
"York Street, St. James's Square, 20th August, 1787."
Possibly the manuscript was dated in Paris and forwarded to
the London printer with the address at which he wished to
find proof on his arrival.
** St. Cuthbert's Register: "Burials, 1786. Joseph Payne (a
Quaker) aged 78 years. November 14th."
Eloquent and pathetic must have been the silence around the gray man when, after so many tempests, he sat once more in the little meeting-house where his childhood was nurtured. From this, his spiritual cradle, he had borne away a beautiful theory, in ignorance of the contrasted actuality. Theoretically the Society of Friends is a theocracy; the Spirit alone rules and directs, effacing all distinctions of rank or sex. As a matter of fact, one old Quaker, or the clerk of a meeting, often overrules the "inner lights" of hundreds. Of the practical working of Quaker government Paine had no experience; he had nothing to check his ideal formed in boyhood. His whole political system is explicable only by his theocratic Quakerism. His first essay, the plea for negro emancipation, was brought from Thetford meeting-house. His "Common Sense," a new-world scripture, is a "testimony" against the proud who raised their paltry dignities above the divine presence in the lowliest "But where, say some, is the King of America? I 'll tell you, friend, he reigns above." Paine's love of his adopted country was not mere patriotism; he beheld in it the land of promise for all mankind, seen from afar while on his Thetford Pisgah. Therefore he made so much of the various races in America.
"The mere independence of America, were it to have been followed by a system of government modelled after the corrupt system of the English government, would not have interested me with the unabated ardour that it did. It was to bring forward and establish the representative system of government that was the leading principle with me."
So he spake to Congress, and to its president he said that he would have done the same for any country as for America. The religious basis of his political system has a droll illustration in an anecdote of his early life told by himself. While bowling with friends at Lewes, Mr. Verril remarked that Frederick of Prussia "was the best fellow in the world for a king; he had so much of the devil in him." It struck Paine that "if it were necessary for a king to have so much of the devil in him, kings might very beneficially be dispensed with." From this time he seems to have developed a theory of human rights based on theocracy; and so genuinely that in America, while the Bible was still to him the word of God, he solemnly proposed, in the beginning of the Revolution, that a crown should be publicly laid on that book, to signify to the world that "in America the Law is King."
While in America the States were discussing the Constitution proposed by the Convention, Paine sat in the silent meeting at Thetford dreaming of the Parliament of Man, and federation of the world. In America the dawn of the new nation was a splendor, but it paled the ideals that had shone through the night of struggle. The principles of the Declaration, which would have freed every slave,—representation proportionate to population, so essential to equality, the sovereignty of justice instead of majorities or of States,—had become "glittering generalities." The first to affirm the principles of the Declaration, Paine awaited the unsummoned Convention that would not compromise any of them away. For politicians these lofty ideas might be extinguished by the rising of a national sun; but in Paine there remained the deep Quaker well where the stars shone on through the garish day.*
Seated in the Quaker meeting-house beside his mother, and beside his father's fresh grave, Paine revises the past while revising the proofs of his pamphlet. The glamor of war, even of the American Revolution, fades; the shudder with which he saw in childhood soldiers reeking from the massacres of Culloden and Inverness returns; he begins his new career in the old world with a "testimony" against war.**
* "In wells where truth in secret lay He saw the midnight
stars by day."—W. D. Howells.
** "Prospects on the Rubicon; or, An Investigation into the
Causes and Consequences of the Politics to be Agitated at
the Meeting of Parliament." London, 1787. Pp. 68.
"When we consider, for the feelings of Nature cannot be dismissed, the calamities of war and the miseries it inflicts upon the human species, the thousands and tens of thousands of every age and sex who are rendered wretched by the event, surely there is something in the heart of man that calls upon him to think! Surely there is some tender chord, tuned by the hand of the Creator, that still struggles to emit in the hearing of the soul a note of sorrowing sympathy. Let it then be heard, and let man learn to feel that the true greatness of a nation is founded on principles of humanity.... War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances, such a combination of foreign matters, that no human wisdom can calculate the end. It has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.... I defend the cause of the poor, of the manufacturer, of the tradesman, of the farmer, and of all those on whom the real burthen of taxes fall—but above all, I defend the cause of humanity."
So little did Paine contemplate or desire revolution in England or France. His exhortation to young Pitt is to avoid war with Holland, to be friendly with France, to shun alliances involving aid in war, and to build up the wealth and liberties of England by uniting the people with the throne. He has discovered that this healthy change is going on in France. The French people are allying "the Majesty of the Sovereign with the Majesty of the Nation." "Of all alliances this is infinitely the strongest and the safest to be trusted to, because the interest so formed and operating against external enemies can never be divided." Freedom doubles the value of the subject to the government When the desire of freedom becomes universal among the people, then, "and not before, is the important moment for the most effectual consolidation of national strength and greatness." The government must not be frightened by disturbances incidental to beneficent changes. "The creation we enjoy arose out of a chaos."*
* The pamphlet was reprinted in London in 1793 under the
title: "Prospects on the War, and Paper Currency. The
second edition, corrected." Advertisement (June 20th): "This
pamphlet was written by Mr. Paine in the year 1787, on one
of Mr. Pitt's armaments, namely, that against Holland. His
object was to prevent the people of England from being
seduced into a war, by stating clearly to them the
consequences which would inevitably befall the credit of
this country should such a calamity take place. The minister
has at length, however, succeeded in his great project,
after three expensive armaments within the space of seven
years; and the event has proved how well founded were the
predictions of Mr. Paine. The person who has authority to
bring forward this pamphlet in its present shape, thinks his
doing so a duty which he owes both to Mr. P——— and the
people of England, in order that the latter may judge what
credit is due to (what a great judge calls) the wild
theories of Mr. Paine."
Paine had seen a good deal of Jefferson in Paris, and no doubt their conversation often related to struggles in the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia. Jefferson wished the Constitution to include a Declaration of Rights, and wrote Paine some comments on the argument of James Wilson (afterward of the Supreme Court), maintaining that such a Declaration was unnecessary in a government without any powers not definitely granted, and that such a Declaration might be construed to imply some degree of power over the matters it defined. Wilson's speeches, powerfully analyzing the principles of liberty and federation, were delivered on October 6th and November 24th, and it will appear by the subjoined paper that they were more in accord with Paine's than with Jefferson's principles. The manuscript, which is among Jefferson's papers, bears no date, but was no doubt written at Thetford early in the year 1788.