[68] Frothingham's Rise of the Republic of the United States, Chap, xi., p. 472.
The pamphlet was called "Common Sense," and was written by Thomas Paine, an Englishman, who held and expressed extreme opinions upon the "Rights of Man." He had been a staymaker in England, and was ruined; when, in the winter of 1774, by Franklin's advice, he came to America and rapidly grasped and comprehended the position of affairs. (Elliott's History of New England, Vol. II., Chap, xxviii., p. 383.)
Referring to this demagogue of the American and French Revolution, his American biographer, Cheetham, says: "All sects have had their disgraceful members and offspring. Paine's father, a peaceful and industrious Quaker, connects him with the exemplary sect of the Friends. He received his education at the Grammar School of his native place, Thetford, in Norfolk, but attained to little beyond the rudiments of Latin. His first application to business was in the trade of his father, that of staymaker, which he followed in London, Dover, and Sandwich, where he married; afterwards he became a grocer and an exciseman, at Lewes, in Sussex. This situation he lost through some misdemeanor. After this, however, so well were the public authorities of his native country disposed to serve him, that one of the Commissioners of Excise gave him a letter of recommendation to Dr. Franklin, then a colonial agent in London, who recommended him to go to America. At this period he had first exercised his talents as a writer by drawing up a pamphlet recommending the advance of the salaries of excisemen.
"His age at this time was thirty-seven. His first engagement in Philadelphia was with Mr. Aitkin, a respectable bookseller, who, in January, 1775, commenced the 'Pennsylvania Magazine,' the editorship of which work became the business of Mr. Paine, who had a salary of £50 currency a year. When Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia, suggested to Paine the propriety of preparing the Americans for a separation from England, it seems that he seized with avidity the idea, and immediately commenced his famous pamphlet on that subject, which being shown in MS. to Doctors Franklin and Rush and Mr. Samuel Adams, was, after some discussion, entitled, at the suggestion of Dr. Rush, 'Common Sense.' For this production the Legislature of Pennsylvania voted him £500. Shortly afterwards Paine was appointed Secretary to the Committee of the United States on Foreign Affairs. His business was merely to copy papers, number and file them, and generally do the duty of what is now called a clerk in the Foreign Department. But in the title-page of his 'Rights of Man,' he styles himself 'Secretary for Foreign Affairs to the Congress of the United States in the Late War.' While in this office, he published a series of appeals on the struggle between Great Britain and the colonies. In 1777 he was obliged to resign his secretaryship on account of a quarrel with Silas Deane, American agent in France. The next year, however, he obtained the appointment of Clerk to the Assembly of Pennsylvania; and in 1785, on the rejection of a motion to appoint him historiographer to the United States, the Congress granted him three thousand dollars, and the Legislature of New York granted him an estate of 500 acres of highly cultivated land, the confiscated property of a Loyalist. Having no more revolutionary occupation in the United States, he embarked for France in 1787, with a letter of recommendation from Dr. Franklin to the Duke de la Rochefoucault. From Paris he went to London, where, the following year, he was arrested for debt, but was bailed by some American merchants. He went to Paris in 1791 to publish, under the name of 'Achilles Du Chatellet,' a tract recommending the abolition of royalty. He again returned to London and wrote the first part of his 'Rights of Man,' in answer to Mr. Burke's 'Reflections on the French Revolution.' The second part was published early in 1792. He was ordered to be arrested and prosecuted for his seditious and blasphemous writings, but escaped to France, and was elected a member of the French National Convention—grateful for the honour which the bloody anarchists had conferred upon him by electing him a member of their order. His conduct, however, offended the Jacobins, and towards the close of the year 1793 he was excluded from the convention, was arrested and committed to the prison of the Luxembourg. Just before his confinement he had finished the first part of his 'Age of Reason,' and confided it to the care of his friend Joel Barlow for publication. He was now taken ill, to which circumstance he ascribed his escape from the guillotine; and on the fall of Robespierre was released. In 1795 he published, at Paris, the second part of his 'Age of Reason.' He returned to America in 1802, bringing with him a woman named Madame Bonneville, whom he had seduced away from her husband, with her two sons, and whom he seems to have treated with the utmost meanness and tyranny. His friend and American biographer, Mr. Cheetham, in continuation, gives the following account of Paine's arrival at New York in 1802: 'The writer,' says Mr. Cheetham, 'supposing him (Paine) to be a gentleman, was employed to engage a room for him at Lovett's hotel, New York. On his arrival, in 1802, about ten at night, he wrote me a note, desiring to see me immediately. I waited on him at Lovett's, in company with Mr. George Clinton, jun. We rapped at the door. A small figure opened it within, meanly dressed, having an old top-coat, without an under one; a dirty silk handkerchief loosely thrown around his neck, a long beard of more than a week's growth, a face well carbuncled as the setting sun, and the whole figure staggering under a load of inebriation. I was on the point of inquiring for Mr. Paine, when I noticed something of the portraits I had seen of him. We were desired to be seated. He had before him a small round table, on which were a beefsteak, some beer, a pint of brandy, a pitcher of water and a glass. He sat eating, drinking, and talking with as much composure as if he had lived with us all his life. I soon perceived that he had a very retentive memory, and was full of anecdote. The Bishop of Llandaff (Dr. Watson) was almost the first word he uttered, and it was followed by his informing us that he had in his trunk a manuscript reply to the bishop's 'Apology for the Bible.' He then calmly mumbled his steak, and ever and anon drinking his brandy and beer, repeated the introduction to his reply, which occupied nearly half an hour. This was done with deliberation and the utmost clearness, and a perfect apprehension, intoxicated as he was, of all that he repeated. Scarcely a word would he allow us to speak. He always, I afterwards found, in all companies, drunk or sober, would be listened to; in his regard, there were no rights of men with him—no equality, no reciprocal immunities and obligations—for he would listen to no one.'
"On the 13th of October, 1802, he arrived at Baltimore, under the protection of Mr. Jefferson. But it appears that curiosity induced no one of distinction to suffer his approach. While at his hotel he was principally visited by the lower class of emigrants from Scotland, England, and Ireland, who had read and admired his 'Rights of Man.' With them, it appears, 'he drank grog in the tap-room morning, noon, and night, admired and praised, strutting and staggering about, showing himself to all and shaking hands with all. The leaders of the party to which he had attached himself paid him no attention.'"
Paine's subsequent years, until his miserable death in 1809, were characterized by the lowest degradation, blasphemy, drunkenness, and filthiness, which rendered him unfit for any human society, as his biographies, written even by his friends, abundantly testify.
Those who knew Paine in his earlier years were, of course, not responsible for the depravity and degradation of his subsequent years; but from the beginning he was an infidel and an enemy of all settled government.
Such was the author of American republicanism and of American hatred to England, to all British institutions, to all monarchy, and the advocate of the abolition of kings.
[69] Dr. Ramsay's History of the United States, Vol. II., Chap. xii., pp. 161, 162, 163.