"Joseph Lebon, one of the vilest characters that ever existed, and who made the streets of Arras run with blood, was my suppliant as member of the convention for the department of the Pays de Calais. When I was put out of the convention, he came and took my place; when I was liberated from prison, and voted again into the convention, he was sent into the same prison, and took my place there; and he went to the guillotine instead of me. He supplied my place all the way through. One hundred and sixty-eight persons were taken out of the Luxembourg in one night, and one hundred and sixty of them guillotined the next day, of which I know I was to have been one; and the manner I escaped that fate is curious, and has all the appearance of accident. When persons by scores and hundreds were to be taken out of prison for the guillotine, it was always done in the night, and those who performed that office had a private mark, or signal, by which they knew what rooms to go to, and what number to take. We were four, and the door of our room was marked, unobserved by us, with that number, in chalk; but it happened, if happening is a proper word, that the mark was put on when the door was open and flat against the wall, and thereby came on the inside when we shut it at night, and the destroying angel passed by it. A few days after this Robespierre fell, and the American embassador arrived and reclaimed me, and invited me to his house.
"During the whole of my imprisonment, prior to the fall of Robespierre, there was no time when I could think my life worth twenty-four hours, and my mind was made up to meet its fate. The Americans in Paris went in a body to the convention to reclaim me, but without success. There was no party among them with respect to me. My only hope then rested on the government of America, that it would remember me. But the icy heart of ingratitude, in whatever man it may be placed, has neither feeling nor sense of honor. The letter of Mr. Jefferson has served to wipe away the reproach, and has done justice to the mass of the people of America.
"About two months before this event, I was seized with a fever that, in its progress, had every symptom of becoming mortal.... I have some reason to believe, because I can not discover any other cause, that this illness preserved me in existence."
In these hours of death, and when he expects to be beheaded at any moment, he is writing his Age of Reason. The first part he completed just before going to prison; the second part he studies upon, and partly writes, while in prison, and publishes it a few months after his release.
This work was planned years before it appeared, and its completion was deferred till near the close of his life, that the purity of his motives might not be impeached. It was written at that time, too, before he had intended it, because he expected soon to be put to death, and lest, in "the general shipwreck of superstition, of false systems of government, and false theology, the people lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of the theology that is true." It was written to combat superstition, fanaticism, and atheism on the one hand, and to defend religion, morality, and deism on the other. It is the good and religious work of a good and religious man. The work it was designed to accomplish is not yet done, but it is well begun. As the world grows wiser it will be valued the more highly, and the more it is read the better will people become.
Had Mr. Paine died at this time, his life's work would have been fulfilled, and the tranquillity of his life would not have been disturbed by the curses of the whole order of the priesthood. But there are fourteen years of life before him yet, in which he is maligned, vilified, slandered, and publicly and privately insulted.
I will briefly sum them up. Seven of these years he spends in France. He writes his essays "On the English System of Finance," "Agrarian Justice," and the "Letter to General Washington;" also, one "To the People and Armies of France." It seems he became attached to Napoleon, for the project of the gun-boat invasion of England is started, and should it succeed, Mr. Paine is to give England a more liberal government. In 1802, he came to America, and the folly of gun-boats also enters into Jefferson's administration. These seven years of life in America are years of trouble and grief. Jefferson, the great Democratic partisan, secures his services to write for his party; but he had never been a partisan, he had stood on higher ground, he had labored for all mankind, and the work, which ill became him, served only to aggravate his own life. We can see a mental change coming over the old man; the reason is yet strong, but the temper is irritable; he grows peevish and broods over his wrongs. "I ought not to have an enemy in America," he said. But the generation of people he now lived among, near the close of his life, were not yet born "in the times that tried men's souls," and they knew him not. He was the friend of Jefferson, and Jefferson had bitter enemies, who said "they both ought to dangle from the same gallows."
He had been paid but little for his revolutionary services, and he now felt the ingratitude of the old Congress, which had treated him badly, and the new one, which could not be bothered with him. Thus his miseries multiply. "After so many years of service, my heart grows cold toward America," he writes, a year before his death, to the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Jefferson ought to have kept the old man aloof from politics, instead of thrusting him into his party broils, and bringing down on his head the whole host of his own personal enemies. Paine had enemies enough of his own without these. But great ideas and generous affections, it seems, Jefferson never had. Now, in his old age, the great apostle of liberty is deserted by many he had labored to befriend, and, though he does not meet death at the hands of his enemies, they have venom enough in their hearts to slay him.
It is sad to think that his last hours were embittered for the want of a friend. Washington had long before forgotten him while a prisoner in the Luxembourg. Samuel Adams had condemned him. John Adams has it in his heart to blast his memory, and four years after he is dead writes to Jefferson, "Joel Barlow was about to record Tom Paine as the great author of the American Revolution. If he was, I desire that my name may be blotted out forever from its record." This came from the man who twice deserted his post in the trying hour of his country; once for four months when at the head of the war committee, and once for seven months when president of the nation. It came from the man who said: Jefferson had stolen his ideas from him to put into the Declaration of Independence. "Blotted out," No! John Adams, your name will live forever on the records of your country. You were sometimes a great man. But by the side of Thomas Paine, on the records of your country, you stand thus:
| History. | |
| John Adams, Memberof Congress, the Colossusof debate, signer of theDeclaration of Independence,famous in the world,chief of the war committee,on whom greattrusts were imposed, inwhom great faith was had,in the first trying crisis ofthe new nation DESERTEDHER. Brave in hishome by the sea. | Thomas Paine, the Juniusof England, authorof Common Sense and theDeclaration of Independence,whose fame is unknown,on whom no trustwas imposed by the public,undertakes the businessof a world; enlists in thearmy of Washington, andin the first trying crisis ofthe new nation, by the inspirationof his pen, SAVEDHER. Bravest when stouthearts fail. |