I now call attention to the fact that Mr. Paine and Junius, when attacking the private character of men, both seem to delight, when the fact would fit, in charging bastardy:
| Paine. | Junius. |
| "A French bastard, landing with an armed banditti, and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is, in plain terms, a very paltry rascally original. It certainty hath no divinity in it."—Common Sense. | Speaking of the Duke of Grafton's ancestors: "Those of your grace, for instance, left no distressing examples of virtue, even to their legitimate posterity; and you may look back with pleasure to an illustrious pedigree, in which heraldry has not left a single good quality upon record to insult or upbraid you. You have better proofs of your descent, my lord, than the register of a marriage," etc.—Let. 12. |
In their appeals to posterity they were both equal and frequent. Mr. Paine says, in closing his first Crisis: "By perseverance and fortitude we have the prospect of a glorious issue; by cowardice and submission the sad choice of a variety of evils, a ravaged country, a depopulated city, habitations without safety, and slavery without hope; our homes turned into barracks and bawdy-houses for Hessians and a future race to provide for, whose fathers we shall doubt of. Look on this picture and weep over it! and if there yet remains one thoughtless wretch who believes it not, let him suffer it unlamented." Junius also says in strains as pathetic and patriotic: "We owe it to posterity not to suffer their dearest inheritance to be destroyed. But if it were possible for us to be insensible of these sacred claims, there is yet an obligation binding on ourselves, from which nothing can acquit us, a personal interest which we can not surrender. To alienate even our own rights would be a crime as much more enormous than suicide as a life of civil security and freedom is superior to a bare existence; and if life be the bounty of Heaven, we scornfully reject the noblest part of the gift, if we consent to surrender that certain rule of living, without which the condition of human nature is not only miserable, but contemptible."—Let. 20.
In the study of the human heart, and in a knowledge of the secret workings of the mind they were both masters. And, had it not been that they overapplied the nobler virtues in the common people, they would never have gone wrong in their conclusions. They failed not in the knowledge, but in the application of the thing. They thought it existed where it did not. But this is the law, which they laid down as follows:
The mental constitution of Mr. Paine made him practical. What he knew he considered of no use to himself unless he could apply it in some way. He finds the people oppressed by the usurpations of government, and he urges to rebellion. He finds in America, Britain had prohibited the importation of powder, and his knowledge of chemistry immediately supplies the national magazines. His mechanical thought was not satisfied until it had taken the form of an iron bridge. It was the same disposition in Junius which kept him forever talking of "experience," and the "evidence of facts." I give a single parallel out of hundreds:
| Paine. | Junius. |
| "In the progress of politics, as in the common occurrences of life, we are not only apt to forget the ground we have traveled over, but frequently neglect to gather up experience as we go."—Crisis, iii. | "As you yourself are a singular instance of youth without spirit, the man who defends you is a no less remarkable example of age without the benefit of experience."—Let. 9. |
I merely call attention to the above fact as a practical feature of the mind common to both. In the same manner both make frequent mention of "reason" and "common sense." Examples of this kind it is useless to give, for they look out from every page.