Day after day this carnival of death goes on. Danton, Brissot, and many more of the best men of France are butchered; Roland and Condorcet die by their own hands; Talleyrand is a refugee in America, and Lafayette pines in the dungeon vaults of Austria.
Many noble women, too, are sacrificed. Marie Antoinette follows her Louis to the scaffold. In the Conciergerie, companions for a time, are held captive two of the purest and noblest of women,—the lovely and amiable Josephine Beauhamais, destined to become Napoleon's queen, and the beautiful and gifted Madame Roland, whose innocent blood must wet the cruel knife of the guillotine.
Such was the French Revolution,—"A mighty truth clad in hell-fire,"—the bloodiest, and yet the brightest page in the history of France. It might have been a bloodless one, it might have been a brighter one, had the wise and moderate counsels of Thomas Paine prevailed.
In the shadow of death the crowning effort of his life, the "Age of Reason," was composed. His pen had given kingcraft a mortal hurt; priestcraft must be destroyed. This book has filled die Orthodox world with terror. Around it has raged one of the fiercest intellectual conflicts of the age. All the artillery of Christendom has been brought to bear upon it; but without effect. Firm, impregnable, like some Gibraltar, it still stands unharmed.
Bowed with the weight of sixty-six years Paine returned to America. Here the evening of his life was passed,—embittered by a world's ingratitude.
"Men never know their saviors when they come."
The apostle of liberty, of mercy, and of truth, became successively a martyr to each. For espousing the cause of liberty England declared him an outlaw; for advocating mercy France gave him a prison; and for proclaiming the truth America placed upon his aged head the cruel crown of thorns.
But death came at last and brought relief to the persecuted sage. On a bright June morning (June 8), in 1809, the end came.
Yes, death came. But with it came no fears. No banished Hagar with famishing infant haunted him; from the desolate ruins of those Midianite homes came no phantoms to strike his soul with terror; no Uriah's ghost stood before his bedside and would not down; the hand that with no weapon but the pen had made priests and monarchs tremble, now growing cold and pallid, was not stained with the blood of a wile or child; no agonizing shrieks of a burning Servetus rang in his dying ears. Tempestuous as life's voyage had been, the old man readied his port in peace. Nature, whom he had deified, fondly and pityingly held him in her all-embracing arms, and soothed him in that last sad hour as with a mother's love. The morning sun looked kindly down and kissed his throbbing temples; gentle breezes, fragrant with the odors of a thousand roses, fanned his fevered brow; joyous birds, whose songs he loved so well, came to his window and sang their cheeriest notes; while faithful friends were at his bedside, ministering to every want. And so, bravely and peacefully, with that serenity of soul which only the conscious of a well-spent life can give, the grand old patriot passed away.
Thus have I briefly traced the public career of Thomas Paine,—a career in which his steadfast devotion to manly principles ranks him with the world's worthiest heroes. His private life was not less honorable. In his moral nature were united the noblest traits that adorn the human character.