There are, I regret to say, many good people who believe that Thomas Paine was a very bad man. They have heard this from the lips of those in whose veracity they place implicit confidence. While from infancy they have been taught to regard Jesus Christ as the mediator between man and God, they have been led to consider Thomas Paine as a sort of negotiator between the Devil and man. Now, let me ask these people, do you know why Thomas Paine has been so bitterly assailed? You have heard various charges preferred against him; but seriously, do you believe any of the charges named sufficient to account for the intense, the bitter hatred that has been manifested toward him? Have you never been impressed with the thought that there might be something back of all this, some secret grudge which your informants dare not mention? Let us notice briefly the faults and vices imputed to him.
You have been told that he was a pauper, that he died in wretchedness and want. Those who told you this were certainly mistaken. The estate presented to him by New York, in consideration of his Revolutionary services, was valued at $30,000, and the greater portion of this was remaining at his death. It is true that during his long and useful career he was many times in straitened circumstances; but this was the result, not of improvidence, or reckless expenditure, but of the devotion of his life to the cause of humanity instead of the accumulation of wealth. But what if he had died poor? Is poverty a crime? Yes, were this true, is it a thing of which to boast, that in a Christian city, within the sound of forty church-bells, an old man was suffered to lie neglected and alone, racked by the pangs of hunger and disease, piteously pleading for a crust of bread, or a cup of cold water to cool his parched and fevered tongue; and do you mean to tell us that Christian charity the while stood by unmoved, mocked his sufferings, and damned him when he died?
You have been told that he was a drunkard. A baser slander was never uttered. No human being ever saw Thomas Paine intoxicated. He was one of the most temperate of men. All of his neighbors and acquaintances indignantly denied the truth of this imputation. Gilbert Vale tells us that he knew more than twenty persons who were intimately acquainted with him and not one of whom ever saw him intoxicated. The proprietor of the house in New York, a respectable inn at which Paine boarded in his later years, says that of all his guests he was the most temperate. But supposing that he was a drunkard. Is drunkenness so rare as to secure for its victims an immortal notoriety? Are there no living drunkards for these omnivorous creatures to devour, that, like hyenas, they must dig into a drunkard's grave to fill their empty maws?
You have been told by the clergy that his writings are immoral. I defy those who make this charge to point to one immoral sentence in all that he has written. They cannot; and I further affirm that they dare not permit you to examine his writings and ascertain for yourselves the truth or falsity of this assertion. You who have never read his works may believe that they contain much that is bad. You may imagine that a deadly serpent lurks within them. Let me assure you that there is nothing in them that can harm you. The highest moral tone pervades their pages. They are full of charity, they glow with patriotism, they are warm with love. Even yet, within their lids methinks I feel the beating of the generous heart of him who penned them, every throb marking an aspiration for the welfare of his fellow-men. But admitting, for the sake of argument, that his writings are immoral. Does not the world teem with immoral literature? Are there not hundreds of immoral writers even among the living? If so, why has all this wrath been concentrated upon Paine to the almost total exclusion of the rest?
You have been told that he was an Infidel. Infidel to what? In the Christian sense of this term he was. But what peculiar significance do your informants attach to this fact? Are not three fourths of the world's inhabitants Infidels? Do not the greatest scholars of the age go far beyond him in Infidelity? Earth's wisest sons—those who have contributed most to the wealth of science, and literature, and statesmanship, have been these so-called Infidels. Yet Paine has been denounced as if he were the only Infidel that ever lived.
You have been told that he recanted on his deathbed. In other words, that he lived a hypocrite; that he only feigned Infidelity for the sake of being persecuted. A very plausible reason, surely. But this statement has been widely circulated, and that, too, in spite of the fact that every person who was with him during his dying hours pronounced it false,—those who sat by his bedside and heard every word that fell from his lips. It has ever been the custom of the church to make every distinguished individual appear as an endorser of her dogmas. See those insolent priests haunting the death chamber of Voltaire; see the crucifix thrust into the hands of the dying Litre and the dead Sherman; see the frantic efforts made to convince the world that Lincoln changed his religious views and died a Christian. An honest Quaker who visited Paine daily during his last illness testified to having been offered money to publicly state that he recanted. But he refused. Others were doubtless approached in the same manner, and with the same result. Unable to find a deathbed witness base enough to make so foul a charge, the calumny was originated by one who did not see him die. A Christian's brain conceived and bore that infamous falsehood; and black and hideous as the offspring was, nearly every orthodox clergyman was ready to serve it in the capacity of a faithful nurse. And in these nurses' arms it lived and died. Only a little while ago I saw one of them hugging to his breast and endeavoring to resuscitate with holy breath the putrid corpse of this dead lie! But supposing that he did recant, that he acknowledged the divinity of Christ. If he did this he died in the Christian faith. Now does the church treat deathbed penitents in the manner in which Paine has been treated? Has not every criminal that has repented in his last hours, from the dying thief of nineteen hundred years ago to the last murderer sent to Heaven, been held up as an object of admiration? Why, then, denounce Paine for having, as they claim, renounced his Infidelity? O Consistency, thou art, indeed, a jewel!
And now, assuming all these charges to be true, he would still have been naught but a poor, drunken Infidel; and while this would have subjected him to much harsh criticism while living, it would have been merely of a local character, and would have ceased when he was no more. Death would have silenced censure, the mantle of charity would have been spread above his grave, and the waves of oblivion would have rolled over his memory long ago. Is it possible that all Christendom would have been so deeply agitated, that the walls of her churches would have echoed every week with the fierce anathemas thundered from a thousand pulpits against the inanimate dust of a poor, drunken Infidel!
The conclusion, I think, must irresistibly force itself upon your minds that these reputed faults do not constitute the real head and front of Thomas Paine's offending. There must be something else. What is it? Would you have the mystery solved? If so, read his, "Age of Reason." Read it carefully, thoughtfully, critically; read it with your Bibles open before you; read it in connection with the ablest refutations that have been attempted against it. Do this, and the mystery will be solved. You will then know why Thomas Paine has been so bitterly assailed.
Two champions meet in the arena of debate. One of them, is overwhelmed. Smiles and groans announce his discomfiture, while shouts of applause reward the triumph of his rival. Then one of them grows angry, and stung with madness, drops the sword of argument and seizes in its stead the bludgeon of malice with which to assail his adversary. But which one does this, the successful or the defeated antagonist? I have somewhere read that "the bird that soars on pinions strong and free and is not hit by the marksman's bullet is not discomposed'"—that "it is the wounded bird that flutters!"
That Thomas Paine was not the poor, drunken, immoral wretch that priestly virulence represents him to have been, is dearly shown by the esteem in which he was held by those who knew him best. Would Dr. Franklin have retained the friendship of a poor, drunken, immoral wretch? Would Lord Erskine have defended against the government of England, a poor, drunken, immoral wretch? Would Bishop Watson have crossed swords in theological disputation with a poor, drunken, immoral wretch? Would Napoleon Bonaparte, when in the zenith of his fame, have invited to his table a poor, drunken, immoral wretch? Would France's greatest women, Roland and De Stael, have stooped to pay the tribute of praise to a poor, drunken, immoral wretch? Would President Jefferson have offered a national ship to bear to his home a poor, drunken, immoral wretch? Would Washington have acknowledged as one of the most potent factors in achieving American Independence, the pen of a poor, drunken, immoral wretch? Would the Congress of the United States and the National Convention of France have bestowed gifts and conferred, honors upon a poor, drunken, immoral wretch? Impossible! Every fact connected with his public life refutes these charges made against his private character.