It comes to tell how by union of France and America—of Lafayette and Washington—the "Contrat Social" was framed into the Constitution of a happy and glorious new earth, over it a new heaven unclouded by priestly power or superstitions. By that book of Paine's (Part I), the idea of a national convention was made the purpose of the French leaders who were really inspired by an "enthusiasm of humanity." In December, 1791, when the legislature sits paralyzed under royal vetoes, Paine's panacea is proposed.*
On the tenth of August, 1792, after the massacre of the Marseillese by the King's Swiss guards, one book, hurled from the window of the mobbed palace, felled an American spectator—Robert Gilmor, of Baltimore—who consoled himself by carrying it home. The book, now in the collection of Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, New York, was a copy of "The Thirteen Constitutions," translated by Franklin's order into French (1783) and distributed among the monarchs of Europe.**
* "Veto after Veto; your thumbscrew paralysed! Gods and men
may see that the Legislature is in a false position. As,
alas, who is in a true one? Voices already murmur for a
National Convention."—Carlyle.
** "Constitutions des Treize etats-Unis de l'Amerique." The
French king's arms are on the red morocco binding, and on
the title a shield, striped and winged; above this thirteen
minute stars shaped into one large star, six-pointed. For
the particulars of Franklin's gift to the monarchs see
Sparks' "Franklin," x., p. 39. See also p. 390 of this
volume.
What a contrast between the peace and order amid which the thirteen peoples, when the old laws and authorities were abolished, formed new ones, and these scenes in France! "For upwards of two years from the commencement of the American war," wrote Paine, "and a longer period, in several of the American States, there were no established forms of government. The old governments had been abolished, and the country was too much occupied in defence to employ its attention in establishing new governments; yet, during this interval, order and harmony were preserved as inviolate as in any country in Europe." When Burke pointed to the first riots in France, Paine could make a retort: the mob is what your cruel governments have made it, and only proves how necessary the overthrow of such governments. That French human nature was different from English nature he could not admit. Liberty and equality would soon end these troubles of transition. On that same tenth of August Paine's two great preliminaries are adopted: the hereditary representative is superseded and a national convention is called. The machinery for such convention, the constituencies, the objects of it, had been read in "The Rights of Man," as illustrated in the United States and Pennsylvania, by every French statesman.1 It was the American Republic they were about to found; and notwithstanding the misrepresentation of that nation by its surviving courtiers, these French republicans recognized their real American Minister: Paine is summoned.
* "Theorie et Pratique des Droits de l'Homme. Par Thomas
Paine, Secrettaire da Congres au Departement des Affaires
£trangeres pendant la guerre d'Araenque, auteur du ' Sens
Commun,' et des Reponses a Burke. Traduit en Francais par F.
Lanthenas, D.M., et par le Traducteur du "Sens Common." A
Paris: Chez les Directeurs de l'lmprimerie du Cercle Social,
rue du Theatre Francais, No. 4. 1792. L'an quatrierae de La
Liberte."
On August 26, 1792, the National Assembly, on proposal of M. Guadet, in the name of the "Commission Extraordinaire," conferred the title of French citizen on "Priestley, Payne, Ben thorn, Wilberforce, Clarkson, Mackintosh, David Williams, Gorani, Anacharsis Clootz, Campe, Cornielle, Paw, N. Pestalozzi, Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Klopstoc, Kosciusko, Gilleers." Schiller was afterwards added, and on September 25 th the Patriote announces the same title conferred on Thomas Cooper, John Home Tooke, John Oswald, George Boies, Thomas Christie, Dr. Joseph Warner, Englishmen, and Joel Barlow, American.*
* "Life and Letters of Joel Barlow," etc., by Charles Burr
Todd, New York, 1886, p. 97.
Paine was elected to the French Convention by four different departments—Oise, Puy-de-Dome, Somme, and Pas-de-Calais. The votes appear to have been unanimous.
Here is an enthusiastic appeal (Riom, le 8 Septembre) signed by Louvet, "auteur de la Sentinelle," and thirty-two others, representing nine communes, to Paine, that day elected representative of Puy-de-Dome:
"Your love for humanity, for liberty and equality, the useful works that have issued from your heart and pen in their defence, have determined our choice. It has been hailed with universal and reiterated applause. Come, friend of the people, to swell the number of patriots in an assembly which will decide the destiny of a great people, perhaps of the human race. The happy period you have predicted for the nations has arrived. Come! do not deceive their hope!"