Paine was chosen by his fellow-deputies of Calais to offer the Convention the congratulations of their department on the abolition of monarchy. This letter, written October 27th, was on that day read in Convention, in French.
"Citizen President: In the name of the deputies of the department of Pas de Calais, I have the honor of presenting to the Convention the felicitations of the General Council of the Commune of Calais on the abolition of royalty.
"Amid the joy inspired by this event, one can not forbear some pain at the folly of our ancestors, who have placed us under the necessity of treating seriously (solennellement) the abolition of a phantom.
"Thomas Paine, Deputy, etc."*
The Moniteur, without printing the letter, says that applause followed the word "fantome" The use of this word was a resumption of Paine's effort to save the life of the king, then a prisoner of state, by a suggestion of his insignificance.** But he very soon realizes the power of the phantom, which lies not only in the monarchical Trade Union of Europe but in the superstition of monarchy in those who presently beheaded poor Louis. Paine was always careful to call him Louis Capet, but the French deputies took the king seriously to the last. The king's divine foot was on their necks in the moment when their axe was on his. But Paine feared a more terrible form which had arisen in place of the royal prisoner of the Temple. On the fourth day of the Convention Marat arose with the words, "It seems a great many here are my enemies," and received the shouted answer, "All! all!" Paine had seen Marat hypnotize the Convention, and hold it subdued in the hollow of his hand. Here was King Stork ready to succeed King Log.
* This letter I copied and translated in the Historical
Exhibition of the Revolution, in Paris, 1889. This letter of
the "philosophe anglais" as he is described in the
catalogue, is in the collection of M. Charavay, and was
framed with the Bonneville portrait of Paine.
** In his republican manifesto at the time of the king's
flight he had deprecated revenge towards the captured
monarch.
But what has the Convention to do with deciding about Louis XVI., or about affairs, foreign or domestic? It is there like the Philadelphia Convention of 1787; its business is to frame a Constitution, then dissolve, and let the organs it created determine special affairs. So the committee work hard on the Constitution; "Deputy Paine and France generally expect," finds Carlyle, "all finished in a few months." But, alas, the phantom is too strong for the political philosophers. The crowned heads of Europe are sinking their differences for a time and consulting about this imprisoned brother. And at the same time the subjects of those heads are looking eagerly towards the Convention.*
* "That which will astonish posterity is that at Stockholm,
five months after the death of Gustavus, and while the
northern Powers are leaguing themselves against the liberty
of France, there has been published a translation of Thomas
Paine's "Rights of Man," the translator being one of the
King's secretaries! "—Moniteur Nov. 8, 1792.
The foreign menaces had thus far caused the ferocities of the revolution, for France knew it was worm-eaten with enemies of republicanism. But now the Duke of Brunswick had retreated, the French arms were victorious everywhere; and it is just possible that the suicide of the Republic—the Reign of Terror—might never have been completed but for that discovery (November 20th) of secret papers walled up in the Tuileries. These papers compromised many, revealed foreign schemes, and made all Paris shriek "Treason!" The smith (Gamain) who revealed the locality of that invisible iron press which he had set under the wainscot, made a good deal of history that day.
A cry for the king's life was raised, for to France he was the head and front of all conspiracy.