How everybody bent under the breath of those days may be seen in the fact that even Gouverneur Morris is found writing to Lord Wycombe (November 22d): "All who wish to partake thereof [freedom] will find in us (ye French) a sure and certain ally. We will chase tyranny, and, above all, aristocracy, off the theatre of the Universe."*
* "Diary and Letters." The letter was probably written with
knowledge of its liability to fall into the hands of the
French Committee. It could not deceive Wycombe.
Paine was living in the "Passage des Pétites Peres, No. 7." There are now two narrow passages of that name, uniting near the church "Notre Dame des Victoires," which still bears the words, "Liberty Egalité, Fraternity." No. 7 has disappeared as a number, but it may have described a part of either No. 8 or No. 9,—both ancient. Here he was close to a chapel of the Capucines, unless, indeed, it had already been replaced by this church, whose interior walls are covered with tablets set up by individuals in acknowledgment of the Virgin's miraculous benefits to them. Here he might study superstition, and no doubt did; but on November 20th he has to deal with the madness of a populace which has broken the outer chains of superstition with a superstition of their own, one without restraints to replace the chains. Beneath his window the Place des Victoires will be crowded with revolutionists, frantic under rumors of the discovered iron press and its treasonable papers. He could hardly look out without seeing some poor human scape-goat seeking the altar's safety. Our Lady will look on him from her church the sad-eyed inquiry: "Is this, then, the new religion of Liberty, with which you supplant the Mother and Babe?"
Paine has carried to success his anti-monarchical faith. He was the first to assail monarchy in America and in France. A little more than a year before, he had founded the first Republican Society in Europe, and written its Declaration on the door of the National Assembly. Sieyès had denounced him then as a "polyarchist." Now he sat with Sieyès daily, framing a republican Constitution, having just felicitated the Convention on the abolition of the phantom—Royalty. And now, on this terrible night of November 20th, this unmaker of kings finds himself the solitary deputy ready to risk his life to save the man whose crown he had destroyed. It is not simply because the old Quaker heart in him recoils from bloodshed, but that he would save the Republic from the peril of foreign invasion, which would surely follow the execution of Louis, and from disgrace in America, whose independence owed much to the fallen monarch.
In his little room, the lonely author, unable to write French, animated by sentiments which the best of the French revolutionists could not understand—Danton reminding him that "revolutions are not made of rose-water"—must have before the morrow's Convention some word that shall control the fury of the moment. Rose-water will not answer now. Louis must pass his ordeal; his secret schemes have been revealed; the treachery of his submissions to the people exposed. He is guilty, and the alternatives are a calm trial, or death by the hands of the mob. What is now most needed is delay, and, that secured, diversion of national rage from the individual Louis to the universal anti-republican Satan inspiring the crowned heads of Europe. Before the morning dawns, Paine has written his letter to the president It is translated before the Convention meets, November 21st, and is read to that body the same day.* Louis XVI., he says, should be tried. The advice is not suggested by vengeance, but by justice and policy. If innocent, he may be allowed to prove it; if guilty, he must be punished or pardoned by the nation. He would, however, consider Louis, individually, beneath the notice of the republic. The importance of his trial is that there is a conspiracy of "crowned brigands" against the liberties not only of France, but of all nations, and there is ground for suspecting that Louis XVI. was a partner in it. He should be utilized to ferret out the whole gang, and reveal to the various peoples what their monarchs, some of whom work in secret for fear of their subjects, are doing. Louis XVI. should not be dealt with except in the interest of all Europe.
"If, seeing in Louis XVI. only a weak and narrow-minded man, badly reared, as all like him, subject, it is said, to intemperance, imprudently re-established by the Constituent Assembly on a throne for which he was unfit,—if we hereafter show him some compassion, this compassion should be the effect of national magnanimity, and not a result of the burlesque notion of pretended inviolability.'"
* "L' Histoire Parlementaire," xx., p. 367.
** This essay has suffered in the translation found in
English and American editions of Paine. The words "national
magnanimity" are omitted. The phrase "brigands couronnes"
becomes "crowned robbers" in England, and "crowned ruffians"
in America. Both versions are commonplace, and convey an
impression of haste and mere abuse. But Paine was a slow
writer, and weighed his words even when "quarelling in
print. When this letter was written to the Convention its
members were reading his Essay on Royalty, which filled
seven columns of Brissot's Patriot Francois three weeks
before. In that he had traced royalty to the bandit-chief.
Several troops of banditti assemble for the purpose of
upsetting some country, of laying contributions over it, of
seizing the landed property, of reducing the people to
thraldom. The expedition being accomplished, the chief of
the gang assumes the title of king or monarch. Such has been
the origin of royalty among all nations who live by the
chase, agriculture, or the tending of flocks. A second
chieftain arriving obtains by force what has been acquired
by violence. He despoils his predecessor, loads him with
fetters, puts him to death, and assumes his title. In the
course of ages the memory of the outrage is lost; his
successors establish new forms of government; through
policy, they become the instruments of a little good; they
invent, or cause to be invented, false genealogical tables;
they employ every means to render their race sacred; the
knavery of priests steps in to their assistance; for their
body-guard they take religion itself; then it is that
Royalty, or rather Tyranny, becomes immortal. A power
unjustly usurped is transformed into a hereditary right."
Lamartine, in his history of the Girondists, reproaches Paine for these words concerning a king-who had shown him friendship during the American war. But the facts were not well explored in Lamartine's time. Louis Blanc recognizes Paine's intent.*
* "Hist, de la Revolution," etc., vol. vii., p. 396.
"He had learned in England that killing a monarch does not kill monarchs." This grand revolutionary proposal to raise the inevitable trial from the low plane of popular wrath against a prisoner to the dignity of a process against European monarchy, would have secured delay and calmer counsels. If the reader, considering the newly discovered papers, and the whole situation, will examine critically Paine's words just quoted, he will find them meriting a judgment the reverse of Lamartine's. With consummate art, the hourly imperilled king is shielded from vindictive wrath by the considerations that he is non compos, not responsible for his bringing up, was put back on the throne by the Assembly, after he had left it, acknowledging his unfitness, and that compassion for him would be becoming to the magnanimity of France. A plea for the King's immunity from trial, for his innocence or his virtues, would at that juncture have been fatal. As it was, this ingenious document made an impression on the Convention, which ordered it to be printed. *