"Remember, thou hast thrown me the glove, Cato, and either thee or I must tire. I fear not the field of fair debate, but thou hast stepped aside and made it personal. Thou hast tauntingly called me by name; and if I cease to hunt thee from every lane and lurking hole of mischief, and bring thee not a trembling culprit before the public bar, then brand me with reproach by naming me in the list of your confederates."
"The Forester" declares his respect for the honest and undisguised opponents of independence. "To be nobly wrong is more manly than to be meanly right." But "Cato" wears the mask of a friend, and shall be proved a foe.
The so-called "Tories" of the American Revolution have never had justice done them. In another work I have told the story of John Randolph, King's Attorney in Virginia, and there were many other martyrs of loyalty in those days.* Four months after the affair at Lexington, Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Randolph, in London: "Looking with fondness towards a reconciliation with Great Britain, I cannot help hoping you may be able to contribute towards expediting the good work." This was written on August 25, 1775; and if this was the feeling of Jefferson only ten months before the Declaration, how many, of more moderate temper, surrounded "Cato" and "The Forester" in loyal and peace-loving Philadelphia? But "Cato" was believed ungenuine. The Rev. Dr. William Smith, who wrote under that name, a native of Aberdeen with an Oxonian D.D., had been a glowing Whig patriot until June, 1775. But his wife was a daughter of the loyalist, William Moore. This lady of fashion was distinguished by her contempt for the independents, and her husband, now near fifty, was led into a false position.**
* "Omitted Chapters of History, Disclosed in the Life and
Papers of Edmund Randolph," p. 20.
** R. H. Lee, in a letter to his brother (July 5, 1778) says:
"We had a magnificent celebration of the anniversary of
independence. The Whigs of the city dressed up a woman of
the town with the monstrous head-dress of the Tory ladies,
and escorted her through the town with a great concourse of
people. Her head was elegantly and expensively dressed, I
suppose about three feet high and proportionate width, with
a profusion of curls, etc. The figure was droll, and
occasioned much mirth. It has lessened some heads already,
and will probably bring the rest within the bounds of
reason, for they are monstrous indeed. The Tory wife of Dr.
Smith has christened this figure Continella, or the Duchess
of Independence, and prayed for a pin from her head by way
of relic. The Tory women are very much mortified,
notwithstanding this."—"Omitted Chapters of History," p.
40.
"Cato's" brilliant wife had to retire before "Continella" in
the following year. The charter of the College of
Philadelphia was taken away, and its president retired to an
obscure living at Chestertown, Maryland. He had, however,
some of the dexterity of the Vicar of Bray; when the cause
he had reviled was nearly won he founded a "Washington"
college in Maryland. He was chosen by that diocese for a
bishop (1783), but the General Convention refused to
recommend him for consecration. In 1789 he managed to regain
his place as college president in Philadelphia.
He held the highest literary position in Philadelphia, and perhaps felt some jealousy of Paine's fame. He picked out all the mistakes he could find in "Common Sense," and tried in every way to belittle his antagonist. Himself a Scotchman, his wife an Englishwoman, he sneered at Paine for being a foreigner; having modified his principles to those of the loyalist's daughter, he denounced Paine as an "interested writer." He was out of his element in the controversy he began with personalities. He spoke of the trouble as a lovers' quarrel. Paine answers:
"It was not in the power of France or Spain, or all the other powers in Europe, to have given such a wound, or raised us to such mortal hatred as Britain hath done. We see the same kind of undescribed anger at her conduct, as we would at the sight of an animal devouring its young."
The strongest point of "Cato" was based on the proposed embassy for negotiation, and he demanded reverence for "Ambassadors coming to negotiate a peace." To this "The Forester" replied:
"Cato discovers a gross ignorance of the British Constitution in supposing that these men can be empowered to act as Ambassadors. To prevent his future errors, I will set him right. The present war differs from every other, in this instance, viz., that it is not carried on under the prerogative of the crown, as other wars have always been, but under the authority of the whole legislative power united; and as the barriers which stand in the way of a negotiation are not proclamations, but acts of Parliament, it evidently follows that were even the King of England here in person, he could not ratify the terms or conditions of a reconciliation; because, in the single character of King, he could not stipulate for the repeal of any acts of Parliament, neither can the Parliament stipulate for him. There is no body of men more jealous of their privileges than the Commons: Because they sell them."
Paine wrote three letters in reply to "Cato," the last of which contained a memorable warning to the people on the eve of the Declaration of Independence: "Forget not the hapless African." That was forgotten, but the summing up made Dr. William Smith an object of detestation. He never ventured into political controversy again, and when he returned from exile to Philadelphia, a penitent patriot, he found his old antagonist, Thomas Paine, honored by a degree from the University of Pennsylvania into which the college had been absorbed.
On May 8th a fourth letter, signed "The Forester," appeared in the same paper (Pennsylvania Journal), which I at first suspected of not being from Paine's pen.* This was because of a sentence beginning: "The clergy of the English Church, of which I profess myself a member," etc. There is no need to question the truth of this, for, as we have seen, Paine had been confirmed, and no doubt previously baptized; nor is there reason to disbelieve the statement of Oldys that he wished to enter holy orders. There was a good deal of rationalism in the American church at that time, and that Paine, with his religious fervor and tendency to inquire, should have maintained his place in that scholarly church is natural. His quakerism was a philosophy, but he could by no means have found any home in its rigid and dogmatic societies in Philadelphia. The casual sentence above quoted was probably inserted for candor, as the letter containing it opens with a censure on the attitude of the Quakers towards the proposal for independence. The occasion was an election of four burgesses to represent Philadelphia in the State Assembly, a body in which Quakers (loyalists) preponderated. Had the independents been elected they must have taken the oath of allegiance to the crown, with which the State was at war. Indeed Paine declares that the "Tories" succeeded in the election because so many patriots were absent for defence of their country. Under these circumstances Paine urges the necessity of a popular convention. The House of Assembly is disqualified from "sitting in its own case."