* Mr. Burk, Secretary of the University of Pennsylvania,
sends me some interesting particulars. The proposal to
confer the degree on Paine was unanimously agreed to by the
trustees present, who were the Hon. Joseph Reed, President
of the Province; Mr. Moore, Vice-President; Mr. Sproat
(Presbyterian minister), Mr. White (the Bishop), Mr.
Helmuth, Mr. Wei-borg (minister of the German Calvinist
Church), Mr. Farmer (Roman Catholic Rector of St. Mary's),
Dr. Bond, Dr. Hutchkinson, Mr. Muhlenberg (Lutheran
minister). There were seven other recipients of the honor on
that day, all eminent ministers of religion; and M.D. was
conferred on David Ramsay, a prisoner with the enemy.
** "In Council. Philadelphia, October 10th, 1780. Sir,—Pay
to Thomas Paine Esquire, or his order, the amount of three
hundred and sixty dollars Continental money in State money,
at sixty to one, amount of his account for 10 dozen of the
Crisis Extraordinary. Wm. Moore, Vice President.—To David
Rittenhouse Esquire, Treasurer."
Although the financial emergency had been tided over by patriotic sacrifices, it had disclosed a chaos.
"Sir,—Please to pay the within to Mr. Willm. Harris, and you will oblige yr. obt. Hble. Sert., Thos. Paine.—David Rittenhouse Esq."
"Red. in full, H. Wm. Harris." [Harris printed the pamphlet].
Congress, so far from being able to contend with Virginia on a point of sovereignty, was without power to levy taxes. "One State," writes Washington (May 31st) "will comply with a requisition of Congress; another neglects to do it; a third executes it by halves; and all differ either in the manner, the matter, or so much in point of time, that we are always working up hill, and ever shall be; and, while such a system as the present one or rather want of one prevails, we shall ever be unable to apply our strength or resources to any advantage." In the letter of May 28th, to the President of Pennsylvania, which led to the subscription headed by Paine, Washington pointed out that the resources of New York and Jersey were exhausted, that Virginia could spare nothing from the threatened South, and Pennsylvania was their chief dependence. "The crisis, in every point of view, is extraordinary." This sentence of Washington probably gave Paine his title, Crisis Extraordinary. It is in every sense a masterly production. By a careful estimate he shows that the war and the several governments cost two millions sterling annually. The population being 3,000,000, the amount would average 13s. 4d. per head. In England the taxation was £2 per head. With independence a peace establishment in America would cost 5s. per head; with the loss of it Americans would have to pay the £2 per head like other English subjects. Of the needed annual two millions, Pennsylvania's quota would be an eighth, or £250,000; that is, a shilling per month to her 375,000 inhabitants,—which subjugation would increase to three-and-threepence per month. He points out that the Pennsylvanians were then paying only £64,280 per annum, instead of their real quota of £250,000, leaving a deficiency of £185, 720, and consequently a distressed army. After showing that with peace and free trade all losses and ravages would be speedily redressed, Paine proposes that half of Pennsylvania's quota, and £60,000 over, shall be raised by a tax of 7s. per head. With this sixty thousand (interest on six millions) a million can be annually borrowed. He recommends a war-tax on landed property, houses, imports, prize goods, and liquors. "It would be an addition to the pleasures of society to know that, when the health of the army goes round, a few drops from every glass become theirs."
On December 30, 1780, Dunlap advertised Paine's pamphlet "Public Good." Under a charter given the Virginia Company in 1609 the State of Virginia claimed that its southern boundary extended to the Pacific; and that its northern boundary, starting four hundred miles above, on the Atlantic coast, stretched due northwest. To this Paine replies that the charter was given to a London company extinct for one hundred and fifty years, during which the State had never acted under that charter. Only the heirs of that company's members could claim anything under its extinct charter. Further, the State unwarrantably assumed that the northwestern line was to extend from the northern point of its Atlantic base; whereas there was more reason to suppose that it was to extend from the southern point, and meet a due west line from the northern point, thus forming a triangular territory of forty-five thousand square miles. Moreover, the charter of 1609 said the lines should stretch "from sea to sea." Paine shows by apt quotations that the western sea was supposed to be a short distance from the Atlantic, and that the northwestern boundary claimed by Virginia would never reach the said sea, "but would form a spiral line of infinite windings round the globe, and after passing over the northern parts of America and the frozen ocean, and then into the northern parts of Asia, would, when eternity should end, and not before, terminate in the north pole." Such a territory is nondescript, and a charter that describes nothing gives nothing. It may be remarked here that though the Attorney-General of Virginia, Edmund Randolph, had to vindicate his State's claim, he used a similar argument in defeating Lord Fairfax's claim to lands in Virginia which had not been discovered when his grant was issued.* All this, however, was mere fencing preliminary to the real issue. The western lands, on the extinction of the Virginia companies, had reverted to the Crown, and the point in which the State was really interested was its succession to the sovereignty of the Crown over all that territory. It was an early cropping up of the question of State sovereignty. By royal proclamation of 1763 the province of Virginia was defined so as not to extend beyond heads of rivers emptying in the Atlantic.
* "Omitted Chapters of History Disclosed in the Life and
Papers of Edmund Randolph," pp. 47, 60.
Paine contended that to the sovereignty of the Crown over all territories beyond limits of the thirteen provinces the United States had succeeded. This early assertion of the federal doctrine, enforced with great historical and legal learning, alienated from Paine some of his best Southern friends. The controversy did not end until some years later. After the peace, a proposal in the Virginia Legislature to present Paine with something for his services, was lost on account of this pamphlet.*
* Of course this issue of State v. National sovereignty was
adjourned to the future battle-field, where indeed it was
not settled. Congress accepted Virginia's concession of the
territory in question (March I, 1784), without conceding
that it was a donation; it accepted some of Virginia's
conditions, but refused others, which the State surrendered.
A motion that this acceptance did not imply endorsement of
Virginia's claim was lost, but the contrary was not
affirmed. The issue was therefore settled only in Paine's
pamphlet, which remains a document of paramount historical
interest.
There was, of course, a rumor that Paine's pamphlet was a
piece of paid advocacy. I remarked among the Lee MSS., at
the University of Virginia, an unsigned scrap of paper
saying he had been promised twelve thousand acres of western
land. Such a promise could only have been made by the old
Indiana, or Vandalia, Company, which was trying to revive
its defeated claim for lands conveyed by the Indians in
compensation for property they had destroyed. Their agent,
Samuel Wharton, may have employed Paine's pen for some kind
of work. But there is no faintest trace of advocacy in
Paine's "Public Good." He simply maintains that the
territories belong to the United States, and should be sold
to pay the public debt,—a principle as fatal to the claim
of a Company as to that of a State.
The students of history will soon be enriched by a "Life of Patrick Henry," by his grandson, William Wirt Henry, and a "Life of George Mason," by his descendant, Miss Rowland. In these works by competent hands important contributions will be made (as I have reason to know) to right knowledge of the subject dealt with by Paine in his "Public Good." It can here only be touched on; but in passing I may say that Virginia had good ground for resisting even the semblance of an assertion of sovereignty by a Congress representing only a military treaty between the colonies; and that Paine's doctrine confesses itself too idealistic and premature by the plea, with which his pamphlet closes, for the summoning of a "continental convention, for the purpose of forming a continental constitution, defining and describing the powers and authority of Congress."