So he spake to Congress, and to its president he said that he would have done the same for any country as for America. The religious basis of his political system has a droll illustration in an anecdote of his early life told by himself. While bowling with friends at Lewes, Mr. Verril remarked that Frederick of Prussia "was the best fellow in the world for a king; he had so much of the devil in him." It struck Paine that "if it were necessary for a king to have so much of the devil in him, kings might very beneficially be dispensed with." From this time he seems to have developed a theory of human rights based on theocracy; and so genuinely that in America, while the Bible was still to him the word of God, he solemnly proposed, in the beginning of the Revolution, that a crown should be publicly laid on that book, to signify to the world that "in America the Law is King."
While in America the States were discussing the Constitution proposed by the Convention, Paine sat in the silent meeting at Thetford dreaming of the Parliament of Man, and federation of the world. In America the dawn of the new nation was a splendor, but it paled the ideals that had shone through the night of struggle. The principles of the Declaration, which would have freed every slave,—representation proportionate to population, so essential to equality, the sovereignty of justice instead of majorities or of States,—had become "glittering generalities." The first to affirm the principles of the Declaration, Paine awaited the unsummoned Convention that would not compromise any of them away. For politicians these lofty ideas might be extinguished by the rising of a national sun; but in Paine there remained the deep Quaker well where the stars shone on through the garish day.*
Seated in the Quaker meeting-house beside his mother, and beside his father's fresh grave, Paine revises the past while revising the proofs of his pamphlet. The glamor of war, even of the American Revolution, fades; the shudder with which he saw in childhood soldiers reeking from the massacres of Culloden and Inverness returns; he begins his new career in the old world with a "testimony" against war.**
* "In wells where truth in secret lay He saw the midnight
stars by day."—W. D. Howells.
** "Prospects on the Rubicon; or, An Investigation into the
Causes and Consequences of the Politics to be Agitated at
the Meeting of Parliament." London, 1787. Pp. 68.
"When we consider, for the feelings of Nature cannot be dismissed, the calamities of war and the miseries it inflicts upon the human species, the thousands and tens of thousands of every age and sex who are rendered wretched by the event, surely there is something in the heart of man that calls upon him to think! Surely there is some tender chord, tuned by the hand of the Creator, that still struggles to emit in the hearing of the soul a note of sorrowing sympathy. Let it then be heard, and let man learn to feel that the true greatness of a nation is founded on principles of humanity.... War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances, such a combination of foreign matters, that no human wisdom can calculate the end. It has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.... I defend the cause of the poor, of the manufacturer, of the tradesman, of the farmer, and of all those on whom the real burthen of taxes fall—but above all, I defend the cause of humanity."
So little did Paine contemplate or desire revolution in England or France. His exhortation to young Pitt is to avoid war with Holland, to be friendly with France, to shun alliances involving aid in war, and to build up the wealth and liberties of England by uniting the people with the throne. He has discovered that this healthy change is going on in France. The French people are allying "the Majesty of the Sovereign with the Majesty of the Nation." "Of all alliances this is infinitely the strongest and the safest to be trusted to, because the interest so formed and operating against external enemies can never be divided." Freedom doubles the value of the subject to the government When the desire of freedom becomes universal among the people, then, "and not before, is the important moment for the most effectual consolidation of national strength and greatness." The government must not be frightened by disturbances incidental to beneficent changes. "The creation we enjoy arose out of a chaos."*
* The pamphlet was reprinted in London in 1793 under the
title: "Prospects on the War, and Paper Currency. The
second edition, corrected." Advertisement (June 20th): "This
pamphlet was written by Mr. Paine in the year 1787, on one
of Mr. Pitt's armaments, namely, that against Holland. His
object was to prevent the people of England from being
seduced into a war, by stating clearly to them the
consequences which would inevitably befall the credit of
this country should such a calamity take place. The minister
has at length, however, succeeded in his great project,
after three expensive armaments within the space of seven
years; and the event has proved how well founded were the
predictions of Mr. Paine. The person who has authority to
bring forward this pamphlet in its present shape, thinks his
doing so a duty which he owes both to Mr. P——— and the
people of England, in order that the latter may judge what
credit is due to (what a great judge calls) the wild
theories of Mr. Paine."
Paine had seen a good deal of Jefferson in Paris, and no doubt their conversation often related to struggles in the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia. Jefferson wished the Constitution to include a Declaration of Rights, and wrote Paine some comments on the argument of James Wilson (afterward of the Supreme Court), maintaining that such a Declaration was unnecessary in a government without any powers not definitely granted, and that such a Declaration might be construed to imply some degree of power over the matters it defined. Wilson's speeches, powerfully analyzing the principles of liberty and federation, were delivered on October 6th and November 24th, and it will appear by the subjoined paper that they were more in accord with Paine's than with Jefferson's principles. The manuscript, which is among Jefferson's papers, bears no date, but was no doubt written at Thetford early in the year 1788.