"Mr. Brown [Senator of Kentucky] has shown me a letter from the famous Dr. O'Fallon to Captain Herron, dated Oct 18, 1793. It was intercepted, and he has permitted me to take the following extract:—'This plan (an attack on Louisiana) was digested between Gen. Clarke and me last Christmas. I framed the whole of the correspondence in the General's name, and corroborated it by a private letter of my own to Mr. Thomas Paine, of the National Assembly, with whom during the late war I was very intimate. His reply reached me but a few days since, enclosed in the General's despatches from the Ambassador."**
* "The conduct of Spain towards us is unaccountable and
injurious. Mr. Pinckney is by this time gone over to Madrid
as our envoy extraordinary to bring matters to a conclusion
some way or other. But you will seize any favorable moment
to execute what has been entrusted to you respecting the
Mississippi."—Randolph to Monroe, February 15, 1795.
** Two important historical works have recently appeared
relating to the famous Senator Brown. The first is a
publication of the Filson Club: "The Political Beginnings of
Kentucky," by John Mason Brown. The second is: "The Spanish
Conspiracy," by Thomas Marshall Green (Cincinnati, Robert
Clarke & Co., 1891). The intercepted letter quoted above has
some bearing on the controversy between these authors.
Apparently, Senator Brown, like many other good patriots,
favored independent action in Kentucky when that seemed for
the welfare of the United States, but, when the situation
had changed, Brown is found co-operating with Washington and
Randolph.
That such letters (freely written as they were at the beginning of 1793) were now intercepted indicates the seriousness of the situation time had brought on. The administration had soothed the Kentuckians by pledges of pressing the matter by negotiations. Hence Monroe's instructions, in carrying out which Paine was able to lend a hand.
{1795}
In the State Archives at Paris (États Unis, vol. xliii.) there are two papers marked "Thomas Payne." The first urges the French Ministry to seize the occasion of a treaty with Spain to do a service to the United States: let the free navigation of the Mississippi be made by France a condition of peace. The second paper (endorsed "3 Ventose, February 21, 1795") proposes that, in addition to the condition made to Spain, an effort should be made to include American interests in the negotiation with England, if not too late. The negotiation with England was then finished, but the terms unpublished. Paine recommended that the Convention should pass a resolution that freedom of the Mississippi should be a condition of peace with Spain, which would necessarily accept it; and that, in case the arrangement with England should prove unsatisfactory, any renewed negotiations should support the just reclamations of their American ally for the surrender of the frontier posts and for depredations on their trade. Paine points out that such a declaration could not prolong the war a day, nor cost France an obole; whereas it might have a decisive effect in the United States, especially if Jay's treaty with England should be reprehensible, and should be approved in America.
That generosity "would certainly raise the reputation of the French Republic to the most eminent degree of splendour, and lower in proportion that of her enemies." It would undo the bad effects of the depredations of French privateers on American vessels, which rejoiced the British party in the United States and discouraged the friends of liberty and humanity there. It would acquire for France the merit which is her due, supply her American friends with strength against the intrigues of England, and cement the alliance of the Republics.
This able paper might have been acted on, but for the anger in France at the Jay treaty.
While writing in Monroe's house, the invalid, with an abscess in his side and a more painful sore in his heart—for he could not forget that Washington had forgotten him,—receives tidings of new events through cries in the street. In the month of his release they had been resonant with yells as the Jacobins were driven away and their rooms turned to a Normal School. Then came shouts, when, after trial, the murderous committeemen were led to execution or exile. In the early weeks of 1795 the dread sounds of retribution subside, and there is a cry from the street that comes nearer to Paine's heart—"Bread and the Constitution of Ninety-three!" He knows that it is his Constitution for which they are really calling, for they cannot understand the Robespierrian adulteration of it given out, as one said, as an opiate to keep the country asleep. The people are sick of revolutionary rule. These are the people in whom Paine has ever believed,—the honest hearts that summoned him, as author of "The Rights of Man," to help form their Constitution. They, he knows, had to be deceived when cruel deeds were done, and heard of such deeds with as much horror as distant peoples. Over that Constitution for which they were clamoring he and his lost friend Condorcet had spent many a day of honest toil. Of the original Committee of Nine appointed for the work, six had perished by the revolution, one was banished, and two remained—Sieyès and Paine. That original Committee had gradually left the task to Paine and Condorcet,—Sieyès, because he had no real sympathy with republicanism, though he honored Paine.* When afterwards asked how he had survived the Terror, Sieyès answered, "I lived." He lived by bending, and now leads a Committee of Eleven on the Constitution, while Paine, who did not bend, is disabled. Paine knows Sieyès well. The people will vainly try for the "Constitution of Ninety-three." They shall have no Constitution but of Sieyès' making, and in it will be some element of monarchy. Sieyès presently seemed to retire from the Committee, but old republicans did not doubt that he was all the more swaying it.
* "Mr. Thomas Paine is one of those men who have contributed
the most to establish the liberty of America. His ardent
love of humanity, and his hatred of every sort of tyranny,
have induced him to take up in England the defence of the
French revolution, against the amphigorical declamation of
Mr. Burke. His work has been translated into our language,
and is universally known. What French patriot is there who
has not already, from the bottom of his heart, thanked this
foreigner for having strengthened our cause by all the
powers of his reason and reputation? It is with pleasure
that I observe an opportunity of offering him the tribute of
my gratitude and my esteem for the truly philosophical
application of talents so distinguished as his own."—Sieyès
in the Moniteur, July 6, 1791.