Paine gained great favor with the French government and fame throughout Europe by his pamphlet, "The Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance," in which he predicted the suspension of the Bank of England, which followed the next year. He dated the pamphlet April 8th, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs is shown, in the Archives of that office, to have ordered, on April 27th, a thousand copies. It was translated in all the languages of Europe, and was a terrible retribution for the forged assignats whose distribution in France the English government had considered a fair mode of warfare. This translation "into all the languages of the continent" is mentioned by Ralph Broome, to whom the British government entrusted the task of answering the pamphlet.* As Broome's answer is dated June 4th, this circulation in six or seven weeks is remarkable, The proceeds were devoted by Paine to the relief of prisoners for debt in Newgate, London.**
* "Observations on Mr. Paine's Pamphlet," etc. Broome
escapes the charge of prejudice by speaking of "Mr. Paine,
whose abilities I admire and deprecate in a breath." Paine's
pamphlet was also replied to by George Chalmers ("Oldys")
who had written the slanderous biography.
** Richard Carlile's sketch of Paine, p. 20. This large
generosity to English sufferers appears the more
characteristic beside the closing paragraph of Paine's
pamphlet, "As an individual citizen of America, and as far
as an individual can go, I have revenged (if I may use the
expression without any immoral meaning) the piratical
depredations committed on American commerce by the English
government. I have retaliated for France on the subject of
finance: and I conclude with retorting on Mr. Pitt the
expression he used against France, and say, that the English
system of finance 'is en the verge, nay even in the gulf of
bankruptcy.'"
Concerning the false French assignats forged in England,
see Louis Blanc's "History of the Revolution," vol. xii.,
p. 101.
The concentration of this pamphlet on its immediate subject, which made it so effective, renders it of too little intrinsic interest in the present day to delay us long, especially as it is included in all editions of Paine's works. It possesses, however, much biographical interest as proving the intellectual power of Paine while still but a convalescent. He never wrote any work involving more study and mastery of difficult details. It was this pamphlet, written in Paris, while "Peter Porcupine," in America, was rewriting the slanders of "Oldys," which revolutionized Cobbett's opinion of Paine, and led him to try and undo the injustice he had wrought.
It now so turned out that Paine was able to repay all the kindnesses he had received. The relations between the French government and Monroe, already strained, as we have seen, became in the spring of 1796 almost intolerable. The Jay treaty seemed to the French so incredible that, even after it was ratified, they believed that the Representatives would refuse the appropriation needed for its execution. But when tidings came that this effort of the House of Representatives had been crushed by a menaced coup d'état, the ideal America fell in France, and was broken in fragments. Monroe could now hardly have remained save on the credit of Paine with the French. There was, of course, a fresh accession of wrath towards England for this appropriation of the French alliance. Paine had been only the first sacrifice on the altar of the new alliance; now all English families and all Americans in Paris except himself were likely to become its victims. The English-speaking residents there made one little colony, and Paine was sponsor for them all. His fatal blow at English credit proved the formidable power of the man whom Washington had delivered up to Robespierre in the interest of Pitt. So Paine's popularity reached its climax; the American Legation found through him a modus vivendi with the French government; the families which had received and nursed him in his weakness found in his intimacy their best credential. Mrs. Joel Barlow especially, while her husband was in Algeria, on the service of the American government, might have found her stay in Paris unpleasant but for Paine s friendship. The importance of his guarantee to the banker, Sir Robert Smith, appears by the following note, written at Versailles, August 13th:
"Citizen Minister: The citizen Robert Smith, a very particular friend of mine, wishes to obtain a passport to go to Hamburg, and I will be obliged to you to do him that favor. Himself and family have lived several years in France, for he likes neither the government nor the climate of England. He has large property in England, but his Banker in that country has refused sending him remittances. This makes it necessary for him to go to Hamburg, because from there he can draw his money out of his Banker's hands, which he cannot do whilst in France. His family remains in France.—Salut et fraternité.
"Thomas Paine."
Amid his circle of cultured and kindly friends Paine had dreamed of a lifting of the last cloud from his life, so long overcast. His eyes were strained to greet that shining sail that should bring him a response to his letter of September to Washington, in his heart being a great hope that his apparent wrong would be explained as a miserable mistake, and that old friendship restored. As the reader knows, the hope was grievously disappointed. The famous public letter to Washington (August 3d), which was not published in France, has already been considered, in advance of its chronological place. It will be found, however, of more significance if read in connection with the unhappy situation, in which all of Paine's friends, and all Americans in Paris, had been brought by the Jay treaty. From their point of view the deliverance of Paine to prison and the guillotine was only one incident in a long-planned and systematic treason, aimed at the life of the French republic. Jefferson in America, and Paine in France, represented the faith and hope of republicans that the treason would be overtaken by retribution and reversal.
* Soon after Jefferson became President Paine wrote to him,
suggesting that Sir Robert's firm might be safely depended
on as the medium of American financial transactions in
Europe.