Life of Thomas Paine / Written Purposely to Bind with His Writings

by Richard Carlile

After some difficulty a publisher was found for "Rights of Man" in Mr. Jordan, late of 166, Fleet Street The First Part appeared on the 13th of March, 1791, and the Second Part on the 16th of February in the following year. The Government was paralyzed at the rapid sale of the First Part, and the appearance of the Second. The attempt to purchase having failed, the agents of the Government next set to work to ridicule it, and to call it a contemptible work. Whig and Tory members in both Houses of Parliament affected to sneer at it, and to laud our glorious constitution as a something impregnable to the assaults of such a book. However, Whig and Tory members had just began to be known, and their affected contempt of "Rights of Man," served but as advertisements, and greatly accelerated its sale. In the month of May, 1792, the King issued his proclamation, and the King's Devil his ex officio information, on the very same day, against "Rights of Man." This in some measure impeded its sale, or occasioned it to be sold in a private manner; through which means it is impossible to give effectual circulation to any publication. One part of the community is afraid to sell and another afraid to purchase under such conditions. It is not too much to say, that if "Rights of Man" had obtained two or three years free circulation in England and Scotland, it would have produced a similar effect to what "Common Sense" did in the United States of America. The French Revolution had set the people of England and Scotland to think, and "Rights of Man" was just the book to furnish materials for thinking. About this time he also wrote his "Letter to the Addressers," and several letters to the Chairmen of different County Meetings, at which those addresses were voted.

Mr. Paine had resolved to defend the publication of "Rights of Man" in person, but in the month of September, a deputation from the inhabitants of Calais waited upon him to say, that they had elected him their deputy to the National Convention of France. This was an affair of more importance than supporting "Rights of Man," before a political judge and a packed jury, and, accordingly, Mr. Paine set off for France with the deputation, but not without being exposed to much insult at Dover; where the Government spies had apprised the Custom House Officers of his arrival, and some of those spies were present to overhaul all his papers.

It was said, that Mr. Paine had scarcely embarked twenty minutes before a warrant came to Dover, from the Home Department to arrest him. Be this as it may, Mr. Paine had more important scenes allotted to him. On reaching the opposite Shore the name of Paine was no sooner announced than the beach was crowded;-all the soldiers on duty Were drawn up; the officer of the guard embraced him on landing, and presented him with the national cockade, which a handsome young woman, who was standing by, begged the honour of fixing in his hat, and returned it to him, expressing a hope that he would continue his exertions in the behalf of Liberty, France, and the Rights of Man. A salute was then fired from the battery; to announce the arrival of their new representative. This ceremony being over, he walked to Deisseiu's, in the Rue de l'Egalite (formerly Rue de Roi), the men, women, and children crowding around him, and calling out "Vive Thomas Paine!" He was then conducted to the Town Hall, and there presented to the Municipality, who with the greatest affection embraced their representative. The Mayor addressed him in a short speech, which was interpreted to him by his friend and conductor, M. Audibert, to which Mr. Paine laying his hand on his heart, replied, that his life should be devoted to their service.

At the inn, he was waited upon by the different persons in authority, and by the President of the Constitutional Society, who desired he would attend their meeting of that night: he cheerfully complied with the request, and the whole town would have been there, had there been room: the hall of the 'Minimes' was so crowded that it was with the greatest difficulty they made way for Mr. Paine to the side of the President. Over the chair he sat in, was placed the bust of Mirabeau, and the colours of France, England, and America united. A speaker acquainted him from the tribune with his election, amidst the plaudits of the people. For some minutes after this ceremony, nothing was heard but "Vive la Nation! Vive Thomas Paine" in voices male and Female.

On the following day, an extra meeting was appointed to be held in the church in honour of their new Deputy to the Convention, the Minimes being found quite suffocating from the vast concourse of people which had assembled on the previous occasion. A play was performed at the theatre on the evening after his arrival, and a box was specifically reserved "for the author of 'Rights of Man,' the object of the English Proclamation."

Mr. Paine was likewise elected as deputy for Abbeville, Beauvais, and Versailles, as well as for the department of Calais, but the latter having been the first in their choice, he preferred being their representative.

On reaching Paris, Mr. Paine addressed a letter to the English Attorney General, apprizing him of the circumstances of his departure from England, and hinting to him, that any further prosecution of "Rights of Man," would form a proof that the Author was not altogether the object, but the book, and the people of England who should approve its sentiments. A hint was also thrown out that the events of France ought to form a lesson to the English Government, on its attempt to arrest the progress of correct principles and wholesome truths. This letter was in some measure due to the Attorney General, as Mr. Paine had written to him in England on the commencement of the prosecution assuring him, that he should defend the work in person. Notwithstanding the departure of Mr. Paine, as a member of the French National Convention, the information against "Rights of Man" was laid before a jury, on the 2d of December in the same year, and the Government, and its agents, were obliged to content themselves with outlawing Mr. Paine, and punishing him, in effigy, throughout the country! Many a faggot have I gathered in my youth to burn old Tom Paine! In the West of England, his name became quite a substitute for that of Guy Faux. Prejudice, so aptly termed by Mr. Paine, the spider of the mind, was never before carried to such a height against any other individual; and what will future ages think of the corrupt influence of the English Government at the close of the eighteenth century, when it could excite the rancour of a majority of the nation against such a man as Thomas Paine!

We now find Mr. Paine engaged in new and still more important scenes. His first effort as a member of the National Convention, was to lay the basis of a self-renovating constitution, and to repair the defects of that which had been previously adopted: but a circumstance very soon occurred, which baffled all his good intentions, and brought him to a narrow escape from the guillotine. It was his humane and strenuous opposition to the putting Louis the XVIth to death. The famous or infamous manifesto issued by the Duke of Brunswick, in July 1792, had roused such a. spirit of hatred towards the Royal Family of France, and all other Royal Families, that nothing short of their utter destruction could appease the majority of the French nation. Mr. Paine willingly voted for the trial of Louis as a necessary exposure of Court intrigue and corruption; but when he found a disposition to destroy him at once, in preference to banishment, he exposed the safety of his own person in his endeavour to save the life of Louis. Mr. Paine was perfectly a humane man, he deprecated the punishment of death on any occasion whatever. His object was to destroy the monarchy, but not the man who had filled the office of monarch.

The following anecdote is another unparalleled instance of humanity, and the moral precept of returning good for evil. Mr. Paine happened to be dining one day with about twenty friends at a Coffee House in the Palais Egalité, now the Palais Royal, when unfortunately for the harmony of the company, a Captain in the English service contrived to introduce himself as one of the party. The military gentleman was a strenuous supporter of what is called in England, the constitution in church and state, and a decided enemy of the French Revolution. After the cloth was drawn, the conversation chiefly turned on the state of affairs in England, and the means which had been adopted by the government to check the increase of political knowledge. Mr. Paine delivered his opinions very freely, and much to the satisfaction of every one present, with the exception of Captain Grimstone, who returned his arguments by calling him a traitor to his country, with a variety of terms equally opprobrious. Mr. Paine treated his abuse with much good humour, which rendered the Captain so furious, that he walked up to the part of the room where Mr. Paine was sitting, and struck him a violent blow, which nearly knocked him off his seat. The cowardice of this behaviour from a stout young man towards a person of Mr. Paine's age (he being then upwards of sixty) is not the least disgraceful part of the transaction. There was, however, no time for reflections of this sort; an alarm was instantly given, that the Captain had struck a Citizen Deputy of the Convention, which was considered an insult to the nation at large; the offender was hurried into custody, and it was with the greatest difficulty that Mr. Paine prevented him from being executed on the spot.

It ought to be observed, that an act of the Convention had awarded the punishment of death to any one who should be convicted of striking a deputy; Mr. Paine was therefore placed in a very unpleasant situation. He immediately applied to Barrere, at that time president of the Committee of Public Safety, for a passport for his imprudent adversary, who after much hesitation complied with his request. It likewise occasioned Mr. Paine considerable personal inconvenience to procure his liberation; but even this was not sufficient; the Captain was without friends, and pennyless, and Mr. Paine generously supplied him with money to defray his travelling expences.