I know not what opinions have been circulated in America. It may have been supposed there that I had voluntarily and intentionally abandoned America, and that my citizenship had ceased by my own choice. I can easily [believe] there are those in that country who would take such a proceeding on my part somewhat in disgust. The idea of forsaking old friendships for new acquaintances is not agreeable. I am a little warranted in making this supposition by a letter I received some time ago from the wife of one of the Georgia delegates in which she says "Your friends on this side the water cannot be reconciled to the idea of your abandoning America."
I have never abandoned her in thought, word or deed; and I feel it incumbent upon me to give this assurance to the friends I have in that country and with whom I have always intended and am determined, if the possibility exists, to close the scene of my life. It is there that I have made myself a home. It is there that I have given the services of my best days. America never saw me flinch from her cause in the most gloomy and perilous of her situations; and I know there are those in that country who will not flinch from me. If I have enemies (and every man has some) I leave them to the enjoyment of their ingratitude.*
* I subjoin in a note, for the sake of wasting the solitude
of a prison, the answer that I gave to the part of the
letter above mentioned. It is not inapplacable to the
subject of this Memorial; but it contain! somewhat of a
melancholy idea, a little predictive, that I hope is not
becoming true so soon.
It is somewhat extraordinary that the idea of my not being a citizen of America should have arisen only at the time that I am imprisoned in France because, or on the pretence that, I am a foreigner. The case involves a strange contradiction of ideas. None of the Americans who came to France whilst I was in liberty had conceived any such idea or circulated any such opinion; and why it should arise now is a matter yet to be explained. However discordant the late American Minister G. M. [Gouverneur Morris] and the late French Committee of Public Safety were, it suited the purpose of both that I should be continued in arrestation. The former wished to prevent my return to America, that I should not expose his misconduct; and the latter, lest I should publish to the world the history of its wickedness. Whilst that Minister and the Committee continued I had no expectation of liberty. I speak here of the Committee of which Robespierre was member.(1)
"You touch me on a very tender point when you say that my
friends on your side the water cannot be reconciled to the
idea of my abandoning America. They are right. I had rather
see my horse Button eating the grass of Borden-Town or
Morrisania than see all the pomp and show of Europe.
"A thousand years hence (for I must indulge a few thoughts)
perhaps in less, America may be what Europe now is. The
innocence of her character, that won the hearts of all
nations in her favour, may sound like a romance and her
inimitable virtue as if it had never been. The ruin of that
liberty which thousands bled for or struggled to obtain may
just furnish materials for a village tale or extort a sigh
from rustic sensibility, whilst the fashionable of that day,
enveloped in dissipation, shall deride the principle and
deny the fact.
"When we contemplate the fall of Empires and the extinction
of the nations of the Ancient World, we see but little to
excite our regret than the mouldering ruins of pompous
palaces, magnificent museums, lofty pyramids and walls and
towers of the most costly workmanship; but when the Empire
of America shall fall, the subject for contemplative sorrow
will be infinitely greater than crumbling brass and marble
can inspire. It will not then be said, here stood a temple
of vast antiquity; here rose a babel of invisible height;
or there a palace of sumptuous extravagance; but here, Ah,
painful thought! the noblest work of human wisdom, the
grandest scene of human glory, the fair cause of Freedom
rose and fell. Read this, and then ask if I forget
America."—Author.
1 This letter, quoted also in Paine's Letter to Washington,
was written from London, Jan. 6, 1789, to the wife of Col.
Few, née Kate Nicholson. It is given in full in my "Life of
Paine," i., p. 247.—Editor.
THE MEMORIAL TO MONROE.
I ever must deny, that the article of the American constitution already mentioned, can be applied either verbally, intentionally, or constructively, to me. It undoubtedly was the intention of the Convention that framed it, to preserve the purity of the American republic from being debased by foreign and foppish customs; but it never could be its intention to act against the principles of liberty, by forbidding its citizens to assist in promoting those principles in foreign Countries; neither could it be its intention to act against the principles of gratitude.(1) France had aided America in the establishment of her revolution, when invaded and oppressed by England and her auxiliaries. France in her turn was invaded and oppressed by a combination of foreign despots. In this situation, I conceived it an act of gratitude in me, as a citizen of America, to render her in return the best services I could perform. I came to France (for I was in England when I received the invitation) not to enjoy ease, emoluments, and foppish honours, as the article supposes; but to encounter difficulties and dangers in defence of liberty; and I much question whether those who now malignantly seek (for some I believe do) to turn this to my injury, would have had courage to have done the same thing. I am sure Gouverneur Morris would not. He told me the second day after my arrival, (in Paris,) that the Austrians and Prussians, who were then at Verdun, would be in Paris in a fortnight. I have no idea, said he, that seventy thousand disciplined troops can be stopped in their march by any power in France.
1 This and the two preceding paragraphs, including the
footnote, are entirely omitted from the American pamphlet.
It will be seen that Paine had now a suspicion of the
conspiracy between Gouverneur Morris and those by whom he
was imprisoned. Soon after his imprisonment he had applied
to Morris, who replied that he had reclaimed him, and
enclosed the letter of Deforgues quoted in my Introduction
to this chapter, of course withholding his own letter to the
Minister. Paine answered (Feb. 14, 1793): "You must not
leave me in the situation in which this letter places me.
You know I do not deserve it, and you see the unpleasant
situation in which I am thrown. I have made an answer to the
Minister's letter, which I wish you to make ground of a
reply to him. They have nothing against me—except that they
do not choose I should lie in a state of freedom to write my
mind freely upon things I have seen. Though you and I are
not on terms of the best harmony, I apply to you as the
Minister of America, and you may add to that service
whatever you think my integrity deserves. At any rate I
expect you to make Congress acquainted with my situation,
and to send them copies of the letters that have passed on
the subject. A reply to the Minister's letter is absolutely
necessary, were it only to continue the reclamation.
Otherwise your silence will be a sort of consent to his
observations." Deforgues' "observations" having been
dictated by Morris himself, no reply was sent to him, and no
word to Congress.—Editor.
2 In the pamphlet this last clause of the sentence is
omitted.—Editor..
Besides the reasons I have already given for accepting the invitations to the Convention, I had another that has reference particularly to America, and which I mentioned to Mr. Pinckney the night before I left London to come to Paris: "That it was to the interest of America that the system of European governments should be changed and placed on the same principle with her own." Mr. Pinckney agreed fully in the same opinion. I have done my part towards it.(1)