Previously to this, it was through Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense, that the Americans first saw that separation was the only remedy for their grievances. Conway tells an amusing story about Common Sense and The Rights of Man. When the Bolton town crier was sent round to seize these prohibited books, he reported that he could not find any Rights of Man or Common Sense anywhere!
For trying to save the life of Louis XVI during the revolution, Paine was thrown into the Bastille, and only escaped death by a curious accident. It was customary for chalk-marks to be made on the cell-doors of those to be guillotined the following morning, and these doors opened outwards. When Paine’s door was marked, it happened to be open, and the mark was made on the inside, so that, when the door was shut, the mark was not visible. If Paine had not been a sceptic, this would have been described in those days as a wonderful interposition of Providence!
Conway lays a terrible indictment against Washington. When Paine, whose services to America, and to Washington himself, had been so magnificent, was thrown into the Bastille, Washington could have saved him by a word—but remained silent! This was no doubt the reason why Paine, after his liberation, was led to make an unjust attack on Washington’s military and Presidential work. It was due to this attack on Washington and the bigotry of the time against the author of The Age of Reason, that Paine fell utterly into disrepute.
When the Centenary of American independence was celebrated by an Exhibition at Philadelphia, a bust of Paine was offered to the city by his admirers, but was promptly declined! And yet Conway says that on the day, whose centenary was then being celebrated, Paine was idolized in America above all other men, Washington included.
The foregoing notes were made on reading an article on Paine by Moncure D. Conway in The Fortnightly, March, 1879. I think the fact mentioned in the last paragraph and the town-crier story do not appear in Conway’s subsequent Life of Paine.
Even at the present day bigotry seems to prevent any proper recognition of Paine’s fine character and important work. (The unpleasant flippancy[5] with which he dealt with serious religious questions is no doubt partly the cause of this.) I find very inadequate appreciation of him in The Americana and The Biographical Dictionary of America—and also in our own Dictionary of National Biography. The general impression among the public still probably is that Paine was an atheist; as a matter of fact, he was a Theist, and his will ends with the words, “I die in perfect composure and resignation to the will of my Creator, God.”
Carlyle’s reference to Paine is amusing: “Nor is our England without her missionaries. She has her Paine: rebellious staymaker; unkempt; who feels that he, a single needleman, did, by his Common-Sense Pamphlet, free America—that he can and will free all this World; perhaps even the other.” (French Revolution.)
Buy my English posies!