“It was the Quaker Paine who worked for our independence, and not the infidel Paine. He did nothing in the interests [pg 182] of our national liberty after he avowed his irreligious principles.” Neither was he the first to raise the voice in favor of national liberty. Ten years before he wrote his work entitled “Common Sense,” at the suggestion of Franklin and Dr. Benjamin Rush, which was in 1776, Patrick Henry's voice was heard amid the assembled colonists in Virginia. He said: “Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles I. his Cromwell, and George III.—” Just then some one cried out, “Treason!” After a pause, Henry added,—“may profit by their example.” Years before Tom Paine came to America, even in 1748, it went to record that American legislatures were tending to independence. “They were charged with presumption in declaring their own rights and privileges.” Our independence was predicted near at hand from 1758 and onwards. In 1774, before Paine came from England, the word freedom was ringing out upon the air. “James Otis was hailing the dawn of a new empire” in 1765. In this year there were utterances of such sentiments as tended to evolve the declaration of 1776, and these were heard all over the land from Boston to Charleston, S. C. In 1773 “Samuel Adams insisted that the colonies should have a congress to frame a bill of rights, or to form an independent state, an American commonwealth.” The North Carolinians renounced their allegiance to the king of England in the Mecklenberg declaration, which was made in May, 1775. But Paine's little book, suggested by Dr. Benjamin Rush and Franklin, and called “Common Sense,” was published in 1776. Hildreth, writing of the year 1802, says that “Paine, instead of being esteemed as formerly, as a lover of liberty, whose pen has contributed to hasten the Declaration of Independence, was now detested by large numbers as the libeler of Washington.” In 1795 the Aurora put out the following language, which seems to be that to which Hildreth alludes: “If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation was debauched by Washington; if ever a nation was deceived by a man, the American nation has been deceived by Washington. Let the history of the federal government instruct mankind, that the mask of patriotism may be worn to [pg 183] conceal the foulest designs against the liberties of the people.” This, gentle reader, was from the pen of the man whom Mr. Ingersoll would immortalize if he could.
William Carver addressed a private letter to Thomas Paine, dated Dec. 2, 1806, and published in the New York Observer Nov. 1, 1877, in which we have the following revelations: “A respectable gentleman from New Rochelle called to see me a few days back, and said that every body was tired of you there and that no one would undertake to board and lodge you. I thought this was the case, as I found you at a tavern in a most miserable situation. You appeared as if you had not been shaved for a fortnight, and as to a shirt, it could not be said that you had one on, it was only the remains of one, and this likewise appeared not to have been off your back for a fortnight, and was nearly the color of tanned leather; and you had the most disagreeable smell possible, just like that of our poor beggars in England. Do you remember the pains I took to clean you? That I got a tub of warm water and soap, and washed you from head to foot, and this I had to do three times before I could get you clean? You say also that you found your own liquors during the time you boarded with me, but you should have said, ‘I found only a small part of the liquor I drank during my stay with you; this part I purchased of John Fellows, which was a demijohn of brandy containing four gallons, and this did not serve me three weeks.’ This can be proved, and I mean not to say anything I can not prove, for I hold this as a precious jewel. It is a well-known fact that you drank one quart of brandy per day, at my expense, during the different times that you have boarded with me, the demijohn alone mentioned excepted, and the last fourteen weeks you were sick. Is not this a supply of liquor for dinner and supper? Now sir, I think I have drawn a complete portrait of your character, yet, to enter upon every minutia, would be to give a history of your life, and to develop the fallacious mask of hypocrisy and deception under which you have acted in your political, as well as moral, capacity of life.” So much for the apostate Quaker's character after the close of the American revolution.
Mr. Lecky, an infidel, says, “It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character, which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has filled the hearts of men with an impassioned love, and has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions; has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the highest incentive of practice: amid all the sins and failing; amid all the priestcraft, the persecution and fanaticism which have defaced the church, it has preserved in the character of its founder an enduring principle of regeneration.” If such be the fountain let the stream continue to flow.
Shall We Unchain The Tiger? Or, The Fruits Of Infidelity.
By Eld. A. I. Maynard.
An infidel production was submitted to Benjamin Franklin manuscript; he returned it to the author with a letter, from which the following quotations are extracted: “I would advise you not to attempt unchaining the Tiger, but to burn this piece before it is seen by any other person.... If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be without it?” He informs us that he was “an advocate of infidelity in his early youth, a confirmed Deist.” He says his “arguments perverted some other young persons, particularly Collins and Ralph, and when he recollected that they both treated him exceedingly ill without the least remorse, and also remembered the behavior of Keith, another ‘Freethinker,’ and his own conduct toward Vernon and a Miss Reed, which at times gave him great uneasiness, he was led to suspect that his theory, if true, was not very useful.”
Youth and inexperience have been the secret of many young persons being led astray, like Franklin, by infidel speculations; but age and observation have convinced many of them that all infidel speculations are empty and worthless. [pg 185] Look at the history of infidelity in France and Scotland, and then look at liberalism in America, with Col. Ingersoll leading the van. Can't you see that its only tendency is to loosen the restraints of morality and “unchain the Tiger?”
The inconsiderate and inexperienced youth of both sexes, have need of all the motives of religion to lead them from vice, to support their virtue, and retain them in its practice until it becomes habitual.
Unbeliever, if you read this article, and remember that you have prepared one sentence to cut one cord that helps to hold the Tiger, burn it. Do not unchain the animal. Would you substitute infidelity for Christianity, for the religion of the Bible? Would you do that in this country? The enemies of this religion confess that its code of morals is holy, just and good, its doctrine is dignified and glorious; its tendency is to purity and peace; “it is pure, peaceable, gentle and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits; without partiality, and without hypocrisy.” Montesquieu, the publisher of the Persian letters and president of the parliament of Bordeaux, says: “The Christian religion, which ordains that men should love each other, would, without doubt, have every nation blessed with the best political and civil laws, because these, next to religion, are the greatest good that men can have.”