Who Gained from Thomas Paine?

At the end of President Obama’s inaugural address in January 2009, he alluded to a small passage that appeared in Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense. Faced with an American economy wracked by nervousness and self-doubt Obama noted Paine’s rallying cry that galvanised and gave hope to the despairing:

"Let it be told to the future world … that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive … that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [this danger]."

Unique among radicals, the 200th anniversary of the death of Thomas Paine will be marked in England, in France and across the Atlantic. This is a measure of the impact of Paine’s ideas both in his own country and in parts of the world that became the centre of revolutionary political change at the end of the 18th century. Paine was perhaps fortunate to live in such invigorating times and to be able to think about them so constructively. Yet what is remarkable is that his message has been capable of speaking with immediacy to each successive generation, providing radical inspiration and comfort in troubled times. This is because Paine was a persuasive author with a gift for penetrating, lucid and memorable language. However, he was also actively participating in the revolutions he wished to inspire. Both through word and deed he could justly claim ‘the world is my country and my religion to do good.’

Thomas Paine’s origins were anything but promising. He was born in Thetford in Norfolk in 1737 and was apprenticed to his father as a corset- and stay-maker, a trade that he followed intermittently. Some commentators would not let him forget this and later a number of cartoons portrayed his radicalism as an attempt forcibly to lace the English constitution in the shape of Britannia into an uncomfortable corset. After a spell in the capital, Paine embarked on a similarly lacklustre career as an excise officer. In 1768 he moved to Lewes, but debt and disillusion with this career led to his emigration to America in 1774.

Arriving in Philadelphia with a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin, Paine immediately began to mix with radical journalists and to make his mark. His first venture into radical journalism, as the editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, was a success. The magazine focused on American colonial opposition to high-handed British policies and it flourished. From this success, Paine distilled his arguments for American independence into one of his most important pamphlets, Common Sense:

... many strong and striking reasons may be given, to shew, that nothing can settle our affairs so expeditiously as an open and determined declaration of independence.

The pamphlet appeared in the first month of 1776 and by the end of the year had sold 150,000 copies in 56 separate editions. So impassioned was Paine that he enlisted himself in the colonists’ fight for freedom, serving as aide-de-camp to an American general. He became a trusted adviser to Washington, coming to the practical and ideological defence of the colonists with a series of pamphlets under the umbrella title of The Crisis. These galvanised resistance and were responsible for stabilising the army’s morale when it was on the point of collapse. Paine received the gratitude of the American nation and a number of states granted him pensions or gave him gifts in kind.

In the 1780s, after the defeat of the British forces and the gaining of American independence, Paine returned to England where he briefly switched his attention to scientific and engineering projects, in particular the construction of a single-span iron bridge. The movement between political science and pure science was not uncommon among Enlightenment thinkers. Just as mechanics and magnetism were mysteries of the natural world, the study of which would yield their significance, so too could similar analysis be applied to man’s political instincts and relationships.

When the French Revolution ignited in 1789 Paine, though still a political animal, was initially preoccupied with other business. However, when in November 1790 Edmund Burke published Reflections on the Revolution in France, his shocked reaction to the violence in Paris, a response from Paine was guaranteed. Paine must have been surprised at Burke’s apparent change of heart since Burke had also supported the American colonists. The two had met in 1788 and corresponded. Paine swiftly replied with what was to be his most famous and widely read work Rights of Man, published in early 1791. Written in an immediate and engaging style, it was spectacularly popular, selling in the region of 250,000 copies within the space of two years. Although Paine hoped for open debate, he found himself a wanted man for views that incited revolution and unrest and which threatened the established monarchical order in England. While he continued to lecture on constitutional change, government reaction was rising against him and in September 1792 he eventually fled to France, where he had been made an honorary citizen the previous month, missing the order for his arrest at Dover by some 20 minutes. In France he was feted as a defender and promoter of liberty.

"Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the Heathens ... It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set foot for the promotion of idolatry"

Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Paine now took a role in the revolutionary government of France and was one of only two foreigners to be elected to the country’s National Convention. He was instrumental in ensuring Louis XVI was tried but also argued against his execution. Meanwhile, in England Paine had been convicted in his absence of seditious libel and this effectively ended his relationship with the land of his birth. He also fell out of favour in his adopted country, falling victim to the factionalism and political upheavals that wracked France. He was imprisoned at the end of 1793, possibly on the fabricated grounds that he was an enemy alien. Indeed, several Americans in post-revolutionary Paris petitioned for Paine’s release on the grounds that he was an American citizen and was deserving of that country’s protection. Narrowly escaping execution when others imprisoned with him went to the guillotine, his American connections eventually saved him and he was freed with the help of the American ambassador James Monroe on November 4th, 1794. Within a few years Paine was rehabilitated by the Convention and was voted a pension.

During the troubled early years of the 1790s Paine wrote another of his most enduring works, The Age of Reason. This was intended to undermine the pretensions of established religion and the structures associated with it.

Paine eventually returned to America in 1802 to discover that he was no longer a hero. He had quarrelled with Washington and this was remembered by those who revered the country’s first president after his death in 1799. Paine’s anti-Christian views were also extremely unpopular and were more readily recalled than his earlier exertions for the young republic. His last years were characterised by ill-health exacerbated by his periods of imprisonment. His mood was not helped by a series of small slights and the refusal of financial support which he took to be poor recompense for all he had done for the cause of American freedom. He died in 1809 a somewhat bitter man. Even his dying wish to be interred in a Quaker cemetery was refused. His funeral was a miserable affair and he was mourned by a tiny group of friends and two African-Americans who wanted to pay tribute to one of the few founding fathers of the United States who had argued against slavery.

Paine’s story might have belonged solely to the 18th century were it not for the importance of his ideas, the captivating nature of his writing and its dramatic appeal. Paine’s skill at producing political tracts for specific purposes was aided by his ability to write  quickly when the mood took him. He was also adept at creating memorable phrases that enlivened his major works, ensuring them a wide audience. Paine’s fame and legacy largely rests on the ideas and concepts conveyed in his three central works Common Sense, Rights of ManandThe Age of Reason. In a sense these represent a fitting trio since each was written in one of the three countries whose welfare preoccupied his life: America, Britain and France, and each addressed the particular problems those countries faced at a historic moment in time.

Common Sense conveys a breathless energy and appetite for change. In its first few pages Paine urges the American people to form a government from scratch, a chance almost without precedent, which the colonists should grasp with both hands since it was likely this would be their best opportunity. The fact that this would lead to conflict and a swift call to arms was a dramatic consequence that should be recognised:

By referring the matter from argument to arms, a new era for politics is struck; a new method of thinking hath arisen. All plans, proposals ... are like the almanacks of the last year, which though proper then, are superseded and useless now.

Paine argued that the American colonists had right and justice on their side in their struggle for independence. He also suggested that the colonies could afford such a break with Britain since they were prosperous and economically independent. However, he did not simply offer these as arguments for freedom, but went further to ask Americans to think about what they wished to do with their independence once they had gained it. Paine demonstrated that American freedom was wholly justified since the ancient, corrupt and privilege-ridden British monarchy had dispensed with fairness and justice in favour of coercing the colonies into submission.

By seeking independence the colonies could cast off such tyranny and look forward to the creation of a new society that would be governed by properly elected and accountable representatives of the people. Paine sketched the form this government might take and also suggested crucial social reforms to promote and sustain the common good. This blend of radical political ideals with concrete schemes for reforms of everyday life was a theme he would return to. Nonetheless, his immediate intention in Common Sense was to show how a break with the forms of organisation of the old world was essential. In so doing he unashamedly urged republican thinking: ‘Government by kings was first introduced into the world by Heathens,’ he wrote, ‘from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry.’

Individuals were not protected or privileged by birth or position in the society he envisaged. He answered those who wondered where America might find its future monarch with the telling phrase ‘the Law is King’. The accountability of people for their actions was seen as a central core of the new society, a reflection of wider Enlightenment thinking that increasingly viewed humankind in terms of the individual.

Having given the American colonists the reason to fight, The American Crisis offered support when their backs were against the wall:

These are times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman ... What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.