The Life Of Thomas Paine Volume I Part 22

"June 17.--I received your last to the 21st May. I am just now informed of Messrs. Parker and Cutting setting off tomorrow morning for Paris by whom this will be delivered to you. Nothing new is showing here. The trial of Hastings, and the Examination of evidence before the house of Commons into the Slave Trade still continue.

"I wrote Sir Joseph Banks an account of my Experiment Arch. In his answer he informs me of its being read before the Royal Society who expressed 'great satisfaction at the Communication.' 'I expect' says Sir Joseph 'many improvements from your Countrymen who think with vigor, and are in a great measure free from those shackles of Theory which are imposed on the minds of our people before they are capable of exerting their mental faculties to advantage.' In the close of his letter he says: 'We have lost poor Ledyard. He had agreed with certain Moors to conduct him to Sennar. The time for their departure was arrived when he found himself ill, and took a large dose of Emetic Tartar, burst a blood-vessel in the operation, which carried him off in three days. We sincerely lament his loss, as the papers we have received from him are full of those emanations of spirit, which taught you to construct a Bridge without any reference to the means used by your predecessors in that art.' I have wrote to the Walkers and proposed to them to manufacture me a compleat Bridge and erect it in London, and afterwards put it up to sale. I do this by way of bringing forward a Bridge over the Thames--which appears to me the most advantageous of all objects.

For, if only a fifth of the persons, at a half penny each, pa.s.s over a new Bridge as now pa.s.s over the old ones the tolls will pay 25 per Cent besides what will arise from carriage and horses. Mrs. Williams tells me that her letters from America mention Dr. Franklin as being exceedingly ill. I have been to see the Cotton Mills,--the Potteries--the Steel furnaces--Tin plate manufacture--White lead manufacture. All those things might be easily carried on in America. I saw a few days ago part of a hand bill of what was called a geometrical wheelbarrow,--but cannot find where it is to be seen. The Idea is one of those that needed only to be thought of,--for it is very easy to conceive that if a wheelbarrow, as it is called, be driven round a piece of land,--a sheet of paper may be placed in it--so as to receive by the tracings of a Pencil, regulated by a little Mechanism--the figure and content of the land--and that neither Theodolite nor chain are necessary."

"Rotherham,Yorkshire, July 13.--The Walkers are to find all the materials, and fit and frame them ready for erecting, put them on board a vessel & send them to London. I am to undertake all expense from that time & to compleat the erecting. We intend first to exhibit it and afterwards put it up to sale, or dispose of it by private contract, and after paying the expences of each party the remainder to be equally divided--one half theirs, the other mine. My princ.i.p.al object in this plan is to open the way for a Bridge over the Thames.... I shall now have occasion to draw upon some funds I have in America. I have one thousand Dollars stock in the Bank at Philadelphia, and two years interest due upon it last April, 180 in the hands of General Morris ',40 with Mr. Constable of New York; a house at Borden Town, and a farm at New Roch.e.l.le. The stock and interest in the Bank, which Mr. Willing manages for me, is the easiest negotiated, and full sufficient for what I shall want. On this fund I have drawn fifteen guineas payable to Mr. Trumbull, tho' I shall not want the money longer than till the Exhibition and sale of the Bridge. I had rather draw than ask to borrow of any body here. If you go to America this year I shall be very glad if you can manage this matter for me, by giving me credit for two hundred pounds, on London, and receiving that amount of Mr. Willing. I am not acquainted with the method of negotiating money matters, but if you can accommodate me in this, and will direct me how the transfer is to be made, I shall be much obliged to you. Please direct to me under cover to Mr. Trumbull. I have some thoughts of coming over to France for two or three weeks, as I shall have little to do here until the Bridge is ready for erecting.

"September 15.--When I left Paris I was to return with the Model, but I could now bring over a compleat Bridge. Tho' I have a slender opinion of myself for executive business, I think, upon the whole that I have managed this matter tolerable well. With no money to spare for such an undertaking I am the sole Patentee here, and connected with one of the first and best established houses in the Nation. But absent from America I feel a craving desire to return and I can scarcely forbear weeping at the thoughts of your going and my staying behind.

"Accept my dear Sir, my most hearty thanks for your many services and friendship. Remember me with an overflowing affection to my dear America--the people and the place. Be so kind to shake hands with them for me, and tell our beloved General Washington, and my old friend Dr.

Franklin how much I long to see them. I wish you would spend a day with General Morris of Morrisania, and present my best wishes to all the family.--But I find myself wandering into a melancholy subject that will be tiresome to read,--so wishing you a prosperous pa.s.sage, and a happy meeting with all your friends and mine, I remain yours affectionately, etc.

"I shall be very glad to hear from you when you arrive. If you direct for me to the care of Mr. Benjamin Vaughn it will find me.--Please present my friendship to Captain Nicholson and family of New York, and to Mr. and Mrs. Few.

"September 18.--I this moment receive yours of ye 13 int. which being Post Night, affords me the welcome opportunity of acknowledging it. I wrote you on the 15 th by post--but I was so full of the thoughts of America and my American friends that I forgot France.

"The people of this Country speak very differently on the affairs of France. The ma.s.s of them, so far as I can collect, say that France is a much freer Country than England. The Peers, the Bishops, &c. say the National a.s.sembly has gone too far. There are yet in this country, very considerable remains of the feudal System which people did not see till the revolution in france placed it before their eyes. While the mult.i.tude here could be terrified with the cry and apprehension of Arbitrary power, wooden shoes, popery, and such like stuff, they thought themselves by comparison an extraordinary free people; but this bugbear now loses its force, and they appear to me to be turning their eyes towards the Aristocrats of their own Nation. This is a new mode of conquering, and I think it will have its effect.

"I am looking out for a place to erect my Bridge, within some of the Squares would be very convenient. I had thought of Soho Square, where Sir Joseph Banks lives, but he is now in Lincolnshire. I expect it will be ready for erecting and in London by the latter end of October.

Whether I shall then sell it in England or bring it over to Paris, and re-erect it there, I have not determined in my mind.. In order to bring any kind of a contract forward for the Seine, it is necessary it should be seen, and, as oeconomy will now be a principle in the Government, it will have a better chance than before.

"If you should pa.s.s thro' Borden Town in Jersey, which is not out of your way from Philadelphia to New York, I shall be glad you would enquire out my particular friend Col. Kirkbride. You will be very much pleased with him. His house is my home when in that part of the Country--and it was there that I made the Model of my Bridge."

CHAPTER XIX. THE KEY OF THE BASTILLE

In June, 1777, the Emperor Joseph II. visited his sister, the Queen of France, and pa.s.sed a day at Nantes. The Count de Menou, commandant of the place, pointed out in the harbor, among the flags raised in his honor, one bearing thirteen stars. The Emperor turned away his eyes, saying: "I cannot look on that; my own profession is to be royalist"

Weber, foster-brother of Marie Antoinette, who reports the Emperor's remark, recognized the fate of France in those thirteen stars. That republic, he says, was formed by the subjects of a King, aided by another King. These French armies, mingling their flags with those of America, learned a new language. Those warriors, the flower of their age, went out Frenchmen and returned Americans. They returned to a court, but decorated with republican emblems and showing the scars of Liberty. Lafayette, it is said, had in his study a large carton, splendidly framed, in two columns: on one was inscribed the American Declaration of Independence; the other was blank, awaiting the like Declaration of France.*

* "Memoires concernant Marie-Antoinette," pp. 34-79. 268

The year 1789 found France afflicted with a sort of famine, its finances in disorder; while the people, their eyes directed to the new world by the French comrades of Washington, beheld that great chieftain inaugurated as president of a prosperous republic. The first pamphlet of Thomas Paine, expurgated in translation of anti-monarchism, had been widely circulated, and John Adams (1779) found himself welcomed in France as the supposed author of "Common Sense." The lion's skin dropped from Paine's disgusted enemy, and when, ten years later, the lion himself became known in Paris, he was hailed with enthusiasm. This was in the autumn of 1789, when Paine witnessed the scenes that ushered in the "crowned republic," from which he hoped so much. Jefferson had sailed in September, and Paine was recognized by Lafayette and other leaders as the representative of the United States. To him Lafayette gave for presentation to Washington the Key of the destroyed Bastille, ever since visible at Mount Vernon,--symbol of the fact that, in Paine's words, "the principles of America opened the Bastille."

But now an American enemy of Paine's principles more inveterate than Adams found himself similarly eclipsed in Paris by the famous author.

Early in 1789 Gouverneur Morris came upon the stage of events in Europe.

He was entrusted by the President with a financial mission which, being secret, swelled him to importance in the imagination of courtiers. At Jefferson's request Gouverneur Morris posed to Houdon for the bust of Washington; and when, to Morris' joy, Jefferson departed, he posed politically as Washington to the eyes of Europe. He was scandalized that Jefferson should retain recollections of the Declaration of Independence strong enough to desire for France "a downright republican form of government"; and how it happened that under Jefferson's secretaryship of state this man, whom even Hamilton p.r.o.nounced "an exotic" in a republic, was presently appointed Minister to France, is a mystery remaining to be solved.

Morris had a "high old time" in Europe. Intimacy with Washington secured him influence with Lafayette, and the fine ladies of Paris, seeking official favors for relatives and lovers, welcomed him to the boudoirs, baths, and bedrooms to which his diary now introduces the public.

{1790}

It was but natural that such a man, just as he had been relieved of the overlaying Jefferson, should try to brush Paine aside. On January 26, 1790, he enters in his diary:

"To-day, at half-past three, I go to M. de Lafayette's. He tells me that he wishes to have a meeting of Mr. Short, Mr. Paine, and myself, to consider their judiciary, because his place imposes on him the necessity of being right. I tell him that Paine can do him no good, for that, although he has an excellent pen to write, he has but an indifferent head to think."

Eight years before, Gouverneur Morris had joined Robert Morris in appealing to the author to enlighten the nation on the subject of finance and the direction of the war. He had also confessed to Paine that he had been duped by Silas Deane, who, by the way, was now justifying all that Paine had said of him by hawking his secret letter-books in London. Now, in Paris, Morris discovers that Paine has but an indifferent head to think.*

Gouverneur Morris was a fascinating man. His diary and letters, always entertaining, reveal the secret of his success in twisting the Const.i.tution and Jefferson and Washington around his fingers in several important junctures. To Paine also he was irresistible. His cordial manners disarm suspicion, and we presently find the author pouring into the ear of his secret detractor what state secrets he learns in London.

On March 17, 1790, Paine left Paris to see after his Bridge in Yorkshire, now near completion. On the day before, he writes to a friend in Philadelphia how prosperously everything is going on in France, where Lafayette is acting the part of a Washington; how the political reformation is sure to influence England; and how he longs for America.

"I wish most anxiously to see my much loved America. It is the country from whence all reformation must originally spring. I despair of seeing an abolition of the infernal traffic in negroes. We must push that matter further on your side of the water. I wish that a few well-instructed could be sent among their brethren in bondage; for until they are able to take their own part nothing will be done."**

* "Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris." Edited by Anne Cary Morris. i., p. 286.

** One cannot help wondering how, in this matter, Paine got along with his friend Jefferson, who, at the very time of his enthusiasm for the French Revolution, had a slave in his house at Challiot. Paine was not of the philanthropic type portrayed in the "Biglow Papers":

"I du believe in Freedom's cause Ez fur away ez Payris is; I love to see her stick her claws In them infarnal Phayrisees.

It's well enough agin a king To dror resolves and triggers, But libbaty 's a kind 'o thing That don't agree with n.i.g.g.e.rs."

On his arrival in London he has the happiness of meeting his old friend General Morris of Morrisania, and his wife. Gouverneur is presently over there, to see his brother; and in the intervals of dancing attendance at the opera on t.i.tled ladies--among them Lady Dunmore, whose husband desolated the Virginia coast,--he gets Paine's confidences.*

Poor Paine was an easy victim of any show of personal kindness, especially when it seemed like the magnanimity of a political opponent.

The historic sense may recognize a picturesque incident in the selection by Lafayette of Thomas Paine to convey the Key of the Bastille to Washington. In the series of intellectual and moral movements which culminated in the French Revolution, the Bastille was especially the prison of Paine's forerunners, the writers, and the place where their books were burned. "The gates of the Bastille," says Rocquain, "were opened wide for Abbes, savants, brilliant intellects, professors of the University and doctors of the Sorbonne, all accused of writing or reciting verses against the King, casting reflections on the Government, or publishing books in favor of Deism, and contrary to good morals.

Diderot was one of the first arrested, and it was during his detention that he conceived the plan of his 'Encyclopedia.'" **

* "Diary," etc., i., pp. 339, 341.

** "L'Esprit revolutionaire avant la Revolution." A good service has just been done by Miss Hunting in translating and condensing the admirable historical treatise of M. Felix Rocquain on "The Revolutionary Spirit Preceding the Revolution," for which Professor Huxley has written a preface.

The coming Key was announced to Washington with the following letters:

"London, May 1, 1790.--Sir,--Our very good friend the Marquis de la Fayette has entrusted to my care the Key of the Bastille, and a drawing, handsomely framed, representing the demolition of that detestable prison, as a present to your Excellency, of which his letter will more particularly inform. I feel myself happy in being the person thro' whom the Marquis has conveyed this early trophy of the Spoils of despotism, and the first ripe fruits of American principles transplanted into Europe, to his great master and patron. When he mentioned to me the present he intended you, my heart leaped with joy. It is something so truly in character that no remarks can ill.u.s.trate it, and is more happily expressive of his remembrance of his American friends than any letters can convey. That the principles of America opened the Bastille is not to be doubted, and therefore the Key comes to the right place.

"I beg leave to suggest to your Excellency the propriety of congratulating the King and Queen of France (for they have been our friends,) and the National a.s.sembly, on the happy example they are giving to Europe. You will see by the King's speech, which I enclose, that he prides himself on being at the head of the Revolution; and I am certain that such a congratulation will be well received and have a good effect.

"I should rejoice to be the direct bearer of the Marquis's present to your Excellency, but I doubt I shall not be able to see my much loved America till next Spring. I shall therefore send it by some _American_ vessel to New York. I have permitted no drawing to be taken here, tho'

it has been often requested, as I think there is a propriety that it should first be presented. B[ut] Mr. West wishes Mr. Trumbull to make a painting of the presentation of the Key to you.

"I returned from France to London about five weeks ago, and I am engaged to return to Paris when the Const.i.tution shall be proclaimed, and to carry the American flag in the procession. I have not the least doubt of the final and compleat success of the French Revolution. Little Ebbings and Flow-ings, for and against, the natural companions of revolutions, sometimes appear; but the full current of it, is, in my opinion, as fixed as the Gulph Stream.

"I have manufactured a Bridge (a single arch) of one hundred and ten feet span, and five feet high from the cord of the arch. It is now on board a vessel coming from Yorkshire to London, where it is to be erected. I see nothing yet to disappoint my hopes of its being advantageous to me. It is this only which keeps me [in] Europe, and happy shall I be when I shall have it in my power to return to America.

I have not heard of Mr. Jefferson since he sailed, except of his arrival. As I have always indulged the belief of having many friends in America, or rather no enemies, I have [mutilated] to mention but my affectionate [mutilated'] and am Sir with the greatest respect, &c.

"If any of my friends are disposed to favor me with a letter it will come to hand by addressing it to the care of Benjamin Vaughn Esq., Jeffries Square, London."

"London, May 31, 1790.--Sir,--By Mr. James Morris, who sailed in the May Packet, I transmitted you a letter from the Marquis de la Fayette, at the same time informing you that the Marquis had entrusted to my charge the Key of the Bastille, and a drawing of that prison, as a present to your Excellency. Mr. J. Rutledge, jun'r, had intended coming in the ship 'Marquis de la Fayette,' and I had chosen that opportunity for the purpose of transmitting the present; but, the ship not sailing at the time appointed, Mr. Rutledge takes his pa.s.sage on the Packet, and I have committed to his care that trophie of Liberty which I know it will give you pleasure to receive. The french Revolution is not only compleat but triumphant, and the envious despotism of this nation is compelled to own the magnanimity with which it has been conducted.

"The political hemisphere is again clouded by a dispute between England and Spain, the circ.u.mstances of which you will hear before this letter can arrive. A Messenger was sent from hence the 6th inst. to Madrid with very peremptory demands, and to wait there only forty-eight hours. His return has been expected for two or three days past. I was this morning at the Marquis del Campo's but nothing is yet arrived. Mr. Rutledge sets off at four o'clock this afternoon, but should any news arrive before the making up the mail on Wednesday June 2, I will forward it to you under cover.

"The views of this Court as well as of the Nation, so far as they extend to South America, are not for the purpose of freedom, but conquest. They already talk of sending some of the young branches to reign over them, and to pay off their national debt with the produce of their Mines. The Bondage of those countries will, as far as I can perceive, be prolonged by what this Court has in contemplation.