The Life Of Thomas Paine Volume I Part 29

* "Veto after Veto; your thumbscrew paralysed! G.o.ds and men may see that the Legislature is in a false position. As, alas, who is in a true one? Voices already murmur for a National Convention."--Carlyle.

** "Const.i.tutions des Treize etats-Unis de l'Amerique." The French king's arms are on the red morocco binding, and on the t.i.tle a shield, striped and winged; above this thirteen minute stars shaped into one large star, six-pointed. For the particulars of Franklin's gift to the monarchs see Sparks' "Franklin," x., p. 39. See also p. 390 of this volume.

What a contrast between the peace and order amid which the thirteen peoples, when the old laws and authorities were abolished, formed new ones, and these scenes in France! "For upwards of two years from the commencement of the American war," wrote Paine, "and a longer period, in several of the American States, there were no established forms of government. The old governments had been abolished, and the country was too much occupied in defence to employ its attention in establishing new governments; yet, during this interval, order and harmony were preserved as inviolate as in any country in Europe." When Burke pointed to the first riots in France, Paine could make a retort: the mob is what your cruel governments have made it, and only proves how necessary the overthrow of such governments. That French human nature was different from English nature he could not admit. Liberty and equality would soon end these troubles of transition. On that same tenth of August Paine's two great preliminaries are adopted: the hereditary representative is superseded and a national convention is called. The machinery for such convention, the const.i.tuencies, the objects of it, had been read in "The Rights of Man," as ill.u.s.trated in the United States and Pennsylvania, by every French statesman.1 It was the American Republic they were about to found; and notwithstanding the misrepresentation of that nation by its surviving courtiers, these French republicans recognized their real American Minister: Paine is summoned.

* "Theorie et Pratique des Droits de l'Homme. Par Thomas Paine, Secrettaire da Congres au Departement des Affaires trangeres pendant la guerre d'Araenque, auteur du ' Sens Commun,' et des Reponses a Burke. Traduit en Francais par F.

Lanthenas, D.M., et par le Traducteur du "Sens Common." A Paris: Chez les Directeurs de l'lmprimerie du Cercle Social, rue du Theatre Francais, No. 4. 1792. L'an quatrierae de La Liberte."

On August 26, 1792, the National a.s.sembly, on proposal of M. Guadet, in the name of the "Commission Extraordinaire," conferred the t.i.tle of French citizen on "Priestley, Payne, Ben thorn, Wilberforce, Clarkson, Mackintosh, David Williams, Gorani, Anacharsis Clootz, Campe, Cornielle, Paw, N. Pestalozzi, Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Klopstoc, Kosciusko, Gilleers." Schiller was afterwards added, and on September 25 th the _Patriote_ announces the same t.i.tle conferred on Thomas Cooper, John Home Tooke, John Oswald, George Boies, Thomas Christie, Dr. Joseph Warner, Englishmen, and Joel Barlow, American.*

* "Life and Letters of Joel Barlow," etc., by Charles Burr Todd, New York, 1886, p. 97.

Paine was elected to the French Convention by four different departments--Oise, Puy-de-Dome, Somme, and Pas-de-Calais. The votes appear to have been unanimous.

Here is an enthusiastic appeal (Riom, le 8 Septembre) signed by Louvet, "auteur de la Sentinelle," and thirty-two others, representing nine communes, to Paine, that day elected representative of Puy-de-Dome:

"Your love for humanity, for liberty and equality, the useful works that have issued from your heart and pen in their defence, have determined our choice. It has been hailed with universal and reiterated applause.

Come, friend of the people, to swell the number of patriots in an a.s.sembly which will decide the destiny of a great people, perhaps of the human race. The happy period you have predicted for the nations has arrived. Come! do not deceive their hope!"

But already Calais, which elected him September 6th, had sent a munic.i.p.al officer, Achille Audibert, to London, to entreat Paine's acceptance. Paine was so eager to meet the English government in court, that he delayed his answer. But his friends had reason to fear that his martyrdom might be less mild than he antic.i.p.ated, and urged his acceptance. There had been formed a society of the "Friends of Liberty,"

and, at its gathering of September 12th, Paine appears to have poured forth "inflammatory eloquence." At the house of his friend Johnson, on the following evening, Paine was reporting what he had said to some sympathizers, among them the mystical William Blake, who was convinced that the speech of the previous night would be followed by arrest.

Gilchrist's account of what followed is here quoted:

"On Paine's rising to leave, Blake laid his hand on the orator's shoulder, saying, 'You must not go home, or you are a dead man,' and hurried him off on his way to France, whither he was now in any case bound to take his seat as a legislator. By the time Paine was at Dover, the officers were in his house, [he was staying at Rickman's, in Marylebone] and, some twenty minutes after the Custom House officials at Dover had turned over his slender baggage, narrowly escaped from the English Tories. Those were hanging days! Blake on the occasion showed greater sagacity than Paine, whom, indeed, Fuseli affirmed to be more ignorant of the common affairs of life than himself even. Spite of unworldliness and visionary faculty, Blake never wanted for prudence and sagacity in ordinary matters."*

* "Life of William Blake," by Alexander Gilchrist, p. 94.

Before leaving London Paine managed to have an interview with the American Minister, Pinckney, who thought he could do good service in the Convention.

Mr. Frost, who accompanied Paine and Audibert, had information of certain plans of the officials. He guided them to Dover by a circuitous route--Rochester, Sandwich, Deal. With what emotions does our world-wanderer find himself in the old town where he married and suffered with his first love, Mary Lambert, whose grave is near! Nor is he so far from Cranbrook, where his wife receives her mysterious remittances, but since their separation "has not heard of" this said Thomas Paine, as her testimony goes some years later. Paine is parting from England and its ghosts forever. The travellers find Dover excited by the royal proclamation. The collector of customs has had general instructions to be vigilant, and searches the three men, even to their pockets. Frost pretended a desire to escape, drawing the scent from Paine. In his report (September 15th) of the search to Mr. Dundas, Paine says:

"Among the letters which he took out of my trunk were two sealed letters, given into my charge by the American minister in London [Pinckney], one of which was addressed to the American minister at Paris, the other to a private gentleman; a letter from the president of the United States, and a letter from the secretary of State in America, both directed to me, and which I had received from the American minister, now in London, and were private letters of friendship; a letter from the electoral body of the department of Calais, containing the notification of my being elected to the National Convention; and a letter from the president of the National a.s.sembly informing me of my being also elected for the department of the Oise [Versailles].... When the collector had taken what papers and letters he pleased out of the trunks, he proposed to read them. The first letter he took up for this purpose was that from the president of the United States to me. While he was doing this I said, that it was very extraordinary that General Washington could not write a letter of private friendship to me, without its being subject to be read by a customhouse officer. Upon this Mr.

Frost laid his hand over the face of the letter, and told the collector that he should not read it, and took it from him. Mr. Frost then, casting his eyes on the concluding paragraph of the letter, said, I will read this part to you, which he did; of which the following is an exact transcript--'And as no one can feel a greater interest in the happiness of mankind than I do, it is the first wish of my heart that the enlightened policy of the present age may diffuse to all men those blessings to which they are ent.i.tled and lay the foundation of happiness for future generations.'"

So Washington's nine months' delay (p. 302) in acknowledging Paine's letter and gift of fifty volumes had brought his letter in the nick of time. The collector quailed before the President's signature. He took away the doc.u.ments, leaving a list of them, and they were presently returned. Soon afterward the packet sailed, and "twenty minutes later"

the order for Paine's arrest reached Dover. Too late! Baffled pursuers gnash their teeth, and Paine pa.s.ses to his ovation.

What the ovation was to be he could hardly antic.i.p.ate even from the cordial, or glowing, letter of Herault Sech.e.l.les summoning him to the Convention,--a fine translation of which by Cobbett is given in the Appendix. Ancient Calais, in its time, had received heroes from across the channel, but hitherto never with joy. That honor the centuries reserved for a Thetford Quaker. As the packet sails in a salute is fired from the battery; cheers sound along the sh.o.r.e. As the representative for Calais steps on French soil soldiers make his avenue, the officers embrace him, the national c.o.c.kade is presented. A beautiful lady advances, requesting the honor of setting the c.o.c.kade in his hat, and makes him a pretty speech, ending with Liberty, Equality, and France.

As they move along the Rue de l'Egalite (late Rue du Roi) the air rings with "Vive Thomas Paine!" At the town hall he is presented to the Munic.i.p.ality, by each member embraced, by the Mayor also addressed. At the meeting of the Const.i.tutional Society of Calais, in the _Minimes_, he sits beside the president, beneath the bust of Mirabeau and the united colors of France, England, and America. There is an official ceremony announcing his election, and plaudits of the crowd, "_Vive la Nation!_" "_Vive Thomas Paine!_" The _Minimes_ proving too small, the meeting next day is held in the church, where martyred saints and miraculous Madonnas look down on this miraculous Quaker, turned savior of society. In the evening, at the theatre, a box is decorated "For the Author of 'The Rights of Man.'"

Thus for once our wayfarer, so marked by time and fate, received such welcome as. .h.i.therto had been accorded only to princes. Alas, that the aged eyes which watched over his humble cradle could not linger long enough to see a vision of this greatness, or that she who bore the name of Elizabeth Paine was too far out of his world as not even to know that her husband was in Europe. A theatrical La France must be his only bride, and in the end play the role of a cruel stepmother. When Washington was on his way to his inauguration in New York, pa.s.sing beneath triumphal arches, amid applauding crowds, a sadness came over him as he reflected, so he wrote a friend, how easily all this enthusiasm might be reversed by a failure in the office for which he felt himself so little competent But for Paine on his way to sit in the Convention of a People's representatives--one summoned by his own pen for objects to which his life was devoted, for which he had the training of events as well as studies,--for him there could be no black star hovering over his welcome and his triumphal pathway to Paris. For, besides his fame, there had preceded him to every town rumors of how this representative of man--of man in America, England, France--had been hunted by British oppressors down to the very edge of their coast. Those outwitted pursuers had made Paine a greater power in France than he might otherwise have been. The _Moniteur_ (September 23d) told the story, and adds: "Probably M. Payne will have been indemnified for such injustices by the brilliant reception accorded him on his arrival on French soil."

Other representatives of Calais were Personne, Carnat, Bollet, Magniez, Varlet, Guffroy, Eulard, Duquesnoy, Lebas, Daunon. It could hardly be expected that there should be no jealousy of the concentration of enthusiasm on the brilliant Anglo-American. However, none of this yet appeared, and Paine glided flower-crowned in his beautiful barge, smoothly toward his Niagara rapids. He had, indeed, heard the distant roar, in such confused, hardly credited, rumors of September ma.s.sacres as had reached London, but his faith in the National Convention was devout. All the riots were easily explained by the absence of that charm. He had his flask of const.i.tutional oil, other representatives no doubt had theirs, and when they gathered on September 21 st, amid equinoctial gales, the troubled waters would be still.

Paine reached White's Hotel, Paris, September 19th; on the 20th attends a gathering of the "Conventionnels"; on the 21st moves in their procession to the Tuileries, for verification of credentials by the expiring a.s.sembly, repairing with them for work in the Salle du Manege.

He was introduced by the Abbe Gregoire, and received with acclamations.

On September 21st, then, the Year One opens. It greets mankind with the decree: "Royalty is from this day abolished in France."

September 22d, on a pet.i.tion from Orleans, Dan-ton proposes removal of the entire administrative corps, munic.i.p.al and judicial, to prevent their removal by popular violence. Paine (through Goupilleau) suggests postponement for more thorough discussion. Having got rid of kings they must be rid of royal hirelings; but if partial reforms are made in the judiciary system those inst.i.tutions cannot possess coherence; for the present persons might be changed without altering laws; finally, justice cannot be administered by men ignorant of the laws. Danton welcomes Paine's views, and it is decreed that the administrative bodies be renewed by popular election; but the limitations on eligibility, fixed by the Const.i.tution of 1791, are abolished--the judge need not be a lawyer, nor the munic.i.p.al officer a proprietor.

On September 25th appears Paine's letter to his "Fellow Citizens,"

expressing his "affectionate grat.i.tude" for his adoption and his election. "My felicity is increased by seeing the barrier broken down that divided patriotism by spots of earth, and limited citizenship to the soil, like vegetation." The letter is fairly "floreal" with optimistic felicities. "An over-ruling Providence is regenerating the old world by the principles of the new." "It is impossible to conquer a nation determined to be free." "It is now the cause of all nations against the cause of all courts." "In entering on this great scene, greater than any nation has been called to act in, let us say to the agitated mind, be calm! Let us punish by instruction, rather than by revenge. Let us begin the new era by a greatness of friendship, and hail the approach of union and success."

October 11th, a committee to frame a const.i.tution is appointed, consisting of Sieyes, Paine, Bris-sot, Potion, Vergniaud, Gensonne, Barrere, Danton, Condorcet. Supplementary--Barbaroux, Herault Sech.e.l.les, Lanthenas, Debry, the Abbe Fauchet, Lavicourterie. Paine was placed second to his old adversary, Sieyes, only because of his unfamiliarity with French. At least four of the committee understood English--Condorcet, Danton, Barrere, and Brissot. Paine had known Brissot in America, their friendship being caused by literary tastes in common, and the zeal of both for negro emanc.i.p.ation.

On October 25th was written for _Le Patriote Francais_ (edited by Brissot) an address by Paine arguing carefully the fallacies of royalism. He tersely expresses the view now hardly paradoxical, that "a talented king is worse than a fool."

"We are astonished at reading that the Egyptians set upon the throne a stone, which they called king. Well! such a monarch was less absurd and less mischievous than those before whom nations prostrate themselves. At least he deceived no one. None supposed that he possessed qualities or a character. They did not call him Father of his People; and yet it would have been scarcely more ridiculous than to give such a t.i.tle to a blockhead (_un et.u.r.di_) whom the right of succession crowns at eighteen.

A dumb idol is better than one animated."'

In this letter Paine adroitly prepares the way for his purpose of saving the life of Louis XVI., for whose blood the thirst is growing. "It is little," he says, "to overthrow the idol; it is the pedestal which must especially be beaten down. It is the kingly _office_, rather than the officer, that is destructive (_meurtriere_). This is not seen by every one."

In those who sympathized with the human spirit of his views Paine inspired deep affection. A volume might be filled with the personal tributes to him. In Paris he was the centre of a loving circle, from the first. "I lodge," writes Lord Edward Fitzgerald to his mother (October 30th), "with my friend Paine--we breakfast, dine, and sup together. The more I see of his interior, the more I like and respect him. I cannot express how kind he is to me; there is a simplicity of manner, a goodness of heart, and a strength of mind in him, that I never knew a man before possess."**

* "Father of his People" was a t.i.tle of Geo. III. "Father of his Country" was applied to Peyton Randolph, first president of Congress. Paine's essay, quoted above, which is not included in the editions of Paine's works, was printed by James Watson in London, 1843, the translation being by W. J.

Linton, who, while editing the National, also wrote the same year, and for the same publisher, a small but useful "Life of Paine."

** Moore's "Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald."

Paine was chosen by his fellow-deputies of Calais to offer the Convention the congratulations of their department on the abolition of monarchy. This letter, written October 27th, was on that day read in Convention, in French.

"Citizen President: In the name of the deputies of the department of Pas de Calais, I have the honor of presenting to the Convention the felicitations of the General Council of the Commune of Calais on the abolition of royalty.

"Amid the joy inspired by this event, one can not forbear some pain at the folly of our ancestors, who have placed us under the necessity of treating seriously (_solennellement_) the abolition of a phantom.

"Thomas Paine, Deputy, etc."*

The _Moniteur_, without printing the letter, says that applause followed the word "_fantome_" The use of this word was a resumption of Paine's effort to save the life of the king, then a prisoner of state, by a suggestion of his insignificance.** But he very soon realizes the power of the phantom, which lies not only in the monarchical Trade Union of Europe but in the superst.i.tion of monarchy in those who presently beheaded poor Louis. Paine was always careful to call him Louis Capet, but the French deputies took the king seriously to the last. The king's divine foot was on their necks in the moment when their axe was on his.

But Paine feared a more terrible form which had arisen in place of the royal prisoner of the Temple. On the fourth day of the Convention Marat arose with the words, "It seems a great many here are my enemies," and received the shouted answer, "All! all!" Paine had seen Marat hypnotize the Convention, and hold it subdued in the hollow of his hand. Here was King Stork ready to succeed King Log.

* This letter I copied and translated in the Historical Exhibition of the Revolution, in Paris, 1889. This letter of the "_philosophe anglais_" as he is described in the catalogue, is in the collection of M. Charavay, and was framed with the Bonneville portrait of Paine.

** In his republican manifesto at the time of the king's flight he had deprecated revenge towards the captured monarch.

But what has the Convention to do with deciding about Louis XVI., or about affairs, foreign or domestic? It is there like the Philadelphia Convention of 1787; its business is to frame a Const.i.tution, then dissolve, and let the organs it created determine special affairs. So the committee work hard on the Const.i.tution; "Deputy Paine and France generally expect," finds Carlyle, "all finished in a few months." But, alas, the phantom is too strong for the political philosophers. The crowned heads of Europe are sinking their differences for a time and consulting about this imprisoned brother. And at the same time the subjects of those heads are looking eagerly towards the Convention.*

* "That which will astonish posterity is that at Stockholm, five months after the death of Gustavus, and while the northern Powers are leaguing themselves against the liberty of France, there has been published a translation of Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man," the translator being one of the King's secretaries! "--Moniteur Nov. 8, 1792.

The foreign menaces had thus far caused the ferocities of the revolution, for France knew it was worm-eaten with enemies of republicanism. But now the Duke of Brunswick had retreated, the French arms were victorious everywhere; and it is just possible that the suicide of the Republic--the Reign of Terror--might never have been completed but for that discovery (November 20th) of secret papers walled up in the Tuileries. These papers compromised many, revealed foreign schemes, and made all Paris shriek "Treason!" The smith (Gamain) who revealed the locality of that invisible iron press which he had set under the wainscot, made a good deal of history that day.

A cry for the king's life was raised, for to France he was the head and front of all conspiracy.

How everybody bent under the breath of those days may be seen in the fact that even Gouverneur Morris is found writing to Lord Wycombe (November 22d): "All who wish to partake thereof [freedom] will find in us (ye French) a sure and certain ally. We will chase tyranny, and, above all, _aristocracy_, off the theatre of the Universe."*

* "Diary and Letters." The letter was probably written with knowledge of its liability to fall into the hands of the French Committee. It could not deceive Wycombe.

Paine was living in the "Pa.s.sage des Pet.i.tes Peres, No. 7." There are now two narrow pa.s.sages of that name, uniting near the church "Notre Dame des Victoires," which still bears the words, "Liberty Egalite, Fraternity." No. 7 has disappeared as a number, but it may have described a part of either No. 8 or No. 9,--both ancient. Here he was close to a chapel of the Capucines, unless, indeed, it had already been replaced by this church, whose interior walls are covered with tablets set up by individuals in acknowledgment of the Virgin's miraculous benefits to them. Here he might study superst.i.tion, and no doubt did; but on November 20th he has to deal with the madness of a populace which has broken the outer chains of superst.i.tion with a superst.i.tion of their own, one without restraints to replace the chains. Beneath his window the Place des Victoires will be crowded with revolutionists, frantic under rumors of the discovered iron press and its treasonable papers. He could hardly look out without seeing some poor human scape-goat seeking the altar's safety. Our Lady will look on him from her church the sad-eyed inquiry: "Is this, then, the new religion of Liberty, with which you supplant the Mother and Babe?"