The Life Of Thomas Paine Volume II Part 3

* "I observed in the french revolutions that they always proceeded by stages, and made each stage a stepping stone to another. The Convention, to amuse the people, voted a const.i.tution, and then voted to suspend the practical establishment of it till after the war, and in the meantime to carry on a revolutionary government. When Robespierre fell they proposed bringing forward the suspended Const.i.tution, and apparently for this purpose appointed a committee to frame what they called organic laws, and these organic laws turned out to be a new Const.i.tution (the Directory Const.i.tution which was in general a good one).

When Bonaparte overthrew this Const.i.tution he got himself appointed first Consul for ten years, then for life, and now Emperor with an hereditary succession."--Paine to Jefferson.

MS. (Dec. 27, 1804). The Paine-Condorcet Const.i.tution is printed in ?uvres Completes de Condorcet, vol. xviii. That which superseded it may be read (the Declaration of Rights omitted) in the "Const.i.tutional History of France. By Henry C. Lockwood." (New York, 1890). It is, inter alia, a sufficient reason for describing the latter as revolutionary, that it provides that a Convention, elected by a majority of the departments, and a tenth part of the primaries, to revise or alter the Const.i.tution, shall be "formed in like manner as the legislatures, and unite in itself the highest power." In other words, instead of being limited to const.i.tutional revision, may exercise all legislative and other functions, just as the existing Convention was doing.

Some have ascribed to Robespierre a phrase he borrowed, on one occasion, from Voltaire, _Si Dieu n' existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer_.

Robespierre's originality was that he did invent a G.o.d, made in his own image, and to that idol offered human sacrifices,--beginning with his own humanity. That he was genuinely superst.i.tious is suggested by the plausibility with which his enemies connected him with the "prophetess,"

Catharine Theot, who p.r.o.nounced him the reincarnate "Word of G.o.d,"

Certain it is that he revived the old forces of fanaticism, and largely by their aid crushed the Girondins, who were rationalists. Condorcet had said that in preparing a Const.i.tution for France they had not consulted Numa's nymph or the pigeon of Mahomet; they had found human reason sufficient. Corruption of best is worst. In the proportion that a humane deity would be a potent sanction for righteous laws, an inhuman deity is the sanction of inhuman laws. He who summoned a nature-G.o.d to the French Convention let loose the scourge on France. Nature inflicts on mankind, every day, a hundred-fold the agonies of the Reign of Terror.

Robespierre had projected into nature a sentimental conception of his own, but he had no power to master the force he had evoked. That had to take the shape of the nature-G.o.ds of all time, and straightway dragged the Convention down to the savage plane where discussion becomes an exchange of thunder-stones. Such relapses are not very difficult to effect in revolutionary times. By killing off sceptical variations, and cultivating conformity, a cerebral evolution proceeded for ages by which kind-hearted people were led to worship jealous and cruel G.o.ds, who, should they appear in human form, would be dealt with as criminals.

Unfortunately, however, the nature-G.o.d does not so appear; it is represented in euphemisms, while at the same time it coerces the social and human standard. Since the nature-G.o.d punishes hereditarily, kills every man at last, and so tortures millions that the suggestion of h.e.l.l seems only too probable to those sufferers, a political system formed under the legitimacy of such a superst.i.tion must subordinate crimes to sins, regard atheism as worse than theft, acknowledge the arbitrary principle, and confuse retaliation with justice. From the time that the shekinah of the nature-G.o.d settled on the Mountain, offences were measured, not by their injury to man, but as insults to the Mountain-G.o.d, or to his anointed. In the mysterious counsels of the Committee of Public Safety the rewards are as little harmonious with the human standard as in the ages when sabbath-breaking and murder met the same doom. Under the paralyzing splendor of a divine authority, any such considerations as the suffering or death of men become petty. The average Mountaineer was unable to imagine that those who tried to save Louis had other than royalist motives. In this Armageddon the Girondins were far above their opponents in humanity and intelligence, but the conditions did not admit of an entire adherence to their honorable weapons of argument and eloquence. They too often used deadly threats, without meaning them; the Mountaineers, who did mean them, took such phrases seriously, and believed the struggle to be one of life and death. Such phenomena of bloodshed, connected with absurdly inadequate causes, are known in history only where G.o.ds mingle in the fray. Reign of Terror? What is the ancient reign of the G.o.d of battles, jealous, angry every day, with everlasting tortures of fire prepared for the unorthodox, however upright, even more than for the immoral? In France too it was a suspicion of unorthodoxy in the revolutionary creed that plunged most of the sufferers into the lake of fire and brimstone.

From the time of Paine's speeches on the King's fate he was conscious that Marat's evil eye was on him. The American's inflexible republicanism had inspired the vigilance of the powerful journals of Brissot and Bonneville, which barred the way to any dictatorship. Paine was even propagating a doctrine against presidency, thus marring the example of the United States, on which ambitious Frenchmen, from Marat to the Napoleons, have depended for their stepping-stone to despotism.

Marat could not have any doubt of Paine's devotion to the Republic, but knew well his weariness of the Revolution. In the simplicity of his republican faith Paine had made a great point of the near adoption of the Const.i.tution, and dissolution of the Convention in five or six months, little dreaming that the Mountaineers were concentrating themselves on the aim of becoming masters of the existing Convention and then rendering it permanent. Marat regarded Paine's influence as dangerous to revolutionary government, and, as he afterwards admitted, desired to crush him. The proposed victim had several vulnerable points: he had been intimate with Gouverneur Morris, whose hostility to France was known; he had been intimate with Dumouriez, declared a traitor; and he had no connection with any of the Clubs, in which so many found asylum. He might have joined one of them had he known the French language, and perhaps it would have been prudent to unite himself with the "Cordeliers," in whose _esprit de corps_ some of his friends found refuge.

However, the time of intimidation did not come for two months after the King's death, and Paine was busy with Condorcet on the task a.s.signed them, of preparing an Address to the People of England concerning the war of their government against France. This work, if ever completed, does not appear to have been published. It was entrusted (February 1st) to Barrere, Paine, Condorcet, and M. Faber. As Frederic Ma.s.son, the learned librarian and historian of the Office of Foreign Affairs, has found some trace of its being a.s.signed to Paine and Condorcet, it may be that further research will bring to light the Address. It could hardly have been completed before the warfare broke out between the Mountain and the Girondins, when anything emanating from Condorcet and Paine would have been delayed, if not suppressed. There are one or two brief essays in Condorcet's works--notably "The French Republic to Free Men"--which suggest collaboration with Paine, and may be fragments of their Address.*

* "?uvres Completes de Condorcet," Paris, 1804, t. xvi., p.

16: "La Republique Francoise aux homines libres." In 1794, when Paine was in prison, a pamphlet was issued by the revolutionary government, ent.i.tled: "An Answer to the Declaration of the King of England, respecting his Motives for Carrying on the Present War, and his Conduct towards France." This anonymous pamphlet, which is in English, replies to the royal proclamation of October 29th, and bears evidence of being written while the English still occupied Toulon or early in November, 1793. There are pa.s.sages in it that suggest the hand of Paine, along with others which he could not have written. It is possible that some composition of his, in pursuance of the task a.s.signed him and Condorcet, was utilized by the Committee of Public Safety in its answer to George III.

At this time the long friendship between Paine and Condorcet, and the Marchioness too, had become very intimate. The two men had acted together on the King's trial at every step, and their speeches on bringing Louis to trial suggest previous consultations between them.

Early in April Paine was made aware of Marat's hostility to him. General Thomas Ward reported to him a conversation in which Marat had said: "Frenchmen are mad to allow foreigners to live among them. They should cut off their ears, let them bleed a few days, and then cut off their heads." "But you yourself are a foreigner," Ward had replied, in allusion to Marat's Swiss birth.* The answer is not reported. At length a tragical incident occurred, just before the trial of Marat (April 13th), which brought Paine face to face with this enemy. A wealthy young Englishman, named Johnson, with whom Paine had been intimate in London, had followed him to Paris, where he lived in the same house with his friend. His love of Paine amounted to worship. Having heard of Marat's intention to have Paine's life taken, such was the young enthusiast's despair, and so terrible the wreck of his republican dreams, that he resolved on suicide. He made a will bequeathing his property to Paine, and stabbed himself. Fortunately he was saved by some one who entered just as he was about to give himself the third blow. It may have been Paine himself who then saved his friend's life; at any rate, he did so eventually.

* "Englishmen in the French Revolution." By John G. Alger.

London, 1889, p. 176. (A book of many blunders.)

The decree for Marat's trial was made amid galleries crowded with his adherents, male and female ("Dames de la Fraternite"), who hurled cries of wrath on every one who said a word against him. All were armed, the women ostentatious of their poignards. The trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal was already going in Marat's favor, when it was determined by the Girondins to bring forward this affair of Johnson.

Paine was not, apparently, a party to this move, though he had enjoined no secrecy in telling his friend Brissot of the incident, which occurred before Marat was accused. On April 16th there appeared in Bris-sot's journal _Le Patriote Francais_, the following paragraph:

"A sad incident has occurred to apprise the anarchists of the mournful fruits of their frightful teaching. An Englishman, whose name I reserve, had abjured his country because of his detestation of kings; he came to France hoping to find there liberty; he saw only its mask on the hideous visage of anarchy. Heart-broken by this spectacle, he determined on self-destruction. Before dying, he wrote the following words, which we have read, as written by his own trembling hand, on a paper which is in the possession of a distinguished foreigner:--'I had come to France to enjoy Liberty, but Marat has a.s.sa.s.sinated it. Anarchy is even more cruel than despotism. I am unable to endure this grievous sight, of the triumph of imbecility and inhumanity over talent and virtue.'"

The acting editor of _Le Patriote Francais_, Girey-Dupre, was summoned before the Tribunal, where Marat was on trial, and testified that the note published had been handed to him by Brissot, who a.s.sured him that it was from the original, in the hands of Thomas Paine. Paine deposed that he had been unacquainted with Marat before the Convention a.s.sembled; that he had not supposed Johnson's note to have any connection with the accusations against Marat.

President.--Did you give a copy of the note to Brissot?

Paine.--I showed him the original.

President.--Did you send it to him as it is printed?

Paine.--Brissot could only have written this note after what I read to him, and told him. I would observe to the tribunal that Johnson gave himself two blows with the knife after he had understood that Marat would denounce him.

Marat.--Not because I would denounce the youth who stabbed himself, but because I wish to denounce Thomas Paine.*

Paine (continuing).--Johnson had for some time suffered mental anguish.

As for Marat, I never spoke to him but once. In the lobby of the Convention he said to me that the English people are free and happy; I replied, they groan under a double despotism.**

* It would appear that Paine had not been informed until Marat declared it, and was confirmed by the testimony of Choppin, that the attempted suicide was on his account.

** Moniteur, April 24,1793.

No doubt it had been resolved to keep secret the fact that young Johnson was still alive. The moment was critical; a discovery that Brissot had written or printed "avant de mourir" of one still alive might have precipitated matters.

It came out in the trial that Marat, addressing a club ("Friends of Liberty and Equality"), had asked them to register a vow to recall from the Convention "all of those faithless members who had betrayed their duties in trying to save a tyrant's life," such deputies being "traitors, royalists, or fools."

Meanwhile the Const.i.tution was undergoing discussion in the Convention, and to that Paine now gave his entire attention. On April 20th the Convention, about midnight, when the Moderates had retired and the Mountaineers found themselves masters of the field, voted to entertain the pet.i.tion of the Parisian sections against the Girondins. Paine saw the star the Republic sinking. On "April 20th, 2d year of the Republic,"

he wrote as follows to Jefferson:

"My dear Friend,--The gentleman (Dr. Romer) to whom I entrust this letter is an intimate acquaintance of Lavater; but I have not had the opportunity of seeing him, as he had sett off for Havre prior to my writing this letter, which I forward to him under cover from one of his friends, who is also an acquaintance of mine.

"We are now in an extraordinary crisis, and it is not altogether without some considerable faults here. Dumouriez, partly from having no fixed principles of his own, and partly from the continual persecution of the Jacobins, who act without either prudence or morality, has gone off to the Enemy, and taken a considerable part of the Army with him. The expedition to Holland has totally failed and all Brabant is again in the hands of the Austrians.

"You may suppose the consternation which such a sudden reverse of fortune has occasioned, but it has been without commotion. Dumouriez threatened to be in Paris in three weeks. It is now three weeks ago; he is still on the frontier near to Mons with the Enemy, who do not make any progress. Dumouriez has proposed to re-establish the former Const.i.tution, in which plan the Austrians act with him. But if France and the National Convention act prudently this project will not succeed.

In the first place there is a popular disposition against it, and there is force sufficient to prevent it. In the next place, a great deal is to be taken into the calculation with respect to the Enemy. There are now so many powers accidentally jumbled together as to render it exceedingly difficult to them to agree upon any common object.

"The first object, that of restoring the old Monarchy, is evidently given up by the proposal to re-establish the late Const.i.tution. The object of England and Prussia was to preserve Holland, and the object of Austria was to recover Brabant; while those separate objects lasted, each party having one, the Confederation could hold together, each helping the other; but after this I see not how a common object is to be formed. To all this is to be added the probable disputes about opportunity, the expense, and the projects of reimburs.e.m.e.nts. The Enemy has once adventured into France, and they had the permission or the good fortune to get back again. On every military calculation it is a hazardous adventure, and armies are not much disposed to try a second time the ground upon which they have been defeated.

"Had this revolution been conducted consistently with its principles, there was once a good prospect of extending liberty through the greatest part of Europe; but I now relinquish that hope. Should the Enemy by venturing into France put themselves again in a condition of being captured, the hope will revive; but this is a risk that I do not wish to see tried, lest it should fail.

"As the prospect of a general freedom is now much shortened, I begin to contemplate returning home. I shall await the event of the proposed Const.i.tution, and then take my final leave of Europe. I have not written to the President, as I have nothing to communicate more than in this letter. Please to present to him my affection and compliments, and remember me among the circle of my friends. Your sincere and affectionate friend,

"Thomas Paine.

"P. S. I just now received a letter from General Lewis Morris, who tells me that the house and Barn on my farm at N. Roch.e.l.le are burnt down. I a.s.sure you I shall not bring money enough to build another."

Four days after this letter was written Marat, triumphant, was crowned with oak leaves. Fou-frede in his speech (April 16th) had said: "Marat has formally demanded dictatorship." This was the mob's reply: _Bos locutus est_.

With Danton, Paine had been on friendly terms, though he described as "rose water" the author's pleadings against the guillotine. On May 6th, Paine wrote to Danton a letter brought to light by Taine, who says: "Compared with the speeches and writings of the time, it produces the strangest effect by its practical good sense."* Dr. Robinet also finds here evidence of "a lucid and wise intellect."**

* "La Revolution," ii., pp. 382, 413, 414.

** "Danton Emigre," p. 177.

"Paris, May 6th, and year of the Republic (1793).

"Citoyen Danton:

"As you read English, I write this letter to you without parsing it through the hands of a translator. I am exceedingly disturbed at the distractions, jealousies, discontents and uneasiness that reign among us, and which, if they continue, will bring ruin and disgrace on the Republic. When I left America in the year 1787, it was my intention to return the year following, but the French Revolution, and the prospect it afforded of extending the principles of liberty and fraternity through the greater part of Europe, have induced me to prolong my stay upwards of six years. |I now despair of seeing the great object of European liberty accomplished, and my despair arises not from, the combined foreign powers, not from the intrigues of aristocracy and priestcraft, but from the tumultuous misconduct with which the internal affairs of the present revolution is conducted.

"All that now can be hoped for is limited to France only, and I agree with your motion of not interfering in the government of any foreign country, nor permitting any foreign country to interfere in the government of France. This decree was necessary as a preliminary toward terminating the war. But while these internal contentions continue, while the hope remains to the enemy of seeing the Republic fall to pieces, while not only the representatives of the departments but representation itself is publicly insulted, as it has lately been and now is by the people of Paris, or at least by the tribunes, the enemy will be encouraged to hang about the frontiers and await the issue of circ.u.mstances.

"I observe that the confederated powers have not yet recognised Monsieur, or D'Artois, as regent, nor made any proclamation in favour of any of the Bourbons; but this negative conduct admits of two different conclusions. The one is that of abandoning the Bourbons and the war together; the other is that of changing the object of the war and subst.i.tuting a part.i.tion scheme in the place of their first object, as they have done by Poland. If this should be their object, the internal contentions that now rage will favour that object far more than it favoured their former object. The danger every day increases of a rupture between Paris and the departments. The departments did not send their deputies to Paris to be insulted, and every insult shown to them is an insult to the departments that elected and sent them. I see but one effectual plan to prevent this rupture taking place, and that is to fix the residence of the Convention, and of the future a.s.semblies, at a distance from Paris.

"I saw, during the American Revolution, the exceeding inconvenience that arose by having the government of Congress within the limits of any Munic.i.p.al Jurisdiction. Congress first resided in Philadelphia, and after a residence of four years it found it necessary to leave it. It then adjourned to the State of Jersey. It afterwards removed to New York; it again removed from New York to Philadelphia, and after experiencing in every one of these places the great inconvenience of a government, it formed the project of building a Town, not within the limits of any munic.i.p.al jurisdiction, for the future residence of Congress. In any one of the places where Congress resided, the munic.i.p.al authority privately or openly opposed itself to the authority of Congress, and the people of each of those places expected more attention from Congress than their equal share with the other States amounted to.

The same thing now takes place in France, but in a far greater excess.

"I see also another embarra.s.sing circ.u.mstance arising in Paris of which we have had full experience in America. I mean that of fixing the price of provisions. But if this measure is to be attempted it ought to be done by the Munic.i.p.ality. The Convention has nothing to do with regulations of this kind; neither can they be carried into practice. The people of Paris may say they will not give more than a certain price for provisions, but as they cannot compel the country people to bring provisions to market the consequence will be directly contrary to their expectations, and they will find clearness and famine instead of plenty and cheapness. They may force the price down upon the stock in hand, but after that the market will be empty.

"I will give you an example. In Philadelphia we undertook, among other regulations of this kind, to regulate the price of Salt; the consequence was that no Salt was brought to market, and the price rose to thirty-six shillings sterling per Bushel. The price before the war was only one shilling and sixpence per Bushel; and we regulated the price of flour (farine) till there was none in the market, and the people were glad to procure it at any price.