The Writings Of Thomas Paine Volume III Part 18

1 There is no need to delay the reader here with any argument about Paine's unquestionable citizenship, that point having been settled by his release as an American, and the sanction of Monroe's action by his government. There was no genuineness in any challenge of Paine's citizenship, but a mere desire to do him an injury. In this it had marvellous success. Ten years after Paine had been reclaimed by Monroe, with the sanction of Washington, as an American citizen, his vote was refused at New Roch.e.l.le, New York, by the supervisor, Elisha Ward, on the ground that Washington and Morris had refused to Declaim him. Under his picture of the dead Paine, Jarvis, the artist, wrote: "A man who devoted his whole life to the attainment of two objects--rights of man, and freedom of conscience--had his vote denied when living, and was denied a grave when dead."--_Editor._

August 17th, 1794.

My Dear Sir: As I believe none of the public papers have announced your name right I am unable to address you by it, but a _new_ minister from America is joy to me and will be so to every American in France.

Eight months I have been imprisoned, and I know not for what, except that the order says that I am a Foreigner. The Illness I have suffered in this place (and from which I am but just recovering) had nearly put an end to my existence. My life is but of little value to me in this situation tho' I have borne it with a firmness of patience and fort.i.tude.

I enclose you a copy of a letter, (as well the translation as the English)--which I sent to the Convention after the fall of the Monster Robespierre--for I was determined not to write a line during the time of his detestable influence. I sent also a copy to the Committee of public safety--but I have not heard any thing respecting it. I have now no expectation of delivery but by your means--_Morris has been my inveterate enemy_ and I think he has permitted something of the national Character of America to suffer by quietly letting a Citizen of that Country remain almost eight months in prison without making every official exertion to procure him justice,--for every act of violence offered to a foreigner is offered also to the Nation to which he belongs.

The gentleman, Mr. Beresford, who will present you this has been very friendly to me.(1) Wishing you happiness in your appointment, I am your affectionate friend and humble servant.

August 18th, 1794.

Dear Sir: In addition to my letter of yesterday (sent to Mr. Beresford to be conveyed to you but which is delayed on account of his being at St. Germain) I send the following memoranda.

I was in London at the time I was elected a member of this Convention.

I was elected a Depute in four different departments without my knowing any thing of the matter, or having the least idea of it. The intention of electing the Convention before the time of the former Legislature expired, was for the purpose of reforming the Const.i.tution or rather for forming a new one. As the former Legislature shewed a disposition that I should a.s.sist in this business of the new Const.i.tution, they prepared the way by voting me a French Citoyen (they conferred the same t.i.tle on General Washington and certainly I had no more idea than he had of vacating any part of my real Citizenship of America for a nominal one in France, especially at a time when she did not know whether she would be a Nation or not, and had it not even in her power to promise me protection). I was elected (the second person in number of Votes, the Abbe Sieves being first) a member for forming the Const.i.tution, and every American in Paris as well as my other acquaintance knew that it was my intention to return to America as soon as the Const.i.tution should be established. The violence of Party soon began to shew itself in the Convention, but it was impossible for me to see upon what principle they differed--unless it was a contention for power. I acted however as I did in America, I connected myself with no Party, but considered myself altogether a National Man--but the case with Parties generally is that when you are not with one you are supposed to be with the other.

1 A friendly lamp-lighter, alluded to in the Letter to Washington, conveyed this letter to Mr. Beresford.-- _Editor._

I was taken out of bed between three and four in the morning on the 28 of December last, and brought to the Luxembourg--without any other accusation inserted in the order than that I was a foreigner; a motion having been made two days before in the Convention to expel Foreigners therefrom. I certainly then remained, even upon their own tactics, what I was before, a Citizen of America.

About three weeks after my imprisonment the Americans that were in Paris went to the bar of the Convention to reclaim me, but contrary to my advice, they made their address into a Pet.i.tion, and it miscarried.

I then applied to G. Morris, to reclaim me as an official part of his duty, which he found it necessary to do, and here the matter stopt.(1) I have not heard a single line or word from any American since, which is now seven months. I rested altogether on the hope that a new Minister would arrive from America. I have escaped with life from more dangers than one. Had it not been for the fall of Roberspierre and your timely arrival I know not what fate might have yet attended me. There seemed to be a determination to destroy all the Prisoners without regard to merit, character, or any thing else. During the time I laid at the height of my illness they took, in one night only, 169 persons out of this prison and executed all but eight. The distress that I have suffered at being obliged to exist in the midst of such horrors, exclusive of my own precarious situation, suspended as it were by the single thread of accident, is greater than it is possible you can conceive--but thank G.o.d times are at last changed, and I hope that your Authority will release me from this unjust imprisonment.

1 The falsehood told Paine, accompanied by an intimation of danger in pursuing the pretended reclamation, was of course meant to stop any farther action by Paine or his friends.-- _Editor._.

August 25, 1794.

My Dear Sir: Having nothing to do but to sit and think, I will write to pa.s.s away time, and to say that I am still here. I have received two notes from Mr. Beresford which are encouraging (as the generality of notes and letters are that arrive to persons here) but they contain nothing explicit or decisive with respect to my liberation, and _I shall be very glad to receive a line from yourself to inform me in what condition the matter stands_. If I only glide out of prison by a sort of accident America gains no credit by my liberation, neither can my attachment to her be increased by such a circ.u.mstance. She has had the services of my best days, she has my allegiance, she receives my portion of Taxes for my house in Borden Town and my farm at New Roch.e.l.le, and she owes me protection both at home and thro' her Ministers abroad, yet I remain in prison, in the face of her Minister, at the arbitrary will of a committee.

Excluded as I am from the knowledge of everything and left to a random of ideas, I know not what to think or how to act. Before there was any Minister here (for I consider Morris as none) and while the Robespierrian faction lasted, I had nothing to do but to keep my mind tranquil and expect the fate that was every day inflicted upon my comrades, not individually but by scores. Many a man whom I have pa.s.sed an hour with in conversation I have seen marching to his destruction the next hour, or heard of it the next morning; for what rendered the scene more horrible was that they were generally taken away at midnight, so that every man went to bed with the apprehension of never seeing his friends or the world again.

I wish to impress upon you that all the changes that have taken place in Paris have been sudden. There is now a moment of calm, but if thro' any over complaisance to the persons you converse with on the subject of my liberation, you omit procuring it for me _now_, you may have to lament the fate of your friend when its too late. The loss of a Battle to the Northward or other possible accident may happen to bring this about. I am not out of danger till I am out of Prison.

Yours affectionately.

P. S.--I am now entirely without money. The Convention owes me 1800 livres salary which I know not how to get while I am here, nor do I know how to draw for money on the rent of my farm in America. It is under the care of my good friend General Lewis Morris. I have received no rent since I have been in Europe.

[Addressed] Minister Plenipotentiary from America, Maison des etrangers, Rue de la Loi, Rue Richelieu.

Such was the sufficiently cruel situation when there reached Paine in prison, September 4th, the letter of Peter Whiteside which caused him to write his Memorial. Whiteside was a Philadelphian whose bankruptcy in London had swallowed up some of Paine's means. His letter, reporting to Paine that he was not regarded by the American Government or people as an American citizen, and that no American Minister could interfere in his behalf, was evidently inspired by Morris who was still in Paris, the authorities being unwilling to give him a pa.s.sport to Switzerland, as they knew he was going in that direction to join the conspirators against France. This Whiteside letter put Paine, and through him Monroe, on a false scent by suggesting that the difficulty of his case lay in a _bona fide_ question of citizenship, whereas there never had been really any such question. The knot by which Morris had bound Paine was thus concealed, and Monroe was appealing to polite wolves in the interest of their victim. There were thus more delays, inexplicable alike to Monroe and to Paine, eliciting from the latter some heartbroken letters, not hitherto printed, which I add at the end of the Memorial. To add to the difficulties and dangers, Paris was beginning to be agitated by well-founded rumors of Jay's injurious negotiations in England, and a coldness towards Monroe was setting in. Had Paine's release been delayed much longer an American Minister's friendship might even have proved fatal. Of all this nothing could be known to Paine, who suffered agonies he had not known during the Reign of Terror. The other prisoners of Robespierre's time had departed; he alone paced the solitary corridors of the Luxembourg, chilled by the autumn winds, his cell tireless, unlit by any candle, insufficiently nourished, an abscess forming in his side; all this still less cruel than the feeling that he was abandoned, not only by Washington but by all America.

This is the man of whom Washington wrote to Madison nine years before: "Must the merits and services of 'Common Sense' continue to glide down the stream of time unrewarded by this country?" This, then, is his reward. To his old comrade in the battle-fields of Liberty, George Washington, Paine owed his ten months of imprisonment, at the end of which Monroe found him a wreck, and took him (November 4) to his own house, where he and his wife nursed him back into life. But it was not for some months supposed that Paine could recover; it was only after several relapses; and it was under the shadow of death that he wrote the letter to Washington so much and so ignorantly condemned. Those who have followed the foregoing narrative will know that Paine's grievances were genuine, that his infamous treatment stains American history; but they will also know that they lay chiefly at the door of a treacherous and unscrupulous American Minister.

Yet it is difficult to find an excuse for the retention of that Minister in France by Washington. On Monroe's return to America in 1797, he wrote a pamphlet concerning the mission from which he had been curtly recalled, in which he said:

"I was persuaded from Mr. Morris's known political character and principles, that his appointment, and especially at a period when the French nation was in a course of revolution from an arbitrary to a free government, would tend to discountenance the republican cause there and at home, and otherwise weaken, and greatly to our prejudice, the connexion subsisting between the two countries."

In a copy of this pamphlet found at Mount Vernon, Washington wrote on the margin of this sentence:

"Mr. Morris was known to be a man of first rate abilities; and his integrity and honor had never been impeached. Besides, Mr. Morris was sent whilst the kingly government was in existence, ye end of 91 or beginning of 92." (1)

But this does not explain why Gouverneur Morris was persistently kept in France after monarchy was abolished (September 21, 1792), or even after Lafayette's request for his removal, already quoted. To that letter of Lafayette no reply has been discovered. After the monarchy was abolished, Ternant and Genet successively carried to America protests from their Foreign Office against the continuance of a Minister in France, who was known in Paris, and is now known to all acquainted with his published papers, to have all along made his office the headquarters of British intrigue against France, American interests being quite subordinated. Washington did not know this, but he might have known it, and his disregard of French complaints can hardly be ascribed to any other cause than his delusion that Morris was deeply occupied with the treaty negotiations confided to him. It must be remembered that Washington believed such a treaty with England to be the alternative of war.(2) On that apprehension the British party in America, and British agents, played to the utmost, and under such influences Washington sacrificed many old friendships,--with Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Edmund Randolph, Paine,--and also the confidence of his own State, Virginia.

1 Washington's marginal notes on Monroe's "View, etc.,"

were first fully given in Ford's "Writings of Washington,"

vol. xiii., p. 452, seq.

2 Ibid., p. 453.

There is a traditional impression that Paine's angry letter to Washington was caused by the President's failure to inter-pose for his relief from prison. But Paine believed that the American Minister (Morris) had reclaimed him in some feeble fashion, as an American citizen, and he knew that the President had officially approved Monroe's action in securing his release. His grievance was that Washington, whose letters of friendship he cherished, who had extolled his services to America, should have manifested no concern personally, made no use of his commanding influence to rescue him from daily impending death, sent to his prison no word of kindness or inquiry, and sent over their mutual friend Monroe without any instructions concerning him; and finally, that his private letter, asking explanation, remained unanswered. No doubt this silence of Washington concerning the fate of Paine, whom he acknowledged to be an American citizen, was mainly due to his fear of offending England, which had proclaimed Paine. The "outlaw's"

imprisonment in Paris caused jubilations among the English gentry, and went on simultaneously with Jay's negotiations in London, when any expression by Washington of sympathy with Paine (certain of publication) might have imperilled the Treaty, regarded by the President as vital.

So anxious was the President about this, that what he supposed had been done for Paine by Morris, and what had really been done by Monroe, was kept in such profound secrecy, that even his Secretary of State, Pickering, knew nothing of it. This astounding fact I recently discovered in the ma.n.u.scripts of that Secretary.(1) Colonel Pickering, while flattering enough to the President in public, despised his intellect, and among his papers is a memorandum concluding as follows:

"But when the hazards of the Revolutionary War had ended, by the establishment of our Independence, why was the knowledge of General Washington's comparatively defective mental powers not freely divulged?

Why, even by the enemies of his civil administration were his abilities very tenderly glanced at? --Because there were few, if any men, who did not revere him for his distinguished virtues; his modesty--his unblemished integrity, his pure and disinterested patriotism. These virtues, of infinitely more value than exalted abilities without them, secured to him the veneration and love of his fellow citizens at large.

Thus immensely popular, no man was willing to publish, under his hand, even the simple truth. The only exception, that I recollect, was the infamous Tom Paine; and this when in France, after he had escaped the guillotine of Robespierre; and in resentment, because, after he had partic.i.p.ated in the French Revolution, President Washington seemed not to have thought him so very important a character in the world, as officially to interpose for his relief from the fangs of the French ephemeral Rulers. In a word, no man, however well informed, was willing to hazard his own popularity by exhibiting the real intellectual character of the immensely popular Washington."

1 Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society, vol. 11., p. 171.

How can this ignorance of an astute man, Secretary of State under Washington and Adams, be explained? Had Washington hidden the letters showing on their face that he _had_ "officially interposed" for Paine by two Ministers?

Madison, writing to Monroe, April 7, 1796, says that Pickering had spoken to him "in harsh terms" of a letter written by Paine to the President. This was a private letter of September 20, 1795, afterwards printed in Paine's public Letter to Washington. The Secretary certainly read that letter on its arrival, January 18, 1796, and yet Washington does not appear to have told him of what had been officially done in Paine's case! Such being the secrecy which Washington had carried from the camp to the cabinet, and the morbid extent of it while the British Treaty was in negotiation and discussion, one can hardly wonder at his silence under Paine's private appeal and public reproach.

Much as Pickering hated Paine, he declares him the only man who ever told the simple truth about Washington. In the lapse of time historical research, while removing the sacred halo of Washington, has revealed beneath it a stronger brain than was then known to any one. Paine published what many whispered, while they were fawning on Washington for office, or utilizing his power for partisan ends. Washington, during his second administration, when his mental decline was remarked by himself, by Jefferson, and others, was regarded by many of his eminent contemporaries as fallen under the sway of small partisans. Not only was the influence of Jefferson, Madison, Randolph, Monroe, Livingston, alienated, but the counsels of Hamilton were neutralized by Wolcott and Pickering, who apparently agreed about the President's "mental powers."

Had not Paine previously incurred the _odium theologic.u.m_, his pamphlet concerning Washington would have been more damaging; even as it was, the verdict was by no means generally favorable to the President, especially as the replies to Paine a.s.sumed that Washington had indeed failed to try and rescue him from impending death.(1) A pamphlet written by Bache, printed anonymously (1797), Remarks occasioned by the late conduct of Mr. Washington, indicates the belief of those who raised Washington to power, that both Randolph and Paine had been sacrificed to please Great Britain.

The _Bien-informe_ (Paris, November 12, 1797) published a letter from Philadelphia, which may find translation here as part of the history of the pamphlet:

"The letter of Thomas Paine to General Washington is read here with avidity. We gather from the English papers that the Cabinet of St James has been unable to stop the circulation of that pamphlet in England, since it is allowable to reprint there any English work already published elsewhere, however disagreeable to Messrs. Pitt and Dundas.

We read in the letter to Washington that Robespierre had declared to the Committee of Public Safety that it was desirable in the interests of both France and America that Thomas Paine, who, for seven or eight months had been kept a prisoner in the Luxembourg, should forthwith be brought up for judgment before the revolutionary tribunal. The proof of this fact is found in Robespierre's papers, and gives ground for strange suspicions."

1 The princ.i.p.al ones were "A Letter to Thomas Paine. By an American Citizen. New York, 1797," and "A Letter to the infamous Tom Paine, in answer to his Letter to General Washington. December 1796. By Peter Porcupine" (Cobbett).

Writing to David Stuart, January 8,1797, Washington, speaking of himself in the third person, says: "Although he is soon to become a private citizen, his opinions are to be knocked down, and his character traduced as low as they are capable of sinking it, even by resorting to absolute falsehoods. As an evidence whereof, and of the plan they are pursuing, I send you a letter of Mr. Paine to me, printed in this city and disseminated with great industry. Enclosed you will receive also a production of Peter Porcupine, alias William Cobbett. Making allowances for the asperity of an Englishman, for some of his strong and coa.r.s.e expressions, and a want of official information as to many facts, it is not a bad thing." The "many facts" were, of course, the action of Monroe, and the supposed action of Morris in Paris, but not even to one so intimate as Stuart are these disclosed.

"It was long believed that Paine had returned to America with his friend James Monroe, and the lovers of freedom [there] congratulated themselves on being able to embrace that ill.u.s.trious champion of the Rights of Man.

Their hopes have been frustrated. We know positively that Thomas Paine is still living in France. The partizans of the late presidency [in America] also know it well, yet they have spread a rumor that after actually arriving he found his (really popular) _principles no longer the order of the day_, and thought best to re-embark.

"The English journals, while repeating this idle rumor, observed that it was unfounded, and that Paine had not left France. Some French journals have copied these London paragraphs, but without comments; so that at the very moment when Thomas Paine's Letter on the 18th. Fructidor is published, _La Clef du Cabinet_ says that this citizen is suffering unpleasantness in America."

Paine had intended to return with Monroe, in the spring of 1797, but, suspecting the Captain and a British cruiser in the distance, returned from Havre to Paris. The packet was indeed searched by the cruiser for Paine, and, had he been captured, England would have executed the sentence p.r.o.nounced by Robespierre to please Washington.