Books: Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9
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Elbert Hubbard >> Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9
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Every Government, at the last, is of the people, by the people, but
whether for the people depends upon whether the people are awake. And
now England did not care for a radical change of rulers; all the
citizens wanted was that those in power recede from their position and
grant the relief demanded. The Queen now reconsidered the resignation
of Sir Robert Peel and refused to accept it, and he again assumed the
reins. An extraordinary session of the House of Commons was called and
the Corn Laws were repealed. The House of Lords concurred. The
nobility was absolutely routed, and Cobden, "the sooty manufacturer,"
had won.
Strangely enough, panic did not follow, nor did the yeomanry go into
bankruptcy. The breadstuffs flowed in, and the manufacturing
population being better fed at a less outlay than formerly, had more
money to spend. Great general prosperity followed, and the gentry, who
had threatened to abandon their estates if the Corn Laws were
repealed, simply raised their rents a trifle and increased the gaming
limit.
Sir Robert Peel publicly acknowledged his obligation to Cobden, and
Lord Palmerston, who had fought him tooth and nail, did the same,
explaining, "A new epoch has arisen, and England is a manufacturing
country, and as such the repeal of the Corn Laws became desirable." As
though he would say, "To have had free trade before this new epoch
arose, would have been a calamity." A large sum had been subscribed
but not used in the agitation. And now by popular acclaim it was
decided that this money should go to Cobden personally as a thank-
offering. When the proposition was made, new subscriptions began to
flow in, until the sum of eighty thousand pounds was realized.
Cobden's business had been neglected. In his fight for the good of the
nation his own fortune had taken wing. He announced his intention of
retiring from politics and devoting himself to trade, and this was
that which, probably, caused the tide to turn his way. He hesitated
about accepting the gift, which amounted to nearly half a million
dollars, but finally concluded that only by accepting could he be free
to serve the State, and so he acceded to the wishes of his friends.
Some years later, Lord Palmerston offered him a baronetcy and a seat
in the cabinet, but he preferred still to help the State as an outside
advocate.
John Morley, the strongest and sanest of modern English statesmen,
says:
"Cobden had an intrepid faith in the perfectibility of man. His
doctrine was one of non-intervention; that the powerful can
afford to be lenient; that mankind continually moves toward the
light if not too much interfered with. By his influence the darker
shapes of repression were banished from the education of the young;
the insane were treated with a consideration before unknown; the
criminal was regarded as a brother who deserved our gentlest
consideration and patience; the time-honored and ineffective
processes of violence and coercion fell into abeyance, and a
rational moderation and enlightenment appeared on the horizon. He
elevated and refined the world of business, just as he benefited
everything he touched. His early death at the age of sixty-one
seemed a calamity for England, for we so needed the help of his
generous, gentle and unresentful spirit. He lived not in vain; yet
years must pass before the full and sublime truths for which he
stood are realized."
THOMAS PAINE
These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the
sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of
his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and
thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily
conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the
conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap,
we esteem too lightly; 't 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.
--_Paine, in "The Crisis"_
[Illustration: THOMAS PAINE]
Thomas Paine was an English mechanic, of Quaker origin, born in the
year Seventeen Hundred Thirty-seven. He was the author of four books
that have influenced mankind profoundly. These books are, "Common
Sense," "The Age of Reason," "The Crisis," and "The Rights of Man."
In Seventeen Hundred Seventy-four, when he was thirty-seven years old,
he came to America bearing letters of introduction from Benjamin
Franklin.
On arriving at Philadelphia he soon found work as editor of "The
Pennsylvania Magazine."
In Seventeen Hundred Seventy-five, in the magazine just named, he
openly advocated and prophesied a speedy separation of the American
Colonies from England. He also threw a purple shadow over his
popularity by declaring his abhorrence of chattel slavery.
His writings, from the first, commanded profound attention, and on the
advice and suggestion of Doctor Benjamin Rush, an eminent citizen of
Philadelphia, the scattered editorials and paragraphs on human rights,
covering a year, were gathered, condensed, revised, made into a book.
This "pamphlet," or paper-bound book, was called "Common Sense."
In France, John Adams was accused of writing "Common Sense." He
stoutly denied it, there being several allusions in it stronger than
he cared to stand sponsor for.
In England, Franklin was accused of being the author, and he neither
denied nor admitted it. But when a lady reproached him for having used
the fine alliterative phrase, applied to the king, "The Royal British
Brute," he smiled and said blandly, "Madame, I would never have been
so disrespectful to the brute creation as that."
"Common Sense" struck the keynote of popular feeling, and the
accusation of "treason," hurled at it from many sources, only served
to advertise it. It supplied the common people with reasons, and gave
statesmen arguments. The Legislature of Pennsylvania voted Paine a
honorarium of five hundred pounds, and the University of Pennsylvania
awarded him the degree of "Master of Arts," in recognition of eminent
services to literature and human rights. John Quincy Adams said,
"Paine's pamphlet, 'Common Sense,' crystallized public opinion and was
the first factor in bringing about the Revolution."
The Reverend Theodore Parker once said: "Every living man in America
in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six, who could read, read 'Common Sense,'
by Thomas Paine. If he was a Tory, he read it, at least a little, just
to find out for himself how atrocious it was; and if he was a Whig, he
read it all to find the reasons why he was one. This book was the
arsenal to which the Colonists went for their mental weapons."
As "Common Sense" was published anonymously and without copyright, and
was circulated at bare cost, Paine never received anything for the
work, save the twenty-five hundred dollars voted to him by the
Legislature.
When independence was declared, Paine enlisted as a private, but was
soon made aide-de-camp to General Greene. He was an intrepid and
effective soldier and took an active part in various battles.
In December, Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six, he published his second
book, "The Crisis," the first words of which have gone into the
electrotype of human speech, "These are the times that try men's
souls." The intent of the letters which make up "The Crisis" was to
infuse courage into the sinking spirits of the soldiers. Washington
ordered the letters to be read at the head of every regiment, and it
was so done.
In Seventeen Hundred Eighty-one, Paine was sent to France with Colonel
Laurens to negotiate a loan. The errand was successful, and Paine then
made influential acquaintances, which were later to be renewed. He
organized the Bank of North America to raise money to feed and clothe
the army, and performed sundry and various services for the Colonies.
In Seventeen Hundred Ninety-one he published his third book, "The
Rights of Man," with a complimentary preface by Thomas Jefferson. The
book had an immense circulation in America and England. By way of
left-handed recognition of the work, the author was indicted by the
British Government for "sedition." A day was set for the trial, but as
Paine did not appear--those were hanging days--and could not be found,
he was outlawed and "banished forever."
He became a member of the French Assembly, or "Chamber of Deputies,"
and for voting against the death of the king came under suspicion, and
was cast into prison, where he was held for one year, lacking a few
weeks. His life was saved by James Monroe, America's Minister to
France, and for eighteen months he was a member of Monroe's household.
In Seventeen Hundred Ninety-four, while in France, there was published
simultaneously in England, America and France, Paine's fourth book,
"The Age of Reason."
In Eighteen Hundred Two, Thomas Jefferson, then President of the
United States, offered Paine passage to America on board the man-of-
war "Maryland," in order that he might be safe from capture by the
English, who had him under constant surveillance and were intent on
his arrest, regarding him as the chief instigator in the American
Rebellion. Arriving in America, Paine was the guest for several months
of the President at Monticello. His admirers in Baltimore, Washington,
Philadelphia and New York gave banquets in his honor, and he was
tendered grateful recognition on account of his services to humanity
and his varied talents. He was presented by the State of New York, "in
token of heroic work for the Union," a farm at New Rochelle, eighteen
miles from New York, and here he lived in comparative ease, writing
and farming.
He passed peacefully away, aged seventy-two, in Eighteen Hundred Nine,
and his body was buried on his farm, near the house where he lived,
and a modest monument erected marking the spot. He had no Christian
burial, although, unlike Mr. Zangwill, he had a Christian name. Nine
years after the death of Paine, William Cobbett, the eminent English
reformer, stung by the obloquy visited upon the memory of Paine in
America, had the grave opened and the bones of the man who wrote the
first draft of our Declaration of Independence were removed to
England, and buried near the spot where he was born. Death having
silenced both the tongue and the pen of the Thetford weaver, no
violent interference was offered by the British Government. So now the
dead man slept where the presence of the living one was barred and
forbidden. A modest monument marks the spot. Beneath the name are
these words, "The world is my country, mankind are my friends, to do
good is my religion."
In Eighteen Hundred Thirty-nine, a monument was erected at New
Rochelle, New York, on the site of the empty grave where the body of
Paine was first buried, by the lovers and admirers of the man. And
while only one land claims his birthplace, three countries now
dispute for the privilege of honoring his dust, for it so happened
that in France a strong movement was on foot demanding that the
remains of Thomas Paine be removed from England to France, and be
placed in the Pantheon, that resting-place of so many of the
illustrious dead who gave their lives to the cause of Freedom, close
by the graves of Voltaire, Rousseau and Victor Hugo. And the reason
the bones were not removed to Paris was because only an empty coffin
rests in the grave at Thetford, as at New Rochelle. Rumor says that
Paine's skull is in a London museum, but if so, the head that
produced "The Age of Reason" can not be identified. And the end is
not yet!
* * * * *
The genius of Paine was a flower that blossomed slowly. But life is a
sequence, and the man who does great work has been in training for
it. There is nothing like keeping in condition--one does not know
when he is going to be called on. Prepared people do not have to hunt
for a position--the position hunts for them. Paine knew no more about
what he was getting ready for than did Benjamin Franklin, when at
twenty he studied French, evenings, and dived deep into history.
The humble origin of Paine and his Quaker ancestry were most helpful
factors in his career. Only a working-man who had tasted hardship
could sympathize with the overtaxed and oppressed. And Quakerdom made
him a rebel by prenatal tendency. Paine's schooling was slight, but
his parents, though poor, were thinking people, for nothing sharpens
the wits of men, preventing fatty degeneration of the cerebrum, like
persecution. In this respect, the Jews and Quakers have been greatly
blessed and benefited--let us congratulate them. Very early in life
Paine acquired the study habit. And for the youth who has the study
habit no pedagogic tears need be shed. There were debating-clubs at
coffeehouses, where great themes were discussed; and our young weaver
began his career by defending the Quakers. He acquired considerable
local reputation as a weaver of thoughts upon the warp and woof of
words. Occasionally he occupied the pulpit in dissenting chapels.
These were great times in England--the air was all athrob with
thought and feeling. A great tidal wave of unrest swept the land. It
was an epoch of growth, second only in history to the Italian
Renaissance. The two Wesleys were attacking the Church, and calling
upon men to methodize their lives and eliminate folly; Gibbon was
writing his "Decline and Fall"; Burke, in the House of Commons, was
polishing his brogue; Boswell was busy blithering about a book
concerning a man; Captain Cook was sailing the seas finding
continents; the two Pitts and Charles Fox were giving the king
unpalatable advice; Horace Walpole was setting up his private press
at Strawberry Hill; the Herschels--brother and sister--were sweeping
the heavens for comets; Reynolds, West, Lawrence, Romney and
Gainsborough were founding the first school of British Art; and David
Hume, the Scotchman, was putting forth arguments irrefutable. And
into this seething discontent came Thomas Paine, the weaver, reading,
studying, thinking, talking, with nothing to lose but his reputation.
He was twenty-seven years of age when he met Ben Franklin at a
coffeehouse in London. Paine got his first real mental impetus from
Franklin. Both were workingmen. Paine listened to Franklin one whole
evening, and the said, "What he is I can at least in part become."
Paine thought Franklin quite the greatest man of his time, an opinion
which, among others held by him, the world now fully accepts.
* * * * *
Paine at twenty-four, from a simple weaver, had been called into the
office of his employer to help straighten out the accounts. He tried
storekeeping, but with indifferent success. Then it seems he was
employed by the Board of Excise on a similar task. Finally he was
given a position in the Excise. This position he might have held
indefinitely, and been promoted in the work, for he had clerical
talents which made his services valuable. But there was another theme
that interested him quite as much as collecting taxes for the
Government, and that was the philosophy of taxation. This was very
foolish in Thomas Paine--a tax-collector should collect taxes, and
not concern himself with the righteousness of the business, nor about
what becomes of the money.
Paine had made note of the fact that England collected taxes from
Jews, but that Jews were not allowed to vote because they were not
"Christians," it being assumed that Jews were not as fit, either
intellectually or morally, to pass on questions of state as members
of the "Church." In Seventeen Hundred Seventy-one, in a letter to a
local paper, he used the phrase, "The iniquity of taxation without
representation," referring to England's treatment of the Quakers.
About the same time he called attention to the fact that the
Christian religion was built on the Judaic, and that the reputed
founder of the established religion was a Jew and his mother a Jewess,
and to deprive Jews of the right of full citizenship, simply because
they did not take the same view of Jesus that others did, was a
perversion of the natural rights of man. This expression, "the
natural rights of man," gave offense to a certain clergyman of
Thetford, who replied that man had no natural rights, only
privileges--all the rights he had were those granted by the Crown.
Then followed a debate at the coffeehouse, followed by a rebuke from
Paine's superior officer in the Excise, ordering him to cease all
political and religious controversy on penalty.
Paine felt the smart of the rebuke; he thought it was unjustifiable,
in view of the fact that the excellence of his work for the Government
had never been questioned. So he made a speech in a dissenting chapel
explaining the situation. But explanations never explain, and his
assertion that the honesty of his service had never been questioned
was put out of commission the following week by the charge of
smuggling. His name was dropped from the official payroll until his
case could be tried, and a little later he was peremptorily
discharged. The charge against him was not pressed--he was simply not
wanted--and the statement by the head exciseman that a man working for
the Government should not criticize the Government was pretty good
logic, anyway. Paine, however, contended that all governments exist
for the governed, and with the consent of the governed, and it is the
duty of all good citizens to take an interest in their government, and
if possible show where it can be strengthened and bettered.
It will thus be seen that Paine was forging reasons--his active brain
was at work, and his sensitive spirit was writhing under a sense of
personal injustice.
One of his critics--a clergyman--said that if Thomas Paine wished to
preach sedition, there was plenty of room to do it outside of England.
Paine followed the suggestion, and straightway sought out Franklin to
ask him about going to America.
Every idea that Paine had expressed was held by Franklin and had been
thought out at length. Franklin was thirty-one years older than Paine,
and time had tempered his zeal, and beside that, his tongue was always
well under control, and when he expressed heresy he seasoned it with a
smile and a dash of wit that took the bitterness out of it. Not so
Paine--he was an earnest soul, a little lacking in humor, without the
adipose which is required for a diplomat.
Franklin's letters of introduction show how he admired the man--what
faith he had in him--and it is now believed that Franklin advanced him
money, that he might come to America.
William Cobbett says:
As my Lord Grenville has introduced the name of Edmund Burke, suffer
me, my Lord, to introduce the name of a man who put this Burke to
shame, who drove him off the public stage to seek shelter in the
pension-list, and who is now named fifty million times where the
name of the pensioned Burke is mentioned once. The cause of the
American Colonies was the cause of the English Constitution,
which says that no man shall be taxed without his own consent. A
little cause sometimes produces a great effect; an insult offered to
a man of great talent and unconquerable perseverance has in many
instances produced, in the long run, most tremendous effects; and it
appears to me very clear that the inexcusable insults offered to Mr.
Paine while he was in the Excise in England was the real cause of
the Revolution in America; for, though the nature of the cause of
America was such as I have before described it, though the
principles were firm in the minds of the people of that country,
still it was Mr. Paine, and Mr. Paine alone, who brought those
principles into action.
Paine's part in the Revolutionary War was most worthy and honorable.
He shouldered a musket with the men at Valley Forge, carried messages
by night through the enemy's country, acted as rear-guard for
Washington's retreating army, and helped at break of day to capture
Trenton, and proved his courage in various ways. As clerk, secretary,
accountant and financier he did excellent service.
Of course, there had been the usual harmonious discord that will occur
among men hard-pressed and over-worked, where nerve-tension finds vent
at times in acrimony. But through all the nine long, weary years
before the British had had enough, Paine was never censured with the
same bitterness which fell upon the heads of Washington and Jefferson.
Even Franklin came in for his share of blame, and it was shown that he
had expended an even hundred thousand pounds in Europe, with no
explanation of what he had done with the money. When called upon to
give an accounting for the "yellow-dog fund," Franklin simply wrote
back, "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn." And
on the suggestion of Thomas Paine, the matter was officially dropped.
Paine was a writing man--the very first American writing man--and I am
humiliated when I have to acknowledge that we had to get him from
England. He was the first man who ever used these words, "The American
Nation," and also these, "The United States of America." Paine is the
first American writer who had a literary style, and we have not had so
many since but that you may count them on the fingers of one hand.
Note this sample of antithesis: "There are but two natural sources of
wealth--the earth and the ocean--and to lose the right to either, in our
situation, is to put the other up for sale."
Here is a little tribute from Paine's pen to America which some of our
boomers of boom towns might do well to use:
America has now outgrown the state of infancy. Her strength and
commerce make large advances to manhood; and science in all its
branches has not only blossomed, but even ripened upon the soil. The
cottages as it were of yesterday have grown into villages, and the
villages to cities; and while proud antiquity, like a skeleton in
rags, parades the streets of other nations, their genius, as if
sickened and disgusted with the phantom, comes hither for recovery.
America yet inherits a large portion of her first-imported virtue.
Degeneracy is here almost a useless word. Those who are conversant
with Europe would be tempted to believe that even the air of the
Atlantic disagrees with the constitution of foreign vices; if they
survive the voyage they either expire on their arrival, or linger
away with an incurable consumption. There is a happy something in
the climate of America which disarms them of all their power both
of infection and attraction.
Ease, fluidity, grace, imagination, energy, earnestness, mark his
work. No wonder is it that Franklin said, "Others can rule, many can
fight, but only Paine can write for us the English tongue." And
Jefferson, himself a great writer, was constantly, for many years,
sending to Paine manuscript for criticism and correction. In one
letter to Paine, Jefferson adds this postscript, "You must not be too
much elated and set up when I tell you my belief that you are the only
writer in America who can write better than your obliged and obedient
servant--Thomas Jefferson."
Paine was living in peace at Bordentown in the year Seventeen Hundred
Eighty-seven. The war was ended, the last hostile Britisher had
departed, and the country was awakening to prosperity. Paine rode his
mettlesome old war-horse "Button," back and forth from Philadelphia,
often stopping and seating himself by the roadway to write out a
thought while the horse that had known the smell of powder quietly
nibbled the grass. The success of Benjamin Franklin as an inventor had
fired the heart of Paine. He devised a plan to utilize small
explosions of gunpowder to run an engine, thus anticipating our gas
and gasoline engines by nearly a hundred years. He had also planned a
bridge to span the Schuylkill. Capitalists were ready to build the
bridge, provided Paine could get French engineers, then the greatest
in the world, to endorse his plans. So he sailed away to France,
intending also to visit his parents in England, instructing his
friends in Bordentown with whom he boarded, to take care of his
horse, his rooms and books with all his papers, for he would be back
in less than a year. He was fifty years old. It was thirteen years
since he had left England, and he felt that his transplantation to a
new soil had not been in vain. England had practically exiled him,
but still the land of his birth called, and unseen tendrils tugged at
his heart. He must again see England, even for a brief visit, and then
back to America, the land that he loved and which he had helped to
free.
And destiny devised that it was to be fifteen years before he was
again to see his beloved "United States of America."
Arriving in France, Paine was received with honours. There was much
political unrest, and the fuse was then being lighted that was to
cause the explosion of Seventeen Hundred Eighty-Nine. However, of all
this Paine knew little.
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