The Life Of Thomas Paine Volume I Part 30

Paine has carried to success his anti-monarchical faith. He was the first to a.s.sail monarchy in America and in France. A little more than a year before, he had founded the first Republican Society in Europe, and written its Declaration on the door of the National a.s.sembly. Sieyes had denounced him then as a "polyarchist." Now he sat with Sieyes daily, framing a republican Const.i.tution, having just felicitated the Convention on the abolition of the phantom--Royalty. And now, on this terrible night of November 20th, this unmaker of kings finds himself the solitary deputy ready to risk his life to save the man whose crown he had destroyed. It is not simply because the old Quaker heart in him recoils from bloodshed, but that he would save the Republic from the peril of foreign invasion, which would surely follow the execution of Louis, and from disgrace in America, whose independence owed much to the fallen monarch.

In his little room, the lonely author, unable to write French, animated by sentiments which the best of the French revolutionists could not understand--Danton reminding him that "revolutions are not made of rose-water"--must have before the morrow's Convention some word that shall control the fury of the moment. Rose-water will not answer now.

Louis must pa.s.s his ordeal; his secret schemes have been revealed; the treachery of his submissions to the people exposed. He is guilty, and the alternatives are a calm trial, or death by the hands of the mob.

What is now most needed is delay, and, that secured, diversion of national rage from the individual Louis to the universal anti-republican Satan inspiring the crowned heads of Europe. Before the morning dawns, Paine has written his letter to the president It is translated before the Convention meets, November 21st, and is read to that body the same day.* Louis XVI., he says, should be tried. The advice is not suggested by vengeance, but by justice and policy. If innocent, he may be allowed to prove it; if guilty, he must be punished or pardoned by the nation.

He would, however, consider Louis, individually, beneath the notice of the republic. The importance of his trial is that there is a conspiracy of "crowned brigands" against the liberties not only of France, but of all nations, and there is ground for suspecting that Louis XVI. was a partner in it. He should be utilized to ferret out the whole gang, and reveal to the various peoples what their monarchs, some of whom work in secret for fear of their subjects, are doing. Louis XVI. should not be dealt with except in the interest of all Europe.

"If, seeing in Louis XVI. only a weak and narrow-minded man, badly reared, as all like him, subject, it is said, to intemperance, imprudently re-established by the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly on a throne for which he was unfit,--if we hereafter show him some compa.s.sion, this compa.s.sion should be the effect of national magnanimity, and not a result of the burlesque notion of pretended inviolability.'"

* "L' Histoire Parlementaire," xx., p. 367.

** This essay has suffered in the translation found in English and American editions of Paine. The words "national magnanimity" are omitted. The phrase "brigands couronnes"

becomes "crowned robbers" in England, and "crowned ruffians"

in America. Both versions are commonplace, and convey an impression of haste and mere abuse. But Paine was a slow writer, and weighed his words even when "quarelling in print. When this letter was written to the Convention its members were reading his Essay on Royalty, which filled seven columns of Brissot's Patriot Francois three weeks before. In that he had traced royalty to the bandit-chief.

Several troops of banditti a.s.semble for the purpose of upsetting some country, of laying contributions over it, of seizing the landed property, of reducing the people to thraldom. The expedition being accomplished, the chief of the gang a.s.sumes the t.i.tle of king or monarch. Such has been the origin of royalty among all nations who live by the chase, agriculture, or the tending of flocks. A second chieftain arriving obtains by force what has been acquired by violence. He despoils his predecessor, loads him with fetters, puts him to death, and a.s.sumes his t.i.tle. In the course of ages the memory of the outrage is lost; his successors establish new forms of government; through policy, they become the instruments of a little good; they invent, or cause to be invented, false genealogical tables; they employ every means to render their race sacred; the knavery of priests steps in to their a.s.sistance; for their body-guard they take religion itself; then it is that Royalty, or rather Tyranny, becomes immortal. A power unjustly usurped is transformed into a hereditary right."

Lamartine, in his history of the Girondists, reproaches Paine for these words concerning a king-who had shown him friends.h.i.+p during the American war. But the facts were not well explored in Lamartine's time. Louis Blanc recognizes Paine's intent.*

* "Hist, de la Revolution," etc., vol. vii., p. 396.

"He had learned in England that killing a monarch does not kill monarchs." This grand revolutionary proposal to raise the inevitable trial from the low plane of popular wrath against a prisoner to the dignity of a process against European monarchy, would have secured delay and calmer counsels. If the reader, considering the newly discovered papers, and the whole situation, will examine critically Paine's words just quoted, he will find them meriting a judgment the reverse of Lamartine's. With consummate art, the hourly imperilled king is s.h.i.+elded from vindictive wrath by the considerations that he is _non compos_, not responsible for his bringing up, was put back on the throne by the a.s.sembly, after he had left it, acknowledging his unfitness, and that compa.s.sion for him would be becoming to the magnanimity of France.

A plea for the King's immunity from trial, for his innocence or his virtues, would at that juncture have been fatal. As it was, this ingenious doc.u.ment made an impression on the Convention, which ordered it to be printed. *

* "Convention Nationale. Opinion de Thomas Payne, Depute"

du Departement de la Somme, concern ant le jugement de Louis XVI. Precede" de sa lettre d'envoi au President de la Convention. Imprime" par ordre de la Convention Nationale. A Paris. De rimprimerie Nationale." It is very remarkable that, in a State paper, Paine should be described as deputy for the Somme. His votes in the Convention are all entered under Calais. Dr. John Moore, who saw much of Paine at this time, says, in his work on the French Revolution, that his (Paine's) writings for the Convention were usually translated into French by the Marchioness of Condorcet.

The delay which Paine's proposal would involve was, as Louis Blanc remarks, fatal to it. It remains now only to work among the members of the Convention, and secure if possible a majority that will be content, having killed the king, to save the man; and, in saving him, to preserve him as an imprisoned hostage for the good behavior of Europe. This is now Paine's idea, and never did man toil more faithfully for another than he did for that discrowned Louis Capet.

CHAPTER XXIV. OUTLAWED IN ENGLAND

While Paine was thus, towards the close of 1792, doing the work of a humane Englishman in France, his works were causing a revolution in England--a revolution the more effectual because bloodless.

In Paine's letter to Secretary Dundas (Calais, September 15th), describing the examination of his papers at Dover, a "postscript" states that among the papers handled was "a printed proof copy of my Letter to the Addressers, which will soon be published." This must have been a thumbscrew for the Secretary when he presently read the pamphlet that escaped his officers. In humor, freedom, and force this production may be compared with Carlyle's "Latter Day Pamphlets." Lord Stormont and Lord Grenville having made speeches about him, their services are returned by a speech which the author has prepared for them to deliver in Parliament. This satirical eulogy on the British const.i.tution set the fas.h.i.+on for other radical encomiums of the wisdom of the king and of the peers, the incorruptibility of the commons, beauty of rotten boroughs, and freedom of the people from taxes, with which prosecuting attorneys were unable to deal. Having felicitated himself on the circulation of his opinions by the indictment, and the advertis.e.m.e.nts of his books by loyal "Addresses," Paine taunts the government for its method of answering argument. It had been challenging the world for a hundred years to admire the perfection of its inst.i.tutions. At length the challenge is taken up, and, lo, its acceptance is turned into a crime, and the only defence of its perfection is a prosecution! Paine points out that there was no sign of prosecution until his book was placed within reach of the poor. When cheap editions were clamored for by Sheffield, Leicester, Chester, Warwicks.h.i.+re, and Scotland, he had announced that any one might freely publish it. About the middle of April he had himself put a cheap edition in the press. He knew he would be prosecuted for that, and so wrote to Thomas Walker.*

* At the trial the Attorney-General admitted that he had not prosecuted Part I. because it was likely to be confined to judicious readers; but this still more reprehensible Part II. was, he said, with an industry incredible, ushered into the world in all shapes and sizes, thrust into the hands of subjects of every description, even children's sweetmeats being wrapped in it.

It was the common people the government feared. He remarks that on the same day (May 21st) the prosecution was inst.i.tuted and the royal proclamation issued--the latter being indictable as an effort to influence the verdict in a pending case. He calls attention to the "special jury," before which he was summoned. It is virtually selected by the Master of the Crown Office, a dependant on the Civil List a.s.sailed in his book. The special jury is treated to a dinner, and given two guineas for a conviction, and but one guinea and no dinner for acquittal. Even a fairly selected local jury could not justly determine a const.i.tutional issue affecting every part of the empire. So Paine brings under scrutiny every part of the legal machinery sprung on him, adding new ill.u.s.trations of his charges against the whole system. He begins the siege, which Bradlaugh was to carry forward in a later time, against the corrupt Pension List, introducing it with his promised exposure of Edmund Burke. Near the end of Lord North's administration Burke brought in a bill by which it was provided that a pension or annuity might be given without name, if under oath that it was not for the benefit of a member of the House of Commons. Burke's pension had been taken out under the name of another man; but being under the necessity of mortgaging it, the real pensioner had to be disclosed to the mortgagee.* For the rest, this "Address to the Addressers," as it was popularly called,--or "Part Third of the Rights of Man," as one publisher ent.i.tled it,--sowed broadcast through England pa.s.sages that were recited in a.s.semblies, and sentences that became proverbs.

* This disclosure, though not disproved, is pa.s.sed over silently by most historians. Nevertheless it was probably that which ended Burke's parliamentary career. Two years later, at the age of sixty-two, he retired with an acc.u.mulation of pensions given at the king's request, amounting to 3,700 per annum. His reputation had been built up on his supposed energy in favor of economy. The secret and illegal pension (1,500) cast light on his sudden coalition with Lord North, whom he once proposed to impeach as a traitor. The t.i.tle of "masked pensioner" given by Paine branded Burke. Writing in 1819 Cobbett says: "As my Lord Grenville introduced the name of Burke, suffer me, my Lord, to introduce that of the man [Paine] 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."

"It is a dangerous attempt in any government to say to a Nation, _Thou shalt not read_."

"Thought, by some means or other, is got abroad in the world, and cannot be restrained, though reading may."

"Whatever the rights of the people are, they have a right to them, and none have a right either to withhold or to grant them."

"The project of hereditary Governors and Legislatures was a treasonable usurpation over the rights of posterity."

"Put a country right, and it will soon put government right."

"When the rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example to the poor to plunder the rich of his property."

"Who are those that are frightened at reform? Are the public afraid their taxes should be lessened too much? Are they afraid that sinecure places and pensions should be abolished too fast? Are the poor afraid that their condition should be rendered too comfortable?"

"A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be."

"If to expose the fraud and imposition of monarchy, and every species of hereditary government--to lessen the oppression of taxes--to propose plans for the education of helpless infancy, and the comfortable support of the aged and distressed--to endeavour to conciliate nations with each other--to extirpate the horrid practice of war--to promote universal peace, civilization, and commerce--and to break the chains of political superst.i.tion, and raise degraded man to his proper rank--if these things be libellous, let me live the life of a Libeller, and let the name of Libeller be engraven on my tomb."

Two eminent personages were burnt in effigy in Europe about this time, one in France, the other in England: Paine and the Pope.

Under date of December 19th, the American minister (Morris) enters in his diary: "Several Americans dine with me. Paine looks a little down at the news from England; he has been burned in effigy."

This was the reply of the Addressers, the n.o.blemen and gentry, to Paine's "Letter." It is said that on the Fifth of November it was hinted to the boys that their Guy Fawkes would extort more pennies if labelled "Tom Paine," and that thenceforth the new Guy paraded with a pair of stays under his arm. The holocaust of Paines went on through December, being timed for the author's trial, set for the eighteenth. One gets glimpses in various local records and memoirs of the agitation in England. Thus in Mrs. Henry Sandford's account of Thomas Poole,* we read in Charlotte Poole's journal:

"December 18, 1792.--John dined with Tom Poole, and from him heard that there was a great bustle at Bridgwater yesterday--that Tom Paine was burnt in Effigy, and that he saw Richard Symes sitting on the Cornhill with a table before him, receiving the oaths of loyalty to the king, and affection to the present const.i.tution, from the populace. I fancy this could not have been a very pleasant sight to Tom Poole, for he has imbibed some of the wild notions of liberty and equality that at present prevail so much; and it is but within these two or three days that a report has been circulated that he has distributed seditious pamphlets to the common people of Stowey. But this report is entirely without foundation. Everybody at this time talks politicks, and is looking with anxiety for fresh intelligence from France, which is a scene of guilt and confusion."

* "Thomas Poole and his Friends." By Mrs. Henry Sandford.

New York: Macmillan, 1888.

In Richardson's "Borderer's Table Book" is recorded: "1792 (Dec.)--This month, Thomas Paine, author of the 'Rights of Man,' &c. &c., was burnt at most of the towns and considerable villages in Northumberland and Durham." No doubt, among the Durham towns, Wearmouth saw at the stake an effigy of the man whose iron bridge, taken down at Paddington, and sold for other benefit than Paine's, was used in spanning the Wear with the arch of his invention; all amid shouts of "G.o.d save the King," and plaudits for the various public-spirited gentlemen and architects, who patriotically appropriated the merits and patent of the inventor. The _Bury Post_ (published near Paine's birthplace) says, December 12th:

"The populace in different places have been lately amusing themselves by burning effigies. As the culprit on whom they meant to execute this punishment was Thomas Paine, they were not interrupted by any power civil or military. The ceremony has been at Croydon in Surrey, at Warrington, at Lymington, and at Plymouth."

January 9, 1793:

"On Sat.u.r.day last the effigy of Thomas Paine was carried round the town of Swaffham, and afterwards hung on a gibbet, erected on the market-hill for that purpose. In the evening his remains were committed to the flames amidst acclamations of G.o.d save the King, etc."

The trial of Paine for high treason was by a Special Jury in the Court of King's Bench, Guildhall, on Tuesday, December 18, 1792, before Lord Kenyon.*

* Special Jury: John Campbell, John Lightfoot, Christopher Taddy, Robert Oliphant, Cornelias Donovan, Robert Rolleston, John Lubbock, Richard Tuckwell, William Porter, Thomas Bruce, Isaac Railton, Henry Evans. Counsel for the Crown: Sir Archibald Macdonald (Attorney-General), Solicitor- General, Mr. Bearcroft, Mr. Baldwin, Mr. Wood, Mr. Per- cival. Counsel for the Defendant: The Hon. Thomas Erskine, Mr. Piggot, Mr. Shepherd, Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. F. Vaughan.

Solicitors: For the Crown, Messrs. Chamberlayne and White; for Defendant, Mr. Bonney.

The "Painites" had probably little hope of acquittal. In Rickman's journal (ma.n.u.script) he says: "C. Lofft told me he knew a gentleman who tried for five or six years to be on the special juries, but could not, being known to be a liberty man. He says special juries are packed to all intents and purposes." The reason for gathering such powerful counsel for defence must have been to obtain from the trial some definitive adjudication on the legal liabilities of writers and printers, and at the same time to secure, through the authority of Erskine, an affirmation of their const.i.tutional rights. Lord Loughborough and others vainly tried to dissuade Erskine from defending Paine. For himself, Paine had given up the case some time before, and had written from Paris, November 11th, to the Attorney-General, stating that, having been called to the Convention in France, he could not stay to contest the prosecution, as he wished.

"My necessary absence from your country affords the opportunity of knowing whether the prosecution was intended against Thomas Paine, or against the Rights of the People of England to investigate systems and principles of government; for as I cannot now be the object of the prosecution, the going on with the prosecution will show that something else was the object, and that something else can be no other than the People of England.... But I have other reasons than those I have mentioned for writing you this letter; and however you chuse to interpret them they proceed from a good heart. The time, Sir, is becoming too serious to play with Court prosecutions, and sport with national rights. The terrible examples that have taken place here upon men who, less than a year ago, thought themselves as secure as any prosecuting Judge, Jury, or Attorney-General can do now in England, ought to have some weight with men in your situation.

That the Government of England is as great, if not the greatest perfection of fraud and corruption that ever took place since governments began, is what you cannot be a stranger to; unless the constant habit of seeing it has blinded your sense. But though you may not chuse to see it, the people are seeing it very fast, and the progress is beyond what you may chuse to believe. Is it possible that you or I can believe, or that reason can make any other man believe, that the capacity of such a man as Mr. Guelph, or any of his profligate sons, is necessary to the government of a nation? I speak to you as one man ought to speak to another; and I know also that I speak what other people are beginning to think. That you cannot obtain a verdict (and if you do it will signify nothing) without _packing a Jury_, and we _both_ know that such tricks are practised, is what I have very good reason to believe.... Do not then, Sir, be the instrument of drawing away twelve men into a situation that may be injurious to them afterwards. I do not speak this from policy, but from benevolence; but if you chuse to go on with the process, I make it my request that you would read this letter in Court, after which the Judge and the Jury may do what they please. As I do not consider myself the object of the prosecution, neither can I be affected by the issue one way or the other, I shall, though a foreigner in your country, subscribe as much money as any other man towards supporting the right of the nation against the prosecution; and it is for this purpose only that I shall do it. As I have not time to copy letters, you will excuse the corrections."

A month after this awful letter was written, Paine no doubt knew its imprudence. It was sprung on the Court by the Attorney-General, and must alone have settled the verdict, had it not been foregone. Erskine, Paine's leading counsel, was Attorney-General for the Prince of Wales--foremost of "Mr. Guelph's profligate sons,"--and he was compelled to treat as a forgery the letter all felt to be genuine. He endeavored to prevent the reading of it, but Lord Kenyon decided that "in prosecutions for high treason, where overt acts are laid, you may prove overt acts not laid to prove those that are laid. If it [the letter]

goes to prove him the author of the book, I am bound to admit it."

Authors.h.i.+p of the book being admitted, this was only a pretext. The Attorney-General winced a good deal at the allusion to the profligate sons, and asked:

"Is he [Paine] to teach human creatures, whose moments of existence depend upon the permission of a Being, merciful, long-suffering, and of great goodness, that those whose youthful errors, from which even royalty is not exempted, are to be treasured up in a vindictive memory, and are to receive sentence of irremissible sin at His hands?"

It may be incidentally remarked here that the Attorney-General could hardly have failed to retort with charges against the author, had not Paine's reputation remained proof against the libellous "biography" by the government clerk, Chalmers.

The main part of the prosecution was thus uttered by Paine himself.

While reading the letter the prosecutor paused to say: "If I succeed in this prosecution he shall never return to this country otherwise than _in vinculis_, for I will outlaw him."*