THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE -- VOLUME I

Chapter XXIII.  The Deputy for Calais in the Convention.  [1792]

The prosecution of Paine in England had its counterpart in a shrine across the channel. The Moniteur, June 17, 1792, announces the burning of Paine's works at "Excester," and the expulsion from Manchester of a man pointed out as Paine. Since April 16th his "Rights of Man," sympathetically translated by M. Lanthenas, had been in every French home. Paine's portrait, just painted in England by Romney and engraved by Sharpe, was in every cottage, framed in immortelles. In this book the philosophy of visionary reformers took practical shape. From the ashes of Rousseau's "Contrat Social," burnt in Paris, rose "The Rights of Man," no phœnix, but an eagle of the new world, with eye not blinded by any royal sun. [1] It comes to tell how by union of France and America -- of Lafayette and Washington -- the "Contrat Social" was framed into the Constitution of a happy and glorious new earth, over it a new heaven unclouded by priestly power or superstitions. By that book of Paine's (Part I), the idea of a national convention was made the purpose of the French leaders who were really inspired by an "enthusiasm of humanity." In December, 1791, when the legislature sits paralyzed under royal vetoes, Paine's panacea is proposed. [2]

On the tenth of August, 1792, after the massacre of the Marseillese by the King's Swiss guards, one book, hurled from the window of the mobbed palace, felled an American spectator -- Robert Gilmor, of Baltimore -- who consoled himself by carrying it home. The book, now in the collection of Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, New York, was a copy of "The Thirteen Constitutions," translated by Franklin's order into French (1783) and distributed among the monarchs of Europe. [3] What a contrast between the peace and order amid which the thirteen peoples, when the old laws and authorities were abolished, formed new ones, and these scenes in France! "For upwards of two years from the commencement of the American war," wrote Paine, and a longer period, in several of the American States, there were no established forms of government. The old governments had been abolished, and the country was too much occupied in defence to employ its attention in establishing new governments; yet, during this interval, order and harmony were preserved as inviolate as in any country in Europe." When Burke pointed to the first riots in France, Paine could make a retort: the mob is what your cruel governments have made it, and only proves how necessary the overthrow of such governments. That French human nature was different from English nature he could not admit. Liberty and equality would soon end these troubles of transition. On that same tenth of August Paine's two great preliminaries are adopted the hereditary representative is superseded and a national convention is called. The machinery for such convention, the constituencies, the objects of it, had been read in "The Rights of Man," as illustrated in the United States and Pennsylvania, by every French statesman. [4] It was the American Republic they were about to found; and notwithstanding the misrepresentation of that nation by its surviving courtiers, these French republicans recognized their real American Minister: Paine is summoned.

On August 26, 1792, the National Assembly, on proposal of M. Guadet, in the name of the "Commission Extraordinaire," conferred the title of French citizen on "Priestley, Payne [Paine], Benthom, Wilberforce, Clarkson, Mackintosh, David Williams, Gorani, Anacharsis Clootz, Campe, Cormelle, Paw, N. Pestalozzi, Washington, Hamilton, Maddison [Madison], Klopstoc, Kosciusko, Gilleers." Schiller was afterwards added, and on September 25th the Patriote announces the same title conferred on Thomas Cooper, John Horne Tooke, John Oswald, George Boies, Thomas Christie, Dr. Joseph Warner, Englishmen, and Joel Barlow, American. [5]

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

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

"Your love for humanity, for liberty and equality, the useful works that have issued from your heart and pen in their defence, have determined our choice. It has been hailed with universal and reiterated applause. Come, friend of the people, to swell the number of patriots in an assembly which will decide the destiny of a great people, perhaps of the human race. The happy period you have predicted for the nations has arrived. Come! do not deceive their hope!"

But already Calais, which elected him September 6th, had sent a municipal officer, Achille Audibert, to London, to entreat Paine's acceptance. Paine was so eager to meet the English government in court, that he delayed his answer. But his friends had reason to fear that his martyrdom might be less mild than he anticipated, and urged his acceptance. There had been formed a society of the "Friends of Liberty," and, at its gathering of September 12th, Paine appears to have poured forth "inflammatory eloquence." At the house of his friend Johnson, on the following evening, Paine was reporting what he had said to some sympathizers, among them the mystical William Blake, who was convinced that the speech of the previous night would be followed by arrest. Gilchrist's account of what followed is here quoted:

"On Paine's rising to leave, Blake laid his hand on the orator's shoulder, saying, 'You must not go home, or you are a dead man,' and hurried him off on his way to France, whither he was now in any case bound to take his seat as a legislator. By the time Paine was at Dover, the officers were in his house, [he was staying at Rickman's, in Marylebone] and, some twenty minutes after the Custom House officials at Dover had turned over his slender baggage, narrowly escaped from the English Tories. Those were hanging days! Blake on the occasion showed greater sagacity than Paine, whom, indeed, Fuseli affirmed to be more ignorant of the common affairs of life than himself even. Spite of unworldliness and visionary faculty, Blake never wanted for prudence and sagacity in ordinary matters." [6]

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

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

"Among the letters which he took out of my trunk were two sealed letters, given into my charge by the American minister in London [Pinckney], one of which was addressed to the American minister at Paris, the other to a private gentleman; a letter from the president of the United States, and a letter from the secretary of State in America, both directed to me, and which I had received from the American minister, now in London, and were private letters of friendship; a letter from the electoral body, of the department of Calais, containing the notification of my being elected to the National Convention; and a letter from the president of the National Assembly informing me of my being also elected for the department of the Oise [Versailles]. . . . When the collector had taken what papers and letters he pleased out of the trunks, he proposed to read them. The first letter he took up for this purpose was that from the president of the United States to me. While he was doing this I said, that it was very extraordinary that General Washington could not write a letter of private friendship to me, without its being subject to be read by a customhouse officer. Upon this Mr. Frost laid his hand over the face of the letter, and told the collector that he should not read it, and took it from him. Mr. Frost then, casting his eyes on the concluding paragraph of the letter, said, I will read this part to you, which he did; of which the following is an exact transcript. -- 'And as no one can feel a greater interest in the happiness of mankind than I do, it is the first wish of my heart that the enlightened policy of the present age may diffuse to all men those blessings to which they are entitled and lay the foundation of happiness for future generations.' "

So Washington's nine months' delay in acknowledging Paine's letter and gift of fifty volumes had brought his letter in the nick of time. The collector quailed before the President's signature. He took away the documents, leaving a list of them, and they were presently returned. Soon afterward the packet sailed, and "twenty minutes later" the order for Paine's arrest reached Dover. Too late! Baffled pursuers gnash their teeth, and Paine passes to his ovation.

What the ovation was to be, he could hardly anticipate even from the cordial, or glowing, letter of Hérault Séchelles summoning him to the Convention, -- a fine translation of which by Cobbett is given in the Appendix. Ancient Calais, in its time, had received heroes from across the channel, but hitherto never with joy. That honor the centuries reserved for a Thetford Quaker. As the packet sails in a salute is fired from the battery; cheers sound along the shore. As the representative for Calais steps on French soil soldiers make his avenue, the officers embrace him, the national cockade is presented. A beautiful lady advances, requesting the honor of setting the cockade in his hat, and makes him a pretty speech, ending with Liberty, Equality, and France. As they move along the Rue de l'Égalité (late Rue du Roi) the air rings with "Vive Thomas Paine!" At the town hall he is presented to the Municipality, by each member embraced, by the Mayor also addressed. At the meeting of the Constitutional Society of Calais, in the Minimes, he sits beside the president, beneath the bust of Mirabeau and the united colors of France, England, and America. There is an official ceremony announcing his election, and plaudits of the crowd, "Vive la Nation!" "Vive Thomas Paine!" The Minimes proving too small, the meeting next day is held in the church, where martyred saints and miraculous Madonnas look down on this miraculous Quaker, turned savior of society. In the evening, at the theatre, a box is decorated "For the Author of 'The Rights of Man.' "

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

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

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

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

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

On September 25th appears Paine's letter to his "Fellow Citizens," expressing his "affectionate gratitude" for his adoption and his election. "My felicity is increased by seeing the barrier broken down that divided patriotism by spots of earth, and limited citizenship to the soil, like vegetation." The letter is fairly "floreal" with optimistic felicities. "An over-ruling Providence is regenerating the old world by the principles of the new." "It is impossible to conquer a nation determined to be free." "It is now the cause of all nations against the cause of all courts." "In entering on this great scene, greater than any nation has been called to act in, let us say to the agitated mind, be calm! Let us punish by instruction, rather than by revenge. Let us begin the new era by a greatness of friendship, and hail the approach of union and success."

October 11th, a committee to frame a constitution is appointed, consisting of Sieyès, Paine, Brissot, Pétion, Vergniaud, Gensonne, Barrère, Danton, Condorcet. Supplementary -- Barbaroux, Hérault Séchelles, Lanthenas, Débry, the Abbé Fauchet, Lavicourterie. Paine was placed second to his old adversary, Sieyès, only because of his unfamiliarity with French. At least four of the committee understood English -- Condorcet, Danton, Barrère, and Brissot. Paine had known Brissot in America, their friendship being caused by literary tastes in common, and the zeal of both for negro emancipation.

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

"We are astonished at reading that the Egyptians set upon the throne a stone, which they called king. Well! such a monarch was less absurd and less mischievous than those before whom nations prostrate themselves. At least he deceived no one. None supposed that he possessed qualities or a character. They did not call him Father of his People; and yet it would have been scarcely more ridiculous than to give such a title to a blockhead (un étourdi) whom the right of succession crowns at eighteen. A dumb idol is better than one animated." [7]

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

In those who sympathized with the human spirit of his views Paine inspired deep affection. A volume might be filled with the personal tributes to him. In Paris he was the centre of a loving circle, from the first. "I lodge," writes Lord Edward Fitzgerald to his mother (October 30th), "with my friend Paine -- we breakfast, dine, and sup together. The more I see of his interior, the more I like and respect him. I cannot express how kind he is to me; there is a simplicity of manner, a goodness of heart, and a strength of mind in him, that I never knew a man before possess." [8]

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

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

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

"THOMAS PAINE, Deputy, etc." [9]

The Moniteur, without printing the letter, says that applause followed the word "fantôme." The use of this word was a resumption of Paine's effort to save the life of the king, then a prisoner of state, by a suggestion of his insignificance. [10] But he very soon realizes the power of the phantom, which lies not only in the monarchical Trade Union of Europe but in the superstition of monarchy in those who presently beheaded poor Louis. Paine was always careful to call him Louis Capet, but the French deputies took the king seriously to the last. The king's divine foot was on their necks in the moment when their axe was on his. But Paine feared a more terrible form which had arisen in place of the royal prisoner of the Temple. On the fourth day of the Convention Marat arose with the words, "It seems a great many here are my enemies," and received the shouted answer, "All! all!" Paine had seen Marat hypnotize the Convention, and hold it subdued in the hollow of his hand. Here was King Stork ready to succeed King Log.

But what has the Convention to do with deciding about Louis XVI., or about affairs, foreign or domestic? It is there like the Philadelphia Convention of 1787; its business is to frame a Constitution, then dissolve, and let the organs it created determine special affairs. So the committee work hard on the Constitution; "Deputy Paine and France generally expect," finds Carlyle, "all finished in a few months." But, alas, the phantom is too strong for the political philosophers. The crowned heads of Europe are sinking their differences for a time and consulting about this imprisoned brother. And at the same time the subjects of those heads are looking eagerly towards the Convention. [11]

The foreign menaces had thus far caused the ferocities of the revolution, for France knew it was worm-eaten with enemies of republicanism. But now the Duke of Brunswick had retreated, the French arms were victorious everywhere; and it is just possible that the suicide of the Republic -- the Reign of Terror -- might never have been completed but for that discovery (November 10th) of secret papers walled up in the Tuileries. These papers compromised many, revealed foreign schemes, and made all Paris shriek "Treason!" The smith (Gamain) who revealed the locality of that invisible iron press which he had set under the wainscot, made a good deal of history that day. A cry for the king's life was raised, for to France he was the head and front of all conspiracy.

How everybody bent under the breath of those days may be seen in the fact that even Gouverneur Morris is found writing to Lord Wycombe (November 22d): "All who wish to partake thereof [freedom] will find in us (ye French) a sure and certain ally. We will chase tyranny, and, above all, aristocracy, off the theatre of the Universe." [12]

Paine was living in the "Passage des Pétites Pères, No. 7." There are now two narrow passages of that name, uniting near the church "Notre Dame des Victoires," which still bears the words, "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité." No. 7 has disappeared as a number, but it may have described a part of either No. 8 or No. 9, -- both ancient. Here he was close to a chapel of the Capucines, unless, indeed, it had already been replaced by this church, whose interior walls are covered with tablets set up by individuals in acknowledgment of the Virgin's miraculous benefits to them. Here he might study superstition, and no doubt did; but on November 10th he has to deal with the madness of a populace which has broken the outer chains of superstition with a superstition of their own, one without restraints to replace the chains. Beneath his window the Place des Victoires will be crowded with revolutionists, frantic under rumors of the discovered iron press and its treasonable papers. He could hardly look out without seeing some poor human scape-goat seeking the altar's safety. Our Lady will look on him from her church the sad-eyed inquiry: "Is this, then, the new religion of Liberty, with which you supplant the Mother and Babe?"

Paine has carried to success his anti-monarchical faith. He was the first to assail 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 Assembly. Sieyès had denounced him then as a "polyarchist." Now he sat with Sieyès daily, framing a republican Constitution, 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 pass 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. [13] 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 Constituent Assembly on a throne for which he was unfit, -- if we hereafter show him some compassion, this compassion should be the effect of national magnanimity, and not a result of the burlesque notion of pretended inviolability." [14]

Lamartine, in his history of the Girondists, reproaches Paine for these words concerning a king who had shown him friendship during the American war. But the facts were not well explored in Lamartine's time. Louis Blanc recognizes Paine's intent. [15] "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 imperiled king is shielded 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 Assembly, after he had left it, acknowledging his unfitness, and that compassion 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 document made an impression on the Convention, which ordered it to be printed. [16]

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.

_______________

Notes:

1.  L'Esprit du Contrat Social; suivi de l'Esprit de Sens Commun de Thomas Paine. Présenté a la Convention. Par le Citoyen Boinvilliers, Instituteur et ci-devant Membre de plusieurs Sociétés Littéraires. L'an second.

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

3.  "Constitutions des Treize États -- Unis de l'Amérique." The French king's arms are on the red morocco binding, and on the title a shield, striped and winged; above this thirteen minute stars shaped into one large star, six-pointed. For the particulars of Franklin's gift to the monarchs see Sparks' "Franklin," x., p, 39. See also p. 290 of this volume.

4.  "Théorie et Pratique des Droits de l'Homme. Par Thomas Paine, Sécrétaire du Congres au Département des Affaires Étrangeres pendant la guerre d'Amérique, auteur du 'Sens Commun,' et des Réponses à Burke. Traduit en Français par F. Lanthenas, D.M., et par le Traducteur du "Sens Commun." À Paris: Chez les Directeurs de l'Imprimerie du Cercle Social, rue du Théâtre Français, No. 4. 1792, L'an quatrième de La Liberté." ["Theory and Practice of the Rights of Man. By Thomas Paine, Secretary of the Congress to the Department of the Foreign Affairs during the war in America, author of his 'Common Sense,' and of the Answers to Burke. Translated in French by F. Lanthenas, D.M., the Translator of the "Common Sense." In Paris: By the Directors of Printing of the Social Circle, Rue du Théâtre Français, No. 4., 1792, the fourth year of The Liberty."]

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

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

7.  "Father of his People" was a title of Geo. III. "Father of his Country" was applied to Peyton Randolph, first president of Congress. Paine's essay, quoted above, which is not included in the editions of Paine's works, was printed by James Watson in London, 1843, the translation being by W. J. Linton, who, while editing the National, also wrote the same year, and for the same publisher, a small but useful "Life of Paine."

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

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

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

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

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

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

14.  This essay has suffered in the translation found in English and American editions of Paine. The words "national magnanimity" are omitted. The phrase "brigands couronnés" becomes "crowned robbers" in England, and (p.364) "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 Patriote Français three weeks before. In that he had traced royalty to the bandit-chief. "Several troops of banditti assemble 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 assumes the title 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 assumes his title. 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 assistance; 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."

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

16.  "Convention Nationale. Opinion de Thomas Payne, Deputé du Département de la Somme, concernant le jugement de Louis XVI. Précedé de sa lettre d'envoi au President de la Convention. Imprimé par ordre de la Convention Nationale. À Paris. De l'imprimerie Nationale." ["National Convention. Opinion of Thomas Paine, Deputy of the Department of the Somme, Concerning the Judgment of Louis XVI. Preceded by his Consigned Letter to the President of the Convention. Printed by Order of the National Convention. In Paris. By The National Printer."-- Digital Editor's Translation.] 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.

Go To Next Page