The Life Of Thomas Paine Volume II Part 27

{1806}

The opening year 1806 found Paine in New Roch.e.l.le. By insufficient nourishment in Carver's house his health was impaired. His means were getting low, insomuch that to support the Bonnevilles he had to sell the Bordentown house and property.*

* It was bought for $300 by his friend John Oliver, whose daughter, still residing in the house, told me that her father to the end of his life "thought everything of Paine."

John Oliver, in his old age, visited Colonel Ingersoll in order to testify against the aspersions on Paine's character and habits.

Elihu Palmer had gone off to Philadelphia for a time; he died there of yellow fever in 1806. The few intelligent people whom Paine knew were much occupied, and he was almost without congenial society. His hint to Jefferson of his impending poverty, and his reminder that Virginia had not yet given him the honorarium he and Madison approved, had brought no result. With all this, and the loss of early friends.h.i.+ps, and the theological hornet-nest he had found in New York, Paine began to feel that his return to America was a mistake.

The air-castle that had allured him to his beloved land had faded. His little room with the Bonnevilles in Paris, with its chaos of papers, was preferable; for there at least he could enjoy the society of educated persons, free from bigotry. He dwelt a stranger in his Land of Promise.

So he resolved to try and free himself from his depressing environment.

He would escape to Europe again. Jefferson had offered him a s.h.i.+p to return in, perhaps he would now help him to get back. So he writes (Jan.

30th) a letter to the President, pointing out the probabilities of a crisis in Europe which must result in either a descent on England by Bonaparte, or in a treaty. In the case that the people of England should be thus liberated from tyranny, he (Paine) desired to share with his friends there the task of framing a republic. Should there be, on the other hand, a treaty of peace, it would be of paramount interest to American s.h.i.+pping that such treaty should include that maritime compact, or safety of the seas for neutral s.h.i.+ps, of which Paine had written so much, and which Jefferson himself had caused to be printed in a pamphlet. Both of these were, therefore, Paine's subjects. "I think," he says, "you will find it proper, perhaps necessary, to send a person to France in the event of either a treaty or a descent, and I make you an offer of my services on that occasion to join Mr. Monroe.... As I think that the letters of a friend to a friend have some claim to an answer, it will be agreeable to me to receive an answer to this, but without any wish that you should commit yourself, neither can you be a judge of what is proper or necessary to be done till about the month of April or May."

This little dream must also vanish. Paine must face the fact that his career is ended.

It is probable that Elihu Palmer's visit to Philadelphia was connected with some theistic movement in that city. How it was met, and what annoyances Paine had to suffer, are partly intimated in the following letter, printed in the Philadelphia _Commercial Advertiser_, February 10, 1806.

"To John Inskeep, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia.

"I saw in the Aurora of January the 30th a piece addressed to you and signed Isaac Hall. It contains a statement of your malevolent conduct in refusing to let him have Vine-st. Wharf after he had bid fifty dollars more rent for it than another person had offered, and had been unanimously approved of by the Commissioners appointed by law for that purpose. Among the reasons given by you for this refusal, one was, that '_Mr Hall was one of Paine's disciples_.' If those whom you may chuse to call my disciples follow my example in doing good to mankind, they will pa.s.s the confines of this world with a happy mind, while the hope of the hypocrite shall perish and delusion sink into despair.

"I do not know who Mr. Inskeep is, for I do not remember the name of Inskeep at Philadelphia in '_the time that tried men's souls._* He must be some mushroom of modern growth that has started up on the soil which the generous services of Thomas Paine contributed to bless with freedom; neither do I know what profession of religion he is of, nor do I care, for if he is a man malevolent and unjust, it signifies not to what cla.s.s or sectary he may hypocritically belong.

"As I set too much value on my time to waste it on a man of so little consequence as yourself, I will close this short address with a declaration that puts hypocrisy and malevolence to defiance. Here it is: My motive and object in all my political works, beginning with Common Sense, the first work I ever published, have been to rescue man from tyranny and false systems and false principles of government, and enable him to be free, and establish government for himself; and I have borne my share of danger in Europe and in America in every attempt I have made for this purpose. And my motive and object in all my publications on religious subjects, beginning with the first part of the Age of Reason, have been to bring man to a right reason that G.o.d has given him; to impress on him the great principles of divine morality, justice, mercy, and a benevolent disposition to all men and to all creatures; and to excite in him a spirit of trust, confidence and consolation in his creator, unshackled by the fable and fiction of books, by whatever invented name they may be called. I am happy in the continual contemplation of what I have done, and I thank G.o.d that he gave me talents for the purpose and fort.i.tude to do it It will make the continual consolation of my departing hours, whenever they finally arrive.

"Thomas Paine."

"'_These are the times that try men's souls_.' Crisis No. 1, written while on the retreat with the army from fort Lee to the Delaware and published in Philadelphia in the dark days of 1776 December the 19th, six days before the taking of the Hessians at Trenton."

But the year 1806 had a heavier blow yet to inflict on Paine, and it naturally came, though in a roundabout way, from his old enemy Gouverneur Morris. While at New Roch.e.l.le, Paine offered his vote at the election, and it was refused, on the ground that he was not an American citizen! The supervisor declared that the former American Minister, Gouverneur Morris, had refused to reclaim him from a French prison because he was not an American, and that Was.h.i.+ngton had also refused to reclaim him. Gouverneur Morris had just lost his seat in Congress, and was politically defunct, but his ghost thus rose on poor Paine's pathway. The supervisor who disfranchised the author of "Common Sense"

had been a "Tory" in the Revolution; the man he disfranchised was one to whom the President of the United States had written, five years before: "I am in hopes you will find us returned generally to sentiments worthy of former times. In these it will be your glory to have steadily labored, and with as much effect as any man living." There was not any question of Paine's qualification as a voter on other grounds than the supervisor (Elisha Ward) raised. More must presently be said concerning this incident. Paine announced his intention of suing the inspectors, but meanwhile he had to leave the polls in humiliation. It was the fate of this founder of republics to be a monument of their ingrat.i.tude. And now Paine's health began to fail. An intimation of this appears in a letter to Andrew A. Dean, to whom his farm at New Roch.e.l.le was let, dated from New York, August, 1806. It is in reply to a letter from Dean on a ma.n.u.script which Paine had lent him.*

* "I have read," says Dean, "with good attention your ma.n.u.script on dreams, and Examination of the Prophecies in the Bible. I am now searching the old prophecies, and comparing the same to those said to be quoted in the New Testament. I confess the comparison is a matter worthy of our serious attention; I know not the result till I finish; then, if you be living, I shall communicate the same to you. I hope to be with you soon." Paine was now living with Jarvis, the artist. One evening he fell as if by apoplexy, and, as he lay, his first word was (to Jarvis): "My corporeal functions have ceased; my intellect is clear; this is a proof of immortality."

"Respected Friend: I received your friendly letter, for which I am obliged to you. It is three weeks ago to day (Sunday, Aug. 15,) that I was struck with a fit of an apoplexy, that deprived me of all sense and motion. I had neither pulse nor breathing, and the people about me supposed me dead. I had felt exceedingly well that day, and had just taken a slice of bread and b.u.t.ter for supper, and was going to bed. The fit took me on the stairs, as suddenly as if I had been shot through the head; and I got so very much hurt by the fall, that I have not been able to get in and out of bed since that day, otherwise than being lifted out in a blanket, by two persons; yet all this while my mental faculties have remained as perfect as I ever enjoyed them. I consider the scene I have pa.s.sed through as an experiment on dying, and I find death has no terrors for me. As to the people called Christians, they have no evidence that their religion is true. There is no more proof that the Bible is the word of G.o.d, than that the Koran of Mahomet is the word of G.o.d. It is education makes all the difference. Man, before he begins to think for himself, is as much the child of habit in Creeds as he is in ploughing and sowing. Yet creeds, like opinions, prove nothing. Where is the evidence that the person called Jesus Christ is the begotten Son of G.o.d? The case admits not of evidence either to our senses or our mental faculties: neither has G.o.d given to man any talent by which such a thing is comprehensible. It cannot therefore be an object for faith to act upon, for faith is nothing more than an a.s.sent the mind gives to something it sees cause to believe is fact. But priests, preachers, and fanatics, put imagination in the place of faith, and it is the nature of the imagination to believe without evidence. If Joseph the carpenter dreamed (as the book of Matthew, chapter 1st, says he did,) that his betrothed wife, Mary, was with child by the Holy Ghost, and that an angel told him so, I am not obliged to put faith in his dream; nor do I put any, for I put no faith in my own dreams, and I should be weak and foolish indeed to put faith in the dreams of others.--The Christian religion is derogatory to the Creator in all its articles. It puts the Creator in an inferior point of view, and places the Christian Devil above him. It is he, according to the absurd story in Genesis, that outwits the Creator, in the garden of Eden, and steals from him his favorite creature, man; and, at last, obliges him to beget a son, and put that son to death, to get man back again. And this the priests of the Christian religion, call redemption.

"Christian authors exclaim against the practice of offering human sacrifices, which, they say, is done in some countries; and those authors make those exclamations without ever reflecting that their own doctrine of salvation is founded on a human sacrifice. They are saved, they say, by the blood of Christ. The Christian religion begins with a dream and ends with a murder.

"As I am well enough to sit up some hours in the day, though not well enough to get up without help, I employ myself as I have always done, in endeavoring to bring man to the right use of the reason that G.o.d has given him, and to direct his mind immediately to his Creator, and not to fanciful secondary beings called mediators, as if G.o.d was superannuated or ferocious.

"As to the book called the Bible, it is blasphemy to call it the word of G.o.d. It is a book of lies and contradictions, and a history of bad times and bad men. There are but a few good characters in the whole book. The fable of Christ and his twelve apostles, which is a parody on the sun and the twelve signs of the Zodiac, copied from the ancient religions of the eastern world, is the least hurtful part. Every thing told of Christ has reference to the sun. His reported resurrection is at sunrise, and that on the first day of the week; that is, on the day anciently dedicated to the sun, and from thence called Sunday; in latin Dies Solis, the day of the sun; as the next day, Monday, is Moon day. But there is no room in a letter to explain these things. While man keeps to the belief of one G.o.d, his reason unites with his creed. He is not shocked with contradictions and horrid stories. His bible is the heavens and the earth. He beholds his Creator in all his works, and every thing he beholds inspires him with reverence and grat.i.tude. From the goodness of G.o.d to all, he learns his duty to his fellow-man, and stands self-reproved when he transgresses it. Such a man is no persecutor. But when he multiplies his creed with imaginary things, of which he can have neither evidence nor conception, such as the tale of the garden of Eden, the talking serpent, the fall of man, the dreams of Joseph the carpenter, the pretended resurrection and ascension, of which there is even no historical relation, for no historian of those times mentions such a thing, he gets into the pathless region of confusion, and turns either frantic or hypocrite. He forces his mind, and pretends to believe what he does not believe. This is in general the case with the Methodists. Their religion is all creed and no morals.

"I have now my friend given you a fac-simile of my mind on the subject of religion and creeds, and my wish is, that you may make this letter as publicly known as you find opportunities of doing. Yours in friends.h.i.+p."

{1807}

The "Essay on Dream" was written early in 1806 and printed in May, 1807. It was the last work of importance written by Paine. In the same pamphlet was included a part of his reply to the Bishop of Llandaff, which was written in France: "An Examination of the Pa.s.sages in the New Testament, quoted from the Old, and called Prophecies of the Coming of Jesus Christ" The Examination is widely known and is among Paine's characteristic works,--a continuation of the "Age of Reason." The "Essay on Dream" is a fine specimen of the author's literary art. Dream is the imagination awake while the judgment is asleep. "Every person is mad once in twenty-four hours; for were he to act in the day as he dreams in the night, he would be confined for a lunatic." Nathaniel Hawthorne thought spiritualism "a sort of dreaming awake." Paine explained in the same way some of the stories on which popular religion is founded. The incarnation itself rests on what an angel told Joseph in a dream, and others are referred to. "This story of dreams has thrown Europe into a dream for more than a thousand years. All the efforts that nature, reason, and conscience have made to awaken man from it have been ascribed by priestcraft and superst.i.tion to the workings of the devil, and had it not been for the American revolution, which by establis.h.i.+ng the universal right of conscience, first opened the way to free discussion, and for the French revolution which followed, this religion of dreams had continued to be preached, and that after it had ceased to be believed."

But Paine was to be reminded that the revolution had not made conscience free enough in America to challenge waking dreams without penalties. The following account of his disfranchis.e.m.e.nt at New Roch.e.l.le, was written from Broome St., New York, May 4, 1807, to Vice-President Clinton.

"Respected Friend,--Elisha Ward and three or four other Tories who lived within the british lines in the revolutionary war, got in to be inspectors of the election last year at New Roch.e.l.le. Ward was supervisor. These men refused my vote at the election, saying to me: 'You are not an American; our minister at Paris, Gouverneur Morris, would not reclaim you when you were emprisoned in the Luxembourg prison at Paris, and General Was.h.i.+ngton refused to do it.' Upon my telling him that the two cases he stated were falsehoods, and that if he did me injustice I would prosecute him, he got up, and calling for a constable, said to me, 'I will commit you to prison.' He chose, however, to sit down and go no farther with it.

"I have written to Mr. Madison for an attested copy of Mr. Monro's letter to the then Secretary of State Randolph, in which Mr. Monro gives the government an account of his reclaiming me and my liberation in consequence of it; and also for an attested copy of Mr. Randolph's answer, in which he says: 'The President approves what you have done in the case of Mr. Paine.' The matter I believe is, that, as I had not been guillotined, Was.h.i.+ngton thought best to say what he did. As to Gouverneur Morris, the case is that he did reclaim me; but his reclamation did me no good, and the probability is, he did not intend it should. Joel Barlow and other Americans in Paris had been in a body to reclaim me, but their application, being unofficial, was not regarded.

I then applied to Morris. I shall subpoena Morris, and if I get attested copies from the Secretary of State's office it will prove the lie on the inspectors.

"As it is a new generation that has risen up since the declaration of independence, they know nothing of what the political state of the country was at the time the pamphlet 'Common Sense' appeared; and besides this there are but few of the old standers left, and none that I know of in this city.

"It may be proper at the trial to bring the mind of the court and the jury back to the times I am speaking of, and if you see no objection in your way, I wish you would write a letter to some person, stating, from your own knowledge, what the condition of those times were, and the effect which the work 'Common Sense,' and the several members (numbers) of the 'Crisis' had upon the country. It would, I think, be best that the letter should begin directly on the subject in this manner: Being informed that Thomas Paine has been denied his rights of citizens.h.i.+p by certain persons acting as inspectors at an election at New Roch.e.l.le, &c.

"I have put the prosecution into the hands of Mr. Riker, district attorney, who can make use of the letter in his address to the Court and Jury. Your handwriting can be sworn to by persons here, if necessary.

Had you been on the spot I should have subpoenaed you, unless it had been too inconvenient to you to have attended. Yours in friends.h.i.+p."

To this Clinton replied from Was.h.i.+ngton, 12th May, 1807:

"Dear Sir,--I had the pleasure to receive your letter of the 4th instant, yesterday; agreeably to your request I have this day written a letter to Richard Riker, Esquire, which he will show you. I doubt much, however, whether the Court will admit it to be read as evidence.

"I am indebted to you for a former letter. I can make no other apology for not acknowledging it before than inability to give you such an answer as I could wish. I constantly keep the subject in mind, and should any favorable change take place in the sentiments of the Legislature, I will apprize you of it.

"I am, with great esteem, your sincere friend."

In the letter to Madison, Paine tells the same story. At the end he says that Morris' reclamation was not out of any good will to him. "I know not what he wrote to the french minister; whatever it was he concealed it from me." He also says Morris could hardly keep himself out of prison.*

* The letter is in Mr. Frederick McGuire's collection of Madison papers.

A letter was also written to Joel Barlow, at Was.h.i.+ngton, dated Broome Street, New York, May 4th. He says in this:

"I have prosecuted the Board of Inspectors for disfranchising me. You and other Americans in Paris went in a body to the Convention to reclaim me, and I want a certificate from you, properly attested, of this fact.

If you consult with Gov. Clinton he will in friends.h.i.+p inform you who to address it to.

"Having now done with business I come to meums and tuums. What are you about? You sometimes hear of me but I never hear of you. It seems as if I had got to be master of the feds and the priests. The former do not attack my political publications; they rather try to keep them out of sight by silence. And as to the priests, they act as if they would say, let us alone and we will let you alone. My Examination of the pa.s.sages called prophecies is printed, and will be published next week. I have prepared it with the Essay on Dream. I do not believe that the priests will attack it, for it is not a book of opinions but of facts. Had the Christian Religion done any good in the world I would not have exposed it, however fabulous I might believe it to be. But the delusive idea of having a friend at court whom they call a redeemer, who pays all their scores, is an encouragement to wickedness.

"What is Fulton about? Is he taming a whale to draw his submarine boat? I wish you would desire Mr. Smith to send me his country National Intelligencer. It is printed twice a week without advertis.e.m.e.nt. I am somewhat at a loss for want of authentic intelligence. Yours in friends.h.i.+p."

It will be seen that Paine was still in ignorance of the conspiracy which had thrown him in prison, nor did he suspect that Was.h.i.+ngton had been deceived by Gouverneur Morris, and that his private letter to Was.h.i.+ngton might have been given over to Pickering.*

* In Chapter X. of this volume, as originally printed, there were certain pa.s.sages erroneously suggesting that Pickering might have even intercepted this important letter of September 20, 1795. I had not then observed a reference to that letter by Madison, in writing to Monroe (April 7, 1796), which proves that Paine's communication to Was.h.i.+ngton had been read by Pickering. Monroe was anxious lest some attack on the President should be written by Paine while under his roof,--an impropriety avoided by Paine as we have seen,--and had written to Madison on the subject. Madison answers: "I have given the explanation you desired to F. A.

M[uhlenberg], who has not received any letter as yet, and has promised to pay due regard to your request. It is proper you should know that Thomas Paine wrote some time ago a severe letter to the President which Pickering mentioned to me in harsh terms when I delivered a note from Thomas Paine to the Secretary of State, inclosed by T. P. in a letter to me. Nothing pa.s.sed, however, that betrayed the least a.s.sociation of your patronage or attention to Thomas Paine with the circ.u.mstance; nor am I apprehensive that any real suspicion can exist of your countenancing or even knowing the steps taken by T. P. under the influence of his personal feelings or political principles. At the same time the caution you observe is by no means to be disapproved. Be so good as to let T. P. know that I have received his letter and handed his note to the Secretary of State, which requested copies of such letters as might have been written hence in his behalf. The note did not require any answer either to me or through me, and I have heard nothing of it since I handed it to Pickering." At this time the Secretary of State's office contained the President's official recognition of Paine's citizens.h.i.+p; but this application for the papers relating to his imprisonment by a foreign power received no reply, though it was evidently couched in respectful terms; as the letter was open for the eye of Madison, who would not have conveyed it otherwise. It is incredible that Was.h.i.+ngton could have sanctioned such an outrage on one he had recognized as an American citizen, unless under pressure of misrepresentations. Possibly Paine's Quaker and republican direction of his letter to "George Was.h.i.+ngton, President of the United States," was interpreted by his federalist ministers as an insult.

It will be seen, by Madame Bonneville's and Jarvis' statements elsewhere, that Paine lost his case against Elisha Ward, on what ground it is difficult to imagine. The records of the Supreme Court, at Albany, and the Clerk's office at White Plains, have been vainly searched for any trace of this trial. Mr. John H. Riker, son of Paine's counsel, has examined the remaining papers of Richard Riker (many were accidentally destroyed) without finding anything related to the matter. It is so terrible to think that with Jefferson, Clinton, and Madison at the head of the government, and the facts so clear, the federalist Elisha Ward could vindicate his insult to Thomas Paine, that it may be hoped the publication of these facts will bring others to light that may put a better face on the matter.*

* Gilbert Vale relates an anecdote which suggests that a reaction may have occurred in Elisha Ward's family: "At the time of Mr. Paine's residence at his farm, Mr. Ward, now a coffee-roaster in Gold Street, New York, and an a.s.sistant alderman, was then a little boy and residing at New Roch.e.l.le. He remembers the impressions his mother and some religious people made on him by speaking of Tom Paine, so that he concluded that Tom Paine must be a very bad and brutal man. Some of his elder companions proposed going into Mr. Paine's orchard to obtain some fruit, and he, out of fear, kept at a distance behind, till he beheld, with surprise, Mr. Paine come out and a.s.sist the boys in getting apples, patting one on the head and caressing another, and directing them where to get the best. He then advanced and received his share of encouragement, and the impression this kindness made on him determined him at a very early period to examine his writings. His mother at first took the books from him, but at a later period restored them to him, observing that he was then of an age to judge for himself; perhaps she had herself been gradually undeceived, both as to his character and writings."

Madame Bonneville may have misunderstood the procedure for which she had to pay costs, as Paine's legatee. Whether an ultimate decision was reached or not, the sufficiently shameful fact remains that Thomas Paine was practically disfranchised in the country to which he had rendered services p.r.o.nounced pre-eminent by Congress, by Was.h.i.+ngton, and by every soldier and statesman of the Revolution.