Chapter XLII: Last Words (2)

The societies, checked for a moment by the blow struck at them, soon renewed their exertions. The sale of the "Rights of Man" became more extended than ever. Paine said that the proclamation served hint for an advertisement. The Manchester and Sheffield branches of the Constitutional Society voted unanimously addresses of thanks to him for his essay, "a work of the highest importance to every nation under heaven." The newspapers were full of speeches, votes, resolutions, on the same subject. Every mail was laden with congratulations to the Jacobins on the coming time,--

"When France shall reign, and laws be all
repealed."

To the Radicals, the Genius of Liberty seemed to be hovering over England; and Thomas Paine was the harbinger to prepare his way.

Differences of opinion, when frequently expressed in hard words, commonly lead to hard blows; and the conservative classes of England were not men to hold their hands when they thought the proper time had come to strike. But the party which looked up to Paine as its apostle was not as numerous as it appeared to be from the noise it made. There is never a sufficiently large number of reckless zealots in England to do much mischief,--one of the greatest proofs of the inherent good sense of that people. Dr. Gall's saying, "_Tout ce qui est ultrà est bête_," is worth his whole phrenological system. Measures and doctrines had now been pushed so far that a numerous and influential body of liberals called a halt,--the prelude of a union with the government forces.

Luckily for Paine, his French admirers stepped in at this critical moment to save him. Mons. Audibert, a municipal officer from Calais, came to announce to him that he was elected to the National Convention for that department. He immediately proceeded to Dover with his French friend. In Dover, the collector of the customs searched their pockets as well as their portmanteaus, in spite of many angry protestations. Finally their papers were returned to them, and they were allowed to embark. Paine was just in time; an order to detain him arrived about twenty minutes after his embarkation.

The trial came on before Lord Kenyon. Erskine appeared for the absent defendant. The Attorney-General used, as his brief, a foolish letter he had received from Paine at Calais, read it to the jury, made a few remarks, and rested his case. The jury found Paine guilty without leaving their seats. Sentence of outlawry was passed upon him. Safe in France, he treated the matter as a capital joke. Some years later he found that it had a disagreeable meaning in it.

The prophet had been translated to another sphere of revolutionary unrest. His influence gradually died away. He dwindled into a mere name. "But the fact remains," to use his own words, "and will hereafter be placed in the history of extraordinary things, that a pamphlet should be produced by an individual, unconnected with any sect or party, and almost a stranger in the land, that should completely frighten a whole government, and that in the midst of its triumphant security."

Paine might have published his "principles" his life long without troubling many subjects of King George, had it not been for their combination with "practice" in France,--whither let us now follow him.

When he landed at Calais, the guard turned out and presented arms; a grand salute was fired; the officer in command embraced him and presented him with the national cockade; a good-looking _citoyenne_ asked leave to pin it on his hat, expressing the hope of her compatriots that he would continue his exertions in favor of liberty. Enthusiastic acclamations followed,--a grand chorus of _Vive Thomas Paine!_ The crowd escorted him to Dessein's hotel,[1] in the Rue de l'Égalité, formerly Rue du Roi, and shouted under his windows. At the proper time he was conducted to the Town Hall. The municipality were assembled to bestow the _accolade fraternelle_ upon their representative. M. le Maire made a speech, which Audibert, who still had Paine in charge, translated. Paine laid his hand on his heart, bowed, and assured the municipality that his life should be devoted to their service. In the evening, the club held a meeting in the Salle des Minimes. The hall was jammed. Paine was seated beside the President, under a bust of Mirabeau, surmounted by the flags of France, England, and the United States. More addresses, compliments, protestations, and frantic cries of _Vive Thomas Paine!_ The _séance_ was adjourned to the church, to give those who could not obtain admission into the Club Hall an opportunity to look at their famous representative. The next evening Paine went to the theatre. The state-box had been prepared for him. The house rose and _vivaed_ as he entered.

[Footnote 1: See Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_.]

When Calais had shouted itself hoarse, Paine travelled towards Paris. The towns he traversed on the road thither received him with similar honors. From the capital he addressed a letter of thanks to his fellow-citizens. Although he sat for Calais in the Convention, he had been chosen by three other departments. Priestley was a candidate for Paris, but was beaten by Marat, a doctor of another description. He was, however, duly elected in the department L'Orne, but never took his seat. Paine and Baron Clootz were the only foreigners in the Convention. Another stranger, of political celebrity out of doors, styled himself American as well as Paine,--_Fournier l'Américain_, a mulatto from the West Indies, whose complexion was not considered "incompatible with freedom" in France,--a violent and blood-thirsty fellow, who shot at Lafayette on the _dix-sept Juillet_, narrowly missing him,--led an attacking party against the Tuileries on the _dix Août_, and escaped the guillotine to be transported by Bonaparte.

In Paris, Paine was already a personage well known to all the leading men,--a great republican luminary, "foreign benefactor of the species," who had commenced the revolution in America, was making one in England, and was willing to help make one in France. His English works, translated by Lanthenas, a friend of Robespierre and co-editor with Brissot of the "Patriote Français," had earned for him the dignity of _citoyen Français_,--an honor which he shared with Mackintosh, Dr. Price, the Priestleys, father and son, and David Williams. He had furnished Lafayette with a good deal of his revolutionary rhetoric, had contributed to the Monthly Review of the Girondists and the "Chronique de Paris," and had written a series of articles in defence of representative government, which Condorcet had translated for him. Paine was a man of one idea in politics; a federal republic, on the American plan, was the only system of government he believed in, and the only one he wished to see established in France. Lafayette belonged to this school. So did Condorcet, Pétion, Buzot, and others of less note. Under Paine's direction they formed a republican club, which met at Condorcet's house. This federal theory cost them dear. In 1793, it was treason against the _une et indivisible_, and was punished accordingly.

After the flight to Varennes, Paine openly declared that the King was "a political superfluity." This was true enough. The people had lost all respect for the man and for the office. None so base as to call him King. He was only the _pouvoir exécutif_, or more commonly still, _Monsieur Veto_. Achille Duchâtelet, a young officer who had served in America, called upon Dumont to get him to translate a proclamation drawn up by Paine, urging the people to seize the opportunity and establish a republic. It was intended to be a "Common Sense" for France. Dumont refusing to have anything to do with it, some other translator was found. It appeared on the walls of the capital with Duchâtelet's name affixed. The placard was torn down by order of the Assembly and attracted little attention. The French were not quite ready for the republic, although gradually approaching it. They seemed to take a pleasure in playing awhile with royalty before exterminating it.

The Abbé Sièyes was a warm monarchist. He wrote in the "Moniteur," that he could prove, "on every hypothesis," that men were more free in a monarchy than in a republic. Paine gave notice in Brissot's paper, that he would demolish the Abbé utterly in fifty pages, and show the world that a constitutional monarchy was a nullity,--concluding with the usual flourish about "weeping for the miseries of humanity," "hell of despotism," etc., etc., the fashionable doxology of patriotic authors in that day. Sièyes announced his readiness to meet the great Paine in conflict. This passage of pens was interrupted by the publication of Part Second of the "Rights of Man." Before Paine returned to Paris, the mob had settled the question for the time, so far as the French nation were concerned.

Paine had also taken a leading part in some of the politico-theatrical entertainments then so frequent in the streets of Paris. At the festival of the Federation, in July, 1790, when Clootz led a "deputation" of the _genre humain_, consisting of an English editor and some colored persons in fancy dresses, Paine and Paul Jones headed the American branch of humanity and carried the stars and stripes. Not long after, Fame appears again marshalling a deputation of English and Americans, who waited upon the Jacobin Club to fraternize. Suitable preparations had been made by the club for this solemn occasion. The three national flags, united, were placed in the hall over the busts of Dr. Franklin and Dr. Price. Robespierre himself received the generous strangers; but most of the talking seems to have been done by a fervid _citoyenne_, who took _la parole_ and kept it. "Let a cry of joy rush through all Europe and fly to America," said she. "But hark! Philadelphia and all its countries repeat, like us, _Vive la Liberté!_" To see a man of Paine's clear sense and simple tastes pleased by such flummery as this shows us how difficult it is not to be affected by the spirit of the generation we live with. How could he have supposed that the new heaven upon earth of his dreams would ever be constructed out of such pinchbeck materials?

It was now the year 1. of the Republic. The _dix Août_ was over, the King a prisoner in the Temple. Lafayette, in his attempt to imitate his "master," Washington, had succeeded no better than the magician's apprentice, who knew how to raise the demon, but not how to manage him when he appeared. He had gone down before the revolution, and was now _le traître Lafayette_, a refugee in Austria. Dumouriez commanded on the north-eastern frontier in his place. France was still shuddering at the recollection of the prison-massacres of the _Septembriseurs_, and society, to use the phrase of a modern French revolutionist, was _en procès de liquidation_.

Paine got on very well, at first. The Convention was impressed with the necessity of looking up first principles, and Paine was emphatically the man of principles. A universal republic was the hope of the majority, with a convention sitting at the centre of the civilized world, watching untiringly over the rights of man and the peace of the human race. Meantime, they elected a committee to make a new constitution for France. Paine was, of course, selected. His colleagues were Sièyes, Condorcet, Gensonné, Vergniaud, Pétion, Brissot, Barère, and Danton. Of these nine, Paine and Sièyes alone survived the Reign of Terror. When, in due time, this constitution was ready to be submitted to the Convention, no one could be found to listen to the reading of the report. The revolution had outstripped the committee. Their labors proved as useless as the Treatise on Education composed by Mr. Shandy for the use of his son Tristram;--when it was finished, the child had outgrown every chapter.

Thenceforward, we catch only occasional glimpses of Paine. In the days of his glory, he lived in the fashionable Rue de Richelieu, holding levees twice a week, to receive a public eager to gaze upon so great a man. His name appears at the _fête civique_ held by English and Irish republicans at White's Hotel. There he sat beside Santerre, the famous brewer, and proposed, as a sentiment, "The approaching National Convention of Great Britain and Ireland." At this dinner, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, then an officer in the British service, gave, "May the 'Ça ira,' the 'Carmagnole,' and the 'Marseillaise' be the music of every army, and soldier and citizen join in the chorus,"--a toast which cost him his commission, perhaps his life. We read, too, that Paine was struck in a _café_ by some loyal, hot-headed English captain, who took that means of showing his dislike for the author of the "Rights of Man." The police sternly seized the foolish son of Albion. A blow inflicted upon the sacred person of a member of the Convention was clearly sacrilege, punishable, perhaps, with death. But Paine interfered, procured passports, and sent the penitent soldier safely out of the country.

Speaking no French, for he never succeeded in learning the language, Paine's part in the public sittings of the Convention must have been generally limited to eloquent silence or expressive dumbshow. But when the trial of the King came on, he took a bold and dangerous share in the proceedings, which destroyed what little popularity the ruin of his federal schemes had left him, and came near costing him his head. He was already so great a laggard behind the revolutionary march, that he did not suspect the determination of the Mountain to put the King to death. Louis was guilty, no doubt, Paine thought,--but not of any great crime. Banishment for life, or until the new government be consolidated,--say to the United States, where he will have the inestimable privilege of seeing the working of free institutions;--once thoroughly convinced of his royal errors, morally, as well as physically uncrowned, he might safely be allowed to return to France as plain Citizen Capet: that should be his sentence. But the extreme left of the Convention and the constituent rabble of the galleries wanted to break with the past, and to throw a king's head into the arena as wager of battle to the despots of Europe. The discovery of the iron safe in the palace offered, it was thought, sufficient show of evidence for the prosecution; if not, they were ready to dispense with any. The case was prejudged; the trial, a cruel and an empty form. There were two righteous men in that political Gomorrah,--Tronchet and the venerable Malesherbes. They offered their services to defend the unfortunate victim. Who can read Malesherbes's noble letter to the President of the Convention, without thinking the better of French nature forever after?

A fierce preliminary discussion arose the Convention on the constitutional question of the King's inviolability. Paine had no patience with the privileges of kingship and voted against inviolability. He requested that a speech he had prepared on the subject might be read to the House at once, as he wished to send off a copy to London for the English papers. This wretched composition was manifestly written for England. Paine had George III. in his mind, rather than Louis XVI. Here is a specimen of the style of it,--interesting, as showing the temper of the time, as well as of Member Thomas Paine:--"Louis, as an individual, is an object beneath the notice of the Republic. But he ought to be tried, because a conspiracy has been formed against the liberty of all nations by the crowned ruffians of Europe. Louis XVI. is believed to be the partner of that horde, and is the only man of them you have in your power. It is indispensable to discover who the gang is composed of, and this may be done by his trial. It may also bring to light the detestable conduct of Mr. Guelph, Elector of Hanover, and be doing justice to England to make them aware of it. It is the interest of France to be surrounded by republics, and that revolutions be universal. If Louis XVI. can serve to prove, by the flagitiousness of government in general, the necessity of revolutions, France ought not to let slip so precious an opportunity. Seeing no longer in Louis XVI. but a weakminded and narrow-spirited individual, ill-bred, like all his colleagues, given, as it is said, to frequent excesses of drunkenness, and whom the National Assembly raised again imprudently to a throne which was not made for him,--if we show him hereafter some pity, it shall not be the result of the burlesque idea of a pretended inviolability."

A secretary read this speech from the tribune,--Paine standing near him, silent, furnishing perhaps an occasional gesture to mark the emphasis. The Convention applauded warmly, and ordered it to be printed and circulated in the departments.

When the King was found guilty, and it came to the final vote, whether he should be imprisoned, banished, or beheaded, the Girondins, who had spoken warmly against the death-penalty, voted for it, overawed by the stormy abuse of the galleries. Paine, coarse and insolent, but not cowardly or cruel, did not hesitate to vote for banishment. He requested the member from the Pas de Calais to read from the tribune his appeal in favor of the King. Drunau attempted to do it, but was hooted down. Paine persisted,--presented his speech again the next day. Marat objected to its reception, because Paine was a Quaker, and opposed to capital punishment on principle; but the Convention at last consented to the reading. After alluding to the all-important assistance furnished by Louis XVI. to the insurgent American Colonies, Paine, as a citizen of both countries, proposed sending him to the United States. "To kill Louis," wrote Paine, "is not only inhuman, but a folly. It will increase the number of your enemies. France has but one ally,--the United States of America,--and the execution of the King would spread an universal affliction in that country. If I could speak your language like a Frenchman, I would descend a suppliant to your bar, and in the name of all my brothers in America present to you a petition and prayer to suspend the execution of Louis." The Mountain and the galleries roared with rage. Thuriot exclaimed,--"That is not the true language of Thomas Paine."

"I denounce the translator," shrieked venomous Marat; "these are not the opinions of Thomas Paine; it is a wicked and unfaithful translation."

Coulon affirmed, solemnly, that he had seen the original in Paine's hands, and that it was exact. The reader was finally allowed to resume. "You mean to send an ambassador to the United States. Let him announce to the Americans that the National Convention of France, from pure friendship to America, has consented to respite the sentence of Louis. Ah, Citizens, do not give the despot of England the pleasure of seeing sent to the scaffold the man who helped my beloved brethren of America to free themselves from his chains!"

Soon after the execution of the King, Paris fell into the hands of the lowest classes. Their leaders ruled with terrible energy. Chabot's _dictum,--"Il n'y a pas de crimes en révolution_," and Stablekeeper Drouet's exclamation,--"_Soyons brigands pour le bonheur du peuple_," contain the political principles which guided them. Marat thundered away in his paper against Brissotins, Girondins, federalism, and moderantism. The minority members, thus unpleasantly noticed, went armed; many of them dared not sleep at home. Soon came the arrest of the _suspects_. The 31st of May, _cette insurrection toute morale_, as Robespierre called it, followed next. The Convention was stormed by the mob and purged of Brissotins and Girondins. The _Comité de Salut Public_ decreed forced loans and the _levée en masse_. Foreigners were expelled from the Convention and imprisoned throughout France. Mayor Bailly, Mme. Roland, Manuel, and their friends, passed under the axe. The same fate befell the Girondins, a party of phrase-makers who have enjoyed a posthumous sentimental reputation, but who, when living, had not the energy and active courage to back their fine speeches. The _reductio ad horribile_ of all the fine arguments in favor of popular infallibility and virtue had come; neither was the _reductio ad absurdum_ wanting. The old names of the days and months and years were changed. The statues of the Virgin were torn from the little niches in street-walls, and the busts of Marat and Lepelletier set up in their stead. The would-be God, _soi-disant Dieu_, was banished from France. Clootz and Chaumette, who called themselves Anacharsis and Anaxagoras, celebrated the worship of the Goddess of Reason. Bonfires of feudality; Goddesses of Liberty in plaster; trees of liberty planted in every square; altars _de la patrie_; huge rag-dolls representing Anarchy and Discord; Cleobis and Biton dragging their revered parents through the streets; _bonnets rouges, banderolles, ça iras, carmagnoles, fraternisations, accolades_; the properties, as well as the text of the plays, borrowed from Ancient Greece or Rome. What a bewildering retrospect! A period well summed up by Emerson:--"To-day, pasteboard and filigree; to-morrow, madness and murder." _Tigre-singe_, Voltaire's epigrammatic definition, describes his countrymen of the Reign of Terror in two words.

Neglected by all parties, and disgusted with all, Paine moved to a remote quarter of Paris, and took rooms in a house which had once belonged to Mme. de Pompadour. Brissot, Thomas Christie, Mary Wolstonecraft, and Joel Barlow were his principal associates. Two Englishmen, "friends of humanity," and an ex-officer of the _garde-du-corps_ lodged in the same building. The neighborhood was not without its considerable persons. Sanson, most celebrated of headsmen, had his domicile ii the same section. He called upon Paine, complimented him in good English upon his "Rights of Man," which he had read, and offered his services in a polite manner.

When the Reign of Terror was fully established, the little party seldom left their walls, and amused themselves as best they could with conversation and games. The news of the confusion and alarm of Paris reached them in their retreat, as if they were miles away in some quiet country residence. Every evening the landlord went into the city and brought back with him the horrible story of the day. "As to myself," Paine wrote to Lady Smith, "I used to find some relief by walking in the garden and cursing with hearty good-will the authors of that terrible system that had turned the character of the revolution I had been proud to defend."

After some weeks, the two Englishmen contrived to escape to Switzerland, leaving their enthusiasm for humanity behind them. Two days later, a file of armed men came to arrest them. Before the month was out, the landlord was carried off in the night. Last of all came the turn of Paine. He was arrested in December, by order of Robespierre, "for the interest of America, as well as of France, as a dangerous enemy of liberty and equality." On his way to the Luxembourg, he stopped at Barlow's lodgings and left with him the First Part of the "Age of Reason," finished the day before. The Americans in Paris applied to the Convention for Paine's release, offering themselves as security for his good conduct during his stay in France. They rounded off their petition with a phrase of the prisoner's,--"Ah, Citizens! do not give the leagued despots of Europe the pleasure of seeing Thomas Paine in irons." This document was presented by a Major Jackson, a "volunteer character," who had come to Europe with a letter of introduction to Gouverneur Morris, then minister, from Mr. Jefferson. Instead of delivering his letter to Morris, Jackson lodged it with the _Comité de Salut Public_ as a credential, and represented his country on the strength of it. The Convention, careless of the opinion of the "leagued despots," as well as of Major Jackson, replied, that Paine was an Englishman, and the demand for his release unauthorized by the United States. Paine wrote to Morris to request him to demand his discharge of the citizen who administered foreign affairs. Morris did so; but this official denied that Paine was an American. Morris inclosed this answer to Paine, who returned a shrewd argument in his own behalf, and begged Morris to lay the proofs of his citizenship before the minister. But Morris disliked Paine, and his own position in France was far from satisfactory. It is probable that he was not very zealous in the matter, and shortly after Paine's letter all communication with prisoners was forbidden.

The news of the outer world reached these unfortunates, penned up like sheep waiting for the butcher, only when the doors of the dungeon opened to admit a new _fournée_, or batch of victims, as the French pleasantly called them. They knew then that the revolution had made another stride forward, and had trodden these down as it moved on. Paine saw them all--Ronsin, Hébert, Momoro, Chaumette, Clootz, Gobel, the crazy and the vile, mingled together, the very men he had cursed in his garden at St. Denis--pass before him like the shadows of a magic-lantern, entering at one side and gliding out at the other,--to death. A few days later came Danton, Camille, Desmoulins, and the few who remained of the moderate party. Paine was standing near the wicket when they were brought in. Danton embraced him. "What you have done for the happiness and liberty of your country I have in vain tried to do for mine. I have been less fortunate, but not more culpable. I am sent to the scaffold." Turning to his friends.--"_Eh, bien! mes amis, allons y gaiement._" Happy Frenchmen! What a consolation it was to them to be thus always able to take an attitude and enact a character! Their fondness for dramatic display must have served them as a moral anaesthetic in those scenes of murder, and have deadened their sensibility to the horrors of their actual condition.

In July, the carnage had reached its height. No man could count upon life for twenty-four hours. The tall, the wise, the reverend heads had been taken off, and now the humbler ones were insecure upon their shoulders. Fouquier-Tinville had erected a guillotine in his court-room, to save time and transportation. Newsboys sold about the streets printed lists of those who were to suffer that day. "_Voici ceux qui ont gagné à la loterie de la Sainte Guillotine!_" they cried, with that reckless, mocking, blood-thirsty spirit which is found only in Frenchmen, or, perhaps, in their fellow-Celts. It seemed to Paine that Robespierre and the Committee were afraid to leave a man alive. He expected daily his own summons; but he was overlooked. There was nothing to be gained by killing him, except the mere pleasure of the thing.

He ascribed his escape to a severe attack of fever, which kept him out of sight for a time, and to a clerical error on the part of the distributing jailer. He wrote this account of it, after his return to America:--"The room in which I was lodged was on the ground-floor, and one of a long range of rooms under a gallery, and the door of it opened outward and flat against the wall, so that, when it was opened, the inside of the door appeared outward, and the contrary when it was shut I had three fellow-prisoners with me,--Joseph Van Huile of Bruges, Michel and Robin Bastini of Louvain. When persons by scores were to be taken out of prison for the guillotine, it was always done in the night, and those who performed that office had a private mark by which they knew what rooms to go to and what number to take. We, as I have said, were four, and the door of our room was marked, unobserved by us, with that number in chalk; but it happened, if happening is a proper word, that the mark was put on when the door was open and flat against the wall, and thereby came on the inside when we shut it at night, and the destroying angel passed by it." Paine thought his escape providential; the Orthodox took a different view of it.

After the fall of Robespierre, in Thermidor, seventy-three members of the Convention, who had survived the Reign of Terror, resumed their seats. But Paine was not released. Monroe had superseded Morris in August, but had no instructions from his government. Indeed, as Paine had accepted citizenship in France, and had publicly acted as a French citizen, it was considered, even by his friends, that he had no claim to the protection of the United States. Paine, as was natural, thought differently. He wrote to Monroe, explaining that French citizenship was a mere compliment paid to his reputation; and in any view of the case, it had been taken away from him by a decree of the Convention. His seat in that body did not affect his American _status_, because a convention to make a constitution is not a government, but extrinsic and antecedent to a government. The government once established, he would never have accepted a situation under it. Monroe assured him that he considered him an American citizen, and that "to the welfare of Thomas Paine Americans are not nor can they be indifferent,"--with which fine phrase Paine was obliged to be satisfied until November. On the fourth of that month he was released. The authorities of Thermidor disliked the Federalist government, and Paine was probably kept in prison some additional months on account of Monroe's application for his discharge.

He left the Luxembourg, after eleven months of incarceration, with unshaken confidence in his own greatness and in the truth of his principles,--but in appearance and in character another man, with only the tatters of his former self hanging about him. A certain elegance of manner and of dress, which had distinguished him, was gone. He drank deep, and was noisy. His fondness for talking of himself had grown to such excess as to destroy the conversational talents which all his contemporaries who speak of him describe as remarkable. "I will venture to say that the best thing will be said by Mr. Paine": that was Horne Tooke's prophecy, talking of some proposed dinner-party.

Demoralized by poverty, with ruined health, his mind had become distorted by physical suffering and by brooding over the ingratitude and cruel neglect of the American people, who owed, as he really believed, their very existence as a nation to him. "Is this what I ought to have expected from America," he wrote to General Washington, "after the part I have acted towards her?" "I do not hesitate to say that you have not served America with more fidelity or greater zeal or more disinterestedness than myself, and perhaps not with better effect." Henceforth he was a man of two ideas: he engrafted his resentment upon his "Rights of Man," and thought himself carrying out his theory while indulging in his wrath. He poured the full measure of his indignation upon the party who directed affairs in the United States, and upon the President. In two long letters, composed after his release, under Monroe's roof, he accused Washington of conniving at his imprisonment, to keep him, Paine, "the marplot of all designs against the people," out of the way. "Mr. Washington and his new-fangled party were rushing as fast as they dared venture into all the vices and corruptions of the British government; and it was no more consistent with the policy of Mr. Washington and those who immediately surrounded him than it was with that of Robespierre or of Pitt that I should survive." As he grew more angry, he became more abusive. He ridiculed Washington's "cold, unmilitary conduct" during the War of Independence, and accused his administration, since the new constitution, of "vanity," "ingratitude," "corruption," "bare-faced treachery," and "the tricks of a sharper." He closed this wretched outbreak of peevishness and wounded self-conceit with the following passage:--

"And as to you, Sir, treacherous in private friendship (for so you have been to me, and that in the day of danger) and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor,--whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any."

The remains of the old Convention invited Paine to resume his place in their assemblage. A committee of eleven, unaided by his experience, had been working at a new constitution, the political spring-fashion in Paris for that year. It was the plan since known as the _Directoire_, reported complete about the time Paine reappeared in the Convention. Disapproving of some of the details of this instrument, Paine furbished up his old weapons, and published "A Dissertation on the First Principles of Government." This tract he distributed among members,--the _libretto_ of the speech he intended to make. Accordingly, on the 5th of July, on motion of his old ally, Lanthenas, who had managed to crawl safely through the troubles, permission was granted to Thomas Paine to deliver his sentiments on the "Declaration of Rights and the Constitution." He ascended the tribune for the last time, and the secretary read the translation. He began, of course, with rights; but qualified them by adding, that, when we consider rights, we ought always to couple with them the idea of duties,--a happy union, which did not strike him before the Reign of Terror, and which is almost always overlooked. He then brought forward his universal political specific and panacea,--representative government and a written constitution. "Had a constitution been established two years ago," he said, "(as ought to have been done,) the violences that have since desolated France and injured the character of the Revolution would, in my opinion, have been prevented." There is nothing else in his speech of interest to us, except, that, in attacking a property qualification, which was wisely inserted in the new system, he made use of the _reductio-ad-absurdum_ illustration so often attributed to Dr. Franklin:--"When a broodmare shall fortunately produce a foal or a mule that by being worth the sum in question shall convey to its owner the right of voting, or by its death take it from him, in whom does the origin of such a right exist? Is it in the man or in the mule?"

The new government went into operation in September, 1795. Bonaparte's lesson to the insurgents of Vendémiaire, in front of the Church of St. Roche, followed immediately after. On the 26th of October, the Convention was dissolved, and Paine ceased to be a legislator for France.

He was no longer an object of consideration to Frenchmen, whose faith in principles and in constitutions was nearly worn out. Poor and infirm, indebted to Monroe's hospitality for a lodging, he remained eighteen months under the roof of the Embassy, looking for an opportunity to get back to America. Monroe wished to send him as bearer of dispatches before the dissolution of the Convention. But a member of that body could not leave France without a passport from it. To apply for it would have announced his departure, and have given the English government a chance to settle the old account they had against him. After Monroe had returned to the United States, Paine engaged his passage, and went to Havre to embark: but the appearance of a British frigate off the port changed his plans. The sentence of outlawry, a good joke four years before, had now become an unpleasant reality. So he travelled back to Paris, full of hate against England, and relieved his mind by writing a pamphlet on the "Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance," a performance characteristic of the man,--sound, clear sense mixed with ignorance and arrogance. He attempted to show arithmetically that the English funding system could not continue to the end of Mr. Pitt's life, supposing him to live to the usual age of man. The calculation is ingenious, but has not proved to be as accurate as some of Newton's. On the other hand, his remarks on paper money are excellent, and his sneer at the Sinking Fund, then considered a great invention in finance, well placed:--"As to Mr. Pitt's project for paying off the national debt by applying a million a year for that purpose while he continues adding more than twenty millions a year to it, it is like setting a man with a wooden leg to run after a hare;--the longer he runs, the farther he is off." The conclusion is one of his peculiar flourishes of his own trumpet:--"I have now exposed the English system of finance to the eyes of all nations,--for this work will be published in all languages. As an individual citizen of America, and as far as an individual can go, I have revenged (if I may use the expression without any immoral meaning) the piratical depredations committed on the American commerce by the English government."

From Monroe's departure until the year 1802, little is known of Paine. He is said to have lived in humble lodgings with one Bonneville, a printer, editor of the "Bouche de Fer" in the good early days of the Revolution. He must have kept up some acquaintance with respectable society; for we find his name on the lists of the _Cercle Constitutionnel_, a club to which belonged Talleyrand, Benjamin Constant, and conservatives of that class who were opposed to both the _bonnet-rouge_ and the _fleur-de-lis_. Occasionally he appears above the surface with a pamphlet. Politics were his passion, and to write a necessity of his nature. If public matters interested him, an essay of some kind made its way into print. When Baboeuf's agrarian conspiracy was crushed, Paine gave the world his views on "Agrarian Justice." Every man has a natural right to a share in the land; but it is impossible that every man should exercise this right. To compensate him for this loss, be should receive at the age of twenty-one fifteen pounds sterling; and if he survive his fiftieth year, ten pounds _per annum_ during the rest of his life. The funds for these payments to be furnished by a tax on inheritances.

Camille Jourdain made a report to the Five Hundred on priests and public worship, in which he recommended, _inter alia_, that the use of church-bells and the erection of crosses be again permitted by law. This reactionary measure excited Paine's liberal bigotry. He published a letter to Jourdain, telling him that priests were useless and bells public nuisances. Another letter may be seen, offering his subscription of one hundred francs to a fund for the invasion of England,--a favorite project of the Directory, and the dearest wish of Paine's heart. He added to his mite an offer of any personal service he could render to the invading army. When Carnot, Barthélémy, and Pichegru were expelled from power by the _coup d'état_ of the 18th Fructidor,--a military demonstration against the Republic,--Paine wrote an address to the people of France and to the French armies, heartily approving of the summary method that had been adopted with these reactionists, who must have their bells and their priests. He did not then perceive the real significance of the movement.

On one remarkable occasion, Paine made a full-length appearance before the French public,--not in his character of a political philosopher, but as a moralist. Robespierre, a few days before his fall, declared atheism to be aristocratic, reinstated _l'Être suprême_, and gave a festival in his honor. There religious matters had rested. Deism, pure and simple, was the faith of true republicans, and the practice of morality their works. But deism is a dreary religion to the mass of mankind, and the practice of morality can never take the place of adoration. The heart must be satisfied, as well as the conscience. Larévillière, a Director, of irreproachable character, felt this deficiency of their system, and saw how strong a hold the Catholic priesthood had upon the common people. The idea occurred to him of rivalling the churches by establishing regular meetings of moral men and women, to sing hymns of praise to the Almighty, "one and indivisible," and to listen to discourses and exhortations on moral subjects. Haüy, a brother of the eminent crystallogist, assembled the first society of Theophilanthropists, (lovers of God and man,) as they called themselves. They held their meetings on the day corresponding to Sunday. They had their manual of worship and their book of canticles. Their dogmas were the existence of one God and the immortality of the soul. And they wisely said nothing about matters which they did not believe. Paine, who in his "Age of Reason" had attempted to prepare a theology _ad usum reipublicae,_ felt moved by the spirit of morality, and delivered a sermon to one of these Theophilanthropist congregations. His theme was the existence of God and the propriety of combining the study of natural science with theology. He chose, of course, the _a-posteriori_ argument, and was brief, perhaps eloquent. Some passages of his discourse might pass unchallenged in the sermon of an Orthodox divine. He kept this one ready in his memory of brass, to confound all who accused him of irreligion:--"Do we want to contemplate His power? We see it in the immensity of the creation. Do we want to contemplate His wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate His mercy? We see it in His not withholding His abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not written books, but the Scriptures called the Creation."

If it were possible to establish a new _cultus,_ based upon mere abstract principles, Frenchmen, we should say, would be about the last people who could do it. This new worship, like any other play, drew well as long as it was new, and no longer. The moral men and women soon grew tired of it, and relapsed into the old faith and the old forms.

The end of all this child's play at government and at religion came at last. Bonaparte, checked at Acre by Sir Sydney Smith, left the East, landed in France in October, 1799, sent a file of grenadiers to turn Ancients and Five Hundred out of their halls, and seated himself in the chair of state.

After this conclusive _coup d'état,_ Paine sunk out of sight. The First Consul might have examined with interest the iron bridge, but could never have borne with the soiled person and the threadbare principles of the philosopher of two hemispheres. Bonaparte loved neatness and elegance, and disliked _idéologues_ and _bavards,_ as he styled all gentlemen of Paine's turn of mind.

In 1802, after the peace with England, Paine set sail from Havre to end his days in the United States. Here we leave him. We have neither space nor inclination to sum up his virtues and his vices in these columns, and to give him a character according to the balance struck. We have sketched a few outlines of his history as we have found it scattered about in newspapers and pamphlets. Our readers may make up their own minds whether this supposed ally of the Arch Enemy was as black as he has been painted.

ELKANAH BREWSTER'S TEMPTATION.

I was always of opinion that the fruit forbidden to our grandmother Eve was an unripe apple. Eaten, it afflicted Adam with the first colic known to this planet. He, the weaker vessel, sorrowed over his transgression; but I doubt if Eve's repentance was thorough; for the plucking of unripe fruit has been, ever since, a favorite hobby of her sons and daughters,--until now our mankind has got itself into such a chronic state of colic, that even Dr. Carlyle declares himself unable to prescribe any Morrison's Pill or other remedial measure to allay the irritation.

Part of this irritation finds vent in a great cry about "legitimate ambition." Somehow, because any American _may_ be President of the United States, almost every American feels himself bound to run for the office. A man thinks small things of himself, and his neighbors think less, if he does not find his heart filled with an insane desire, in some way, to attain to fame or notoriety, riches or bankruptcy. Nevertheless, we are not purse-proud,--nor, indeed, proud at all, more's the pity,--and receive a man just as readily whose sands of life have been doled out to suffering humanity in the shape of patent pills, as one who has entered Fifth Avenue by the legitimate way of pork and cotton speculations, if only he have been successful,--which I call a very noble trait in the American character.

Now this is all very well, and, granted that Providence has placed us here to do what is best pleasing to ourselves, it is surely very noble and grand in us to please to serve nothing less than our country or our age. But let us not forget that the English language has such a little word as _duty_. A man's talents, and, perhaps, once in a great while, his wishes, would make him a great man, (if wishes ever did such things, which I doubt,) while duty imperatively demands that he shall remain a _little_ man. What then? Let us see.

Elkanah Brewster was going to New York to-morrow.

"What for, boy?" asked old Uncle Shubael, meeting whom on the fish-wharf, he had bid him a cheery good-bye.

"To make my fortune," was the bold reply.

"Make yer fortin? You're a goose, boy! Stick to yer work here,--fishin' summers an' shoemakin' winters. Why, there isn't a young feller on the hull Cape makes as much as you. What's up? Gal gin ye the mitten? Or what?"

"I don't want to make shoes, nor fish neither, Uncle Shub," said Elkanah, soberly, looking the old fellow in the face,--"goin' down to the Banks year arter year in cold an' fish-gurry, an' peggin' away all winter, like mad. I want to be rich, like Captain Crowell; I want to be a gentleman, like that painter-chap that give me drawin'-lessons, last summer, when I stayed to home."

"Phew! Want to be rich an' a gentleman, eh? Gittin' tu big for yer boots, youngster? What's yer old man du but go down t' the Banks regular every spring? You're no better 'n he, I guess: Keep yer trade, an' yer trade'll keep you. A rollin' stun gathers no moss. Dry bread tu home's better 'n roast meat an' gravy abroad."

"All feet don't tread in one shoe, Uncle Shub," said young Brewster, capping the old fellow's proverbs with another. "Don't see why I shouldn't make money as well's other fellers. It's a free country, an' if a feller wants to try suthin' else 'sides fishin' uv it, what d'yer all want to be down on him fur? I don't want to slave all my days, when other folks ken live in big houses an' ride in 'kerriges, an' all that."

"A'n't yer got bread enough to eat, an' a place to sleep? an' what more's any on 'em got? You stay here; make yer money on the old Cape, where yer father an' grand'ther made it afore you. Use yer means, an' God 'll give the blessin'. Yer can't honestly git rich anywheres all tu once. Good an' quickly don't often meet. One nail drives out another. Slow an' easy goes fur in a day. Honor an' ease a'n't often bedfellows. Don't yer be a goose, I tell ye. What's to become of Hepsy Ann?"

Having delivered himself of which last and hardest shot, Uncle Shubael shouldered his cod-craft, and, without awaiting an answer, tugged across the sand-beach for home.

Elkanah Brewster was a Cape-Cod boy, with a pedigree, if he had ever thought of it, as long as any on the Cape,--and they are the longest in the land. His forefathers had caught fish to the remotest generation known. The Cape boys take to the water like young ducks; and are born with a hook and line in their fists, so to speak, as the Newfoundland codfish and Bay Chaleur mackerel know, to their cost. "Down on old Chatham" there is little question of a boy's calling, if he only comes into the world with the proper number of fingers and toes; he swims as soon as he walks, knows how to drive a bargain as soon as he can talk, goes cook of a coaster at the mature age of eight years, and thinks himself robbed of his birthright, if he has not made a voyage to the Banks before his eleventh birthday comes round. There is good stuff in the Cape boys, as the South-Street ship-owners know, who don't sleep easier than when they have put a "Cape man" in charge of their best clipper. Quick of apprehension, fertile in resource, shrewd, enterprising, brave, prudent, and, above all, lucky,--no better seamen sail the sea. Long may they keep their prestige and their sand!

They are not rich on the Cape,--in the Wall-Street sense of the word, that is to say. I doubt if Uncle Lew Baker, who was high line out of Dennis last year, and who, by the same token, had to work himself right smartly to achieve that honor,--I doubt if this smart and thoroughly wide-awake fellow took home more than three hundred dollars to his wife and children when old Obed settled the voyage. But then the good wife saves while he earns, and, what with a cow, and a house and garden-spot of his own, and a healthy lot of boys and girls, who, if too young to help, are not suffered to hinder, this man is more forehanded and independent, gives more to the poor about him and to the heathen at the other end of the world, than many a city man who makes, and spends, his tens of thousands.

Uncle Abijah Brewster, the father of this Elkanah, was an old Banker,--which signifies here, not a Wall-Street broker-man, but a Grand-Bank fisherman. He had brought up a goodly family of boys and girls by his hook-and-line and, though now a man of some fifty winters, still made his two yearly fares to the Banks, in his own trim little pinky, and prided himself on being the smartest and jolliest man aboard. His boys had sailed with him till they got vessels of their own, had learned from his stout heart and strong arm their seamanship, their fisherman's acuteness, their honest daring, and child-like trust in God's Providence. These poor fishermen are not rich, as I have said; a dollar looks to them as big as a dinner-plate to us, and a moderately flush Wall-Street man might buy out the whole Cape and not overdraw his bank-account. Also, they have but little book-learning among them, reading chiefly their Bible, Bowditch, and Nautical Almanac, and leaving theology mostly to the parson, on shore, who is paid for it. But they have a conscience, and, knowing a thing to be right, do it bravely, and against all odds. I have seen these men on Sunday, in a fleet of busy "Sunday fishers," fish biting all around them, sitting faithfully,--ay, and contentedly,--with book in hand, sturdily refraining from what the mere human instinct of destruction would strongly impel them to, without counting the temptation of dollars,--and this only because they had been taught that Sunday was a day of rest and worship, wherein no man should catch fish, and knew no theological quibble or mercantile close-sailing by which to weather on God's command. It sounds little to us who have not been tempted, or, if tempted, have gracefully succumbed, on the plea that other people do so too; but how many stock-speculators would see their follows buying bargains and making easy fortunes on Sunday morning, and not forget the ring of Trinity chimes and go in for dollars? Or which of us denies himself his Monday morning's paper?

Elkanah had always been what his mother called a strange boy. He was, indeed, an odd sheep in her flock. Restless, ambitious, dreamy, from his earliest youth, he possessed, besides, a natural gift for drawing and sketching, imitating and constructing, that bade fair, unless properly directed, to make of him that saddest and most useless of human lumber, a jack-at-all-trades. He profited more by his limited winter's schooling than his brothers and fellows, and was always respected by the old man as "a boy that took naterally to book-larnin', and would _be_ suthin' some day." Of course he went to the Banks, and acquitted himself there with honor,--no man fishing more zealously or having better luck. But all the time he was dreaming of his future, counting this present as nothing, and ready, as soon as Fortune should make him an opening, to cast away this life, and grasp--he had not settled what.

"_I_ dun know what ails him," said his father; "but he don't take kindly to the Banks. Seems to me he kinder despises the work, though he _does_ it well enough. And then he makes the best shoes on the Cape; but he a'n't content, somehow."