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| Thomas Paine
The Rights of Man
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.
When Thomas Paine sailed from America for France, in April, 1787, he
was perhaps as happy a man as any in the world. His most intimate
friend, Jefferson, was Minister at Paris, and his friend Lafayette
was the idol of France. His fame had preceded him, and he at once
became, in Paris, the centre of the same circle of savants and
philosophers that had surrounded Franklin. His main reason for
proceeding at once to Paris was that he might submit to the Academy
of Sciences his invention of an iron bridge, and with its favorable
verdict he came to England, in September. He at once went to his aged
mother at Thetford, leaving with a publisher (Ridgway), his "
Prospects on the Rubicon." He next made arrangements to patent his
bridge, and to construct at Rotherham the large model of it exhibited
on Paddington Green, London. He was welcomed in England by leading
statesmen, such as Lansdowne and Fox, and above all by Edmund Burke,
who for some time had him as a guest at Beaconsfield, and drove him
about in various parts of the country. He had not the slightest
revolutionary purpose, either as regarded England or France. Towards
Louis XVI. he felt only gratitude for the services he had rendered
America, and towards George III. he felt no animosity whatever. His
four months' sojourn in Paris had convinced him that there was
approaching a reform of that country after the American model, except
that the Crown would be preserved, a compromise he approved, provided
the throne should not be hereditary. Events in France travelled more
swiftly than he had anticipated, and Paine was summoned by Lafayette,
Condorcet, and others, as an adviser in the formation of a new
constitution.
Such was the situation immediately preceding the political and
literary duel between Paine and Burke, which in the event turned out
a tremendous war between Royalism and Republicanism in Europe. Paine
was, both in France and in England, the inspirer of moderate
counsels. Samuel Rogers relates that in early life he dined at a
friend's house in London with Thomas Paine, when one of the toasts
given was the " memory of Joshua,"-in allusion to the Hebrew leader's
conquest of the kings of Canaan, and execution of them. Paine
observed that he would not treat kings like Joshua. " I 'm of the
Scotch parson's opinion," he said, "when he prayed against Louis
XIV.-`Lord, shake him over the mouth of hell, but don't let him drop!
' " Paine then gave as his toast, " The Republic of the World,"-which
Samuel Rogers, aged twenty-nine, noted as a sublime idea. This was
Paine's faith and hope, and with it he confronted the revolutionary
storms which presently burst over France and England.
Until Burke's arraignment of France in his parliamentary speech
(February 9, 1790), Paine had no doubt whatever that he would
sympathize with the movement in France, and wrote to him from that
country as if conveying glad tidings. Burke's " Reflections on the
Revolution in France " appeared November 1, 1790, and Paine at once
set himself to answer it. He was then staying at the Angel Inn,
Islington. The inn has been twice rebuilt since that time, and from
its contents there is preserved only a small image, which perhaps was
meant to represent " Liberty,"-possibly brought from Paris by Paine
as an ornament for his study. From the Angel he removed to a house in
Harding Street, Fetter Lane. Rickman says Part First of " Rights of
Man " was finished at Versailles, but probably this has reference to
the preface only, as I cannot find Paine in France that year until
April 8. The book had been printed by Johnson, in time for the
opening of Parliament, in February ; but this publisher became
frightened after a few copies were out (there is one in the British
Museum), and the work was transferred to J. S. Jordan, 166 Fleet
Street, with a preface sent from Paris (not contained in Johnson's
edition, nor in the American editions). The pamphlet, though sold at
the same price as Burke's, three shillings, had a vast circulation,
and Paine gave the proceeds to the Constitutional Societies which
sprang up under his teachings in various parts of the country.
Soon after appeared Burke's " Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs."
In this Burke quoted a good deal from " Rights of Man," but replied
to it only with exclamation points, saying that the only answer such
ideas merited was "criminal justice." Paine's Part Second followed,
published February 17, 1792. In Part First Paine had mentioned a
rumor that Burke was a masked pensioner (a charge that will be
noticed in connection with its detailed statement in a further
publication); and as Burke had been formerly arraigned in Parliament,
while Paymaster, for a very questionable proceeding, this charge no
doubt hurt a good deal. Although the government did not follow
Burke's suggestion of a prosecution at that time, there is little
doubt that it was he who induced the prosecution of Part Second.
Before the trial came on, December 18, 1792, Paine was occupying his
seat in the French Convention, and could only be outlawed.
Burke humorously remarked to a friend of Paine and himself, " We hunt
in pairs." The severally representative character and influence of
these two men in the revolutionary era, in France and England,
deserve more adequate study than they have received. While Paine
maintained freedom of discussion, Burke first proposed criminal
prosecution for sentiments by no means libellous (such as Paine's
Part First). While Paine was endeavoring to make the movement in
France peaceful, Burke fomented the league of monarchs against France
which maddened its people, and brought on the Reign of Terror. While
Paine was endeavoring to preserve the French throne ("phantom" though
he believed it), to prevent bloodshed, Burke was secretly writing to
the Queen of France, entreating her not to compromise, and to " trust
to the support of foreign armies " (" Histoire de France depuis
1789." Henri Martin, i., 151). While Burke thus helped to bring the
King and Queen to the guillotine, Paine pleaded for their lives to
the last moment. While Paine maintained the right of mankind to
improve their condition, Burke held that " the awful Author of our
being is the author of our place in the order of existence; and that,
having disposed and marshalled us by a divine tactick, not according
to our will, but according to his, he has, in and by that
disposition, virtually subjected us to act the part which belongs to
the place assigned us." Paine was a religious believer in eternal
principles; Burke held that " political problems do not primarily
concern truth or falsehood. They relate to good or evil. What in the
result is likely to produce evil is politically false, that which is
productive of good politically is true." Assuming thus the
visionary's right to decide before the result what was " likely to
produce evil," Burke vigorously sought to kindle war against the
French Republic which might have developed itself peacefully, while
Paine was striving for an international Congress in Europe in the
interest of peace. Paine had faith in the people, and believed that,
if allowed to choose representatives, they would select their best
and wisest men; and that while reforming government the people would
remain orderly, as they had generally remained in America during the
transition from British rule to selfgovernment. Burke maintained that
if the existing political order were broken up there would be no
longer a people, but " a number of vague, loose individuals, and
nothing more." " Alas! " he exclaims, " they little know how many a
weary step is to be taken before they can form themselves into a
mass, which has a true personality." For the sake of peace Paine
wished the revolution to be peaceful as the advance of summer; he
used every endeavor to reconcile English radicals to some modus
vivendi with the existing order, as he was willing to retain Louis
XVI. as head of the executive in France: Burke resisted every
tendency of English statesmanship to reform at home, or to negotiate
with the French Republic, and was mainly responsible for the King's
death and the war that followed between England and France in
February, 1793. Burke became a royal favorite, Paine was outlawed by
a prosecution originally proposed by Burke. While Paine was demanding
religious liberty, Burke was opposing the removal of penal statutes
from Unitarians, on the ground that but for those statutes Paine
might some day set up a church in England. When Burke was retiring on
a large royal pension, Paine was in prison, through the devices of
Burke's confederate, the American Minister in Paris. So the two men,
as Burke said, " hunted in pairs."
So far as Burke attempts to affirm any principle he is fairly quoted
in Paine's work, and nowhere misrepresented. As for Paine's own
ideas, the reader should remember that "Rights of Man" was the
earliest complete statement of republican principles. They were
pronounced to be the fundamental principles of the American Republic
by Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson,-the three Presidents who above
all others represented the republican idea which Paine first allied
with American Independence. Those who suppose that Paine did but
reproduce the principles of Rousseau and Locke will find by careful
study of his well-weighed language that such is not the case. Paine's
political principles were evolved out of his early Quakerism. He was
potential in George Fox. The belief that every human soul was the
child of God, and capable of direct inspiration from the Father of
all, without mediator or priestly intervention, or sacramental
instrumentality, was fatal to all privilege and rank. The universal
Fatherhood implied universal Brotherhood, or human equality. But the
fate of the Quakers proved the necessity of protecting the individual
spirit from oppression by the majority as well as by privileged
classes. For this purpose Paine insisted on surrounding the
individual right with the security of the Declaration of Rights, not
to be invaded by any government; and would reduce government to an
association limited in its operations to the defence of those rights
which the individual is unable, alone, to maintain.
From the preceding chapter it will be seen that Part Second of
" Rights of Man " was begun by Paine in the spring of 1791. At the
close of that year, or early in 1792, he took up his abode with his
friend Thomas" Clio " Rickman, at No. 7 Upper Marylebone Street.
Rickman was a radical publisher; the house remains still a
book-binding establishment, and seems little changed since Paine
therein revised the proofs of Part Second on a table which Rickman
marked with a plate, and which is now in possession of Mr. Edward
Truelove. As the plate states, Paine wrote on the same table other
works which appeared in England in 1792.
In 1795 D. I. Eaton published an edition of " Rights of Man," with a
preface purporting to have been written by Paine while in Luxembourg
prison. It is manifestly spurious. The genuine English and French
prefaces are given.
MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY
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