Patriot; born in
Thetford, England, Jan. 29, 1737.
His father was a Quaker, from whom he learned the business of stay-making.
He went on a privateering cruise in 1755, and
afterwards worked at his trade and preached as a Dissenting minister.
He was an exciseman at
Thetford, and wrote (1772) a pamphlet on the subject.
Being accused of smuggling, he was dismissed from office
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Meeting
Dr. Franklin, the latter advised him to go to
America.
He arrived in
Philadelphia in December, 1774, and was employed as editor of the
Pennsylvania magazine.
In that paper he published, October, 1775,
Serious thoughts, in which he declared his hope of the abolition of slavery.
At the suggestion of
Dr. Benjamin Rush, of
Philadelphia, it is said, he put forward a powerfully written pamphlet, at the beginning of 1776, in favor of the independence of the colonies.
It opened with the often-quoted words, “These are the times that try men's souls.”
Its terse, sharp, incisive, and vigorous sentences stirred the people with irrepressible aspirations for independence.
A single extract will indicate its character: “The nearer any government approaches to a republic, the less business there is for a king; in
England a king hath little more to do than to make war and give away places.
Arms must decide the contest [between
Great Britain and
America]; the appeal was the choice of the
King, and the continent hath escaped the challenge.
The sun never shone on a cause of greater worth.
'Tis not the affair of a city, a county, a province, or a kingdom, but of a continent—of at least oneeighth part of the habitable globe.
'Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in it even to the end of time. . . . Freedom hath been hunted round the globe:
Asia and
Africa hath long expelled her;
Europe regards her like a stranger; and
England hath given her warning to depart.
Oh, receive the fugitive, and prepare an asylum for mankind.”
The effect of
Common sense was marvellous.
Its trumpet tones awakened the continent, and made every patriot's heart beat with intense emotion.
It was read with avidity everywhere; and the public appetite for its solid food was not appeased until 100,000 copies had fallen from the press.
The legislature of Pennsylvania voted to the author $2,500.
Washington, in a letter written at
Cambridge, highly applauded it, and all over the colonies there were immediate movements in favor of absolute independence.
For a short time after the
Declaration of Independence Paine was in the military service, and was aide-de-camp to General
Greene.
In December, 1776, he published the first number of his
Crisis, and continued it at intervals during the war. In 1777 he was elected secretary to the committee on foreign affairs.
Silas Deane (q. v.), who acted as mercantile as well as diplomatic agent of the Continental Congress during the earlier portion of the war, incurred the enmity of
Arthur Lee and his brothers, and was so misrepresented by them that Congress recalled him from
France.
It had been insinuated by
Carmichael that
Deane had appropriated the public money to his private use. Two violent parties arose, in and out of Congress, concerning the doings of the agents of Congress abroad.
Robert Morris, and others acquainted with financial matters, took the side of
Deane.
The powerful party against him was led by
Richard Henry Lee, brother of
Arthur, and chairman of the committee on foreign affairs.
Deane published (1779)
An address to the people of the United States, in which he commented severely on the conduct of the Lees, and justly claimed credit for himself in obtaining supplies from
France through
Beaumarchais.
Paine, availing himself of documents in his custody, published a reply to
Deane's address, in which he asserted that the supplies nominally furnished through a mercantile house came really from the
French government.
This avowal, which the
French and Congress both wished to conceal, drew from the
French minister,
Gerard, a warm protest, as it proved duplicity on the part of the French Court; and, to appease the minister, Congress, by resolution, expressly denied that any present of supplies had been received from
France previous to the treaty of alliance.
Paine was dismissed from office for his imprudence in revealing the secrets of diplomacy.
Late in November, 1779, he was made clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly; and in that capacity read a letter to that body from
General Washington, intimating that a mutiny in the army was imminent because of the distresses of the soldiers.
The Assembly was disheartened.
Paine wrote a letter to
Blair McClenaghan, a Philadelphia merchant, stating the case, and enclosing $500 as his contribution to a relief fund.
A meeting of citizens was
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called, when a subscription was circulated, and very soon the sum of £300,000 (
Pennsylvania currency) was collected.
With this capital a bank (afterwards the
Bank of North America) for the relief of the army was established.
With
Colonel Laurens,
Paine obtained a loan of 6,000,000 livres from
France in 1781.
In 1786 Congress gave him $3,000 for his services during the war, and the
State of New York granted him a farm of 300 acres of land at New Rochelle, the confiscated estate of a loyalist.
Sailing for
France in April, 1787, his fame caused him to be cordially received by distinguished men. In 1788 he was in
England, superintending the construction of an iron bridge (the first of its kind) which he had invented.
It now spans the Wear, at
Sunderland.
He wrote the first part of his
Rights of man in 1791, in reply to
Burke's
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
It had an immense sale, and the
American edition had a preface by
Thomas Jefferson.
An active member of the revolutionary society in
England, he was elected to a seat in the French National Convention in 1792.
He had a triumphant reception in
Paris, but in
London he was indicted for sedition and afterwards outlawed.
Paine assisted in framing the
French constitution in 1793; and the same year he opposed the execution of the
King, and proposed his banishment to
America.
This action caused his imprisonment by the Jacobins, and he had a narrow escape from the guillotine.
It was at that period that he wrote his
Age of reason.
James Monroe, then American minister to
France, procured his release from prison in 1794.
After an absence from the
United States of fifteen years, he returned in a government vessel in 1802.
His admirers honored him with public dinners; his political opponents insulted him. Settled in New York, he died there, June 8, 1809, and was buried on his farm at New Rochelle, the Quakers, for peculiar reasons, having denied his request to be interred in one of their burying-grounds.
Near where he was buried a neat monument was erected in 1839.
In 1819
William Cobbett took his bones to
England.
In 1875 a memorial building was dedicated in
Boston, having over the entrance the inscription, “Paine Memorial Building and Home of the
Boston Investigator.”
See
Ingersoll, Robert Green.