Volume III Part 18 (1/2)
1 There is no need to delay the reader here with any argument about Paine's unquestionable citizens.h.i.+p, that point having been settled by his release as an American, and the sanction of Monroe's action by his government. There was no genuineness in any challenge of Paine's citizens.h.i.+p, but a mere desire to do him an injury. In this it had marvellous success. Ten years after Paine had been reclaimed by Monroe, with the sanction of Was.h.i.+ngton, as an American citizen, his vote was refused at New Roch.e.l.le, New York, by the supervisor, Elisha Ward, on the ground that Was.h.i.+ngton and Morris had refused to Declaim him. Under his picture of the dead Paine, Jarvis, the artist, wrote: ”A man who devoted his whole life to the attainment of two objects--rights of man, and freedom of conscience--had his vote denied when living, and was denied a grave when dead.”--_Editor._
August 17th, 1794.
My Dear Sir: As I believe none of the public papers have announced your name right I am unable to address you by it, but a _new_ minister from America is joy to me and will be so to every American in France.
Eight months I have been imprisoned, and I know not for what, except that the order says that I am a Foreigner. The Illness I have suffered in this place (and from which I am but just recovering) had nearly put an end to my existence. My life is but of little value to me in this situation tho' I have borne it with a firmness of patience and fort.i.tude.
I enclose you a copy of a letter, (as well the translation as the English)--which I sent to the Convention after the fall of the Monster Robespierre--for I was determined not to write a line during the time of his detestable influence. I sent also a copy to the Committee of public safety--but I have not heard any thing respecting it. I have now no expectation of delivery but by your means--_Morris has been my inveterate enemy_ and I think he has permitted something of the national Character of America to suffer by quietly letting a Citizen of that Country remain almost eight months in prison without making every official exertion to procure him justice,--for every act of violence offered to a foreigner is offered also to the Nation to which he belongs.
The gentleman, Mr. Beresford, who will present you this has been very friendly to me.(1) Wis.h.i.+ng you happiness in your appointment, I am your affectionate friend and humble servant.
August 18th, 1794.
Dear Sir: In addition to my letter of yesterday (sent to Mr. Beresford to be conveyed to you but which is delayed on account of his being at St. Germain) I send the following memoranda.
I was in London at the time I was elected a member of this Convention.
I was elected a Depute in four different departments without my knowing any thing of the matter, or having the least idea of it. The intention of electing the Convention before the time of the former Legislature expired, was for the purpose of reforming the Const.i.tution or rather for forming a new one. As the former Legislature shewed a disposition that I should a.s.sist in this business of the new Const.i.tution, they prepared the way by voting me a French Citoyen (they conferred the same t.i.tle on General Was.h.i.+ngton and certainly I had no more idea than he had of vacating any part of my real Citizens.h.i.+p of America for a nominal one in France, especially at a time when she did not know whether she would be a Nation or not, and had it not even in her power to promise me protection). I was elected (the second person in number of Votes, the Abbe Sieves being first) a member for forming the Const.i.tution, and every American in Paris as well as my other acquaintance knew that it was my intention to return to America as soon as the Const.i.tution should be established. The violence of Party soon began to shew itself in the Convention, but it was impossible for me to see upon what principle they differed--unless it was a contention for power. I acted however as I did in America, I connected myself with no Party, but considered myself altogether a National Man--but the case with Parties generally is that when you are not with one you are supposed to be with the other.
1 A friendly lamp-lighter, alluded to in the Letter to Was.h.i.+ngton, conveyed this letter to Mr. Beresford.-- _Editor._
I was taken out of bed between three and four in the morning on the 28 of December last, and brought to the Luxembourg--without any other accusation inserted in the order than that I was a foreigner; a motion having been made two days before in the Convention to expel Foreigners therefrom. I certainly then remained, even upon their own tactics, what I was before, a Citizen of America.
About three weeks after my imprisonment the Americans that were in Paris went to the bar of the Convention to reclaim me, but contrary to my advice, they made their address into a Pet.i.tion, and it miscarried.
I then applied to G. Morris, to reclaim me as an official part of his duty, which he found it necessary to do, and here the matter stopt.(1) I have not heard a single line or word from any American since, which is now seven months. I rested altogether on the hope that a new Minister would arrive from America. I have escaped with life from more dangers than one. Had it not been for the fall of Roberspierre and your timely arrival I know not what fate might have yet attended me. There seemed to be a determination to destroy all the Prisoners without regard to merit, character, or any thing else. During the time I laid at the height of my illness they took, in one night only, 169 persons out of this prison and executed all but eight. The distress that I have suffered at being obliged to exist in the midst of such horrors, exclusive of my own precarious situation, suspended as it were by the single thread of accident, is greater than it is possible you can conceive--but thank G.o.d times are at last changed, and I hope that your Authority will release me from this unjust imprisonment.
1 The falsehood told Paine, accompanied by an intimation of danger in pursuing the pretended reclamation, was of course meant to stop any farther action by Paine or his friends.-- _Editor._.
August 25, 1794.
My Dear Sir: Having nothing to do but to sit and think, I will write to pa.s.s away time, and to say that I am still here. I have received two notes from Mr. Beresford which are encouraging (as the generality of notes and letters are that arrive to persons here) but they contain nothing explicit or decisive with respect to my liberation, and _I shall be very glad to receive a line from yourself to inform me in what condition the matter stands_. If I only glide out of prison by a sort of accident America gains no credit by my liberation, neither can my attachment to her be increased by such a circ.u.mstance. She has had the services of my best days, she has my allegiance, she receives my portion of Taxes for my house in Borden Town and my farm at New Roch.e.l.le, and she owes me protection both at home and thro' her Ministers abroad, yet I remain in prison, in the face of her Minister, at the arbitrary will of a committee.
Excluded as I am from the knowledge of everything and left to a random of ideas, I know not what to think or how to act. Before there was any Minister here (for I consider Morris as none) and while the Robespierrian faction lasted, I had nothing to do but to keep my mind tranquil and expect the fate that was every day inflicted upon my comrades, not individually but by scores. Many a man whom I have pa.s.sed an hour with in conversation I have seen marching to his destruction the next hour, or heard of it the next morning; for what rendered the scene more horrible was that they were generally taken away at midnight, so that every man went to bed with the apprehension of never seeing his friends or the world again.
I wish to impress upon you that all the changes that have taken place in Paris have been sudden. There is now a moment of calm, but if thro' any over complaisance to the persons you converse with on the subject of my liberation, you omit procuring it for me _now_, you may have to lament the fate of your friend when its too late. The loss of a Battle to the Northward or other possible accident may happen to bring this about. I am not out of danger till I am out of Prison.
Yours affectionately.
P. S.--I am now entirely without money. The Convention owes me 1800 livres salary which I know not how to get while I am here, nor do I know how to draw for money on the rent of my farm in America. It is under the care of my good friend General Lewis Morris. I have received no rent since I have been in Europe.
[Addressed] Minister Plenipotentiary from America, Maison des etrangers, Rue de la Loi, Rue Richelieu.
Such was the sufficiently cruel situation when there reached Paine in prison, September 4th, the letter of Peter Whiteside which caused him to write his Memorial. Whiteside was a Philadelphian whose bankruptcy in London had swallowed up some of Paine's means. His letter, reporting to Paine that he was not regarded by the American Government or people as an American citizen, and that no American Minister could interfere in his behalf, was evidently inspired by Morris who was still in Paris, the authorities being unwilling to give him a pa.s.sport to Switzerland, as they knew he was going in that direction to join the conspirators against France. This Whiteside letter put Paine, and through him Monroe, on a false scent by suggesting that the difficulty of his case lay in a _bona fide_ question of citizens.h.i.+p, whereas there never had been really any such question. The knot by which Morris had bound Paine was thus concealed, and Monroe was appealing to polite wolves in the interest of their victim. There were thus more delays, inexplicable alike to Monroe and to Paine, eliciting from the latter some heartbroken letters, not hitherto printed, which I add at the end of the Memorial. To add to the difficulties and dangers, Paris was beginning to be agitated by well-founded rumors of Jay's injurious negotiations in England, and a coldness towards Monroe was setting in. Had Paine's release been delayed much longer an American Minister's friends.h.i.+p might even have proved fatal. Of all this nothing could be known to Paine, who suffered agonies he had not known during the Reign of Terror. The other prisoners of Robespierre's time had departed; he alone paced the solitary corridors of the Luxembourg, chilled by the autumn winds, his cell tireless, unlit by any candle, insufficiently nourished, an abscess forming in his side; all this still less cruel than the feeling that he was abandoned, not only by Was.h.i.+ngton but by all America.
This is the man of whom Was.h.i.+ngton wrote to Madison nine years before: ”Must the merits and services of 'Common Sense' continue to glide down the stream of time unrewarded by this country?” This, then, is his reward. To his old comrade in the battle-fields of Liberty, George Was.h.i.+ngton, Paine owed his ten months of imprisonment, at the end of which Monroe found him a wreck, and took him (November 4) to his own house, where he and his wife nursed him back into life. But it was not for some months supposed that Paine could recover; it was only after several relapses; and it was under the shadow of death that he wrote the letter to Was.h.i.+ngton so much and so ignorantly condemned. Those who have followed the foregoing narrative will know that Paine's grievances were genuine, that his infamous treatment stains American history; but they will also know that they lay chiefly at the door of a treacherous and unscrupulous American Minister.
Yet it is difficult to find an excuse for the retention of that Minister in France by Was.h.i.+ngton. On Monroe's return to America in 1797, he wrote a pamphlet concerning the mission from which he had been curtly recalled, in which he said:
”I was persuaded from Mr. Morris's known political character and principles, that his appointment, and especially at a period when the French nation was in a course of revolution from an arbitrary to a free government, would tend to discountenance the republican cause there and at home, and otherwise weaken, and greatly to our prejudice, the connexion subsisting between the two countries.”
In a copy of this pamphlet found at Mount Vernon, Was.h.i.+ngton wrote on the margin of this sentence: