Part 1 (2/2)

He had the happiest possible way of putting the case, in asking questions in such a way that they answer themselves, and in stating his premises so clearly that the deduction could not be avoided.

Day and night he labored for America. Month after month, year after year, he gave himself to the great cause, until there was ”a government of the people and for the people,” and until the banner of the stars floated over a continent redeemed and consecrated to the happiness of mankind.

At the close of the Revolution no one stood higher in America than Thomas Paine. The best, the wisest, the most patriotic were his friends and admirers; and had he been thinking only of his own good he might have rested from his toils and spent the remainder of his life in comfort and in ease. He could have been what the world is pleased to call ”respectable.” He would have died surrounded by clergymen, warriors, and statesmen, and at his death there would have been an imposing funeral, miles of carriages, civic societies, salvos of artillery, a Nation in mourning, and, above all, a splendid monument covered with lies. He choose rather to benefit mankind. At that time the seeds sown by the great infidels were beginning to bear fruit in France. The eighteenth century was crowning its gray hairs with the wreath of progress.

On every hand science was bearing testimony against the church.

Voltaire had filled Europe with light. D'Holbach was giving to the elite of Paris the principles contained in his ”System of Nature.” The encyclopaedists had attacked superst.i.tion with information for the ma.s.ses. The foundation of things began to be examined. A few had the courage to keep their shoes on and let the bush burn. Miracles began to get scarce. Everywhere the people began to inquire. America had set an example to the world. The word liberty was in the mouths of men, and they began to wipe the dust from their superst.i.tious knees.

The dawn of a new day had appeared. Thomas Paine went to France.

Into the new movement he threw all his energies. His fame had gone before him, and he was welcomed as a friend of the human race and as a champion of free government.

He had never relinquished his intention of pointing out to his countrymen the defects, absurdities, and abuse of the English government. For this purpose; he composed and published his greatest political work. ”The Rights of Man.” This work should be read by every man and woman. It is concise, accurate, rational, convincing, and unanswerable. It shows great thought, an intimate knowledge of the various forms of government, deep insight into the very springs of human action, and a courage that compels respect and admiration. The most difficult political problems are solved in a few sentences. The venerable arguments in favor of wrong are refuted with a question--answered with a word. For forcible ill.u.s.tration, apt comparison, accuracy and clearness of statement, and absolute thoroughness, it has never been excelled.

The fears of the administration were aroused, and Paine was prosecuted for libel, and found guilty; and yet there is not a sentiment in the entire work that will not challenge the admiration of every civilized man. It is a magazine of political wisdom, an a.r.s.enal of ideas, and an honor not only to Thomas Paine, but to nature itself. It could have been written only by the man who had the generosity, the exalted patriotism, the goodness to say: ”The world is my country, and to do good my religion.”

There is in all the utterances of the world no grander, no sublimer sentiment. There is no creed that can be compared with it for a moment. It should be wrought in gold, adorned with jewels, and impressed upon every human heart: ”The world is my country, and to do good my religion.”

In 1792, Paine was elected by the department of Calais as their representative in the National a.s.sembly. So great was his popularity in France, that he was selected about the same time by the people of no less than four departments.

Upon taking his place in the a.s.sembly, he was appointed as one of a committee to draft a const.i.tution for France. Had the French people taken the advice of Thomas Paine, there would have been no ”reign of terror.” The streets of Paris would not have been filled with blood in that reign of terror. There were killed in the City of Paris not less, I think, than seventeen thousand people--and on one night, in the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew, there were killed, by a.s.sa.s.sination, over sixty thousand souls--men, women, and children. The revolution would have been the grandest success of the world. The truth is that Paine was too conservative to suit the leaders of the French revolution.

They, to a great extent, were carried away by hatred and a desire to destroy. They had suffered so long, they had borne so much, that it was impossible for them to be moderate in the hour of victory.

Besides all this, the French people had been so robbed by the government, so degraded by the church, that they were not fit material with which to construct a republic. Many of the leaders longed to establish a beneficent and just government, but the people asked for revenge. Paine was filled with a real love for mankind. His philanthropy was boundless. He wished to destroy monarchy--not the monarch. He voted for the destruction of tyranny, and against the death of the tyrant. He wished to establish a government on a new basis--one that would forget the past; one that would give privileges to none, and protection to all.

In the a.s.sembly, where all were demanding the execution of the king,--where to differ with the majority was to be suspected, and where to be suspected was almost certain death--Thomas Paine had the courage, the goodness, and the justice to vote against death. To vote against the execution of the king was a vote against his own life. This was the sublimity of devotion to principle. For this he was arrested, imprisoned, and doomed to death. There is not a theologian who has ever maligned Thomas Paine that has the courage to do this thing. When Louis Capet was on trial for his life before the French convention, Thomas Paine had the courage to speak and vote against the sentence of death. In his speech I find the following splendid sentiments:

”My contempt and hatred for monarchical governments are sufficiently well known, and my compa.s.sion for the unfortunate, friends or enemies, is equally profound.

I have voted to put Louis Capet upon trial, because it was necessary to prove to the world the perfidy, the corruption, and the horror of the monarchical system.

To follow the trade of a king destroys all morality, just as the trade of a jailer deadens all sensibility.

Make a man a king today and tomorrow he will be a brigand.

Had Louis Capet been a farmer, he might have been held in esteem by his neighbors, and his wickedness results from his position rather than from his nature.

Let the French nation purge its territory of kings without soiling itself with their impure blood.

Let the United States be the asylum of Louis Capet, where, in spite of the overshadowing miseries and crimes of a royal life, he will learn by the continual contemplation of the general prosperity that the true system of government is not that of kings, but of the people.

I am an enemy of kings, but I can not forget that they belong to the human race.

It is always delightful to pursue that course where policy and humanity are united.

As France has been the first of all the nations of Europe to destroy royalty, let it be the first to abolish the penalty of death.

As a true republican, I consider kings as more the objects of contempt than of vengeance.”

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