Part 5 (1/2)

”The key of happiness is not in the keeping of any sect, nor ought the road to it to be obstructed by any.

”My religion, and the whole of it, is the fear and love of the Deity, and universal philanthropy.

”I have yet, I believe, some years in store, for I have a good state of health and a happy mind. I take care of both, by nouris.h.i.+ng the first with temperance and the latter with abundance.

”He lives immured within the Bastille of a word.”

How perfectly that sentence describes the orthodox. The Bastille in which they are immured is the word ”Calvinism.”

”Man has no property in man.”

”The world is my country, to do good my religion.”

I ask again whether these splendid utterances came from the lips of a drunken beast?

”Man has no property in man.”

What a splendid motto that would make for the religious newspapers of this country thirty years ago. I ask, again, whether these splendid utterances came from the lips of a drunken beast?

Only a little while ago--two or three days--I read a report of an address made by Bishop Doane, an Episcopal Bishop in apostolic succession--regular line from Jesus Christ down to Bishop Doane. The Bishop was making a speech to young preachers--the sprouts, the theological buds. He took it upon him to advise them all against early marriages. Let us look at it. Do you believe there is any duty that man owes to G.o.d that will prevent a man marrying the woman he loves?

Is there some duty that I owe to the clouds that will prevent me from marrying some good, sweet woman? Now, just think of that! I tell you, young man, you marry as soon as you can find her and support her. I had rather have one woman that I know than any amount of G.o.ds that I am not acquainted with. If there is any revelation from G.o.d to man, a good woman is the best revelation he has ever made; and I will admit that that revelation was inspired.

Now, on the subject of marriage, let me offset the speech of Bishop Doane by a word from this ”wretched infidel:”

”Though I appear a sorry wanderer, the marriage state has not a sincerer friend than I. It is the harbor of human life, and is, with respect to the things of this world, what the next world is to this.

It is home, and that one word conveys more than any other word can express. For a few years we may glide along the tide of a single life, but it is a tide that flows but once, and, what is still worse, it ebbs faster than it flows, and leaves many a hapless voyager aground. I am one, you see, that has experienced the fall I am describing. I have lost my tide; it pa.s.sed by while every throb of my heart was on the wing for the salvation of America, and I have now, as contentedly as I can, made myself a little tower of walls on that sh.o.r.e that has the solitary resemblance of home.”

I just want you to know what this dreadful infidel thought of home. I just wanted you to know what Thomas Paine thought of home. Then here is another letter that Thomas Paine wrote to congress on the 21st day of January, 1808, and I wanted you to know those two.

It is only a short one:

”To the Honorable Senate of the United States: The purport of this address is to state a claim I feel myself ent.i.tled to make on the United States, leaving it to their representatives in congress to decide on its worth and its merits. The case is as follows:

”Toward the latter end of the year 1780 the continental money had become depreciated--the paper dollar being then not more than a cent--that it seemed next to impossible to continue the war. As the United States was then in alliance with France it became necessary to make France acquainted with our real situation. I therefore drew up a letter to the Count De Vergennes, stating undisguisedly the whole case, and concluding with a request whether France could not, either as a subsidy of a loan, supply the United States with a million pounds sterling, and continue that supply, annually, during the war. ”I showed this letter to Mr. Morbois, secretary of the French minister.

His remark upon it was that a million sent out of the nation exhausted it more than ten millions spent in it. I then showed it to Mr. Ralph Izard, member of congress from South Carolina. He borrowed the letter of me and said: 'We will endeavor to do something about it in congress.' Accordingly, congress then appointed John A. Laurens to go to France and make representation for the purpose of obtaining a.s.sistance. Col. Laurens wished to decline the mission, and asked that congress would appoint Col. Hamilton, who did not choose to do it.

Col. Laurens then came and stated the case to me, and said that he was well enough acquainted with the military difficulties of the army, but he was not acquainted with political affairs, or with the resources of the country, to undertake such a mission. Said he, 'If you will go with me I will accept the mission.' This I agreed to do, and did do.

We sailed from Boston in the Alliance frigate February, 1781, and arrived in France in the beginning of March. The aid obtained from France was six millions of livres, as at present, and ten millions as a loan, borrowed in Holland on the security of France. We sailed from Brest in the French frigate Resolue the 1st of June, and arrived at Boston on the 25th of August, bringing with us two millions and a half in silver, and conveying a chip and a brig laden with clothing and military stores.

”The money was transported with sixteen ox teams to the National bank at Philadelphia, which enabled our army to move to Yorktown to attack in conjunction with the French army under Rochambeau, the British army under Cornwallis.

”As I never had a single cent for these services, I felt myself ent.i.tled, as the country is now in a state of prosperity, to state the case to congress.

”As to my political works, beginning with the pamphlet 'Common Sense,'

published the beginning of January 1776, which awakened America to a declaration of independence as the president and vice-president both know, as they were works done from principle I can not dishonor that principle by ever asking any reward for them. The country has been benefited by them, and I make myself happy in the knowledge of that benefit. It is, however, proper for me to add that the mere independence of America, were it to have been followed by a system of government modeled after the corrupt system of the English government, would not have interested me with the unabated ardor it did. It was to bring forward and establish a representative system of government. As the work itself will show, that was the leading principle with me in writing that work, and all my other works during the progress of the revolution, and I followed the same principle in writing in English the 'Rights of Man.'

”After the failure of the 5 percent duty recommended by congress to pay the interest of the loan to be borrowed in Holland, I wrote to Chancellor Livingston, then minister for foreign affairs, and Robert Morris, minister of finance, and proposed a method for getting over the difficulty at once, which was by adding a continental legislature which should be empowered to make laws for the whole union instead of recommending them. So the method proposed met with their future probation. I held myself in reserve to take a step up whenever a direct occasion occurred.