In September, Nineteen Hundred Four, the World's Free-Thought Convention was held in Rome, and a committee was appointed to decorate the statue of Bruno and hold at its base a memorial meeting. The principal address was by Ernst Haeckel. In the course of his remarks Haeckel said:
We meet in the Eternal City in the cause of liberty and the cause of truth. We need to express, each in his own way, unfettered and unvexed by coercion and fear of suppression, the things we believe are right and just and beautiful, and should be said. We know but little, but in this we are agreed—that there is no final, arbitrary and dogmatic truth. Truth is a point of view; as we know more and comprehend more, we will express more. Man has today freedom to breathe, freedom to study, freedom to grow, such as he never before had since time began. Man has today more faith than he ever had before—more faith in himself, more faith in his fellows. Thinking, like the physical act of walking, is a matter of faith. For the privilege of being here today, in this place, expressing what we think, we are under special obligations to one man, and the entire world of progress is under obligation to this man—and that man is Garibaldi.
Garibaldi passed peacefully away at his beloved Caprera in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-two, aged seventy-five, gently ministered to by his children and grandchildren. The insurance-company that might have insured his life when he was twenty would have made money on the transaction regardless of rate. Yet he was the hero of sixty-seven battles on land and sea, and engaged in more than two hundred personal encounters, where rifles, pistols, stilettos, swords or cudgels played their part. Behold the irony of Fate!
No man was ever more detested, hated, feared—no man was ever better loved. That he was a sternly honest, sincere man, singularly pure in motive and abstemious in habit, even his bitterest enemies do not dispute. If Savonarola was God-intoxicated, Garibaldi was freedom- mad.
He refused bribes, declined honors, put aside titles, and died as penniless as he was born, and as he had lived. His life was consecrated to one thing—Liberty.
RICHARD COBDEN
What I contend is that England is today so situated in every
particular of her domestic and foreign circumstances that, by
leaving other governments to settle their own business and fight out
their own quarrels, and by attending to the vast and difficult
affairs of her own enormous realm, and the condition of her people,
she will not only be setting the world an example of noble morality,
which no other nation is so happily free to set, but she will be
following the very course which the maintenance of her own greatness
most imperatively demands. It is precisely because Great Britain is
so strong in resources, in courage, in institutions, in geographical
position, that she can, before all other European powers, afford to
be moral, and to set the example of a mighty nation walking in the
paths of justice and peace.
—Cobden
[Illustration: Richard Cobden]
Richard Cobden never had any chance in life. He was born in an obscure hamlet of West Sussex, England, in Eighteen Hundred Four. His father was a poor farmer, who lost his freehold and died at the top, whipped out, discouraged, when the lad was ten years old. Richard Cobden became a porter, a clerk, a traveling salesman, a mill-owner, a member of parliament, an economist, a humanitarian, a statesman, a reformer. Up to his thirteenth year he was chiefly interested in the laudable task of making a living—getting on in the world. During that year, and seemingly all at once and nothing first, just as bubbles do when they burst, he beheld the problem of business from the broad vantage- ground of humanitarianism. But he did not burst, for his dreams were spun out of life's realities, and today are coming true; in fact, many of them came true in his own time. Richard Cobden ceased to be provincial and became universal.
He saw that commerce, instead of being merely a clutch for personal gain, was the chief factor in civilization. He realized that we are educated through our efforts to get food and clothing; and therefore the man who ministers to the material wants of humanity is really the true priest. The development of every animal has come about through its love-emotions and its struggle to exist.
A factory in a town changes every person in the town, mentally and physically. This being true, does not the management of this factory call for men of heart and soul—broad-minded, generous, firm in the right? Then every factory is influenced by the laws of the land, and each country is influenced by the laws of other countries, since most countries that are engaged in manufacturing find a market abroad.
Cobden set himself to inquire into the causes of discontent and failure, of progress and prosperity. And not content merely to philosophize, he carried his theories into his own enterprises.
Many of our modern business betterments seem to have had their rise in the restless, prophetic brain of Richard Cobden. He of all men sought to make commerce a science, and business a fine art. The world moves slowly.
It is only a few years ago that we in America thought to have in our
President's Cabinet a Secretary of Commerce and Labor.
Listen to what Cobden wrote in Eighteen Hundred Forty-three:
In the close council of every king, or president, or prince, should be a man of affairs whose life is devoted to commerce and labor, and the needs and requirements of peace. His work is of far greater moment than that of men-of-war. Battleships ever form a suggestion for their use, and as long as we have armies, men will kill, fight and destroy. Soldiers who do not want to fight are not of this earth. Prepare for war and war will come. When government gives to the arts of peace the same thought and attention that it gives to the arts of war, we will have peace on earth and good-will among men. But so long as the soldier takes precedence of the businessman in the political courts of the world, famine, death, disease and want will crouch at our doors. Commerce is production, war is destruction. The laws of production and distribution must and will be made a science; and then and not until then will happiness come to mankind and this earth serve as a pattern for the paradise of another life, instead of being a pandemonium.
* * * * *
Emerson defines commerce as carrying things from where they are plentiful to where they are needed. Business is that field of human endeavor which undertakes to supply the materials to humanity that life demands.
The clergy are our spiritual advisers, preparing us for a pleasant and easy place in another world. The lawyers advise us on legal themes— showing us how to obey the law, or else evade it, and they protect us from lawyers. The doctors look after us when disease attacks our bodies—or when we think it does.
We used to talk about "The Three Learned Professions"; if we use the phrase now, it is only in a Pickwickian sense, for we realize that there are at present fifty-seven varieties of learned men.
The greatest and most important of all the professions is that of Commerce, or Business. Medicine and law have their specialties—a dozen each—but business has ten thousand specialties, or divisions.
So important do we now recognize business, or this ministering to the material wants of humanity, that theology has shifted its ground, and within a few years has declared that to eat rightly, dress rightly, and work rightly are the fittest preparation for a life to come.
The best lawyers now are businessmen, and their work is to keep the commercial craft in a safe channel, where it will not split on the rocks of litigation nor founder in the shallows of misunderstanding. Every lawyer will tell you this, "To make money you must satisfy your customers."
The greatest change in business came with the one-price system.
The old idea was for the seller to get as much as he possibly could for everything he sold. Short weight, short count, and inferiority in quality were considered quite proper and right, and when you bought a dressed turkey from a farmer, if you did not discover the stone inside the turkey when you weighed it and paid for it, there was no redress. The laugh was on you. And moreover a legal maxim—caveat emptor, "Let the buyer beware"—made cheating legally safe.
Dealers in clothing guaranteed neither fit nor quality, and anything you paid for, once wrapped up and in your hands, was yours beyond recall—"Business is business," was a maxim that covered many sins.
A few hundred years ago business was transacted mostly through fairs and ships, and by pedlers. Your merchant of that time was a peripatetic rogue who reduced prevarication to a system.
The booth gradually evolved into a store, with the methods and customs of the irresponsible keeper intact: the men cheated their neighbors and chuckled in glee until their neighbors cheated them, which, of course, they did. Then they cursed each other, began again, and did it all over. John Quincy Adams tells of a certain deacon who kept a store near Boston, who always added in the year 1775, at the top of the column, as seventeen dollars and seventy-five cents.
The amount of misery, grief, disappointment, shame, distress, woe, suspicion and hate caused by a system which wrapped up one thing when the buyer expected another, and took advantage of his innocence and ignorance as to quality and value, can not be computed in figures. Suffice it to say that duplicity in trade has had to go. The self- preservation of the race demanded honesty, square dealing, one price to all. The change came only after a struggle, and we are not quite sure of the one-price deal yet.
But we have gotten thus far: that the man who cheats in trade is tabu. Honesty as a business asset is fully recognized. If you would succeed in business you can not afford to sell a man something he does not want; neither can you afford to disappoint him in quality, any more than in count. Other things being equal, the merchant who has the most friends will make the most money. Our enemies will not deal with us. To make a sale and acquire an enemy is poor policy. To a pedler or a man who ran a booth at a bazaar or fair, it was "get your money now or never." Buyer and seller were at war. One transaction and they never met again. The air was full of hate and suspicion, and the savage propensity of physical destruction was refined to a point where hypocrisy and untruth took the place of violence—the buyer was as bad as the seller: if he could buy below cost he boasted of it. To catch a merchant who had to have money was glorious—we smote him hip and thigh! Later, we discovered that being strangers he took us in.
The one-price system has come as a necessity, since it reduces the friction of life, and protects the child or simple person in the selection of things needed, just the same as if the buyer were an expert in values and a person who could strike back if imposed upon. Safety, peace and decency demanded the one-price system. And so we have it—with possibly a discount to the clergy, to schoolteachers, and relatives as close as second cousins. But when we reach the point where we see that all men are brothers, we will have absolute honesty and one price to all.
And this change in business methods, in our mental attitude towards trade, has all grown out of a dimly perceived but deeply felt belief in the brotherhood of man, of the solidarity of the race—also, in the further belief that life in all of its manifestations is Divine.
Therefore, he who ministers to the happiness and well-being of the life of another is a priest and is doing God's work. Men must eat, they must be clothed, they must be housed. It is quite as necessary that you should eat good food as that you should read good books, hear good music, hear good sermons, or look upon beautiful pictures. The necessary is the sacred.
There are no menial tasks. "He that is greatest among you shall be your servant." The physical reacts on the spiritual and the spiritual on the physical, and, rightly understood, are one and the same thing. We live in a world of spirit and our bodies are the physical manifestation of a spiritual thing, which for lack of a better word we call "God." We change men by changing their environment. Commerce changes the environment and gives us a better society. To supply good water, better sanitary appliances, better heating apparatus, better food, served in a more dainty way—these are all tasks worthy of the highest intelligence and devotion that can be brought to bear upon them, and every Christian preacher in the world today so recognizes, believes and preaches. We have ceased to separate the secular from the sacred. That is sacred which serves.
Once, a businessman was a person who not only thrived by taking advantage of the necessities of people, but who also banked on their ignorance of values. But all wise men now know that the way to help yourself is to help humanity. We benefit ourselves only as we benefit others. And the recognition of these truths is what has today placed the businessman at the head of the learned professions—he ministers to the necessities of humanity.
Out of blunder and bitterness comes wisdom. Men are taught through reaction, and all experience that does not kill you is good.
When the father of Richard Cobden gave up hope and acknowledged defeat, the family of a full dozen were farmed out among relatives. The kind kinsmen who volunteered to look after the frail and sensitive Richard evaded responsibility by placing the lad in a boys' boarding- school. Here he remained from his tenth until his sixteenth year. Once a year he was allowed to write a letter home to his mother, but during the five years he saw her but once.
Hunger and heartache have their uses. Richard Cobden lived to strike the boarding-school fallacy many a jolting blow; but it required Charles Dickens to complete the work by ridicule, just as Robert Ingersoll laughed the Devil out of church. We fight for everything until the world regards it as ridiculous, then we abandon it. So long as war is regarded as heroic, we will fight for it; when it becomes absurd it will die.
Said Richard Cobden in a speech in the House of Commons: "Of all the pathetic fallacies perpetuated, none seems to me more cruelly absurd than the English Boarding-School for boys. The plan of taking the child of seven, eight or ten years away from his parents, and giving him into the keeping of persons who have only a commercial interest in him, and compelling him to fight for his life among little savages as unhappy as himself, or sink into miserable submission, seems too horrible to contemplate." Yet this plan of so-called education continued up to about fifty years ago, and was upheld and supported by the best society of England, including the clergy, who were usually directly "particeps criminis" in the business.
Logic and reason failed to dislodge the folly, and finally it was left to a stripling reporter, turned novelist, to give us Squeers and Dotheboys Hall. This fierce ridicule was the thing which finally punctured the rhinoceros hide of the pedagogic blunder.
There is one test for all of our educational experiments—will it bring increased love? That which breeds hate and fosters misery is bad in every star. Compare the boarding-school idea with the gentle philosophy of Friedrich Froebel, and note how Froebel always insists that the education of the mother and her child should go forward hand in hand. Motherhood is for the mother, and she who shifts the care of her growing child to a Squeers, not only immerses her child in misery but loses the opportunity of her life.
When Richard was sixteen he was transferred from the boarding-school to his uncle's warehouse in London. His position was that of a poor relation, and his work in the warehouse was to carry bundles and manipulate a broom. His shy and sensitive ways caught the attention of a burly and gruff superintendent, whose gruffness was only on the outside. This man said to the boy, before he had been sweeping a week: "Young 'un, I obsarve with my hown hies that you sweeps in the corners. For this I raises your pay a shilling a week, and makes you monkey to the shipping-clerk."
In a year the shipping-clerk was needed as a salesman, and Richard took his place. In another year Richard was a salesman, and canvassing London for orders. Very shortly after he became convinced that to work for relations was a mistake. Twenty years later the thought crystallized in his mind thus: Young man, you had better neither hire relatives nor work for them. It means servility or tyranny or both. You do not want to be patronized nor placed under obligations, nor have other helpers imagine you are a favorite. To grow you must be free—let merit count and nothing else. Probably this was what caused a wise man to say, "The Devil sent us our relatives, but thank Heaven we can choose our friends for ourselves."
Relatives often assume a fussy patronizing management which outsiders never do. And so at twenty we find Cobden cutting loose from relatives. He went to work as a commercial traveler selling cotton prints. That English custom of the "commercial dinner," where all the "bagmen" that happened to be in the hotel dine at a common table, as a family, and take up a penny collection for the waiter, had its rise in the brain of Cobden. He thought the traveling salesman should have friendly companionship, and the commercial dinner with its frank discussions and good-fellowship would in degree compensate for the lack of home. This idea of brotherhood was very strong in Richard Cobden's heart. And always at these dinners he turned the conversation into high and worthy channels, bringing up questions of interest to the "boys," and trying to show them that the more they studied the laws of travel, the more they knew about commerce, the greater their power as salesmen. His journal about this time shows, "Expense five shillings for Benjamin Franklin's 'Essays,'" and the same for "'Plutarch's Lives.'" And from these books he read aloud at the bagmen's dinners.
Cobden anticipated in many ways that excellent man, Arthur F. Sheldon, and endeavored to make salesmanship a fine art.
From a salesman on a salary, he evolved into a salesman on a salary and commission. Next he made a bold stand with two fellow-travelers and asked for the exclusive London agency of a Manchester print-mill. A year later he was carrying a line of goods worth forty thousand pounds on unsecured credit. "Why do you entrust me with all these goods when you know I am not worth a thousand pounds in my own name?"
And the senior member of the great house of Fort, Sons and Company answered: "Mr. Cobden, we consider the moral risk more than we do the financial one. Our business has been built up by trusting young, active men of good habits. With us character counts." And Cobden went up to London and ordered the words, "Character Counts!" cut deep in a two-inch oak plank which he fastened to the wall in his office.
At twenty-seven his London brokerage business was netting him an income of twelve hundred pounds a year. It seems at this time that Fort and Sons had a mill at Sabden, which on account of mismanagement on the part of superintendants had fallen into decay. The company was thinking of abandoning the property, and the matter was under actual discussion when in walked Cobden.
"Sell it to Cobden," said one of the directors, smiling.
"For how much?" asked Cobden.
"A hundred thousand pounds," was the answer.
"I'll take it," said Cobden, "on twenty years' time with the privelege of paying for it sooner if I can." Cobden had three valuable assets in his composition—health, enthusiasm and right intent. Let a banker once feel that the man knows what he is doing, and is honest, and money is always forthcoming.
And so Cobden took possession of the mill at Sabden. Six hundred workers were employed, and there was not a school nor a church in the village. The workers worked when they wanted, and when they did not they quit. Every pay-day they tramped off to neighboring towns, and did not come back until they had spent their last penny. In an endeavor to discipline them, the former manager had gotten their ill- will, and they had mobbed the mill and broken every window. Cobden's task was not commercial: it was a problem in diplomacy and education. To tell of how he introduced schools, stopped child labor, planted flowerbeds and vegetable-gardens, built houses and model tenements, and disciplined the workers without their knowing it, would require a book. Let the simple fact stand that he made the mill pay by manufacturing a better grade of goods than had been made, and he also raised the social status of the people. In three years his income had increased to ten thousand pounds a year.
"At thirty," says John Morley, "Cobden passed at a single step from the natural egotism of youth to the broad and generous public spirit of a great citizen." Very early in his manhood Cobden discovered that he who would do an extraordinary work must throw details on others, and scheme for leisure. Cobden never did anything he could hire any one else to do. He saved himself to do work that to others was impossible. That is to say, he picked his men, and he chose men of his own type—healthy, restless, eager, enthusiastic, honest men. The criticism of Disraeli that "Cobden succeeded in business simply because he got other people to do his work," is sternly true. It proves the greatness of Cobden.
* * * * *
And so we find Richard Cobden, the man who had never had any chance in life, thirty years old, with an income equal to thirty-five thousand dollars a year, and at the head of a constantly growing business. He had acquired the study habit ten years before, so really we need shed no tears on account of his lack of college training. He knew political history—knew humanity—and he knew his Adam Smith. And lo! cosmic consciousness came to him in a day. His personal business took second place, and world problems filled his waking dreams.
These second births in men can usually be traced to a book, a death, a person, a catastrophe—a woman. If there was any great love in the life of Cobden I would make no effort to conceal it—goodness me!
But the sublime passion was never his, otherwise there would have been more art and less economics in his nature. Yet for women he always had a high and chivalrous regard, and his strong sense of justice caused him to speak out plainly on the subject of equal rights at a time when to do so was to invite laughter.
And so let x—Miss X—symbol the cause of Richard Cobden's rebirth. He placed his business in charge of picked men, and began his world career by going across to Paris and spending three months in studying the language and the political situation. He then moved on to Belgium and Holland, passed down through Germany to Switzerland, across to Italy, up to Russia, back to Rome, and finally took ship at Naples for England by way of Gibraltar. On arriving at Sabden he found that, while the business was going fairly well, it had failed to keep the pace that his personality had set. When the man is away the mice will play—a little. Things drop down. Eternal vigilance is not only the price of liberty, but of everything else, and success in business most of all.
Cobden knew the truth—that by applying himself to business he could become immensely rich. But if he left things to others, he could at the best expect only a moderate income on the capital he had already acquired. Everything is bought with a price—make your choice! Richard Cobden chose knowledge, service to mankind, and an all-round education, rather than money. He spent six months at his print-mill, and again fared forth upon his journeyings.
He visited Spain, Turkey, Greece and Egypt, spending several months in each country, studying the history of the place on the spot. What interested him most was the economic reasons which led to advance and fall of nations. In Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five he started for America on a sailing-vessel, making the passage in just five weeks. One letter to his brother from America contains the following:
I am thus far on my way back again to New York, which city I expect to reach on the Eighth instant, after completing a tour through Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburgh, Lake Erie to Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Albany (via Auburn, Utica, Schenectady), and the Connecticut Valley to Boston and Lowell. On my return to New York, I propose giving two days to the Hudson River, going up to Albany one day, and returning the next; after which I shall have two or three days for the purpose of taking leave of my good friends in New York, previous to going on board the "Britannia" on the Sixteenth. My journey may be called a pleasure-trip, for without an exception or interruption of any kind I have enjoyed every minute of the too short time allowed me for seeing this truly magnificent country. No writer has yet done justice to America. Her lakes, rivers, forests and cataracts are peculiarly her own, and when I think of their superiority to all that we have in the Old World, and still more, when I recollect that by a mysterious ordinance of their Creator, these were hid from "learned ken" till modern times, I fell into the fanciful belief that the Western continent was brought forth at a second birth, and intended by Nature as a more perfect specimen of her handiwork. But how in the name of breeding must we account for the degeneracy of the human form in this otherwise mammoth-producing soil? The men are but sorry descendants from the noble race that begot their ancestors. And as for the women—my eyes have not found one that deserves to be called a wholesome, blooming, pretty woman since I have been here! One-fourth part of the women look as if they had just recovered from a fit of jaundice; another quarter would in England be termed in a state of decided consumption; and the remainder are fitly likened to our fashionable women, haggard and jaded with the dissipation of a London season. There, now, haven't I out-Trolloped Mrs. Trollope! But leaving the physical for the moral, my estimate of American character has improved, contrary to my expectations, by this visit. Great as was my previous esteem for the qualities of this people, I find myself in love with their intelligence, their sincerity, and the decorous self-respect that actuates all classes. The very genius of activity seems to have found its fit abode in the souls of this restless and energetic race.
Among other interesting items which Cobden made note of in America was that everywhere wood was used for fuel, "excepting at Brownsville, Virginia, where beds of coal jut out of the hillside, and all the people have to do is to help themselves." Pittsburgh interested him, and he spent a week there: went to a theater and heard England hissed and Columbia exalted. Pittsburgh burned only wood for fuel, the wood being brought down on flatboats. At Youngstown, Ohio, were three hundred horses used on the many stagecoaches that centered there. There was a steamboat that ran from Cleveland to Buffalo in two days and a night, stopping seven times on the way to take on passengers and goods and wood for fuel. At Buffalo you could hear the roar of Niagara Falls and see the mist. Arriving at the Canada side of the Falls he was shaved by a negro who was a runaway slave, all negroes in Canada being free.
Cobden says: "The States are not especially adapted for agricultural products, the land being hilly and heavily wooded. American exports are cotton, wool, hides and lumber." It will thus be seen that in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-six America had not been discovered.
Arriving in England, Cobden began to write out his ideas and issue them in pamphlet form at his own expense. For literature, as such, he seemed to have had little thought, literature being purely a secondary love-product.
* * * * *
Cobden's work was statistical, economic, political and philosophic. From writing he read his pamphlets before various societies and lyceums. Debates naturally followed, and soon Cobden was forced to defend his theories.
He was nominated for a seat in Parliament and was defeated. Next year he ran again and was elected. The political canvass had given freedom to his wings; he had learned to think on his feet, to meet interruption, to parry in debate. The air became luminous with reasons.
England then had a tax on everything, including bread. On grains and meat brought into England there was an import tax which was positively prohibitive. This tax was for the dual purpose of raising revenue for the Government, and to protect the English farmer. Of course, the farmer believed in this tax which prevented any other country from coming into competition with himself.
Cobden thought that food-products should pass unobstructed to where they were needed, and that any other plan was mistaken and vicious. The question came up in the House of Commons, and Cobden arose to speak. Anyone who then spoke of "free trade" was considered disloyal to his country. Cobden used the word and was hissed. He waited and continued to speak. "Famine is possible only where trade is restricted," and he proved his proposition by appeals to history, and a wealth of economic information that hushed the House into respectful silence. As an economist he showed he was the peer of any man present. The majority disagreed with him, but his courteous manner won respect, and his resourceful knowledge made the opposition cautious.
Soon after he brought up a public-school measure, and this was voted down on the assumption that education was a luxury, and parents who wanted their children educated should look after it themselves, just as they did the clothing and food of the child. At best, education should be left to the local parish, village or city government.
Cobden was in the minority; but he went back to Manchester and formed the Anti-Corn-Law League, demanding that wheat and maize should be admitted to the United Kingdom free of duty, and that no tax of any kind should be placed on breadstuffs. The farmers raised a howl— incited by politicians—and Cobden was challenged to go into farming communities and debate the question. The enemy hoped, and sincerely believed, he would be mobbed. But he accepted the challenge, and the debate took place, with the result that he was for the most part treated with respect, since he convinced his hearers that agriculture was something he knew more about than did the landlords. He showed farmers how to diversify crops and raise vegetables and fruits, and if grains would flow in cheaper than they could raise them, why then take the money they received from vegetables and buy grain! It was an uphill fight, but Cobden threw his soul into it, and knew that some day it would win.
Cobden's contention was that all money necessary to run the Government should be raised by direct taxation on land, property and incomes, and not on food any more than on air, since both are necessary to actual existence. To place a tariff on necessities, keeping these things out of the country and out of the reach of the plain and poor people who needed them, was an inhumanity. A tariff should be placed on nothing but articles of actual luxury—things people can do without—but all necessities of life should flow by natural channels, unobstructed. An indirect tax is always an invitation to extravagance on the part of Government, and also, it is a temptation to favor certain lines of trade at the expense of others, and so is class legislation. Government must exist for all the people, never for the few, and the strong and powerful must consider the lowly and weak.
The landed gentry upheld the Corn Laws and used the word "commercial" as an epithet. Very naturally they made their tenants believe that if free trade were allowed, the farmers would be worse than bankrupt, and commercialism rampant. Cobden stood for the manufacturing public and the cities. The landlords tried to disparage Cobden by declaring that smoky, dirty Birmingham was his ideal. Cobden's task was to make England see that the less men tampered with the natural laws of trade the better, and that no special class of citizens should suffer that others might be prosperous, and that business and manufacturing must and could be rescued from their low estate and be made honorable. And so the fight went on. From a curiosity to hear what Cobden might say, interest in the theme subsided, and the opposition adopted the cheerful habit of trooping out to the cloakroom whenever Cobden arose to speak.
Cobden had at least one very great quality which few reformers have: he was patient with the fools. Against stupidity he never burst forth in wrath. Impatience with stupidity is a fine mark of stupidity. He knew the righteousness of his cause, and repeated and kept repeating his arguments in varied form. His platform manner was conversational and friendly. He often would use the phrase, "Come, let us just talk this matter over together." And so he quickly established close, friendly terms with his hearers, which, while lacking the thrill of oratory, made its impress upon a few who grew to love the man. John Bright tells of "the mild, honest look of love and genuineness that beamed from his eyes," and which told the story even better than his words.
* * * * *
And so the Anti-Corn-Law agitation continued. Sir Robert Peel, as head of the Ministry, sought in every possible way to silence Cobden and bring him into contempt, even to denouncing him as "a dangerous agitator who would, if he could, do for London what Robespierre did for Paris." But time went on as time does, and Cobden had been before the country as the upholder of unpopular causes for more than ten years. There was famine in Ireland. By the roadside famishing mothers held to their withered breasts dying children, and called for help upon the passers-by. Cobden described the situation in a way that pierced the rhinoceros hides of the landlords, and they offered concessions of this and that. Cobden said, "Future generations will stand aghast with amazement when they look back upon this year and see children starving for bread in Ireland, and we forbidding the entry of corn into the country with a prohibitive tariff, backing up this law with armed guns."
The common people began to awake. If famine could occur in Cork and Dublin, why not in Manchester and London? The question came close, now. The Anti-Corn-Law League saw its opportunity. Mass meetings were held in all cities and towns. In Manchester, Cobden asked for funds to carry on the agitation. He himself headed the list with a thousand pounds. Twenty-three manufacturers followed his lead in three minutes. Windsor and Westminster now sat up and rubbed their sleepy eyes, and Sir Robert Peel sent word to Cobden asking for a conference. Cobden replied, "All we desire is an immediate repeal of the Corn Laws—no conference is necessary."
Sir Robert Peel sent in his resignation as Prime Minister, saying he could not in conscience comply with the demands of the mob, and while compliance seemed necessary to avoid revolution, others must make the compromise. The Queen then appointed Lord John Russell as Prime Minister and ordered him to form a new Cabinet and give an office to Cobden. Lord Russell tried for four days to meet the issue, and endeavored to placate the people with platitude and promise. Cobden refused all office, and informed Lord Russell that he preferred to help the Crown by remaining an outside advocate.
Every Government, at the last, is of the people, by the people, but whether for the people depends upon whether the people are awake. And now England did not care for a radical change of rulers; all the citizens wanted was that those in power recede from their position and grant the relief demanded. The Queen now reconsidered the resignation of Sir Robert Peel and refused to accept it, and he again assumed the reins. An extraordinary session of the House of Commons was called and the Corn Laws were repealed. The House of Lords concurred. The nobility was absolutely routed, and Cobden, "the sooty manufacturer," had won.
Strangely enough, panic did not follow, nor did the yeomanry go into bankruptcy. The breadstuffs flowed in, and the manufacturing population being better fed at a less outlay than formerly, had more money to spend. Great general prosperity followed, and the gentry, who had threatened to abandon their estates if the Corn Laws were repealed, simply raised their rents a trifle and increased the gaming limit.
Sir Robert Peel publicly acknowledged his obligation to Cobden, and Lord Palmerston, who had fought him tooth and nail, did the same, explaining, "A new epoch has arisen, and England is a manufacturing country, and as such the repeal of the Corn Laws became desirable." As though he would say, "To have had free trade before this new epoch arose, would have been a calamity." A large sum had been subscribed but not used in the agitation. And now by popular acclaim it was decided that this money should go to Cobden personally as a thank- offering. When the proposition was made, new subscriptions began to flow in, until the sum of eighty thousand pounds was realized. Cobden's business had been neglected. In his fight for the good of the nation his own fortune had taken wing. He announced his intention of retiring from politics and devoting himself to trade, and this was that which, probably, caused the tide to turn his way. He hesitated about accepting the gift, which amounted to nearly half a million dollars, but finally concluded that only by accepting could he be free to serve the State, and so he acceded to the wishes of his friends. Some years later, Lord Palmerston offered him a baronetcy and a seat in the cabinet, but he preferred still to help the State as an outside advocate.
John Morley, the strongest and sanest of modern English statesmen, says:
"Cobden had an intrepid faith in the perfectibility of man. His doctrine was one of non-intervention; that the powerful can afford to be lenient; that mankind continually moves toward the light if not too much interfered with. By his influence the darker shapes of repression were banished from the education of the young; the insane were treated with a consideration before unknown; the criminal was regarded as a brother who deserved our gentlest consideration and patience; the time-honored and ineffective processes of violence and coercion fell into abeyance, and a rational moderation and enlightenment appeared on the horizon. He elevated and refined the world of business, just as he benefited everything he touched. His early death at the age of sixty-one seemed a calamity for England, for we so needed the help of his generous, gentle and unresentful spirit. He lived not in vain; yet years must pass before the full and sublime truths for which he stood are realized."
THOMAS PAINE
These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the
sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of
his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and
thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily
conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the
conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap,
we esteem too lightly; 't is dearness only that gives everything its
value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and
it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as FREEDOM
should not be highly rated.
—Paine, in "The Crisis"
[Illustration: THOMAS PAINE]
Thomas Paine was an English mechanic, of Quaker origin, born in the year Seventeen Hundred Thirty-seven. He was the author of four books that have influenced mankind profoundly. These books are, "Common Sense," "The Age of Reason," "The Crisis," and "The Rights of Man."
In Seventeen Hundred Seventy-four, when he was thirty-seven years old, he came to America bearing letters of introduction from Benjamin Franklin.
On arriving at Philadelphia he soon found work as editor of "The
Pennsylvania Magazine."
In Seventeen Hundred Seventy-five, in the magazine just named, he openly advocated and prophesied a speedy separation of the American Colonies from England. He also threw a purple shadow over his popularity by declaring his abhorrence of chattel slavery.
His writings, from the first, commanded profound attention, and on the advice and suggestion of Doctor Benjamin Rush, an eminent citizen of Philadelphia, the scattered editorials and paragraphs on human rights, covering a year, were gathered, condensed, revised, made into a book.
This "pamphlet," or paper-bound book, was called "Common Sense."
In France, John Adams was accused of writing "Common Sense." He stoutly denied it, there being several allusions in it stronger than he cared to stand sponsor for.
In England, Franklin was accused of being the author, and he neither denied nor admitted it. But when a lady reproached him for having used the fine alliterative phrase, applied to the king, "The Royal British Brute," he smiled and said blandly, "Madame, I would never have been so disrespectful to the brute creation as that."
"Common Sense" struck the keynote of popular feeling, and the accusation of "treason," hurled at it from many sources, only served to advertise it. It supplied the common people with reasons, and gave statesmen arguments. The Legislature of Pennsylvania voted Paine a honorarium of five hundred pounds, and the University of Pennsylvania awarded him the degree of "Master of Arts," in recognition of eminent services to literature and human rights. John Quincy Adams said, "Paine's pamphlet, 'Common Sense,' crystallized public opinion and was the first factor in bringing about the Revolution."
The Reverend Theodore Parker once said: "Every living man in America in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six, who could read, read 'Common Sense,' by Thomas Paine. If he was a Tory, he read it, at least a little, just to find out for himself how atrocious it was; and if he was a Whig, he read it all to find the reasons why he was one. This book was the arsenal to which the Colonists went for their mental weapons."
As "Common Sense" was published anonymously and without copyright, and was circulated at bare cost, Paine never received anything for the work, save the twenty-five hundred dollars voted to him by the Legislature.
When independence was declared, Paine enlisted as a private, but was soon made aide-de-camp to General Greene. He was an intrepid and effective soldier and took an active part in various battles.
In December, Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six, he published his second book, "The Crisis," the first words of which have gone into the electrotype of human speech, "These are the times that try men's souls." The intent of the letters which make up "The Crisis" was to infuse courage into the sinking spirits of the soldiers. Washington ordered the letters to be read at the head of every regiment, and it was so done.
In Seventeen Hundred Eighty-one, Paine was sent to France with Colonel Laurens to negotiate a loan. The errand was successful, and Paine then made influential acquaintances, which were later to be renewed. He organized the Bank of North America to raise money to feed and clothe the army, and performed sundry and various services for the Colonies.
In Seventeen Hundred Ninety-one he published his third book, "The Rights of Man," with a complimentary preface by Thomas Jefferson. The book had an immense circulation in America and England. By way of left-handed recognition of the work, the author was indicted by the British Government for "sedition." A day was set for the trial, but as Paine did not appear—those were hanging days—and could not be found, he was outlawed and "banished forever."
He became a member of the French Assembly, or "Chamber of Deputies," and for voting against the death of the king came under suspicion, and was cast into prison, where he was held for one year, lacking a few weeks. His life was saved by James Monroe, America's Minister to France, and for eighteen months he was a member of Monroe's household.
In Seventeen Hundred Ninety-four, while in France, there was published simultaneously in England, America and France, Paine's fourth book, "The Age of Reason."
In Eighteen Hundred Two, Thomas Jefferson, then President of the United States, offered Paine passage to America on board the man-of- war "Maryland," in order that he might be safe from capture by the English, who had him under constant surveillance and were intent on his arrest, regarding him as the chief instigator in the American Rebellion. Arriving in America, Paine was the guest for several months of the President at Monticello. His admirers in Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia and New York gave banquets in his honor, and he was tendered grateful recognition on account of his services to humanity and his varied talents. He was presented by the State of New York, "in token of heroic work for the Union," a farm at New Rochelle, eighteen miles from New York, and here he lived in comparative ease, writing and farming.
He passed peacefully away, aged seventy-two, in Eighteen Hundred Nine, and his body was buried on his farm, near the house where he lived, and a modest monument erected marking the spot. He had no Christian burial, although, unlike Mr. Zangwill, he had a Christian name. Nine years after the death of Paine, William Cobbett, the eminent English reformer, stung by the obloquy visited upon the memory of Paine in America, had the grave opened and the bones of the man who wrote the first draft of our Declaration of Independence were removed to England, and buried near the spot where he was born. Death having silenced both the tongue and the pen of the Thetford weaver, no violent interference was offered by the British Government. So now the dead man slept where the presence of the living one was barred and forbidden. A modest monument marks the spot. Beneath the name are these words, "The world is my country, mankind are my friends, to do good is my religion."
In Eighteen Hundred Thirty-nine, a monument was erected at New Rochelle, New York, on the site of the empty grave where the body of Paine was first buried, by the lovers and admirers of the man. And while only one land claims his birthplace, three countries now dispute for the privilege of honoring his dust, for it so happened that in France a strong movement was on foot demanding that the remains of Thomas Paine be removed from England to France, and be placed in the Pantheon, that resting-place of so many of the illustrious dead who gave their lives to the cause of Freedom, close by the graves of Voltaire, Rousseau and Victor Hugo. And the reason the bones were not removed to Paris was because only an empty coffin rests in the grave at Thetford, as at New Rochelle. Rumor says that Paine's skull is in a London museum, but if so, the head that produced "The Age of Reason" can not be identified. And the end is not yet!
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The genius of Paine was a flower that blossomed slowly. But life is a sequence, and the man who does great work has been in training for it. There is nothing like keeping in condition—one does not know when he is going to be called on. Prepared people do not have to hunt for a position—the position hunts for them. Paine knew no more about what he was getting ready for than did Benjamin Franklin, when at twenty he studied French, evenings, and dived deep into history.
The humble origin of Paine and his Quaker ancestry were most helpful factors in his career. Only a working-man who had tasted hardship could sympathize with the overtaxed and oppressed. And Quakerdom made him a rebel by prenatal tendency. Paine's schooling was slight, but his parents, though poor, were thinking people, for nothing sharpens the wits of men, preventing fatty degeneration of the cerebrum, like persecution. In this respect, the Jews and Quakers have been greatly blessed and benefited—let us congratulate them. Very early in life Paine acquired the study habit. And for the youth who has the study habit no pedagogic tears need be shed. There were debating-clubs at coffeehouses, where great themes were discussed; and our young weaver began his career by defending the Quakers. He acquired considerable local reputation as a weaver of thoughts upon the warp and woof of words. Occasionally he occupied the pulpit in dissenting chapels.
These were great times in England—the air was all athrob with thought and feeling. A great tidal wave of unrest swept the land. It was an epoch of growth, second only in history to the Italian Renaissance. The two Wesleys were attacking the Church, and calling upon men to methodize their lives and eliminate folly; Gibbon was writing his "Decline and Fall"; Burke, in the House of Commons, was polishing his brogue; Boswell was busy blithering about a book concerning a man; Captain Cook was sailing the seas finding continents; the two Pitts and Charles Fox were giving the king unpalatable advice; Horace Walpole was setting up his private press at Strawberry Hill; the Herschels—brother and sister—were sweeping the heavens for comets; Reynolds, West, Lawrence, Romney and Gainsborough were founding the first school of British Art; and David Hume, the Scotchman, was putting forth arguments irrefutable. And into this seething discontent came Thomas Paine, the weaver, reading, studying, thinking, talking, with nothing to lose but his reputation. He was twenty-seven years of age when he met Ben Franklin at a coffeehouse in London. Paine got his first real mental impetus from Franklin. Both were workingmen. Paine listened to Franklin one whole evening, and the said, "What he is I can at least in part become." Paine thought Franklin quite the greatest man of his time, an opinion which, among others held by him, the world now fully accepts.
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Paine at twenty-four, from a simple weaver, had been called into the office of his employer to help straighten out the accounts. He tried storekeeping, but with indifferent success. Then it seems he was employed by the Board of Excise on a similar task. Finally he was given a position in the Excise. This position he might have held indefinitely, and been promoted in the work, for he had clerical talents which made his services valuable. But there was another theme that interested him quite as much as collecting taxes for the Government, and that was the philosophy of taxation. This was very foolish in Thomas Paine—a tax-collector should collect taxes, and not concern himself with the righteousness of the business, nor about what becomes of the money.
Paine had made note of the fact that England collected taxes from Jews, but that Jews were not allowed to vote because they were not "Christians," it being assumed that Jews were not as fit, either intellectually or morally, to pass on questions of state as members of the "Church." In Seventeen Hundred Seventy-one, in a letter to a local paper, he used the phrase, "The iniquity of taxation without representation," referring to England's treatment of the Quakers. About the same time he called attention to the fact that the Christian religion was built on the Judaic, and that the reputed founder of the established religion was a Jew and his mother a Jewess, and to deprive Jews of the right of full citizenship, simply because they did not take the same view of Jesus that others did, was a perversion of the natural rights of man. This expression, "the natural rights of man," gave offense to a certain clergyman of Thetford, who replied that man had no natural rights, only privileges—all the rights he had were those granted by the Crown. Then followed a debate at the coffeehouse, followed by a rebuke from Paine's superior officer in the Excise, ordering him to cease all political and religious controversy on penalty.
Paine felt the smart of the rebuke; he thought it was unjustifiable, in view of the fact that the excellence of his work for the Government had never been questioned. So he made a speech in a dissenting chapel explaining the situation. But explanations never explain, and his assertion that the honesty of his service had never been questioned was put out of commission the following week by the charge of smuggling. His name was dropped from the official payroll until his case could be tried, and a little later he was peremptorily discharged. The charge against him was not pressed—he was simply not wanted—and the statement by the head exciseman that a man working for the Government should not criticize the Government was pretty good logic, anyway. Paine, however, contended that all governments exist for the governed, and with the consent of the governed, and it is the duty of all good citizens to take an interest in their government, and if possible show where it can be strengthened and bettered.
It will thus be seen that Paine was forging reasons—his active brain was at work, and his sensitive spirit was writhing under a sense of personal injustice.
One of his critics—a clergyman—said that if Thomas Paine wished to preach sedition, there was plenty of room to do it outside of England. Paine followed the suggestion, and straightway sought out Franklin to ask him about going to America.
Every idea that Paine had expressed was held by Franklin and had been thought out at length. Franklin was thirty-one years older than Paine, and time had tempered his zeal, and beside that, his tongue was always well under control, and when he expressed heresy he seasoned it with a smile and a dash of wit that took the bitterness out of it. Not so Paine—he was an earnest soul, a little lacking in humor, without the adipose which is required for a diplomat.
Franklin's letters of introduction show how he admired the man—what faith he had in him—and it is now believed that Franklin advanced him money, that he might come to America.
William Cobbett says:
As my Lord Grenville has introduced the name of Edmund Burke, suffer me, my Lord, to introduce the name of a man who put this Burke to shame, who drove him off the public stage to seek shelter in the pension-list, and who is now named fifty million times where the name of the pensioned Burke is mentioned once. The cause of the American Colonies was the cause of the English Constitution, which says that no man shall be taxed without his own consent. A little cause sometimes produces a great effect; an insult offered to a man of great talent and unconquerable perseverance has in many instances produced, in the long run, most tremendous effects; and it appears to me very clear that the inexcusable insults offered to Mr. Paine while he was in the Excise in England was the real cause of the Revolution in America; for, though the nature of the cause of America was such as I have before described it, though the principles were firm in the minds of the people of that country, still it was Mr. Paine, and Mr. Paine alone, who brought those principles into action.
Paine's part in the Revolutionary War was most worthy and honorable. He shouldered a musket with the men at Valley Forge, carried messages by night through the enemy's country, acted as rear-guard for Washington's retreating army, and helped at break of day to capture Trenton, and proved his courage in various ways. As clerk, secretary, accountant and financier he did excellent service.
Of course, there had been the usual harmonious discord that will occur among men hard-pressed and over-worked, where nerve-tension finds vent at times in acrimony. But through all the nine long, weary years before the British had had enough, Paine was never censured with the same bitterness which fell upon the heads of Washington and Jefferson. Even Franklin came in for his share of blame, and it was shown that he had expended an even hundred thousand pounds in Europe, with no explanation of what he had done with the money. When called upon to give an accounting for the "yellow-dog fund," Franklin simply wrote back, "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn." And on the suggestion of Thomas Paine, the matter was officially dropped.
Paine was a writing man—the very first American writing man—and I am humiliated when I have to acknowledge that we had to get him from England. He was the first man who ever used these words, "The American Nation," and also these, "The United States of America." Paine is the first American writer who had a literary style, and we have not had so many since but that you may count them on the fingers of one hand. Note this sample of antithesis: "There are but two natural sources of wealth—the earth and the ocean—and to lose the right to either, in our situation, is to put the other up for sale."
Here is a little tribute from Paine's pen to America which some of our boomers of boom towns might do well to use:
America has now outgrown the state of infancy. Her strength and commerce make large advances to manhood; and science in all its branches has not only blossomed, but even ripened upon the soil. The cottages as it were of yesterday have grown into villages, and the villages to cities; and while proud antiquity, like a skeleton in rags, parades the streets of other nations, their genius, as if sickened and disgusted with the phantom, comes hither for recovery. America yet inherits a large portion of her first-imported virtue. Degeneracy is here almost a useless word. Those who are conversant with Europe would be tempted to believe that even the air of the Atlantic disagrees with the constitution of foreign vices; if they survive the voyage they either expire on their arrival, or linger away with an incurable consumption. There is a happy something in the climate of America which disarms them of all their power both of infection and attraction.
Ease, fluidity, grace, imagination, energy, earnestness, mark his work. No wonder is it that Franklin said, "Others can rule, many can fight, but only Paine can write for us the English tongue." And Jefferson, himself a great writer, was constantly, for many years, sending to Paine manuscript for criticism and correction. In one letter to Paine, Jefferson adds this postscript, "You must not be too much elated and set up when I tell you my belief that you are the only writer in America who can write better than your obliged and obedient servant—Thomas Jefferson."
Paine was living in peace at Bordentown in the year Seventeen Hundred Eighty-seven. The war was ended, the last hostile Britisher had departed, and the country was awakening to prosperity. Paine rode his mettlesome old war-horse "Button," back and forth from Philadelphia, often stopping and seating himself by the roadway to write out a thought while the horse that had known the smell of powder quietly nibbled the grass. The success of Benjamin Franklin as an inventor had fired the heart of Paine. He devised a plan to utilize small explosions of gunpowder to run an engine, thus anticipating our gas and gasoline engines by nearly a hundred years. He had also planned a bridge to span the Schuylkill. Capitalists were ready to build the bridge, provided Paine could get French engineers, then the greatest in the world, to endorse his plans. So he sailed away to France, intending also to visit his parents in England, instructing his friends in Bordentown with whom he boarded, to take care of his horse, his rooms and books with all his papers, for he would be back in less than a year. He was fifty years old. It was thirteen years since he had left England, and he felt that his transplantation to a new soil had not been in vain. England had practically exiled him, but still the land of his birth called, and unseen tendrils tugged at his heart. He must again see England, even for a brief visit, and then back to America, the land that he loved and which he had helped to free.
And destiny devised that it was to be fifteen years before he was again to see his beloved "United States of America."
Arriving in France, Paine was received with honours. There was much political unrest, and the fuse was then being lighted that was to cause the explosion of Seventeen Hundred Eighty-Nine. However, of all this Paine knew little.
He met Danton, a freemason, like himself, and various other radicals. "Common Sense" and "The Crisis" had been translated into French, printed and widely distributed, and inasmuch as Paine had been a party in bringing about one revolution, and had helped carry it through to success, his counsel and advice were sought. A few short weeks in France, and Paine having secured the endorsement of the Academy for his bridge, went over to England preparatory to sailing for America.
Arriving in England, Paine found that his father had died but a short time before. His mother was living, aged ninety-one, and in full possession of her faculties. The meeting of mother and son was full of tender memories. And the mother, while not being able to follow her gifted son in all of his reasoning, yet fully sympathized with him in his efforts to increase human rights. The Quakers, while in favor of peace, are yet revolutionaries, for their policy is one of protest.
Paine visited the old Quaker church at Thetford, and there seated in the silence, wrote these words:
When we consider, for the feelings of Nature can not be dismissed, the calamities of war and the miseries it inflicts upon the human species, the thousands and tens of thousands of every age and sex who are rendered wretched by the event, surely there is something in the heart of man that calls upon him to think! Surely there is some tender chord, tuned by the hand of the Creator, that still struggles to emit in the hearing of the soul a note of sorrowing sympathy. Let it then be heard, and let man learn to feel that the true greatness of a nation is founded on principles of humanity, and not on conquest. War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances, such a combination of foreign matters, that no human wisdom can calculate the end. It has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes. I defend the cause of the poor, of the manufacturer, of the tradesman, of the farmer, and of all those on whom the real burden of taxes fall—but above all, I defend the cause of women and children—of all humanity.
Edmund Burke, hearing of Paine's presence in England, sent for him to come to his house. Paine accepted the invitation, and Burke doubtless got a few interesting chapters of history at first hand. "It was equal to meeting Washington, and perhaps better, for Paine is more of a philosopher than his chief," wrote Burke to the elder Pitt.
Paine saw that political unrest was not confined to France—that England was in a state of evolution, and was making painful efforts to adapt herself to the progress of the times. Paine could remember a time when in England women and children were hanged for poaching; when the insane were publicly whipped, and when, if publicly expressed, a doubt concerning the truth of Scripture meant exile or to have your ears cut off.
Now he saw the old custom reversed and the nobles were bowing to the will of the people. It came to him that if the many in England could be educated, the Crown having so recently received its rebuke at the hands of the American Colonies, a great stride to the front could be made. Englishmen were talking about their rights. What are the natural rights of a man? He began to set down his thoughts on the subject. These soon extended themselves into chapters. The chapters grew into a book—a book which he hoped would peacefully do for England what "Common Sense" had done for America. This book, "The Rights of Man," was written at the same time that Mary Wollstonecraft was writing her book, "The Rights of Women."
In London, Paine made his home at the house of Thomas Rickman, a publisher. Rickman has given us an intimate glimpse into the life of the patriot, and told us among other things that Paine was five feet ten inches high, of an athletic build, and very fond of taking long walks. Among the visitors at Rickman's house who came to see Paine were Doctor Priestly, Home Tooke, Romney, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the Duke of Portland and Mary Wollstonecraft. It seems very probable that Mrs. Wollstonecraft, as she styled herself, read to Paine parts of her book, for very much in his volume parallels hers, not only in the thought, but in actual wording. Whether he got more ideas from her than she got from him will have to be left to the higher critics. Certain it is that they were in mutual accord, and that Mrs. Wollstonecraft had read "Common Sense" and "The Rights of Man" to a purpose.
It was too much to expect that a native-born Englishman could go across the sea to British Colonies and rebel against British rule and then come back to England and escape censure. The very popularity of Paine in certain high circles centered attention on him. And Pitt, who certainly admired Paine's talents, referred to his stay in England as "indelicate."
England is the freest country on earth. It is her rule to let her orators unmuzzle their ignorance and find relief in venting grievances upon the empty air. In Hyde Park any Sunday one can hear the same sentiments for the suppression of which Chicago paid in her Haymarket massacre. Grievances expressed are half-cured, but England did not think so then. The change came about through thirty years' fight, which Paine precipitated.
The patience of England in dealing with Paine was extraordinary. Paine was right, but at the same time he was as guilty as Theodore Parker was when indicted by the State of Virginia along with Ol' John Brown.
"The Rights of Man" sold from the very start, and in a year fifty thousand copies had been called for.
Unlike his other books, this one was bringing Paine a financial return. Newspaper controversies followed, and Burke, the radical, found himself unable to go the lengths to which Paine was logically trying to force him.
Paine was in Paris, on a visit, on that memorable day which saw the fall of the Bastile. Jefferson and Adams had left France, and Paine was regarded as the authorized representative of America; in fact, he had been doing business in France for Washington. Lafayette in a moment of exultant enthusiasm gave the key of the Bastile to Paine to present to Washington, and as every American schoolboy knows, this famous key to a sad situation now hangs on its carefully guarded peg at Mount Vernon. Lafayette thought that, without the example of America, France would never have found strength to throw off the rule of kings, and so America must have the key to the detested door that was now unhinged forever.
"And to me," said Lafayette, "America without her Thomas Paine is unthinkable." The words were carried to England and there did Paine no especial good. But England was now giving Paine a living—there was a market for the product of his pen—and he was being advertised both by his loving friends and his rabid enemies.
Paine had many admirers in France, and in some ways he felt more at home there than in England. He spoke and wrote French. However, no man ever wrote well in more than one language, although he might speak intelligently in several; and the orator using a foreign tongue never reaches fluidity. "Where liberty is, there is my home," said Franklin. And Paine answered, "Where liberty is not, there is my home." The newspaper attacks had shown Paine that he had not made himself clear on all points, and like every worthy orator who considers, when too late, all the great things he intended to say, he was stung with the thought of all the brilliant things he might have said, but had not.
And so straightway he began to prepare Part Two of "The Rights of Man." The book was printed in cheap form similar to "Common Sense," and was beginning to be widely read by workingmen.
"Philosophy is all right," said Pitt, "but it should be taught to philosophical people. If this thing is kept up London will re-enact the scenes of Paris."
Many Englishmen thought the same. The official order was given, and all of Paine's books that could be found were seized and publicly used for a bonfire by the official hangman. Paine was burned in effigy in many cities, the charge being made that he was one of the men who had brought about the French Revolution. With better truth it could have been stated that he was the man, with the help of George the Third, who had brought about the American Revolution. The terms of peace made between England and the Colonies granted amnesty to Paine and his colleagues in rebellion, but his acts could not be forgotten, even though they were nominally forgiven. This new firebrand of a book was really too much, and the author got a left-handed compliment from the Premier on his literary style—books to burn!
Three French provinces nominated him to represent them in the Chamber of Deputies. He accepted the solicitations of Calais, and took his seat for that province.
He knew Danton, Mirabeau, Marat and Robespierre. Danton and Robespierre respected him, and often advised with him. Mirabeau and Marat were in turn suspicious and afraid of him. The times were feverish, and Paine, a radical at heart, here was regarded as a conservative. In America, the enemy stood out to be counted: the division was clear and sharp; but here the danger was in the hearts of the French themselves.
Paine argued that we must conquer our own spirits, and in this new birth of freedom not imitate the cruelty and harshness of royalty against which we protest. "We will kill the king, but not the man," were his words. But with all of his tact and logic he could not make his colleagues see that to abolish the kingly office, not to kill the individual, was the thing desired.
So Louis, who helped free the American Colonies, went to the block, and his enemy, Danton, a little later, did the same; Mirabeau, the boaster, had died peacefully in his bed; Robespierre, who signed the death-warrant of Paine, "to save his own head," died the death he had reserved for Paine; Marat, "the terrible dwarf," horribly honest, fearfully sincere, jealous and afraid of Paine, hinting that he was the secret emissary of England, was stabbed to his death by a woman's hand.
And amid the din, escape being impossible, and also undesirable,
Thomas Paine wrote the first part of "The Age of Reason."
The second part was written in the Luxembourg prison, under the shadow of the guillotine. But life is only a sentence of death, with an indefinite reprieve. Prison, to Paine, was not all gloom.
The jailer, Benoit, was good-natured and cherished his unwilling guests as his children. When they left for freedom or for death, he kissed them, and gave each a little ring in which was engraved the single word, "Mizpah." But finally Benoit, himself, was led away, and there was none to kiss his cheek, nor to give him a ring and cry cheerily, "Good luck, Citizen Comrade! Until we meet again!"
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