Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859

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Paine told the Colonists in this pamphlet that the connection with the
mother country was of no use to them, and was rapidly becoming an
impossibility. "It is not in the power of England to do this continent
justice. The business of it is too weighty and too intricate to be
managed with any tolerable degree of convenience by a power so distant.
_To be always running three or four thousand miles with a tale or a
petition, waiting four or five months for an answer, which, when
obtained, requires five or six more to explain it in, will in a few
years be looked upon as folly and childishness_." As to the protection
of England, what is that but the privilege of contributing to her wars?
"Our trade will always be a protection." "Neutrality is a safer convoy
than a man-of-war." "It is the true interest of America to steer clear
of European contentions, which she can never do while by her dependence
on Britain she is made the make-weight in the scale of European
politics." According to "Common Sense," not only was a separation
necessary and unavoidable, but the present moment was the right time to
establish it. "The time hath found us." The materials of war were
abundant; the union of the Colonies complete. It might be difficult, if
not impossible, to form the continent into a government half a century
hence. Now the task is easy. The interest of all is the same. "There is
no religious difficulty in the way." "I fully believe that it is the
will of the Almighty that there should be a diversity of religious
opinions among us. _I look upon the various denominations among us as
children of the same family, differing only in what is called their
Christian names."_ All things considered, "nothing can settle our
affairs so expeditiously as an open and determined declaration of
independence." "This proceeding may at first appear strange and
difficult. A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a
superficial appearance of being right"; but in a little time it will
become familiar. "And until independence is declared, the continent
will feel itself like a man who continues putting off some unpleasant
business from day to day, yet knows it must be done; hates to set about
it, wishes it over, and is continually haunted with the thoughts of its
necessity." To this he thought it necessary to add a labored argument
against kings from the Old Testament, which may possibly have had much
weight with a people some of whose descendants still triumphantly quote
the same holy book in favour of slavery.

The King's speech, "a piece of finished villany" in the eyes of true
patriots, appeared in Philadelphia on the same day as "Common Sense".
Thus Paine was as lucky in his time of publication as in his choice of
a subject. All contemporaries admit that the pamphlet produced a
prodigious effect. Paine himself says,--"The success it met with was
beyond anything since the invention of printing. I gave the copyright
up to every State in the Union, and the demand ran to not less than one
hundred thousand copies." The authorship was attributed to Dr.
Franklin, to Samuel Adams, and to John Adams.

It is hardly necessary to mention that the movement party, with General
Washington at its head, considered Paine's "doctrines sound, and his
reasoning unanswerable." Even in England, Liberals read and applauded.
The pamphlet was translated into French. When John Adams went to
France, he heard himself called _le fameux Adams_, author of "Common
Sense."

It soon became apparent that the people were charged with Independence
doctrines, and, like an electrified Leyden jar, only waited for the
touch of a skilful hand to produce the explosion. "Common Sense" drew
the spark. The winged words flew over the country and produced so rapid
a change of opinion, that, in most cases, conservatives judged it
useless to publish the answers they had prepared. One or two appeared.
None attracted attention. About five months later, Congress declared
independence; "as soon," Paine wrote, "as 'Common Sense' could spread
through such an extensive country." In a few years Paine asserted and
believed, that, had it not been for him, the Colonial government would
have continued, and the United States would never have become a nation.

If we countermarch and get into the rear of Time, to borrow an
expression from "The Crisis," and, placing ourselves in January, 1776,
look at "Common Sense" from that date, we may understand without much
difficulty why it produced so great an impression. Paine, as later,
when he brought out the "Rights of Man," caused a chord to vibrate in
the popular mind which was already strung to the exact point of
tension. The publication was not only timely,--it was novel. Paine
founded a new school of pamphleteering. He was the first who wrote
politics for the million. The learned political dissertations of Junius
Brutus, Publius, or Philanglus were guarded in expression,
semi-metaphysical in theory, and Johnsonian in style. They were
relished by comparatively few readers; [1] but the shrewd illustrations
of "Common Sense," the homely force of its statements, and its concise
and muscular English stirred the mind of every class. Even Paine's
coarse epithets, "Common Ruffian," "Royal Brute of Britain," and the
like, which offended the taste of the leaders of the American
party,--for party-leaders were gentlemen in 1776,--had as much weight
with the rank-and-file as his arguments.

[Footnote 1: Compare, for instance, Judge Drayton's Independence Charge
to the Grand Jury of Charleston, delivered April 23, 1776, with "Common
Sense."]

Paine became suddenly famous. General Charles Lee said "that he burst
upon the world like Jove, in thunder." His acquaintance was sought by
all who were of the true faith in Independence; and when, soon
afterward, he visited New York, he carried with him letters from Dr.
Franklin and John Adams, introducing him to the principal residents "as
a citizen of the world, the celebrated author of 'Common Sense.'" Had
he been a man of fortune or American-born, he might have reached a
place in the foremost rank of the Fathers of the Country. But nativism
was powerful, and position important at that time, as Lee and Gates and
even Hamilton himself experienced. The signature, "Common Sense," Paine
preserved through life. It became what our authorlings, who ought to
know better, will persist in calling a _nom [1] de plume_--a Yankee
affectation, unknown to French idioms.

[Footnote 1: They generally spell it "_nomme_."]

In the autumn of 1776, Paine joined the army as volunteer aide-de-camp
to General Greene, and served through the gloomy campaign which opened
with the loss of New York in September. He remained in the field until
the army went into winter-quarters after the battles of Trenton and
Princeton. It was not as a combatant that Paine did the States good
service. He played the part of Tyraetus in prose,--an adaptation of the
old Greek lyrist to the eighteenth century and to British America,--and
cheered the soldiers, not with songs, but with essays, continuations of
"Common Sense." The first one was written on the retreat from Fort Lee,
and published under the name of "The Crisis," on the 23d of December,
when misfortune and severe weather had cast down the stoutest hearts.
It began with the well-known phrase, "'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."--"But after all,"
he continues, "matters might be worse. Howe has done very little. Fort
Washington and Fort Lee were no loss to us. The retreat was admirably
planned and conducted. General Washington is the right man for the
place, 'with a mind that can even nourish upon care.'" He closes with a
cheerful sketch of the spirit and condition of the army, attacks the
Tories, and appeals to the Colonies for union and contributions.

This "Crisis" produced the best effect at home; in England it had the
honor of being burned by the hangman. The succeeding "Crisises" were
brought out at irregular intervals, whenever the occasion seemed to
demand Paine's attention; some of them not longer than a leader in a
daily paper; others swollen to pamphlet dimensions. They were read by
every corporal's guard in the army, and printed in every town of every
State on brown or yellow paper; for white was rarely to be obtained. In
their hours of despondency, the Colonists took consolation and courage
from the "Crisis." "Never," says a contemporary, "was a writer better
calculated for the meridian under which he wrote, or who knew how to
adapt himself more happily to every circumstance... Even Cheetham
admits, that to the army Paine's pen was an appendage almost as
necessary and as formidable as its cannon."

The next campaign opened gloomily for the Colonies. The Tories felt
certain of victory. In the political almanac of that party, 1777 was
_"the year with three gallows in it."_ The English held New York and
ravaged the Jerseys on their way to Philadelphia. Howe issued a
proclamation "commanding all congresses and committees to desist and
cease from their treasonable doings," promising pardon to all who
should come in and take the oath of allegiance. Paine met him with a
"Crisis." "By what means," he asked, "do you expect to conquer America?
If you could not effect it in the summer, when our army was less than
yours, nor in the winter, when we had none, how _are_ you to do it? If
you obtain possession of this city, [Philadelphia,] you could do
nothing with it but plunder it; it would be only an additional
dead-weight on your hands. You have both an army and a country to
contend with. You may march over the country, but you cannot hold it;
if you attempt to garrison it, your army would be like a stream of
water running to nothing. Even were our men to disperse, every man to
his home, engaging to reassemble at some future day, you would be as
much at a loss in that case as now. You would be afraid to send out
your troops in detachments; when we returned, the work would be all to
do." Paine then turns to those who, frightened by the proclamation,
betrayed their country, and paints their folly and its punishment. In
speaking of them, he calls upon the Pennsylvania Council of Safety to
take into serious consideration the case of the Quakers, whose
published protest against breaking off the "happy connection" seemed to
Paine of a treasonable nature. "They have voluntarily read themselves
out of the Continental meeting," he adds, with a humor, doubtless,
little relished by the Friends, "and cannot hope to be restored to it
again, but by payment and penitence."

In April, Paine was elected, on motion of John Adams, Secretary to the
Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs, with a salary of seventy
dollars a month. When Philadelphia surrendered, he accompanied Congress
in the flight to Lancaster. The day after the affair at Brandywine, a
short "Crisis" appeared, explaining the accidents which had caused the
defeat of the Continentals, and insisting that the good cause was safe,
and that Howe's victories were no better than defeats. Paine was right.
The Americans were gaining more ground in Northern New York than they
had lost in Pennsylvania. Burgoyne, who,

"Unconscious of impending fates,
Could push through woods, but not through
Gates,"

had capitulated. The news reached Philadelphia on the 18th of October.

This winter ought to have closed the war. The alliance with France,
Burgoyne's capture, two campaigns without useful results, Washington's
admirable patience and management at Valley Forge, with starvation and
mutiny in the ranks and disaffection to his person in the officers of
the Gates faction, ought to have convinced every Englishman in America
that the attempt to reduce the Colonies was now hopeless. Paine was so
indignant with the reckless obstinacy of the British government, that
he conceived the idea of carrying the war into England with pen and
paper,--weapons he began to think invincible in his hands. "If I could
get over to England," he wrote to his old chief, General Greene,
"without being known, and only remain in safety until I could get out a
proclamation, I could open the eyes of the country with respect to the
madness and stupidity of its government." Greene had no confidence in
the success of this appeal to the English people, and advised Paine not
to attempt it.

In the mean time the French fleet had arrived, bringing M. Gerard, the
first foreign minister to the United States, and with him trouble to
Thomas Paine. It is well known that the French government employed
Beaumarchais, the author of the "Barber of Seville," as their agent to
furnish secret supplies to the American insurgents, and that
Beaumarchais imagined a firm, Rodrigue Hortalez & Co., who shipped to
the United Colonies munitions of war furnished by the King, and were to
receive return cargoes of tobacco, to keep up mercantile appearances.
Silas Deane, a member of Congress from Connecticut, represented the
Americans in the business. In 1777, Congress, out of patience with
Deane for his foolish contracts with foreign officers, recalled him. He
returned, bringing with him a claim of Beaumarchais for the cargoes
already shipped to the United States. As Deane could produce no
vouchers, and Arthur Lee had cautioned Congress against his demands,
the claim was laid on the table until the vouchers should be presented.
Deane, confiding in the support of his numerous friends, appealed to
the public in a newspaper. Congress bore this indignity so
amiably,--refusing, indeed, by a small majority to take notice of
it,--that Henry Laurens, the president, who had laid Deane's appeal
before them for their action, resigned in disgust, and was succeeded by
John Jay. But Paine, whose position as Foreign Secretary enabled him to
know that the supplies had come from the French government, and not
from Beaumarchais, answered Deane in several newspaper articles,
entitled, "Common Sense to the Public on Mr. Deane's Affairs." In these
he exposed the whole claim with his usual unmitigated directness. M.
Gerard immediately announced officially that Paine's papers were false,
and called upon Congress to declare them so and to pay the claim. Party
feeling ran high on this question,--a foreshadowing of the French and
English factions fifteen years later. Congress passed a resolution in
censure of Paine. Mr. Laurens moved that he be heard in his defence;
the motion was lost, and Paine resigned his office. A motion from the
Deane party to refuse his resignation and to discharge him was also
lost,--the Northern States voting generally in Paine's favor. His
resignation was then accepted.

As the French government persisted in denying that the King had
furnished any supplies, Congress admitted the debt, and in October,
1779, drew bills on Dr. Franklin in favor of Beaumarchais, for two
millions and a half of francs, at three years' sight. Beaumarchais
negotiated the bills, built a fine hotel, and lived _en prince_. But
neither he nor Deane was satisfied. They still demanded another
million.

We have no doubt that Paine was correct in his facts, however
injudicious it may have been to use them in his position. Deane's best
friends gave him up, before many years had passed. M. de Lomenie, in
his interesting sketch of Beaumarchais, has tried hard to show the
justice of his demands on the United States, but without much success.
He does not attempt to explain how Beaumarchais, notoriously penniless
in 1775, should have had in 1777 a good claim for three millions' worth
of goods furnished. The American public looked upon Paine as a victim
to state policy, and his position with his friends did not suffer at
all in consequence of his disclosures. Personally, he exulted in his
conduct to the end of his life, and took pleasure in watching and
recording Deane's disreputable career and miserable end. "As he rose
like a rocket, so he fell like the stick," a metaphor which has passed
into a proverb, was imagined by Paine to meet Deane's case. [1] The
immediate consequence of Paine's resignation was to oblige him to hire
himself out as clerk to an attorney in Philadelphia. In his office,
Paine earned his daily bread by copying law-papers until he was
appointed clerk to the Assembly of Pennsylvania.

[Footnote 1: This Beaumarchais claim was kept alive until the beginning
of the present generation. In 1794, Gouverneur Morris, Minister to the
French Republic, obtained from the Minister of Finance a receipt to the
Crown for a million of francs, signed by Beaumarchais, and sent it home
to meet the claim which had again been presented. In 1806 it
reappeared, urged by the Imperial Ambassador. In 1816, the Duc de
Richelieu, minister of Louis XVIII., sustained it, and declared, on the
strength of Gerard's assertions, that the million receipt did not in
any way concern the United States. In 1824, the daughter of
Beaumarchais came to this country to solicit Congress in person, with
no better success. But at last, in 1835, when our claim of twenty-five
millions on France was settled, eight hundred thousand francs were
allowed to the heirs of Beaumarchais, and the business closed
forever,--not creditably to us. The claim was probably unfounded; but
our government admitted its validity by the fact of payment; and the
money, if due, ought to have been paid forty years before, or a
suitable compensation made for the long delay. To be Liberals in
borrowing and Conservatives in repayment is not a desirable financial
character for a nation to obtain.]

Early in May, 1780, while the Assembly of Pennsylvania was receiving
petitions from all parts of the State, praying for exemption from
taxes, a letter was brought to the speaker from General Washington, and
read to the House by Paine as clerk. It stated simply that the army was
in the utmost distress from the want of every necessary which men could
need and yet retain life; and that the symptoms of discontent and
mutiny were so marked that the General dreaded the event of every hour.
"When the letter was read," says Paine, "I observed a despairing
silence in the House. Nobody spoke for a considerable time. At length a
member, of whose fortitude I had a high opinion, rose. 'If,' said he,
'the account in that letter is true, and we are in the situation there
represented, it appears to me in vain to contend the matter any longer.
We may as well give up first as last.' A more cheerful member
endeavored to dissipate the gloom of the House, and moved an
adjournment, which was carried," Paine, who knew that the Assembly had
neither money nor credit, felt that the voluntary aid of individuals
could alone be relied upon in this conjuncture. He accordingly wrote a
letter to a friend in Philadelphia, a man of influence, explaining the
urgency of affairs, and inclosed five hundred dollars, the amount of
the salary due him as clerk, as his contribution towards a relief fund.
The Philadelphian called a meeting at the coffee-house, read Paine's
communication, and proposed a subscription, heading the list with two
hundred pounds in good money. Mr. Robert Morris put his name down for
the same sum. Three hundred thousand pounds, Pennsylvania currency,
were raised; and it was resolved to establish a bank with the fund for
the relief of the army. This plan was carried out with the best
results. After Morris was appointed Superintendent of Finances, he
developed it into the Bank of North America, which was incorporated
both by act of Congress and by the State of Pennsylvania. Paine
followed up his letter by a "Crisis Extraordinary." Admitting that the
war costs the Colonists a very large sum, he shows that it is trifling,
compared with the burdens the English have to bear. For this reason it
would be less expensive for the Americans to raise almost any amount to
drive the English out than to submit to them and come under their
system of taxation.

Our ancestors read the "Crisis Extraordinary," and understood every
word of it, we may be sure. Paine's lucidity of statement is never more
remarkable than when he handles financial questions. But conviction did
not work its way down to the pocket. Few men gave who could avoid it,
and each State appeared more fearful of paying, by accident, a larger
sum than its neighbor, than of the success of the British arms.
Congress, finding it at last almost impossible to get money or even
provisions at home, resolved to resort again to the financial expedient
which has proved so often profitable to this country, namely, to borrow
in Europe. Colonel Laurens, son of the late President of Congress, was
appointed commissioner to negotiate an annual loan from France of a
million sterling during the continuation of the war. Paine accompanied
him at his request. They sailed in February, 1781, and were graciously
received by King Louis, who promised them six millions of livres as a
present and ten millions as a loan. In little more than ten years, the
American secretary, who stands respectfully and unnoticed in the
presence of his Majesty of France, will sit as one of his judges in a
trial for life! Is there anything more wonderful in the transmutations
of fiction than this? Meanwhile, the future member of the Convention,
as little dreaming of what was in store for him as the King, sailed for
Boston with his principal. They carried with them two millions and a
half in silver,--a great help to Washington in the movement southward,
which ended with the capitulation of Yorktown. While in Paris, Paine
was again seized with the desire of invading England, incognito, with a
pamphlet in his pocket, to open the eyes of the people. But Colonel
Laurens thought no better of this scheme than General Greene, and
brought his secretary safely home again.

Cornwallis had surrendered, and it was evident that the war could not
last much longer. The danger past, the Colonial aversion to pay Union
expenses and to obey the orders of Congress became daily stronger. The
want of a "Crisis," as a corrective medicine for the body politic, was
so much felt, that Robert Morris, with the knowledge and approbation of
Washington, requested Paine to take pen in hand again, offering him, if
his private affairs made it necessary, a salary for his services. Paine
consented. A "Crisis" appeared which produced a most salutary effect.
This was followed a few days later by another, in which a passage
occurs which may be quoted as a specimen of Paine's rhetorical powers.
A rumor was abroad that England was treating with France for a separate
peace. Paine finds it impossible to express his contempt for the
baseness of the ministry who could attempt to sow dissension between
such faithful allies. "We sometimes experience sensations to which
language is not equal. The conception is too bulky to be born alive,
and in the torture of thinking we stand dumb. Our feelings, imprisoned
by their magnitude, find no way out; and in the struggle of expression
every finger tries to be a tongue." It will be difficult to describe
better the struggle of an indignant soul with an insufficient
vocabulary.

When peace was proclaimed, Paine, the untiring advocate of
independence, had a right to print his "Io Paean." The last "Crisis"
announces, "that the times that tried men's souls were over, and the
greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew gloriously and
happily accomplished." "America need never be ashamed to tell her
birth, nor relate the stages by which she rose to empire." But it is to
the future he bids her look, rather than to the past. "The remembrance
of what is past, if it operates rightly, must inspire her with the most
laudable of all ambition, that of adding to the fair fame she began
with." "She is now descending to the scenes of quiet and domestic
life,--not beneath the cypress shade of disappointment, but to enjoy in
her own land and under her own vine the sweet of her labors and the
reward of her toil. In this situation may she never forget that a fair
national reputation is of as much importance as independence,--that it
possesses a charm that wins upon the world, and makes even enemies
civil,--that it gives a dignity which is often superior to power, and
commands reverence where pomp and splendor fail." As indispensable to a
future of prosperity and dignity, he warmly recommends the Union. "I
ever feel myself hurt," he says, "when I hear the Union, that great
Palladium of our liberty and safety, the least irreverently spoken of.
It is the most sacred thing in the Constitution of America, and that
which every man should be most proud and tender of." Thus he
anticipated by seventy-five years our "Union-savers" of 1856, few of
whom dreamed that their pet phrases, or something very like them,
originated with Thomas Paine.

The war left Paine no richer than it found him. He had made fame, but
no money, by his writings. None of the proceeds of large editions had
enriched his purse. He had an exalted ideal of an author's duty when
his work is on political subjects. Louis Blanc has written somewhere,
"_Le journalisme est un sacerdoce._" This seems to have been Paine's
thought, although he may not have expressed it so sonorously,--for
there are no phrase-makers like the French. But Paine went, we suspect,
much farther than Louis Blanc; for he held that the priest ought to
take no pay for his ministrations. And he acted up to this unusual
theory in literary ethics. If he took out a copyright, he gave it away
to some public use. As he himself said, late in life,--"I could never
reconcile it to my principles to make money by my polities or my
religion." "In a great affair, where the happiness of man is at stake,
I love to work for nothing; and so fully am I under the influence of
this principle, that I should lose the spirit, the pleasure, and the
pride of it, were I conscious that I looked for reward."

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