Chapter 5

"It has been very generally propagated through the continent that I wrote the pamphlet "Common Sense." I could not have written anything in so manly and striking a style.--John Adams"

"A few more such flaming arguments as were exhibited at Falmouth and Norfolk, added to the sound doctrine and unanswerable reasoning contained in the pamphlet "Common Sense," will not leave numbers at a loss to decide on the propriety of a separation.--George Washington"

"It is not necessary for me to tell you how much all your countrymen--I speak of the great mass of the people--are interested in your welfare. They have not forgotten the history of their own revolution, and the difficult scenes through which they passed; nor do they review its several stages without reviving in their bosoms a due sensibility of the merits of those who served them in that great and arduous conflict. The crime of ingratitude has not yet stained, and I trust never will stain, our national character. You are considered by them as not only having rendered important services in our revolution, but as being on a more extensive scale the friend of human right and a distinguished and able advocate in favor of public liberty. To the welfare of Thomas Paine, the Americans are not, nor can they be, indifferent.--James Monroe"

"No writer has exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of style, in perspicuity of expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple and unassuming language.--Thomas Jefferson"

Was it in consideration of the services of a drunken beast that the Legislature of Pennsylvania presented Thomas Paine with L500 sterling? Did the State of New York feel indebted to a drunken beast, and confer upon Thomas Paine an estate of several hundred acres? Did the Congress of the United States thank him for his services because he had lived a drunken and beastly life? Was he elected a member of the French convention because he was a drunken beast? Was it the act of a drunken beast to put his own life in jeopardy by voting against the death of the King? Was it because he was a drunken beast that he opposed the "Reign of Terror "--that he endeavored to stop the shedding of blood, and did all in his power to protect even his own enemies? Do the following extracts sound like the words of a drunken beast:

"I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.

"My own mind is my own church.

"It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself.

"Any system of religion that shocks the mind of a child can not be a true system.

"The work of God is the creation which we behold.

"The age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system.

"It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action--it begets a calamitous necessity of going on.

"To read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathizing, and benevolent in the heart of man.

"The man does not exist who can say I have persecuted him, or that I have, in any case, returned evil for evil.

"Of all the tyrants that afflict mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.

"The belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.

"My own opinion is, that those whose lives have been spent in doing good, and endeavoring to make their fellow-mortals happy, will be happy hereafter.

"The intellectual part of religion is a private affair between every man and his Maker, and in which no third party has any right to interfere. The practical part consists in our doing good to each other.

"No man ought to make a living by religion. One person can not act religion for another--every person must act for himself.

"One good school-master is of more use than a hundred priests. Let us propagate morality, unfettered by superstition.

"God is the power, or first cause; nature is the law, and matter is the subject acted upon.

"I believe in one God and no more, and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

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

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

"I have yet, I believe, some years in store, for I have a good state of health and a happy mind. I take care of both, by nourishing the first with temperance and the latter with abundance.

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

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

"Man has no property in man."

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

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

"Man has no property in man."

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

Only a little while ago--two or three days--I read a report of an address made by Bishop Doane, an Episcopal Bishop in apostolic succession--regular line from Jesus Christ down to Bishop Doane. The Bishop was making a speech to young preachers--the sprouts, the theological buds. He took it upon him to advise them all against early marriages. Let us look at it. Do you believe there is any duty that man owes to God that will prevent a man marrying the woman he loves? Is there some duty that I owe to the clouds that will prevent me from marrying some good, sweet woman? Now, just think of that! I tell you, young man, you marry as soon as you can find her and support her. I had rather have one woman that I know than any amount of gods that I am not acquainted with. If there is any revelation from God to man, a good woman is the best revelation he has ever made; and I will admit that that revelation was inspired.

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

"Though I appear a sorry wanderer, the marriage state has not a sincerer friend than I. It is the harbor of human life, and is, with respect to the things of this world, what the next world is to this. It is home, and that one word conveys more than any other word can express. For a few years we may glide along the tide of a single life, but it is a tide that flows but once, and, what is still worse, it ebbs faster than it flows, and leaves many a hapless voyager aground. I am one, you see, that has experienced the fall I am describing. I have lost my tide; it passed by while every throb of my heart was on the wing for the salvation of America, and I have now, as contentedly as I can, made myself a little tower of walls on that shore that has the solitary resemblance of home."

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

It is only a short one:

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

"Toward the latter end of the year 1780 the continental money had become depreciated--the paper dollar being then not more than a cent--that it seemed next to impossible to continue the war. As the United States was then in alliance with France it became necessary to make France acquainted with our real situation. I therefore drew up a letter to the Count De Vergennes, stating undisguisedly the whole case, and concluding with a request whether France could not, either as a subsidy of a loan, supply the United States with a million pounds sterling, and continue that supply, annually, during the war. "I showed this letter to Mr. Morbois, secretary of the French minister. His remark upon it was that a million sent out of the nation exhausted it more than ten millions spent in it. I then showed it to Mr. Ralph Izard, member of congress from South Carolina. He borrowed the letter of me and said: 'We will endeavor to do something about it in congress.' Accordingly, congress then appointed John A. Laurens to go to France and make representation for the purpose of obtaining assistance. Col. Laurens wished to decline the mission, and asked that congress would appoint Col. Hamilton, who did not choose to do it. Col. Laurens then came and stated the case to me, and said that he was well enough acquainted with the military difficulties of the army, but he was not acquainted with political affairs, or with the resources of the country, to undertake such a mission. Said he, 'If you will go with me I will accept the mission.' This I agreed to do, and did do. We sailed from Boston in the Alliance frigate February, 1781, and arrived in France in the beginning of March. The aid obtained from France was six millions of livres, as at present, and ten millions as a loan, borrowed in Holland on the security of France. We sailed from Brest in the French frigate Resolue the 1st of June, and arrived at Boston on the 25th of August, bringing with us two millions and a half in silver, and conveying a chip and a brig laden with clothing and military stores.

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

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

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

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

"In a conversation afterward with Gov. Clinton, of New York, now vice-president, it was judged that for the purpose of my going fully into the subject, and to prevent any misconstruction of my motive or object, it would be best that I received nothing from congress, but to leave it to the states individually to make the what acknowledgement they pleased. The State of New York presented me with a farm which since my return to America, I have found it necessary to sell, and the State of Pennsylvania voted me L500 of their currency, but none of the states to the east of New York, or the south of Pennsylvania, have made me the least acknowledgment. They had received benefits from me which they accepted, and there the matter ended. This story will not tell well in history. All the civilized world knows I have been of great service to the United States, and have generously given away that which would easily have made me a fortune. I much question if an instance is to be found in ancient or modern times of a man who had no personal interest in the case to take up that of the establishment of a representative government and who sought neither place nor office after it was established; that pursued the same undeviating principles that I had for more than thirty years, and that in spite of dangers, difficulties, and inconveniences of which I have had my share.--Thomas Paine"

An old man in Pennsylvania told me once that his father hired a old revolutionary soldier by the name of Thomas Martin to work for him. Martin was then quite an old man; and there was an old Presbyterian preacher used to come there, by the name of Crawford, and he sat down by the fire and he got to talking one night, among other things about Thomas Paine--what a wretched, infamous dog he was; and while he was in the midst of this conversation the old soldier rose from the fireplace, and he walked over to the preacher, and he said to him "Did you ever see Thomas Paine?" "No." "Well," he says, "I have; I saw him at Valley Forge. I heard read at the head of every regiment and company the letters of Thomas Paine. I heard them read the 'Crisis,' and I saw Thomas Paine writing on the head of a drum, sitting at the bivouac fire, those simple words that inspired every patriot's bosom, and I want to tell you Mr. Preacher, that Thomas Paine did more for liberty than any priest that ever lived in this world."

"And yet they say he was afraid to die! Afraid of what? Is there any God in heaven that hates a patriot? If there is Thomas Paine ought to be afraid to die. Is there any God that would damn a man for helping to free three millions of people? If Thomas Paine was in hell tonight, and could get God's attention long enough to point him to the old banner of the stars floating over America, God would have to let him out. What would he be afraid of? Had he ever burned anybody? No. Had he ever put anybody in the inquisition? No. Ever put the thumb-screw on anybody? No. Ever put anybody in prison so that some poor wife and mother would come and hold her little babe up at the grated window that the man bound to the floor might get one glimpse of his blue-eyed babe? Did he ever do that?"

"Did he ever light a fagot? Did he ever tear human flesh? Why, what had he to be afraid of? He had helped to make the world free. He had helped create the only republic then on the earth. What was he afraid of? Was God a tory? It won't do."

One would think from the persistence with which the orthodox have charged for the last seventy years that Thomas Paine recanted, that there must be some evidence of some kind to support these charges. Even with my ideas of the average honor of the believers in superstition, the average truthfulness of the disciples of fear, I did not believe that all those infamies rested solely upon poorly-attested falsehoods. I had charity enough to suppose that something had been said or done by Thomas Paine capable of being tortured into a foundation of all these calumnies. What crime had Thomas Paine committed that he should have feared to die? The only answer you can give is that he denied the inspiration of the scriptures. If that is crime, the civilized world is filled with criminals. The pioneers of human thought, the intellectual leaders of this world, the foremost men in every science, the kings of literature and art, those who stand in the front of investigation, the men who are civilizing and elevating and refining mankind, are all unbelievers in the ignorant dogma of inspiration.

Why should we think Thomas Paine was afraid to die? and why should the American people malign the memory of that great man? He was the first to advocate the separation from the mother country. He was the first to write these words: "The United States of America." Think of maligning that man! He was the first to lift his voice against human slavery, and while hundreds and thousands of ministers all over the United States not only believed in slavery, but bought and sold women and babes in the name of Jesus Christ, this infidel, this wretch who is now burning in the flames of hell, lifted his voice against human slavery and said: "It is robbery, and a slaveholder is a thief; the whipper of women is a barbarian; the seller of a child is a savage." No wonder that the thieving hypocrite of his day hated him! I have no love for any man who ever pretended to own a human being. I have no love for a man that would sell a babe from the mother's throbbing, heaving, agonized breast. I have no respect for a man who considered a lash on the naked back as a legal tender for labor performed. So write it down, Thomas Paine was the first great abolitionist of America.

Now let me tell you another thing. He was the first man to raise his voice for the abolition of the death penalty in the French convention. What more did he do? He was the first to suggest a federal constitution for the United States. He saw that the old articles of confederation were nothing; that they were ropes of water and chains of mist, and he said, "We want a federal constitution so that when you pass a law raising 5 percent you can make the states pay it." Let us give him his due. What were all these preachers doing at that time?

He hated superstition; he loved the truth. He hated tyranny; he loved liberty. He was the friend of the human race. He lived a brave and thoughtful life. He was a good and true and generous man, and "he died as he lived." Like a great and peaceful river with green and shaded banks, without a murmur, without a ripple, he flowed into the waveless ocean of eternal peace. I love him; I love every man who gave me, or helped to give me the liberty I enjoy tonight; I love every man who helped me put our flag in heaven. I love every man who has lifted his voice in any age for liberty, for a chainless body and a fetterless brain. I love everyman who has given to every other human being every right that he claimed for himself. I love every man who has thought more of principle than he has of position. I love the men who have trampled crowns beneath their feet that they might do something for mankind, and for that reason I love Thomas Paine.

I thank you all, ladies and gentlemen, every one--every one, for the attention you have given me this evening.

Ingersoll's Lecture on Liberty of Man, Woman and Child

Ladies and Gentlemen: In my judgment slavery is the child of ignorance. Liberty is born of intelligence. Only a few years ago there was a great awakening in the human mind. Men began to inquire, By what right does a crowned robber make me work for him? The man who asked this question was called a traitor. Others said, by what right does a robed priest rob me? That man was called an infidel. And whenever he asked a question of that kind, the clergy protested. When they found that the earth was round, the clergy protested; when they found that the stars were not made out of the scraps that were left over on the sixth day of creation, but were really great, shining, wheeling worlds, the clergy protested and said: "When is this spirit of investigation to stop?" They said then, and they say now, that it is dangerous for the mind of man to be free. I deny it. Out on the intellectual sea there is room for every sail. In the intellectual air, there is space enough for every wing. And the man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and does not do his duty to his fellow men. For one, I expect to do my own thinking. And I will take my own oath this minute that I will express what thoughts I have, honestly and sincerely. I am the slave of no man and of no organization. I stand under the blue sky and the stars, under the infinite flag of nature, the peer of every human being. Standing as I do in the presence of the Unknown, I have the same right to guess as though I had been through five theological seminary. I have as much interest in the great absorbing questions of origin and destiny as though I had D.D., L. L. D. at the end of my name.

All I claim, all I plead is simple liberty of thought. That is all. I do not pretend to tell what is true and all the truth. I do not claim that I have floated level with the heights of thought, or that I have descended to the depths of things; I simply claim that what idea I have I have a right to express, and any man that denies it to me is an intellectual thief and robber. That is all. I say, take those chains off from the human soul; I say, break these orthodox fetters, and if there are wings to the spirit let them be spread. That is all I say. And I ask you if I have not the same right to think that any other human has? If I have no right to think, why have I such a thing as a thinker. Why have I a brain? And if I have no right to think, who has? If I have lost my right, Mr. Smith, where did you find yours? If I have no right, have three or four men or 300 or 400, who get together and sign a card and build a house and put a steeple on it with a bell in it--have they any more right to think than they had before? That is the question. And I am sick of the whip and lash in the region of mind and intellect. And I say to these men, "Let us alone. Do your own thinking; express your own thoughts." And I want to say tonight that I claim no right that I am not willing to give to every other human being beneath the stars--none whatever. And I will fight tonight for the right of those who disagree with me to express their thoughts just as soon as I will fight for my own right to express mine.

In the good old times, our fathers had an idea that they could make people believe to suit them. Our ancestors in the ages that are gone really believed that by force you could convince a man. You cannot change the conclusion of the brain by force, but I will tell you what you can do by force, and what you have done by force. You can make hypocrites by the million. You can make a man say that he has changed his mind, but he remains of the same opinion still. Put fetters all over him; crush his feet in iron boots; lash him to the stock; burn him if you please, but his ashes are of the same opinion still. I say our fathers, in the good old times--and the best thing I can say about them is, they are dead--they had an idea they could force men to think their way, and do you know that idea is still prevalent even in this country? Do you know they think they can make a man think their way if they say, "We will not trade with that man; we won't vote for that man; we won't hire him, if he is a lawyer; we will die before we take his medicine, if he is a doctor, we won't invite him; we will socially ostracize him; he must come to our church; he must think our way or he is not a gentleman." There is much of that even in this blessed country--not excepting the city of Albany itself.