Part 13

"Was he filthy? He was the friend and associate of Washington and Franklin. He was a member of the most conspicuous philosophical society in the new world. He was associated with the most distinguished men of the philosophical circles of France. Was he little? He entered an intellectual combat with Edmund Burke, and won immortal renown. Was he little? He was big enough and mighty enough to make the throne of Great Britain tremble. Was he little? He was big enough to make in America as well as in France the cause of human liberty his debtor forever "--_Dr. John E. Roberts._

Commenting on this slander the _Nation_ of England says: "After all, our feelings of resentment at such a brutality are assuaged by the reflection that whereas, this man, will in a quick generation sink to the obscurity from which a series of accidents lifted him for a few years, history will gradually set in its proper place among the makers of the Republic the memory of the man whom he defamed."

"All this vilification is really the tribute that mediocrity pays to genius."--_Elbert Hubbard_.

Walt Whitman: "Paine was double damnably lied about."

"Anything lower, meaner, more contemptible, I cannot imagine, to take an aged man--a man tired to death after a complicated life of toil, struggle, anxiety--weak, dragged down, at death's door;... then to pull him into the mud, distort everything he does and says; oh, it's infamous."

"Thomas Paine had a noble personality, as exhibited in presence, face, voice, dress, manner, and what may be called his atmosphere and magnetism, especially the later years of his life. I am sure of it. Of the foul and foolish fictions yet told about the circumstances of his decease, the absolute fact is that he lived a good life, after its kind; he died calmly and philosophically, as became him."

Dr. Morrison Davidson: "He died as he lived, one of the grandest examples of intellectual piety, fidelity and rectitude that ever lived."

New York Advertiser (June 9, 1809): "With heartfelt sorrow and poignant regret, we are compelled to announce to the world that Thomas Paine is no more. This distinguished philanthropist, whose life was devoted to the cause of humanity, departed this life yesterday morning; and, if any man's memory deserves a place in the breast of a freeman, it is that of the deceased, for,

"'Take him for all in all, We ne'er shall look upon his like again.'"

(Paine's remains were buried on his farm at New Rochelle. Ten years later, because of America's ingratitude and neglect, William Cobbett had his bones disinterred and sent to England. In connection with their reinterment he had planned a great popular demonstration. "When I return," he said, "I shall cause them to speak the common sense of the great man; I shall gather together the people of Liverpool and Manchester in one assembly with those of London, and those bones will effect the reformation of England in Church and State."

Cobbett, probably waiting for a more opportune time, failed to carry out his cherished scheme. The bones of Paine reposed for nearly thirty years in their coffin and then disappeared. As late as 1854 a Unitarian clergyman claimed to have in his possession "the skull and the right hand of Thomas Paine.")

"The skull and the right hand of Thomas Paine!" What priceless relics! Could they be found America should repossess them, place them in a casket of gold and preserve them in a shrine at her national capitol. Within that skull was conceived this great republic. That hand wrote the inspired volume which transformed a vague dream into a glorious reality. That hand, too, wrote two other immortal works which, slowly but surely, are effecting what Cobbett contemplated, "the reformation of England in Church and State."

"His 'Rights of Man' is now the political constitution of England, his 'Age of Reason' is the growing constitution of its Church."--_Dr. Conway._

"As to his bones, no man knows the place of their rest to this day. His principles rest not. His thoughts, untraceable like his dust, are blown about the world which he held in his heart. For a hundred years no human being has been born in the civilized world without some spiritual tincture from that heart whose every pulse was for humanity, whose last beat broke a fetter of fear, and fell on the throne of thrones."--_Ibid._

Rev. Charles Wendt, DD.: "A much abused name."

Rev. O. B. Frothingham: "No private character has been more foully calumniated in the name of God than that of Thomas Paine."

"No page in history, stained as it is with treachery and falsehood, or cold-blooded indifference to right or wrong, exhibits a more disgraceful instance of public ingratitude than that which Thomas Paine experienced from an age and country which he had so faithfully served."--_Rev. Solomon Southwick_.

Referring to Paine, the Boston _Herald_ says: "It has, perhaps, never fallen to the lot of any really great man to be so traduced in his lifetime, and, after the grave has closed over him, to have his memory so weighted down with obloquy of unsparing critics." Mrs. Bradlaugh-Bonner of England, daughter of Charles Bradlaugh, one of England's noted orators and statesmen, says: "Paine's politics were politics for the people, and the people were taught to deny him; his ideal religion was 'the Religion of Humanity,' and humanity would not even grant him a grave." Col. Ingersoll says: "I challenge the world to show that Thomas Paine ever wrote one line, one word in favor of tyranny--in favor of immorality; one line, one word against what he believed to be for the highest and best interests of mankind; one line, one word against justice, charity or liberty; and yet he has been pursued as though he had been a fiend from hell."

Harriet Law: "There are few to whom the world owes more, and probably none to whose memory it has been more ungrateful."

Edward D. Mead: "There is no other man in our religious or political history who has been the victim of such misrepresentation, of such persistent obloquy, as Thomas Paine."

"As we go back into the Dark Ages we read of the horrible atrocities perpetrated in the name of religion, and this feeling had not yet passed away during the time that Thomas Paine lived."--_Admiral George W. Melville._

Hon. Andrew D. White, LL. D.: "Great, and, indeed, cruel injustice was done him in his day, and has been continued in large measure ever since."

Eastern Daily Press (England): "The fires still burn, although a hundred years have passed."

"For more than a century his name has been as a touchstone revealing the unappeasable malevolence of men's intolerance."--_Mrs. Bradlaugh-Bonner._

Kumar Krishna de Varma, L. T. O. (Bombay, India): "The Orthodox have always slandered the immortal author of the 'Age of Reason' and the 'Rights of Man.'"

Prof. Ernst Haeckel: "Thomas Paine, the immortal author of the celebrated books, 'Age of Reason,' 'Common Sense,' 'Rights of Man,' and 'Crisis,' belongs to those meritorious Truththinkers who during their lifetime were not accorded the honor and acknowledgment that they well merited. The traditional historians of schoolbooks not only neglected him for many years but deliberately maligned and slandered him."

"Religious bigots have done all in their power to defame his character and rob him of the laurels with which we crown him to-day."--_Elizabeth Cady Stanton_.

D. M. Bennett: "Does a man with such a brilliant career, one having made such a magnificent record, and one to whom the world owes far more than it can ever pay, deserve to have his name maligned, his memory blackened, and all his actions and motives belied and misrepresented? Is it honorable? Is it manly? Is it just?"

Helen H. Gardener: "So long as a man, whether he be layman, bishop, cardinal or pope, is willing to bear false witness against his neighbor, whether that neighbor be living or dead, just so long will all the blood of all the Redeemers of all the nations of the earth be unable to wash his soul white enough to place it beside that of the patriot hero, Thomas Paine."

William T. Stead: "Paine and Ingersoll are assailed by the same weapons, subjected to the same aspersions, and misrepresented in the same merciless fashion as He [Christ] was assailed and misrepresented by the orthodox of his time.... If it is right to treat Paine and Ingersoll in this harsh, carping, uncharitable, malevolent fashion, then it is equally right to apply it to the founder of the faith."

Elmina Drake Slenker: "And this mild work, the 'Age of Reason,' is the real cause of all the cruel calumnies that the world has circulated about the hero, the scholar, the philosopher, the scientist, the inventor, the humanitarian, Thomas Paine."

Lillian Leland: "Paine... had ideals of intellectual and religious freedom, and was flung down from the pedestal of honor, broken, cast off and ostracized for venturing to criticise the received forms of religion."

"The replies to Thomas Paine," says George W. Foote of London, "were the work of Christian ruffians. Bishop Watson was the only one who attempted to answer Paine's arguments. The others only called him names; apparently on the principle that to charge a Freethinker with drunkenness and profligacy is the shortest and easiest way of proving that the Bible is the Word of God."

George E. Macdonald of New York, says: "The strongest defense of the Bible against the 'Age of Reason' was the allegation that Paine drank brandy, although the Bible commends liquor drinking and the ministers of that period were unrestricted in their potations."

"Around New Rochelle, where Thomas Paine lived, and where this myth about his drunkenness has its geography, there were deacons by the dozen who were drinking regularly more than Thomas Paine ever drank, without in the slightest degree affecting their religious reputation. I speak of these things, which I have investigated, because I feel so strongly the wrong which has been done to this man."--_Edward D. Mead._

Gilbert Vale: "Could the 'Age of Reason' and 'Rights of Man' have been replied to as he replied to Burke we should have never heard these slanders."

William Ware Cotter:

"Let libelers' gall-envenomed tongues Make bitter every word they speak; Time will disclose the patriot's wrongs And blanch with shame the slanderer's cheek."

TESTIMONIALS AND TRIBUTES.

M. Coupé: "Faithful friend of liberty."

M. Courtois: "He has labored to found liberty in two worlds."

Hon. Jonathan Bourne, Jr.: "Thomas Paine in England and America and Thomas Jefferson in America became the chanticleers of liberty."

Hon. John J. Ingalls: "Paine was one of the great apostles of human liberty, and did much to emancipate mankind from the shackles of ancient prejudice and error."

"A warm friend to the liberty and lasting welfare of the human race."--_Samuel Adams._

Prof. Lester F. Ward, LL.D.: "Thanks to Paine and other great reformers, we have emerged from the condition where the political struggle is the main issue. In other words political liberty has been attained."

T. J. Bowles, M. D.: "At the close of the eighteenth century it dawned upon the minds of the immortal Paine, Jefferson and Franklin that all men are created equal, and this conception born in the minds of this trinity of saviors made the nineteenth century the most marvelous and the happiest period in the history of the world."

Earl John Francis Stanley Russell: "A great reformer and an illustrious heretical pioneer."

"His name stands for mental freedom and moral courage."--_George W. Foote_.

"Thomas Paine was a heroic innovator. He said what he thought and he meant what he said."--_Rev. George Burman Foster_.

John Wesley Jarvis: "He devoted his whole life to the attainment of two objects--rights of man and freedom of conscience."

Prof. H. M. Kottinger, A. M.: "Thomas Paine fought as courageously for religious liberty as he did for civil liberty."

"I dare not say how much of what our Union is owing and enjoying to-day--its independence--its ardent belief in, and substantial practice of, radical human rights--and the severance of its government from all ecclesiastical and superstitious dominions--I dare not say how much of all this is owing to Thomas Paine, but I am inclined to think a good portion of it decidedly is."--_Walt. Whitman_.

"It was his clear head and brave and righteous soul that inspired the men who declared our independence, and put into the Constitution of the United States such a veto against ecclesiastical domination as has defied its proud and conceited usurpation to the present day."--_Elizur Wright_.

H. Lee-Warner: "Its [Thetford's] great man who taught the world to respect the right of free-thought."

(The one hundredth anniversary of the death of Thomas Paine was observed at his birthplace. The mayor of Thetford presided, and four members of the British Parliament delivered eulogistic addresses.)

George Anderson: "One of the noblest Freethinkers in the world's history.

"Paine is the idol of Freethinkers. He is enthroned in our hearts because he gave his life to freedom."--_L. K. Washburn._

"In both worlds he offered his blood for the good of man. In the wilderness of America, in the French Convention, in the sombre cell awaiting death, he was the same unflinching, unwavering friend of his race; the same undaunted champion of freedom."--_Ingersoll._

Martin L. Bunge: "I owe much to Thomas Paine. His words have guided me in my struggle for liberty and truth. The more I study him the more I love the human race."

Isador Ladoff: "Freethought was to him not a mere attitude of mind, but a philosophy of life and action."

Prof. M. N. Wright: "He will always stand as an illustrious example of that higher reverence, that diviner faith of the incoming religion--a religion based in the common wants of a common humanity."

William Marion Reedy: "He glorified common sense.... He is one of the chief saints of the Church of Man."

Rev. Paul Jordan Smith: "When Thomas Paine first saw the light of day it was the custom of certain disciples of peace and good will to beat and burn the man who wanted to think.... And down the days that since have passed it has been the fashion of the blatant orthodox to cry, 'Infidel!' 'Infidel!' at the man who said: 'Any system of religion that shocks the mind of a child cannot be a true system.' 'The world is my country; to do good my religion.'"

Robert Blatchford: "Paine left Moses and Isaiah centuries behind when he wrote: 'The world is my country; to do good my religion.'"

Stoughton Cooley: "One of the most devoted spirits in the cause of liberty."

East Anglian Daily Times: "The Rights of Man' and the 'Age of Reason' may have scandalized orthodox opinion, but their author was never engaged in any but a generous and noble cause, that had complete personal liberty for its sole object and aim."

"They [Lord Bolingbroke and Thomas Paine] were alike in making bitter enemies of the priests and pharisees of their day. Both were honest men; both advocates of human liberty."--_Thomas Jefferson._

J. C. Hannon: "Liberty, hunted around the globe, has ever found its highest hope, its safest refuge, in the affections of those upon whose grand and noble foreheads the tyrants of the world have ever branded the indelible stigma of Infidelity. Thomas Paine, who has done more for human liberty than any other man who ever lived, has borne it with a grace amounting to sublimity."

Dr. J. B. Wilson: "Towering spires, blazing altars, jeweled palaces, and golden thrones had awed and subdued the Eastern nations for all time. It remained for Thomas Paine, standing upon the shores of this western world, to tear away the blinds of superstition, hypocrisy, selfishness, and imperial pretense, and awaken mankind to a consciousness of its own power and capacity for self-government."

Walter Holloway: "Age after age men have struggled toward the ideal, with toil and tears, praying in their pain, sobbing out their sorrows in the half-light of hope, forever beaten back from the coveted goal. Wise men long ago saw that the gods must be dethroned and the government of earth given into the hands of men. That was the passionate dream of Thomas Paine."

M. Felix Rabbe: "Thomas Paine has suffered the fate of all those who, listening only to their conscience of honest manhood, solely attentive to the voices of Nature and Reason, raised principles above all considerations of frontiers, parties, sects, and sacrificed without hesitation the mean calculations of a temporizing policy to the higher interests of eternal justice."

"The world has had few such men, those who divest themselves of selfish motives of gain or pride and are willing to suffer obloquy and poverty for a conviction."--_Edward C. Wentworth_.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton.: "We cannot be too grateful to those who through poverty, persecution, imprisonment, and death have given us the light of science in the place of blind faith on questions of government, religion, and social life. Thomas Paine is a worthy name in the long line of martyrs to liberal political and religious principles."

"Poor, abused, maligned, hated and persecuted, Paine stood alone in the ocean of superstition, ignorance and prejudice as the Liberty Statue of religious thought while the waves of malice, ostracism and anathema lashed against his kind and manly brow."--_Rev. David W. Bash._

Rev. Dr. Thomas Slicer: "The progress of the world in political and religious liberty will be written in the estimates that the world has learned to take of Thomas Paine during the hundred years since he fell into an unnoticed grave."

"Thomas Paine made it impossible to write the history of human liberty with his name left out. He was one of the creators of light. He was one of the heralds of the dawn."--_Col. R. G. Ingersoll._

"I enjoy myself when I think how free I am, and I thank this man for it. When I think of that the whole horizon is full of glory, and joy comes to me in every ray of sunshine and every rustle of the winds."--_Ibid._

James F. Morton, Jr.:

"Since time began, No greater prophet faced the savage ban Of priest and king."

Rev. David W. Bush: "How unwise to deny myself the companionship of one of the greatest, bravest, most self-sacrificing men of all time because he has written things I cannot accept."

Pearl W. Geer: "This is the beauty of Free-thought--the glory of Infidelity. We recognize good in everything where good is to be found. While we do not accept all of Thomas Paine's ideas we recognize in him the greatest man the world has ever known."

"There is not in Illinois a monument that stands as high as Abraham Lincoln; nor in Massachusetts as high as Ralph Waldo Emerson; nor in the world as high as Thomas Paine."--_L. K. Washburn_.

"The wisest, brightest, humblest son of earth." --Clio Rickman.

Rev. George Croly: "An impartial estimate of this remarkable man has been rarely formed and still more rarely expressed. He was assuredly one of the original men of the age in which he lived."

Col. Charles Stedman (a Tory officer in the Revolution): "Thomas Paine has rendered his name famous on the theatre of Europe and of the world."

Robert Shelton Mackenzie: "We cannot ignore the fact that he was one of the ablest politicians of his time and that liberal minds all over the world recognize him as such."

"Washington recognized his practical insight, Napoleon picked him out from the crowd of 'ideaologues' and consulted him."--_London Times_.

William Cobbett, one of the most notable figures in English politics, who, misled by Paine's enemies, had been one of his most violent assailants, thus frankly acknowledges his indebtedness to him: "Old age having laid his hand upon this truly great man, this truly philosophical politician, at his expiring flambeau I lighted my taper."

Charles Bradlaugh: "He was a sturdy, true man. Though Norfolk born, not English, but human, and with nothing of geographical limit to that humanity. As a politician, or rather as a thinker on politics he stands for England as Jean Jacques Rousseau has stood for France. You on your side ought to reverence him for the timely words which gave form and reality to vague, unspoken thought. We, on our side, too, ought to honor him for the 'Rights of Man' yet to be wearisomely achieved."

Atlantic Monthly: (July, 1859): "His career was wonderful, even for the age of miraculous events he lived in. In America he was a Revolutionary hero of the first rank, who carried letters in his pocket from George Washington, thanking him for his services. And he managed besides to write his radical name in large letters in the History of England and France."

W. W. Bartlett: "He was undeniably preeminent among statesmen, and by his many-sidedness he succeeded in rousing the whole civilized world."

Marshall J. Gauvin: "In honoring the memory of Thomas Paine we recognize and salute one of the greatest forces in history."

"Other men have followed events; Paine actually created them.... he wanted a Declaration of Independence, and he produced the wish for it."--_Gilbert Vale._

Hugh Byron Brown: "There are a few great men who, like milestones along the road of progress, are so distinguished and prominent, and who have so influenced the destinies of nations, as to mark an epoch in the world's history. Such a man was Thomas Paine."

Michael Monahan: "One of the notables of history."

Rev. E. M. Frank: "Thomas Paine was, in his time, one who stood in the forefront of human progress."

Dr. Edward Bond Foote: "As Lincoln was the man for his time and place, so Paine fitted perfectly and filled remarkably the niche which history allotted to him."

Horace L. Green: "Thomas Paine, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, the glorious trinity of Independence."

Eugene V. Debs: "The revolutionary history of the United. States and France stirred me deeply and its heroes and martyrs became my idols. Thomas Paine towered above them all."

Knut Martin Teigen, M.D., Ph.D.: "Thomas Paine was, beyond all doubt, a true genius."

Dr. John Walker (with Paine in France): "There can be no question that Paine was a man of the most gigantic genius and of the soundest practical knowledge."

Joel Barlow, ambassador to France during Napoleon's reign, Paine's companion in London and Paris, and to whom he entrusted the manuscript of his "Age of Reason" when he was taken to prison, says: "Paine was endowed with the clearest perception, an uncommon share of original genius, and the greatest depth of thought.... As a visiting acquaintance and literary friend, he was one of the most instructive men I have ever known."

"He ought to be ranked among the brightest and most undeviating luminaries of the age in which he lived."--_Ibid._

"To me Thomas Paine appears as one of the master spirits of the earth."--_Horace Seaver._

"One who deserves from his still ungrateful country an honored place in her Hall of Fame."--_Rev. Eugene Rodman Shippen._

Rev. Dr. L. M. Birkhead: "Paine in days to come will be considered one of the greatest men and statesmen the world has ever known."

"I regard Thomas Paine as one of the greatest men the world has ever produced, and all ought to be proud that he belonged to our race."--_Sir Hiram Maxim._

Glasgow Herald: "Paine was greater than he knew."

"The two men who have left the richest heritage of thought and made the deepest imprint upon the minds of mankind for future ages,... Thomas Paine and Charles Darwin [Darwin was born in the year that Paine died], were in turn the Elijah and the Elisha of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries of the Christian era. One hundred years ago today Thomas Paine let fall his mantle of light upon the infant shoulders of Charles Darwin and vanished in a chariot of fire that shall blaze the trail of the seeker after truth from generation unto generation."--_Alden Freeman_.