Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 21, July, 1859

But no! Neither author nor authorling liked to have his name seen in company with Thomas Paine. And when a curious compiler has taken him up, he has held him at arm's length, and, after eyeing him cautiously, has dropped him like some unclean and noxious animal.

Sixty years ago, Paine's friends used to say, that, "in spite of some indiscreet writings on the subject of religion," he deserved the respect and thanks of Americans for his services. We think that he deserves something more at the present day than this absolute neglect. There is stuff enough in him for one volume at least. 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 of France. As a mere literary workman, his productions deserve notice. In mechanics, he invented and put up the first iron bridge of large span in England; the boldness of the attempt still excites the admiration of engineers. He may urge, too, another claim to our attention. In the legion of "most remarkable men" these United States have produced or imported, only three have achieved infamy: Arnold, Burr, and Paine. What are Paine's titles to belong to this trio of disreputables? Only these three: he wrote the "Age of Reason"; was a Democrat, perhaps an unusually dirty one; and drank more brandy than was good for him. The "Age of Reason" is a shallow deistical essay, in which the author's opinions are set forth, it is true, in a most offensive and irreverent style. As Dr. Hopkins wrote of Ethan Allen,—

But who reads it now? On the other hand, no one who has studied Paine's career can deny his honesty and his disinterestedness; and every unprejudiced reader of his works must admit not merely his great ability in urging his opinions, but that he sincerely believed all he wrote. Let us, then, try to forget the carbuncled nose, the snuffy waistcoat, the unorthodox sneer. We should wipe out his later years, cut his life short at 1796, and take Paine when he wrote "Common Sense," Paine when he lounged at the White Bear in Piccadilly, talking over with Horne Tooke the answer to Mr. Burke's "Reflections," and Paine, when, as "foreign benefactor of the species," he took his seat in the famous French Convention.

It would repay some capable author to dig him up, wash him, and show him to the world as he was. A biography of him would embrace the history of the struggle which established the new theory of politics in government. He is the representative man of Democracy in both hemispheres,—a good subject in the hands of a competent artist; and the time has arrived, we think, when justice may be done him. As a general rule, it is yet too soon to write the History of the United States since 1784. Half a century has not been sufficient to wear out the bitter feeling excited by the long struggle of Democrats and Federalists. Respectable gentlemen, who, more pious than Aeneas, have undertaken to carry their grandfathers' remains from the ruins of the past into the present era, seem to be possessed with the same demon of discord that agitated the deceased ancestors. The quarrels of the first twenty years of the Constitution have become chronic ink-feuds in certain families. A literary vendetta is carried on to this day, and a stab with the steel pen, or a shot from behind the safe cover of a periodical, is certain to be received by any one of them who offers to his enemy the glorious opportunity of a book. Where so much temper exists, impartial history is out of the question.

Our authors, too, as a general rule, have inherited the political jargon of the last century, and abound in "destiny of humanity," "inalienable rights," "virtue of the sovereign people," "base and bloody despots," and all that sort of phrase, earnest and real enough once, but little better than cant and twaddle now. They seem to take it for granted that the question is settled, the rights of man accurately defined, the true and only theory of government found,—and that he who doubts is blinded by aristocratic prejudice or is a fool. We must say, nevertheless, that Father Time has not yet had years enough to answer the great question of governing which was proposed to him in 1789. Some of the developments of our day may well make us doubt whether the last and perfect form, or even theory, is the one we have chosen. " Les monarchies absolues avaient deshonoré le despotisme: prenons garde que les républiques démocratiques ne le réhabilitent ." But Paine's part in the history of this country after 1783 is of so small importance, that in a life of him all such considerations may be safely waived. The democratic movement of the last eighty years, be it a "finality," or only a phase of progress towards a more perfect state, is the grand historical fact of modern times, and Paine's name is intimately connected with it. One is always ready to look with lenity on the partiality of a biographer,—whether he urge the claims of his hero to a niche in the Valhalla of great men, or act as the Advocatus Diaboli to degrade his memory.

BEING A THIRD LETTER FROM PAUL POTTER, OF NEW YORK, IN THE CITY AND COUNTY OF NEW YORK, ESQ., TO THE DON ROBERTO WAGONERO, OF WASHINGTON, olim , BUT nunc OF NOWHEREINPARTICULAR.

If any person, O my Bobus, had foretold that all these months would go by before I should again address you, he would have exhibited prescient talent great enough to establish twenty "mediums" in a flourishing cabalistic business. Alas! they have been to me months of fathomless distress, immensurate and immeasurable sorrow, and blank, blind, idiotic indifference, even to books and friends, which, next to the nearest and dearest, are the world's most priceless possession. But now that I have a little thrown off the stupor, now that kindly Time has a little balmed my cruel wounds, I come back to my books and to you,—to the animi remissionem of Cicero,—to these gentle sympathizers and faithful solacements,—to old studies and ancient pursuits. There is a Latin line, I know not whose, but Swift was fond of quoting it,—

"Vertiginosus, inops, surdus, male gratus amicis," —

which I have whispered to myself, with prophetic lips, in the long, long watches of my lonesome nights. Do you remember—but who that has read it does not?—that affecting letter, written upon the death of his wife, by Sir James Mackintosh to Dr. Parr? "Such was she whom I have lost; and I have lost her when her excellent natural sense was rapidly improving, after eight years of struggle and distress had bound us fast together and moulded our tempers to each other,—when a knowledge of her worth had refined my youthful love into friendship, before age had deprived it of much of its original ardor. I lost her, alas! (the choice of my youth, and the partner of my misfortunes,) at a moment when I had the prospect of her sharing my better days."

But if I am getting old, although perhaps prematurely, I must be casting about for the subsidia senectuti . Swift wrote to Gay, that these were "two or three servants about you and a convenient house"; justly observing, that, "when a man grows hard to please, few people care whether he be pleased or no"; and adding, sadly enough, "I should hardly prevail to find one visitor, if I were not able to hire him with a bottle of wine"; and so the sorrowful epistle concludes with the sharpest grief of all: "My female friends, who could bear with me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me." It is odd that Montaigne should have hit upon the wine also as among the subsidia senectuti ; although the sage Michael complains, as you will remember, that old men do not relish their wine, or at least the first glass, because "the palate is furred with phlegms." But I care little either for the liquor or the lackeys, and not much, I fear, at present, for "the female friends." I have, then, nothing left for it but to take violently to books; for I doubt not I shall find almost any house convenient, and I am sure of one at last which I can claim by a title not to be disturbed by all the precedents of Cruise, and in which no mortal shall have a contingent remainder.