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1 A LABADE
* Fººl'ſ
"DETRO'ſ 5" º " THE
BIRTH OF THOS. PAINE
Al JTHOR-HERO OF THE REVOLUTION.
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DELIVERED AT THE SEVENTH CELEBRATION OF THE CHI-
CAGO SECULAR UNION, JAN. 30, 1888, By
PRESIDENT E. A. STEVENS.*
In the world's history volumes are devoted to com-
memorate men who have besieged cities merely for
bloody conquest, subdued provinces only to enslave
them, and overthrown empires simply to set up other
tyrants. Seldom, if ever, in their own generation do
moral heroes receive the gratitude, honor, or reward
their unselfish services deserve.
As the highest intellects generally look to the good
- of others, not personal aggrandizement, and, being the
least ambitious among men, it remains for future gener-
ations to place on them the “ diadem immortal.”
Fame seems like a river that bears upon its surface
the lighter substances, but in which the weightier and
solid sink until a more progressive and appreciative in-
telligence reverently resurrects the memory of those
whose high resolves burned deep within their hearts, and
who, with the electrifying eloquence of justice, roused
*Secretary American Secular Union.
-




2 THOMAS PAINE.
men to wrench the new world from the hands of royal
imbeciles.
In the line of mankind's saviors, few seem to have
possessed such singular proof of capacity, such deep
insight into the meaning of things, such courage, perse-
verance and freedom from either bigotry or dissimulation,
as he whose name we recall to honor on the 29th of Jan-
uary—the immortal Thomas Paine.
Paine's birthplace, home, pursuits, habits and early
associates are an oft-told tale, and to recite these unim-
portant facts to freethinkers, who know and venerate
him for his public services, seems largely a work of
supererogation. Still, for any who may be unfamiliar
with these events, it is well to briefly restate some of them.
The hero whose memory every handful of true freethink-
ers throughout this country will commemorate—a duty
in which all good citizens should participate—was born
of Quaker parents, in Thetford, County Norfolk, England,
I5 I years ago yesterday. He received but a limited
education, being substantially self-taught, and was suc-
cessively a stay-maker, sailor, exciseman, tobacconist,
and teacher. In 1772 he published his first political
pamphlet, showing the evils arising from the inadequate
payment of excisemen, their liability to bribery, etc.
This brochure was sent to Benjamin Franklin, and in-
duced him to recommend the poor author to come to
America. On what trivial pivots great destinies turn
He came with the intention of teaching—especially
with the design of elevating the education of woman,
and edited a magazine then published in Philadelphia.
In that publication his first poems appeared, and one of
those, “The Liberty Tree,” shows how he began to im-
bibe that supreme passion for freedom which seems to
have taken entire possession of his after life.

THOMAS PAINE. 3
His ardor for the revolution increasing, he devoted
himself entirely to political literature, and in January,
1774, published the spark that fired the train of inde-
pendence—that lucid, admirably-reasoned pamphlet,
“Common Sense.” This flew in thousands of copies
all over the colonies. It soon seized on the hearts and
minds of the people, and cast all other authors in the
shade. Its effect was electrical.
Remember that Delaware, Maryland and New Jer-
sey had already restrained their delegates in congress
from advocating open revolt. The legislature of Penn-
sylvania elected nine delegates to the continental
congress as late as November, 1775, with the following
instructions :
We direct that you agree upon such measures as shall afford
the best prospect of redressing American grievances and restoring
harmony between Great Britain and the colonies so essential to their
welfare and happiness. Though the British parliament and adminis-
tration have compelled us to resist their violence by force of arms,
yet we strictly enjoin that you dissent from and utterly reject any
proposition, should such be made, that may cause or lead to a sepa-
ration from our mother country or a change of the form of this gov-
ernment.
That sort of conservatism had been at work too
long. Franklin saw the people must be aroused, and he
knew the only man capable of flashing the torch of
freedom was Thomas Paine, who in that memorable ap-
peal for independence embodied in words the vague
longing of the whole country, for, in great emergencies,
politicians are seldom as radical or correct as their con-
stituents.
Listen to this great-hearted heretic's plea for in de-
pendence :
Every quiet method of peace hath been ineffectual; our prayers
have been rejected with disdain; reconstruction is now a fallacious

4. THOMAS PAINE.
dream. Bring the doctrine of reconciliation to the touchstone of
nature; can you hereafter love, honor and faithfully serve the power
that has carried fire and sword into your land? Ye that tell us of
harmony, can ye restore to us the time that is past? The blood of
the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, ’tis time to part. The
last chord is now broken; the people of England are presenting ad-
dresses against us. A government of our own is our natural right.
Ye that Zoze mankind, that dare oppose not only twrammy but the
tyrant, stand forth/ Every spot of the old world is overrun with
oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Europe
regards her like a stranger and England hath given her warning to
depart. Oh, receive the fugitive and prepare an asylum for mankind.
As a match touched to powder fires a magazine, so
these burning words set the country aflame, and this
common light blazed luridly in the continental congress.
This secured the union of all the states, and the Declar-
ation of Independence was produced. America listened
to Paine's grand, resistless appeal; she received gladly
for awhile the fugitives who had been hunted round the
globe and, in some respects, partially realized the daring
dream of that heroic soul who contributed such nervous
eloquence to make this republic a worthy asy/um for man-
//ma.
We cannot follow in detail the story of the Revolu-
tion, but we can record that the shout of victory was for
the sturdy colonists as a result of Thomas Paine's
powerful earnestness, sterling honesty and strength of
logic when espousing the cause of Liberty.
Paine soon became secretary of the committee on
foreign affairs, and was the accepted oracle on subjects
of constitutions and governments. The university of
Pennsylvania conferred on him the degree of master of
arts; he was elected a member of the American Philo-
sophical Society, and the state of Pennsylvania gave
him a grant of £500. Why? Because his “Crisis”

THOMAS PAINE. 5
sustained the army, excited national sympathy, and pro-
duced money and union in support of the war on every
occasion when a number appeared. Though a poor
man, Paine headed the subscription for the distressed
soldiers with $500—the last dollar he had. He gave the
fruit of his brain for the common good, refusing to
copyright his works, so that they would be republished,
have wider circulation and thus increase their influence.
He originated public opinion, moulded it, and led it to
final success, so that John Adams remarked that “in vain
would have been the sword of Washington (worthy as he
was), but for the pen of Paine.”
After the war, as a further evidence of esteem, the
Paine farm of three hundred acres, worth ten thousand
dollars, was presented as a testimonial by the state of
New York, and congress awarded him three thousand
dollars as a mere compliment, apologizing for the small-
ness of the sum on account of the poverty of the union,
burdened as it then was by the expense of the war.
He then visited Europe; introduced iron bridges in
England and mixed with the best talent of the day; but
when the fawning flatterer of royalty, Edmund Burke,
wrote his “Reflections on the French Revolution,” Paine
shot out his modern thunderbolt, the “Rights of Man,”
and shivered the aristocratic sham to atoms. His pr
vious political works had largely produced the revolt-, on
in France, and as a result already that high altar of des-
potism, the bastile, had been destroyed.
Public recognition of his great service to the Ameri-
can republic did not result in his calmly sitting down to
enjoy what was then willingly bestowed, but merely in-
tensified his determination and increased his enthusiasm
to strike stronger and deeper into prevailing infamous
frauds, whose outgrowth were hypocrisy, vice and feroc-

6 THOMAS PAINE.
ity in France. To him, “the peace of slavery was worse
than the war of freedom.”
As an illustration of the power of his pen, an act of
parliament was considered necessary to suppress his
works in England about that period.
You all know Paine's glorious service for liberty in
France, where, elected to the national assembly from
several places at once, he stood in that assembly the
solitary representative of justice and mercy. Refusing
to support Robespierre in the death of Louis Capet—
though willing to “kill the king, he was anxious to save
the man"—he fell under suspicion (for the wrongs of
ages had transformed men into tigers, whom nothing but
human blood could satisfy), was imprisoned and con-
demned; and while daily awaiting death, calmly pre-
pared his “Age of Reason,” which he dedicated to the
American people, still as solicitous for our mental liber-
ation as he was for our political freedom. Contemplate
that sublime spectacle | The man who on the brink of
existence, daily expecting to ascend the scaffold to the
gory knife, where the gray hairs of aged men mingled
with the tresses of beautiful women—the one man unter-
rifted in an age of ferrors—fearless alike of life or death,
dreading nothing but dishonesty, devoted these (sup-
posed) last hours to writing the boldest criticism on the
bible that had ever seen the light of day! The “Age of
Reason" is the red rag before the ecclesiastical bulls; it
is the gage of defiance for all theologians of Christianity
to answer, but their answer never has and never will
come. From this onslaught of Paine's largely dates the
downfall of faith, the destruction of bigotry, and the
elevation of mankind to mental liberty. The fangs of
the clergy were then directed against him, and he replied
with the second part of the “Age of Reason.”

THOMAS PAINE. 7
Since then, treacherous misrepresentation, bitterest
calumny, vilest vituperation, have been malignantly
hurled upon his name for three-quarters of a century;
but as we clear away this de/ris of bigotry and persecu-
tion, brighter gems of genius and grander characteristics
are revealed.
On the overthrow of the republic by Napoleon,
Paine returned to the United States, the condemned, the
ostracized, the hated by all the priestcraft, who have
not yet ceased to employ their spiteful venom.
To this man who first wrote the words, “ The United
States of America,” the undoubted inspirer of our
Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, and
the securer of that independence, no reverential shaft
rears its lofty column in these United States Why this
neglect 2 No, not neglect, for a monster monument was
erected—one which it was hoped would securely hide
the true man from view forever. That monument was
s/ander /
As Courbet, the French artist, led the populace of
Paris, in 1871, to pull down the Column Vendome, built
to commemorate the butcheries of their brethren by
Bonaparte, so we freethinkers, by these annual services,
are hurling down on the heads of those who built them
the pyramid of falsehoods which have rested so long
on the fair fame of Thomas Paine.
The priest has been aided in his defamation of this
great defender of true principle by the aristocrat—
when not the latter, by the monopolist. As monopoly is
sure to create an aristocracy, so a constitutional govern-
ment is often but the mask whereby the people, through
ignorance, indifference or necessity, are lured to embrace
a greater tyranny by their oppressors than armed legions
could maintain. This system has created an American

8 THOMAS PAINE.
aristocracy more relentless, cruel and heartless than
some of those of Europe.
Thomas Paine well said that the constitutional gov-
ernment of England gave just enough liberty to enslave
a people more effectually than by open despotism, and
boldly advised the people to “lay the ax at the root, and
teach governments humility.” Alas for the traditions
of American liberty Similar sentiments uttered in the
United States a century and a half after his birth are
punished with DEATH !
Under the pretense of combating unconstitutional
measures, the authorities now overthrow the constitution
themselves. For, if the freedom of the press and of
private opinion are to be assailed by government, then,
indeed, have the people degenerated, or never learned
the lesson which such heroic souls as Thomas Paine
labored so earnestly to instill. It is not strange when
we remember that theological rancor has, by odious lies,
almost obliterated the principles he taught, as well as
the important part which Paine and other freethinkers
played in founding what might have been the Super-
structure of that “greaf asy/um for mankind.”
We no longer welcome representatives of liberty to
America—they are “foreign disturbers,” and must be
denounced. Still society smiles on the moral and intel-
lectual obliquity of the scions of European aristocracy.
Such are the standards of this decade of the nineteenth
century. Such were the standards of the Roman re-
public when its corruptions had grown ripe for judg-
ment. These are merely transitory—only presaging the
reckless ruin sure to follow false ecclesiastical and
social fabrics.
Well may we remember the words of Madame Ro
land, as she turned on the scaffold to gaze on the statue,

THOMAS PAINE. 9
“O, Ziberty / Waſ crimes are commiſſed in Zhy
//a/e / ''
Year by year, the toiling millions are receiving a
broader education—largely the result of necessity. Once
let them realize true social ethics, their collective mo-
mentum will insure the enforcement of a new Declaration
of Independence. The second declaration is as just as
the first, and is its natural result. The first founded our
political independence; the second will secure our indus-
Zria/INTER-dependence. The first was founded by the bul-
let, but it is hoped to establish the second by the ballot.
Then let the rallying cry of freethinkers and re-
formers be: “We Zhat Zoze mankind, Zhat dare of/ose, mo/
on/y ſyranny but the tyrant, stand forf/ /* -
We may veil our eyes, but we cannot hide
The sun’s meridian glow;
The heel of a priest may tread us down,
And a tyrant work us woe:
But never a truth has been destroyed:
They may curse it and call it crime;
Pervert and betray, or slander and slay,
Its teachers for a time;
But the sunshine aye shall light the sky,
As round and round we run;
And the truth shall ever come uppermost,
And justice shall be done.
Paine died in 1809, at New Rochelle, N. Y., compar-
atively deserted, and few dared own his friendship after
his fearless pamphlet, the “Age of Reason,” appeared,
for truth was the great magnet whose influence he
obeyed; where that guided, Paine implicitly followed,
and thus this unselfish philosopher and patriot spent his
life in a continual struggle for the good of others.
To face a danger man fully is to comprehend its import
and its power, and in this his forethought was prophetic,
1 O THOMAS PAINE.
as even to-day the most advanced social and political
reformer can still extract nourishment from his works;
can still perceive with what prophetic wisdom Paine
weighed, considered and largely counteracted, the vile
hordes whose constant endeavor was to make men, in his
time, drudges and slaves to royal and theological task-
masters.
Paine's mind seems a deep well, which was in no
danger of being exhausted by the copious draughts
made upon it. His power and force of character was
heightened by his versatility of thought, but though
endowed with keenest perception and finest discrimina-
tion, there was nothing of the mean, groveling, selfish
panderer in his composition. He was a student of men
as well as books, with sympathies and experiences en-
larged by contact with the bitter actualities of those in
humble life, whose sufferings seemed to deepen, exalt
and awaken him to trumpet-toned utterances for freedom.
With Paine it was unmanly to murmur at loss of
time, money, or energy. Great wisdom, devotion, and
sacrifice were necessary to reform abuses and suppress
existing evils, and gladly he gave all; to him it was
cowardly to shrink from danger -even from death at
the gory guillotine.
The rights of which Paine wrote were those resting
on man’s requirements and nature's supply; not rights
sanctioned by conventional compact of rulers; not
im/heriſed from past generations, but inherent, not re-
ceived from priests and kings, nor secured by their
parchments, but rights derived from the fact of exist-
ence and embraced in the very charter of our being.
Knowing that liberty makes life, and that life should be
strong enough to guard and maintain liberty, he also
knew that the pursuit of happiness flows from freedom

THOMAS PAINE. º II
of action, and that when government presumes to reg-
ulate the volition of a people a great crime is committed
and desolating oppression is enforced. “Life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness” must be conditions of exist-
ence, for unless we exercise those functions we become
diseased, and a portion of the body politic perishes.
He might have had his faults, but the faults of such
noble souls are like foothills around the base of lofty
mountains—the nearer we stand to them the more they
obscure our judgment of their true proportions by hid-
ing the peaks that rise beyond. But when we draw
farther off, they slowly shrink into the plain, while the
mountain giant, at first obscured, rises free and clear in
majestic grandeur. Even so, as we look at the life and
deeds of this great hero, do we realize how insignificant
were any faults he possessed, compared with the grand-
eur of his purpose.
Paine left us a reflex of his character in the sublime
sentence: “The world is my country; to do good is my
religion.” There never was counselor more faithful,
patriot more sincere or successful, statesman with keener
or more comprehensive views, or a man more unassum-
ing, yet of firmer or more decided qualities.
May Americans long appreciate the genius and rev-
erence the virtues of their noble benefactor, for he left
them a legacy greater than his works—the contemplation
of his high-souled, unselfish character.

I 2 THOMAS PAINE.
S. P. Putnam, President of the American Secular
Union, is conceded to be one of the most brilliant poets
and writers of our time. In a private letter Mr. Put-
nam expressed himself as follows: -
/9ear Stevens: -- - - -
Read your brief oration on Thomas Paine and admired it ever
so much. It is one of the best ever penned. It shows a thorough
understanding of Paine's character and work. It has historic imagi-
nation and what I call juice. It struck me on reading it that you
would make a first class biographer of Paine. You know we have
not a good life of Paine–one where the facts of his career are mar-
shalled in vivid, sparkling style, so that he is presented to the world
in a brilliant, picturesque manner as a living man and not as an ab-
straction. I believe you could fill this long felt want and give the
free thought world a life of Paine—not merely of facts, but of the
very spirit of the man, in which we can see the glow of romance and
the splendor of his character. I suggest this to you if you have the
patience as well as the enthusiasm. We need such a life, full of
facts, not long or tedious, but representing the man faithfully in
what he did and also in his ideas. Your oration shows a real capac-
ity in this direction. It gives the heart of the matter, is vigorous
and to the point. It gives pictures of Paine and not merely a record.
- Yours truly, S. P. PUTNAM.