Part 2

He had never relinquished his intention of pointing out to his countrymen the defects, absurdities, and abuse of the English government. For this purpose; he composed and published his greatest political work. "The Rights of Man." This work should be read by every man and woman. It is concise, accurate, rational, convincing, and unanswerable. It shows great thought, an intimate knowledge of the various forms of government, deep insight into the very springs of human action, and a courage that compels respect and admiration. The most difficult political problems are solved in a few sentences. The venerable arguments in favor of wrong are refuted with a question--answered with a word. For forcible illustration, apt comparison, accuracy and clearness of statement, and absolute thoroughness, it has never been excelled.

The fears of the administration were aroused, and Paine was prosecuted for libel, and found guilty; and yet there is not a sentiment in the entire work that will not challenge the admiration of every civilized man. It is a magazine of political wisdom, an arsenal of ideas, and an honor not only to Thomas Paine, but to nature itself. It could have been written only by the man who had the generosity, the exalted patriotism, the goodness to say: "The world is my country, and to do good my religion."

There is in all the utterances of the world no grander, no sublimer sentiment. There is no creed that can be compared with it for a moment. It should be wrought in gold, adorned with jewels, and impressed upon every human heart: "The world is my country, and to do good my religion."

In 1792, Paine was elected by the department of Calais as their representative in the National Assembly. So great was his popularity in France, that he was selected about the same time by the people of no less than four departments.

Upon taking his place in the assembly, he was appointed as one of a committee to draft a constitution for France. Had the French people taken the advice of Thomas Paine, there would have been no "reign of terror." The streets of Paris would not have been filled with blood in that reign of terror. There were killed in the City of Paris not less, I think, than seventeen thousand people--and on one night, in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, there were killed, by assassination, over sixty thousand souls--men, women, and children. The revolution would have been the grandest success of the world. The truth is that Paine was too conservative to suit the leaders of the French revolution. They, to a great extent, were carried away by hatred and a desire to destroy. They had suffered so long, they had borne so much, that it was impossible for them to be moderate in the hour of victory.

Besides all this, the French people had been so robbed by the government, so degraded by the church, that they were not fit material with which to construct a republic. Many of the leaders longed to establish a beneficent and just government, but the people asked for revenge. Paine was filled with a real love for mankind. His philanthropy was boundless. He wished to destroy monarchy--not the monarch. He voted for the destruction of tyranny, and against the death of the tyrant. He wished to establish a government on a new basis--one that would forget the past; one that would give privileges to none, and protection to all.

In the assembly, where all were demanding the execution of the king,--where to differ with the majority was to be suspected, and where to be suspected was almost certain death--Thomas Paine had the courage, the goodness, and the justice to vote against death. To vote against the execution of the king was a vote against his own life. This was the sublimity of devotion to principle. For this he was arrested, imprisoned, and doomed to death. There is not a theologian who has ever maligned Thomas Paine that has the courage to do this thing. When Louis Capet was on trial for his life before the French convention, Thomas Paine had the courage to speak and vote against the sentence of death. In his speech I find the following splendid sentiments:

"My contempt and hatred for monarchical governments are sufficiently well known, and my compassion for the unfortunate, friends or enemies, is equally profound.

I have voted to put Louis Capet upon trial, because it was necessary to prove to the world the perfidy, the corruption, and the horror of the monarchical system.

To follow the trade of a king destroys all morality, just as the trade of a jailer deadens all sensibility.

Make a man a king today and tomorrow he will be a brigand.

Had Louis Capet been a farmer, he might have been held in esteem by his neighbors, and his wickedness results from his position rather than from his nature.

Let the French nation purge its territory of kings without soiling itself with their impure blood.

Let the United States be the asylum of Louis Capet, where, in spite of the overshadowing miseries and crimes of a royal life, he will learn by the continual contemplation of the general prosperity that the true system of government is not that of kings, but of the people.

I am an enemy of kings, but I can not forget that they belong to the human race.

It is always delightful to pursue that course where policy and humanity are united.

As France has been the first of all the nations of Europe to destroy royalty, let it be the first to abolish the penalty of death.

As a true republican, I consider kings as more the objects of contempt than of vengeance."

Search the records of the world and you will find but few sublimer acts than that of Thomas Paine voting against the king's death. He, the hater of despotism, the abhorer of monarchy, the champion of the rights of man, the republican, accepting death to save the life of a deposed tyrant--of a throneless king! This was the last grand act of his political life--the sublime conclusion of his political career.

All his life he had been the disinterested friend of man. He had labored not for money, not for fame, but for the general good. He had aspired to no office. He had no recognition of his services, but had ever been content to labor as a common soldier in the army of progress, confining his efforts to no country, looking upon the world as his field of action. Filled with a genuine love for the right, he found himself imprisoned by the very people he had striven to save.

Had his enemies succeeded in bringing him to the block, he would have escaped the calumnies and the hatred of the Christian world. And let me tell you how neat they came getting him to the block. He was in prison, there was a door to his cell--it had two doors, a door that opened in and an iron door that opened out. It was a dark passage, and whenever they concluded to cut a man's head off the next day, an agent went along and made a chalk mark upon the door where the poor prisoner was bound. Mr. Barlow, the American minister, happened to be with him and the outer door was shut, that is, open against the wall, and the inner door was shut, and when the man came along whose business it was to mark the door for death, he marked this door where Thomas Paine was, but he marked the door that was against the wall, so when it was shut the mark was inside, and the messenger of death passed by on the next day. If that had happened in favor of some Methodist preacher, they would have clearly seen, not simply the hand of God, but both hands. In this country, at least, he would have ranked with the proudest names. On the anniversary of the Declaration, his name would have been upon the lips of all orators, and his memory in the hearts of all the people.

Thomas Paine had not finished his career. He had spent his life thus far in destroying the power of kings, and now turned his attention to the priests. He knew that every abuse had been embalmed in scripture--that every outrage was in partnership with some holy text. He knew that the throne skulked behind the altar, and both behind a pretended revelation of God. By this time he had found that it was of little use to free the body and leave the mind in chains. He had explored the foundations of despotism, and had found them infinitely rotten. He had dug under the throne, and it occurred to him that he would take a look behind the altar. The result of this investigation was given to the world in the "Age of Reason." From the moment of its publication he became infamous. He was calumniated beyond measure. To slander him was to secure the thanks of the church. All his services were instantly forgotten, disparaged, or denied. He was shunned as though he had been a pestilence. Most of his old friends forsook him. He was regarded as a moral plague, and at the bare mention of his name the bloody hands of the church were raised in horror. He was denounced as the most despicable of men.

Not content with following him to his grave, they pursued him after death with redoubled fury, and recounted with infinite gusto and satisfaction the supposed horrors of his death-bed: gloried in the fact that he was forlorn and friendless, and gloated like fiends over what they supposed to be the agonizing remorse of his lonely death.

It is wonderful that all his services are thus forgotten. It is amazing that one kind word did not fall from some pulpit; that some one did not accord to him, at least--honesty. Strange that in the general denunciation some one did not remember his labor for liberty, his devotion to principle, his zeal for the rights of his fellow-men. He had, by brave and splendid effort, associated his name with the cause of progress. He had made it impossible to write the history of political freedom with his name left out. He was one of the creators of light, one of the heralds of the dawn. He hated tyranny in the name of kings, and in the name of God, with every drop of his noble blood. He believed in liberty and justice, and in the sacred doctrine of human equality. Under these divine banners he fought the battle of his life. In both worlds he offered his blood for the good of man. In the wilderness of America, in the French assembly, in the sombre cell waiting for death, he was the same unflinching, unwavering friend of his race; the same undaunted champion of universal freedom. And for this he has been hated; for this the church has violated even his grave.

This is enough to make one believe that nothing is more natural than for men to devour their benefactors. The people in all ages have crucified and glorified. Whoever lifts his voice against abuses, whoever arraigns the past at the bar of the present, whoever asks the king to show his commission, or question the authority of the priest, will be denounced as the enemy of man and God. In all ages reason has been regarded as the enemy of religion. Nothing has been considered so pleasing to the Deity as a total denial of the authority of your own mind. Self-reliance has been thought deadly sin; and the idea of living and dying without the aid and consolation of superstition has always horrified the church. By some unaccountable infatuation, belief has been and still is considered of immense importance. All religions have been based upon the idea that God will forever reward the true believer, and eternally damn the man who doubts or denies. Belief is regarded as the one essential thing. To practice justice, to love mercy, is not enough; you must believe in some incomprehensible creed. You must say: "Once one is three, and three times one is one." The man who practiced every virtue, but failed to believe, was execrated. Nothing so outrages the feelings of the church as a moral unbeliever, nothing so horrible as a charitable atheist.

When Paine was born the world was religious, the pulpit was the real throne, and the churches were making every effort to crush out of the brain the idea that it had the right to think. He again made up his mind to sacrifice himself. He commenced with the assertion "That any system of religion that had anything in it that shocks the mind of a child can not be a true system." What a beautiful, what a tender sentiment! No wonder the church began to hate him. He believed in one God, and no more. After his life he hoped for happiness. He believed that true religion consisted in doing justice, loving mercy; in endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy, and in offering to God the fruit of the heart. He denied the inspiration of the scriptures. This was his crime.

He contended that it is a contradiction in terms to call anything a revelation that comes to us at secondhand, either verbally or in writing. He asserted that revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication, and that after that it is only an account of something which another person says was a revelation to him. We have only his word for it, as it was never made to us. This argument never had been, and probably never will be answered. He denied the divine origin of Christ and showed conclusively that the pretended prophecies of the Old Testament lead no reference to Him whatever. And yet he believed that Christ was a virtuous and amiable man; that the morality he taught and practiced was of the most benevolent and elevated character, and that it had not been exceeded by any. Upon this point he entertained the same sentiments now held by the Unitarians, and in fact by all the most enlightened Christians.

In his time the church believed and taught that every word in the Bible was absolutely true. Since his day it has been proven false in its cosmogony, false in its astronomy, false in its chronology and geology, false in its history, so far as the Old Testament is concerned, false in almost everything. There are but few, if any, scientific men, who apprehend that the Bible is literally true. Who on earth at this day would pretend to settle any scientific question by a text from the Bible? The old belief is confined to the ignorant and zealous. The church itself will before long be driven to occupy the position of Thomas Paine. The best minds of the orthodox world, today, are endeavoring to prove the existence of a personal Deity. All other questions occupy a minor place. You are no longer asked to swallow the Bible whole, whale, Jonah and all; you are simply required to believe in God and pay your pew-rent.