THOMAS PAINE

THOMAS PAINE
Social and political thought

Gregory Claeys
Associate Professor of History,
Washington University, St Louis

Boston
UNWIN HYMAN
London Sydney Wellington
 © G. Claeys 1989
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.

Unwin Hyman Inc.,

8 Winchester Place, Winchester, Mass. 01890, USA

Published by the Academic Division of

Unwin Hyman Ltd
15/17 Broadwick Street, London W1V 1FP, UK

Allen & Unwin (Australia) Ltd,

8 Napier Street, North Sydney, NSW 2060, Australia

Allen & Unwin (New Zealand) Ltd in association with the

Port Nicholson Press Ltd,
Compusales Building, 75 Ghuznee Street, Wellington 1, New Zealand

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001.

First published in 1989

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Claeys, Gregory.
Thomas Paine : social and political thought / Gregory Claeys
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-04-445089-3 (Print Edition). — ISBN 0-04-445090-7 (pbk.)
1. Paine, Thomas. 1737-1809—Contributions in political science.
I. Title.
JC178.V2C58 1989
320.5´1´092—dc20 89-16531
CIP

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Claeys, Gregory
Thomas Paine : social and political thought
1. Politics. Theories of Paine, Thomas, 1737–1809
I. Title
320.5´1´0924

ISBN 0-04-445089-3 (Print Edition)

ISBN 0-04-445090-7 pbk
ISBN 0-203-19320-2 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-19323-7 (Glassbook Format)
To M.S.G.
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgements page xi

Chronology xiii

Introduction The age of Paine 1

The problem of Thomas Paine 1
British radical traditions, 1688–1789 6
Natural rights and natural law 10
The emergence of the reform movement 13

1 ‘Apostle of liberty’: the life of Thomas Paine 20

2 ‘The cause of all mankind’: Paine and the American revolution 39

Colonial radicalism, 1765–76 39
Independence sounded: Common Sense (1776) 42
Interpreting Common Sense 45
The Tories respond 51
Paine at war: The American Crisis (1776–83) 53
American independence as a democratic revolution 56

3 Republicanism contested: Burke’s Reflections (1790) and the

Rights of Man (1791–92) 63
Radicalism and Dissent, 1788–90 63
The ‘manifesto of a counter-revolution’: Burke’s Reflections on the
Revolution in France (1790) 64
Early responses to Burke (1790-92) 66
Exporting America: the Rights of Man. Being an Answer to Mr. Burke’s
Attack on the French Revolution (February 1791) 71
Towards social justice: the Rights of Man, Part Second. Combining
Principle and Practice (1792) 75

4 Paine’s achievement 85
Constitutionalism, conventions and republicanism 86
Natural rights and natural law 90
Commerce, wealth and equality 96
Quakerism and the millennium 101
Paine’s language and appeal 104

ix
 THOMAS PAINE

5 A great awakening: the birth of the Revolutionary Party 110

‘The whiskey of infidelity and treason’: the Rights of Man and popular
politics 110
How Paine was read 120
‘All change at Hounslow’: middle-class radicalism and the Painites 127
Critics from the left 133

6 Inequality vindicated: the government party 139

Painophobia unleashed: governmental and loyalist reaction 139
Scurrilous abuse 146
Arguments against the Rights of Man: property and civilization 153
Natural rights and the state of nature 159
The Painite counterattack 164
Religion and revolution 167

7 Revolution in heaven: The Age of Reason (1794–95) 177

Introduction 177
Deism in the eighteenth century 178
The Age of Reason 179
The reception of The Age of Reason 193
Conclusion 193

8 Revolution in civilization: Agrarian Justice (1797) 196

Agrarian Justice: natural jurisprudence secularized 197
Deism and the Creation 203
The reception of Agrarian Justice 207

Conclusion Political saint: the legend of Thomas Paine 209

Paine’s reputation 209
The emergence of social radicalism 213
The modernity of Thomas Paine 215

Bibliography 218

Index 248

x
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to Geraint Parry for help in the initial stages of writing this book.
Gordon Smith of Unwin Hyman has done much to see it through to publication.
John Dunn, Gareth Stedman Jones and J. F. C. Harrison remained encouraging as
always. Iver Bernstein, Rowland Berthoff, Istvan Hont and David Konig kindly
commented on all or parts of the book. My best editor, Christine Lattek, offered
many helpful suggestions on the text and, as importantly, remained immensely
patient throughout its composition. I have also benefited from discussions with
Alan Booth, Iain Hampsher-Monk, John Stevenson, Richard Tuck, and Roger
Wells.
Particularly helpful with sources have been the British Library, Bloomsbury,
to whose beleaguered employees I am exceptionally grateful for helping to find
many of the anonymous works used here; the Cambridge University Library, the
Goldsmiths’ Library, University of London, and Washington University Library
(with particular thanks for their considerable assistance to Anne Barker, Holly
Hall, B. J. Johnston, Christine Smith, David Straight, Nada Vaughn and Vicky
Witte). I would also like to thank the British Library Newspaper Library,
Colindale, the library of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, the Thetford Library, the Edinburgh University
Library, the Library of Congress, Rotherham Central Library, the Public Record
Office, Chancery Lane and Richmond, and the Library of the American
Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. Research for this book was funded in part by
grants from the Graduate School of Washington University, St Louis, and the
American Philosophical Society, to whom many thanks are due.
Portions of the book have been tested on various audiences. I am especially
indebted to the Society for the Study of Labour History and the Thomas Paine
Society for their support and helpful comments at their joint Paine conference at
Sheffield in April 1987, and to the former society’s conference on the French
revolution in Britain, held at Nottingham in March 1989. An earlier version of
chapter 8 was published in the Bulletin of the Labour History Society, to whose
editors I am grateful for permission to reprint sections of it here.

xi
 THOMAS PAINE

Finally, I would like to thank Barbara Fineberg for her most generous gift of a print
of Paine in her father’s memory; it has scowled at least once during the progress of
the manuscript, but has hopefully been propitiated at last.

xii
 CHRONOLOGY

29 January 1737 Thomas Paine born at Thetford

1762–74 ‘Wilkes and Liberty’ movement
10 January 1776 Common Sense published
4 July 1776 American Declaration of Independence
1779–80 Yorkshire Association meetings
April 1780 formation of the Society for Promoting
Constitutional Information
November 1782 end of American War of Independence
1788–90 Dissenting efforts to repeal Test Acts
14 July 1789 storming of the Bastille
4 November 1789 Richard Price’s sermon to the Revolution
Society
October 1790 United Irishmen formed
November 1790 Burke’s Reflections published
December 1790 Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the
Rights of Men published
22 February 1791 The Rights of Man, Part One published
19 April 1791 death of Richard Price
7 May 1791 James Mackintosh’s Vindiciae Gallicae
published VM
July 1791 Church and King Riots
25 January 1792 London Corresponding Society founded
February 1792 The Rights of Man, Part Second published
22 May 1792 Royal Proclamation against Sedition, Sub-
version and Riot
September 1792 cheap edition of the Rights of Man (both
parts) published
14 September 1792 Paine moves to Paris
21 September 1792 French monarchy abolished
October 1792 first reformers’ convention, Edinburgh
late 1792 split in the Whig Party; isolation of Fox
20 November 1792 Association for the Preservation of Liberty
and Property formed
18 December 1792 Paine’s trial, in absentia, for seditious libel
January–February 1793 Aliens Act; Traitorous Correspondence
Act
21 January 1793 Louis XVI executed

xiii
 THOMAS PAINE

1 February 1793 France declares war on Britain

February 1793 William Godwin’s Enquiry concerning
Political Justice published
April 1793 second reformers’ convention
August 1793 Edinburgh sedition trials
November–December 1793 third ‘British Convention’ meets at Edin-
burgh
27 December 1793 Paine arrested in Paris
1794 The Age of Reason published
early 1794 further Edinburgh treason trials
May 1794 London treason trials begin; suspension of
Habeas Corpus
July 1794 fall of Robespierre
4 November 1794 Paine released
December 1795 the Two Acts (widening the definition of
treason and curtailing mass meetings)
1797 Agrarian Justice published
1797 Thomas Spence’s The Rights of Infants
published
9 July 1797 death of Edmund Burke
May–October 1798 insurrection in Ireland
July 1799 London Corresponding Society banned
November 1802 Paine returns to the US
February 1804 death of Joseph Priestley
8 June 1809 death of Thomas Paine at New Rochelle,
aged 72

xiv
 INTRODUCTION
THE AGE OF PAINE

I know not whether any Man in the World has had more influence on its inhabitants or
affairs for the last thirty years than Tom Paine. There can be no severer Satyr on the Age.
For such a mongrel between Pigg and Puppy, begotten by a wild Boar on a Bitch Wolf,
never before in any Age of the World was suffered by the Poltroonery of mankind, to run
through such a career of mischief. Call it then the Age of Paine. (John Adams to Benjamin
Waterhouse)1

The problem of Thomas Paine

Two crises at the end of the eighteenth century destroyed the vision of politics which
had dominated all previous human history. From the shots fired at Lexington to the
storming of the Bastille, a chain of events unfolded which inexorably convinced
millions that rule by hereditary monarchies and aristocracies at the expense of the
majority was illegitimate in principle. The claim of the majority to political power,
though it gained ground slowly in the nineteenth century and is still far from
universally granted in practice, is none the less today nearly everywhere conceded
in theory, and defines the politics of modernity. Its achievement, not merely
industrialization, is commonly said to mark the passage of nations to civility. We
nearly all agree that we should be ‘democrats’, no matter how much we dispute what
the term means.
In the first decades of revolution one man more than any other – ‘probably the
most useful man that ever existed upon the face of the earth’, one of his friends said
– epitomized the new democratic ideal. Having done much to foment independence
in America, Thomas Paine sowed the seeds of revolution in Britain in the early 1790s
and went on, though now with a smaller role on a wider political stage, narrowly to
escape the guillotine for his efforts in France shortly thereafter. During his life, his
writings were read by more men and women than any other political author in
history. His interests were wider than the political arena, however. He was among the
first to advocate freeing all slaves. He was a pioneer in the field of international

1
 THOMAS PAINE

arbitration, the inheritor of a solid Quaker tradition in this area. He opposed British
colonial policies in India and Africa.
None the less, Paine’s reputation rests chiefly upon his great political works,
Common Sense, which did much to spark the American revolution, and the Rights of
Man, whose popularity was even greater and set off a much more extensive political
debate. Paradoxically, however, Paine’s very success also underlies his relative
neglect as a thinker today. He was not a trained political philosopher, but a common
man with an uncommonly sharp mind who was profoundly angered by the
oppression and arrogance of Britain’s upper classes as well as by hereditary rule
generally. Paine’s uncanny ability to give voice to similar resentments in millions of
others was an essential component in his popularity on both sides of the Atlantic. But
consequently it is often assumed that Paine spoke the unsophisticated thoughts of the
multitude, and then moreover as an enthusiast and demagogue pandering to the
crowd, ‘a mere Hyde Park orator’ and vulgarizer of Locke, whose chief work does
not constitute ‘even a minor’ contribution to political theory, and who therefore has
no proper place beside the great political thinkers. For decades American historians,
as Alfred Young has remarked, thus relegated Paine to the sidelines of their
revolution ‘as a person of marginal influence’ if not dubious moral character. A
typical account from the 1930s devotes one paragraph of an 800-page study of the
events of 1776 to Paine, dismisses Common Sense as ‘a useless study of the
monarchy’ and an ‘unpractical attempt at laying down a system of government’, and
concludes only grudgingly that ‘whatever Paine’s lack of personal merit, it must be
admitted that he did a great service to his times’. In Britain, despite the pioneering
work of E. P. Thompson, Albert Goodwin and others, many aspects of Paine’s impact
remain unstudied, particularly the massive debate which concentrated so singularly
upon the Rights of Man.2
For similar reasons, Paine has achieved little official respectability on either side
of the Atlantic. There is no place for him among the pantheon of heroes whose
monuments dominate Washington DC, and the American labour movement only
distantly recalls his achievements. His birthday is no cause for celebration in
Downing Street, though the Thomas Paine Society does much to keep his memory
alive. Paris, where he was least successful, has erected a statue of him pleading for
the life of Louis XVI. But in Britain (Michael Foot and Tony Benn notwithstanding)
and America the few politicians who know any history would rather forget than
recall his contribution to modern democracy. Moreover, a surprising proportion of
the American public continues to find Painite theology threatening.
Paine has not suffered from complete neglect, of course. He has had many
biographers and has been figured in several plays and works of fiction. But in

2
 INTRODUCTION

scholarly circles he has only slowly begun to receive his due. His role in the
American revolution is now much clearer after recent careful studies by Eric Foner
and A. O. Aldridge. But his European writings and their impact remain less well
scrutinized and these accordingly receive greater attention here. We recognize the
paradigmatic quality of the ‘Burke–Paine debate’ (we will later see that this is a
considerable misnomer when applied to the controversy as a whole). For it was here
first established that the battleground of politics would long be dominated by the
siege of aristocratic ‘tradition’ by plebeian ‘democracy’. We might even concede
Paine’s virtually single-handed creation of a mass reading public conscious for the
first time of its right to participate in politics. Yet when we study the British debate
over the French revolution it is often Edmund Burke who receives greater attention.
Paine is merely one of his respondents, albeit the most important. But Paine’s brand
of popular radicalism is rarely construed as part of the ‘great tradition’ of political
thought upon which we often suppose western civilization is built.
This is curious given the fact that it is Paine’s vision, rather than Burke’s, which
predominates in the modern world. It would be inexplicable except that the revival
of Burke has had more to do with the Russian than the French revolution and has
consequently resulted in the frequent conservative confusion of the principles of the
latter revolution (or indeed any other) with those of Jacobinism. Such an imbalance
clearly requires rectification, and by examining Paine’s ideas in their context we will
find that he was indeed a revolutionary, but not a Bolshevik or a Jacobin. Moreover,
there are other weaknesses in the current view of Paine. As Jack Greene has
emphasized, it is rare that scholars have been interested in both Paine’s American
and his European careers, and in both the European sources of his ideas and the
bearing of his American experiences on his later thought.3 This bifurcation in Paine
studies, it is hoped, is also partially remedied by this book, by integrating debates
about Paine’s American and European works.
But reconsidering Paine is necessary not only to temper the political and
intellectual preferences of earlier historians and political theorists. A fairer and more
detailed treatment of his ideas also affects our assessment of the central arguments
of the French revolution debate and their British development during the 1790s. For
to take not Paine but Burke as the centre of this controversy is to fail to see how much
more this debate centred on the Rights of Man than the Reflections. Burke’s
vindication of the ancien régime sold some 30,000 copies and generated about fifty
responses, ranging from brief pamphlets to William Godwin’s three-volume
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. Paine sold hundreds of thousands of copies of
the Rights of Man, and provoked perhaps four to five hundred replies ranging from
broadsheets to 700-page tomes. Burke did much to incite the British reaction to the

3
 THOMAS PAINE

French revolution, but he was much less responsible for its success in eradicating the
reform movement, often even going unmentioned in the subsequent pamphlet war.
But Paine’s name epitomized the principles of the new reformers. The Rights of Man
redefined the terms in which politics was to be understood and could be countered
only by pamphleteers willing to address the people directly. Thousands, too, did not
deny the name of ‘Painite’ when it was thrust upon them, while few termed
themselves ‘Burkians’. As importantly, Paine’s arguments, though often
misunderstood, were and remain intellectually as powerful as Burke’s. His defence
of his own version of modernity is no less reasonable than Burke’s championing of
its historical predecessor. Nor did Paine marshal his arguments with less care;
indeed, contrary to popular assumption, some even of Burke’s sympathizers found
his account the more hysterical.
This book is not therefore a new biography of Paine. His life is summarized in the
next chapter, but those interested in the minutiae of Paineana are directed to several
good studies. But no previous account investigates Paine’s social and political
thought in both its British and American moments, details its eighteenth-century
context, examines the ways in which Paine’s ideas were actually understood, and
further attempts to restore him to the position his contemporaries (at least his
supporters) accorded him, that of an important writer on politics and society. Paine’s
biographers have done great service to his life, but an adventurous career has
overshadowed Paine’s role in the forging of modern political debate.4
This is especially true for the more neglected British side of Paine’s thought and
thus for the Rights of Man, The Age of Reason and Agrarian Justice. Accordingly,
while Common Sense and Paine’s role in the American revolution are treated in one
chapter here and their relation to recent debates in American historiography is
summarized, my concentration is upon Paine’s most influential as well as
intellectually interesting work, the Rights of Man, and its British reception and
connection to working-class radicalism. This is further narrowed by a focus upon
England and Scotland, though detailed work on Ireland and Wales is still needed.
While the arguments of all of Paine’s major works are assessed here, two chapters
detail the reception of the Rights of Man and attempt for the first time to scrutinize
carefully the enormous pamphlet literature on both the radical and loyalist sides as a
means of excavating the contextual meaning of Paine’s ideas. Examining the
relationship between text and audience, between political debate and popular
political movement, alone reveals both the appeal of Paine’s ideas and also why
efforts to refute them met with some success. For revolution in Britain was not
prevented by repression alone. Moreover, we will also see that reading the political
thought of this period in terms of this extensive debate, rather than Paine and Burke

4
 INTRODUCTION

alone, gives us quite a different view of its contours and relation to both eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century political thought. In particular, we will see that much of the
controversy did not concentrate solely on natural rights, or the defence or rejection
of the new French government, but rather upon the wider question of whether
egalitarian republicanism was compatible with a commercial society, or whether, in
short, America could be imitated in Europe. Many of the arguments on both sides of
this struggle owed something to Burke or Paine, but its centre of gravity, as it will
here be termed, was defined by neither, but instead emerged spontaneously as the
debate intensified.
With reference to more specific problems which have plagued Paine’s previous
interpreters, I have attempted to offer a balanced view of the respective weight which
should be given to the main sources of Paine’s thought: the Whig radical and
republican traditions of eighteenth-century Britain, natural law (whose contribution
to Paine’s thinking has been gravely neglected) and Dissenting Protestantism,
particularly deism and Quakerism. Only by understanding the confluence of these
streams can we determine Paine’s distinctive contribution to political thought. In
some instances plausible solutions are proposed to problems where wholly
conclusive evidence is lacking. In other areas, new problems are revealed which
have been overlooked previously. The existence of a substantial conflict between
Paine’s religious and political principles, particularly in relation to his later works
and his theory of property, is, for example, examined here for the first time.
If one thread runs throughout my interpretation of Paine, it is the attempt to place
both his ideas and their reception in the context of the recrafting of republican ideals
by political reformers in light of their increasing acceptance of commercial society.
During the last twenty years historians of Anglo-American radicalism have divided
sharply over whether a neo-classical or ‘Harringtonian’ republican emphasis upon
public virtue and its corruption, or a Lockean and later Smithian liberalism more
concerned with rights and their preservation, predominated during the reshaping of
late eighteenth-century Whiggism.5 Like many such debates, the historical truth is
far more complex than a thumbnail sketch of seemingly irreconcilable positions may
imply. Reformers were not notoriously concerned with paradigmatic purity and
freely mixed any arguments which seemed useful. Paine, we will see, contributed
much to creating a new ideal of commercial society whose faith in the market
(though qualified by Paine’s very important welfare proposals) did involve rejecting
a republican reliance upon agrarian virtue as the basis of political stability. None the
less Paine also sought to retain essential elements of the republican inheritance
which have been overlooked in previous interpretations. More than any other
political writer, he contested the central Whig preference for a mixed constitution

5
 THOMAS PAINE

and the political predominance of landed wealth and sought to replace it by a new
theory of commercial republicanism based upon popular representative institutions
without any hereditary monarchy. But in this ‘American’ wedding of trade and
democracy Paine was also strikingly concerned with maintaining public virtue, and
understood this both in terms of classical republican devotion to the common good
(applied to a much larger population and thus in many respects intensified) and true
Christian brotherhood. To appreciate the novelty of Paine’s achievement, however,
we must first briefly consider the various strands of eighteenth-century radicalism
from which these ideals were to be woven.

British radical traditions, 1688–1789

The parliamentary reform movement began to gather steam only after 1760, and
became widely popular only at the French revolution. Beforehand the ruling Whig
oligarchy was obliged to pay lip service to the principles of 1688 by which the
Protestant succession and a limited monarchy had been secured. But 1688 was
construed largely as a conservative defence of ‘popular’ liberty against an
encroaching Catholic monarch, not as a novel effort at revolution seeking greater
popular sovereignty or the reform of parliament. Against this oligarchy a few
dissident Whig aristocrats and their followers battled, occasionally joined by
‘country party’ Tories (though their patriarchal model of ideal polity and the cult of
Charles the Martyr were anathema to Whigs) advocating some extension of the
franchise, a redistribution of Commons’ seats to favour the counties and larger
boroughs, the enfranchisement of towns, shorter parliaments, reduced governmental
expenditures and a diminished influence of the Crown and the government in the
Commons.6
By mid-century, and among the Nonconformists in particular, the emergence of a
new commercial middle order with its own distinctive ideology, social identity and
cultural institutions had begun to add momentum to the reformers’ cause. Resentful
of both the economic dominance of the aristocracy and the Anglican religious
monopoly, Dissenting merchants and manufacturers like Josiah Wedgwood tended
to be radical in both religion and politics. Moreover, they shared an identity based
upon their social and economic position and assumed that the virtues which had
brought them success rendered them superior to the uneducated lower as well as the
profligate upper classes. Class consciousness and conflict played only a minimal
role prior to 1790, however, being strongest among London merchants and

6
 INTRODUCTION

tradesmen, but nowhere so narrowly defined that ‘the middling orders’ did not
usually include farmers and gentry as well as merchants and manufacturers. The
modern language of class had thus not yet formed.7 But considering their economic
position the middle classes felt their political exclusion keenly. Only 5 per cent of a
total population of 8 million in 1790 could vote in England and Wales. In the 1780s
6,000 electors, or a majority of the voters of 129 boroughs, returned 257 MPs, or a
majority of the Commons. Fifty MPs were elected by a mere 340 voters. In the early
1790s, 162 people (71 peers and 91 commoners) secured the election of 306 MPs.
Moreover, 43,000 electors selected 52 MPs for 23 cities and two universities, while
41,000 chose 369 MPs for 192 towns and boroughs.8 The boroughs and a few towns
were thus grossly overrepresented, and the commercial cities correspondingly
neglected. Old Sarum was uninhabited but returned two members, as did the thriving
port of Bristol. Cornwall had as many MPs as Scotland. Patronage and corruption
were expensive, however: elections could cost upwards of £30,000. But at seven
years the life of parliaments gave some opportunity to recoup these expenses.
In arguing against these abuses the reformers relied heavily upon a few key texts
which represented divergent but interpenetrating parts of the Whig tradition, notably
John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (1690), Algernon Sidney’s Discourses
Concerning Government (1698), the writings of the seventeenth century republican
James Harrington and his disciples, such as Walter Moyle and Henry Neville, and
those of later radicals like John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon. Amongst these
writers Locke was the most important, though he did not dominate as absolutely as
was once thought. His Second Treatise defended the natural equality of mankind and
the possession of rights to life, liberty and property as a consequence of God’s
creation of the world. It argued centrally that political power was limited by the
possession of rights to freedom held by all in a pre-political state of nature, which
were to be maintained by law in civil society. Natural society had been abandoned
only because of the inconvenience of individuals judging the justice of their own
claims. The power lodged in a sovereign was accordingly limited by popular consent
and a right of rebellion was justified if life, liberty and property were tyrannically
infringed upon. Taxation was permitted only by the consent of the majority. These
views were popularized widely in both Britain and the colonies by writers like
Thomas Pownall and Joseph Towers. For most, the Lockean inheritance was a
moderate one. In A Vindication of the Political Principles of Mr. Locke (1782), for
example, Towers insisted that Locke’s followers thought the English constitution
was ‘so excellently constructed’ and its laws ‘so well adapted for securing the liberty
of the subject’ that it was ‘preferable to any republic which had yet been constituted’.

7
 THOMAS PAINE

He also offered an excellent summary of how eighteenth-century reformers read

Locke:

It is the doctrine of Mr. Locke, that all legitimate government is derived from the consent
of the people; that men are naturally equal, and that no one has a right to injure another in
his life, health, liberty, or possessions; and that no man in civil society, ought to be subject
to the arbitrary will of others, but only to known and established laws, made by general
consent for the common benefit; that no taxes are to be levied on the people, without the
consent of the majority, given by themselves or by their deputies. That the ruling power
ought to govern by declared and received laws, and not by extemporary dictates, and
undetermined resolutions. That kings and princes, magistrates and rulers of every class,
have no just authority but what is delegated to them by the people; and which, when not
employed for their benefit, the people have always a right to resume, in whatever hands it
may be placed.9

Also widely read by Whigs were the writings of Algernon Sidney, a republican
martyr executed for his beliefs in 1683. Sidney also rejected the divine right theory
of monarchy and saw the sole purpose of government as being the good of the
governed. Though liberty alone was the basis of virtue, order and stability in
governments and was especially associated with the ancient Roman republic, the
best form of government was not purely republican, but a mixture of monarchy,
aristocracy and democracy. Its aims, ‘to increase the number, strength, and riches of
the people’, could be met only through conquest, which in turn required both adept
commanders and a strong, patriotic people loving liberty and uncorrupted by luxury
and private interest. Preserving liberty also required maintaining rights. While man
was born naturally free, liberty being ‘exemption from the domination of any other’,
all governments required surrendering some natural liberty. But the right of
dominion was based on consent, and kings who exceeded their authority could be
resisted, this having been established in Britain prior to the Norman conquest. Such
rights were most frequently lost, in turn, as a result of the corruption of manners and
a decline in public virtue.10
Such themes were echoed in the early eighteenth century by John Trenchard and
Thomas Gordon, whose Independent Whig and Cato’s Letters (1720–1) upheld
religious liberty and the rights of Dissenters, the right to resist tyranny, the right of
freedom of speech and opposition to standing armies, and warned of the dangers of
commercial speculation and of the dependency of liberty on public virtue.11
Trenchard, Gordon and others were especially indebted to the mid-seventeenth

8
 INTRODUCTION

century republican, James Harrington, whose own master was Machiavelli. But
while the so-called neo-Machiavellian republicans or True Whigs aimed to emulate
ancient Greece and Rome, virtually none sought to abolish the monarchy, instead
preferring a ‘mixed government’ where substantial power rested with the Commons,
and warning of monarchical and aristocratic encroachments upon it, which upset the
balance of the constitution. Far less were they democrats wishing majority rule rather
than government by the virtuous, landowning few assumed to represent the genuine
interests of all. Some True Whigs, however, were willing to counsel agrarian laws to
limit landed estates so that inequality did not threaten liberty. Many also warned of
the increasing power of fundholders who held stock in the swiftly growing national
debt, and of the economic instability of the movable property of merchants and
speculators by comparison with land. And other dangers for public virtue and liberty
existed. Standing armies easily became organs of monarchical tyranny. Religious
establishments often proved capricious (some Harringtonians were free-thinkers).
For the republicans or True Whigs, then, preserving liberty required eternal
vigilance, and a Whig oligarchy as much as an arbitrary monarch could upset
Britain’s delicate constitutional balance.
Despite the varying concerns of Locke and Harrington in particular, too much has
been made of the supposed divergences between later ‘Lockean’ and ‘republican’
radicals. Reformers held differing views on, for example, the value of increased
commerce or wider political participation. But by 1750 such disagreements no
longer corresponded with late seventeenth-century Whig positions and most
reformers did not see themselves as narrowly ‘Lockean’ or ‘republican’. Thomas
Pownall, for example, happily quoted Locke on the origins of the social contract and
Harrington on the need to balance property in the commonwealth.12 None the less
as a means of emphasis these labels retain some utility. Broadly speaking,
‘republicans’ were more alarmed at the spread of luxury and commerce, more often
urged the primacy of public virtue, and saw the landed gentry as its best repository.
More ‘Lockean’ reformers concentrated on the right of representation as a means of
ensuring consent, sought the extension of the franchise to middle-class merchants
and manufacturers (many of whom were also Dissenters) in order to protect
‘property’ generally, and not only landed wealth, and were more concerned with
corruption through arbitrary power than commerce. All agreed that the right to resist
tyranny was derived from the ‘executive power’ all possessed in the state of nature
and belonged to ‘the people’. These were chiefly understood as men of property,
government having been founded to preserve property generally, though the
‘people’ could also be construed in a wider sense. All defined the English
constitution as a limited monarchy whose powers were balanced by both the

9
 THOMAS PAINE

aristocracy and the commonalty. In practice this meant parliamentary supremacy

and the ‘independence’ of the Commons, with the king naming his own ministers but
governing only with parliamentary approval. Rule ‘by the consent of the governed’
summarized many of these positions.

Natural rights and natural law

Ideas of natural rights were also crucial to the language of reform and merit some
further introduction here given their centrality to Paine. Whig reformers did not aim
to create a new form of polity, but rather, as the former Cambridge MP Soame Jenyns
put it, ‘to bring back society to its original state, and to restore mankind to the full
enjoyment of their natural rights’, an ideal of purification much indebted to
Machiavellian republicanism. Three models of rights were particularly important to
such arguments: the state of nature ideal often associated with Locke, where political
sovereignty derived from a mutual compact between governors and governed which
secured rights granted by God and originally defined in the Bible, but inhering in all
as psychological properties; the Anglo-Saxon or ancient constitution, which
identified annual parliaments and universal male suffrage with pre-Norman Britain
and was prominently identified with the Yorkshire True Whig Obadiah Hulme’s
Essay on the English Constitution (1771); and the revolutionary settlement of 1688,
a central assumption in the Whig interpretation of which concerned the triumph of
popular sovereignty over monarchical tyranny.13
These ideal types overlapped to a considerable degree and were accordingly
invoked both in isolation and in various mixtures. The scholar and anti-slavery
agitator Granville Sharp, for example, alleged that the Saxon leader Alfred’s chief
inspiration had been Moses. Hulme thought the ancient Greek republics had first
properly wielded natural rights, followed by the Saxons, while the great
Nottinghamshire reformer Major John Cartwright thought the English constitution
perfectly harmonized with that ‘great constitution of moral government, called the
law of nature’. But there were also tensions between these ideals; Hulme, for
example, disparaged the settlement of 1688 as having failed to reinstitute annual
parliaments and instead instigated a great neglect of natural rights founded in the
ancient constitution. None the less all Whigs agreed that basic or natural rights were
divine in origin and unalterable compared to secondary or prescriptive rights, which
were historically rooted and mutable. It was widely asserted that the chief end of
government (as the Cambridge Constitutional Society, for example, stressed) was
securing rather than suppressing natural rights. In particular this meant that .the

10
 INTRODUCTION

divine, the primitive and later forms of rights were thought of as flowing into and
amalgamated in a uniquely British constitution whose restoration was the reformers’
chief aim. Rights were ‘natural’ in that they were ordained by God and inhered in
each individual, but also because they were historically part of the British
constitution. Thus the Society for Constitutional Information’s first address in 1780
took the ‘basis and vital principle’ of the ‘venerable Constitution handed down to us
… from our Saxon and British ancestors’ to be that ‘LAW, TO BIND ALL, MUST
BE ASSENTED TO BY ALL’, which required equal representation.14
Radical discussions of natural rights were also much indebted to the natural
jurisprudence teachings of medieval Christianity which, reformulated in the
seventeenth century, remained a dominant intellectual model throughout Europe for
another 200 years. Though they attained a degree of independence by the early
eighteenth century, natural rights discussions were originally only one segment of
the natural law, which systematically addressed the entire range of psychological,
moral and political experience in order to determine the meaning of the natural law,
or system of rules imposed by God upon man to attain to happiness and knowable
through reason. Unfortunately eighteenth-century British natural jurisprudence has
been much neglected and its relation to natural rights consequently remains largely
unexplored. Usually it is assumed that the central doctrines of natural law were
devastated by both the sceptics, led by Hume, who doubted inferences from divine
intention or any ‘original contract’ or state of nature on evidential grounds, and
thought the passions predominated over reason in human affairs, and the utilitarians,
chiefly Bentham, Paley and Priestley, who provided a new hedonistic foundation for
morals. One way around some of these objections had already been suggested by
Pufendorf: the necessity for sociable co-operation became the chief source of natural
obligation rather than conscious obedience to the demands of virtue.15 But all that
remained in Britain after these assaults, it is usually thought, were the natural law
teachings regarding international relations and the regulation of war, which became
modern international law, and a few natural rights ideas associated with Locke
which, once their systematic context had been removed, limped into the nineteenth
century and then expired.
But if the natural law framework of natural rights had in fact been destroyed by
1790 we would have a hard time explaining many aspects of the natural rights debate
during the revolution, and certainly the popularity of Paine’s political thought and
the association of natural rights doctrines with ideas of reason, sociability, reciprocal
duties and mutual interdependence. In fact the writings of many jurists circulated
widely in late eighteenth-century Britain, among them works by Pufendorf,
Burlamaqui, Hutcheson, Vattel and others. Several prominent Whig radicals wrote

11
 THOMAS PAINE

specifically on natural law, for instance Granville Sharp (A Tract on the Law of
Nature, 1777). Locke was also deeply indebted to the same tradition, which poses
problems for the idea of a separate natural rights discourse and indeed implies that
natural rights arguments were only a special branch of natural law teaching. But
while the longevity of more systematic natural law teachings is now recognized in
relation to the later Scottish Enlightenment, it needs to be stressed for England too,
for Paine and others were also much indebted to such views. Texts like Burlamaqui’s
extremely popular The Principles of Natural and Politic Law (1763) examined such
questions as the origins of civil society and property, the nature of sociability, the
sources of political authority and the definition of rights. To such writers sociability,
‘that disposition which inclines us to benevolence towards our fellow creatures’, was
central to balancing the self-love which ensured self-preservation. From this God-
given inclination, right reason derived principles upon which all social laws and
moral duties were founded, such as that the public good ought to be the supreme rule
and that sociability ought to guide all human affairs, dictating benevolence even
towards our enemies.16
From such works the radicals derived much, though natural law writers were
usually politically more conservative than the natural rights theorists of the 1770s
and later. Pufendorf and other opponents of Hobbes emphasized a contractualist and
voluntary foundation for political authority. But this was still insufficient for many
radicals. Granville Sharp, for example, defended the American colonists by
dismissing Pufendorf’s argument that it was only a ‘notion’, not part of the law of
nature, that for law to bind all required the consent of all. Instead an ‘equitable form
of a reciprocal Covenant’ was the basis for relations between man and God as well
as sovereign and subject. The right of all to consent to laws, and therefore to a vote,
was thus based in the law of nature.17
More acceptable were natural law accounts of the origins of society and of natural
rights. To Burlamaqui, for example, God had given the earth to all ‘to a common use
of whatever the earth produces for their several wants’. Early society was ‘a state of
equality and liberty’ where ‘all men enjoy the same prerogatives, and an entire
independence on any other power but God. For every man is master of himself, and
equally to his fellow-creatures, so long as he does not subject himself to another
person’s authority by a particular convention.’ But a romanticization of this
condition was uncommon among British radicals, most of whom believed that
natural society was characterized by indigence and want and that the struggles
resulting therefrom had led civil government to be founded. None the less the notion
of a ‘natural’ state of man ambiguously meant not only the earliest social state, but
also, as Burlamaqui put it, any other ‘into which man enters by his own act and

12
 INTRODUCTION

agreement … conformable in the main to his nature’ and ‘the end for which he was
formed’. Correspondingly natural rights were rooted not only in the origins of
society, but in man’s nature, and ‘right’ meant ‘whatever reason certainly
acknowledges as a sure and concise means of attaining happiness’. Consequently
this stipulation confined the notion of a right, which was not a simple power to
perform an action but one limited by the requirement of seeking the happiness of
others. Possessing a right meant anyone could ‘make use of his liberty and natural
strength in a peculiar manner’ as long as this was ‘approved by reason’. Thus parents
had a right to bring up their own children, but not to harm them, and a sovereign could
levy troops for the defence of the state, but not if their families were left unprovided
for. A ‘right’ was thus a moral claim which entailed an obligation, ‘a restriction of
natural liberty produced by reason’, both not to restrict the rights of others, and to
assist them in exercising their rights. This emphasis on reason, which was to be
central to Paine’s definition of rights and his retention of a theory of social obligation,
Hume and other critics of natural law found particularly objectionable. But
Burlamaqui, for example, was not worried by the problem of weak or deficient
reason. Reason approved ‘a particular exercise of our strength and liberty’ because
‘the difference of those judgements arises from the very nature of things and their
effects’. Whatever tended ‘to the perfection and happiness of man, meets with the
approbation of reason, which condemns whatever leads to a contrary end’. If reason
did not rule human actions, ‘all the rights it grants to man would become useless and
of no effect’.18

The emergence of the reform movement

So far we have considered only the intellectual bases of eighteenth-century

radicalism. Before turning to Paine, however, we need some sense of how the reform
movement itself developed. John Brewer has shown that many True Whigs were
uninvolved in institutional politics and began to organize only after the accession of
George III in 1760. The practical revival of parliamentary reform activities from
mid-century onwards was dominated by three movements which will be
characterized briefly here: the ‘Wilkes and Liberty’ agitation of the 1760s, which
occasioned an unprecedented popular political participation; support for the
American revolution; and the revival of provincial radicalism which followed.19
These renewed an enthusiasm for parliamentary reform in the early 1780s which
retained some momentum even in 1790.

13
 THOMAS PAINE

(1) ‘Wilkes and Liberty’

John Wilkes, libertine, spendthrift and occasional reformer, provoked one of the
most important outbursts of popular radicalism in the middle years of the century.20
Allied to the elder Pitt, his satirical North Briton (which Paine supposedly read)
lambasted the policies of Lord Bute’s government in 1762–3. When no. 45 of the
journal seemingly impugned the king, Wilkes was prosecuted for seditious libel.
Since he sat in the Commons, his arrest raised two key issues: the immunity of an MP
and, more importantly, the nature of the General Warrant served upon him. Wilkes
proclaimed that ‘the liberty of the subject at large’ was threatened and fervent crowds
of supporters took up the slogan, ‘Wilkes and Liberty’. Released, Wilkes was re-
elected to Parliament in March 1768 with tremendous demonstrations of popular
support, his picture appearing in every public house in London, the great symbolic
number, ‘45’, on every wall. Having fled a charge of obscene libel for printing a
ribald essay, Wilkes surrendered to the King’s Bench prison the following month to
settle the issue of his outlawry. Eleven were killed in riots on this occasion.
Sentenced to 22 months’ imprisonment, Wilkes encouraged the formation of the
Society of Supporters of the Bill of Rights in February 1769 to take up the cause of
increased representation and annual elections. Expelled from Parliament in April,
Wilkes won re-election, but unprecedentedly Parliament chose to seat his defeated
opponent. A vast number of petitions from throughout the nation objected, while
prominent MPs like Edmund Burke took up the cause. Support came even from the
American colonies, whose disillusionment with the Crown can be dated from this
point (at least two town names, Wilkesbarre in Pennsylvania and Wilkesboro in
Wilkes County, North Carolina, commemorate this enthusiasm).21 For the first time
something like a modern political campaign emerged. Popular meetings of a type
never before witnessed drew thousands in protest. Wilkites gained important posts
in London elections. Striking weavers in Spitalfields linked Wilkes’s cause to their
own. After several attempts, Wilkes became Lord Mayor of London in 1774, serving
honourably and respectably. Later re-elected to Parliament until 1790, he ended his
days as an undistinguished MP with scant interest in reform.
Wilkes was clearly no republican and spoke, for example, of ‘rights coeval with
the English constitution, that perfection of human wisdom, that noblest work of
man’. But his cause instigated the involvement in charges of corruption against the
government not only of numbers of merchants and tradesmen, but also of the
labouring classes. Support for Wilkes has been correlated with rising food prices,
and no doubt many artisans and journeymen in the Wilkite ‘mob’ had known
unemployment and hunger. But others, especially Wilkes’s supporters among the
more middling trades of jewellers, saddlers, ironmongers, brewers and timber

14
 INTRODUCTION

merchants, clearly resented their exclusion from politics and identified

parliamentary corruption with a restricted franchise. In their eyes ‘independence’
ought no longer to be associated only with landownership, but should be understood
more generally, at least as encompassing all male householders. Wilkes’s association
with such goals was long-remembered; his last follower died in 1834, having when
drunk commonly paraded through the streets of Aylesbury in an overcoat given him
by his hero, shouting ‘Wilkes and Liberty’.22

(2) The impact of the American revolution

The American revolution gave an enormous boost to the reform movement. After the
colonies assisted Wilkes, his followers in the Society of Supporters of the Bill of
Rights in turn sent money as the American conflict worsened, and upheld the right
to be represented if taxed, some even venturing the view that ‘the fate of Wilkes and
America must stand or fall together’. Other Wilkite organizations subscribed funds
to the victims of Concord and Lexington in June 1775, as did radicals in debating and
convivial clubs like the Robinhood, which comprised mainly tradesmen by the
1770s. Like the Napoleonic threat twenty years later, the coming of war divided the
British reformers, bringing upon them what J. H. Plumb has termed ‘the stigma of
disloyalty’.23 But parallels were evident from the outset between the colonists’ cause
and that of domestic radicals. Both rejected the notion of virtual representation, or
the view that MPs in the Commons maintained the interests of the entire nation rather
than only their constituents. Both insisted that the foundation of government was
voluntary consent, that taxation without representation was unjust and that
abrogating any contract between governors and governed invoked a right of
resistance.
Few connected these issues more successfully than Major John Cartwright, who
sacrificed a potential military career by refusing to serve against the colonists. Not
only did Cartwright lend much assistance in his American Independence, the Interest
and Glory of Great Britain (1774), which advocated separate independence for each
colony under the Crown, though not a federation of all. His Take Your Choice! (1776)
established the radical platform of the next several generations in its demands for
annual elections, manhood suffrage, equal electoral districts, a secret ballot and
payment of MPs. He also insisted that the right of representation could be based only
in personality, and not in property. No republican, Cartwright none the less had scant
respect for the existing monarchy. Like Hulme and the Dissenting schoolmaster
James Burgh, Cartwright also proposed a national convention to begin reforming a
Parliament too corrupt to reform itself, a plan suggested at Middlesex in 1769 by the
Anglican physician and political writer John Jebb. But while this might involve, as

15
 THOMAS PAINE

Burgh suggested, acting against existing representatives, its aim was to pressure
Parliament, not to replace it.24
Though Anglicans like Granville Sharp took up their cause, the American
colonists found their main champions in the leading Dissenting radicals. The
philosopher and minister Richard Price, for example, wrote extensively on the
revolution, seeing its central issue as the equal right of all to share in legislation,
legitimate government consisting only in equal laws framed by common consent.
Wholeheartedly adopting the demand for independence after 1776, Price cheered
the colonists’ success as perhaps the most important step ever taken in human
improvement. As importantly, he upset conservative Whigs by arguing the
colonists’ case from a natural rights basis rather than in terms of precedents like 1688
or the ancient constitution.25
As John Derry has written, the battle lines which defined the French revolution
debate were thus already beginning to form in the mid-1770s. The American conflict
revealed increasingly divergent interpretations of the settlement of 1688, and
correspondingly of the character of the constitution itself. Everyone knew that this
comprised the king, who after 1689 retained considerable powers in his capacity to
name ministers, veto legislation and influence foreign policy; the Lords, who shared
in legislation and had some judicial functions; and the Commons, who were pre-
eminent and held financial power. All conceded that each of these should prevent the
others from dominating. But what powers each branch should correspondingly have
over the others to accomplish this was more debated. British and colonial radicals
agreed that the American cause exemplified the principle of consensual government
against the usurpations of an unrepresentative and corrupt parliament as well as the
designs of a tyrannical monarch. All Whigs commended the ascendancy of the
Commons, but the more radical thought it all too subservient and condemned the
government and Crown’s corrupt use of patronage and ministerial placemen as a
means of extending their powers. Thus the revolution helped to redefine British
radical notions of constitutionalism, republicanism and popular sovereignty,
making these more popular in imitation of what was thought to be American
practice.26

(3) Provincial radicalism: the Yorkshire revival in the 1780s

The expense of the American wars ensured that radical enthusiasm did not flag at the
end of the 1770s. The ‘Associated Counties’ movement began in 1779–80 when a
number of Yorkshire nobles and gentlemen petitioned Parliament about high taxes
and the burgeoning system of sinecures and pensions.27 Soon delegates from various
county organizations met in London to demand annual parliaments, with their chief

16
 INTRODUCTION

spokesman, the Anglican clergyman Christopher Wyvill, also seeking to extend the
suffrage further into the middle orders. In early 1780, a group of Westminster
electors presided over by the Whig leader Charles James Fox more daringly
demanded Cartwrighf s programme of ‘universal male suffrage’ (meaning men of
some property but not the labouring poor), annual elections, equal electoral districts,
vote by ballot and the payment of MPs. At this time Cartwright and others also
founded the Society for Constitutional Information (SCI), whose members
remained active until 1794 and accepted Paine as an honorary member in 1787 on
the basis of Common Sense. But further reforms were derailed by a week-long, anti-
Catholic riot in 1780, which strengthened the government’s hand by making any
substantial popular political participation suspicious (and which was remembered as
proving the dangers of popular enthusiasm in 1792). When the Rockingham Whigs
formed a new government in 1782 after the British defeat in America, the reformers’
hopes were again raised. But various reform bills were introduced and suffered
defeat, the last being Pitt’s effort in 1785, which was supported by 174 MPs.
Thereafter apathy set in once again, though the SCI continued to be occupied with
the anti-slavery cause, prison reform and other issues. Only the coming of the French
revolution markedly revived enthusiasm for political change.
By the late 1780s a spectrum of radical opinion had thus developed which
exhibited both a common programme and a variety of disagreements. Reformers
shared a concern about the inadequacy of the electoral system, the corruption of the
Commons by patronage, and the overly long duration of parliaments. They were
divided as to how short parliaments should be, usually opting for triennial or annual
elections, and who should vote, with most favouring the exclusion of the labouring
poor. Some felt universal suffrage and annual elections were, as Jenyns put it, ‘totally
impracticable’. Wyvill thought universal suffrage acceptable where public safety
was not threatened, but proposed a more restricted suffrage anyway. No reformers
doubted the need for greater independence of the Commons. But virtually none
considered abolishing the monarchy, an independent House of Commons being, as
Jenyns put it, ‘no part of the English constitution, the excellence of which consists in
being composed of three powers, mutually dependent on each other’, and the
republic established in Britain in the mid-seventeenth century being ‘the worst kind
of democracy that ever existed’. Finally, reformers were also divided over the
growth of cities and luxury. By the 1770s many radicals had forsaken the chief
puritan and classical republican objections to commerce and instead saw trade as
beneficial and the manners of commercial society as even superior to classical virtue.
None the less there remained substantial divisions about the merits of modernity well
into the nineteenth century. Prior to the French revolution, for example, the leading

17
 THOMAS PAINE

Dissenting reformers Joseph Priestley and Richard Price found themselves on

opposite sides of this question. Priestley championed commercial development,
while Price thought the ideal society lay between savagery and luxury (a point in
1784 he thought best represented by the new state of Connecticut) and warned
against the corrupting effects of banks, paper money, the national debt and foreign
trade.28 This debate was to remain important through the 1790s. But long before
another powerful voice had also begun to sway public opinion on such issues: that of
Thomas Paine.

Notes to Introduction: the age of Paine

1 Quoted in D. Hawke (1961), p. 111.

2 C. Cone (1968), p. 102; R. Fennessy (1963), p. 244; A. Young (1976), p. x; A. French
(1934), p. 705.
3 J. Greene (1978), p. 73. A. Ayer (1988) is an important step in redressing these
deficiencies, though it is much less concerned with reconstructing political debates than
this book.
4 A. Aldridge (1974) reviews the secondary literature on Paine from 1945 to 73. Highly
useful on Paineana is R. Gimbel (1959).
5 The republican view is best represented by J. Pocock (most recently, 1985, pp. 215–310),
the liberal on the American side by J. Appleby (1976) and the British by I. Kramnick
(1977b and 1982). Also essential are C. Robbins (1959) and H. Dickinson (1977). See
also J. Reid (1988).
6 L. Colley (1981), p. 15. On convergences between Whig and Tory reformers see Colley
(1982), pp. 85–117, H. Dickinson (1977), pp. 14–56, 91–118.
7 On radicalism and the language of class in this period see in particular I. Kramnick
(1977b, 1980, 1982).
8 Wyvill’s statistics, in E. Black (1963), p. 59.
9 J. Locke (1970), pp. 287–95, 301–5, 343–5, 380–1, 385, 421; J. Towers (1788), pp. 26–
7; T. Pownall (1752), pp. 16–17; J. Towers (1782), p. 84, 36–7. On Locke’s reception see
J. Dunn (1969).
10 A. Sidney (1750), Vol. 1, pp. 102, 186–210, 296–308, 37–9, 441–8, Vol. 2, pp. 38–44, 73,
288, 309–14.
11 D. Jacobson (1965) gives a selection of Trenchard and Gordon’s writings.
12 T. Pownall (1752), pp. 16–17, 28–30, 69.
13 [S. Jenyns] (1785) p. 9; [O. Hulme] (1771), pp. 3–33. On the ‘Norman yoke’ see C. Hill
(1954).
14 G. Sharp (1784), p. 3; [O. Hulme] (1771), pp. 2, 127, 149; J. Cartwright (1776), p. 9; T.
Northcote (1781), p. 8; C. Wyvill (1794), Vol. 2, p. 465, Vol. 1, pp. 135–6.
15 See especially I. Hont (1987).

18
 INTRODUCTION

16 J. Burlamaqui (1763), Vol. 1, pp. 169–70.

17 G. Sharp (1774), pp. v, xiv.
18 J. Burlamaqui (1763), Vol. 1, p. 41; (1794), Vol. 1, pp. 38, 42–3, 68–75. See my (1989),
chapter 1.
19 J. Brewer (1980a), p. 343. On the emergence of radicalism see also Brewer (1976).
Surveys of the reform movement include G. Veitch (1913), S. Maccoby (1955a), I.
Christie (1962), E. Black (1963), A. Goodwin (1979), pp. 32–98, E. Royle and J. Walvin
(1982).
20 On the Wilkites see G. Rudé (1962).
21 See R. Postgate (1956), pp. 162–72 and P. Maier (1963) on Wilkes’s impact in America.
22 C. Wyvill (1794), Vol. 1, p. xli; G. Rudé (1962), p. 180; J. Brewer (1980a), p. 345; R.
Postgate (1956), pp. 148–9.
23 J. Plumb (1973), p. 86. Recent treatments of this theme include G. Guttridge (1966), J.
Derry (1976) (very helpful; see especially chapter 4), C. Bonwick (1977), R. Toohey
(1978), J. Bradley (1986). A good unpublished study is A. Sheps (1973).
24 J. Cartwright (1776), p. 89; [O. Hulme] (1771), p. 161; J. Burgh (1764), Vol. 3, pp. 428–
60, Vol. 1, p. 6. On Cartwright see F. Cartwright (1826) and J. Osborne (1972) (and on his
originality, pp. 22–3). On the development of ideas of a convention or ‘anti-parliament’
see T. Parsinnen (1973).
25 R. Price (1777), pp. ix, 20–24. On Dissent and the revolution see C. Bonwick (1976).
26 J. Deny (1976), pp. 170, 4; A. Sheps (1975a).
27 See H. Butterfield (1947), E. Black (1963), pp. 31–173, I. Christie (1960) and (1962), pp.
68–120 and J. Dinwiddy (1971). On the origins of the SCI see E. Black (1963), pp. 174–
212.
28 [S. Jenyns] (1784), pp. 1–2, 5–6, 21–2; C. Wyvill (1794), Vol. 3, p. 63; R. Price (1785),
pp. 66–80.

19
 1
‘Apostle of liberty’:
the life of Thomas Paine

Like nearly everything else associated with him, the retailing of Paine’s life has been
contentious. After the Rights of Man appeared, the British government for £500
commissioned a slanderous ‘biography’ of Paine from one ‘Francis Oldys’, a Tory
refugee from Maryland and clerk at the Board of Trade and Plantations named
George Chalmers. This reached eleven editions within two years, in the process
growing (ever more fictionally) from 25 to over 150 pages, and was abstracted,
embellished and widely reprinted.1 In the late 1790s similarly hostile works
appeared by, among others, William Cobbett, then a leading anti-Jacobin but soon to
convert to radicalism himself. Early in the new century an apostate radical headed in
the opposite direction, James Cheetham (‘Cheat ‘Em’ to Paine’s disciples), added
another vituperative account. But the Painites retaliated as early as 1793 with brief
Impartial Memoirs of Paine and after 1815 several more substantial biographies
appeared. Since then Paine’s character has been assailed and defended many times,
his vices greatly exaggerated by his enemies, his virtues trumpeted loudly by his
friends. Settling the true facts about several events in Paine’s life (his own
autobiography having disappeared) remained important until many decades after his
death, the last great point of contention being Paine’s supposed death-bed reversion
to orthodox Christianity.2
Thomas Paine was born in the small Suffolk market town of Thetford (which
today honours him with a statue and the Rights of Man public house) on 29 January
1737, the son of a small Quaker farmer and stay- (or corset-support) maker.
Politically the town was in the pocket of a prominent Whig magnate, the Duke of
Grafton, who nominated the two local MPs. The Lent Assizes for the Eastern Circuit
were also held there and Paine doubtless witnessed the barbarous penalties meted out
to those who defied the law. Raised as a Quaker on his father’s side, indeed, Paine
was particularly aware of the cruelty of many punishments and frequent use of the
death penalty, for the sect was in the forefront of opposition to both and, while later

20
 ´APOSTLE OF LIBERTY´

comments reveal that he found the Quaker life dull and colourless, he remained fond
of the ‘exceedingly good moral education’ it demanded. At his mother’s instructions
Paine was confirmed in the Church of England. But he was puzzled by a sermon on
redemption read to him by a relative, doubting that God would allow his own son to
be killed when ‘a man would be hanged who did such a thing’ and remaining
convinced of God’s greater benevolence.3
Despite an aptitude for science and mathematics, Paine was withdrawn from
school by his father at the age of 13 to learn the stay-making business, and remained
at this task for some five years. Having already conceived a desire to see America,
however, he doubtless found the trade constricting. More attractive, too, was the
naval life a schoolmaster had regaled him with, and at 17 Paine slipped away to join
the Terrible (its captain’s name was Death), a privateer engaged against French
traders.4 His father rescued him before the vessel sailed, however, and in its next
engagement it lost nearly nine-tenths of its crew. It was not the first time fortune
would smile upon Paine. Though in 1756 he apparently joined another privateer, the
King of Prussia, Paine returned to stay-manufacturing first in London, then Dover,
and finally at Sandwich in Kent, where he married in the autumn of 1759, and
possibly also acted briefly as a Methodist lay preacher. But his business was
unsuccessful and in the following year his wife died. Soon after Paine decided to
become an exciseman. For a time he examined brewers’ casks at Grantham and in
mid-1764 was appointed to observe smugglers at Alford. Ill-paid, and probably also
immersed in his own scientific studies, Paine like many of his colleagues neglected
to examine fully all of the goods brought into local warehouses. For passing some
without inspection he was discharged in August 1765.
Paine now travelled for a time and, though he sued successfully and was reinstated
as an exciseman, no suitable post was available for him. He taught English briefly in
London, again apparently preaching, and may even have considered becoming an
Anglican minister. He also attended scientific lectures at the Royal Society (later
telling a friend that he had ‘seldom passed five minutes of my life, however
circumstanced, in which I did not acquire some knowledge’). Finally an excise post
came open and after a brief period in Cornwall Paine went to Lewes, Sussex in early
1768, where he boarded with a Quaker tobacconist. This was an extremely important
period in his life. He seems to have been involved in local charitable work. He began
to be interested in politics, composing an election song for a local Whig candidate
for the respectable sum of three guineas. Soon, too, by one account, he began to move
away from Whiggism, prompted in the first instance by the none too seditious
comment by a friend, over a glass of punch after a game of bowls, that Frederick,

21
 THOMAS PAINE

King of Prussia was ‘the right sort of man for a king, for he has a deal of the devil in
him’, which led Paine to wonder ‘if a system of government did not exist that did not
require a devil’. He also began his career as a pamphleteer here. His first work, The
Case of the Officers of the Excise (1772), detailed the low wages and arduous duties
of excisemen, the temptations to dishonesty this incited and the consequent dangers
for revenue collection. Paine’s talents as a writer were already evident: The rich, in
ease and affluence, may think I have drawn an unnatural portrait’, he proclaimed,
adding, ‘but could they descend to the cold regions of want, the circle of polar
poverty, they would find their opinions changing with the climate.’ Paine was also
active in a local debating society, the White Hart Evening Club, where he became
known as a convivial conversationalist with a taste for oysters and wine. Here,
Paine’s comrades elected him ‘General of the Headstrong War’ for his
‘perserverance in a good cause and obstinacy in a bad one’, as a radical Quaker
friend, Thomas ‘Clio’ Rickman later put it.5 His only pronounced vice, in fact, seems
to have been a predilection towards vanity.
Paine married again in 1771, this time a young Quaker girl, and spent much of the
next few years preparing petitions favouring higher excisemen’s salaries, a task his
colleagues had deputed him for. He also operated a tobacco mill and small grocery
shop for a time, but was hard hit when he lost his excise post again in April 1774
(though Chalmers’s later accusation that he had been selling smuggled tobacco was
groundless). Forced to sell his possessions in order to meet his creditors’ claims,
Paine separated from his wife (whom he later helped to support) a few months later
and never remarried.6 Returning to London, he followed the ‘Wilkes and Liberty’
campaign with great interest. He now became acquainted with the writer Oliver
Goldsmith and also Benjamin Franklin, whose electrical experiments he admired
and to whom he made the famous retort, when Franklin stated, ‘Where liberty is,
there is my country,’ ‘Where liberty is not, there is my country.’ Franklin saw much
promise in Paine and encouraged him to leave for the American colonies, where
there was greater scope for his talents.
Soon taking this fateful advice, Paine reached Philadelphia in December 1774
after nine weeks’ voyage, having barely survived an outbreak of shipboard typhus.
Originally seeking to open a girls’ school, he instead with Franklin’s assistance
became editor of a small paper, the Pennsylvania Magazine, or American Museum.
To this and other Philadelphia journals he contributed, among other pieces, a defence
of modern authors and institutions against the ancient, an important anti-slavery
essay at a time (March 1775) when such views were uncommon, and articles
condemning duelling, British policy in India, the use of titles and cruelty to animals.
He also helped to draft a bill incorporating the American Philosophical Society. As

22
 ´APOSTLE OF LIBERTY´

colonial independence neared, he had already begun to establish that vigorous and
independent style of radicalism which would become his trademark. But this was not
sufficient to earn a living and poor pay soon forced him to leave the paper.7
Paine did not initially favour the violent separation of the colonies from Britain.
But when the British fired upon a demonstration at Lexington in April 1775, and
certainly by late 1775, or barely a year after his arrival, he concluded that
independence was inevitable. The cause of separation became soon and long
associated with his name and the force of his arguments. The pattern of Paine’s
political career, as we will see, was already laid: what others hesitantly and often
reluctantly felt, he stated unequivocally and in a language all could comprehend.
Much of the autumn of 1775 was devoted to writing Common Sense, which ‘burst
from the press with an effect which has rarely been produced by types and paper in
any age or country’, as his friend Dr Benjamin Rush put it. None the less Paine’s
authorship remained unknown at first, partly because he had resided only briefly in
the colonies and did not want this to prejudice his readers. Franklin, in fact, was
widely believed to have written the piece, though when a loyalist lady denounced
him for using the phrase ‘the royal brute of Britain’ to describe George III, Franklin
denied that he would have so dishonoured the animal world. Despite the success of
Common Sense, Paine gained nothing from it, since he paid the costs of publication
(about £40) himself, and further donated the copyright to the colonists’ struggle. It
was to set a pattern for his entire career, for Paine was usually too proud and too
idealistic to accept money for doing what he did best, and was consequently rarely
well off.8
As the cause of independence gathered steam, Paine assailed vacillating public
opinion in Pennsylvania and New York, and warned against accepting prospective
English peace proposals. Closely associated with Jefferson for a time, he
endeavoured to have an anti-slavery clause inserted into the Declaration of
Independence, but it was withdrawn after objections by Georgia, South Carolina and
various northern slave suppliers. Meanwhile Paine joined the army. By September
he was an aide-de-camp to General Nathaniel Greene with the rank of brigade major
and accompanied the Continental Army during its retreat to Newark. Here he began
to compose the first of his Crisis articles, which did much to raise the colonists’
flagging spirits in the face of an apparently hopeless plight.
In early 1777 Paine served as part of a delegation to secure neutrality from some
Pennsylvania Indians and in April became secretary to the newly created Committee
of Foreign Affairs of the Congress. Philadelphia fell to the British in September and
Paine again returned to the field, following Washington to Valley Forge and seeing
action on several occasions. He was rarely far from political controversy, however.

23
 THOMAS PAINE

First he defended at length the Pennsylvania constitution framed by Franklin, which

was under assault by opponents of popular government. In late 1778 Paine became
involved in a major scandal which made him many political adversaries when he
denounced an American envoy to France, Silas Deane, for purportedly defrauding
Congress by charging for supplies which Paine felt were a gift. Paine inadvertently
undermined his own position, however, by indiscreetly disclosing secret
information about France’s aid to America at a time of its supposed neutrality. The
French envoy was compelled to protest and Paine to defend himself. A fierce debate
occupied nearly a week of congressional business in early 1779 and one of Paine’s
enemies, with whom he would have much to do in the future, Gouverneur Morris,
even urged his dismissal on the grounds of his humble social origins alone.9
Congress refused to discharge him, but Paine resigned his post anyway in the belief
that his case would not be fairly heard. Refusing a large bribe from the French
ambassador, who hoped to gain the services of his pen for France, he instead became
a clerk in the offices of a local lawyer, and in September 1779 complained that he
could not even afford to hire, much less to buy, his own horse.
To raise funds Paine now proposed to bring out a collected edition of his writings
as well as to commence a history of the revolution which, unlike accounts of ancient
wars he knew, would provoke ‘moral reflection’. Lacking support for such projects,
Paine reminded the government of Pennsylvania of its debts to him. Its assembly
accordingly elected him Clerk in November 1779, and in his first day of office Paine
probably assisted in introducing an anti-slavery act which passed the following
March. But his attention remained focused on the war. The Continental Army was
again sinking fast in the winter of 1780 and the new republic was in desperate
financial straits. Paine began a subscription fund with $500 of his own money and
eventually £300,000 was raised. With two new pamphlets in the spring of 1780,
Paine also found his popularity returning, and on 4 July 1780 he was granted the
degree of Master of Arts by the newly reconstituted University of Pennsylvania.
Later that year he proposed that Congress send him on a secret mission to England
to further the American cause by appearing to be an Englishman returning from the
colonies certain of American victory.
Resolved to write his history, none the less, and still hoping for congressional
support, Paine resigned his clerkship to the Pennsylvania Assembly in November
1780. Before he could commence work, however, one Colonel John Laurens, who
had been appointed by Congress to sail for France in search of loans, persuaded Paine
to accompany him as his secretary. Paine found himself widely known and respected
in France, and their mission was highly successful, 6 million livres being secured
with Franklin’s help. Returning to Boston in late summer, Paine found he would

24
 ´APOSTLE OF LIBERTY´

receive no recompense for the expenses of his trip. In the autumn he appealed to
Washington to aid his straitened circumstances. The general, basking in his victory
over Cornwallis at Yorktown, agreed that Paine’s services to the cause had been
essential and arranged for $800 annually to be granted him in return for writing on
behalf of the nation, particularly in support of higher state contributions to the
national government and an extension of the powers of Congress. A similar sum was
to be paid him by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs. By late 1783 Paine had also
accepted money from France in gratitude for his militantly anti-British attitude,
though these were of course causes which he supported himself. In the coming
months Paine wrote warning of overconfidence as negotiations continued and he
restrained Washington from hanging a British officer in reprisal for the unwarranted
British execution of an American officer. He also tried again to persuade some
recalcitrant states to fund the army even as its victory seemed certain. But such
efforts had little effect beyond making Paine himself seem a mere agent of the
Congress.
Soon after this, Paine moved to Bordentown, New Jersey to be near a Quaker
friend, Colonel Joseph Kirkbride. Virtually impoverished after sinking his money
into a small house, he continued to hope for congressional relief. Washington
recommended that Paine be appointed historiographer to the new nation. But Paine’s
views favouring a strong national sovereignty over the states evidently deflected
congressional sympathy for this proposal. In 1784, however, the State of New York
granted him a 277-acre farm with a large house at New Rochelle which had been
confiscated from an exiled loyalist. The Virginia legislature attempted a similar
grant, but it failed to pass. Pennsylvania granted him £500. Finally Congress, trying
to avoid resuscitating the Deane affair again, granted him $3,000, reduced from an
original proposal of $6,000. This did not cover Paine’s expenses in France, but at
least he now enjoyed considerable independence.
During the next several years Paine worked on his favourite scientific project, the
construction of the first large single-arch iron bridge.10 The Pennsylvania Assembly
expressed interest in the design, but Paine decided first to visit his mother in England,
with a stop in France to seek support for his project as well as for the cause of peace
with England. At Paris in the summer of 1787 he was widely fêted, and much
attention was bestowed upon his bridge model. At Thetford he found his mother in
comfort, stayed with her for several months, perhaps attending a local Quaker
meeting house, and settling upon her a respectable allowance. While in Britain he
also wrote against the prospect of a new war with Holland and continued his
scientific explorations, which included plans for a smokeless candle and for using
gunpowder as a motor force.

25
 THOMAS PAINE

Paine was now a celebrity here, too, and attracted the attention of engineers and
inventors, some of whom set up a workshop for him at Rotherham in Yorkshire. In
the summer of 1788 he enjoyed the hospitality of his future nemesis, Edmund Burke,
for a week at the country seat of the Duke of Portland, as well as the company of other
Whig leaders like Charles James Fox. (Burke was pleased to meet ‘the great
American’ and wrote to the elder Pitt that this was perhaps even better than meeting
Washington, since Paine was ‘more of a philosopher than his chief’.)11 In England
Paine pressed the cause of friendly relations with France, and carried on a lengthy
correspondence with Jefferson and others, partly hoping to convince them of his
diplomatic importance in Europe.
But Paine was to become neither diplomat nor inventor. The outbreak of
revolution in France proved irresistibly attractive, and when he arrived in Paris in the
late autumn of 1789 Paine was welcomed as an American hero, his portrait being
seen even in country inns, and Lafayette giving him the key to the Bastille for
presentation to Washington. Returning to England in early 1790 to complete his
bridge, Paine saw his scientific prospects disappear entirely when his partner, an
American merchant, went bankrupt shortly after the model was exhibited in London.
But politics loomed ever larger anyway and in the summer of 1790 Paine began
writing about the new revolution. He was still engaged at the task when Burke
published his Reflections on the Revolution in France on 1 November. With many
others, Paine was taken aback by the ferocity of Burke’s assault, which had
commenced with a parliamentary speech on 9 February. He had continued to
correspond with Burke until early 1790 on the assumption that any friend of the
American revolution must welcome the French, and by agreeing not to discuss
France they continued to meet socially later in the year.12 But Paine could hardly
ignore the Reflections. His famous defence of the revolution, the Rights of Man,
appeared in early 1791, just as Paine returned to Paris. It was immediately taken up
by the Society for Constitutional Information in London, which Paine had recently
joined, and quickly helped to inspire other political organizations.
In Paris Paine followed events closely. He was delighted with Robespierre’s
efforts to abolish the death penalty and did not lament Louis’s flight in June, sure that
‘the vices of kings’ had been the root of France’s misfortunes.13 He was less happy
when the king was arrested and to boot was himself nearly lynched by a mob when
he accidentally neglected to decorate his hat with the red, white and blue cockade
symbolizing liberty and equality. In July he and Condorcet (whose wife helped to
translate Paine’s works), Brissot and a few others founded the Republican Society,
whose manifesto shortly went up on walls throughout Paris at a time when few
revolutionaries were republicans. Its appearance caused a considerable outcry.

26
 ´APOSTLE OF LIBERTY´

Assailed by conservative royalists, Paine also found the Jacobins unhappy at such
competition. But he pressed home his attack none the less, a day later publishing a
refutation of Montesquieu’s view that republics suited only small territories. In July
he returned to London to celebrate the second anniversary of the fall of the Bastille
and to publicize the intimate relationship between French liberty and the cause of
freedom and justice in Britain. Staying with Rickman, now a bookseller, Paine spent
his time in London writing (including an anonymous anti-slavery tract)14 and
visiting acquaintances like Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, John Horne
Tooke, Joel Barlow and Joseph Priestley. In London his activities were closely
monitored for a time by a disgruntled customs official and friend of Rickman’s
named Charles Ross who, unable to support his wife and five children on a meagre
salary – the parallel with Paine’s own early life is ironic – volunteered to spy on Paine
(though calling it a ‘disagreeable task’) in the hopes of a better post in London. With
many of his fellow radicals Paine met at the London Tavern on 4 November 1791
with the Revolution Society, whose focus was now more upon 1789 than 1688. It was
here that he proposed the memorable toast, The Revolution of the World’.15
Amidst growing excitement Paine brought out the second part of the Rights of
Man in February 1792. When its sales soon vastly surpassed the first part, especially
amongst the working classes, the government took the offensive. Paine’s publisher
was given a summons in mid-May and another arrived at Rickman’s house on 21
May, closely followed by a royal edict against seditious publications. Paine
immediately addressed an open letter to the Attorney General and appeared in court
on 8 June, only to have his trial postponed to December.
Meanwhile events were proceeding quickly in France. Though Paine considered
going to Dublin in July after he was elected a member of the radical United Irishmen,
French citizenship was conferred upon him in late August 1792 for ‘having prepared
the enfranchisement of peoples’. Two translations of the Rights of Man appeared,
and Paine was subsequently elected by no less than four départements to the
Convention which was to replace the National Assembly. Such acclaim was
convenient, for Paine’s arrest in London was daily threatened. A warrant reached
Dover only twenty minutes after his departure for France on 14 September and only
Rickman’s quick thinking, by emphasizing that letters of Washington’s were among
Paine’s affairs, prevented him from being further delayed in the Customs House.16
In his Letter Addressed to the Addressers, not published until after his escape, Paine
now broke openly from his previous strategy as well as his moderate associates, and
argued that a British convention should assemble to abolish the monarchy.
Paine would never return to England. Landing at Calais, the first département to
nominate him and whose deputyship he accepted, he was greeted with a salute from

27
 THOMAS PAINE

the harbour cannons and a reception at the town hall. The following evening a box at
the theatre was decorated with a banner inscribed to ‘the Author of the Rights of
Man’. At Paris in mid-October Paine joined a committee to form a constitution.
Opposing Danton, and indeed much of public opinion, he argued against removing
qualifications for judges. Paine applauded the abolition of the monarchy a short time
later. But he resisted calls for Louis’s life, and a month later found himself virtually
alone in his defence of the king.17
Meanwhile Paine’s reputation in England gathered momentum rapidly. Cheap
editions of the Rights of Man were soon widely available and Paine’s trial for having
‘wickedly, falsely, maliciously, scandalously, and seditiously’ published his work
took place in mid-December. Protesting the ‘accumulated mischief arising from the
book, the Attorney General duly secured its proscription; Paine would later
frequently offer the toast, The best way of advertising good books – by prosecution’.
His conviction was a foregone conclusion. None the less Paine’s lawyer, Erskine,
offered a spirited defence of liberty of the press and had his carriage drawn through
the streets by Paine’s supporters, though his own advocacy of the cause was
motivated as much by ambition as principle.18
Now outlawed in England, Paine’s defence of Louis in face of fierce opposition
made life difficult in Paris. Marat tried to disqualify him from voting on the king’s
death because of his supposed Quakerism. Paine did agree that the king should be
tried, though arguing against his own friends the Girondins that this should be by the
Convention rather than direct appeal to the people. But he urged both humanity and
prudence: America was now France’s sole ally and regarded Louis highly. His
execution would only be grist to the mill of counter-revolution. Banishment was
preferable, and Paine suggested that the United States might accept Louis.
But the Mountain, the more extreme Jacobins dominated by Robespierre,
prevailed, and Louis was guillotined. The Girondins, who represented a more
provincial, conservative, federal viewpoint, had failed, but none the less temporarily
remained more influential. After war broke out between Britain and France in early
1793, Paine lent his assistance to the Irish revolutionaries gathered in Paris and
intrigued with them about the prospects of a French invasion of Ireland. One of their
leaders, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, wrote to his mother of Paine: ‘I cannot express how
kind he is to me; there is a simplicity of manner, a goodness of heart, and a strength
of mind in him I never knew a man before possess.’ And Paine was generous also to
his enemies, even saving the life of a hot-blooded young British captain who
assaulted him at a dinner party without knowing that the death penalty had been
imposed recently for attacking deputies. Paine’s house was frequently host to large
numbers of democratic exiles. No doubt, too, he enjoyed life, though there is

28
 ´APOSTLE OF LIBERTY´

probably no substance to the report that he had been caught by a fellow deputy ‘in the
very act of measuring his wife … for a pair of stays’ while singing ‘ça ira, ça ira, ça
ira’.19 Paine’s friends, however, began to lose the upper hand. Amongst the
casualties of the assault upon the Girondins which began in April 1793 was the
constitution at which Paine, Condorcet and others had long laboured. Its adoption
was delayed for several months and, after being accepted in late June, its
implementation was quickly suspended. At the same time Marat and Robespierre
moved quickly to eliminate their opponents.
Marat in particular saw Paine as threatening the revolutionary dictatorship the
Jacobins were anxious to introduce, since he had already condemned the American
presidency as concentrating too much power in one individual. Marat suspected
Paine’s loyalty for other reasons, too. Paine knew some people, like Gouverneur
Morris, who thought little of the revolution. He had defended the Spanish-American
General Miranda against Jacobin charges of treachery and knew General
Dumouriez, who had been accused of seeking a constitutional monarchy and had
then defected to the enemy in April 1793. He was friendly with others, like
Condorcet, who were themselves increasingly isolated. Marat’s opportunity to
damage Paine arose in April 1793 when, apparently after hearing rumours of Marat’s
desire to see his idol executed, a young English devotee of Paine’s named Johnson
attempted suicide in Paris, leaving a note, which Paine published, accusing Marat of
‘assassinating’ the cause of liberty. At this time Marat was himself on trial for
threatening a dictatorial coup against the Convention. Cleverly exploiting this
opportunity, he shifted the focus of the trial to the question of whether his writings
had incited Johnson’s action and emerged victorious by proving that Johnson was
imbalanced. He then accused Johnson of in fact seeking to denounce Paine. The
latter survived the charge, but by publicizing Johnson’s actions he accidentally
paved the way for the Girondins’ downfall as well as his own later arrest.
Paine now worried seriously about the course of the revolution, not, as he wrote
to Danton in early May, because of France’s enemies, but rather ‘the tumultuous
misconduct with which the internal affairs of the present revolution are
conducted’.20 Warning that too little attention was being paid to moral principles,
and that the widespread tendency to denounce political enemies as traitors would
undermine public authority, Paine insisted that only establishing a constitution
would secure the accomplishments of the revolution. In early June the Convention
moved against the Girondins. Paine’s position initially remained secure, however,
and he was exempted from a law permitting the arrest of foreigners, since both he and
the Prussian Anacharsis Clootz were delegates. Condorcet, Brissot and others fled,

29
 THOMAS PAINE

leaving Paine to represent their views in the Convention. His French, however, was
too poor for the cut and thrust of debate and others were now reluctant to translate for
him. Even Paine’s pen was withdrawn from service, no printer being willing to take
his work. But he continued to seek American support for France and helped secure
much needed shipments of grain and rice.
Abandoned and depressed, Paine began to drink to console his fears and
disappointments, though far less than his later detractors claimed. He found some
solace in the company of other exiled radicals like Mary Wollstonecraft, Joel Barlow
and Thomas Christie, who often met at Paine’s lodgings, three rooms in the rue
Faubourg Saint-Denis adjacent to an acre garden of fruit trees, where they played
chess and card games, talked politics and offered one another moral and intellectual
support.
In mid-July Charlotte Corday assassinated Marat, which raised some hope that
the imprisoned and exiled Girondins might be reinstated. Instead Robespierre’s rise
to power not only doomed many of his erstwhile Convention associates, but nearly
resulted in Paine’s execution as well. Robespierre had hitherto been friendly with
Paine, protecting him from attacks by others and conferring with him occasionally.
In August, however, he instigated an address to the Convention from Arras stating
that confidence in Paine’s abilities was wanting. Paine himself could not understand
Robespierre’s antagonism and only several years later discovered that Gouverneur
Morris, now American ambassador to France and an anti-republican in
Washington’s cabinet, had accused him of opposing American interests.21 Since the
United States was France’s sole ally, such charges were very damaging. Moreover,
Morris also suggested that Paine was English rather than American and hence no
longer neutral. It was this act, by a fellow American, which would nearly cost Paine
his life. In early October he was denounced in the Convention for associating with
the imprisoned Girondins, who were executed a month later, and for attempting to
defend Louis. Several friends living at Paine’s house now fled abroad, warrants for
their arrests following a few days later. Watching his own fate unfold, and not
knowing whether his own life would be spared, Paine laboured feverishly over his
vindication of pure religion, The Age of Reason, the first part of which was completed
barely hours before his arrest.
Once Paine had been categorized as an Englishman by the Committee of General
Security, he was clearly doomed. Two days after Christmas 1793, at three in the
morning, he was seized with his landlord and confined in the Luxembourg prison, a
former palace which now held British prisoners and some French aristocrats.
Though Joel Barlow and others immediately petitioned for his release and offered to

30
 ´APOSTLE OF LIBERTY´

take him to America, Paine was to remain in prison for nearly a year, with the
Convention blandly justifying itself by arguing that while Paine had been ‘the
apostle of liberty’, none the less ‘his genius has not understood that which has
regenerated France; he has regarded the system only in accordance with the illusions
with which the false friends of our revolution have invested it’ (meaning the
Girondins), which contradicted ‘the principles admired in the justly esteemed works
of this republican author’.22
Paine was none the less still of value to the Convention. Further action against him
was evidently delayed by Robespierre to allow Paine to enlist more sympathy for the
French cause from Washington. Morris not only lent Paine no assistance, but may
even have conspired to suspend his right of correspondence. Moreover, Morris told
Jefferson that Paine was acknowledged as an American in Paris, which hindered
further action on his behalf in the United States. In all this Morris colluded with his
own agent in the French government, as Moncure Conway discovered in the late
nineteenth century, though the Foreign Minister who conspired with him,
Deforgues, soon lost his own head after a brief stay in the Luxembourg.23
One evening it seemed Paine’s own end had also finally come. It was the height
of Robespierre’s Terror, and some 160 prisoners were due to be executed the
following day. The cell doors of the condemned were first indicated with a chalk
cross mark. But Paine’s door happened to be open when this was applied, ‘if
happening is the proper word’, he later recalled, preferring to assume providential
intervention. Consequently the cross was on the inside when the gaolers came, and
his life was spared.24
The fall of Robespierre paved the way for Paine’s release. Fortunately Morris had
been succeeded by James Monroe in the summer of 1794. Paine managed to get a
letter to him and Monroe agreed that he was an American citizen, assuring him of
Washington’s continuing friendship as well as that of the American people. None the
less Morris had not yet left Paris and Monroe’s response took a month to reach Paine,
by which time the former minister had safely reached Switzerland. He later argued
for the restoration of monarchy in France.
On 4 November 1794, his American citizenship acknowledged, Paine was
released. The Convention restored him to its ranks, while a governmental committee
proposed to grant him a pension for his literary efforts on behalf of the revolution.
Paine refused, deciding instead to return to America to recover from the illnesses he
had suffered in prison. Monroe suggested that the Convention send Paine home
bearing the treaty of friendship just signed between the two nations. Paine was
thankful for such official attention at last, though he was very reproachful towards

31
 THOMAS PAINE

Washington, even terming him ‘treacherous’ for having ignored his plight. But the
Convention then refused Paine, as one of its members, a passport, arguing curiously
that France required his services. Meanwhile the reintroduction of the constitution
Paine, Condorcet and others had designed in 1793 was being proposed and Paine
wrote his Dissertation on First Principles of Government to argue against reviving
the monarchy, any property qualification on the suffrage, and an overly powerful
central executive where the constitution did not restrain partisan enthusiasm.
After his release Paine returned to the Convention only once, in July 1795. He was
weak and a secretary read his speech in French, but Paine’s attack on the attempt to
restrict citizenship to direct taxpayers and war veterans, or only half the existing
population, was vigorous none the less, though it met with ‘cold indifference’ from
the assembly. With the dissolution of the Convention and creation of the Directory
in October 1795, his role in the revolution seemingly came to an end. His health
threatened to fail him completely in the autumn, when Paine put the finishing
touches to part two of The Age of Reason. Still angered by America’s role in his
imprisonment, too, Paine also wrote a strongly worded Letter to George Washington
in early 1796 attacking the President’s competence as both general and politician and
insinuating that his proposed commercial treaty with Britain would undermine
American independence. This was a sad ending to twenty years’ of political
association and warm friendship and it cost Paine many friends in America, for
Washington was widely respected.25 None the less Paine continued to aid Franco-
American relations at a critical point in their history, for with the passage of Jay’s
Treaty between Britain and the United States in 1794, important trading rights were
extended to Britain, and her differences with America seemed largely reconciled.
The French were horrified at what seemed an outright insult given their assistance
during the American revolution, if not an abrogation of American neutrality. Paine,
however, assailed the British government as if American policy had remained
unchanged, and drew up plans for reinforcing commerce with France. Monroe was
particularly appreciative of Paine’s support of America’s reputation.
For some months Paine lived at Monroe’s house in Paris, slowly recovering his
health but depressed both by the course of the revolution and British criticisms of The
Age of Reason. In early 1796 he moved to the countryside near Versailles as the guest
of a wealthy but radical Paris banker, Sir Robert Smith, whose wife he had
befriended (they wrote innocent poems to one another). In April he completed The
Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance, which predicted the collapse of
the funding system under the stress of war and domestic oppression. It met with
considerable acclaim in France and Britain, and was soon widely translated.

32
 ´APOSTLE OF LIBERTY´

Characteristically, Paine donated the proceeds to relieving debtors imprisoned in

Newgate, London.26
In 1796, in an effort to combat the danger of atheism he perceived around him,
Paine founded the small sect of Theophilanthropists. In an important tract published
in England the following year, Agrarian Justice, he further refined his views on
property and poverty. But he was still anxious to return to America. Monroe was
recalled in August 1796, possibly in part because Paine had stayed with him while
continuing to write – despite Monroe’s remonstrances – against Washington and
American policies. Paine travelled with him to Le Havre on his departure, but was
deterred from embarking by the presence of so many British warships on the open
sea (spies were everywhere: Monroe’s ship was in fact stopped and Paine carefully
searched for). But Paine’s role in France was not yet played out. Returning to Paris,
he announced that the war could be successfully ended only if France invaded
England, sent George packing to Hanover and established a republic. These
sentiments reached important ears and Paine was invited to dinner with Napoleon,
who flattered him that he slept with the Rights of Man under his pillow, said that every
city should have a golden statue of its author erected and consulted Paine on a
possible invasion of England. Paine later claimed that he would have accompanied
Bonaparte in order ‘to give the people of England an opportunity of forming a
government for themselves, and thereby bring about peace’, and worked for some
time on the project, even subscribing 100 livres of his own money. But after
Napoleon had built some 250 of a planned 1,000 boats the expedition was
abandoned, and Paine later became hostile to Bonaparte, terming him overly
bloodthirsty and ‘the completest charlatan that ever existed’.27
Now residing with Nicolas de Bonneville, the printer of the French edition of The
Age of Reason, Paine received large numbers of visitors, amongst whom was the
inventor Robert Fulton, who later credited him with having been amongst the first to
propose steam-powered navigation. Paine’s repose was not long-lived, however.
Napoleon’s coup d’êtat of November 1799 was roundly criticized by Bonneville,
who was immediately imprisoned, though Paine himself seems to have preferred
Napoleon to the prospect of the return of the monarchy. Bonneville was released,
though reduced to severe financial straits, and Paine remained with him, now writing
on the necessity for peaceful commercial relations on the high seas. But when his
relations with Bonneville incurred further official suspicion he again considered
returning to America.
There were further setbacks before Paine’s long exile in France came at last to an
end, however. Having prospered for a time, the cause of Theophilanthropy met an

33
 THOMAS PAINE

unsavoury end after Napoleon’s concordat with the Vatican in July 1801. In his
efforts to expunge republicanism, moreover, the French leader even had Paine’s
works taken out of the Bibliothèque Nationale. In March, Jefferson, now Vice-
President, wrote Paine that an American vessel was available if he required passage
to the US. But this invitation was leaked to the American newspapers, and Jefferson
was accused by the Federalists of offering to send the ship for the sole purpose of
fetching Paine, who thereupon delayed his return once again.
In mid-1802 Paine finally bid farewell to ‘restless and wretched Europe’. He was
deeply unhappy with the course the revolution had taken, though insisting that its
fate had much to do with ‘the provocative interference of foreign powers’. He
lamented to one of his last visitors, an English radical named Henry Redhead Yorke,
‘Republic! do you call this a republic? Why they are worse off than the slaves of
Constantinople; for there, they expect to be bashaws in heaven by submitting to be
slaves below, but here they believe neither in heaven nor hell, and yet are slaves by
choice. I know of no republic in the world except America … I have done with
Europe, and its slavish politics.’28 He was also extremely unhappy that The Age of
Reason had proved so unpopular in England. His advice and good intentions seemed
everywhere to have been misunderstood, or defied by powers greater than himself.
Only in America, with the election of Jefferson in 1800, did the forward march of
political progress seem secure.
Paine set sail from Le Havre on 1 September 1802, with Rickman coming from
London during the brief Peace of Amiens to see him off. Reaching Baltimore on 1
November, aged 65, he was delighted to find that friends had maintained his
property. When invested, the £6,000 it was now worth brought him a sum sufficient
to live on. He had been unable to save any money in France, having refused an offer
of £3,000 for his two bridge models and given away the proceeds of almost all his
writings. But this was to be the best news to await Paine. He expected that at least in
republican America, where Jefferson and others had declared his principles to be
virtually identical to those of the nation, public approbation for his exertions in
Europe and a warm welcome might greet him. But again he was to be sorely
disappointed.
Theology was the chief cause of this misfortune. Though deist republicans
applauded his return, Paine now found himself not only a pawn in American partisan
struggles, but prey, in what Rickman called ‘a country abounding in fanatics’, to
religious enthusiasts of all types. Thousands of republicans turned their backs on
him, while his political opponents gleefully seized upon his religious views, with
John Adams’s Federalists in particular using Jefferson’s friendship with the author

34
 ´APOSTLE OF LIBERTY´

of the notorious Age of Reason as an excellent pretext for assailing both. Jefferson
anxiously avoided religious controversy, even refusing to allow his private letters on
the subject to be printed, and consequently was reluctant to meet Paine, though
finally inviting him for a visit. But Paine was now everywhere else on the defensive,
his political ideals seemingly neglected, the theology he had articulated only as a
means of shoring up these ideals condemned. In some places he was jeered by pious
mobs egged on by Federalists. At least once he was refused a place on a stagecoach.
He was pestered in his private life. One day, during his nap, an elderly woman
intruded upon him to warn that Almighty God had sent her to warn him to repent or
be damned, to which Paine – his usual sympathy for women deserting him – replied
that she obviously could not have been sent ‘with any such impertinent message …
He would not send such a foolish, ugly old woman about with His messages.’
Someone even shot at his house.29
Paine none the less was not to be intimidated and wrote a series of eight public
letters defending his views and continuing to support prominent deists like Elihu
Palmer. He also vindicated Jefferson on several occasions, particularly where his
relations with Paine were concerned. He applauded the purchase of Louisiana and
suggested to Jefferson the best means of amalgamating it into the union, later
lambasting the Federalists for first urging its seizure by force, then denying its
importance after Jefferson’s proposed acquisition. He further tried to persuade
Congress not to retain slavery there and urged Jefferson to reconsider his views when
the United States refused entry to slaves fleeing Santo Domingo in case they incited
slave uprisings in America too. Paine’s main interest, however, was again building
his bridge, and he exerted considerable effort in showing his models to all who were
interested. He also planned to reprint his existing works and manuscripts.30
Disappointed that no official post was given to him, Paine left Washington in early
1803 and settled in the country near New Rochelle, New York. Besides some 240
acres, his farm consisted of two oxen, a horse, a cow and ten pigs. Here he lived a
plain but wholesome life, content to call himself the possessor of six chairs and a
table, a straw bed, a feather bed, a tea kettle, an iron pot, a baking and frying pan and
a few other implements. His diet was composed primarily of tea, milk, fruit pies,
dumplings and an occasional piece of meat. At New Rochelle he continued to receive
visitors, and observers noted his kindness to children and animals, his clean
appearance and his moderate drinking, if liberality with the snuffbox. But he had not
yet retired. In 1803–4 he assisted the Connecticut republicans’ effort to secure a
constitution to replace the state’s royal charter.31 In 1805 he again defended
Jefferson against the Federalist press and involved himself in a debate originating in

35
 THOMAS PAINE

the New York State legislature on the issuing of charters and, on another concerning
Pennsylvania, on several constitutional issues.32 He also wrote on subjects as diverse
as yellow fever, gunboat-building and the origins of Freemasonry.
By 1806 Paine was in financial straits again. For several years he had supported
the family of his last French hosts, the Bonnevilles, until this burden forced him to
sell his Bordentown property. Though his health troubled him again, Paine was still
restless and asked Jefferson if some post could be found for him in Europe if war
ended between Britain and France. The poor hospitality America had offered him
was now compounded when his right to vote was denied by a few Tories in New
Rochelle in 1806, on the grounds that Gouverneur Morris had not recognized him as
an American and Washington had not aided him.33
In 1807 Paine’s powers began to ebb. He continued to ply Jefferson with
suggestions and urged mediation between England and France in the interests of
peace. In late 1808 he became friendly with a Quaker preacher and watchmaker
named Willett Hicks. Early the next year he moved to the house of a niece of Elihu
Palmer’s and her husband, but here he began to fade rapidly. Even in his last days,
however, Paine retained a sense of humour in the face of his opponents. On one
occasion an American minister insisted he had recovered the true key to the
Scriptures after it had been lost for 4,000 years, and Paine replied only that it must
have been very rusty after so long. Nor is there evidence of any death-bed recantation
of his religious beliefs, though his enemies whispered that deists plied him with
alcohol to stave off a reversion to orthodoxy. Shortly before he died early in the
morning of 8 June 1809, two clergymen found a means of entering his room in the
hopes of restoring him to the true faith. Paine said only, ‘Let me alone; good
morning.’ His enemies were again disappointed.
Even in death Paine remained a controversial figure. His funeral procession was
described as composed of Negroes, drunken Irishmen and an Irish Quaker; in fact
two blacks did travel twenty-five miles on foot to offer respects to one who had so
often pleaded their cause, while the Quaker was Willett Hicks. To their discredit,
however, the local Quakers refused Paine’s request to be buried in their cemetery and
he was accordingly interred in an orchard on his farm. Ten years later, the English
radical William Cobbett reclaimed Paine’s bones for England, evidently in the hope
of using them as relics to garner support for the reformers’ cause. But after he died,
Paine’s remains disappeared, and no trace of them now exists.34 No grand tomb will
thus ever commemorate Paine’s final resting place. But as Andrew Jackson once
remarked, he needed ‘no monument built by hands; he has erected a monument in
the hearts of all lovers of liberty’. Why his principles came to be so loved, but also so
hated, we must now consider.

36
 ´APOSTLE OF LIBERTY´

Notes to Chapter 1: The life of Thomas Paine

1 E.g. H. Mackenzie (1793), J. Gifford (1792).

2 A good review of Paine’s early biographers is G. Vale (1841), pp. 4–15. The best modern
biography is A. Aldridge (1960), a Basic English version of which has appeared in
French, Arabic, Bengali and Urdu. The most detailed early study is M. Conway (1892),
though T. Rickman (1908) is valuable for the insights gleaned from personal friendship
with Paine. Also helpful are W. Sherwin (1819) and R. Carlile (1819). This chapter is
much indebted in particular to the former two of these works. Useful recent treatments
include A. Williamson (1973) and D. Powell (1985).
3 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 496–7. All further references to Paine’s writings will be to this
nearly complete, standard edition. For works not included in it, see below, n. 14 and p. 61,
n. 26. A more accessible collection of Paine’s major writings is Paine (1987).
4 See Paine (1945), Vol. 1, p. 405, and A. Barry (1977).
5 T. Rickman (1908), p. 17; Public Advertiser, no. 197 (22 August 1808), p. 2; G. Vale
(1841), p. 26; Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 3–15, here p. 9. On Paine’s charitable activities see
A. Williamson (1973), p. 37.
6 Philip Foner claimed that a 1775 essay for a Pennsylvania magazine entitled ‘Reflections
on unhappy marriages’ was Paine’s, in which case it was doubtless partly
autobiographical (Paine, 1945, Vol. 2, pp. 1,118–20). This ascription, however, is denied
by A. Aldridge (1984), p. 287.
7 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 1130, 16–40, 52–60.
8 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 182–3.
9 See Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 96–188.
10 For details of Paine’s bridge project see W. Armytage (1951).
11 E. Burke (1978), Vol. 5, p. 412; Paine (1908), Vol. 1, p. 329.
12 J. Alger (1889), p. 85; E. Burke (1978), Vol. 6, pp. 67–76.
13 See Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 517–19.
14 Internal evidence suggests that the early nineteenth-century attribution to Paine of Old
Truths and Established Facts (1792) was probably accurate, though it has not been
discussed in any subsequent study of Paine. The 13-page pamphlet repeats Paine’s earlier
view that Parliament acted contrary to ‘all natural rights’ (p. 5) in permitting the slave
trade and refers to natural law arguments about legitimate and illegitimate enslavement
(p. 9).
15 TS11/965/3510A. On the British colony in Paris see D. Erdman (1986), especially pp.
223–43. On Barlow’s relations with Paine see J. Woodress (1958), especially pp. 129–41.
16 TS 11/965/3510A. See Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 466–9 for Paine’s account of his escape.
17 See Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 551–60.
18 Trial of Thomas Paine (1792). A full account of Paine’s trial is also in T. Howell (1817),
Vol. 22, cols 357–471.
19 M. Conway (1892), Vol. 1, p. 358; Add. MS. 16924 f. 35. On Paine and French politics
see Z. Libiszowska (1980).
20 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, p. 1335.

37
 THOMAS PAINE

21 Morris also sided privately with Britain against France and was linked to various intrigues
to secure Louis’s escape. See Morris (1939) for his own account of the revolution.
22 M. Conway (1892), Vol. 2, p. 110.
23 M. Conway (1892), Vol. 2, p. 121. Less convincing is A. Aldridge (1960), p. 212.
24 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, p. 921.
25 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 691–723. For hostile responses to Paine see A Letter to Thomas
Paine (1797), [W. Cobbett] (1797), P. Kennedy (1798).
26 Responses to the Decline and Fall include S. Pope (1796), who thought it largely repeated
Price’s objections to the funding system.
27 H. Yorke (1804), Vol. 2, pp. 368–9; Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 680, 1415–16; M. Elliott
(1982), pp. 59–61. See Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 675–83 and A. Aldridge (1957) for
details.
28 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, p. 683; H. Yorke (1804), Vol. 2, p. 342; M. Elliott (1982), p. 279.
29 T. Rickman (1908), pp. 4, 74. On Paine’s reception see J. Knudson (1969).
30 Paine’s writings from this period are not all included in Paine (1945). For some omissions
see A. Aldridge (1953).
31 See R. Gimbel (1956b) for details.
32 For Paine’s anti-Federalist writings see especially (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 1,007–10.
33 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 1487–8. Cheetham later asserted that Mme Bonneville had been
Paine’s mistress, but lost the case when she sued him for libel. None the less the judge
commended Cheetham’s ‘useful’ biography for helping to curtail Paine’s influence (Vale,
1841, p. 153).
34 Paine’s bones were last seen in the possession of one B. Tilly, of 13 Bedford Square East,
in March 1844 (W. Cobbett, 1847, p. 5). Mysteriously, Romney’s famous portrait of Paine
also disappeared at some point.

38
 2
‘The cause of all mankind’:
Paine and the American
revolution

Colonial radicalism, 1765–76

Common Sense exploded amidst an already volatile debate about colonial rights,
imperial arbitrariness, and the possibility of resistance to British rule. American
resentment had been instigated primarily by the passage of stamp duties on legal
and other documents in 1765, which brought rioting and boycotts of British goods.
In the late 1760s protest escalated in reaction to attempts to curtail the powers of
colonial assemblies and to increase colonial revenues. The Wilkes case, as we
have seen, fuelled unrest. British policy towards Ireland and India also seemed to
some to betray the designs of ministerial tyranny. The failure of petitioning
increased disappointments and eroded affections. More widely discussed as early
as 1770–1 was armed resistance, and the view that colonial government was
dissolving and might better be replaced by native rule. Independence was
broached, though not widely supported, by 1772, the Dutch model being
occasionally suggested. By 1774 the monarch, but a few years earlier the focus of
hopes for respite from ministerial intrigue, had himself become a potent symbol of
despotism. At Lexington and Concord in mid-1775 revolt finally became war.1
Until 1776, however, the colonists’ unease produced little support for
independence or strong opposition to monarchy among most colonists. As Gordon
Wood has emphasized, most Americans believed the mixed British constitution to
be the best possible and happily subscribed to the loyalism of John Dickinson’s
popular Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1768). In this sense the majority
were still British and did not yet identify, as Pauline Maier has stressed, with a
self-consciously American collective entity. Paine himself claimed in early 1775
that ‘equality of liberty is the glory of every Briton. He does not forfeit it by

39
 THOMAS PAINE

crossing the ocean … A Briton or American ceases to be a British subject when he

ceases to be governed by rulers chosen or approved of by himself. This is the
essence of liberty and of the British constitution.’2 But it was the interpretation of
precisely what rights this constitution permitted, how far they were ‘natural’ or
bound to precedent, and how far they were owed to all classes, which was to be
crucial to the revolutionary debate.
As we have seen, these were also the central issues of eighteenth-century
radical Whiggism. The colonists’ cause was portrayed primarily in terms of a
country or Commonwealthman language of resistance to executive tyranny.
British excesses, such as the Stamp Act, were construed as the arbitrary acts of a
government whose patronage and corruption demanded further taxation from a
population denied the right of representation in Parliament. American liberties
were infringed upon both because Parliament was unrepresentative and because
colonial policy was dictated more by the monarchy than the Commons.
In the middle and late 1770s, however, this Whiggish protest against tyranny
was transformed completely. At independence many colonists – among them
Paine – felt that they had inaugurated if not the millennium, then at least a
brilliantly innovative polity which offered new hope for other nations. This belief
dawned only gradually, however. And even by early 1776, most Americans sought
only to reinstate an uncorrupted version of the British constitution. But the sense
of uniqueness, and of the creation of a new science of politics, was already afoot.
This Paine would contribute to more than virtually any other colonist.3
What was distinctive about the new nation was first its republican form. The
very strength of the British constitution, Montesquieu, de Lolme and others had
insisted, lay in the balance between its three components and the separation of
their powers.4 Republicanism implied not only the absolute predominance of the
popular branch of government, but also considerable social equality, a more
fervent and widespread devotion to the public good and the willingness to sacrifice
private advantage for it, and a reciprocal dedication by the government to public
welfare. Policy could reflect only the general will and common good, not that of
parties, classes or individuals. The consent of citizens, moreover, was now
required to be granted much more frequently, as well as more directly, than earlier
Whigs had sought. The first step towards creating this form of republicanism was
the argument that parliamentary sovereignty in the colonies had evaporated and
that power instead should be wielded wholly in the colonial assemblies, which
could more directly represent the colonists’ interests and express their active
consent to legislation.5

40
 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

The second component in the new idea of government was that this sovereignty
was to be asserted by assembling representatives in a constitutional convention
rather than through the colonial legislatures. By this means the people would
create all parts of government rather than exercising their authority only in the
legislature. This view became popular only slowly during the revolutionary
period, however. In 1776 most Americans believed only that their colonial
assemblies possessed the right to alter fundamental laws, not that they themselves
should play an active role in so doing. The 1780 Massachusetts constitution was
the first framed by a convention, while that in New Hampshire in 1784 was the
first requiring further popular ratification. Gradually, through the 1780s, the states
thus conceived that such laws were so much more elemental than ordinary
legislation that they required the consent of the people at large outside of their
legislative organs. This, as Gordon Wood has emphasized, was ‘such a radical
innovation in politics that the concept of fundamental law by itself hardly explains
it’. ‘Conventions’ had existed previously in Britain as irregular forms of
representation, but without challenging the status and rights of Parliament itself.
By the early 1770s, however, the formation of increasingly regular extra-
legislative bodies had legitimated the idea that a convention could supplant regular
assemblies corrupted by arbitrary power. In 1774–5, and especially after
Pennsylvania’s moves in 1776, the idea was put widely into practice. When Paine
took the idea up in 1776, therefore, his ground was well prepared. Thereafter
representative democracy capable of embracing a large territory and based upon
the new mechanisms of consent rather than either simple, direct democracy or any
form of mixed government came gradually, and especially after the 1780s, to be
seen as the great American achievement.6
Thirdly, the revolution was correspondingly widely understood to imply a
moral reformation whereby the public virtue upon which republics rested was re-
created and more widely shared than previously thought possible. Not merely
political corruption, moreover, but private moral degeneracy through greed or a
senseless immersion in luxury had to be rejected in favour of greater simplicity,
self-sufficiency, honesty and moral rigour.7 These qualities, it was widely
recognized, already existed, or at least could be cultivated considerably more
easily, in a young agricultural republic than a nation divided by great class
distinctions and habits of commercial luxury. American corruptions could be
identified with British rule, or with monarchy and aristocracy. Banishing these
collectively would leave the nation in a state of pristine moral and political virtue.

41
 THOMAS PAINE

Independence sounded: Common Sense (1776)

One of the most important contributions to the new political ideal was Common
Sense, which appeared anonymously in Philadelphia on 10 January 1776. It was
immediately perceived as being essentially practical, for it was fortuitously
published the same day as reports of George Ill’s hostile speech opening the new
session of parliament. The pamphlet owed something to local conditions. Popular
demand for greater equality was more widespread in Pennsylvania and consequently
here more than elsewhere the revolution was viewed as a struggle between the people
(chiefly western settlers and the labouring classes of Philadelphia, the colonies’
largest city) and an entrenched Quaker and Presbyterian oligarchy which opposed
independence. Paine himself had not favoured independence on arriving in America
in late 1774 and recalled that it was then generally regarded as ‘a kind of treason’ to
renounce attachment to Britain. The immediate pretext for declaring independence
for Paine was the Battle of Lexington, which took place on 19 April 1775, and which
he felt finally proved that the compact between the colonists and Britain had been
broken. Moreover, ‘during the suspension of lthe old governments in America, both
prior to and at the breaking out of hostilities,’ Paine later wrote, ‘I was struck with
the order and decorum with which everything was conducted, and impressed with
the idea, that a little more than what society naturally performed, was all the
government that was necessary, and that monarchy and aristocracy were frauds and
impositions upon mankind.’ This led him to an appreciation of the possibility of
independence as well as the wider liberty promised by a new form of government.8
After a brief introduction trumpeting the American struggle as ‘in great measure
the cause of all mankind’, Common Sense opened by considering the ‘Origin and
Design of Government in General, With Concise Remarks on the English
Constitution’. Government had to be considered as separate from society, Paine
began. Society was ‘produced by our wants and government by our wickedness; the
former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter
negatively by restraining our vices’. Government therefore was merely a ‘necessary
evil’, a ‘badge of lost innocence’ symbolizing the loss of primitive ‘natural liberty’.
None the less, since not all heeded the dictates of conscience, government was
required to provide order and security. Initially all had legislated and, while
representation was later necessary, the ‘strength of government, and the happiness
of the governed’ always depended upon the common interest of both representatives
and represented.9

42
 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Moving to consider ‘the so much boasted Constitution of England’, Paine argued

that this consisted of three segments, ‘the remains of monarchical tyranny in the
person of the king’, ‘the remains of aristocratical tyranny in the persons of the peers’
and ‘the new Republican materials, in the persons of the Commons’. The freedom of
England, Paine insisted, depended solely on the virtue of the latter, for ‘in a
constitutional sense’ neither king nor peers were dedicated to freedom. Denying the
central Whig contention that each part balanced the others, Paine argued that the
Commons did not, for example, check the king, since this presumed that they were
wiser than the monarch and ignored the fact that the king could obstruct bills of the
Commons. But the monarchy itself, in any case, was an ‘exceedingly ridiculous’
institution. Kings were totally ignorant of the world they supposedly governed.
Moreover, how could a wise people ever have given a king such powers, while
always mistrusting their exercise? In fact the strongest or ‘overbearing’ part of the
constitution simply dominated and at present this was the monarchy. If the king was
less oppressive in England than elsewhere, this was only because of the power of
parliament, not the system of government itself.10
Paine’s second section, ‘Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession’, pursued this
attack by examining the origins of kingship. Created equal, mankind at first had no
kings and thus no wars, for it was ‘the pride of kings which throws mankind into
confusion’. Kingship had originated with ‘the heathens’, from which it was copied
by the Jews, who had survived for some 3,000 years (on the Mosaic account) as ‘a
kind of Republic’. Quoting at length from the biblical book of Samuel, Paine argued
that even God himself had vainly opposed the Jewish request for a king. Eventually
the office became hereditary, but for Paine – and this was a vital part of his argument
– this was intrinsically unjust, for ‘no one by birth could have a right to set up his own
family in perpetual preference to all others for ever’. Many kings had originally been
mere robbers who imposed their rule by force. Thus had William the Conqueror
ascended to the English throne, and consequently ‘the antiquity of English
monarchy’ would ‘not bear looking into’. Once they had inherited their positions,
moreover, monarchs grew insolent and oblivious to the needs of their subjects. Some
perched precariously upon the throne as children; others steadied themselves upon
it well into infirmity. Succession crises often provoked bloody civil wars. All that
was valuable in the English constitution hence derived from the right of electing the
Commons, and even here the king had frequently interfered. The sole duties of the
king, in fact, seemed to be waging war and bestowing patronage. With piercing
condemnation Paine insisted that one honest man was worth more to society ‘than
all the crowned ruffians that ever lived’.11

43
 THOMAS PAINE

Turning to the relations between the American colonies and England, Paine
declared the debate over, with only ‘arms as the last resource’ to ‘decide the contest’.
The choice lay with the king, but the colonists had accepted the challenge, and
therein began ‘a new era for politics … a new method of thinking’. Previously all
parties had agreed upon remaining united with Britain, disputing only the means of
so doing. But the possibility of reconciliation had now disappeared. It was no longer
necessary to stress the natural ties between the colonies and Britain. Britain’s
enemies, like France and Spain, would befriend America, who was linked to all
Europe by emigration, not only to England. American commerce could survive
without British ‘protection’, and indeed would thrive as long as ‘eating is the custom
of Europe’. Since, as Paine put it, ‘our plan is commerce’, Britain’s opposition to
many continental powers in fact diminished American trade and thus its prosperity.
“TIS TIME TO PART’ was the only conclusion which could be drawn.12
Contrary arguments Paine quickly dismissed. Those who opposed independence
were untrustworthy, prejudiced, weak and unduly optimistic about European rule.
The British had now carried fire and sword to American towns and cities and had
severed the loyalties of large numbers of inhabitants. But British strength was also
overestimated. Britain no more had the power to conquer the continent than to
govern it correctly. It had also shown no tendency to compromise and, even if
reconciliation occurred, the king would still be capable of vetoing any colonial
legislation, and of exercising his power as arbitrarily. This would discourage
emigration and growth and merely provoke further revolt. Only an American and
republican government would protect its citizens in peace.13
The only grounds to fear independence, then, lay in the colonists’ insufficient
preparations for liberty. Paine therefore proposed that each colony annually elect an
assembly headed by a president and concerned only with domestic policy. These
assemblies would be answerable to a Continental Congress composed of at least
thirty delegates from each colony, from amongst whom a President would be chosen.
To found this government, a ‘continental conference’ of twenty-six members of
Congress plus two members from each provincial convention and five other
representatives at large was to be elected. These would frame a ‘Continental Charter’
establishing the number and authority of the members of congress and assembly and
guaranteeing freedom of religion and property, and thereafter dissolve itself.14
Paine then turned to consider other implications of independence. For the price of
a small but not inconvenient national debt America could build a navy sufficient for
its protection. Its need for defence in turn demanded speedy independence, for the
growth of commerce diminished ‘the spirit both of patriotism and military defense’,

44
 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

and indeed had already sapped Britain’s strength. Fifty years hence the increase of
trade and population would generate many contending interests which did not yet
exist. Common Sense then concluded with a plea for religious toleration and a
summary of some of the main grounds for immediate independence.15

Interpreting Common Sense

How original was Paine’s contribution to the revolutionary debate? Bernard Bailyn
has argued convincingly that Paine was most provocative in his rejection of the
notion of constitutional balance as a basis of liberty. This broke most sharply from
the ideals of 1688 and from Whig republicanism and clearly defined a new
democratic republicanism.16 Paine still spoke a republican language of virtue,
corruption and decline. But while he understood corruption in much the same way
as earlier Whigs, for example, as executive tyranny, his remedy was a representative,
democratic rather than mixed republic. Here his argument that hereditary monarchy
was wrong because it bound posterity to rule by one family, which considerably
extended Locke’s notion of consent, was of immense importance.
Defining more precisely this novel form of republicanism is of considerable
importance to any classification of early American political thought. The concept of
‘modernization’ (conceived neutrally) has frequently been applied to American
political thinking in this period in an effort to define the novel mental world of the
revolution.17 Jack Greene, for example, argues that the ‘modernization of political
consciousness’ involved ‘a wholly new political mentality’ which was

not only receptive but eager for change, oriented toward the present and future rather than
toward the past, confident of the efficacy of human reason to shape that present and future,
and committed to the revolutionary beliefs that criteria for membership in the political
nation should be universalistic rather than prescriptive, and that social and political
advancement should be based on achievement rather than ascription.

In Greene’s view Paine played ‘a central role in the initial phases of this
transformation’. Having stripped ‘the veil of sanctity from tradition’ he convinced
thousands that they could survive without Britain and that the patriarchal household,
far from being perfection incarnate, was in need of complete reform. If a shared
belief in the justice of exchanging deference in return for paternalism was the
principal bond holding a monarchical and aristocratic society together, Paine dealt a

45
 THOMAS PAINE

stunning blow to the system of British paternalism. In part, as Aldridge has justly
remarked, much of the great success of Common Sense doubtless derived not from
its abstract principles, but from its portrayal of the king as a political villain. But
Paine showed further that all hereditary monarchy was oppressive, not merely
tyranny. Simultaneously, thus, he raised his readers’ sense of self-worth and
independence and lowered the status of their nominal rulers. Submission and
involuntary or merely tacit allegiance now seemed immature. Deference to an
illusory superior was foolish. Dependence upon hereditary thieves was insulting.
The people had come of age.18
A second aspect of Paine’s ‘modernity’ concerns his respect for commerce.
Though more classical republicans (like Price) retained fears of the corrupting
effects of luxury and selfishness upon the public spirit, most eighteenth-century
Whig radicals had reconciled trade and republicanism, and accepted the value of
movable as well as landed property to an expanding economy. In America such
views were fuelled in particular by the demands of the frontier, the growth of colonial
entrepreneurial activity and the absence of a dominant landed oligarchy. But we need
to identify Paine’s commitment to trade very carefully. Common Sense advocated
commercial liberty, but none the less assumed a vision of commercial society which
even now (much less in 1792) implied far less inequality than did Adam Smith’s in
the Wealth of Nations, published shortly thereafter. In this sense it remained closer to
classical republicanism than to the more purely commercial Whiggism of Hume and
Smith. And we have seen from Paine’s comments on the impact of commerce upon
patriotism that he clearly recognized the existence of a fundamental conflict between
political virtue and trade. Thus Aldridge is wrong to assume that there was
‘absolutely no tension between virtue and commerce’ in Common Sense, as is Foner
to assert that Paine saw no contradiction between ‘capitalist enterprise’ and virtue.
In addition Paine recognized (as we will see) that farmers and landowners had
special status economically if not politically, though he broadened the idea of
citizenship to encompass possession of all forms of property. Moreover, we will see
that despite his views about the simplicity of wants and government in Common
Sense, Paine was able to shift fairly easily to a greater role for government in the
Rights of Man, and here too was no dogmatic proponent of laissez-faire, but instead
urged considerable redistribution of wealth. In this, too, his republicanism was
central.19
Redefining Paine’s commercial republicanism has several consequences for
recent debates about late eighteenth-century political thought. Some American
historians have associated the unification of democratic republicanism and

46
 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

economic liberalism with the Jeffersonians of the 1790s and have argued against J.
G. A. Pocock’s insistence, in particular, upon the greater longevity of classical
republicanism. Joyce Appleby, for example, sees Paine as among the leading anti-
republican apostles of economic liberalism, which is quite correct in so far as Paine
clearly assumed that both self-interest and virtue could serve as bases for a
republican polity and that economic interest was an important component in popular
conceptions of the common good. But this was less novel than it may appear. Many
late eighteenth-century radicals opposed unrestricted speculation upon the national
debt, for example, but not ‘honest commerce’, and thus sought to reconcile virtue
with commerce rather than surrendering any demand for public spiritedness. By
such means a republican could favour commerce in 1776. In American terms Paine’s
commercial republicanism is thus close to the Jeffersonianism analysed by Drew
McCoy, who stresses attempts to reconcile republicanism and commerce, and Lance
Banning, who views the Jeffersonians less as opposed to commerce as a source of
corruption than ambivalent about it. It is less well described in terms of a ‘stunning
deflation of classical republicanism’ ascribed to him by Appleby, who with Foner
and Aldridge wrongly assumes that Paine saw no dangers in commerce, and ignores
Paine’s republicanism by arguing that in his writings government is conceived only
negatively, as a means of restraining vice, rather than positively, as a sphere of
citizenship.20
In this context it is worth repeating that Common Sense did proclaim that Trade
being the consequence of population, men become too absorbed thereby to attend to
anything else. Commerce diminishes the spirit of both patriotism and military
defense … with the increase of commerce England hath lost its spirit.’ Not only did
trade corrupt public virtue. Paine as we will see also expected that the young republic
would be fervently devoted to the public good and that virtue would obviate the need
for a bicameral assembly, since the common weal would prevail in all legislative
proceedings. This argument was shared by other Pennsylvania radicals, for whom
‘virtue’ was essential to the creation of unicameral assemblies, though its meaning
was narrowed (at least in one interpretation) to only two elements: the independence
of the electorate and the integrity of legislators.21 But this can also be understood as
considerably expanding the scope of ‘virtue’ since there were many more electors
than traditional republicans proposed. And legislators were also to be drawn from a
much wider population, which assumed that far more would be capable of fulfilling
such civic duties. Paine was immensely disappointed when the moral capabilities of
Pennsylvania’s legislators did not prove up to the task. But though he clearly came
to fear the emergence of republican partisanship, his ideal of the undivided republic

47
 THOMAS PAINE

did not substantially alter even in the 1790s, although Paine later gave greater stress
to religion in the hope that it might substitute for any decline in civic virtue.
In another variation on this description of Paine as an advocate of commercial
modernity, Isaac Kramnick has seen Common Sense as the work of an ‘English
bourgeois radical’ who, after less than a year in America, saw the new world as the
means of overthrowing the corrupt aristocracy of the old and replacing it with a
‘bourgeois’ or ‘middle-class’ social and political order. Barring minor problems
arising from the anachronistic use of ‘bourgeois’, this interpretation is plausible
provided it concedes Paine’s republican suspicion of commerce and takes ‘middle
class’ to encompass small farmers, merchants, tradesmen and artisans, which is a
somewhat wider definition than that usually given to ‘middling orders’ in late
eighteenth-century Britain.22 None the less we will see that this is a less accurate
description of Paine’s views in the 1790s, when a wider suffrage was advocated and
Paine had become less suspicious of the politics of the labouring poor.
The commercial ideals of Common Sense can also be seen in terms of a rising
artisan public courted by Paine, particularly in Philadelphia. In a persuasive account
of Paine’s American period, Eric Foner strongly defends the view that the distinctive
elements in Paine’s thought can be explained from this context and that, for example,
this urban artisan vantage point drove Paine towards a market economy and away
from more suspicious country views of commerce. But this does not require, as
Aldridge mistakenly assumes, either that Paine identified himself as an artisan or that
he saw the latter as the basis of any polity or economy. Nor does it conflict with
Paine’s attempt to appeal to a wider audience, or his success in so doing.23 Indeed
Foner also convincingly sees Paine as amongst the first ‘intellectuals’, a group just
beginning to emerge at the end of the eighteenth century. But for this artisan
interpretation to be persuasive Paine did have to see himself as representing those
whose property was primarily in their labour, and this he clearly did to an important
degree. Nor does this inevitably conflict with Kramnick’s view, for the essential
dividing line for Paine at this time was not between merchants and artisans, but the
latter and the labouring poor, who possessed too little property to claim the right to
the franchise.
Defining the relationship between republicanism and commerce in the eighteenth
century also raises the question of how ‘American’ Common Sense was. Paine had
of course only been in the colonies about thirteen months when it was written. In the
best brief analysis of the tract, Bernard Bailyn thus concludes that ‘Common Sense
was an English pamphlet written on an American theme’, and animated by a deep
radical and puritan rage and ‘an intensity no American could have devised’. Eric

48
 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Foner agrees that Paine’s ideas were formed largely in England. None the less Jack
Greene has argued that Paine’s political vision was grounded in the rapid social and
political change of the American revolutionary period. Aldridge, too, describes
Paine’s views categorically as an ‘American ideology’, though without defending
this view or considering Paine after 1787.24 How should we weigh these arguments?
It is fair to assume that Paine’s irreverence for the British monarchy and aristocracy,
his egalitarianism, his Quaker cosmopolitanism and benevolence, his views on
commerce and his deism were formed prior to his arrival in America. Afterwards,
however, he may well have become a more democratic republican, adopted the view
that less ‘government’ was required and increased his faith in popular
representation.
Intellectually, therefore, the primary importance of Common Sense lay in its novel
republicanism. Paine was not the first to argue for American independence; this had
been broadly suggested by Josiah Tucker by 1775 and at the same time detailed by
John Cartwright in terms of a league which would retain British naval protection. In
America Patrick Henry had begun to broach similar sentiments at about the same
time. Moreover, especially given the power of the colonial assemblies, the cause of
independence was in some respects far advanced by 1776. But Paine was the first to
contend that a constitutional convention was necessary in order for the colonies to
establish a new form of government, the final consequence of which was the Federal
Convention which founded the United States’ constitution. Common Sense also
called for independence more bluntly than others had done, and moreover appealed
to the interests and sentiments of the whole population.
Paine’s persuasiveness thus lay both in his definition of the problems to be solved
and of the agents to accomplish this. Here his status as a ‘free floating’ intellectual
with scant respect for established authority was central. Unencumbered by local or
national political interests, as other popular writers like the Philadelphia-based
Benjamin Rush (who read Common Sense as it was written) admitted to Paine they
were, or by habits implanted by social deference, Paine was able to shake off the
mentality of subservience more easily than either native Americans or older
emigrants. His very rootlessness was thus a central element in his perspective; he
could advocate independence so fervently only because of the strength of his own
sense of and desire for independence. Also central was the universalist,
humanitarian perspective Paine adopted from Quakerism in particular, and which
widened his conception of what people were owed by society. Before Common
Sense, Gilbert Vale thus argued, the colonists sought to restore ‘their old British

49
 THOMAS PAINE

privileges’, not to establish their rights.25 Paine taught them a new language of rights
which was less historical than universal in scope.
Before turning to examine the impact of Common Sense we should briefly
consider another pamphlet also written in 1776 and only recently identified by
Aldridge as Paine’s. Four Letters on Interesting Subjects argued that all efforts at
reconciliation were exhausted, and charged Britain with inciting rebellion in order
to confiscate the colonists’ property. The pamphlet is also important because it
further details Paine’s views on commerce before he read the Wealth of Nations.
Arguing that future trade between the colonies would be beneficial, at least as long
as ‘most of their principal articles of commerce differ from each other’, Paine
asserted that no nation could

grow rich without communicating a share of that riches to the rest, and in the like manner,
no province can grow poor without communicating part of its poverty to others; and on
these grounds it is as much our interest, as it is our duty, to promote the happiness of other
provinces as of our own. Were Spain, Portugal, and other nations, with whom Britain
trades, to grow poor, Britain would grow poor in the same proportion.

This is primarily the natural law notion of commercial interdependence which also
underlay the Wealth of Nations, but here derived quite independently of Smith,
which we will see is of some importance. Finally, the Four Letters also revealed
crucial developments in Paine’s notion of a constitution. He now insisted for the first
time that Britain had ‘no fixed Constitution’ because it lacked written limits to
legislative power. England was ‘likewise defective in Constitution’ on three further
grounds: the Crown could increase the number of lords, it could incorporate any
town or village it pleased and empower it to elect MPs, while the entire legislature
could disincorporate any town and hence abolish its electors. Thus, Paine concluded,

the English have no constitution, because they have given up everything; their legislative
power being unlimited without either condition or controul, except in the single instance
of trial by jury. No country can be called free which is governed by an absolute power; and
it matters not whether it be an absolute royal power or an absolute legislative power, as the
consequences will be the same to the people.

Though Paine originally doubted that a republican legislature could be prone to such
absolutism, this was the origin of a doctrine prominently displayed in the Rights of
Man. In the new American usage, a nation possessed a ‘constitution’ only when the

50
 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

separation and limits of the powers of its various branches were clearly defined in a
document accessible to all, not merely a few legal experts, and agreed upon by all
acting through special, not legislative, representatives. In its final paragraph Four
Letters then proposed what colonial historians have described as the first mention of
the Council of Censors, whose task was to review Pennsylvania legislation to ensure
its constitutionality, and which was to remain the most radical body ensuring popular
consent in any state throughout the revolutionary period.26

The Tories respond

Common Sense, one observer put it, burst ‘forth like a mighty conqueror, bearing
down all opposition’. Sales soon vastly surpassed those of any of the other 400
pamphlets of the pre-revolutionary debate: in twenty-five American editions some
120,000 copies were sold in the first three months alone and perhaps half a million
in the first year (to a population of some 3 million!). Soon reprinted in Britain,
quickly translated into French (its anti-monarchist sentiments expunged), German
and Spanish, it played an important role even in the early nineteenth-century
independence movements in South America.27 But its greatest impact was in the
British colonies, where, it has often been repeated, ‘Paine did more to cause the
Declaration of Independence [a document he was once supposed to have written]
than any other man’. In March 1776 Washington heard from Virginia that ‘Common
Sense is working a powerful change there in the minds of many men’ and wrote that
its ‘sound doctrine and unanswerable reasoning’ would ‘not leave numbers at a loss
to decide upon the propriety of separation’. A New Yorker reported that it was
‘eagerly read and much admired’. General Charles Lee called the tract ‘a masterly,
irresistible performance’, while one American officer regarded it as equivalent in
morale to 5,000 troops. Individual readers were often overwhelmed; one recorded
that ‘I could not withhold my assent to the arguments of the victorious author’.
Common Sense in fact, had ‘broken the spell’, as Paine later put it, of Britain’s hold
over the colonies. It convinced Americans, as Gilbert Vale wrote, ‘that the British
constitution was not the best that could be, and that a government of kings, lords, and
commons, might not be the essence of all that was excellent in each’.28
Common Sense effected this ‘sudden and virtually complete revolution in
attitude’ towards British rule (in Cecelia Kenyon’s words) by releasing all of the
pent-up resentment against the monarch which pervaded colonial America. Loyalty
to George III was hard enough by 1776; Paine transformed the king into a tyrant –
even ‘killed’ him metaphorically, it has been suggested – and made attachment

51
 THOMAS PAINE

nearly impossible thereafter. In this sense the tract was central to defining ‘America’
in republican terms. Moreover, Paine appealed to an audience hitherto ignored by
political writers. As Gordon Wood has written, some of the ‘awe and consternation’
Common Sense aroused ‘came from its deliberate elimination of the usual elitist
apparatus of persuasion and its acknowledged appeal to a wider reading public’.29
Paine found particular favour in Philadelphia and other large cities where artisans
and tradesmen were as anxious to battle the native aristocracies governing their
colonial assemblies as to reject British imperial rule. Part of the appeal of Common
Sense, then, certainly involved crystallizing and radicalizing their resentments.30
In Philadelphia, correspondingly, the Quaker oligarchy was largely opposed to
independence, and conservative American Whigs and Tories elsewhere also saw
Common Sense as ‘ruinous and destructive’, ‘rascally and nonsensical … a
sophisticated attempt to throw all men out of Principles’ and ‘specious and
dangerous’. Some early efforts to counter its effects faltered. When the tract first
arrived at Albany, New York, some members of the colonial legislature met to plan
a response. Within a few days, however, they were forced to abandon the plan as
public opinion surged dramatically in Paine’s favour, and tracts opposing Paine were
later burned on the common. But several prominent loyalist responses to Common
Sense did appear. The first was The True Interest of America Impartially Stated,
published in February 1776 by an Anglican clergyman, Charles Inglis. Standing
upon the principles of 1688 and insisting that the British constitution ‘approaches the
nearest to perfection’, Inglis railed against Paine’s attempt to redefine the
constitution, accusing him of uniting ‘the violence and rage of a republican, with all
the enthusiasm and folly of a fanatic’ and of being motivated by ‘some mortifying
disappointment’ (later critics would frequently accuse Paine of seeking revenge for
his loss of employment as an excise official). Only monarchy suited a large territory
or empire; a republic fitted neither ‘the genius of the people, nor the extent of
America’. Rejecting Paine’s contrast of society and government, Inglis argued that
society was the natural state of mankind instead of being based merely upon human
wants (in fact both were essentially agreed on this point). Inglis insisted that society
was unimaginable without some form of government and laws, and thus assailed
Paine’s attempt to legitimate public opinion outside of any legislature, and apart
from the wider British society to which he claimed all Americans belonged. Paine’s
was ‘a new, untried romantic scheme’ facing ‘inevitable ruin’, and was ‘the last stage
of political phrenzy’. America gained many advantages from union with Britain, and
ought still to seek reconciliation with the mother country.31
Another influential critique of Common Sense was John Adams’s Thoughts on
Government’, published a few months after Paine’s tract. Adams was chiefly

52
 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

concerned to ‘depute power from the many to a few of the most wise and good’. He
agreed that representative assemblies should ‘be in miniature an exact portrait of the
people at large’, but condemned single assemblies as prone to arbitrariness, greed
and ambition. Instead, two houses, the lower electing the upper, with both together
choosing a governor, would be superior. Checks over popular power were to be
established by granting the governor a veto over the legislature, and the upper house
over the lower.32 Also important was James Chalmers’s Plain Truth, which argued
that independence was ‘ruinous, delusive, and impracticable’, and accused Paine of
being a ‘political quack’ retailing a ‘Quixotic system’. Had he read Montesquieu,
Chalmers chastised, Paine would have truly appreciated Britain’s form of
government. America could not become a republic because of its attachment to the
British constitution. In any case pure democracy was impossible and republics were
always aggressive. Moreover, America was incapable of winning any conflict with
Britain and could expect no foreign assistance. British rule, too, had brought the
colonies prosperity and, as in the debate over the Rights of Man twenty years later,
Paine was accused of opposing commerce. Independence would invite only ruin and
was synonymous with slavery. A similar attack on Common Sense appeared in a
series of letters to the Pennsylvania Gazette Ledger by another Anglican clergyman
named William Smith. These criticisms Paine answered by denying that
reconciliation was desirable or even practicable. Peace commissioners sent by
Britain sought only bribery and corruption. The cause of independence, moreover,
was now widely supported. But Americans did not seek rule by another European
power instead of the British over America, and Paine advised against any future
European ‘political connections’ (and has consequently been acclaimed a founder of
American isolationism). Blaming George III for ‘all the measures carried on against
America’, Paine argued that ‘all men are republicans by nature, and royalists only by
fashion’.33

Paine at war: The American Crisis (1776–83)

During the revolutionary war Paine wrote a total of sixteen pamphlets on the causes
and course of the struggle. These caught the mood of the initially beleaguered
revolutionary forces and renewed their faith. Washington, indeed, ordered the first
of the Crisis series read to his troops before the Battle of Trenton in December 1776.
It opened with one of Paine’s most memorable lines: ‘These are the times that try
men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink
from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and

53
 THOMAS PAINE

thanks of man and woman.’ Many Crisis papers consequently focused upon the
vicissitudes of American morale. Initially the Americans seemed outnumbered,
undertrained and poorly equipped. Paine told them that God took the side of those
who tried to avoid war, and reminded them that the British had been beaten by lesser
numbers before (and these led by a woman, Joan of Arc). He praised Washington
highly while heaping disgrace upon the slavishly servile American Tories, who told
others the cause was lost when they did not actively hinder it themselves. Against
those like the Quakers who abjured war altogether on moral grounds, Paine agreed
that offensive war was simply ‘murder’, but justified the right of self-defence.34
Subsequent numbers of the Crisis touched upon many other issues. The second
(January 1777) spurned Lord Howe’s offer to pardon all Americans who ceased
fighting. Paine detailed the brutality of Britain’s campaigns, the wickedness of its
cause, and its inability to conquer and garrison large portions of the colonies. On land
British officers were about as capable as cowardly dancing masters; Britain’s
strength lay at sea, and that was no help now. In Crisis no. 3 (April 1777) Paine
outlined four main arguments for independence: the colonists’ natural right to self-
rule; their interest therein, principally greater commerce; the necessity for such an
act given the colonists’ increasing weakness prior to July 1776; and the moral
advantages which would result from peace with Europe and among the colonists
themselves (which held out the Quaker promise of a general peace besides). The
opponents of independence he castigated as fearful, indolent, avaricious and power-
hungry, which made it unsurprising that all the prostitutes of New York were Tories.
The Philadelphia merchant Quakers he accused of fuelling inflation by raising their
prices. But a surplus of currency assisted this, and Paine recommended that all
property be taxed at a flat rate to reduce the currency, with all taxpayers swearing an
oath renouncing allegiance to Britain to clarify who the Tories really were.35
The fourth Crisis sought briefly to rally the American forces after their defeat at
the Battle of Brandywine in September 1777. In the fifth, published in March 1778,
Paine mocked General Howe’s new knight-hood and abhorred his permitting forged
American bills to circulate as a means of undermining the colonists’ cause. Despite
some British successes, Paine asserted that the British were neither daring fighters
nor prudent in their policies towards civilians, which by brutalizing the population
had merely fortified the colonists’ resolve. To the Americans, Paine denied that
classical parallels to their revolution existed. The Greeks and Romans had possessed
the spirit of liberty, but while ‘they were determined not to be slaves themselves, they
employed their power to enslave the rest of mankind’. Since Britain’s liberty had
been lost through ‘a long chain of right reasoning from wrong principles’, only the
Americans could now preserve freedom. But this required an American victory, and

54
 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Paine proposed further means of levying troops and furnishing military clothing and
equipment. The sixth Crisis (October 1778) discussed Britain’s offer of complete
relief short of independence, while the seventh, written a month later, was a lengthy
address to the British people detailing the cruelties of British policy in America and
the East Indies. Britons, Paine argued, could expect no commercial gain from a
reconquest of the colonies, and should not accept ‘national honor’ as sufficient cause
for continuing the war. Moreover, Britain’s national debt was expanding rapidly as
a consequence of the war, and the monarch and government would eventually ruin
the nation. The interest of the British people, therefore, lay in American
independence rather than in war.36
After a lapse of nearly one and a half years, Paine again addressed the British
populace in March 1780 to inform them of the cruelty of their government’s war
policies, but also of America’s fortified resolve to fight to the bitter end. Several
months later, as the colonists’ struggle reached another low point, Paine wrote
another Crisis to raise funds for the army. A further Crisis Extraordinary addressed
the problem of financing the war in greater detail, arguing that American revenues
could suffice if they were correctly assessed and collected and sufficient currency for
payment was available. Paine then outlined a plan for raising revenue through duties
on imports in particular. Similar themes dominated Crisis nos 10 and 11 (March–
April 1782), which also attacked George III’s refusal to acknowledge defeat after
Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown the previous autumn. Two months later Paine
reacted to British efforts to sever the alliance between France and the United States,
and praised France’s unwillingness to conclude a separate peace and the generous
French treatment of the Americans. The last several numbers of the Crisis argued
that Britain would benefit enormously by reduced military expenses by ceding
victory to the Americans, and celebrated the final success of ‘the greatest and
completest revolution the world ever knew’. But Paine warned that national unity
was endangered by the weakness of the central government. America anticipated
peace and prosperity, but its ‘great national character’ and ultimately its
international security depended upon union. Citing the example of Holland, Paine
cautioned that too much decentralized power would endanger the defence of the
whole nation. The final Crisis, dated 9 December 1783, further warned that
perceptions of disunity between the states had occasioned British efforts to prevent
American trade with nearby British colonies.37
During the revolutionary years Paine wrote a number of other short works which
merit brief comment here. His Letter to the Abbé Raynal, published in 1782 to correct
an inadequate history of the revolution, has been seen as marking a shift from
nationalism to internationalism in his thought.38 But it also extended the

55
 THOMAS PAINE

implications of Paine’s ideas of commercial progress considerably, for Paine now

argued that trade could create ‘universal civilization’. Mutual wants had ‘formed the
individuals of each country into a kind of national society’, but here civilization had
stopped. If the wants of nations could be fulfilled in the same way, however, an
international society could be created. This was not a republican view of national
self-subsistence and independence, but essentially a natural law view, now probably
supported by reading Smith and likely indebted to Hume, which stressed the
advantages of interdependence. Barbarians were independent because their wants
were few. Modern men depended upon one another because their wants had
multiplied. Literature, the arts and science were rapidly uniting the peoples of
different nations. Unlike the ancients, they no longer treated one another solely as
enemies. Commerce and science in particular could extend civilization by
eradicating prejudice and encouraging peace.39
Also important in this period was Paine’s Dissertations on Government; the
Affairs of the Bank; and Paper Money (1786), which was principally concerned with
the Bank of North America. In 1782 Paine had condoned the issuing of paper money
and consequent depreciation of its value during the revolution, arguing that this was
done by common consent and had raised money at a time when taxes could not be
collected properly.40 Now, while he was attacked by some as a conservative (though
many Philadelphia mechanics supported him), Paine resisted attempts to repeal the
bank’s charter by describing it as a lawful contract whose preservation guaranteed
security of property for all and avoided popular despotism. A public bank’s capacity
to lend money he defended as a means of assisting commerce and avoiding private
usury, though any issuing of paper money not redeemable in specie he rejected as
encouraging the exportation of bullion. Later, however, Paine became more critical
of bank charters and argued that such legislation might be subjected to time limits.
Also interesting for such topics is Paine’s Prospects on the Rubicon (1787), which
condemned the British national debt and warned that it would create two great parties
in the state, those paying to service it and those benefiting from it.41

American independence as a democratic revolution

America’s accomplishments were central to the new political ideal Paine would soon
attempt to export to Europe. By the time of the constitution, according to Gordon
Wood, the new American science of government could be summed up by five
principles: democratic republics, the pervasiveness of representation, the equation
of rulers and ruled, the parcelling of power and the end of classical politics.

56
 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Politically the revolution was inescapably democratic. Well before independence

was won, the colonists sought more liberty for themselves, and less for their
governors, than any previous mode of rule. Well before the 1787 constitution, the
separate states set about transforming habitual modes of government. Relative to the
central government they sought a great devolution of power. Internally, no state
sought to abolish magistracy, of course. The most radical colony, Pennsylvania, went
furthest in the direction of what is sometimes termed an ‘internal revolution’. Thus
it had the least fear of losing any checks and balances and replaced the governor by
an elected council. But all states made their executives more subservient to popular
will. Gubernatorial terms were therefore limited, the possibility of re-election
curtailed, powers of appointing officials and granting pensions diminished, the
spheres of the legislature, judiciary and executive more clearly delineated, and their
powers separated. A vast number of judicial, executive and legislative officials who
had been appointed under the Crown now became subject to election. The
legislatures too were made more representative, though all but three of the early state
constitutions (Pennsylvania, Georgia, Vermont) retained two houses with the upper
supposedly balancing the lower. Only the most radical (notably the Pennsylvanians,
in keeping with their colonial tradition) opposed bicameralism completely until
1790, in part probably owing to Paine’s influence. Almost all the early states also
introduced annual elections to their legislatures. Numbers of representatives were
increased, their accountability to the populace affirmed and electoral districts in
many areas equalized. The suffrage was generally extended, but not widely
conceded as a universal right, and all of the early states upheld taxpaying or property
qualifications for voting (probably 75 per cent of Philadelphia’s males could vote in
1776, and 60 per cent of county members in the colony).42
Cumulatively, these actions distributed power unprecedentedly away from
central government and to the populace. But many of these changes were as much
formal as substantive, and did not deprive colonial elites of their political influence.
By 1787, moreover, the weakness of the Articles of Confederation was widely
evident, and Federalist opinion in favour of greater constitutional checks and
balances, a more independent judiciary, bicameralism and increased central power
pre-dominated. The Federalists’ fear of unchecked democracy, too, was widely
shared even by those who rejected its aristocratic implications, including many
artisans and labourers. This put an end to the radical demand for more direct and
continuous consent, particularly by ensuring the indirect election of both the Senate
and President, even though government as a whole was still understood as broadly
based upon the consent of the majority.
In part the Federalist reaction occurred because of fears that the demand for
democracy masked a social revolution in which artisans, the labouring classes and

57
 THOMAS PAINE

the poor might connect the cause of independence with their economic lot. Richard
Morris has argued that Adams’s Thoughts on Government’ may have been more
representative of the opinions of revolutionary leaders than Paine’s ideas. But this
does not imply that the less articulate and less visible shared such sentiments.
Artisans, labourers and small farmers throughout the colonies may not have shared
a sense of identical economic interest, but most desired greater independence from
colonial elites as well as Britain. In some cases, too, they were willing to resort to
violence in order to resist further oppression by local oligarchies. Loyalists (and
many American Whigs as well) in turn feared the mob and suspected that the lower
classes sought power under the guise of ‘independence’. None the less the class
dimensions of the revolution and particularly the emergence of a specific ‘artisan
republicanism’ are often difficult to trace. Much of the conflict was fought out in the
name of ‘the people’ and against ‘monarchy’ and ‘aristocracy’. But most colonists
none the less agreed that only those with some property should possess the
franchise.43 This limited considerably the possibility of any ‘internal revolution’,
though Paine wanted a very large proportion of the male population to be
enfranchised, including many whose ‘property’ was primarily only in their own
labour.
Yet Paine was also both more and less ‘radical’ than such views might imply. His
writings and support for the Pennsylvania constitution show that he sought rule by
all classes of freemen. He was directly involved in the radical politics of the
Philadelphia artisans and echoed their growing cry for equality and for restrictions
on individual wealth, their opposition to the mercantile oligarchy, and their hostility
to choosing either wealthy or ‘learned’ men for their constitutional convention. For
this reason his model was not merely ‘American’, but radical even by American
standards. Thus it was no accident that Paine wrote both for and as part of a
Pennsylvania readership, the ‘Constitutionalist’ party, who were considerably more
democratic than other groups and had broken most sharply from colonial
government in 1776, seizing power at the constitutional convention that year largely
because the Whig leadership was unable to stop them. In Pennsylvania mixed
governments were rejected in favour of a pure republic, the doctrine of popular
sovereignty taken further than elsewhere, and the franchise extended to all freemen
aged 21 who paid public taxes, which included most artisans. Here it was also the
Constitutionalists, for essentially political reasons linked to their notion of the
common good, who supported the movement to fix prices in order to sustain the poor
and labouring classes. Price regulation was thus not directly linked to an ‘artisan’
viewpoint, since not all trades in Philadelphia supported it during the 1779–80
debate about the activities of the price-fixing committees, though merchants tended
to be more opposed in principle to such restraints.44 Here and nowhere else, too, an

58
 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

early draft of the state’s Declaration of Rights suggested limiting the concentration
of property. Paine’s model was therefore less an American than a more narrowly
Pennsylvanian or (even more strictly) Constitutionalist model, since here the more
elitist ‘Republicans’ (who came to power in 1789–90) correspondingly sought a
second legislative house to balance a single tumultuous assembly, as well as a
stronger and more independent judiciary and an executive with a veto power over
laws.45
But Paine’s sense of class loyalty and sympathy did not override his
republicanism and his appeal in the late 1770s and 1780s was to the common
concerns of all classes, not their separate interests. He sought to destroy oligarchy,
but to supplant this by republican rule in the name of the common good by all
citizens, not the narrow rule of a single class. The commercial prosperity which
would follow the revolution, too, was to benefit all classes, its new wealth spreading
like water across an arid landscape. It was expected not to increase economic
inequality but to curtail it. In this sense Paine’s was neither a ‘bourgeois’ nor an
‘artisan’ but a republican vision which encompassed all the middling ranks –
including the merchants and artisans often at loggerheads in Philadelphia
revolutionary politics – in agriculture, manufactures and commerce. It was also
republican in so far as citizens were voluntarily to renounce private advantage in the
name of a collective economic good, with public virtue thus restraining self-interest.
Paine thus had not slid far down that slippery path from republican civic virtue
towards ‘free enterpriser’ followed by many in late eighteenth-century America.46
These achievements, Paine thought, would not long be confined to America
alone. Europe groaned under the weight of tyranny and oppression, but millions took
heart at America’s success. They would discover, and Paine himself would
increasingly recognize, that emulating the advantages of a ‘new country’ where
much greater social inequality and poverty existed was not simple. But such
complexities were secondary for the moment. First it was necessary to establish that
the people possessed the right to greater freedom and equality. Of this, again, one
man would persuade them more than any other.

Notes to Chapter 2: The American revolution

1 On colonial radicalism see especially S. Lynd (1968), P. Maier (1972a) and B. Bailyn
(1967).
2 G. Wood (1969), p. 11; P. Maier (1972a), p. 246; Paine (1945), Vol. 2, p. 48. The following
several pages are much indebted to Wood’s interpretation. For a comparison of Paine’s
and Dickinson’s views see A. Aldridge (1976a).

59
 THOMAS PAINE

3 G. Wood (1969), p. 44. For the argument that many Americans were already republicans
by 1776 see P. Maier (1972a), p. 288. On the notion of America’s millennial role see E.
Tuveson (1968), R. Bloch (1985). On millennial allusions in Common Sense see S.
Newman (1978).
4 J. de Lolme (1853), p. 252; Montesquieu (1949), pp. 149–62; see G. Wood (1969), pp. 46–
90, and, on the background to such views, M. Vile (1967).
5 On the debate over sovereignty see G. Wood (1969), pp. 344–89, and E. Morgan (1988),
pp. 237–306, and on the early years of the revolution, J. Marston (1987). On shifts in
‘republic’ and ‘republicanism’ see W. Adams (1970). On shifting views of consent see D.
Lutz (1980).
6 See G. Wood (1969), p. 309, and generally, pp. 306–89.
7 See G. Wood (1969), pp. 91–124.
8 G. Wood (1969), pp. 86–8; E. Douglass (1955), pp. 214–86; Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 25,
143, 406, 496. The most detailed account of Common Sense is A. Aldridge (1984), pp.
17–157. See also R. Gimbel (1956a), pp. 15–57, B. Bailyn (1973), D. Wilson (1988), pp.
34–64, A. Aldridge (1976c), and Kramnick’s introduction to Paine (1976). Unpublished
studies include A. King (1951) and E. Ginsberg (1971). On the Philadelphia artisans in
this period see E. Foner (1976), pp. 19–70, 107–44, also C. Olton (1975).
9 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 3–6.
10 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 6–9. On the language of ‘tyranny’ and ‘slavery’ in this period see
J. Reid (1988), pp. 38–59.
11 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 9–16.
12 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 17–21.
13 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 22–7.
14 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 28–31.
15 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 31–9.
16 B. Bailyn (1967), p. 285, (1973), p. 40. On the term ‘democracy’ in this period see R.
Lokken (1963) and R. Shoemaker (1966).
17 On the ‘modernization’ debate in relation to early America see K. Lockridge (1977).
Those who use this term refer frequently to the creation of a ‘new American type’ of
individualistic, optimistic, active and self-interested citizen.
18 A. Aldridge (1960), p. 28; J. Greene (1978), pp. 74, 77. In support of the anti-deferential
interpretations see also E. Foner (1976), p. 84, R. Bushman (1979), J. Fliegelman (1982),
pp. 102–6. On applying the concept of deference to the American revolution see J. Kirby
(1970).
19 A. Aldridge (1984), p. 152; E. Foner (1976), p. 190. On the acceptance of commerce in
the colonies see G. Nash (1979). For Paine as an economic liberal see J. Appleby (1978).
Kramnick also suggests that ‘Smith’s and Paine’s is the basic liberal vision. The social
order and the economy are spontaneous and self-regulating mechanisms, peopled by
rational, self-seeking individuals … Government … merely presides passively over this
self-regulating economy and spontaneously harmonious polity’ (Paine, 1976, pp. 39–
40).
20 J. Appleby (1985), p. 470, and generally (1984), also broadly supported by W. Gavre
(1978), especially pp. 309–19; D. McCoy (1980), pp. 89–90, and generally 76–104; L.
Banning (1978) and (1986). Appleby acknowledges that Paine elevated ‘free association
to a new moral plane’ but still insists that this entailed a rejection of classical

60
 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

republicanism (1985, p. 470). This debate is also discussed in R. Shalhope (1972, 1982),
J. Pocock (1975), pp. 506–52, J. Ashworth (1984) and L. Kerber (1985).
21 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, p. 36; D. Arnold (1976), pp. 50–2, 164. Arnold also argues that the
traditional concept of virtue was ‘severely abbreviated’ in this ideal.
22 I. Kramnick (1977b), pp. 526–30, (1986).
23 E. Foner (1976), pp. 39, 99; A. Aldridge (1978), pp. 131–5. Aldridge mistakenly contends
that there was no evidence that one class responded differently to Paine’s writings than
another (1984, pp. 22–3).
24 B. Bailyn (1973), pp. 92–3; E. Foner (1976), p. xiii; J. Greene (1978), pp. 86–90. The
second edition of Common Sense described it as by ‘an Englishman’, but this was not
added by Paine himself.
25 J. Tucker (1775), pp. 38–51; J. Cartwright (1774), pp. 8, 13; G. Vale (1841), p. 38.
26 [Paine] (1776), pp. 4–5, 8, 18–20; D. Lutz (1980), p. 133; J. Selsam (1936), pp. 199–210.
For identification of Four Letters see A. Aldridge (1984), pp. 219–39. The style of the
pamphlet is unmistakably Paine’s. The Library of Congress copy is bound with Common
Sense and responses to it. See Bailyn’s discussion in (1967), pp. 298–9. The pamphlet is
also discussed in J. Selsam (1936), pp. 174–5 and D. Arnold (1976), pp. 29–34, though
without ascription to Paine. The Library of Congress catalogue suggests that a further
pamphlet important for proposing the Council of Censors, The People the Best
Governors, may also be Paine’s, but as this work urges that no one be allowed to hold
public office without affirming the Bible to be divine revelation this is impossible (other
Pennsylvania radicals did agree with such an oath: see J. Selsam, 1936, pp. 139–40). On
the emergence of the new idea of a constitution see G. Wood (1969), pp. 259–305. On the
Council of Censors see L. Meader (1898) and, on more likely authors for The People the
Best Governors, p. 280.
27 ‘Rusticus’ (1776), p. iii. On the reception of Common Sense see A. Aldridge (1984), pp.
158–215 and A. King (1951), pp. 97–117. For the German and German-American impact
of Paine see especially M. Kistler (1962). A full bibliography of editions is given in R.
Gimbel (1956a). A few British republicans also thought Paine’s broadside a fine thing.
David Erskine, eleventh Earl of Buchan, said that it treated George III ‘as the dog
deserves’ (C. Robbins, 1959, p. 362).
28 R. Ingersoll in Paine (1908), Vol. 1, p. 290; G. Washington (1931), Vol. 4, pp. 455, 297; G.
Vale (1841), p. 50; B. Franklin (1982), Vol. 22, pp. 357 n., 388; G. Vale (1841), pp. 50–1.
See also P. Maier (1972b).
29 C. Kenyon (1962), p. 167; J. Marston (1987), pp. 61–3; W. Jordan (1973); G. Wood
(1979), pp. 110–11.
30 C. Lincoln (1901), p. 79; E. Douglass (1955), pp. 253–6; P. Foner (1976), pp. 160–3.
31 The True Merits (1776), p. 1; Remarks (1776), p. 3; E. Douglass (1955), p. 21; H. Rock
(1979), p. 41; [C. Inglis] (1776), pp. vi, 10–11, 15, 31, 34, 48–52, 70.
32 J. Adams (1851), pp. 193–200. See J. Porter and R. Farnell (1976) and, on Adams’s
relation to Burke, R. Ripley (1965).
33 [J. Chalmers] (1776), pp. 2, 5, 7, 10–13, 19–20, 35, 37; Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 61–87, 89.
34 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 50–7.
35 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 58–101.
36 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 102–57; A. Aldridge (1951), pp. 832–3.
37 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 158–239; A. Aldridge (1951), p. 833.
38 E.g. D. Abel (1942).

61
 THOMAS PAINE

39 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 22, 211–63. On the origins of this view of commerce see my
(1988a).
40 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 228–9. The best account of this episode is E. Foner (1976), pp.
183–209.
41 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 367–414, 989–92, 642. See A. Aldridge (1949).
42 G. Wood (1969), pp. 197–255, 446–67, 553–64, 593–615; J. Selsam (1936), pp. 173, 186–
7; J. Pole (1966), p. 265; D. Lutz (1980), pp. 194, 225–30. On the evolution of the suffrage
see E. Douglass (1955) and C. Williamson (1960), pp. 3–116. On the question of
increasing democratization in the revolution see E. Douglass (1955), M. Jensen (1957),
R. Buel (1964), J. Pole (1966), pp. 169–382, G. Wood (1969), pp. 127–389, P. Maier
(1972a), R. Weir (1976), D. Arnold (1976)(a particularly careful study). For the claim that
German and Scotch-Irish hostility to Quakers and Anglicans was important here see W.
Bockelman and O. Ireland (1974).
43 R. Morris (1962), p. 7; I. Kramnick, in Paine (1976), pp. 46–55; Kramnick (1986). Eric
Foner sees no evidence that mechanics identified with the poor beneath them (1976, p.
47). See further P. Foner (1976), especially pp. 123–205. On the ‘social’ interpretation of
the revolution see also R. Berthoff and J. Murrin (1973).
44 See J. Selsam (1936), pp. 94–136, C. Olton (1975), pp. 74–7, E. Foner (1976), p. 123, G.
Nash (1979), pp. 381–2 and R. Ryerson (1974). On regulation during the revolution see
E. Foner (1976), pp. 145–82, D. Arnold (1976), pp. 127–47, also J. Crowley (1974),
especially pp. 76–124.
45 E. Douglass (1955), p. 283. See G. Wood (1969), pp. 226–37, and, on opposition to this
constitution in Pennsylvania, pp. 438–46. On the revolution there see C. Lincoln (1901),
E. Douglass (1955), pp. 263–86, J. Pole (1966), pp. 250–80.
46 See R. Berthoff (1979).

62
 3
Republicanism contested:
Burke’s Reflections (1790) and
the Rights of Man (1791–92)

Radicalism and Dissent, 1788–90

For many other reformers besides Paine, the half-dozen years between the ending of
the American war and the outbreak of the French revolution were relatively quiet. At
the end of the 1780s, however, religious reform again became a heated issue in
Britain when the Dissenters renewed their efforts to repeal the Test and Corporation
Acts. From the Restoration of 1660, those who dissented from the Thirty-nine
Articles of the Church of England (perhaps 6 to 7 per cent of the population in 1790)
suffered under restrictive legislation, including being prohibited from election to
Parliament or local government posts or receiving a university degree at Oxford or
Cambridge. Quiescent though most Dissenters were throughout the eighteenth
century, many remained both strongly Whiggish and intensely aware of these
disabilities. Encouraged by American independence, Dissenters in London,
Manchester, Birmingham and elsewhere surged forward in 1787–90 to petition
Parliament to redress their grievances. Concurrently some helped found the
Revolution Society, nominally to celebrate the centenary of 1688, but equally to
revive reform and repeal the Test and Corporation Acts (which finally occurred only
in 1828).1
Given these efforts, the extension of religious toleration in France at the
revolution inevitably met with the Dissenters’ admiration. Many of their leaders
quickly distinguished themselves by their enthusiasm for things French, a taste for
which they would soon pay a heavy price. What specifically provoked Burke to write
the Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) was Richard Price’s sermon to
the second meeting of the Revolution Society in November 1789, which clearly
connected liberty of conscience and the demand for parliamentary reform with the

63
 THOMAS PAINE

right to resist arbitrary power.ZZ With others of the ‘New Whigs’ sympathetic to the
revolution, Price also insisted that the settlement of 1688 had been imperfect, since
it had extended neither toleration nor parliamentary representation. The Americans
had remedied these deficiencies for themselves. But their revolt had taken place a
world away in a young and primitive country. The French revolution
correspondingly appeared to most radicals not as merely an extension of American
principles, but something much more momentous. To the Whig historian Catherine
Macaulay it

was attended with something so new in the history of human affairs; there was something so
singular, so unique, in that perfect unanimity in the people; in that firm spirit which baffled
every hope in the interested, that they could possibly divide them into parties, and render them
the instruments of a resubjection to their old bondage; that it naturally excited the surprize and
admiration of all men. It appeared as a sudden spread of an enlightened spirit.

Not a few of the radicals, Macaulay among them, detected the hand of ‘benevolent
providence’ in the advent of the revolution.2 Joseph Priestley thought it inaugurated
the long-awaited millennial state of divine rule. But even moderate reformers hoped
that once tyranny was destroyed, a government patterned upon the British
constitution would rise from the ashes. For 1789 was to be France’s 1688.
Enthusiasm thus quickly revived in several nearly defunct reformers’
organizations. The Society for Constitutional Information regained its vigour in
1791 and a new organization, the Society of the Friends of the People, was founded
to represent the radical Whiggism of Lauderdale, Cartwright, Sheridan, Whitbread
and others. Neither of these groups even vaguely considered reform on the lines of
the American model and subscriptions were kept at a guinea and a half annually to
ensure a suitably select membership.3 But pressure for popular participation grew
very rapidly. By mid-spring a debate erupted which polarized the reformers and soon
left the moderates in a dangerously exposed position.

The ‘manifesto of a counter-revolution’: Burke’s Reflections on the

Revolution in France (1790)

The first and most crucial blow against the French and anyone who shared their
principles was struck by Edmund Burke. Burke had already attacked the revolution
in Parliament, but at first was somewhat reluctant to publish his assessment of the

64
 RIGHTS OF MAN

virtues of the ancien régime and the malevolence of its enemies. When several
prominent Whigs attended a dinner at the Crown and Anchor tavern celebrating the
first anniversary of the fall of the Bastille on 14 July 1790, however, he hesitated no
longer. The Reflections appeared on 1 November 1790. Its arguments, which even
Burke admitted were rambling and ill organized, were arranged around three
themes: a denunciation of Price’s sermon, an attack on the revolutionaries and their
principles, and a defence of the British constitution and of prescriptive right. Much
of Burke’s disagreement with Price stemmed from a different interpretation of 1688,
which for Burke exemplified that cautious and deliberate spirit inscribed in the
constitution which ensured ‘a manly, moral, regulated liberty’. While admitting that
the French revolution was ‘the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the
world’, Burke denied any parallel between 1789 and 1688. French principles,
created out of ‘the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction’, lay closer to
the intolerant puritan spirit of 1649, which Price was accused of reviving. Against
Price, too, Burke argued that the king owed his crown to a fixed rule of succession,
not the choice of his people. He could not be ‘cashiered for misconduct’, as Price
insisted, because he did not serve the people like other members of government. No
‘new government’ could be created if constitutional liberties were inherited and
defined historically rather than understood as abstract principles.4
Burke then returned to the perpetrators of the revolution, whom he described as
disenchanted lawyers and ‘discontented men of quality’ with too little to lose
themselves to fear popular fervour, but whose actions would only result in a new
nobility of moneylenders and stock speculators. But the main thrust of his argument
was directed against their principles. Price had juxtaposed the ‘rights of men’ to
prescriptive right, and Burke conceded that ‘real rights of men’ did exist (though
there are disagreements about what he meant by this), such as the rule of law, the right
to justice, to the fruits of one’s industry, to non-interference from others generally,
and to the inheritance of property. None the less, insisted Burke, these did not include
a right to equal things, to judge in our own cause, or to defend ourselves exclusively.
(Price in fact had not acknowledged such rights either: already the spectre of
levelling and the implication that discussing natural rights implied returning to the
state of nature hovered threateningly above the debate.) Burke thus conceded that
‘rights’ were not created only by existing governments, though how such rights were
to be used to judge the inadequacies of any government except Britain’s was left
unclear unless we are to presume the principle of utility served this purpose for
Burke. But he then argued that governments existed not to guarantee original rights
but ‘to provide for human wants’ (only later to argue, in his Thoughts and Details on
Scarcity, that ‘to provide for us in our necessities is not in the power; of

65
 THOMAS PAINE

government’). Any rights possessed before civil society were greatly altered at its
inception and were now ‘in a sort of middle’ incapable of definition. Natural rights
might have existed, but only civil rights could be discussed and analysed.5
Burke’s central argument thus revolved around a theory of human nature and
wants, and a notion of history and the fixity of patterns of behaviour and
corresponding limits of possible change. Upon this vision, it is now generally agreed,
rather than the natural law foundation several postwar historians tried to ascribe to
him, Burke’s idea of prescriptive right was built. His view of human nature was
deeply pessimistic. The passions progressed naturally from frailty to vice, and
individual moral failure, not political institutions or their corruption, largely caused
social unhappiness. Manners and civilization distinguished modern from barbaric
societies and depended upon the spirit of the gentleman and of nobility, owing
nothing to the ‘swinish multitude’. Nobility was ‘the Corinthian capital of polished
society’, while ‘perfect democracy’ could generate only the partisan tyranny of the
majority over the minority. In this sense the ‘age of chivalry’, Burke lamented, was
already dead in France. Because people were governed by passion rather than
reason, moreover, their loyalties were local and limited rather than expansive.
Consequently ‘just prejudice’, especially deference to rank and to the monarchy,
bound the British constitution together, aided by the Church of England, the ‘body’
of true religion being the teaching of obedience to earthly sovereigns. Expediency
and utility consequently were central to every political judgement and act. Political
obligation, too, derived from the organic and hierarchical nature of society and arose
inescapably from each individual’s social rank, not from any primordial rights given
in the state of nature. The only hope for the revolution in France was to emulate
Britain, and to turn away from the ‘terrible revolution in property’ which its
confiscations of church holdings implied, and which left no prescriptive right
secure.6

Early responses to Burke (1790–92)

The Reflections clearly appealed to an unmistakable ‘British’ tradition shared by

many Whigs and Tories alike. George III insisted that every gentleman in the
kingdom read it and a large number must have taken his advice, for the book sold
about 19,000 copies in the first year and probably 30,000 over the next five. It was
quickly translated into French and German and reprinted in Ireland and America.
Not one to surrender his profits to the cause, Burke received at least £1,000 for his
efforts.

66
 RIGHTS OF MAN

The Reflections generated a total of over fifty critical responses. These can be
divided into two main categories: works by new Whigs anxious to side with the
revolution in the name of 1688 but without going as far as Paine, and those by
Painites unwilling to compromise at all with Burke.7 The longest and best-known of
these rebuttals were mainly of the first type. We will consider several of these in
detail here, then Paine’s own views, and the Painite reaction in chapter 5.
The first important reply to the Reflections was the novelist and historian Mary
Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Men, published in December 1790.
Like Burke’s work, Wollstonecraft’s Vindication was not a concise analytical tract,
but ranged widely over a number of fronts while concentrating on four main themes.
Burke was primarily accused of being the ‘champion of property’ and of narrowing
the defence of liberty to the maintenance of unequal property and, if need be,
despotism and tyranny. But not only did the ‘demon of property’ always encroach
upon liberty by creating great inequalities. It also destroyed sociability. ‘Among
unequals there can be no society’, Wollstonecraft asserted, meaning friendship and
mutual respect. Secondly, Burke was attacked for championing a ‘gothic affability’,
or condescension and rudeness appropriate to feudalism, but not an advanced
commercial society whose manners were defined by politeness and a liberal civility
(and this discussion of modernity was to prove central to the entire ensuing debate).
Wollstonecraft further defended the idea that rights were inherited by all at birth as
rational creatures, especially equal rights to liberty compatible with that of others.
Rights derived from God’s creation of the world and no prescriptive act could
undermine them. Burke was not accused of denying that natural rights existed
altogether – which some of his later supporters would assert – but rather of virtually
supporting slavery in his defence of prescriptive rights. Finally, Burke was
denounced for writing ‘sentimental jargon’ which appealed only to the sensibility of
his readers, instead of guiding their passions by arguing more rationally. (Soon his
followers would ascribe precisely this strategy to Paine, and historians have too
readily followed them.) Wollstonecraft concluded by praising the unselfish liberty
of Greece and Rome, but conceded that the Romans had been only partially civilized
compared to the moderns. But of the latter, only the middling orders were fit to rule.
A ‘fatherly solicitude’ for the poor was necessary, but they were also envious ‘brutes’
corrupted by inequality. The ‘vulgar’, thus, were both the uncultivated poor and the
affluent who, as mere creatures of habit, had never developed their own talents and
capacities. This was the middle-class philosophy of liberty and civilization par
excellence.8
Probably the best-known of the early replies to Burke was the Scottish
philosopher and lawyer James Mackintosh’s powerful Vindiciae Gallicae,

67
 THOMAS PAINE

published in early 1791, which more than any other work clarified the moderate
Whig position which opposed Burke but also Paine’s appeal to the people. Terming
the Reflections the ‘manifesto of a counter-revolution’ – and Burke was thereafter
often accused of causing the war with France – Mackintosh denied that Burke was a
Whig at all. Burke had always abhorred abstract politics, touted aristocracy, and
dreaded innovation. If ‘Toryism’ implied a preference for chivalry, superstition and
the landed aristocracy, Burke was clearly more Tory than Whig. This meant that the
principles of 1688 were more Mackintosh’s than Burke’s. That revolution, however,
had sanctified the theory, but failed to ensure the practice of free government,
because too few were represented in Parliament. The French revolution was justified
because France had degenerated into an illegitimate inequality of orders dominated
by an exclusive corporate spirit. This violated the natural and laudable tendency of
the wealthy to rule everywhere, and revolt there had thus signalled the advancement
of freedom by bringing to power that commercial and manufacturing ‘middle rank
among whom almost all the sense and virtue of society reside’, and whose interests
were more nearly those of the entire society than were the claims of a small group of
unproductive consumers like the landed aristocracy. The natural progress of society
was for commerce to overthrow a feudal and chivalric system of manners (while
Burke seemed to collapse both stages of development), and for the search for a more
perfect system of social and political liberty to follow. This commercial Whiggism
dominates Mackintosh’s work, though some republican themes were still included,
such as a condemnation of standing armies and public debt. Dismissing Burke for
first conceding the existence of natural rights, then contradicting himself by denying
them, Mackintosh accepted the idea of natural liberty, and argued that the first duty
of government was to preserve the natural rights of man, substantiating rights which
could not be fulfilled in the state of nature, and thus creating political equality while
tolerating a necessary degree of civil inequality.9
A close friend of Mackintosh and a fellow Scot was the writer and historian
Thomas Christie, whose Letters on the Revolution in France were written in January
1791. Christie, too, was surprised that a ‘liberal scholar’ like Burke who knew ‘the
patriots of Greece and Rome’ should immerse himself in ‘gothic feudality’, and
spurned Burke’s ‘miserable deformed gothic idol’. Defending Price’s right to
discuss politics from the pulpit, Christie emphasized that while he respected the
British constitution, its authority rested only on ‘The Rights of Man’, which was
founded on the great principles of eternal justice and reason. ‘The ideas of a Lawyer
eternally haunt Burke’, he insisted, because Burke saw no other grounds for holding
rights than prescription. But natural rights could not be removed by ‘the subsequent
conventions of civilized society’. Burke was thus no Whig, but had revived the

68
 RIGHTS OF MAN

Toryism of 1689 by urging an unchangeable hereditary succession. But though

Britain needed a reformation based on ‘the opinion of the reflecting and enlightened
part of the community’ (the opinion of the rest being unprincipled and inherently
unstable), Christie thought it lacked ‘adequate causes to produce a revolution’. None
the less the Reflections had angered the unreflecting, most of whom, thought
Christie, had not particularly favoured the revolution at first. But to Christie himself
the fall of the ancien régime was ‘the greatest and most glorious event that ever took
place in the history of the world’ and ‘the only revolution that has completely
respected the rights of mankind … the only revolution that is likely to change the
object of ambition amongst men, and to convert it into an emulation of superior
wisdom and virtue, instead of a lust of power and conquest’. The corruption and
tyranny of the ancien régime rendered its overthrow unavoidable. Burke had greatly
exaggerated the accompanying violence. The National Assembly had acted wisely
in creating a more rational system of government, and its policies were detailed at
great length, with particular praise given to efforts to render the king a constitutional
monarch.10
A number of replies to Burke were by prominent Dissenters, for whom the
Reflections was also an irritating defence of the Test and Corporation Acts. Except
at the very beginning, the Dissenters were by no means united in applauding the
revolution, however.11 Certainly by mid-1792 many found themselves torn between
their hopes that political and religious liberty was being created in France, on the one
hand, and the accusation – invoking the spectre of 1649 – of being unpatriotic on the
other. Most were reluctant to stick their heads above the parapet and therefore
quickly rallied behind the forces of order rather than those of change. The Dissenters
had fought hard to achieve respectability during the eighteenth century, and when
they were attacked as a group the fear of losing this reputation proved too strong for
many.
The most important Dissenting response to Burke was by the Unitarian minister,
scientist and philosopher Joseph Priestley, whose fourteen Letters to the Right
Honourable Edmund Burke, published in Birmingham in 1791, noted that while
clergy had universally approved the Reflections, it had been reprobated by the Low
Church party and Dissenters. Priestley defended the right of revolution and the
powers and policies of the National Assembly and in his closing sections heralded
the extinction of national prejudices, of the ‘bondage of the mind’, colonies and war,
and the inauguration of a millennium derived from true religion, philosophy, ‘good
sense and the prevailing spirit of commerce’. He agreed that natural rights were not
surrendered in civil society, but he was principally concerned with the established
Church, loyalty to which Burke had termed ‘the first of our prejudices’ or pillars of

69
 THOMAS PAINE

the constitution. In Priestley’s eyes every defence of the French revolution also
vindicated the principles of Dissent. The respect paid to any religion or church ought
to accord only with its virtue, not its antiquity or proximity to civil power. Conceding
that social peace required religion, Priestley none the less argued that electing the
clergy on the Dissenting model (as the French sought) would not harm the Church of
England. At present Anglicanism was corrupted by the system of preferment by
which promotions took place, as well as the wealth of the higher clergy. The state had
also ‘taken a great deal too much upon it’ in attempting to guide religious affairs. The
property of the church, moreover, was held in trust for society and could be disposed
of by the state as the French had proposed. The Dissenters possessed a right to
representation based upon their payment of taxes, benefited the cause of religion in
their diversity and would, Priestley promised, continue to assail the alliance between
the Crown and the Anglican Church and to press the cause of parliamentary
reform.12
Joseph Towers was among the other early Dissenting respondents to Burke.
Towers insisted that there were ‘certainly natural rights, independently of all positive
law or appointment’, that all legitimate government derived from the people, that
men were naturally equal and that taxation required the consent of the majority. His
fellow Dissenter Capel Lofft similarly agreed that the only rights surrendered in civil
society were those inconsistent with it, vindicated the necessity for revolution in
France and devoted much space to defending Rousseau, who was otherwise largely
missing from the revolution debate. The consequence of Burke’s view of rights,
added another critic of the Reflections, was that ‘the people would, in no case have a
right to alter their government’.13
Further replies to Burke emphasized various themes. Several accounts mocked
Burke as ‘the Filmer of the age’. Catherine Macaulay defended republicanism. The
radical journalist Charles Pigott attacked Burke for inconsistency considering his
views on the American revolution, while an anonymous assailant accused him of
defending papism and tyranny. The Analytical Review charged that on Burke’s
principles both the Magna Carta and 1688 would have been considered unacceptable
innovations. The poet Sir Brooke Boothby denied that the ancien régime was
endurable, praised the abolition of religious hierarchies and mocked Burke’s idea
that the demise of Gothic feudalism entailed an end to learning, the arts, honour and
humanity. An SCI member, George Rous, stressed that the location of national
sovereignty lay in the people themselves rather than Parliament, but also noted that
the House of Lords usefully checked the democratic excesses to which the Commons
were occasionally prone. Replying in February 1790 to Burke’s speech in the
Commons on the revolution, Earl Stanhope chastised him for not condemning the

70
 RIGHTS OF MAN

tyranny and cruelty of the ancien régime and termed the revolution likely to ‘make
the world, for centuries, prosperous, free, and happy’ as well as conducive to
improved relations with Britain. Another Whig response – one of several which
defended Price – insisted that the latter merely followed Locke on the question of
resistance to unlawful usurpation.14
By the vehemence of his attack Burke did much to bring the revolution to public
attention, forcing many to take sides who had earlier, one Revolution Society
member thought, had vague sympathies for the fate of Louis and his queen but
equally had resented French interference during the American wars, ‘and with these
sentiments, they leave them to settle their own government’. A major result of
Burke’s arguments was to give greater prominence to natural rights ideals than they
had enjoyed in radical debates hitherto; as one writer put it, the Reflections had the
effect of ‘producing a general recognition of those inalienable rights, the existence
of which it imprudently and weakly questions’. In this respect Burke demanded that
Whigs choose between adhering to ‘the British constitution’ and to natural rights per
se. Previously no conflict had seemed to exist between these ideals. Whig radicals
had always agreed that reform required the restitution of the constitution, which
meant safeguarding both natural and civil rights. Now these objects appeared
juxtaposed. But to most new Whigs natural rights remained primary, though the
British constitution was not far behind. As Christie wrote in 1791, ‘there is
something that I hold to be greater and dearer than the British or any Constitution:
that is, the rights of man, founded on the great principles of eternal justice and reason.
It is from these Rights that all particular Constitutions derived their authority, and the
British Constitution is respectable only as it is conformable to this unchangeable
standard.’ Others, too, castigated Burke for describing the British constitution as too
complex for most to understand. It rested on only one pivot, the rights of men, and
‘On that axis it performs all its revolutions and points to one common centre – the
choice of the people’.15

Exporting America: the Rights of Man. Being an Answer to Mr. Burke’s

Attack on the French Revolution (February 1791)

Of the responses to Burke, only Paine’s succeeded in becoming genuinely popular if

not indeed ‘one of the most useful and benevolent books ever offered to mankind’
(which was Paine’s own view).16 In the first part of the Rights of Man Paine
addressed one of the central issues of the emerging revolutionary dispute – the nature
of rights – at length for the first time in his life. He also argued more strongly for a

71
 THOMAS PAINE

republican government than contemporary radicals had done. These themes,

however, were only systematically articulated in Part Two, published a year later.
The first part was less well organized and, like the Reflections, was more a series of
immediate comments on the revolution rather than a reflective treatise. We will
therefore consider the central achievements of the work as a whole in the following
chapter, after first examining the arguments of each part here.
The first part of the Rights of Man is divisible by subject into eight segments: an
introductory section where the question of the right of living generations over earlier
ones dominates; Paine’s explanation of the origins of the French revolution; a brief
account of rights; a lengthy comparison of the existing British government and class
system with those intended to be created by the new French constitution; a further
analysis of the development of the revolution; the reprinting of the French
‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens’ with Paine’s observations
thereon; a ‘Miscellaneous Chapter’ which formed the basis for Part Two; and Paine’s
brief conclusion.
The Rights of Man opened by declaring that the revolution was viewed differently
by European peoples compared to their governors. For the former the French cause
embraced ‘the interests of the entire world’, but many of the latter profited from
enmity between France and other nations. As a friend to American independence,
Burke should have hailed its French counterpart. That he had not, Paine implied, was
connected to Burke’s rumoured receipt of a secret state pension in return for hiring
his pen (in fact Burke was awarded £1,200 annually from mid-1794). The
Reflections, then, was not a principled treatise, and Burke not an independent writer.
For Paine few accusations could be more damning.17
Paine’s most important initial disagreement with Burke concerned the authority
of past legislation over existing generations, for Burke had contended against Price
that the settlement of 1688 bound all posterity. Burke thus denied the people’s right
to choose their own governors, cashier them for misconduct and frame their own
government. But the Parliament of 1688 had done just this, Paine thought, but then
restricted its own successors. This was inconsistent and unjust: ‘every age and
generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generation
which preceded it’. ‘Governing beyond the grave’, or forcing the living to be
compelled by the actions of the dead, was tyranny.18
Paine’s account of the origins and course of events in France was intended chiefly
to correct Burke’s misperceptions. For Paine ‘it was not against Louis XVI, but
against the despotic principles of the government, that the nation revolted’. Paine
admitted that Louis ‘was known to be the friend of the nation’ and rarely ruled
despotically. But the revolution was for principles rather than against men, and

72
 RIGHTS OF MAN

Louis’s moderation did not mitigate his unjust powers. Despotism, moreover, had
infiltrated into every corner of France, assuming variously the guises of feudal,
ministerial, monarchical, parliamentary, or ecclesiastical tyranny. Burke,
concentrating on the personality of the king, lamented the loss of the ‘age of
chivalry’, and did not sympathize with the victims of the Bastille and other prisons,
only the few officials killed liberating them. In one of Paine’s most memorable
phrases, Burke was ridiculed because he ‘pities the plumage, but forgets the dying
bird’. No great violence had marred the revolution to date, and individual acts of
bloody vengeance, such as the affixing of heads to pikes, could be explained by the
corruption of public morals through the cruelty of the ancien régime.19
Paine then turned to rights. Burke appeared to deny that men possessed any rights
at all. But this could not be his meaning, Paine assumed. Rights of one kind or another
existed, everyone agreed. The chief problem was their origins. But to discover these
it was essential to go back ‘the whole way’, not merely a hundred or a thousand years.
The origin of the rights of man was the origin of man himself, at the Creation. All
histories thereof, and particularly the Mosaic account, ‘whether taken as divine
authority or merely historical’, agreed ‘in establishing one point, the unity of man;
by which I mean that men are all of one degree, and consequently that all men are
born equal, and with equal natural rights’. Consequently each generation possessed
identical natural rights ‘in the same manner as if posterity had been continued by
creation’. On these rights were founded civil rights. The former included ‘all the
rights of the mind’ as well as ‘all those rights of acting as an individual for his own
comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the natural rights of others’. Civil
rights existed because not all natural rights, especially self-protection, could be
guaranteed by the individual. Those natural rights ‘in which the power to execute is
as perfect in the individual as the right itself’, such as freedom of religion, remained
intact in civil society. Others, such as the right to judge in one’s own case, were
surrendered in exchange for the guarantee of just redress in society, which secured
the right more fully, civil power having no mandate to invade any natural right. The
divine origin of rights and of the idea of natural liberty was thus central to Paine’s
account. Civil authority could not defy divine intention, and natural rights always
defined the nature and limits of civil rights, with the Bible remaining Paine’s
principal authority.20
None the less two kinds of government in particular did interfere with natural
rights: those disguised by superstition and governed through priestcraft; and those
based on power and conquest. A third form of government, based on reason, took
cognizance of the common rights and interests of mankind and was itself grounded
in a mutual compact between a people to form a government, and not between

73
 THOMAS PAINE

themselves and a ruler, as Locke had assumed. The existing British government was
of the second type, having originated in William’s invasion of Britain. Moreover, not
only was a ‘constitution’ the sole basis for founding a just government; it could not
exist as an ideal alone, but had to assume ‘a visible form’, by which Paine meant a
single document mutually agreed upon. Britain lacked a constitution in this
(American) sense and could create one only by calling a national convention to
establish a new social compact. But governments had no right to alter themselves,
since this ‘would be arbitrary’, and most previous parliamentary reformers had thus
pursued a false path. This view would inspire the chief strategy of the new reform
movement of the 1790s.21
Paine then turned to expose the wrongs of the existing government and class
system. Parliamentary representation was extremely limited and unfairly
distributed. Game laws prevented small farmers from taking animals even on their
own land. Monopolies inhibited the freedom of commerce. The right to make war
lay with kings and ministers, who shouldered few of the subsequent burdens. By
contrast, degrading aristocratic titles had been abolished in France. Primogeniture,
by which the younger children of the aristocracy were virtually disowned, was to be
eradicated there. Paine considered at length why the aristocracy were poor
legislators, emphasizing the absurdity of supposing that talent in this field could be
hereditary, although the right to exercise it was. The system of taxation and finance
merely fuelled the inordinate desires of the aristocracy, moreover, and was a form of
‘conquering at home’ for the rest of the population. Nor was religion better practised
or organized in Britain. The French had raised the salaries of the lower clergy and
diminished those of the higher, while abolishing tithes and establishing universal
freedom of conscience. Only by separating church and state, Paine insisted, could
the naturally ‘mild and benign’ character of any religion emerge. Finally, while the
French constitution left executive power with the king, sovereignty was assigned to
the nation and the National Assembly was elected by the people. The House of
Commons, however, originated as a boon or grant from the monarchy and did not
recognize the principle of popular sovereignty.22
After dwelling further on the sources of the revolution and stressing the
importance of American inspiration to the French, Paine reprinted the ‘Declaration
of the Rights of Man and Of Citizens’ with a brief explanation of its implications for
a notion of the equivalent duties of citizens. In the final segment of the Rights of Man
Paine offered a series of miscellaneous observations which strengthened his case
against hereditary succession, his support of the general will as the basis of political
legitimacy, and his growing tendency to equate hereditary succession with
despotism, especially for later generations, since the first king in a royal line might

74
 RIGHTS OF MAN

have been chosen by all. Paine’s conclusion also rejected ‘mixed government’ as
inevitably corrupt and lacking in responsibility either in the king, or the prime
minister, who could always hide behind his party. Real government here took place
only by the cabinet and through committees. But this was impermissible in ‘a well
constituted republic’ where corrupting compromises between ill-fitting parts were
unnecessary. Paine at first denied that he recommended any particular form of
government, arguing that ‘That which a whole nation chooses to do, it has a right to
do’. None the less he then sided clearly with republicanism, hoping that with a true
‘renovation of the natural order of things … combining moral with political
happiness and national prosperity … the cause of wars would be taken away’. A
European Congress similar to plans put forward by Henri IV of France in the early
seventeenth century could be convened for the purpose of preventing war. Man was
‘not the enemy of man, but through the medium of false government’. The ‘age of
revolutions’ would at last render this clear to all.23

Towards Social Justice: the Rights of Man, Part Second. Combining

Principle and Practice (1792)

The Rights of Man, Part Second appeared in February 1792. Wary of Paine’s powers,
the government tried to prevent its publication. Paine had been recommended by
Thomas Christie to a printer named Chapman, who began to set the type, but stopped
when he reached a point which ‘appeared of a dangerous tendency’. Unmoved by
Paine’s entreaties, which he later claimed were accompanied by a declamation
against all Dissenters as ‘a pack of hypocrites’, he instead offered to buy the
copyright of the text for 1,000 guineas, obviously ministerial funds. Paine of course
refused.24
‘The most impressive of all his writings’, a distinguished philosopher has recently
termed it, Part Two of the Rights of Man is a considerably better organized work, as
Paine himself conceded in its preface. Theoretically it is a much more astute attempt
to forge a radical philosophy from the suggestive threads left hanging in the brief
‘Miscellaneous Chapter’ and other sections of its predecessor. Accordingly it was
even less a response to Burke, but was instead a tract on social and political thought
laid before the public in the hope that monarchy and aristocracy would not ‘continue
seven years longer in any of the enlightened countries in Europe’ once their true
rationale unfolded through open debate.25
Paine’s starting point in Part Two was again the American Revolution and its
impact, and indeed the text has been described as considerably more American than

75
 THOMAS PAINE

French in outlook. America had been ‘the only spot in the political world, where the
principles of universal reformation could begin’. The diversity of its immigrants and
their different religious backgrounds had enforced a spirit of compromise.
Conquering the wilderness demanded continuous exertion, which enlarged the
mental horizons of the colonists, as well as great co-operation, by which they came
to see one another ‘not with the inhuman idea of a natural enemy, but as kindred’,
while old divisions, fomented by the ‘quarrels and intrigues of governments’, were
now superseded. Moreover, America’s increasing opulence proved that its
government assisted prosperity. By contrast, Europe abounded with ‘hordes of
miserable poor’. The greedy hand of government’ could be found ‘thrusting itself
into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude’,
making ‘universal civilization and commerce’ impossible. Moreover, monarchies
were military in nature and aimed at plunder and revenue. Peace, thus, which was to
remain as important a goal for Paine as prosperity, required governments to be
founded upon a ‘moral theory, on a system of universal peace, on the indefeasible,
hereditary rights of man’.26
The connection of democratic republicanism and prosperity led Paine, in one of
the most famous segments of his work, to elaborate upon the distinction between
‘society’ and ‘government’ first tentatively explored in Common Sense. Now Paine
argued at much greater length that society antedated government and would remain,
at least in certain circumstances, ‘if the formality of government was abolished’.
Society was a ‘great chain of connection’ based upon ‘mutual dependence and
reciprocal interest’ between landholders, merchants, tradesmen, manufacturers and
other occupations whose strong common interest regulated their affairs almost
entirely. Thus ‘society performs for itself almost every thing which is ascribed to
government’, while ‘a great part’ – but not all, we must note – of ‘government’ was
‘mere imposition’. Compelled to co-operate because their wants were greater and
more diverse than their individual capacities, people were moreover bound together
by ‘a system of social affections’ which produced a ‘love for society’. The more
perfect civilization was, thus, ‘the less occasion has it for government, because the
more does it regulate its own affairs, and govern itself’. Such a stage required ‘but
few general laws’. Thus uncivilized governments upset rather than reinforced the
natural harmony of society. In the Gordon Riots of 1780, for example, government
encouragement of anti-Catholic prejudices had fuelled disorder. Excessive and
unequal taxation also made the majority poor, desperate and easily provoked into
riot. America proved that concord was based upon society, for there different groups
intermingled peacefully, ‘the poor are not oppressed, the rich are not privileged.
Industry is not mortified by the splendid extravagance of a court rioting at its expense
… taxes are few, because government is just.’ America hence taught the world that

76
 RIGHTS OF MAN

‘government is nothing more than a national association acting on the principles of

society’.27
Existing European and indeed all ‘old governments’ were thus not founded upon
‘society’ but upon usurpation. In Britain the Norman invasion had established ‘a
continual system of war and extortion’. By contrast the ‘new system of government’
delegated power ‘for the common benefit of society’, and encouraged ‘universal
society, as the means of universal commerce’ instead of national prejudice. The old
form of government Paine now simply termed ‘hereditary’, the new,
‘representative’. All hereditary government (and Paine regarded this as his most
important argument) was ‘in its nature tyranny’, because no one could rightfully
impose future rulers on later generations. It was also inefficient and truly encouraged
‘mental levelling’ since any fool might become king, while no one would be stupid
enough to propose, for example, that literature become hereditary. Contested
hereditary claims also provoked many more wars than popular elections, while kings
also encouraged foreign wars.28
By contrast the representative system ensured the wisest laws, as evidenced by the
best of ancient governments, the Athenian democracy. None the less the ancients had
not understood the principle of representation. If they had, monarchy and aristocracy
might never have arisen, since they emerged only after society became ‘too
populous, and too extensive for the simple democratical form’. But ‘republic’ was
not a particular form of government, only one devoted to the common good, which
representation best secured. Simple democracies were incapable of governing great
populations, but so were monarchies and aristocracies, which were too centralized
to know the true state of agriculture, manufactures, commerce and other phenomena
in all quarters of society. Representation, however, overcame the difficulties of both
form and knowledge, and thus the incapacities of simple democracy, aristocracy and
monarchy alike. ‘Ingrafting’ representation upon democracy permitted both a
diversity of interests and an extensive territory and population. Here rulers were
never too young or too old, and succeeded one another with peaceful regularity. They
governed cheaply and openly, without mystery and intrigue. Who would opt
voluntarily for monarchy by comparison?29
A representative democracy could not be founded by an existing government,
however, but only by a constitution through which a whole people installed a new
government. Governing without a constitution was merely exercising ‘power
without a right’, and any people thus possessed the right to form a constitution. In the
United States, each state had formed its own government after the Declaration of
Independence in July 1776, and Paine used the Pennsylvania example to illustrate
how a people could meet in a convention and then govern according to a constitution.
Creating the federal government had followed the same pattern, with the people

77
 THOMAS PAINE

concluding a compact amongst themselves, rather than with government, then

writing a constitution which bound the government itself; first the Articles of
Confederation, accepted in 1781. The Articles had been found to grant too little
power to the federal government, but they had been amended through the same
process, each state having elected a convention to consider the new constitution. And
after the federal constitution had been accepted, Pennsylvania amended its state
constitution according to the same procedure. In all instances the constitution
represented a pre-governmental ‘society’ meeting to compose a particular
government.30
Britain thus lacked a constitution because its ‘controlling power’ lay not in the
people but with the government. The Norman tyranny had been amended in various
ways. But the Magna Carta ‘did not create and give powers to Government’ and
merely restricted power already usurped. Subsequent shifts of power had similar
results: the Bill of Rights established in 1688, for example, reallocated powers,
profits and privileges, leaving the people merely the right of petitioning. Coining
another oft-quoted phrase, Paine instead called it the ‘Bill of Wrongs’, perpetrated
by some who were never elected, and none elected for the purpose. Nor was there
evidence of constitutional control over the oligarchy which arose under Walpole. Its
power had been virtually unbounded, the parts of government able only to
‘embarrass each other’, its capacity to raise taxes seemingly unrestrained. The nation
thus was ruled solely by recourse to legal precedents, about which Paine asserted that
‘the greater distance of time they are drawn from, the more they are to be
suspected’.31
Paine then turned to consider the constituent parts of governments. These were
usually divided into legislative, executive and judicial branches, but might be
reduced to two, legislation and execution or administration, adjudication being
merely the latter strictly defined. Considering whether two legislative houses, as in
America, or one, as in France, was preferable, Paine reviewed the objections to each
without at this point taking sides. But he was certain that no executive should be paid
too much, nor entrusted with vast powers which could be exercised without popular
consent, such as the British monarch’s capacity to form alliances and declare war and
peace.32
In the final and longest section of the Rights of Man, Paine summarized the lessons
of America and France. Since all constitutions and governments sought collective
happiness, it was legitimate to ask why such ‘a great portion of mankind in what are
called civilized countries’ were ‘in a state of poverty and wretchedness, far below the
condition of an Indian’. The cause of this, Paine thought, lay not ‘in any natural
defect in the principles of civilization, but in preventing those principles having an
universal operation’, which resulted in ‘a perpetual system of war and expense, that

78
 RIGHTS OF MAN

drains the country, and defeats the general felicity of which civilization is capable’.
Though commerce could satisfy the needs of all, governments warred barbarically
‘like so many individuals in a state of nature’. Ignoring the more advanced principles
of ‘civilization’, governments extracted from the poor especially ‘a great portion of
those earnings which should be supplied to their own subsistence and comfort’.
Poverty was thus caused by excessive taxation. Only a thirtieth or fortieth of the
amount raised was necessary for civil government. The rest was stolen
extravagance.33
This elaboration of Paine’s views on commerce and civilization was central to his
broader notions of government and of peace, and accordingly merits closer scrutiny.
Vital here was Paine’s notion of a system of interdependent needs, which he usually
termed ‘society’, and which was drawn largely from natural law writings.
Commerce, Paine thought, was ‘a pacific system, operating to unite mankind by
rendering nations, as well as individuals, useful to each other. Since each individual
was improvable principally ‘by means of his interest’, if ‘commerce were permitted
to act to the universal extent it is capable of’, it would ‘extirpate the system of war,
and produce a revolution in the uncivilized state of governments’. Commerce had
‘arisen since those governments began’ and was ‘the greatest approach towards
universal civilization, that has yet been made by any means not immediately flowing
from moral principles’. Instead of one party (or country) always losing in any
exchange, as many earlier economic writers had believed, Paine asserted that needs
ideally were mutually fulfilled in trade. The natural course of commerce was ‘no
other than the traffic of two individuals, multiplied on a scale of numbers; and by the
same rule that nature intended the intercourse of two, she intended that of all’.
Consequently nature had ‘distributed the materials of manufactures and commerce
in various and distant parts of a nation and of the world; and as they cannot be
procured by war so cheaply or so commodiously as by commerce, she has rendered
the latter the means of extirpating the former’. Uncivilized governments had
consequently misunderstood commerce completely. By war and taxation they
inhibited commercial growth at home as well as abroad. But when nations trading
with Britain were harmed, their capacity to buy British goods also lessened. Thus
‘the prosperity of any commercial nation is regulated by the prosperity of the rest. If
they are poor, she cannot be rich.’ Invariably reciprocal, true commerce consisted ‘in
the balance being a level of benefits among all nations’. Nor should merchants be
condemned for profiting on imports and exports, provided nations gained thereby.
Paine none the less felt that domestic trade was primary, because its advantages
remained at home. Least important was commerce derived from foreign conquest
and colonies, since the need to maintain large navies absorbed any trading profits.

79
 THOMAS PAINE

Mutual interest, not military might, was the best protection commerce could
receive.34
His general principles established, Paine turned again to condemn flaws in the
British system of government. Charters and corporations which gave individuals
and associations specified voting and other rights at the expense of the rest of the
population were dismissed, as were laws forcing the poor to remain near their
birthplace to receive relief. The House of Lords was illegitimate because no other
occupation – peers deriving their income primarily from rents – was separately
represented, and this monopoly or ‘combination’ was used in order to deflect taxes
from the land to consumption, which further oppressed the middling classes and
poor. Paine conceded that agriculture had special status since all were interested in
its fruits. But he denied that the aristocracy should be the chief proprietors, since only
active farmers did the actual cultivation. The peers, moreover, also had their hands
in the public till elsewhere, filling unnecessary offices through patronage and
generally burdening the public with their progeny.35
The most novel proposals in Part Two were contained in the final segment of
chapter 5, where Paine detailed his schemes for the redistribution of wealth. Here he
proclaimed for the first time that the aim of government was to provide ‘for the
instruction of youth, and the support of age, so as to exclude, as much as possible,
profligacy from the one, and despair from the other’. These partly republican-
inspired goals thus allowed for a more virtuous electorate and greater social equality.
But government was thus to be accorded a much more substantial and positive role
than Paine had earlier implied and moreover would have to find the money to meet
these aims. Since 1688, however, and especially since the Hanoverian succession,
taxation had increased considerably with the expansion of both the national debt and
current expenses. Though Paine saw some sense in a national debt, since it served ‘to
keep alive a capital, useful to commerce’, vast increases in current expenses were
unnecessary. He therefore proposed cutting all unnecessary costs and began by
presuming that about £500,000 would suffice for the non-military expenses of the
British government, giving 300 representatives a reasonable salary and some 1,773
public servants wages ranging from £75 to £10,000 annually. About £1.5 million
would therefore suffice for the peacetime expenses of government, leaving some £6
million remaining to dispense from legitimate existing revenues.36
Many of Paine’s most intriguing proposals resulted from his efforts to dispose of
this surplus. The most important existing problem was the growth of poverty. Rising
poor rates, Paine felt, would be largely unnecessary if taxes diminished, since about
a quarter of the poor’s wages disappeared through taxes upon consumption. He
therefore proposed to abolish the poor rates completely, but to remit to the poor
double their present support from the rates, or £4 million in total. This they would

80
 RIGHTS OF MAN

receive when they were most in need, by instituting a programme which has often
been seen as heralding the modern welfare state. To ensure them a minimal
education, £4 per year would be allotted to each child under age 14, with parish
ministers ascertaining that the funds were so spent. Of the aged, some at 50 (about a
third of the total) were already unable to support themselves. These would receive
£6 per annum until the age of 60, or about a ninth of a skilled labourer’s average
wage, and £10 thereafter, and not as a matter of charity, either, but of right, in return
for taxes paid over a lifetime of labour. Two-thirds of the society would not require
such support, however. Paine then proposed to give ten shillings per year for six
years’ schooling for children of the near-poor who found this a considerable burden.
A further £1 would be given to women on the birth of each child and £20,000 made
available to defray the funeral costs of all who died away from home. Next,
acknowledging that distress was more extreme in London, Paine proposed that two
work-houses be constructed or acquired there in order to provide temporary
employment, meals and lodging of a standard at least equivalent to a military
barrack, with part of each individual’s earnings being returned to them on their
departure. Paine estimated that some 24,000 people annually might be helped
through this provision. Funds would also be set aside for the maintenance of
disbanded soldiers and sailors after a military alliance with France rendered many
superfluous. Finally, and most dramatically, Paine proposed a system of progressive
taxation on inheritances in order to distribute wealth further. On estates annually
worth from £50 to £500, the tax would be only some 3d per pound (1 1/4 per cent) of
value, but at £23,000 (equivalent to several million pounds today) it would reach 100
per cent. Estates so large were simply a ‘prohibitable luxury’ based upon a marginal
utility calculation of how far they actually supported any family, though property
acquired by honest industry would not be affected, only that received by bequest. By
this means the aristocracy would carry its burden of just taxes. But it is important to
point out, given the subsequent debate about the Rights of Man, that these proposals
did not threaten to destroy the existing property system completely. Estates of up to
some £13–14,000 a year – a very considerable sum earned by probably only 200
families in Britain – would still produce a profit to their holder, Paine estimated.
Larger estates – those owned by approximately the wealthiest 200 families – would
have to be divided. Consequently that old republican bugbear, primogeniture, would
be abolished, both because it was unjust and ‘because the country suffers by its
operation’. In addition, Paine urged that all restrictions on workmen’s wages be
lifted, leaving them ‘as free to make their own bargains, as the law-makers are to let
their farms and houses’. Doubtless reflecting upon his own experiences many years
earlier, he urged increases in salaries for excise officers the lower clergy and

81
 THOMAS PAINE

common soldiers and sailors. But a further tax upon the profits of holders of stock in
the debt (at that time untaxed was to be added to help pay off the national debt.37
The Rights of Man Part Two concluded with further reflections on a potential
military alliance between Britain, France and other countries, since this was
essential to Paine’s general scheme for reducing taxes, as well as to his commercial
ideal. Such an alliance might be begun by confederating the fleets of Holland, Britain
and France. No new ships were to be built, and all existing navies could be
simultaneously cut back by nine-tenths. With the United States, the alliance might
then propose that Spain grant independence to the countries of South America and
open them to freedom of commerce. Wishing ‘freedom and happiness to all nations’,
Paine hoped that extending revolution throughout Europe would reduce national
animosities and increase religious toleration.38
Some of these points were again briefly defended in a pamphlet Paine wrote
shortly before his departure for France, the Letter Addressed to the Addressers
(1792), which remains the best short statement of his republicanism. Here Paine
counselled British democrats to convene to form a true national constitution. The
notion that Parliament should reform itself he termed ‘a worn-out, hackneyed
subject’, since no government had ‘a right to alter itself, either in whole or in part’.
He reiterated the right of universal suffrage since all paid taxes on their property or
labour. Paine also proposed a general review of laws, to be repeated every 21 years
so that obsolete laws no longer crowded the statute books. Finally, he ridiculed the
Society of the Friends of the People’s demand for ‘temperate and moderate’ reform,
describing them as mere ‘place-hunting reformers’. Only two classes existed, those
who paid taxes and those who received them, and the Friends of the People merely
aspired to join the latter and fatten on the former. Several of these points, particularly
the principle of universal suffrage, were later also defended in Paine’s Dissertation
on First Principles of Government (1795), which examined the French constitution
of that year.39

Notes to Chapter 3: Rights of Man

1 E. Black (1963), pp. 212–18. On Dissent in this period see also J. Creasey (1966), R. Davis
(1971), pp. 28–52, G. Ditchfield (1974), A. Goodwin (1979), pp. 65–98. On Dissenting
thought see A. Lincoln (1938), H. Dickinson (1977), pp. 197–205, and, in relation to
America, S. Lynd (1968).
2 R. Price (1927), p. 466; C. Macaulay (1790), pp. 22, 20.
3 On the impact of the revolution in Britain see P. Brown (1918), C. Cone (1968) and C.
Emsley (1979), but especially the modern standard work, A. Goodwin (1979). The best
short survey of the subject is H. Dickinson (1985). For Scotland see H. Meikle (1912).

82
 RIGHTS OF MAN

The parliamentary aspects are detailed in S. Maccoby (1955b) and W. Laprade (1970),
though the latter is strongly biased against Paine. The best selection of primary sources,
though emphasizing conservative and moderate reform opinion, is the 3-volume A
Comparative Display. Other collections are A. Cobban (1950) and M. Butler (1984). On
the Society of the Friends of the People see I. Hampsher-Monk (1978).
4 E. Burke (1987), pp. 7, 10, 14, 24, 33–4. On Burke see F. O’Gorman (1973), C.
MacPherson (1980), M. Freeman (1980), I. Kramnick (1977a), F. Lock (1985) and J.
Pocock’s introduction to E. Burke (1987). A good collection of texts and commentary is
I. Hampsher-Monk (1987). Also useful is A. Ayer (1988), pp. 56–71.
5 E. Burke (1987), pp. 35–46, 51–5; Burke (1826), Vol. 4, p. 226. Burke’s attack on Price
had an important antecedent in Josiah Tucker’s Treatise Concerning Civil Government
(1781; on the text see J. Pocock, 1985, pp. 157–91). For a summary of disagreements
about Burke’s theory of rights see M. Freeman (1980), pp. 85–93. A longer account is B.
Wilkins (1967), pp. 163–246, which argues that Burke continued to believe in natural
rights. Burke had earlier argued that ‘a conservation and secure enjoyment of our natural
rights is the great and ultimate purpose of civil society’ (I. Hampsher-Monk, 1987, p. 76).
6 E. Burke (1987), pp. 76, 81, 83–8, 90, 124, 127, 163, 166, 176, 217. For the natural law
view of Burke see P. Stanlis (1958) and, for emphases on utility and prescription, P. Lucas
(1968), J. Dinwiddy (1974b) and F. Lock (1985), pp. 90–4.
7 On responses to Burke see J. Boulton (1963), pp. 75–96, 151–206, R. Fennessy (1963),
pp. 181–212, A. Goodwin (1979), pp. 99–135, and F. Lock (1985), pp. 132–66. Defences
of Burke include A Vindication (1791), which termed Burke a Whig who none the less
upheld divine right (pp. 81, 141).
8 M. Wollstonecraft (1790), pp. 20, 24, 8, 12, 92, 32, 20–2, 78, 66–8, 121, 24, 98, 145, 151,
28. See J. Boulton (1963), pp. 67–76 and M. Myers (1977).
9 J. Mackintosh (1846), Vol. 3, pp. 8, 138, 135, 34–5, 51, 62, 76, 81, 94, 99, 95. On the text
see W. Christian (1973b), J. Boulton (1963), pp. 151–84 and L. McKenzie (1980). Pocock
contend; that the ‘Gothic’ reading of the Reflections was mistaken and that Burke was also
defending modern politeness and commerce, which he saw as rooted in older manners (E.
Burke, 1987, pp. xxxii–iii, also generally Pocock, 1985, pp. 193–212). But he also argues
that Burke in many ways feared the growing influence of the middle classes, and in some
respects tried to displace the Scottish vindication of their social, economic and cultural
position (1985, pp. 280–1). For the view that Burke caused the war by inciting hatred of
the revolution, see the Morning Chronicle, 28 January 1796.
10 T. Christie (1791), pp. 5–6, 12–16, 21, 24, 32, 44, 47–8, 58–9, 89–100, 120–1, 149, 207.
11 On Dissenting reactions to the revolution see R. Davis (1971), pp. 53–76 and J. Creasey
(1966).
12 J. Priestley (1791b), pp. 22–3, 144–50, 49, 22–33, 86, 55, 73, 52, 131, 139. Other
responses to Burke (e.g. Strictures, 1791) also concentrated on the issue of religious
toleration.
13 J. Towers (1790), pp. 69, 150–1, 155; C. Lofft (1790), pp. 28–9; Lofft (1791); W. White
(1792), p. 9.
14 Wonderful Flights (1791), p. 21; Comparative Display (1970), Vol. 1, pp. 494–519; C.
Pigott (1791); Philo-Theodosius (1790), p. 6; Analytical Review, vol. 8 (1790), p. 303; B.
Boothby (1791), pp. 19–22, 42–56, 38; G. Rous (1790), p. 38; Comparative Display
(1970), Vol. 2, pp. 196–202; E. Stanhope (1790); An Answer to the Rt. Hon. Edmund
Burke (1791), p. 8.

83
 THOMAS PAINE

15 Major Scott (1791), p. 51; A Letter to a Member (1791), p. 30; T. Christie (1791), p. 11;
B. Bousfield (1790), p. 10.
16 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, p. 444. Useful introductions to the text include Paine (1969a), Paine
(1985) and (1987), D. Wilson (1988), pp. 65–95 and A. Ayer (1988), pp. 72–113. A
relevant and careful unpublished study is P. Burnell (1972).
17 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 247–9.
18 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 250–2.
19 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 255–61, 265–6.
20 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 273–6.
21 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 277–80.
22 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 281–95.
23 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 296–344, 251. On Henri’s plans for peace see Sully (1909) and,
for a general study of such plans, S. Hemleben (1943). Henri’s plan was first to destroy
the power of the House of Habsburg, then divide Europe into fifteen nations (including
four republics) linked by commerce, defended by a single military force (which could be
used to conquer parts of Asia and Africa), and governed by a council of sixty-six
representatives reappointed every three years. This served as a model for the later plans
of William Penn, John Sellers, Rousseau, Saint-Pierre and others. Paine explained a
decade later that the best means of setting the plan in motion would be for leading powers
like France and Britain to reduce their navies and compel others to do the same (1945, Vol.
2, p. 1476).
24 The Genuine Trial (1792), pp. 31–4.
25 A. Ayer (1988), p. 91; Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 348–53.
26 G. Williams (1969), p. 7; Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 353–6.
27 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 357–61.
28 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 361–8.
29 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 368–75.
30 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 375–81.
31 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 381–7.
32 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 387–97.
33 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 398–400.
34 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 400–5.
35 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 406–14.
36 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 405, 415–21, 32.
37 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 422–45. My calculations respecting the implications of Paine’s
proposals are based on G. Mingay (1963), pp. 19–26 and B. Mitchell (1988), p. 153.
38 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 447–58.
39 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 469–511, 577–84.

84
 4
Paine’s achievement

How we understand Paine depends in part on how we think he constructed his

arguments and whom he may have drawn upon in so doing. But the problem of
Paine’s sources has always proved especially irksome for his interpreters. Though
Common Sense has been linked inconclusively to Joseph Priestley’s Essay on the
First Principles of Government, the writings of John Milton and a minor
seventeenth-century republican, John Hall, it is usually conceded that Paine’s early
writings responded primarily to specific events. A greater interest in abstract
political ideas dates only from the Rights of Man, when Paine became a political
thinker rather than a pamphleteer arguing a cause.1 Moreover, Paine’s shift of focus
to Europe in 1791 altered his thinking on a number of critical issues. Erskine
prudently claimed at Paine’s trial that the principles of Common Sense and the Rights
of Man were identical, and Paine himself asserted that the only difference was a
concern with British instead of American conditions, a view repeated by many
historians. None the less this shift was of momentous import for Paine and would
underlie his most significant innovations during the 1790s. For the problems of older
nations were quite different from those of America and a distinction between the two
was to become central to Paine’s thought, as well as to the debate which surrounded
the Rights of Man.2
But defining Paine’s originality even by the 1790s is not easy. His boastful claims
that ‘I rarely ever quote; the reason is, I always think’ and that he ‘neither read books,
nor studied other people’s opinions’ but always ‘thought for myself have frustrated
generations of students of his ideas. Clearly this attitude had its uses. As Gwyn
Williams has noted, Paine’s general insolence was often a far better weapon against
deference than carefully marshalled historical argument. His independence
seemingly proved that the common man needed no political or intellectual
authorities to comprehend and challenge relations of power. With respect to
Common Sense, for example, Paine argued that he had ‘succeeded without any help
from anybody’, and was not indebted to Locke or anyone else. None the less Paine
did read widely; his rooms in Paris, for example, were crowded with pamphlets,

85
 THOMAS PAINE

journals and other materials, and visitors elsewhere noted similar conditions. But
even admirers like Henry Redhead Yorke (who observed this in Paris) asserted that
The Bible is the only book which he has studied, and there is not a verse in it that is
not familiar to him’. However, this was at a time when Paine was especially
interested in religious issues. And if he specifically disclaimed ever having had
Locke’s works in his hands, adding that Horne Tooke had persuaded him Locke was
dry, musty and excessively theoretical, Paine mentioned many authorities in his
writings. Discussing the immorality of slavery, for example, he alluded to Locke,
Carmichael, Hutcheson, Montesquieu, Blackstone and Wallace. Elsewhere he cited,
and had clearly read, ‘the immortal Montesquieu’ on alliances, republicanism and
other topics and in a later anti-slavery pamphlet referred to Montesquieu ‘and many
writers on natural law’. He quoted Rousseau on several occasions in relation to
European peace and republicanism. The English System of Finance cited Adam
Smith extensively and referred to Richard Price. Paine’s theological works, which
were better annotated, cited Grotius, Whiston and others on the Bible. Moreover,
where he did not introduce specific authorities, we must recall another of Paine’s
strengths: as Yorke and others noticed, he had an astounding memory and
remembered ‘everything he has written in the course of his life’, sometimes reciting
lengthy passages from his own works.3 Thus when Paine had read other authors, too,
we may deduce that he could often use their arguments without further reference.
None the less, it is less Paine’s precise sources than his interpretation and
combination of various ideas which most concern us here. To reassess Paine’s
intellectual achievements by 1790 we need to examine six aspects of his mature
thought in greater detail: the rejection of the inheritance of 1688, and corresponding
demand for a constitutional convention; republicanism and the relation of society to
government; natural rights and natural law; the theory of civilization and commerce
and the social programme of the Rights of Man, Part Two; the question of Paine’s
‘millenarian’ or Quaker politics; and Paine’s language and appeal.

Constitutionalism, conventions and republicanism

Paine broke from the Whig tradition of the Glorious Revolution more sharply than
any other radical. In the first part of the Rights of Man he wrote contemptuously that,
‘exalted beyond its value’, the revolution of 1688 was ‘already on the wane, eclipsed
by the enlarging orb of reason, and the luminous revolutions of America and France’.
It was ridiculous that a free nation ‘would send to Holland for a man, and clothe him
with power, on purpose to put themselves in fear of him, and give him almost a

86
 PAINE’S ACHIEVEMENT

million sterling a year for leave to submit themselves and their posterity, like bond-
men and bond-women, for ever’. There was nothing ‘glorious’ in 1688 compared to
the struggles of America and France. The very rights men and women now sought
had not even been debated then (and thus Paine’s dismissal of 1688 differed from,
for example, Hulme’s rejection of the settlement as not restoring ancient Saxon
liberties). Nor did modern radicals still retain a slavish obedience towards precedent.
Instead they insisted that universal, active consent to the mode of rule was the sole
basis of political legitimacy. Fundamental to this view of 1688 was Paine’s doctrine
of the supremacy of the present generation over its forebears, which asserted (in
Gwyn Williams’s words) ‘the primacy of the present’ over ‘precedent, organicism
and social mysticism’. This owed something to Locke’s conception of consent, by
which no man was held to have a right to bind his children or posterity in a compact.
Cartwright too had argued that corrupt laws were not binding because each House of
Commons was responsible to its electors, not bound by its predecessors’ acts. But
Paine extended this idea to comprise a right to repeal any law, no matter how
fundamental. He retained a faith in the role of reason in such judgements, too, which
many Whigs, as well as Burke, rejected.4
By 1790 Paine also believed that the franchise should be extended much further
than most Whigs advised. More importantly, he asserted that Parliament by
definition could not reform itself. When trust was forfeited, power devolved once
more to the community, who through a constitutional convention ought to form a
new compact and issue a written constitution. This definition of ‘constitution’ was
novel in a British context and so was Paine’s conception of the rights and duties of a
convention. Reformers like Hulme, Wyvill, Burgh, Cartwright and Jebb had
suggested imitating the Americans by forming a general radical association to
inform Parliament how best to reform itself. But Paine (who urged such a gathering
in England as early as March 1789, when George III’s insanity was declared)
assigned conventions far greater powers, wished them directly to represent a much
larger number of citizens, and denied the legitimacy of any government not so
formed. This was an ‘American’ argument because its concept of democratic
republicanism went well beyond that of British radicalism, and was both forged in
the colonists’ revolt as well as rooted in Paine’s faith in the greater capacity for
independent thought of the Americans compared to their more servile British
counterparts.
If Paine’s conception of reform was based on the American experience, his
recommendation that ‘the standard of liberty’ be carried to other nations went further
still. This he termed ‘the peculiar honor of France’ in 1792 and, though Paine
abandoned hopes of a French-led European revolution the following year, the later

87
 THOMAS PAINE

idea of revolutionary internationalism owes much to him. Paine did not always
present this ideal consistently, arguing in 1797 that ‘one nation has not the right to
interfere in the internal government of another nation’ and that if England chose to
keep its king, this was none of France’s business.5 None the less his concern was
never with reforming single nations, but with bringing justice to all. ‘My country is
the world’ remains among Paine’s most oft-quoted phrases and indicates not only
Paine’s broad sympathies but a new awareness of an international system of
mutually reinforcing tyrannies whose overthrow demanded parallel revolutionary
collusion wherever it was possible.
Paine deviated from Whiggism in the goals as well as the means of reform. Most
importantly, he was a fully fledged republican, while most radicals before 1791
supported a mixed monarchy with the Commons predominating. In Part One of the
Rights of Man, Paine conceded the people’s right to create or accede to even a
hereditary executive, doubtless aware that Lafayette’s ‘Declaration of Rights’ of
August 1789 permitted a hereditary monarchy. But he himself clearly believed that
representation was always ‘debased’ when combined with monarchy and in Part
Two thus insisted on a pure republic. Pownall, Price, Cartwright and others earlier
had suggested that popular sovereignty in America did not require hereditary
institutions. But they did not extend such views to Britain or dismiss monarchy
entirely. Paine argued that the existence of hereditary monarchy was itself a violation
of trust and a proof of arbitrary power. The abrogation of laws was thus not required
to prove the existence of tyranny, as Locke had insisted. Hereditary government was
always illegitimate because it implied that the consent of each generation to its rulers
was not required. Simply put, Paine possessed greater faith in the political capacities
of the majority, and was the first to insist that all forms of government not directly
based on active popular consent (rather than the passive consent of holding property
Locke had permitted) were illegitimate. Locke and others had described hereditary
rule as absurd, Paine later wrote, but he alone had condemned it ‘on the ground of
illegality, which is the strongest of all grounds to attack it upon’. This was Paine’s
most important innovation in political thought and it took him beyond Whiggism
entirely.6
Within republicanism, Paine’s defence of extensive republics was a consciously
modern innovation. The Greeks did not bear imitating, Paine thought, while the
Romans ‘held the world in slavery, and were themselves the slaves of their
emperors’. Moreover, no form of direct democracy should be the republican goal,
for this suited only small nations. The representative system alone could amass ‘the
quantity of knowledge necessary to govern to the best national advantage’. But there

88
 PAINE’S ACHIEVEMENT

remained the question of the best form of democratic republic. Paine originally
agreed with Franklin that one legislative house was preferable since further bodies
merely bred more parties. By 1786, however, and especially after the controversy
over the Bank of North America, Paine conceded that flaws existed in unicameral
systems, even arguing that intense partisanship by a majority could render them
‘capable of being made a compleat aristocracy for the time it exists … when the
majority of a single house is made up on the ground of party prejudice … instead of
comprehending the good of the whole dispassionately’. This was ‘as dangerous to
the principles of liberty as that of a despotic monarchy’. In 1791 he thought that some
compromise between unicameral and bicameral systems might be possible and in
France in 1792 accepted some of the Madisonian argument against faction, agreeing
that if a constitution established two legislative chambers ‘as a check upon each other
… the result is sure to be advantageous’ and now arguing that a single assembly
meeting together was ‘the worst’ form of legislature.7
The Rights of Man Part Two thus proposed a compromise between single and
bicameral assemblies, with a single house dividing for debates to avoid the clashing
of passions, and only later voting together. In 1805 Paine suggested that
Pennsylvania adopt such a plan, opposing the Federalist cry for an upper house
elected only by property-holders and rejecting the premiss that educated men
thereby become the political elite. None the less Paine did not believe only in private,
or interest-based, virtue, but still hoped for a single legislature where republican
virtue prevailed, party prejudices had ‘no operation within the walls of the
legislature’, all would ‘unite and agree in the general principles of good government’
and ‘the public good, or the good of the whole, would be the governing principle of
the legislature within it. Party dispute, taken on this ground, would only be, who
should have the honor of making the laws; not what the laws should be.’ All would
be united by the republican goal of seeking equal justice for each citizen, and Paine
at one point emphasized that ‘I wish with all the devotion of a Christian, that the
names of Whig and Tory may never more be mentioned.’ A clearer statement of
republican idealism could not be asked for, though Paine obviously became
increasingly pessimistic about its realization. Correspondingly, this view has been
construed as overly optimistic, which by modern standards is doubtless true. But
Paine has also been wrongly accused of ignoring the possibility that democracy
could degenerate into a tyranny of the majority. He advised, for example, that the
American state constitutions ‘should be so constructed and secured, as to afford no
opportunities for the future abuse of power’ when revolutionary enthusiasm had
cooled. In the controversy over the Bank of North America, too, he warned that

89
 THOMAS PAINE

‘despotism may be more effectually acted by many over a few, than by one man over
all’.8
None the less Paine never anticipated considerable conflict between the executive
and legislative branches of a popular government and denied the need for any
balancing of them, which implied a republican ‘opposition’, as he emphasized
respecting the French constitutions of both 1791 and 1795. Nor would he concede
that any minority ‘insurrection’ against a majority was ever justified. But while he
was much less suspicious of democracy than the Federalists, Paine’s views were
iconoclastic and non-partisan. Though most anti-Federalists strongly opposed
aristocracy, while the Federalists counselled both a strong central government and
rule by a ‘natural aristocracy’, Paine also favoured a strong executive and was
amongst the first to argue (in 1780) that the Articles of Confederation were too weak
and that the Congress needed strengthening. But the executive in his conception
merely implemented laws enacted by the legislature, to which it remained
subordinate. Conflict between executive and people was impossible, for American
government ought to bear no analogy to the British constitution or the Whig
conception of mixed forms of government, which Federalists seemed to think it
should. Against the latter Paine thus also argued that a plural rather than a single
executive was preferable.9

Natural rights and natural law

As its title implies and its readers soon acknowledged, much of the appeal of the
Rights of Man lay in its focus upon rights. Yet we have seen that rights language had
pervaded eighteenth-century politics. Whig writers insisted upon the rights of all to
life, liberty and the protection of property, to some participation in government,
especially respecting decisions affecting these rights, and to resist arbitrary
authority. None the less not all these rights were granted universally, and many were
restricted (even the right of resistance) to those of independent means. Much of the
great attractiveness of the Rights of Man thus was doubtless Paine’s invocation of the
rights of all rather than only narrowly British liberties. By de-emphasizing
historically based rights or liberties Paine turned away from the imitation of the
ancient or Anglo-Saxon constitution. The state of nature remained as a device for
examining and claiming rights, but Paine’s was not a backwards-looking, historical
argument. This shift consequently radicalized the Whig view while also
emphasizing a deeply Christian – especially Quaker – and cosmopolitan view of
rights language. Mankind could now be understood as belonging to one universal

90
 PAINE’S ACHIEVEMENT

fraternal community where all possessed equal rights and duties which upheld the
fundamental dignity (a word of immense importance to Paine) of each. Some
universal implications of rights language had been evident in seventeenth-century
debates, for example among the Levellers. The phrase ‘the rights of man’ had been
used before. But only with Paine, it has been emphasized, was the ‘fully universal
character’ of rights revealed.10
Paine’s idea of rights was thus not unchanged from Common Sense onwards, as is
often assumed, for by the 1790s he agreed that universal male suffrage was a natural
right, rejecting his own earlier and more traditional Whig view. In 1778 he had still
argued that the franchise could be forfeited by state employees, or by all servants,
‘because their interest is in their master’ (and thus they lacked sufficient
independence), or if someone no longer contributed to taxation or public service.11
Thereafter he condemned property qualifications for the franchise, and by the 1790s
argued for universal male suffrage.
Paine’s invocation of natural over historical rights contributed considerably to the
longevity of such doctrines at a time when both they and the natural law basis from
which they sprang were under increasing attack. But Paine did not defend some form
of completely new, abstractly ‘metaphysical’ rights, like those Burke accused Price
and the French of upholding. (Indeed his own conception of rights was no more
‘metaphysical’ than Burke’s idea of the divine right of kings.) Instead he followed
most natural law writers in believing that rights derived from the Creation, and the
emphasis of most later natural rights authors, that they inhered in each person as
psychological properties, both the ‘animal right, and the power to act it’ being
‘supposed, either fully or in part, to be mechanically contained within ourselves as
individuals’.12 Paine’s notion that civil rights both derived from but also transmuted
some natural rights according to the needs of society (for example losing the right to
judge in one’s own case) was, as Gierke has emphasized, a prevalent doctrine in
natural law. So too was the ‘correlativity’ idea that possessing rights implied
corresponding duties to respect the rights of others, which Paine clearly upheld, and
which proves that his theory of rights did not, as Fennessy and others have alleged,
simply propose that all individuals had the right to do what they were capable of
doing (but Paine’s misleading use of ‘animal right’ is admittedly confusing).13 By
radical Whig standards, then, there was also little novel here, Locke being usually
associated with the notion that the social contract fulfilled and protected earlier
rights. But Paine’s insistence on the inalienability of some natural rights was
important given David Hume’s powerful and increasingly popular argument that
utility was the chief basis of governments, that the state of nature was a fiction and
correspondingly that only ‘civil’ rights existed. This assault on the natural rights

91
 THOMAS PAINE

ideals, reinforced by William Paley’s popular theological utilitarianism and

Bentham’s dismissal of natural rights as ‘pestilential’ and ‘nonsense upon stilts’,
prepared the way for much of nineteenth-century British political thought (both
Whig and socialist, though not, for example, Chartist) and was in fact one of the chief
turning points in the history of political thought in this period.14
But historians have wrongly presumed that the rise of a sceptical, historicist
utilitarianism simply swept aside natural rights arguments. This teleological
interpretation focuses too narrowly on the arguments of a few individuals without
reading ideas historically, or in the fullness of their context, and derives from the idea
that Burke and Bentham were the next ‘great thinkers’ to follow Hume in the canon
of history of political thought and must therefore have extended his victory over the
forces of dark Lockean ignorance. We would have a great deal of trouble accounting
for Paine’s popularity if this had been the case. Indeed it was far more the diffusion
of his natural rights doctrines which forced Whigs finally to reject this inheritance
than the arguments of Hume, Burke, Paley and Bentham alone, as we will shortly see.
For this reason, too, Paine and not Burke – since the latter largely renounced natural
rights in favour of utility – remained far closer to the natural law tradition as it had
developed during the eighteenth century, though Paine too touted a vague brand of
utilitarianism.15
Paine’s proximity to the natural law tradition has in fact been virtually ignored in
previous interpretations. Largely this is because conservative scholars have wished
to claim adherence to natural law doctrines for Burke, even while, for example,
defining the core of natural law teaching as the idea of reciprocal rights and duties, a
doctrine which we have seen Paine held as well. This view, which aims to portray
Paine as a rabid ‘individualist’, succeeds only by completely neglecting Paine’s
ideas of sociability, duty and mutual interdependence. More generally, however, this
omission is also partly due to the paucity of studies of eighteenth-century natural law,
which has contributed to the view that most eighteenth-century British political
writers paid little heed to natural law ideals, though Rousseau and others continued
the tradition on the continent.16 Blackstone, for example, notoriously merely
touched upon the laws of nature in the introduction to his Commentaries on the Laws
(1765), and thereafter ignored them. Instead British writers supposedly preferred to
discuss the common law and precedent as the basis of political norms and, accepting
Hume and Bentham’s critique of the rationalist assumptions of the natural law
writers, grounded their moral philosophy on the passions rather than conscious
obedience to external laws. But while Burke is no longer generally described as a
natural law thinker, the jurisprudential debts of eighteenth-century thinkers like
Smith, for example, are now increasingly acknowledged.17 It is also clear that

92
 PAINE’S ACHIEVEMENT

natural law textbooks remained extremely popular in Dissenting academies, at the

universities and among the reading public, and that the rationalist aspects of natural
law doctrines were not everywhere jettisoned in favour of discussing natural rights
alone, or even dispensing with the latter in favour of utility. Though important
differences existed in the perspectives of, for example, Grotius, Cumberland,
Pufendorf, Wolff, Vattel and Burlamaqui, all of whom were widely read in the
eighteenth century, all presumed that a moral law existed which was both prior and
superior to governments, was inscribed in the divine order, and was both knowable
rationally and operated through the requirement of sociability as well as the
restraints of conscience. These assumptions thus continued to be widely popular
throughout this period.
What is implied, then, by seeing Paine as part of the natural law tradition? The
view that morality operated through the conjunction of conscience and reason and
should not be reduced to instinct or the passions Paine clearly accepted; slavery, for
example, he condemned as ‘contrary to the plain dictates of natural light, and
conscience’. In the so-called third part of The Age of Reason, not published until
1807, too, he quoted Cicero’s view that ‘The true law is right reason, conformable to
the nature of things, constant, eternal, diffused through all, which calls us to duty by
commanding, deters us from sin by forbidding; which never loses its influence with
the good, nor ever preserves it with the wicked.’18 Moreover, unlike many Whigs,
Paine also believed that the law of nature was, like the Quaker inner light,
comprehensible to all, not merely the most educated. This faith in the common
possession of reason clearly underlay his belief that political virtue could be
extended more widely than most Whigs thought possible. In addition, Paine also
thought the laws of nature were part of the natural, divinely created universal order
which was scientifically verifiable in terms of the operations of harmoniously
mechanical natural laws, and also demonstrated that harmony between the natural
and moral worlds existed. All, too, were capable of understanding these
relationships.
A central element of natural law teaching important to Paine concerned the state
of nature. The leading seventeenth-century positions on this much-vexed question
were those of Hobbes, who described this period as violent and unpleasant, leading
mankind to surrender all sovereignty over its rights in a compact with an absolute
monarch, and Locke, for whom an era of considerable peace and co-operation ended
with a contract by which, in return for obedience, the sovereign protected natural
rights on penalty of being overthrown. For Paine the idea of a state of nature was
necessary to account for a fundamental constitutional law superior to positive law
and formulated outside of government in a convention (and other writers used

93
 THOMAS PAINE

natural law ideas this way to justify the American revolution, drawing in particular
on Pufendorf, Vattel and Burlamaqui).19 But though one might suspect, given
Paine’s juxtaposition of ‘society’ to ‘government’, that he believed the state of nature
to have been relatively idyllic, he did not. Paine portrayed extra-governmental
relations as seemingly co-operative. But he also believed that the state of nature had
been a period of warfare and conquest. In fact it was only civilized society which
functioned harmoniously, and here only within certain limits.
Distinguishing between these views of the state of nature has considerable
implications for understanding the single most important natural law contribution to
Paine’s doctrines. For Paine not only accepted the central jurisprudential
juxtaposition of a state of nature to ‘society’, but also the natural law definition of
society as a system designed to ensure survival and satisfy mutual needs, and thus
promote sociability. ‘Civilization’ was based upon an instinctive desire for society
or ‘system of social affections’ as strong as any animal instinct, and reinforced by
morality and true religion. But it was also grounded upon the necessity of mutual aid
based on the existence of common wants and the deliberate divine distribution of
resources unevenly across the world to ensure co-operation.20
This form of sociability, reciprocal interest, was intimately bound up with Paine’s
definition of commerce and was supposed to regulate both domestic and
international relations. In their present form the latter were exactly analogous to rule
by the strongest in the state of nature. But for Paine this was the consequence of
aristocratic and monarchic rule in particular rather than, as most natural jurists
believed, human nature as well as the anarchy of the international state system. In
one of the Crisis pamphlets, thus, Paine wrote: ‘In a Christian and philosophical
sense, mankind seem to have stood still at individual civilization, and to retain as
nations all the original rudeness of nature.’ But ‘all the great laws of society are laws
of nature’, and natural sociability, the principle of society rather than the state of
nature, could still triumph in government, and could make it more than a merely
negative, restraining force. But for Paine this was possible only in a representative
republic trading harmoniously with other nations, and only by recognizing the moral
duty to support the poor as well as their right to such assistance, not merely the
unreciprocal, individualistic right of property to do with its own as it pleased. Hume,
Burke and others had also accepted a notion of society as a system of wants. This
conception underlay Smith’s theory of the division of labour, while for Hume, too,
trade lessened international aggression. But Paine identified such benefits only with
a commercial republicanism tempered by a humane treatment of the poor and
demanded the abolition of monarchy as the price for universal civilization.21

94
 PAINE’S ACHIEVEMENT

That government ought to extend the principles of society was standard in most
natural law treatments.22 But here we encounter an interesting and important
anomaly in Paine’s political thought. For in Common Sense and the Rights of Man
Part One, Paine had seemingly argued that extending civilization was the goal of
society, not of government, which evidently inhibited this process. Yet in the Rights
of Man Part Two, and, as we will see below, Agrarian Justice, Paine did not adopt
only the ‘negative’ contractualist view of society often associated with natural law,
which narrowed the sphere of government to defence and the enforcement of justice.
He also argued from another strand of natural law thinking – which is in fact partly
the origin of the modern theory of ‘positive liberty’ – that it was the government’s
duty, as the expression of the common good, to promote sociability and a higher level
of civilization by maintaining and enhancing the rights of the poor. Such a task could
not be entrusted solely to ‘society’, whose charitable institutions failed to meet these
obligations sufficiently. Between 1776 and 1792 Paine thus grappled with the
Augustinian argument that government was unnatural and instituted solely to
control sin (the view of government usually ascribed to him) and the Aristotelian
view that it was natural because merely an extension of society, and ought indeed, in
republican form, to extend the virtues of society even further. Between 1791 and
1792 in particular, he decided that trade alone could not assure a subsistence to all
and that government would have to promote a more extensive notion of rights than
was implied by what we now term a ‘negative liberty’ conception of commerce and
society, where individuals are considered ‘free’ primarily if the state does not
interfere with them. A consistent underlying natural law ideal of social obligation
made it possible for his welfare programme to be introduced and maintained by
republican governments. But it has confused many subsequent commentators, for
whom these administrative burdens of Paine’s social programme flatly contradict his
demands for minimal government, and who have failed to see that Paine believed
republicanism capable of much that other forms of government were not.
There is one central reason why this apparent contradiction was resolved in the
Rights of Man Part Two. By the 1790s Paine became aware that the ideal of minimal
government in fact only applied to ‘new countries’ with little social inequality. ‘Old
countries’ indeed deserved less burdensome, more evenly distributed taxation and
the curtailing of extreme landed wealth. But their greater inequality also meant that
more governmental activity was needed to offset its effects, and this was the most
important shift in Paine’s thinking from Common Sense to the Rights of Man. This
was why he never proposed that his welfare and taxation reforms should apply to
America. Paine by 1792 distinguished between the levels of government appropriate
to various stages of economic development and realized that there were important

95
 THOMAS PAINE

parallels between a state of nature and one of advanced civilization. Commerce, he

now believed, lacked the capacity to solve the question of poverty once and for all
outside of new countries, at least for a very long time to come. This realization
culminated in the rights theories of Agrarian Justice.
The centrality of Paine’s emphasis both on society as a organization for satisfying
needs and on individuals as bearers of rights thus does not preclude acknowledging
Paine’s retention of important republican ideals. The natural jurists did tend to
construct persons as individualized bearers of rights and duties who primarily sought
the maintenance of order and justice from the state, while republicanism emphasized
their civic, military and generally collective responsibilities as citizens. But too
sharp a contrast should not be drawn between these perspectives. Paine’s theory of
society doubtless did construe individuals as utility-maximizing creatures primarily
motivated by self-interest in seeking to satisfy their needs. But Paine none the less
placed a high value upon citizenship, did not expect public virtue to decline
substantially in a commercial republic, and in fact required its maintenance if his
political system and his new welfare mechanisms were to succeed. Indeed to Paine
it was only in a republic that the demands of natural obligation could be wholly met.

Commerce, wealth and equality

What does this imply for the traditional view of Paine’s theory of commerce? The
jurisprudential definition of society as a system of wants was clearly central to
Paine’s commercial ideal, but it is his emphasis on freedom and expansion of trade
which has most often been stressed previously, with the implication that Paine had a
narrowly ‘liberal’, restricted definition of property rights.23 But given Paine’s view
of social reciprocity such an interpretation is untenable. Paine did indeed often write
of government as hindering free commerce, insisting even in the Rights of Man Part
Two that in England all improvements in agriculture, commerce and the like had
been ‘made in opposition to the genius of its government’. Every inventor and
pioneer hoped that government ‘would let him alone’. European poverty, moreover,
resulted from ‘what in such countries is called government’. But this meant not only
taxation, but also failure to maintain the poor, which was the duty of those who
possessed property and therefore (given their failure to meet this obligation
satisfactorily) of government. And in keeping with his enthusiasm for free trade,
Paine was also less fearful than many republicans of the moral corruption which
might result from luxury goods introduced by commerce. No puritan in this regard,
he thus wrote in 1783 that although new countries should first encourage agriculture,

96
 PAINE’S ACHIEVEMENT

he was ‘no enemy to genteel or fashionable dress, or to the moderate enjoyment of

those articles of indulgence we are furnished with from abroad’ if they were also
taxed like agriculture. Eventually, perhaps ‘a thousand years hence … perhaps in
less’, America might ‘be what Europe is now’, its liberty sadly declined. But for the
present there was no need to worry that commerce would throttle the revolution.24
But we have seen that Paine’s ‘liberalism’ requires an entirely different context
from that usually assigned it. Paine is often assumed to have been a disciple of Adam
Smith on the basis of a few well-worn passages from Common Sense and the Rights
of Man. But since his notion of society as a system of wants and their satisfaction
through mutual interdependence obviously preceded the publication of the Wealth
of Nations, we should be suspicious of such claims. After all, Hume, Priestley and
many others also advocated free trade in the late eighteenth century, usually but not
exclusively drawing on jurisprudential arguments. None the less such assertions also
imply that Paine consequently gave some form of priority to commerce, or thought
it advantageous to a nation compared to agriculture. But to complicate matters, Paine
has also been identified with a physiocratic emphasis on the primacy of agriculture
over commerce. Aldridge, for example, sees Paine as close to Franklin’s
‘physiocracy’ in his view that farmers and cultivators were ‘the first useful class of
citizens … because everything comes from the earth’ and also describes Paine as
‘virtually a mercantilist’ because he implied (in Prospects on the Rubicon) that gold
and silver were alone capital.25 Other evidence also supports the view that Paine
thought agriculture primary. He argued that ‘lands are the real riches of the habitable
world, and the natural funds of America’ in his 1780 defence of the appropriation of
western lands by the United States. Discussing farmers in a letter, too, Paine added
that after them came manufacturers and mechanics, who contributed ‘to the
accommodation rather than to the first necessaries of life’. Only merchants and
shopkeepers did not produce anything, but lived by exchange and were thus
‘convenient but not important’. In 1778, distinguishing sharply between riches in old
and new countries, Paine also contended that in old countries wealth only shifted
hands, ‘without either increasing or diminishing’ (implying that commerce did not
produce wealth), while in new countries ‘there is a real addition of riches by
population and cultivation’. Agriculture in a new country was ‘the fountainhead’ of
wealth, trade being only ‘the streams which distribute it’. But Paine none the less
described both as ‘ways of obtaining wealth’ and added that neither cultivation nor
trade here could be ‘too large, too numerous, or too extensive’ (he added elliptically
that he himself belonged to the first class, being ‘a farmer of thoughts, and all the
crops I raise I give away’).26

97
 THOMAS PAINE

Commerce thus did not necessarily increase wealth narrowly defined as land
under cultivation or population, but it augmented wealth and, more importantly,
happiness in other ways. Paine did retain some republican prejudices about
commerce. Land was ‘real riches’ in America partly only because the national
wealth of many other countries was built on trade and speculation, and thus their
‘funds’ were ‘in general, artificially constructed; the creatures of necessity and
contrivance dependent upon credit, and always exposed to hazard and uncertainty’.
There was considerable Harringtonian scepticism about the political instability of
movable wealth in this view, and Paine obviously did believe that land was a more
secure, and commerce a less certain, basis of national wealth. But commerce was far
from intrinsically useless and clearly added to the value of the produce it exchanged,
while Paine condemned the professions, and especially lawyers (for whom he had a
very Quakerish disdain) as frequently unprincipled parasites. As the Dissertations
on Government emphasized, it had always been ‘a maxim in politics, founded on,
and drawn from, natural causes and consequences, that the more foreign countries
which any nation can interest in the prosperity of its own, so much the better’. Trade
therefore created wealth even though it did not fashion physical objects or cultivate
food, and within Paine’s theory of society as a system of needs-satisfaction there was
no contradiction between ascribing some primacy to agriculture and zealously
promoting commerce. Smith in fact did the same; it was Ricardo who sought to make
Britain the workshop of the world, importing food from others. And although the
Prospects on the Rubicon argued that a profitable trade brought ‘real money’, or gold
and silver, into a country, Paine did in fact consider paper money (backed by metal)
to be capital. The Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance (1796)
condemned in particular Pitt’s issuing of paper money because no metallic security
existed, warning that severe currency depreciation would ensue, as had occurred in
America.27
Like Smith, Paine thus considered commerce and manufacturing as sources of
wealth, and was hardly ‘physiocratic’ despite his occasional terminological
imprecision. But by the 1790s Paine was not a ‘physiocrat’, a ‘mercantilist’, or a
‘disciple’ of Smith. His commercial liberalism instead requires different categories
of analysis, particularly the jurisprudential theory of needs. But what was distinctive
about Paine’s views in the 1790s went well beyond any natural law vision. Between
the American revolution and the Rights of Man his general sympathy for laissez-faire
did not diminish; he argued in relation to American fishing rights in 1779, for
example, that ‘wealth like water soon spreads over the surface, let the place of
entrance be ever so remote’. The Rights of Man again defended the natural laws of
trade and hoped reduced taxes would permit their operation. But Paine’s scheme for

98
 PAINE’S ACHIEVEMENT

state-enforced pensions, progressive taxation, universal education and assistance to

the poor involved a massive redistribution of wealth and restatement of rights wholly
alien to the Smithian as well as any jurisprudential vision. Any natural jurist could
agree with Paine that ‘Humanity dictates a provision for the poor’. But none had ever
verged upon his system of poor relief, or stated the right to charity in this manner.
Government now had a positive function which ‘society’ could not perform, which
was to alleviate the chief vice of society, the failure of the system of exchange to
support the population at all times.28 Paine’s was not a system of natural liberty, but
a system of liberty reinforced by newly reconstructed rights to maintenance
grounded in the first instance on the social contribution of all. Both republican
equality and jurisprudential duties were to be satisfied.
This shift, which was to be even more starkly stated in Agrarian Justice, was of
enormous importance both to Paine’s thought and to the development of rights
assumptions generally.29 By 1792 Paine began to conceive that even though poverty
in Britain and its absence in America could in great measure be accounted for by their
differing governments and tax burdens, poverty was to some degree, and particularly
in old countries, the natural result of commerce rather than of governmental
wickedness. Government was still a national association to secure rights and
promote ‘the greatest quantity of happiness with the least expense’.30 But for
advanced countries this did not mean little or no expenditure on the poor. Though his
focus was not on the rights of labourers per se, which would have required a more
Lockean property doctrine focusing on the creation of property by labour than he
expressed, Paine contributed to the radicalism of the 1790s a previously unexplored
concern for the social consequences of reform. This was a fundamental turning-point
in modern radicalism. In 1792 Paine united freedom of trade with a radical theory of
social justice and common rights where the poor retained the right to maintenance in
all periods of danger, not merely famine. Paine had extended, hardened and
institutionalized the duties towards the poor enjoined by the natural jurists and in so
doing transformed a soft or imperfect right (or one which could not be compelled) to
charity into a hard right to justice enforceable by government. This vision we today
identify not with ‘negative liberty’, but with the welfare state and social democracy,
where a regulated economic liberty supposedly predominates, and government
substantially mitigates poverty as well as providing some employment for the poor
beyond what the market allocates.
As with later visions of the welfare state, however, there were clear limits to
Paine’s republican egalitarianism. He did not foresee the complete abolition of
poverty. Defending the constitution of Pennsylvania in 1777 he pleaded for an
equality of rights which would ‘Let the rich man enjoy his riches, and the poor man

99
 THOMAS PAINE

comfort himself in his poverty’. Nearly twenty years later, in 1795, he still
maintained ‘That property will ever be unequal is certain. Industry, superiority of
talents, dexterity of management, extreme frugality, fortunate opportunities, or the
opposite, or the means of those things, will ever produce that effect’, urging that ‘All
that is required with respect to property is to obtain it honestly, and not employ it
criminally’. What was important, thus, was that property not be made ‘a pretense for
unequal or exclusive rights’ and poverty not become insufferable. But this was still
a very radical vision indeed.31
Nor was Paine’s new social programme more sympathetic to market regulation.
He was well aware of the dangers of hoarding, profiteering and the manipulation of
food prices in periods of scarcity. During the American revolution he strongly
condemned ‘monopolizers’ (amongst whom he included Silas Deane) as harming
the community more than anyone else, even justifying mob action against them. He
also warned that abolishing the Bank of North America would allow the market in
country produce to be ‘monopolized by a few monied men, who would command the
price as they pleased’ and who thus opposed the Bank ‘as standing in the way of their
private interest’. Consequently Paine never completely excluded regulation as a
temporary measure. At Paris in 1793 he advised Danton that fixing food prices, as
the labouring classes in Paris demanded, could be accomplished only by the
municipality, not the Convention. Citing his Philadelphia experiences, however, he
added pessimistically that regulating the price of salt and flour there had dried up the
market. If the Parisians refused to pay more than a certain price for food, thus, ‘as
they cannot compel the country people to bring provisions to market the
consequence will be directly contrary to their expectations, and they will find
dearness and famine instead of plenty and cheapness. They may force the price down
upon the stock in hand, but after that the market will be empty.’32
Paine thus shared certain assumptions about a ‘moral economy’ but not others.
The concept of a ‘moral economy’ refers primarily to natural law theories of the
social obligation to regulate property such that the poor neither starved nor were
grossly exploited, and the practice, legislative embodiment and popular awareness
of these ideals. The success of this scheme rested upon two assumptions: that in a
divinely-ordered world the rich owed the poor a minimal subsistence as a
consequence of God’s bequeathing the earth to all at the Creation, and that the
customary regulation of wages and prices ensured justice as well as social harmony.
Paine certainly agreed that the rich as stewards of God’s estate owed the poor a
subsistence, and recognized (as he wrote in 1791) ‘the moral obligation of providing
for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty’.33 For this reason Paine is wrongly

100
 PAINE’S ACHIEVEMENT

categorized as not having challenged ‘the property rights of the rich nor the doctrines
of laissez-faire’ because he apparently did not urge the taxation of mercantile capital
and profit. For his theory of obligation underlies the social programme of the Rights
of Man Part Two, as well, as we will see, as Agrarian Justice, and this was an
enormous barrier to the application of naked laissez-faire. But he did not favour any
normal regulation of the market, arguing instead that the poor deserved a minimum
standard of living, but otherwise assuming that the market could provide normally
for all, especially in new countries. Correspondingly the suggestion that Paine saw
in the economic world a system of natural harmony similar to a Newtonian
conception of the natural world is also of only limited value. That he felt there were
important analogies between the natural and commercial world is undoubted, and his
plea for governmental simplicity was probably indebted to a mechanical
philosophy.34 But government had to act continuously to ensure the correct balance
required by his social programme. This was artificial, not natural harmony.
Again we can see that these views were much closer to a natural law conception
of commercial relations than to any vulgar conception of laissez-faire. Natural law
writers did encourage freedom of trade and believed God had distributed raw
materials across the earth to foster human interdependence. But jurists like Vattel
(writing in 1758) urged the primacy of agriculture and the creation of public
granaries while still supporting free trade. And they strongly upheld the maintenance
of the customary standard of living of the poor through charity as well as, when
necessary, wage and price controls. Other writers – like Charles Davenant, Dudley
North and Henry Martyn – had of course earlier argued for freedom of commerce and
were themselves indebted to aspects of the natural law tradition. But Paine’s
principles are more clearly indebted to mainstream natural law writers than such
political economists, though even here he offered the poor a great deal more than the
jurists.35

Quakerism and the millennium

It has always been assumed that to an important degree religion underlay both
Paine’s sympathy for the poor and his concern with peace. But the impact of
Quakerism on Paine’s social programme and his vision of international harmony,
once thought powerful, is now given little prominence. Instead the ‘millenarian’
aspects of his social theory have recently aroused greater interest. None the less each
of these questions has a somewhat different bearing on Paine’s thought.36

101
 THOMAS PAINE

Paine’s affiliation with the Quakers was not of course theological. Though
Quakers were often confounded with deists because of their simple theology and
hostility to a professional priesthood, they had long attacked deism themselves, and
The Age of Reason, as we will see, left little room for Quaker theology. Neither here
nor elsewhere did Paine invoke the central Quaker doctrine of the divinely inspired
‘Inner Light’ as the source of individual religious guidance, though he clearly
preferred personal revelation to scriptural authority. Like Franklin, what Paine
instead admired were the social virtues and moral steadfastness of the Quakers, their
egalitarianism and opposition to war, their plain speech and simplicity (though not
their tendency to drabness), and their hostility to aristocracy and a formal clergy.37
But did these sympathies make Paine’s social theory distinctive? Moncure
Conway claimed that Paine’s ‘whole political system’ was ‘explicable only by his
theocratic Quakerism. His first essay, the plea for negro emancipation, was brought
from Thetford Meeting House. His “Common Sense”, a new-world scripture, is a
“testimony” against the proud who raised their paltry dignities against the divine
presence of the lowliest.’ We know, too, that Paine was impressed with Quaker
philanthropy in founding hospitals, libraries, temperance, abolitionist and other
organizations, and their willingness to extend charity into the wider ‘holy
community’. This accorded with his own aims, and a general debt to the Quakers can
certainly be conceded, especially with respect to abolitionism.38 Interpreting
Common Sense as a ‘testimony’ may none the less be pushing this affiliation too far
considering the distance of Paine’s language from most eighteenth-century Quaker
political writing. Paine’s conception of institutionalized governmental benevolence,
too, differed quantitatively as well as qualitatively from Quaker philanthropic
policy, for in the Rights of Man Part Two the private duty of charity gave way to the
notion of a just social reward and the just inheritance of God’s world.
More important to Paine were certain aspects of the Quaker attitude towards
government. Most Quakers believed that while God’s magistracy alone was just,
earthly rules were to be obeyed unless they violated the dictates of conscience.
William Penn and other Quaker founders were generally Whiggish in their
opposition to religious intolerance as well as other matters, but ‘quietism’ or political
non-involvement dominated late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British as
well as American Quakerism. By the early eighteenth century, however, the
Pennsylvania Quakers were divided into factions representing a more radical
‘country party’ and conservative city merchants. As we have seen, the latter attracted
Paine’s enmity for their loyalism and pacifism during the revolutionary war, for he
thought that Quaker principles should have led them to be the first to support

102
 PAINE’S ACHIEVEMENT

independence.39 But Paine none the less deeply admired many aspects of Quaker
anti-war principles without ever opposing self-defence. In Common Sense he
advised building an American navy and later aided French preparations for invading
England. But like his contemporaries, Kant and Rousseau, who also grappled with
the problem of attaining perpetual peace, Paine was deeply attracted by the Quakers’
well-known plans for a cosmopolitan and particularly European peace. The leading
late seventeenth-century Quaker writer on such topics was William Penn, with
whose principles Paine was certainly acquainted, and whose An Essay Towards the
Present and Future State of Europe (1693) urged the creation of a European
assembly to guard against the outbreak of war. This certainly influenced Paine’s own
proposals for peace in Europe.40
How far do such pacific ideals share ‘millenarian’ characteristics in the sense in
which the thought of Price and Priestley (both ministers) has been so described?41
Many seventeenth-century Quakers, among others, believed Christ would soon
return to judge mankind and punish the wicked, though such views were much less
in evidence a century later. But Paine even metaphorically avoided such appeals. He
did believe that ‘Providence’ intended peace and plenty. But this did not imply active
divine interference to introduce human perfection, only God’s good intentions.
Paine thus quite happily argued of the French revolution that ‘an overruling
Providence is regenerating the old world by the principles of the new’. But this
assumed neither social or individual perfectibility, which all forms of
millenarianism did. Instead Paine insisted that ‘we live not in a world of angels. The
reign of Satan is not ended; neither are we to expect to be defended by miracles’, and
elsewhere, referring to constitutions, noted that ‘I suppose nothing is perfect, nor
ever will [be]’, and that ‘no constitution could be established in which defects would
not appear in the course of time’. He did not deny human weaknesses, merely arguing
that ‘If all human nature be corrupt, it is needless to strengthen the corruption by
establishing a succession of kings’. Nor did he think that poverty would be abolished
completely, or that all conflict would cease. He did hope, as he put it in 1792, that it
was ‘by no means unlikely that … all the European systems of government will
experience a change, and that quarrels among nations will be terminated by pacific
methods and not by the ferocious horrors of war’. But practically he recommended
only that nations fix treaties of peace for a certain number of years to aid in discussing
grievances and preventing future wars.42 Unlike Price or Priestley, however, he did
not use theological language to describe such prospects. His vision was considerably
more secular and republican and less apocalyptic, perfectibilist and Utopian than
theirs, and consequently should not be termed ‘millenarian’.

103
 THOMAS PAINE

Paine’s language and appeal

Paine’s style was both novel and essential to his popular success. Critics found his
wit coarse and language vulgar, but these qualities attracted his readers. However, he
is often assumed to have paid a substantial intellectual price for this popularity by
simplifying complex doctrines in order to reach the working classes. But Paine did
not, as we have seen, merely ‘popularize’ ideas of natural rights, constitutionalism
or the social contract, since much of his social and political thought was his own
creation. Moreover, Paine’s aim was not only to write for a wide audience, but
actually to redefine his readers by pressing a more egalitarian republicanism upon
them. Paine’s goals were thus emancipatory as well as informative.
Paine sought to re-create his readers in several ways. First, he portrayed them as
equal in value as human beings to the landed aristocracy and gentry. ‘One honest
man’, we recall, he thought ‘worth all the crowned ruffians’ that ever existed. This
sense of defiant confidence, coupled with Paine’s disdain for established
institutions, helped to undermine the deference traditionally paid to the upper classes
by artisans and labourers as the price of ostensible paternal care by their betters. This
was the first, and in many ways the most important, step in the revolt against the
status quo. Typical of the growing distance between Crown and subject was the
comment by a group of London mechanics, upon the king’s creation of new peers in
1797 at a time of great scarcity of provisions, that ‘if his majesty had been invested
with a power of creating geese, or pigs, or calves, or oxen, it might, at that juncture,
have been much more beneficial to the community at large’. Paine’s role in fuelling
this growing contempt for authority contributed immensely to the emergence of new
forms of class consciousness, though these were expressed primarily in social and
political rather than economic terms. In part his appeal, correspondingly, was to the
poor, about whom he wrote that ‘we have nothing to fear from the poor; for we are
pleading their cause’. But elsewhere he stressed that he defended not only ‘the cause
of the poor, of the manufacturers, of the tradesmen, of the farmers, and of all those
on whom the real burden of taxes falls’, adding ‘but above all, I defend the cause of
humanity’.43
Direct assault upon the monarchy and aristocracy was also a vital part of Paine’s
strategy. Humour, sarcasm, exaggeration, paradox, punning and alliteration were
some of the principal weapons. The nobility were men of ‘no-ability’. Titles marked
‘a sort of foppery in the human character which degrades it’. The House of Lords was
an association for protecting stolen property. Satan was unforgettably referred to in
The Age of Reason as ‘his sooty highness’. Such descriptions not only struck home;

104
 PAINE’S ACHIEVEMENT

they were sharp and easily remembered. Paine’s imagery was also often strongly
visual, as when he described Point-No-Point, a shoreline in America which never
seemed to end, as similar to Burke’s Reflections. Apparent absurdities which made
his opponents seem laughable were also common. In the Rights of Man, for example,
Paine compared the English government with a wild beast on the grounds that since
Burke disagreed that government was founded on the rights of man, it must be based
on other rights. Since only men and beasts roamed the earth, Burke proved
government must be a beast.44
Paine also used his own authorial position dramatically, rarely retreating into
modesty and proclaiming his independence loudly and frequently. Considering the
defects of the British government, for example, he portrayed himself as a
compassionate man associating with the misfortunate poor: ‘In taking up this
subject, I seek no recompense – I fear no consequences … Fortified with that proud
integrity that disdains to triumph or to yield, I will advocate the Rights of Man.’
Elsewhere Paine insisted that despite humble beginnings he had ‘arrived at an
eminence in political literature, the most difficult of all lines to succeed and excel in,
which aristocracy, with all its aids, has not been able to reach or to rival’. Paine also
frequently portrayed his own motives as pure and unbiassed. In one of his best-
known lines, he announced that ‘Independence is my happiness, and I view things as
they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion
is to do good.’ Similarly he wrote that the Rights of Man was possessed of ‘a spirit of
greater benignity, and stronger inculcation of moral principles’ than any other
political work.45
Paine’s appeal to a moral code common to all humanity was also central to his
style. Often he juxtaposed some corrupt aspect of monarchy or aristocracy to what a
pure-hearted man would do or think. ‘To read the history of kings’, he put it at one
point, ‘a man would be almost inclined to think that government consisted in stag-
hunting, and that every nation paid a million a year to the huntsman’, concluding that
‘Man ought to have pride or shame enough to blush at being thus imposed upon, and
when he feels his proper character, he will’. Such injunctions struck home so well
because of Paine’s acute awareness of the servility ingrained into and deeply
resented by the common people, and correspondingly their widespread desire for
independence, which awaited a cathartic moment to erupt into political passion.
‘Upon all subjects of this nature’, he insisted of the average person, ‘there is often
passing in the mind a train of ideas he has not yet accustomed himself to encourage
and communicate. Restrained by something that puts on the character of prudence,
he acts the hypocrite upon himself as well as to others.’ Paine was extremely

105
 THOMAS PAINE

sensitive to the power of the printed word to counteract this reluctance, observing
that it was ‘curious to observe how soon this spell can be dissolved. A single
expression, boldly conceived and uttered, will sometimes put a whole company into
their proper feelings, and whole nations are acted upon in the same manner.’
Sincerity was thus vital both to Paine’s conception of the ideal personality and to his
literary style. Monarchy and aristocracy encouraged fawning dissimulation, while
republicanism instilled a noble equality of relations, where men saw one another
without ‘artifice’ rather than diffracted through the prismatic language of
‘vassalage’. To pass from one to the other, nations needed to be shaken to their
senses. To lend this shock was always Paine’s foremost aim, and both Common Sense
and the Rights of Man proved indeed capable of provoking extraordinary exercises
in mass therapy.46
Finally, Paine’s sense of the dramatic and apocalyptic also helped to lend his
writing a sense of urgency and of removal from cool drawing-rooms into crowded
market-places. The question of revolutionizing European governments, he wrote,
was more pressing than any other that had ever arisen. It was not ‘whether this or that
party shall be in or out, or Whig or Tory, or high or low shall prevail; but whether man
shall inherit his rights and universal civilization take place? Whether the fruits of his
labour shall be enjoyed by himself, or consumed by the profligacy of governments?
Whether robbery shall be banished from courts, and wretchedness from
countries?’47 Paine conveyed the sense that a new world was dawning, if only the
majority would awaken, throw off the chains of deference and claim the rights which
were universally theirs. And hundreds of thousands, as we will now see, were indeed
awakened.

Notes to Chapter 4: Paine’s achievement

1 A. Aldridge (1960), p. 150.

2 T. Howell (1817), Vol. 22, col. 427. Eric Foner repeats Paine’s disclaimer about changes
in the Rights of Man (1976, p. 87), while Aldridge confusingly claims that the latter is thus
not more ‘radical’ than Common Sense (1984, p. 18).
3 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, p. 406, Vol. 2, p. 78; G. Williams (1969), p. 15; [Paine] (1792), p. 9;
H. Yorke (1804), Vol. 2, p. 365; Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 16, 79, 91, 598, 652, 862, 869;
G. Vale (1841), p. 165. Paine once wrote that neither Locke nor his work was ‘ever
mentioned during the revolution that I know of. The case America was in was a new one
without any former example’ (Public Advertiser, no. 209, 5 September 1807, p. 2). The
best study of Paine’s literary references is C. Robbins (1983). See also H. Clark (1932),
Aldridge (1976b), R. Gummere (1965), P. Burnell (1972), pp. 296–304 and D. Wilson
(1988), pp. 43–8. Aldridge simply denies that Paine read much (1984, p. 109).

106
 PAINE’S ACHIEVEMENT

4 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, p. 296; [O. Hulme] (1771), p. 127; G. Williams (1969), p. 14; J. Locke
(1970), pp. 364–6; J. Osborne (1972), p. 32.
5 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 539, 1331, 608.
6 J. Locke (1970), pp. 365–6, 418; Public Advertiser, no. 209 (5 September 1807), p. 2. On
this article see A. Aldridge (1953). On the emergence of the ‘unmixed’ theory of
democracy in this period see C. Weston (1965), pp. 179–216.
7 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 54, 584, 598; [Paine] (1776), pp. 19–20; Pennsylvania Gazette,
no. 2938 (20 September 1786), p. 2; Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 521–34, 585–6.
8 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 409, 1001–2, 373, Vol. 1, p. 54, Vol. 2, pp. 293, 374; Pennsylvania
Gazette, no. 2938 (20 September 1786), p. 2; Paine (1969b), p. ix, C. Kenyon (1951); J.
Meng (1946).
9 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 332, 585, 692–3; G. Wood (1969), p. 488.
10 M. Roshwald (1959), p. 378. On rights in this period see also G. Cole (1950), J. Burns
(1971) and H. Dickinson (1976). Thomas Spence claimed to have first used the phrase
‘the rights of man’ in 1780, when, inspired by the independence of a hermit living in a
cave by the sea, he inscribed on the cave wall, ‘Ye Landlords vile, who man’s peace marr/
Come levy rents here if you can/Your stewards and lawyers I defy;/And live with all the
RIGHTS OF MAN’ (Place Papers, set 37, f. 167). He later entitled one of his songs ‘The
Rights of Man’ (1st edn, 1783) as well as one of his lectures.
11 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, p. 287.
12 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 274–5. A letter to Jefferson in 1789 refined these ideas further,
giving virtually the definitions of natural and civil rights offered in the Rights of Man
(1945, Vol. 2, pp. 1298–9). Paine also clearly believed that no government preserved all
natural rights, only those which were consistent with civil society. Any attempt to
preserve all would only involve what he once termed an ‘Indian Bill of Rights … fitted to
man in a state of nature without any government at all’ (1945, Vol. 2, p. 274).
13 O. Gierke (1957), p. 113; R. Fennessy (1963), pp. 169–70. Stanlis asserts that Paine
thought each retained the right ‘to judge in his own cause’ in civil society (1958, p. 147),
but Paine clearly argues that this was amended by a corresponding civil right (1945, Vol.
1, p. 276, Vol. 2, p. 274). On the correlativity of rights and duties see R. Tuck (1979), pp.
159–60.
14 J. Bentham (1838), Vol. 2, pp. 489–534 (here, p. 501).
15 P. Gay (1977), p. 18; J. Dinwiddy (1974b).
16 R. Fennessy (1963), pp. 72, 75, makes this error, and thus overly stresses Paine’s
‘individualism’ (pp. 23–8). D. Elder (1951), p. 81, is one of the few studies to touch even
briefly on Paine’s view of the law of nature. There is no adequate survey of eighteenth-
century Anglo-American natural law at all. General reference works include H. Rommen
(1949), P. Sigmund (1971) and A. d’Entrèves (1972). Also helpful are K. Haakonssen
(1981) and I. Hont (1987). On natural rights in particular see especially R. Tuck (1979)
for the seventeenth-century origins, then D. Raphael (1967) and I. Shapiro (1986). On
natural law contributions to the American revolutionary debate see B. Wright (1931), E.
Barker (1948) and L. Cohen (1978).
17 W. Blackstone (1941), p. 26; E. Barker (1948), p. 311; B. Willey (1957), pp. 14–18; K.
Haakonssen (1981).
18 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 17, 885.
19 E. Barker (1948); L. Cohen (1978).

107
 THOMAS PAINE

20 Thus it is ridiculous to suppose, with writers like Stanlis, that Paine sought to return to
something like natural society, or that by definition Paine’s adherence to natural rights
excluded him from adopting natural law doctrines too. Stanlis, for example, argues that
in Part Two, Paine thought that all government merely prevented ‘men from living
according to their original equality in a state of nature’ (1958, pp. 146–7). Too similar a
line of argument is also taken in P. Nursey-Bray (1968).
21 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, p. 197, Vol. 1, pp. 146, 358, 400. In 1779 Paine discussed America’s
right to fish its own waters as a ‘natural right’ because Britain and America lacked any
treaty and were therefore ‘in a state of nature, not being even within the law of nations’.
The anti-statist aspects of Paine’s emphasis upon society versus government have been
seen as an original contribution to political thought, antedating, for example, Herbert
Spencer (R. Adams, 1922, p. 116). There are also interesting comments in J. Keane
(1988), pp. 44–50.
22 Thomas Pownall, for example, argued that ‘Communion, or the social State, is the real
state of the nature of man: And … Government is a still further Progress of this System,
as it arises, by Ways and Means consistent with all the Rights and Liberties of Man, from
the Vigor of natural Principles’ (Pownall, 1752, pp. 38, 109).
23 E.g. J. Dorfman (1938), H. Collins, in Paine (1969a), p. 27. See E. Foner (1976), pp. 145–
82.
24 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 387, 355, Vol. 2, pp. 350, 358, 1348–9.
25 F. Garrison (1923); A. Aldridge (1960), pp. 121, 291, (1984), p. 52; see Paine (1945), Vol.
2, pp. 637, 1142.
26 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 283, 329–30, 402, 637–40, 1142, 383.
27 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 330, 283, 651–74, 685. Paine later claimed that the Decline and
Fall led to ‘so great a run upon the Bank of England’ that payments of specie for notes
were suspended.
28 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, p. 191, Vol. 1, p. 393. Foner tends to assume that both Paine and
Smith sought an egalitarian society of small producers, which places Smith too close to
Paine (1976, p. 156). Paine may have been influenced in his discussion of London
workhouses by Philadelphia debates (see E. Foner, 1976, p. 46, and G. Nash, 1976, pp.
17–18, who also argues that poverty became increasingly systematic in Philadelphia just
prior to the revolution). Foner also sees a stronger commitment to a self-regulating market
in the Rights of Man than I find (1976, p. 181).
29 See J. Burns (1971), p. 25 and D. Raphael (1967), pp. 62–3 on this point.
30 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 451, 536.
31 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 287, 580–1. A. Ayer (1988), p. 109, assumes that Paine sought
to abolish poverty entirely.
32 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 141, 289, 416, 424, 1,337.
33 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, p. 535. Paine also believed that ‘education is the right of everyone,
and society owes it to all its members equally’ (1945, Vol. 2, p. 560). On the application
of ‘moral economy’ to Paine’s thought see E. Foner (1976), pp. 145–82 and W. Christian
(1973a).
34 E. Thompson (1968), pp. 104–5; H. Clark (1933b), p. 136; P. Burnell (1972), p. 64.
35 E. Vattel (1916), pp. 37–8, 43. On free trade ideas in this period see I. Hont (1989).
36 This trend is already evident in H. Clark (1933a). Aldridge plays down the impact of
Quakerism on Paine (1984, p. 88).
37 E.g. Paine (1945), Vol. 2, p. 817. R. Falk (1938) argues for the deist view of Paine.

108
 PAINE’S ACHIEVEMENT

38 M. Conway (1892), Vol. 1, p. 231. See S. James (1963), pp. 128–0.

39 J. Naylor (1656), pp. 24–7; F. Tolles (1948), p. 15; R. Bauman (1971), pp. 159–83; Paine
(1945), Vol. 1, pp. 83, 94. On eighteenth-century Quakerism see F. Tolles (1960) and, for
Philadelphia in particular, Tolles (1948). On the influence of Paine’s criticisms see A.
Mekeel (1979), p. 139, and generally R. Falk (1939). A breakaway group of revolutionary
supporters called the ‘Free Quakers’ was formed in 1781 (R. Bauman, 1971, pp. 166–9).
On Quaker attitudes towards social services during the revolution see S. James (1963),
pp. 240–67. For a more extended discussion see my (1989), ch. 1.
40 For Paine’s view of defensive war see (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 52–60. On the origins of Quaker
anti-war beliefs see T. Jones (1972). For Paine’s criticism of ‘political Quakers’ see, e.g.,
Paine (1945), Vol. 1, p. 83. A good overview of Penn’s social theory is C. Robbins (1986).
Other Quakers also supported such plans for European peace. A friend and follower of
Penn’s, John Bellers, for example, urged the ending of war through conciliation in Some
Reasons for an European State (1711). Penn was no egalitarian, preferring a society of
ranks as well as limited monarchy. But he urged the abolition of primogeniture in
Pennsylvania and the limitation of landed estates to 1000 acres per family. These views
were clearly Harringtonian, and not far removed from the spirit of the Rights of Man (F.
Tolles, 1948, p. 114).
41 See J. Harrison (1979) and (1988), and J. Fruchtman (1984). For Price and Priestley see
Fruchtman (1981) and (1983), pp. 46–80.
42 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 539, 79, 276, 52, 532–3, 396. Fruchtman (1984) sees Paine as
adhering to a ‘secular millennialism’ which was merely less Christ-centred or prophetic
than Priestley’s. Harrison (1988) examines the overlapping of popular radicalism and
millenarianism, but does not see Paine as a millenarian. Bloch (1985) prefers ‘utopian
deism’ or ‘secular utopians’ (pp. 190–9), though she also associates Paine with
millenarianism. Foner links Paine too closely with perfectibilism (1976, p. 117).
43 Thoughts on National Insanity (1797), pp. 27–8; Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 537, 632. On
Paine’s style see J. Boulton (1963), pp. 134–50 and E. Hinz (1972). The best account of
Paine’s rhetoric is D. Wilson (1988), pp. 20–9, which plays down claims for its
uniqueness. This tends, however, to ignore the Quaker context of Paine’s search for
‘plainness’ of prose and speech. A good study of Paine’s metaphors is J. Betka (1975).
44 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 310, 286, 509, Vol. 2, p. 582, 258, 385.
45 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 405–6, 413–14.
46 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 421, 296.
47 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, p. 404.

109
 5
A great awakening:
the birth of the
revolutionary party

I consider a King in England as something which the military keep to cheat with, in the
same manner that wooden gods and conjuror’s wands were kept in time of idolatry and
superstition; and in proportion as knowledge is circulated throughout a country, and the
minds of the people become cleared of ignorance and rubbish, they will find themselves
restless and uneasy under any government so established. This is exactly the case with the
people of England. They are not sufficiently ignorant to be governed superstitiously, nor
yet wise enough to be governed rationally, so that being complete in neither, and equally
defective in both, are for ever discontented and hard to be governed at all. They live in a
useless twilight of political knowledge and ignorance, in which they have dawn enough to
discover the darkness by, and liberty enough to feel they are not free; constantly
slumbering, without an ability to sleep, without an inclination to rise. (1778)

‘Tis a noble! ‘tis a virtuous! ‘tis a Godlike and an immortal cause in which we are now
mutually embarked. (the Bristol Society for Constitutional Information, 1792).1

‘The whiskey of infidelity and treason’: the Rights of Man and popular
politics

In the history of political thought the way in which books are read is often as
important a part of their composite social ‘meaning’ as what their authors intended.
However we identify the intellectual debts of particular concepts, or reconstruct the
internal relations between portions of texts, or boldly illuminate thoughts by
deducing intentionality, a contextual assessment of ‘meaning’ demands an analysis
of the reception of ideas. This is nowhere more true, moreover, than in popular
political thought. For here, much more than for more dispassionate or chiefly
analytical treatises on first principles, what constitutes ‘reading’ is determined less

110
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

by the structure of ideas than their ability to seize the gist of a particular moment, and
to give voice to the inchoate but deeply felt longings of the many. No political tract
has ever been published which was more successful in this regard over a similar
period of time than the Rights of Man. In this and the following chapter, thus, we will
consider what Paine’s ideas meant to both his followers and their opponents, and
how the revolution debate came to be defined by the contest between them.
One of Paine’s central aims in the Rights of Man was indeed the creation of a
popular political movement. Circulating many such works, he correctly surmised in
a letter to the leading Manchester radical Thomas Walker, would ‘embarrass the
Court gentry more than anything else, because it is a ground they are not used to’. It
would be wrong, of course, to ascribe the growth of the radical movement of the
1790s to Paine alone. As the prominent London political lecturer and writer John
Thelwall pointed out, ‘even the popular language of Thomas Paine would not have
provoked any very alarming discussion, if the general condition of mankind had not
pre-disposed them to exclaim – We are wretched! Let us enquire the cause!’ But the
success of his writings surpassed Paine’s wildest expectations and was in fact
unparalleled in the history of the printed word. The book ‘seemed to electrify the
nation’, one radical later recalled.2 ‘Hey for the New Jerusalem! The millennium!
And peace and eternal beatitude be unto the soul of Thomas Paine’, blurted one
social critic, Thomas Holcroft, to another, William Godwin, on its appearance. No
work, echoed Paine’s friend Joel Barlow, ‘that will be written for ages to come, will
surely find a reader who will not have read the Rights of Man’. In one London tavern
a tailor announced that ‘Tom Paine … was a second Jesus Christ’ and ‘the only Man
to save this Country and the Whole World’, while a pamphlet termed him ‘a God’
compared to princes, bishops, judges and peers. Spies in pubs – much government-
subsidized ale was consumed in the name of intelligence-gathering – reported toasts
like ‘Destruction to the King and Parliament and Success to Tom Paine’ and Tom
Paine’s health and success to his proceedings and damn those that are not Tom
Paine’s’. Soon their children also took up the cry, or at least something like it; at
Birmingham in late 1792 some were heard to shout, rather confusedly, ‘God save the
King and Huzza, Tom Paine for ever’ while others mimicked, no more consistently,
‘No Presbyterians and Tom Paine for ever’ (but so did adult loyalists, as we will
see).3
Sales of the Rights of Man astounded radicals and conservatives alike and cheap
editions fuelled demand even more. One printer described by a jealous rival as an
‘Adventurer’ was alone responsible for producing some 10–12,000 copies per week
of the Rights of Man and sending ‘bales of hundreds of thousands’ to Ireland.

111
 THOMAS PAINE

Entrepreneurs also undertook to sell Paine on their own; two such men ‘with large
wallets at their backs’ were reported to be hawking cheap editions of the Rights of
Man in villages in the east in late 1792 (though loyalists claimed that some did not
know what they were selling), while a Chatham bookseller boasted of selling 1,000
copies. The more philanthropic did not even sell the tract; one person bought 3,000
copies of Part One for free distribution. Part Two went through five editions in a
single month and sold at least 10,000 copies a week for a time. Many went for 6d, but
at least 30,000 copies were sold by political clubs at a groat (4d) each, or about a ninth
of a skilled labourer’s daily wage. A sympathetic 1792 account calculated that 40–
50,000 copies of the first part and as many of the second had been bought, while a
1793 pamphlet claimed sales of ‘no less than 130,000 copies’.4 Sherwin thought
100,000 copies of each part of the Rights of Man had circulated. But other accounts
figure as many were bought between 1791–3 alone and Paine himself thought that
‘between four and five hundred thousand’ had been sold by 1802. Since Britain had
10 million inhabitants at this time, a modern comparison would require sales of 12
million copies in the USA today. And for every copy circulated, many readers might
be found; a Perth cabinet-maker, for example, lent his copy to twelve friends,
claiming that he could not ‘do a greater service to my country than by making such
principles known’.5 Many who did not read the book itself, moreover, doubtless saw
some of the 600 titles6 generated in the ensuing debate, read excerpts from them in
the popular press, or heard them in the form of lectures and sermons.
Most of this enthusiasm was confined to Britain. But in the United States the
Rights of Man still required nineteen editions between 1791–3 (to Burke’s two) to
satisfy demand and rendered public opinion more favourable to France, even among
the clergy. Initially both Federalists and anti-Federalists collaborated in issuing a
complete edition of Paine’s works. Radicals in particular read Paine’s new work
‘with avidity and pleasure’, as Jefferson, now Secretary of State, put it, commending
the work highly to its first American printer to aid in the fight against Adams, Jay,
Hamilton and other Tory’ anti-Gallicans. These compliments were advertised on the
title page of a new edition. In reply a series of letters signed ‘Publicola’ (often
ascribed to John Quincy Adams) lambasted Jefferson and Paine as well as the new
French constitution, but without complimenting Burke. ‘Publicola’ denied that
England lacked a constitution and that sovereignty rested outside any representative
body except when real oppression was present, which he implied was not the case in
Britain. Widely attacked, these letters began a new controversy over political
principles in the United States. But by 1793, and especially after the execution of
Louis, the Federalists, also fearing popular licentiousness at home, increasingly used

112
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

the Rights of Man to deride the revolution. France’s belligerency towards American
shipping during the war with Britain together with clerical fears of deism and
accusations of the French subversion of American institutions fuelled popular
reaction. In 1798 public opinion turned sharply against France, and the Alien and
Sedition Acts were passed to suppress the republican opposition. With Jefferson’s
victory in 1800, however, republican sympathies were again triumphant.7
In Britain the Rights of Man appeared to many as a political revelation. Millions
who had never played any formal role in politics were now jolted to political
consciousness by Paine’s insistence that as human beings, rather than as members of
a social rank, nation or historical epoch, they had rights which could not be
abrogated, including representation and the choice of the best form of government
for the nation. As the philosopher David Hartley put it, politics were no longer
understood as ‘limited merely to the arrangement of a balance of powers between the
various members of any community, as in a state of contentious society: the doctrine
of free compact, founded on the Rights of Man, is now claimed by mankind in a mass,
as their indefeasible right’. This appeal to those who (as the Attorney General put it)
could not ‘from their education or situation in life, be supposed to understand the
subject on which he writes’, was precisely the argument used to prosecute Paine. But
this was what he wanted, and to multitudes the Rights of Man was virtually cathartic;
as a Sheffield radical put it, the book ‘astonishes, while it instructs’. For thousands it
inspired an intellectual as well as emotional break which is difficult for us to
comprehend. That the common man and woman felt themselves already to be in
possession of ‘rights’ is undoubted. But these were broadly perceived to be limited
by custom, tradition and national boundaries. For the disenfranchised to demand the
‘Rights of Man’ (in print the words were often capitalized or in bold type) was to
proclaim a new identity defined by the common right to happiness, political freedom
and participation, and to transform the resentment of grievances into a sense of
systematic oppression. As a Sheffield radical wrote, ‘our views of the Rights of Man
are not confined solely to this small island but are extended to the whole human race
black or white high or low’. For hundreds of thousands Paine thus illuminated a
passage to independence and adulthood after what seemed an eternity of
subservience. No work had so challenged the bonds of deference and hierarchy
which were the sinews of an aristocratic, agricultural and Anglican nation. The
erosion of servility was everywhere; one radical wrote to a loyalist society that ‘Men
and Angels sing the Eternal immortal Praises’ of the Rights of Man, and signed
himself, ‘Not your humble Servant, but the Contrary’, which was Paine’s concluding
line in his Letter Addressed to the Addressers.8

113
 THOMAS PAINE

This process was only partially understood as ‘political’. Many of Paine’s readers
were probably ill acquainted with the intricacies of politics and were in any case
contemptuous of existing parties. The names of Pittite and Foxite, with those other
blandishments, with which interest has contrived to catch the eyes and seduce the
attention of the unthinking and the vulgar, are regarded by them as the rattles of
childhood’, one account put it; ‘They aspire to a nobler character; and, instead of
consigning their understandings to the custody of others, are determined to take the
trouble of thinking for themselves.’ Some Painites recalled the Wilkes agitation of
the 1760s and many connected Paine’s ideas to other issues: anti-slavery, local
government reform, food prices, religious toleration. But their sense of higher moral
mission, common enterprise and fellowship, and the consciousness of international
mission which reached from America to France, were unlike anything seen since the
seventeenth-century civil war. For the first time terms like ‘citizen’ and even
‘comrade’ were used in a fraternal language of respectful address, beginning a
radical tradition unbroken to the present day. Old titles of deference were to be
abolished in the new republican spirit. And this was true even in democratic
America, where radicals praised the fact that in France ‘instead of the ridiculous
epithets of Sir, Mr., Esquire, Worshipful, Reverend … which are all contrary to the
principles of a republican government and despicable to every citizen who thinks for
himself, we find the social and soul-warming term Citizen applied even to the first
servant of that sublime nation’.9
Both Paine’s reputation and this sense of solidarity were directly linked to the
unprecedented growth of popular political organizations, particularly during the
peak of the Painite movement, mid–1792 to spring 1793.10 Many of these
associations reprinted cheap editions or synopses of the Rights of Man. The Leicester
Constitutional Society, for example, produced 10,000 copies of an ‘Abstract of the
Rights of Man’ in late 1792 for distribution to troops and the populace on market day
and ensured that every private in the Blues, quartered in the town, was presented with
a copy. (Much the same occurred at Dorchester.) In London the Society for
Constitutional Information (SCI) praised Paine’s ‘irresistibly convincing’ book,
ordered 12,000 copies of the Letter to Mr. Secretary Dundas in mid-1792 and sent
out nearly 9,000 copies of various of Paine’s other works to local distributors.11
Paine reciprocated such sentiments by offering the very considerable profits (some
£1,000 by mid-1792) of the Rights of Man Part Two to the SCI on the sixteenth
anniversary of American independence, 4 July 1792; the Society refused, saying he
deserved some reward himself. The Sheffield SCI reprinted the Rights of Man at 6d
a copy and offered special thanks to Paine for ‘the affectionate concern he has shown

114
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

in his second work in behalf of the Poor, the Infant, and the Aged’.12 At Ipswich a
dozen clubs each elected a reader who explained ‘Paine’s pamphlet to those ignorant
People who can neither read nor write’. At Hatfield, Yorkshire, a club of a hundred
led by a grocer and a dyer had the Rights of Man read to them. Everywhere it seemed
that a single book might revolutionize an entire society. Some Norwich radicals thus
prophesied that ‘Mr. Paine’s books were to be the medium, through which the
prejudices that had grown up under the British constitution were to be got rid of’,
while other associations hoped ‘that in consequence of the effect of this work a
complete reform in the present inadequate state of the representation of the people
will be accomplished; and that the other great plans of public benefit which Mr. Paine
has so powerfully recommended will speedily be carried into effect’.13
The most important new political association was the London Corresponding
Society (LCS), which, as a later Painite put it, ‘first demonstrated that the people
could act for themselves – that they did not want the assistance of great men, or
popular leaders’. The first working-class or ‘popular Radical’ organization (in E. P.
Thompson’s words), the LCS was founded in January 1792 with some assistance
from Paine himself and organized into divisions of about thirty members each
paying a penny subscription weekly. Delegates from each division met weekly in a
General Committee and could be recalled at any time.14 In their meetings a spirit of
equality predominated and efforts to restrict membership were never taken seriously.
To the contrary, the society actively resisted attempts at ‘leadership’ of any type other
than directly elected and some adherents boasted that it had ‘no leaders and no
parties’ whatsoever. According to the tailor Francis Place, who knew the society
well, its most prominent members were republicans as a consequence of reading
Paine, though one prudently denied in 1795 that the LCS circulated the Rights of Man
on an official basis.15 The rank and file were artisans, principally shoemakers, tailors
and weavers, and tradesmen. Though their goals were also economic – there were a
number of strikes in 1791–2 – their chief aim was political organization and
education. But such goals could assume many guises, including the threat of
imitating France. One LCS branch, for example, circulated an inflammatory
handbill advertising a never-performed farce ‘for the benefit of John Bull’ entitled
‘Le Guillotine or George’s Head in a Basket’, whose leading character was ‘Numpy
the Third’, played by ‘Mr Gwelp’, which invoked Paine’s name for George III (and
the LCS was later accused of harbouring such plans on the basis of this farce).
Another LCS member entertained his comrades with ‘Magic Lanthorn’ slides of the
Bastille and Louis losing his head, and it was said he carried some unpainted slides
which ‘were to have on them figures of people in this country whenever the guillotine

115
 THOMAS PAINE

was introduced’. Another comrade, a carpenter, made a small wooden model of the
offending instrument to show the curious how heads of state fell in France.16
The most important provincial radical organizations were the local Societies for
Constitutional Information or ‘Constitutional Societies’. ‘In some parts of England
whole towns are reformers’, claimed the London radical Maurice Margarot.
Sheffield ‘and its environs’, he thought, counted some 50,000 of the tribe, adding
that altogether some ‘six or seven hundred thousand males, which is a majority of all
the adults in the kingdom’ (and no doubt an exaggeration) favoured reform. Local
associations typically began spontaneously with a few members. At Sheffield, for
example, which boasted many literate artisans and tradesmen, the Constitutional
Society commenced in late 1791 when ‘five or six mechanics’, meeting at one of
their houses, began

conversing about the enormous high price of provisions; the gross abuses this nation
labours under from the unbounded authority of Monopolizers of all ranks, from the KING
to the PEASANT; the waste and lavish of the public property by placemen, pensioners,
luxury, and debauchery, sources of the grievous burdens under which the nation groans;
together with the mock representation of the people.

Soon reprinting an edition of 1,600 copies of the Rights of Man for sale at 6d, the
society claimed that it had ‘derived more true knowledge from … Mr Thomas Paine
… than from any other author on the subject’. It had 2,000 members within four
months, and six months later could amass demonstrations of 5,000 to 6,000. Its
petition to Parliament for reform, thrown out as insolent, had some 10,000
signatures.17 Another provincial hotbed was Norwich, ‘the jacobin city’, and its
surrounding villages. Long a Dissenting stronghold, it was by mid-1792 home to
some forty clubs of weavers, shoemakers, manufacturers and shopkeepers
combined as the 2,000-strong United Constitutional Societies. Here, on 14 July
1791, the Rights of Man was quoted freely against Burke by a Norfolk farmer
speaking from the pulpit of St Paul’s chapel, immediately provoking the formation
of a loyalist society.18 Manchester was also extremely active under the leadership of
the boroughreeve Thomas Walker’s Constitutional Society, where Paine’s works
and others were read aloud and weavers, merchants and manufacturers were Paine’s
chief adherents (and middle-class involvement in the movement was strong
throughout this period). At Birmingham a Society for Constitutional Information
was founded in November 1792 and amassed 2,700 signatures for its petition for
parliamentary reform in 1793. In the Potteries many journeymen potters read Paine’s

116
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

works, while in the mining districts of the south-west, it was claimed, they were
smuggled on the backs of mules and dropped surreptitiously into the pits.19 In many
towns liberals congregated around a newspaper like Benjamin Flower’s Cambridge
Intelligencer. In small villages one or two local craftsmen, often shoemakers, shared
radical sentiments and ventured to correspond with a provincial society.
Scotland was also extremely active in the radical cause. Sales of the Rights of Man
were greater there, many thought, because the lower classes were better educated. Its
principles penetrated deeply and were often repeated directly: one radical handbill
stated that the nation was the source of sovereignty, the right of altering government
lay with the people rather than government, and that government was only a national
association acting on the principles of society. By the autumn of 1792 ‘Paine’s
pamphlet, or the cream and substance of it’ was ‘in the hands of almost every
countryman’ and societies were ‘everywhere formed, and clubs instituted for the
sole purpose of political debate’. There were 1,200, led by merchants, active at Perth,
6,000 at Stirling and (some claimed) at least 50,000 in the west country, of whom
seven-eighths were tradesmen. Everywhere they read the Rights of Man, sent
privately from Edinburgh, it was alleged, and often distributed for free. At
Edinburgh prominent dignitaries like Professor Dugald Stewart welcomed the
revolution, joined by students, lawyers, booksellers and merchants. Twenty
branches of the Friends of the People represented radical opinion by early 1793;
scarcely one met after the treason trials later that year, which also dispersed activities
at Dundee, Perth, Stirling and Glasgow, where Professor John Millar led local
enthusiasts. Many small towns also possessed plebeian organizations. In the village
of Partick in Lanarkshire, for example, radicals indignant ‘at the honour of their town
having been stained, by the erection of a Burkified society’ of loyalists, and ‘having
attentively perused the whole works of the immortal author of the Rights of Man,
Thomas Paine’, formed in November 1792 an association named ‘the Sons of
Liberty, and the Friends of Man’. If Paine’s principles were adopted everywhere,
they hoped, ‘tyrants and their satellites would vanish like the morning mist before
the rising sun’.20 At this time the Home Secretary, ‘the villan [sic] Dundas’, was at
least once burned in effigy by a crowd of masons and labourers. ‘Liberty trees’, often
laurel branches with gilded leaves and sometimes decorated with candles and apples
or signs reading ‘liberty and equality’, were also erected in many towns and villages.
Much of the considerable popular unrest in Scotland throughout 1792 was officially
blamed on the influence of Paine’s writings. But clearly other causes were at work,
since protests were also against enclosures, the ejection of tenants to introduce
sheep-farming, high tolls and taxes, the poor harvest that year, and burgh and
agricultural reform. Here, as elsewhere, old liberties and new rights joined hands.21

117
 THOMAS PAINE

Less is known about the radical movement in other parts of the country. A Welsh
translation of the Rights of Man closely printed on brown paper was distributed for
free shortly before Christmas 1792. In Ireland the Dublin Whig Club appointed a
committee to decide the best means of disseminating Paine’s works, but popular
appeal rendered such efforts scarcely necessary. By one account some 20,000 copies
of the Rights of Man circulated in the city, while Paine himself thought that over
40,000 of Part One had been sold throughout Ireland by November 1791.22 Artisans
were its favoured buyers. At the treason trial of one the gift of a print of Paine was
entered as incriminating evidence; at another, at Dublin in 1795, Paine’s doctrines
were declared to be ‘the whiskey of infidelity and treason’, which was no mere turn
of phrase, since Paine’s name was a favourite in radical drinking songs. But Paine’s
heady doctrines intoxicated other ranks as well. A militia captain was tried for
sedition for handing the book to a lieutenant of another regiment with the words,
‘read this, it is my creed.’ At Wexford, where a short-lived republic blossomed in
1798, Paine’s ideas were debated in the streets. The United Irishmen, formed in
October 1790 to establish equal rights and parliamentary reform, had contacts with
many English organizations as well as with France and were doubtless chiefly
responsible for extending Paine’s reputation in Ireland. Though it has been claimed
that most of them did not follow Paine into republicanism and remained closer to
True Whiggism, their plans (revealed under interrogation) ‘to form a Republic,
independent from England or France; to form a constitution upon the French model’
seemingly belies such a view.23
The strength of the new movement is everywhere difficult to calculate. The LCS
began with some seventy members in April 1792, and by the autumn was enrolling
300 or 400 new members weekly. Meetings commonly attracted many more
listeners than members; one division had 112 paying members, but occasionally 700
in attendance. In December 1792 the LCS had perhaps 13,000 members and
mustered as many as 150,000 onlookers at some meetings (out of a London
population of one million!). Sheffield had another 10,000 and Norwich 2–3,000. The
LCS also had connections with (its enemies claimed it was ‘actually directing’)
organizations in Manchester, Bristol, Coventry, Nottingham, Derby and Belper in
Derbyshire, Leicester, Cambridge, Royston, Hertford, Norwich, Nottingham,
Birmingham, Stockport, Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield,
Wakefield, Newcastle upon Tyne, York, Hereford, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leith,
Perth, Stirling, Paisley and other parts of Scotland. One source in April 1792
calculated that the political societies together comprised over 40,000 members.24
Following a period of decline, the LCS again enjoyed an increase in membership
after one of its organizers, the shoemaker Thomas Hardy, was acquitted of high

118
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

treason in late 1794 (having frequently referred to the Rights of Man at his trial). By
late 1795 it had 2,000 actually meeting and in 1796 about 1,500 paid-up members.25
The government found such numbers and activities threatening for several
reasons. By the end of 1792 radical organizations seemed to be growing very rapidly
and, moreover, moving ever closer in spirit to events in France. French military
victories became the occasion for local celebrations. Sheffield, for example,
celebrated the French victory at Valmy in 1792 by 5,000 cutlers carrying pictures
portraying Burke astride a pig, the Home Secretary as half-man, half-ass, and an
Angel of Peace ministering the Rights of Man to suffering Britannia. Fraternal
addresses and delegations were also sent to the Convention in Paris. Small wonder,
then, that the government began to consider revolution as a real possibility if food
prices continued to rise and popular unrest and political organizations proceeded
apace. Political polarization increased greatly throughout 1792 and by mid-1793
Britons had begun to divide into what Paine saw as three groups: the ‘Revolutionary
party’, the ‘government party’, and an ‘intermedial party’ anxious to end the war
primarily on the grounds of its expense.26
To the government the radicals were most threatening when they met as a national
‘convention’, for here they seemed most aware of, and capable of implementing,
Paine’s theory of sovereignty. A convention was necessary because most people had
played no role in electing the present parliament, argued the radical editor Sampson
Perry. Reform would come from neither King nor Parliament, but ‘by a convention
of ourselves and our Societies’, asserted another Painite. Preceded by earlier
Scottish meetings of Societies of the Friends of the People, the main ‘British
Convention’ occurred in late 1793 when some forty associations from London,
Sheffield and parts of Scotland sent 153 delegates to Edinburgh. French terms were
used and delegates graced one another with the title of ‘Citizen’. The government
reacted quickly. Though no force was threatened (there is evidence it was expected),
several leaders were arrested at the end of the sittings and sentenced to fourteen
years’ transportation. In 1794 LCS members none the less pressed for a further
convention, rejecting efforts by the SCI to confine their ambitions to a mere
‘meeting’. For the language of the former organization was necessary and its import
inescapably clear: it was society attempting to reconstitute government.27
Paine’s presence loomed large over such proceedings long after he had left for
France and his principles were celebrated in many other ways. Songs with titles like
‘The Triumph of Reason’ echoed through radical taverns. Tokens and vases bore
Paine’s visage or quotes from his works. Slogans adorned walls and placards; for
many months a sign hung at the Surrey end of Westminster bridge saying ‘Rubbish
may be shot by the direction of Thomas Paine’ (a Lord of the Bedchamber finally

119
 THOMAS PAINE

ordered it removed in 1794). Such evidence leaves little doubt of the centrality of
Paine’s writings to the new political movement. At a dinner marking the anniversary
of the LCS in 1795, Paine was the only author honoured with a toast, though after his
trial his name was less frequently invoked so openly. None the less the widespread
public identification of Paine with the LCS and similar organizations is uncontested.
When the publisher Charles Pigott was arrested, thrown into a cell and denied a
candle, fire, bed, or chair, his vain protests were answered with the charge ‘that we
were TOM PAINE’s Men, and rebels’. In his widely circulated Pigott’s Political
Dictionary, too, a ‘Painite’ was defined as ‘every individual who will not sign his test
in Mr. Reeves’ [loyalist] Association, will not condescend to kiss the ministerial rod,
held out to punish him, or agree to arm for the sake of a constitution senilely adulized,
and pompously extolled’.28

How Paine was read

Paine’s popularity was doubtless aided by Burke’s attack on the revolution. The
labouring classes, many felt, deeply resented ‘their unworthy abuse by Mr. Burke’,
and ‘in their rage, against their detractor … adopted notions which had never
obtained access to their minds before’. Burke’s barbs were hurled back at him and
his language of declamation became an important ingredient in the new self-
identification of the radicals. Thousands took pride in calling themselves members
of ‘the swinish multitude’ and Burke’s phrase spawned a host of porcine terms, with
the most important radical publisher, Daniel Isaac Eaton, for example, naming
characters in his dialogues ‘Gregory Grunter’ and ‘Porculus’. The ensuing
controversy thus drove apart and rigidified the views of both contending parties,
making it difficult not to take sides.29
But most of Paine’s partisans did not read Burke but instead reacted directly to the
Rights of Man. This reading of the text, usually in the small, densely printed cheap
edition (it must have weakened many eyes by the fireside), was nothing short of
cathartic. Its effect was to create a new political consciousness and the feeling that,
as a Scot put it, ‘Politics is no longer a Mysterious System but Common Sence (sic)’.
This new collective consciousness verged upon being a sense of class identity, but
was not based upon narrow economic criteria and obviously cannot be termed
‘proletarian’ in the nineteenth-century industrial sense. Class and political identity
could overlap, for example, at Birmingham in late 1792, when a number of radicals
threatened to establish ‘a Rights of Man club … which was to consist of the lower

120
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

classes of people only … No gentleman to be admitted’, so that they could ‘instruct

the people in Paine’s Principles’. Yet such manifestations of collective identity were
broadly derived from a feeling of political exclusion, of shared working, living and
cultural conditions, of oppression by the wealthy and of the basic equality of
humankind.30
How Paine contributed to this new sense of identity can be partly ascertained by
examining what parts of the Rights of Man were stressed by readers. One recent
analysis of the Painite movement in several towns has concluded that Paine’s most
popular arguments concerned the rights of the living against government by
precedent, the doctrine that nations were the only source of sovereignty, the defence
of equal natural rights, his attacks upon placemen, pensioners, the aristocracy and
higher clergy, and his hope for universal religious toleration. His republicanism was
less appealing as was, apparently, any reference to ‘levelling’ (which Paine hardly
made in any case). There are many difficulties, however, in isolating Paine’s precise
contribution to popular debate. By 1793 his language and arguments had become so
pervasive that when Paine was not explicitly cited, evidence of his inspiration is
elusive. When the radical United Scotsmen, for example, resolved that mankind
were naturally friends, and became enemies only because of corrupt governments,
was this principally a Christian homily or a Painite principle? (It was probably more
the latter.) What can we assert of Paine’s influence in the shift in popular slogans
noted by R. B. Rose for Birmingham, for example, where the more vocal in 1790–3
shouted ‘Church and King’, ‘Damn the Jacobins’ and ‘War and Pitt’, and in 1800 ‘No
war’, ‘Damn Pitt’ and ‘Large loaves, peace, no taxes, no tithes, free constitution’.
Certain themes from the Rights of Man do, however, recur more frequently in the
popular press and reports of meetings and speeches. Paine’s distinction between the
benevolence of society and maleficence of government was widely applauded.31 His
notion that ‘we have no constitution’ was toasted at a Birmingham public house and
elsewhere (but also rejected by some radicals). His views on commerce were given
extensive circulation. His scheme for progressive taxation also received much
praise; for example, from John Thelwall. No doubt the economic calculations of the
Rights of Man Part Two also impressed many of Paine’s readers. At Birmingham, for
example, a group of workmen were said to have been drawn to ‘the very powerful
argument … that they shall have ale at 2d a quart’, and had indeed gone ‘so far in their
calculations as to fix that a Man with 3 children will have £50 a year’. The
supposition that such views were common, we will see, proved extremely important
in the ensuing debate. But otherwise Paine’s ‘social chapter’ was not in fact
extensively discussed, at least in print.32

121
 THOMAS PAINE

Of Paine’s political principles, his proposals for adopting an American political

model were especially widely praised. Much was made at the Edinburgh convention,
for example, of the advantages of American government, though some thought only
the suffrage in Pennsylvania and Vermont wide enough.33 Many felt, as Henry
Redhead Yorke stressed in 1794, that America proved a society could flourish
without kings, bishops and a nobility. To Charles Pigott, America showed that good
government was possible for a tenth or twentieth of what a monarchy cost, and that
with ‘scarce such a thing known as corruption of rulers’. While Whiggish reformers
held such republicanism repugnant, the more plebeian seem to have supported it,
though their sentiments were more evident in the taverns and the street and on walls
than in print. At his trial for sedition, the London radical John Frost admitted to
having responded to a question, in the Percy coffee-house, London, as to what he
meant by ‘equality’, ‘Why, I mean no king.’ But other reformers may have agreed
with a Norwich radical that The jacobins acknowledge kingship, but abominate
monarchy. By king, they mean a chief magistrate who rules by law. By monarch, one
who is above the law, and rules by his own absolute authority.’ Such radicals even
suspected the concentration of power in the hands of the American President and
welcomed Washington’s resignation, despite their admiration for his talents,
because of the dangers of ‘long-continued power’. The American achievement also
implied a distinctively modern notion of democracy which superseded classical
ideals. ‘Democracy’ in Athens, after all, had included more slaves – their presence
in America was less often touched upon – than freemen, while the ancient republics
had been confined to city-states. Joel Barlow thought Rousseau and others had failed
to see that not only was a republic the ‘only proper and safe’ form of government, but
‘its propriety and safety’ were ‘in proportion to the magnitude of the society and the
extent of the territory’. Classical republicanism was thus inverted and modern
republicanism legitimated by claiming that their aims could be met only in
substantial nations. This was the message of the American revolution. Linked to this
sense of the novelty of the ‘representative republic’, too, was a new concept of
revolution which no longer meant returning to an originally uncorrupted foundation.
Barlow, for one, insisted in 1792 that ‘the change of government in France is,
properly speaking, a renovation of society’ by which government had been
organized ‘on principles approved by reason’.34
Besides republicanism, Paine’s emphasis on rights was enormously important to
the reception of the Rights of Man. Ideas of rights were now brought far more sharply
into focus and invested with a substantially new meaning. Rights now became the
moral and political centre of gravity of most radical tracts, and were no longer seen

122
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

as a privilege to be begged from government, but (as Gilbert Vale later put it) as ‘a
power which could only be exercised by the nation itself’. ‘The natural Rights of
Man; rights essential and imprescriptable, because they constitute our very species:
Rights undoubtedly inalienable, because no species can cease to be itself, or what it
is, without ceasing to exist’ was how Sampson Perry defined his political creed.
Rights were now widely construed in an anthropological sense, as inhering in each
individual regardless of rank, rather than as liberties and privileges dependent on
precedent or the fortunes of the English constitution. Some might go back to 1688 or
even Alfred, said one Edinburgh convention delegate, but others were for
‘disregarding all authorities, and standing up for our rights as men’. None the less the
foundation document of the LCS stressed that no rights had been lost when society
was formed and emphasized that ‘men can never barter away the rights of their
posterity’. It also sought to regain an annually elected parliament, thus introducing
an historical argument Paine rarely used, and in fact probably consciously rejected.
Members of the LCS never completely relinquished such historical appeals to
specific civil and political rights and in claiming ‘our natural rights, Universal
Suffrage, and Annual Parliaments’ simply mixed historical and natural conceptions
of rights. The ‘Norman Yoke’ idea, in particular, in which Saxon liberties were held
to have been overthrown by William the Conqueror, was often nearby; at his trial one
Scots radical sentenced to transportation, Joseph Gerrald, for example, stated that in
Saxon society all had some land and the right to vote. This appeal to a specifically
British, historically-rooted constitution, we will see, may indeed have made some
loyalist attacks on Paine appear more plausible.35
Stress upon the extra-governmental origins of rights rendered some conception of
the state of nature central to many Painites. As Paine had realized, the notion that any
rights were surrendered in creating government opened the door to the possibility
that virtually all rights could have been so bartered. Burke had verged upon this view
and often radicals conceded that some rights had been surrendered to secure others
more conducive to the common good. But Gerrald among others emphasized that ‘It
is not true, that when men agree to erect a government they give up any portion of
these rights. No: they only adopt a different mode of enjoying them. They give up
nothing; but by combining their own particular force with the force of others, they
adopt a plan, by which they are enabled to possess their rights in greater security.’
Henry Redhead Yorke at his trial similarly claimed that it was impossible for rights
to liberty or property to be abrogated upon entering society, with each only
delegating ‘the use of his faculties to the government for the purpose of public
convenience’. So, too, the Baptist clergyman William Winterbotham asserted at his
sedition trial that there were rights ‘SUPERIOR TO SOCIETY, which the individual

123
 THOMAS PAINE

cannot cede, nor the society accept’, including an absolute right to the necessities of
life (which was a gift of God), the right to choose, act and speak according to the rule
‘Do unto others’, and the right to object to heavy taxation. More Whiggish radicals,
despite their disagreements with the Painites, also conceded this point. Mackintosh
thought natural sovereignty had been relinquished only in order to avoid abuses
resulting from inequalities of strength and skill. Wollstonecraft agreed: government
had the duty to destroy any natural inequality by protecting the weak against the
strong. None the less the new radicalism gave less stress to the historical existence
of a state of nature than the intrinsic possession of rights by all. John Thelwall, for
example, defined ‘man in his natural state’ to mean ‘simply as an individual, stripped
of all the relations of Society, independent of its Compacts, and uninfluenced by its
reciprocations’. Rights hence were defined according to human nature, by wants and
their satisfaction, and faculties and their capacity for improvement. Any original
right had merely been physical, while society rendered rights moral ‘by substituting
moral arbitration for physical force’.36
Paine’s writings thus did not usurp all previous treatments of natural rights.
Sidney was not neglected and Thelwall quoted Machiavelli at length on the
abrogation of rights through political tyranny. Particularly after the Rights of Man
was proscribed, Thomas Spence and others continued to quote natural law writers
like Pufendorf on the theme of equality, for here they were on safe ground.
(Pufendorf indeed was so well known that Pigott’s Political Dictionary, invoking his
sentiments on government, referred readers only to ‘his seventh book, chapter five’,
without any title.)37 Locke was also widely cited; for example, by Gerrald both at his
trial and in the opening sentences of his appeal for a convention, on the right of the
people to alter their mode of rule. Passages from the Second Treatise on property and
money remained especially popular, for they supported the view that all had property
in their own person and labour. But many thought that by 1791 Locke had been
improved upon. To the Dissenter David Williams, for example, Locke’s
observations were ‘in favour of liberty: but they are general. They state rights which
oppressive governments may not dispute: but the mode of asserting, recovering, or
preserving them, he does not point out. His mind had not conceived the general and
certain remedy of social disorders and the only origin of Political Liberty, in the
formation of the whole society into a moral being.’38
The natural rights invoked by the Painites did not, however, include equality of
property. Thomas Cooper, who also supported political rights for women, cited
William Ogilvie’s Essay on the Right of Property in Land (1781) as ‘a very important
book too little noticed’ which recommended distributing commons and waste lands

124
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

amongst the poor. Charles Pigott praised republican equality and invoked
Rousseau’s condemnation of extreme luxury. Otherwise no important radical urged
an agrarian law to reduce inequality of property. This point needs stressing given the
loyalists’ strategy explored in the next chapter. There is no doubt, however, that
Paine’s egalitarianism constituted an essential part of his appeal; one account
asserted that ‘nothing … fascinated the minds of the people so effectually, as the
doctrine of the equality of mankind’. In a society where the natural, God-given
inequality of men and property was repeatedly taught from pulpit and hustings and
probably not hitherto widely doubted anywhere, this is unsurprising. But precisely
what ‘equality’ meant to the radicals is of great importance. What they sought,
insisted the Manchester Herald, was equality of rights, not levelling. Property
derived from industry and good fortune should be allowed to be inherited freely. A
‘Visionary Equality of Property’ would ‘desolate the world, and replunge it into the
darkest and wildest barbarism’, said a Sheffield reformer. Such a ‘ruinous, absurd,
foolish and contemptible notion’ would never have been heard of, added a Leeds
radical, except that it had been ‘palmed upon us by wicked or foolish men, for the
worst of purposes’. By ‘equality’, one paper insisted, the reformers meant only equal
representation, equal security in the produce of industry, and equal liberty and
freedom of religion.39
A few radicals did, however, construe the question of equality of property in
Christian terms. Eaton praised the Quakers as true levellers, while James
Pilkington’s The Doctrine of Equality of Rank and Condition Examined and
Supported on the Authority of the New Testament (1795) insisted that the Scriptures
prohibited entry to heaven to the overly wealthy and also applauded the Quakers for
having alone made an honest attempt to establish equality amongst themselves.40
Thelwall, too, noted that the primitive Christians had practised community of goods
but added that this was none the less ‘a wild and absurd scheme … not practicable
upon any large scale’. He also conceded that ‘Man has naturally an equal claim to
the elements of nature’. But this meant that because the ‘earth has been appropriated,
by expediency and compact … light, air, and water (with some exceptions) still
continue to be claimed in common’. Uncultivated land could also still be treated as
part of a common inheritance, and was intended, as Sampson Perry emphasized, not
for exclusive possession but the general good.41
Thelwall thus agreed with Paine that society owed the poor their basic
subsistence. But he also shifted from a more general consideration of the rights of
man to the rights of labourers. The latter retained a right to receive as much from
others as their ‘own toil and faculties throw into the common stock’, as well as a right

125
 THOMAS PAINE

to satisfy their ‘common appetites’ and to enjoy their rational faculties. When ‘the
territorial monopolist’ paid his employees a wage scarcely sufficient for survival,
Thelwall insisted that such an ‘unjust agreement, extorted by the power of an
oppressor’ was ‘morally and politically, void’. Instead an ‘implied compact … to
promote the accommodation of the whole’ derived from the formation of society and
the rules of moral justice. Mankind had ceded ‘their common interest in the
spontaneous produce of the earth’ and yielded to ‘appropriated culture’ because they
meant ‘to increase the comforts and abundance of all, not the luxury and wantonness
of a faction’. All of the advantages of civilized society derived from common labour.
The labourer thus retained a right to a portion of social improvement as a
consequence of exchanging natural society for civilization. Thus the landed
proprietor was ‘only a trustee for the community’ entitled to ‘compensation for the
due management of the deposit’, but with no right to ‘monopolize the advantages’.
These views were strikingly similar to Paine’s new doctrines in Agrarian Justice,
published a short time later.42
In their views of property the radicals on the whole thus subscribed to the
prevalent Scottish enlightenment interpretation of the progress of property through
the four stages of hunting and gathering, pastoral, agricultural and commercial
societies. One account, for example, noted that the first ‘revolution in civil society’,
the transition from savagery to shepherding, had created an hereditary aristocracy,
while the latest led public institutions to be judged ‘by the standard of utility’. But
few doubted that commercial society was a superior stage and that trade underlay its
achievements. Far from disliking commerce, therefore, radicals like the Newark
printer Daniel Holt (tried for seditious libel in 1793) warned that ‘a country which
once loses its liberty, must shortly lose its trade also’. Parliamentary reform thus
would restore free trade, curb monopoly and lighten taxation. This was a very
common view, though fragmentary (and somewhat suspect) evidence also suggests
that Paine’s views were sometimes associated with market regulation. A Scot
reported in 1793, for example, that ‘Paine’s book … has been industriously
circulated among the lower classes of our people, and its damnable doctrines eagerly
embraced by them. Of liberty and equality they are constantly talking, and of making
laws and fixing prices on every necessity of life.’ But very few radicals indeed
suggested, as Maurice Margarot was later to do, that man had a right to revert to
primitive natural purity if need be.43
The threat of levelling, we will see, underlay the loyalist reaction to Paine. But
Whigs and Whig radicals also felt threatened in particular by Paine’s call to the
labouring classes to shape their own political destinies. This most sharply

126
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

demarcated Paine’s brand of radicalism and prompted, as we will see, his

proscription. It also split the radical movement dramatically.

All change at Hounslow: middle-class radicalism and the Painites

In Parliament the revolution debate drove a substantial wedge between the leading
Whig MPs. Fox could not sympathize with Paine and described the Rights of Man in
1792 as a libel upon the constitution. None the less he tried to rally the party by
proclaiming neutrality towards the revolution. All the same, a split was inevitable
between more radical Whigs like Sheridan and Grey and the more aristocratic
reformers led by the Duke of Portland, who were spurred on by both Burke and the
king. First Fox and Burke themselves broke during an emotional parliamentary
sitting, after which Fox cried and was unable to speak for some minutes. Further
splits were nearly provoked in late 1792, instigated by disagreements about the Alien
Bill and related measures, though about fifty MPs and a few Lords continued to
support reform.44 The government and most of the Whigs soon determined that any
call for parliamentary reform merely fuelled the flames of popular protest.
Radicalism ‘out of doors’ had to be eradicated, and it was. Fox and others were
alarmed by the attack on British liberties associated with the sedition trials, but they
were unable to restrain Pitt. Portland’s defection to Pitt’s ministry in July 1794,
egged on by the Prime Minister, thus effectively ended the Whig opposition.
The Painite phenomenon took many older reformers by surprise. Some of the
most influential organizations prior to 1790, such as the Revolution Society, whose
members included the Dissenters Richard Price, Andrew Kippis, Abraham Rees,
Joseph Towers and Thomas Brand Hollis, played no important role in the subsequent
decade. This was not because their principles were unacceptable to the new radicals.
The Revolution Society, for example, believed that all authority derived from the
people, that the abuse of power justified resistance and that the rights of private
judgement, liberty of conscience, trial by jury, freedom of the press and freedom of
election ‘ought ever to be held sacred and inviolable’. Moreover, the society also
corresponded with the French National Assembly, even announcing to them the
publication of Part Two of the Rights of Man in February 1792. But some
programmatic differences between the new and older radicals were important. The
Society of the Friends of the People (SFP) (founded in April 1792), which included
Lauderdale, Christie, Mackintosh, Andrew Kippis and others who could afford an
annual fee of two guineas, did not seek universal suffrage, for example, but a
property qualification sufficient to enfranchise 1.5 million heads of households but
to exclude ‘the lowest and most profligate part of the community’. The most radical

127
 THOMAS PAINE

Whigs, notably Cartwright, believed universal suffrage a just goal, but were in a
minority. Nor were universalized natural rights the core of middle-class radical
doctrine. The SFP concentrated in petitions upon warning of the dangers to the
balanced constitution of a despotic monarchy or dangerous oligarchy and the
corresponding need for shorter parliaments, more equal parliamentary districts and
a uniform exercise of the right to the franchise. But it was unwilling to go the whole
length of Painism and by 1794 was decidedly reluctant to have anything to do with
the LCS.45
Once popular upheaval accelerated it was easier for moderate reformers to shy
away from further involvement. The Norwich Whig MP William Windham, among
others, warned of the perils of reform in the midst of revolution, remonstrating that
no sane person would repair his house during a hurricane. But other prominent Whig
radicals were sceptical about the French revolution much earlier. Horne Tooke
cautioned the Constitutional Society that ‘the English nation had only to maintain
and improve the constitution which their ancestors transmitted to them’ when he felt
that Sheridan had too warmly applauded the French. But Tooke did not abjure reform
entirely and was himself finally caught up in the reaction. At his own treason trial he
protested that while some parts of Paine’s works were laudable, he ‘highly
disapproved of others’. In a phrase that caught the imagination of many, he insisted
that while he could travel some distance with Paine in an imaginary stagecoach
headed towards reform, ‘When I find myself at Hounslow I get out, others may go
further.’46
Typical of those who were also anxious to alight was Christopher Wyvill, who in
1793 warned those political associations which ‘in their rash zeal for liberty’ had
‘applauded publications [Paine was footnoted] in which the British people are
represented to have no Constitution, no political right, but the unavailing right to
petition; and the plunder of the rich is held out, as the incentive to the poor, to effect
a Revolution in Britain, on the principles of Republican Equality: thus, under the
pretext of promoting Personal Liberty, contributing to the ruin of property, the
preservation of which was one principal end, for which Society was formed’. Paine
himself Wyvill accused of being ‘inflamed … by his having been an actor in the
Revolution of America’ and of failing to see that ‘an honest enthusiast may be a
dangerous Politician’. He praised Paine’s ‘strong, though coarse, understanding,
with much originality of thought and energy of expression’, terming him ‘fitted by
nature to be a democratic leader; and early prejudice, habit, and a variety of
accidental circumstances, confirmed the original tendency of his mind’. But he
lamented that Paine had not written ‘a more classical composition, in which more
attention had been employed to avoid the grossness of indecent language and more
solicitude displayed to shun whatever might tend to excite the lower classes of the
People to acts of violence and injustice’. By contrast Richard Price, according to

128
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

Wyvill, had not been such ‘an enthusiastic Politician; though active and public
spirited, he was cool and rational; though strongly attached to liberty, he was prudent
and cautious to avoid unnecessary danger, not to himself, but to the public’. Price had
recognized, too, thought Wyvill, that merely emulating America would not
introduce prosperity to Britain.47
What chiefly irritated the more Whiggish reformers about Paine was thus his
appeal to the common people and the implication that they, and not the established
opposition, were the legitimate reformers. The Rights of Man, Whigs complained,
was ‘flattering to the feelings of the vulgar’ and pandered to the labouring classes by
promising them support under a future radical government. Many moderates, at least
early on, admired the ‘temperate parts’ of the Rights of Man. Some helped to
circulate Paine’s works. A liberal gentleman, Thomas Poole, for example, lent the
Rights of Man to a Bridgwater, Somerset cabinet-maker in December 1792 (who
promptly bumped into a local loyalist attorney who tore the pamphlet to pieces). But
many moderates were soon driven to deny that Paine was in any sense a Whig. Some
cited Locke, for example, on the protection of property as the chief end of
government and asserted that if Paine’s view of the British ‘constitution’ were
correct, then ‘Locke, Montesquieu, and all the great train of statesmen and
philosophers, who have extolled the English constitution, were wrong’.48
Most Whigs had no desire to embrace Burke either, however. The problem
therefore was to define a middle position which, as Catherine Macaulay put it,
steered between the parties of ‘exultation and rapture’ and ‘indignation and scorn’.
Burke had clearly ‘unwhig’d himself’ by writing the Reflections, as one account put
it, but Paine was a simple menace to social order. Each, said the Duke of Norfolk,
‘had done infinite mischief’ and many other erstwhile reformers felt that both were
‘equally dangerous to the public and private tranquillity, and liberty of Great Britain
and France. The one served to foster and encourage pride, avarice, ambition, and
oppression, among the higher orders of society; the other to create envy, discontent,
murmuring, and sedition, among the middle and lower orders.’ Some reformers
attempted to refute the arguments on both sides. Thomas Green’s The Two Systems
of the Social Compact and the Natural Rights of Man Examined and Refuted (1793),
for example, contended that Burke essentially followed Locke in taking 1688 as his
model compact, and Paine, Richard Price’s concern with natural rights. Both
systems erred, the author thought, in grounding the right to govern in a principle
distinct from the consequences of such power, which for Green was despotism on
Burke’s principles and tyranny of the majority on Paine’s.49
But if Burke’s position was contemptible to moderates, the problem of Paine was
the more pressing. Whigs therefore sought to place the brakes upon such enthusiasm.
One otherwise quite sympathetic 400-page account of radical principles disagreed
with Paine on the issue of an hereditary monarchy, squarely accused Paine of being

129
 THOMAS PAINE

friendly to agrarianism and further criticized him for demanding ‘in plain terms …
an instant change of government’. Another pamphlet entitled Is All We Want Worth
a Civil War? thought Paine was ‘too unaware of the delicate line which divides
licentiousness from liberty’, and warned that his writings had excited ‘that
dangerous spirit which threatens a total revolution in this country, a measure
apparently not to be gained without the horrible disasters of a civil war’.50
Moderates were consequently also driven to defend the wisdom of the British
constitution. Whigs commonly argued against Paine that the poor could not be
politically independent since they were incapable of refusing any assistance from the
wealthy.51 Moreover, Paine had promised too much too fast. In 1792 the SFP
censured the Manchester branch of the Society for Constitutional Information,
adding that Paine’s plans unveiled an ‘indefinite language of delusion, which by
opening the unbounded prospects of political adventure, tends to destroy that public
opinion, which is the support of all Free Governments, and to excite a spirit of
innovation, of which no wisdom can forsee the effect, and no skill direct the course’.
Reasserting the principles of Whig reform, the Society insisted that

We view man as he is: the creature of habit as well as of reason. We think it therefore our
bounden duty to propose no extreme changes, which … can never be accomplished without
violence to the settled opinions of mankind, nor attempted without endangering some of
the most estimable advantages which we confessedly enjoy. We are convinced that the
people bear a fixed attachment to the happy form of our Government, and the genuine
principles of our Constitution … We wish to reform the Constitution, because we wish to
preserve it.

Although some examinations of the Rights of Man attacked Paine’s notions of

constitution and finance at length, but found his sentiments on rights ‘perfectly just’,
attacks on the Painites by the SFP also frequently insisted that rights were
exclusively or at least primarily civil rather than natural and that God did not create
men equal but instead gave them unequal powers. The SFP also vigorously denied
any parallels between circumstances in France and in Britain. Cartwright, one of
Paine’s chief opponents in the SFP, was especially hostile to Paine’s republicanism,
objecting that a republic, while suitable to the new world – Harrington remained his
guide – was not appropriate given British institutions and Britain’s much greater
social inequality. Like some Painite radicals, Cartwright also disagreed strenuously
with Paine’s notion of the English constitution and in 1823 finally wrote a work
entitled The English Constitution Produced and Illustrated to settle the matter. None
the less Cartwright too tried to tread his own delicate path between reform and

130
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

revolution. Observing of ‘the stage-coach of reform’ that ‘a man may travel …

without connecting himself with bad men who may chance to be passengers’, he later
defended Paine against Arthur Young’s hysterically anti-revolutionary The
Commonwealth in Danger (1795).52
Moderates Whigs were thus extremely wary about the class basis of Paine’s
support, sometimes terming his followers ‘Paine’s journeymen’, as if this alone were
sufficient to put them in their place. Most leading Whigs did not collapse into
hysteria, as we will see many loyalists were to do. But they too, while willing to agree
that ‘all mankind start fair in the Race of life’, wondered whether Paine’s appeal to
‘equality’ did not invoke the spectre of 1649. Although the SCI circulated the Rights
of Man and defrayed Paine’s expenses during its prosecution, for example, some of
its members protested such moves, arguing that the text implied an agrarian law and
would in practice probably lead to political tyranny. When the SFP condemned
equality of property in late 1792, too, some insisted that this was an attack on Paine.
Erring on the side of caution, the society expelled five of its members for
corresponding with Jacobins in Paris, prompting members of the SCI to deny that
they were republicans or connected to France. But the middle ground disappeared
too quickly for such measures to be of much use, the influence of the moderates by
1793 being ‘almost entirely annihilated … from the violence of the tories on the one
hand, and that of the republicans on the other’, as the New Annual Register put it.
With the rise of the LCS and the polarization of political debate, the SCI went into
steep decline and ceased to meet after its last few members were arrested in early
1794.53 By pressing the cause of reform at all, the SFP also found itself tarred with a
Painite brush. The pronounced defeat of Charles Grey’s reform motion in May 1793
nearly finished the Society, though it limped on for another two years, suspending its
meetings in May 1795.
But moderate reformers were as alarmed by events in France as the prospect of
their imitation in England. Mackintosh wrote to Burke in 1796 that the course of the
revolution had led him to reverse his opinions ‘on many subjects on which I was then
the dupe of my own enthusiasm’. Those who failed to renounce their earlier
optimism found that the middling orders could also discipline themselves
collectively. Wayward democrats like Henry Erskine, dean of the Faculty of
Advocates at Edinburgh, were dismissed from their posts for protesting against the
Sedition and Treason Bills. Whig reformers were also relatively easily cowed by the
government’s onslaught. A meeting of some 200 ‘Friends of the Liberty of the Press’
in late December 1792 at the conclusion of Paine’s trial, for example, praised
Thomas Erskine’s defence, but strongly doubted ‘the propriety, at this time, of

131
 THOMAS PAINE

making the most distant mention of the work called the Rights of Man’ and
accordingly omitted its title and author’s name in a resolution.54
Moderate Dissenting reformers do not seem to have varied greatly from this
pattern. Many were clearly radicalized by the onset of the revolution; Priestley noted
in 1791 that ‘many of the Dissenters are of late become enemies to all civil
establishments of religion’. In some areas they gave initial support to the
dissemination of Paine’s principles (‘small donations’ at Sheffield, reported a spy)
without becoming over-enthusiastic. Unitarians in various locations voted to praise
the Rights of Man. Parallels between its views of political liberty and Price’s were
noted. But other Dissenters were alarmed at any signs of imprudence. Some
ransacked works by earlier Nonconformist radicals for use against Paine. ‘A British
Manufacturer’, for example, reprinted a 1759 sermon by Price which was a paean to
British laws, government and religion, while a 1794 pamphlet entitled A Blow at the
Root, or Constitutional Liberty Preferable to Jacobinism and Anarchy consisted
predominantly of extracts from Price’s works.55
Influential Dissenters were thus generally at least cautious about the Rights of
Man. One of their leading journals, the Analytical Review, termed Part One ‘one of
the most curious, original, and interesting publications which the singular
vicissitudes of modern politics have produced’ and found ‘much originality of
thought’ in the chapter on civilization in Part Two. Whether or not Britain had a
constitution depended on definitions of terms, however, and while Paine’s taxation
plans were praised as ‘in the main judicious and humane’, the Review doubted that
property could ever be accurately assessed. Other Dissenters also played down the
political implications of the Rights of Man by reading it as primarily a tract on
Nonconformity. A letter to one reform journal thus said that ‘If we consider the
Rights of Man as an essay on civil government, Paine has said no more than what
many have said before him; if we consider it as a defence of religious liberty, he has
said more on a single page on this most interesting subject than other writers have
been able to say in a whole volume’. But many Dissenters were clearly sceptical
about Paine’s attitude to government. Fearing Paine had oversimplified this
question, Anna Barbauld, daughter of the leading Dissenter John Aikin, for example,
contended that ‘the larger and more flourishing any society is, the more occasion it
has for Government, because it has more affairs to manage in common, and more
cases to determine by particular rules’. It was a lesson Paine himself would only
gradually concede.56
Many Dissenters were none the less active in the strong middle-class peace
movement recently studied by J. E. Cookson. The ‘Friends of Peace’ were chiefly

132
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

Whig Dissenters who opposed the war on both religious and political grounds. They
included prominent Dissenting reviewers and journalists like Aikin, William Taylor
and William Enfield, and their publishers, especially Joseph Johnson and George
Robinson. Most of these remained unconnected to artisan radical groups; William
Frend and Jeremiah Joyce, who played some part in the LCS, are two exceptions.
Most were moderates. The Cambridge Unitarian Frend agreed that imposing the
American model on a nation whose ‘customs, laws and situation have inured us to
habits unknown to the new world … might be as prejudicial to the happiness of this
country, as the imposition of our constitution might be to the inhabitants of America’.
Frend also later criticized Paine’s taxation schemes as unfair to the middle classes.
But another Unitarian, Francis Stone, rector of Cold Norton, Essex, assailed Burke
at length and, while touching only briefly on Paine, commended a French scheme for
dividing waste lands amongst the members of a universal citizens’ militia which was
extraordinarily far-reaching in its implications.57

Critics from the left

If Paine was too extreme for moderate Whigs, some reformers found him too
hesitant. But these few in turn ironically were to play some role in the branding of the
Painites as levellers. The eighteenth century had seen few serious defences of much
greater equality of property prior to the 1790s; an agrarian law guaranteeing forty
acres to all was recommended in Ogilvie’s Essay on the Right of Property in Land,
while Catherine Macaulay urged the equal division of property among all male heirs.
But support for agrarian laws in the 1790s was rare. The Manchester radical Thomas
Cooper, as we have seen, praised Ogilvie’s schemes, as did Paine’s friend John
Oswald, one Dr William Thomson, and a few others. A general regulation of food
prices and wages was also recommended in the London doctor William Hodgson’s
republican Utopia, The Commonwealth of Reason.58 From 1776 onwards,
moreover, a diminutive Newcastle schoolteacher and later London printer named
Thomas Spence began to urge the collective ownership of land and by the early
1790s attracted a small but determined band of disciples. Spence himself was to
suffer considerably in the reaction; amongst other crimes he was arrested for selling
the Rights of Man Part Two. But he never lost enthusiasm for his ‘Plan’ for abolishing
private property in land by a meeting of all local parishes, who would thereafter rent
the land as small farms, and out of the proceedings pay for government as well as
maintaining the poor and unemployed. With the ballot and universal suffrage,
political corruption would end. Free schools and libraries, public relief for the ill and

133
 THOMAS PAINE

granaries for the hungry would be established and a militia substituted for a standing
army. Spence thus claimed that Paine ‘aimed only at kings’, while he went to the root
of the problem of inequality, landed property.59
Public discussion of community of goods was further provoked by the publication
in 1793 of an Enquiry Concerning Political Justice by William Godwin, a former
Dissenting minister and struggling novelist, historian and playwright. Godwin’s
audience was clearly very different from Spence’s, being mainly young middle-class
Dissenters and a few rebellious Anglicans, including Coleridge and Wordsworth.
The message of Political Justice was also rather different from that of either Paine
or Spence. Godwin, for example, initially rejected the use of rights language,
preferring to intensify moral duty, and opposed popular political activity or
revolution. He did help to promulgate the idea of community of goods, however, and
offered an elaborate defence of the stewardship ideal of property as a trust for
common use, and especially for the needy. But while Godwin thought a relative
equality of property necessary to ensure public virtue and a ‘euthanasia’ of
government (Paine’s distinction between society and government being here
enthusiastically supported), he urged that such goals could be achieved only by
voluntary means. A narrow division of labour and commerce were also generally
denigrated by Godwin, who none the less increasingly conceded some of the benefits
of affluence in the later 1790s.60
Spence and Godwin certainly helped to give currency to the notion of equality of
property, though neither even remotely approached Paine’s popularity. The Norwich
Cabinet, for example, defended equality of property at considerable length in 1795
with reference to Godwin, but concluded by proposing that ‘a limitation of
testamentary donations would be the best mode’ for achieving this. But this was of
course far closer to Paine’s plan than Godwin’s, which shows how easily Paine’s
plans could be associated with much more extreme forms of egalitarianism. As we
will now see, this was to prove vital to the cause of counter-revolution.61

Notes to Chapter 5: The birth of the revolutionary party

1 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, p. 290; TS11/966/3510B.

2 F. Knight (1957), p. 64; J. Thelwall (1796b), part 1, pp. 82–3; T. Hardy (1832), p. 20. The
most detailed accounts of radicalism in this period are E. Thompson (1968), pp. 95–203,
J. Walvin (1969)(unfortunately unpublished) and A. Goodwin (1979), pp. 171–50. See
also W. Hall (1912), J. Money (1980), E. Royle and J. Walvin (1982), pp. 48–79, H.
Dickinson (1977) and (1985) and G. Gallop (1983), especially pp. 71–112. On the
reception of the Rights of Man see D. Roper (1978), pp. 190–5, R. Fennessy (1963), pp.

134
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

213–43, F. Canavan (1976). A. Ayer (1988), p. 72, inexplicably assumes its political
effects were much less powerful than those of Common Sense.
3 C. Paul (1876), Vol. 1, p. 69; J. Barlow (1795), p. 6; The Catechism of Man (n.d.), p. 24;
R. Wells (1983), p. 258; TS11/954/3497; TS11/954/3504; J. Money (1977), p. 263. As A.
Aldridge (1960, p. 135) indicates, there is no evidence, as was once assumed, that Godwin
assisted Paine in publishing the Rights of Man.
4 R. Dozier (1983), p. 100; HO42/23; TS11/965/3510A; The Life and Adventures of Job
Knott (1798), pp. 18–19; Analytical Review, Vol. 12 (1792), p. 303; TS11/966/3510B; J.
Cheetham (1817), p. xxii; An Impartial Sketch (1792), pp. 8–9; More Reasons (1793), p.
9.
5 W. Sherwin (1819), p. 112; Paine (1945), Vol. 2, p. 910; TS11/951/3495.
6 My own estimate, which excludes works solely on the war, economic conditions, or
continental developments. At least 200 of these works focus primarily on the Rights of
Man. The most extensive existing bibliography describes about 350 titles (G. Pendleton,
1982). Related issues are raised in at least 2500 further titles (G. Pendleton, 1976, p. 152).
7 A. Young (1967), p. 349; ‘Publicola’ (1913), pp. 74–6, 108–9; M. Smelser (1951); G.
Nash (1965); C. Hazen (1897), pp. 157–61.
8 D. Hartley (1794), p. 35; T. Howell (1817), Vol. 22, col. 779; B. Damm (1792), p. 4; TS11/
952/3496; Add. MS. 16922 f. 143.
9 An Impartial Sketch (1792), p. 9; Report of the Committee (1799), p. 71; C. Hazen (1897),
p. 212.
10 On provincial radicalism see A. Goodwin (1979), pp. 136–70, J. Money (1977), F. Knight
(1957) and H. Alves (1981).
11 HO42/22; HO42/23; TS11/961/3507; The Complete Reports (1794), p. 22.
12 TS11/962/3508; PC1/44/A155; The Second Report (1794), Appendix C.
13 HO42/22; TS11/952/3496; The Complete Reports (1794), p. 58.
14 Black Dwarf, Vol. 2, no. 35 (2 September 1818), p. 551; E. Thompson (1968), p. 22; Add.
MS. 27812 f. 6. A good account of the LCS is given in F. Place (1972), pp. 129–200. Many
of its papers have been edited by M. Thale (1983) and are most extensively analysed in J.
Walvin (1969), pp. 78–108, 408–604, 792–9. Still useful is H. Collins (1954). Other
London societies of the period are also discussed in M. Thale (1989).
15 M. Thale (1983), pp. 160, 307; F. Place (1972), p. 196 n; Add. MS. 27808 f. 113; A.
Goodwin (1979), p. 360.
16 TS11/953/3497; Treason Triumphant (1795), p. 18; T. Howell (1818), Vol. 24, col. 682;
TS11/956/3501–2. The government was especially anxious to find the perpetrators of the
‘Gwelp’ handbill (PC1/22/A37).
17 Application of Barruel’s Memoirs (1798), pp. 34, 32; Chester Chronicle, no. 885 (25 May
1792), p. 4; Derby Mercury, no. 3158 (25 October 1792), p. 4; A. Seaman (1957).
18 G. Williams (1969), p. 64; C. Jewson (1975), pp. 26, 39; Add. MS. 16922 f. 2; M. Wilks
(1791), pp. 30, 64. An extensive contemporary account of the Norwich reformers
published in 1796 claimed that the authors most favoured there included Locke, Sidney,
Marvel, Milton and others. The reformers themselves comprised an atheist and a Jew, an
Anglican, Catholics, Quakers and many deists. But all agreed that ‘each sect ought to

135
 THOMAS PAINE

maintain its own clergy, and that the labour of the catholic ought not to be put in requisition
for the maintenance of the Church of England man’. All were ‘consequently enemies to
the tythe laws [and] to the connection between Church and State’ (R. Dinmore Jr, 1796,
pp. 10–11). On Dinmore see C. Jewson (1975), pp. 84–5.
19 T. Howell (1817), Vol. 23, col. 1083; A. Booth (1979), pp. 39, 49; J. Money (1977), pp.
223–43; Add. MS. 16920 f. 47. On Walker and Manchester radicalism see P. Handforth
(1956) and F. Knight (1957).
20 HO102/5–6; H. Meikle (1912), pp. 91, 145, 82; HO102/4; HO102/60; Considerations on
the French War (1794), p. 11. See generally J. Brims (1983).
21 HO102/5; T. Howell (1817), Vol. 23, col. 35; K. Logue (1979), pp. 147–54; Add. MS.
16923 f. 10. On radicalism and Scottish nationalism see J. Callender (1792) and J. Brims
(1987).
22 Political Review (1792), p. 24; Add. MS. 16921 f. 94; Remarks on Mr. Paine’s Pamphlet
(1791), p. iii; S. Cronin (1980), p. 93; Paine (1945), Vol. 2, p. 1322.
23 T. Howell (1819), Vol. 26, cols 427, 343; Vol. 27 (1820), col. 348; W. Kennedy (1976), p.
119; PC1/44/A155. M. Elliott (1982, p. 27) claims that the United Irishmen were less
republican. On Paine and popular Irish songs see R. Browne (1964).
24 An Account of the … British Convention (1793), p. 40; T. Howell (1817), Vol. 23, col.
1233; Application of Barruel’s Memoirs (1798), p. 31; G. Veitch (1913), p. 218; The
Complete Reports (1794), pp. 12–13; F. Oldys (1793), p. 160. See E. Thompson (1968),
pp. 167–9.
25 T. Howell (1818), Vol. 24, col. 291; M. Thale (1983), pp. xix, xxiv; F. Place (1972), p. 140.
Hardy’s trial is one of the best sources for the political views of the LCS (Howell, Vol. 24,
cols 199–1407). John Binns claimed that some 12,000 members were paying weekly dues
in 1794 (Binns, 1854, p. 45).
26 Manchester Herald, no. 37 (8 December 1792), p. 4; Paine (1945), Vol. 2, p. 567.
27 TS11/41/150; TS11/952/3496; M. Thale (1983), p. 132. Minutes of the earlier (December
1792) meetings are printed in H. Meikle (1912), pp. 239–73. See also W. Hall (1912), pp.
182–96 and A. Goodwin (1979), pp. 268–306. For government assessments of the threat
of force see TS11/955/3500.
28 Tom Paine’s Jests (1794), p. 3; Account of the Proceedings (1795), p. 3; C. Pigott (1798),
p. 5; Pigott (1795), pp. 95–6. On such representations see generally R. Paulson (1983),
pp. 57–87.
29 J. M’Phail (1795), p. 21. Eaton is studied in D. McCue Jr (1974).
30 HO102/7; HO42/22.
31 H. Alves (1981), p. 314; Report of the Committee (1799), p. 67; R. Rose (1965), p. 11; The
Patriot (13 April 1792), pp. 23–30.
32 HO42/22; Manchester Herald, no. 4 (21 April 1792), p. 4; J. Thelwall (1796a), p. 14; J.
Money (1977), p. 231; J. Brims (1983), pp. 228–31.
33 HO102/8. See A. Sheps (1975b) and (1973), pp. 121–262.
34 H. Yorke (1794), pp. 48–9; C. Pigott (1795), p. 116; T. Howell (1817), Vol. 22, col. 476;
HO42/22; R. Dinmore Jr (1796), p. 29; The Cabinet (1795), Vol. 1, pp. 8, 105; J. Barlow
(1792a), pp. 4–5, 1.

136
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

35 G. Vale (1841), p. 96; S. Perry (1797), p. 11; HO102/9; Account of the Proceedings (1795),
p. 3; The London Corresponding Society’s Addresses and Regulations (1792), pp. 1, 13–
14; The Rights of Citizens (1791), p. 41; J. Gerrald (1794a), p. 189.
36 A Narrative (1797), p. 26; J. Gerrald (1794a), p. 9; The Trial of Henry Yorke (1795), pp.
89–90; The Trial of William Winterbotham (1794), pp. 78–9; J. Mackintosh (1792), pp.
210–12; M. Wollstonecraft (1794), p. 7.
37 J. Thelwall (1796b), part 2, pp. 37–8, 41–5; Pigs’ Meat, Vol. 1 (1793), pp. 89–92; C. Pigott
(1795), p. 48. The references were to Pufendorf’s The Law of Nature and Nations (5th
edn, 1739).
38 J. Gerrald (1794a), pp. 10–11, (1794c), p. 1; The Patriot, no. 8 (10 September 1792), pp.
256–63; Politics for the People (1794), p. 151; [D. Williams] (1790), pp. 51–2.
39 T. Cooper (1792), pp. 75, 98–9; C. Pigott (1791), pp. 85–6; Letters to a Friend (1792), p.
22.
40 Politics for the People (1794), pp. 66–8; J. Pilkington (1795), pp. 13, 41–2. At least one
London Quaker sermon mentioned Paine in the context of an end to war (W. Savory,
1796).
41 Manchester Herald, no. 37 (8 December 1792), p. 4; TS11/892/3035; TS24/3/30A; A
Picture of the Times, no. 6 (1795), p. 74; J. Thelwall (1796b), part 1, p. 67; Thelwall
(1796b), part 2, pp. 27, 67; S. Perry (1797), p. 23.
42 J. Thelwall (1796b), part 2, pp. 78–82. On the development of Thelwall’s views in this
period see I. Hampsher-Monk (1989).
43 The Measures (1794), p. 28; T. Howell (1817), Vol. 24, col. 1193; S. Bernstein (1945), p.
151; M. Margarot (1812), p. 24.
44 Parliamentary Register, 32 (30 April 1792), pp. 469, 478. On the split among the Whigs
see F. O’Gorman (1967) and L. Mitchell (1971).
45 Friends (1795), pp. 3–4; Authentic Copy (1793), pp. 1–2; Add. MS. 27814 f. 70.
46 The Trial of John Horne Tooke (1795), p. 92; A. Stephens (1813), Vol. 2, pp. 113, 147, 324.
47 C. Wyvill (1794), Vol. 2, p. 633; (1794), Vol. 5, p. 51; (1794), Vol. 4, p. 75; (1794), Vol. 3,
appendix, pp. 70–1; (1792), pp. 59–63, 76. On Wyvill’s views in the 1790s see J.
Dinwiddy (1971), pp. 3–9.
48 W. Fox (1793), p. 2; W. Belcher (n.d.), p. 7; H. Sandford (1888), Vol. 1, p. 36; Thoughts
upon Liberty (1793), pp. 4, 13.
49 C. Macaulay (1790), p. 6; J. Wilde (1793), p. 23; E. Burke (1978), Vol. 8, p. 239; [T.
Green] (1793), pp. 7–20, 25.
50 Is All We Want (1792), p. 10; Rights and Remedies (1795), pp. 28–9, 56.
51 Considerations on the French War (1794), p. 14; An Abstract of the History (1789), pp.
14–15; The Correspondence of the Revolution Society (1792), pp. 216–17; Comparative
Display (1970), Vol. 1, p. 152; C. Wyvill (1794), Vol. 4, pp. 239–40.
52 Proceedings of the Society (1792), pp. 30–1; Remarks (1792), pp. 73–5; F. Cartwright
(1826), Vol. 1, pp. 215, 192, 221; J. Cartwright (1795), pp. xlvi–liii. For radical
disagreements with Paine’s definition of the British constitution see, e.g., A Political
Dictionary for Guinea-less Pigs, for which ‘constitution’ meant ‘that form of
government, which in any country, is established by fundamental laws’, including the
British form of government (TS11/837/2832). See also The Patriot (1792), Vol. 2, pp. 311
ff.

137
 THOMAS PAINE

53 T. Walker (1794), p. 46; John Saint John (1791), pp. 32, 124; A. Dalrymple (1793), p. 27;
Considerations on Mr. Paine’s Pamphlet (1791), p. 42; A Dialogue between an
Associator (1793), p. 12; Proceedings (1792), p. 48; New Annual Register (1794), p. 6.
On the decline of the SCI see J. Walvin (1969), pp. 349–407.
54 J. Cartwright (1795), p. 127; R. Mackintosh (1836), Vol. 1, p. 87; The Whole of the
Proceedings (1792), p. 8.
55 Analytical Review, Vol. 9 (1791), pp. 313, 12, (1792), Vol. 12, pp. 291, 300–3; R. Price
(1791), p. 5; H.R.H. (1791), p. 9; A Blow at the Root (1794); TS11/966/3510B. On the
increasing isolation of the Rational Dissenters in particular, see N. Murray (1975), pp.
125–63.
56 The Patriot (11 December 1792), p. 195; A. Barbauld (1792), p. 17.
57 J. Cookson (1982), p. 28; W. Frend (1793), pp. 3–4; Frend (1799), p. iv; F. Stone (1792),
pp. 152, 197–8.
58 W. Ogilvie (1781), pp. 73–8; [C. Macaulay] (1767), pp. 36–7; A. Goodwin (1979), pp.
262–3; J. Oswald (1791), p. 59; Comparative Display (1970), Vol. 2, p. 631; W. Hodgson
(1795), pp. 74–7.
59 T. Spence (1982), pp. 3, 8, 29, 32, 34. On Spence’s followers see I. McCalman (1988) and
M. Chase (1988).
60 W. Godwin (1976), pp. 701–95.
61 The Cabinet (1795), Vol. 3, pp. 281–97.

138
 6
Inequality vindicated:
the government party

Come listen, good folks, and a tale I’ll relate,

How a Staymaker fain would have made himself great,
And from mending of stays took to mending of State.
Oh, the Reformer of England!

Long may Old England possess good cheer and jollity,

Liberty and property, and no equality.

A Republican’s picture is easy to draw,

He can’t bear to obey, but will govern the law;
His manners unsocial, his temper unkind,
He’s a Rebel in conduct, a Tyrant in mind.1

Painophobia unleashed: governmental and loyalist reaction

The Painite movement and the threat of revolution were defeated for three reasons.
Most importantly, Britain and France went to war in 1793 and the new principles of
reform became ‘French’ and hostile. This doubtless frightened off thousands of
potential reformers. Secondly, the government reacted both quickly and prudently
to the upsurge in popular radicalism. Finally, the loyalist movement mushroomed,
both spontaneously and under guidance, into a massive and highly successful
reactionary force. Heralded by a Royal Proclamation against sedition, subversion
and riot published on 22 May 1792 and read aloud to much of the population,
loyalism dictated the terms of the revolutionary debate from early 1792 to about the
end of 1794. None the less its victory was by no means immediately certain. The
king’s sentiments prompted an outpouring of loyal addresses (some 32,000 by July,
claimed Paine). But the proclamation also had the effect of adding fuel to the flames.
As one account put it, ‘in remote villages, where hardly two copies of the Rights of

139
 THOMAS PAINE

Man had before been sold, hundreds were now called for, and greedily bought up;
the coaches which brought up the addresses, carrying down cargoes of Paine’s
prohibited works’.2 Initially this reaction thus probably helped the popular radical
movement. Still, prominent Whig leaders like Lord Fitzwilliam soon saw the virtues
of the government’s anti-sedition legislation. Charles James Fox remained
indecisive, defending the revolution but attacking Paine. But most of Parliament
backed Pitt, and the basis for an alliance between government and the parliamentary
opposition was laid by May 1792.
The battle had scarcely begun, however. As Painite enthusiasm continued to
expand, the government became aware that new and more effective
countermeasures were required. By late 1792, indeed, it was widely believed both
that France intended to export revolution to Britain and that many would welcome
the new product. Revolutions have ever bred conspiracy theories and the more
paranoid now claimed that while England was his first target, ‘an immense number
of copies of Mr. Paine’s works, in French, Spanish, and Portuguese’ were ‘about to
be placed in a proper train for distribution in Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Germany,
Italy, Spain, and Portugal, and their colonies’.3 Agents and informers, always prone
to exaggeration, fanned the embers of paranoia. Strikes and ‘riots’ were invested
with a political significance they lacked in reality. Alehouse verbosity became
seditious plotting.
To counter this rising threat two strategies proved most successful: direct
prosecutions of the reformers, and the formation of loyalist pressure groups.
Prosecutions began with Paine himself, in absentia, and then encompassed those
who sold the Rights of Man and a few other works. In total four pages of the Rights
of Man (beginning with the statement, ‘All hereditary government is in its nature
tyranny’) were found seditious.4 Paine’s language here, as elsewhere, was strong.
But the government was much more concerned with his intended audience, as the
Attorney General acknowledged in asserting that ‘the first part of the Rights of Man
being among the judicious classes of the community, he does not fear concerning it;
but when it descended and was circulated in the lower order, there the evil begins’.
Part One had addressed a limited, refined class of readers. Part Two was offered to
all for virtually nothing, men’s tobacco, ‘even the sweetmeats of children’, being
wrapped in it.5
About a dozen people were prosecuted for selling the Rights of Man from
December 1792 to August 1793, of whom three were acquitted. The Sheffield
radicals, amongst others, consequently felt compelled to cease circulating the Rights
of Man and by mid-1793 the work was difficult to find elsewhere. Yet gaoling a few
booksellers was hardly sufficient to stem the radical tide. The government therefore

140
 THE GOVERNMENT PARTY

turned to the political associations. Prominent Scottish reformers like Thomas Fyshe
Palmer and Thomas Muir (tried in part for lending a copy of the Rights of Man) were
arrested and transported in early 1793, followed by the leaders of the Edinburgh
Convention at the end of the year. In 1794 Pitt moved against the London radicals,
charging Thomas Hardy, John Thelwall, John Horne Tooke and others. But here,
facing an incorruptible jury, the government failed to establish a case and the
prisoners were acquitted. Hardy was pulled by the crowd in a carriage through
London, pausing briefly in silence before his house, where the violence of his arrest
had caused his wife to miscarry and die. But other trials were more successful. The
radical doctor William Hodgson, for example, denounced ‘George Guelph, a
German hog-butcher, a dealer in human flesh by the carcass’ somewhat too loudly at
the London Coffee-house in late 1793, and spent two years in Newgate for his
troubles. These trials terminated only with the 1799 prosecution of the liberal
Dissenter Gilbert Wakefield for his reply to a pamphlet by the Bishop of Llandaff, by
which time little freedom of criticism survived.6
Severe restrictions on oppositional political activity were also an important part
of government strategy. In 1794 the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended in order to
hold prisoners without trial and, except for the period 1795–7, was not restored until
1802. The Treason Act (1795) widened the definition of treason to encompass
writings which incited hatred or contempt of the Crown or government. The
Seditious Meetings Act (1795) severely restricted the right to assemble publicly,
while the Newspaper Act (1798) tightened controls on various publications. Several
organizations were forbidden by the 1797 Unlawful Oaths Act, while the new
Combination Acts (1799–1800) crowned the legislation of repression by imposing
severe penalties for forming trade unions (these acts were not repealed until 1824).
Collectively this legislation created what Francis Place, citing the case of a
Lincolnshire blacksmith given twelve months in solitary confinement for damning
the king and calling the government a despotism, later called ‘years of terror’. A
‘disloyal word was enough to bring some punishment upon any man’s head’, even
‘laughing at the awkwardness of a volunteer corps’. As the poet Peter Pindar put it,
‘Whoever christens but his dog, Tom Paine / (And many an itching tongue can scarce
refrain), / The cur and master shall be brought to shame.’7
Besides legal repression the government had other means at its disposal. Loyalist
morning and evening papers (the True Briton and The Sun) were founded, with secret
service payments helping to ensure their success and free copies being distributed to
provincial papers who reprinted annotated material. Altogether the government
controlled about nine daily papers in 1790, the opposition, five. Public opinion was
also manipulated in other ways. Using an admiral as intermediary, the government

141
 THOMAS PAINE

paid a Portsmouth printer £175 for 22,000 copies of ‘Strictures on Thomas Paine’s
Works and Character’. ‘Oldys’s’ Life became a staple of the growing anti-Painite
literature. Some hostile respondents to the Rights of Man were also paid by secret
service money, like the Rev. Robert Nares in 1792–3.8
But anti-Jacobinism was by no means only centrally directed. Once the alarm bell
pealed, the gentry, clergymen and substantial property owners formed ‘Loyal
Associations’ which spent large sums distributing cheap or free anti-revolutionary
propaganda. Leading these efforts was the Association for the Preservation of
Liberty and Property Against Republicans and Levellers of John Reeves, former
Chief Justice of Newfoundland, which redefined the revolutionary debate within a
matter of months. Formed in November 1792, the association soon prompted the
Post Office to survey seditious correspondence and within weeks boasted supporters
across the nation. Lincoln College, Oxford, was enrolled in the organization by its
rector, while the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge volunteered to
distribute association literature. Leading Wyvillites offered their assistance.
Branches sprang up in Jamaica and Grenada, and Paine’s American enemies
venomously decried his role in 1776.9 In rural Britain a vast number of meetings
occurred at the end of the year which, it was claimed, formed 2,000 associations
(1,500 is a more likely figure), with 150 in London alone. Letters poured in to Reeves
in London reporting local conditions; Worcester, for example, was said to be solidly
loyal except for ‘ONE furious Painite’. Some claimed loyalism comprised up to a
third of the adult males of Britain. But this is a considerable exaggeration. Local
notables, MPs, squires, farmers, the gentry, merchants and manufacturers
predominated amongst the committees and their ‘popular’ character has been
overrated. At least four former radical societies changed their names to demonstrate
their support for the constitution. But several new associations were also captured by
reformers.10
Organized loyalism had several objectives. Reeves certainly aimed to encourage
heads of families, master-manufacturers and employers to persuade their
dependants to avoid reform politics. To this end admonition was useful, but
labourers’ signatures were also sought deliberately for loyalist petitions. Wider
publicity resulted from a vigorous campaign of newspaper advertising, meetings and
processions, circulating tracts, placarding broadsides on walls and distributing
handbills to loyalist publicans. Many such publications, like the widely dispersed
One Penny-Worth of Truth, From Thomas Bull to His Brother John, attacked Paine
by name.11 But less subtle forms of persuasion also proved highly successful.
Soldiers were disciplined by their officers; a London ensign sent four privates and a

142
 THE GOVERNMENT PARTY

corporal to the guardhouse for reading the Rights of Man. Innkeepers were
threatened with the loss of their licences if they failed to prevent radical meetings and
signs quickly went up reading ‘NO JACOBINS ADMITTED HERE’. At Leicester,
thus, 128 tavern keepers prominently refused to allow subversive gatherings on their
premises, while in London, Thomas Hardy lamented, ‘the poor publicans were
obliged to submit’. Vigilance subsequently ensured that any evidence of alehouse
radicalism was censured. Near Wimbledon a local loyalist forced a publican to erase
the ‘Tom Paine No King Damn the King’ chalked on one of his shutters. Some
associations rewarded informers. Loyalists also protested weak prosecutions of
Painites, objected to defences, such as that offered at Paine’s trial, on the basis of
liberty of the press and employed legal harassment whenever possible. At
Manchester, for example, the prominent radical Thomas Walker was charged with
sedition in 1794 and, though his accuser was himself eventually tried for perjury and
forced to pay court costs of £3,000, Walker withdrew from politics anyway.12
In 1793–4 loyalists turned their attention to the war effort, raising bounties to
encourage naval enlistments and collecting for soldiers’ uniforms and widows and
orphans. They also helped to raise volunteers (eventually some 300,000) to meet the
threat of French invasion. Some of these served unwillingly, coerced by their
employers, but others needed the pay received for drilling. Enough proved reliable
to serve an important domestic purpose, moreover, by threatening reformers,
searching their houses and occasionally beating them up.13
Intimidation and violence were in fact important elements in both official and
popular reaction. Church and King mobs were often given liquor and money to storm
the houses of local ‘Jacobins’, in the Midlands often leading Dissenters whose
success and cultural prominence in these strongholds of commerce and
manufacturing were doubtless resented.14 Joseph Priestley saw his house,
laboratory and manuscripts destroyed at Birmingham by such a mob after a dinner
celebrating the second anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, where ‘King and
Constitution’ had also been toasted. Here rioting, encouraged by an inflammatory
handbill blasting ministers as ‘hypocrites’, lasted five days, with patriotism, anti-
Presbyterianism and the cry (curiously reminiscent of Thatcherite Britain) of ‘No
Philosophers’ soon giving way to more plunder and destruction.15 Similar outrages
were perpetrated in Manchester, Nottingham and elsewhere. At Manchester, for
example, a Unitarian chapel was stormed by crowds wielding trees as battering rams
and Quaker meeting-houses and homes were similarly assailed. Municipal officials
stood by and the next day dutifully formed a committee ‘for preserving Peace and
good order of the Town’. Such connivance, indeed, was widespread, with even the

143
 THOMAS PAINE

Home Office admitting privately that measures ‘not exactly justifiable by law’ were
necessary if radicalism was to be halted.16
Symbolic violence was a more subtle aspect of loyalism and here the focus upon
Paine himself was extremely pronounced. His image was portrayed on plates and
mugs with the ears of an ass. Tokens showed him hanging from a gibbet. Vases were
adorned with verses vilifying him. A favoured display of patriotism was to have the
initials T.P. stamped on the underside of boots, the better to trample Paine into the
dust. Widely abused in effigy after the beginning of the loyalist onslaught in
November 1792, Paine was often represented with a pair of stays beneath his arm,
which helped expose his humble origins. After an appropriate display he was nearly
always consigned to the flames. Paine burnings in fact soon became the order of the
day; the first was in mid-1792, while in the first two months of 1793 there were
twenty-six within twenty miles of Manchester alone. In Devon the dreaded figure
was drawn in a cart guarded by twelve constables accompanied by 126 horsemen and
no less than 4,000 foot soldiers. A volley was fired when the burnt effigy was cut
down; it was then hung in chains on a gibbet fifty feet high. At Winchester a Paine
was adorned respectably before its immolation (doubtless roasting a gentleman was
more amusing) in a black coat provided by the Church, a waistcoat and breeches
from the local college, and a hat and wig from the corporation. At Shrewsbury
Priestley and Paine were burned together. At Birmingham in the late 1790s a Paine
was constructed from a barber-shop wig block and paraded through the streets
accompanied by two sweeps, one bearing The Age of Reason, the other the Rights of
Man, both books being burned after their author had dangled on the gallows for a
time. Near Dronfield a Paine was hung with such hurried excitement that it fell down
and killed an unfortunate bystander; whether he was a loyalist was not recorded.17
Some of these incidents were macabre and ferocious. Sometimes a bladder of
bullock’s blood was attached as a heart, so that passers-by might prick it ‘and give
the surrounding spectators an idea of a fellow-being bleeding to death beneath the
assassinating fury of the multitude’, as a disgusted John Thelwall put it. Once a
wooden image of Paine was smashed to pieces with a sledgehammer so vigorously
that the executioner’s hands bled. Even more bizarrely, at Scarborough a Paine
manikin cried – doubtless from contrition – when a hidden sponge was squeezed by
an attendant after each assault of the vile symbol.18
But we must be wary of seeing such enthusiasm as the unrestrained effect of
political principle, for self-interest as well as mere excitement were intermixed in
such acts. In Suffolk in early 1793, for example, a village rector offered two guineas
to a few of his lowly parishioners to burn a Paine, which they duly did. But when a

144
 THE GOVERNMENT PARTY

local ‘intelligent gentleman’ offered them the same amount to burn the rector himself
in effigy, they happily performed the act in front of his own house. In 1794, similarly,
a Devonshire patriot employed several people for a Paine roasting, and one of them
afterwards waited on him ‘to know if there was any other gemman among his friends,
who he would wish to have burned, as they were ready to do it for the same quantity
of beer’, an offer repeated in Yorkshire. The well-attired Paine consigned to the
flames at Shrewsbury was incinerated by a mob who were also paid by the aldermen
and mayor to shout ‘Church and King’ (the local militia refused to join in). But when
they had imbibed enough, a loyalist reported, ‘some few did cry out – Tom Paine for
ever – Tom Paine for ever’, adding apologetically in a letter to Reeves, ‘but they were
very drunk’. Nor should we overestimate the political sophistication of the mob. On
one Sheffield account, for example, Paine was burned in one parish ‘for being a
Presbyterian – in another for being a Jacobite – in a third for being a Popish Jesuit –
and in a fourth for being nothing less than the Devil himself!’ Moreover, like the
Royal Proclamation, singling Paine out in this way may often have been
counterproductive. A letter from the Tewkesbury Society for Political and Moral
Information in July 1793, for example, insisted that ‘The burning of Thomas Paine’s
effigy, together with the blessed effects of the present war, has done more good to the
cause than the most substantial arguments; ‘tis amazing the increase of friends to
liberty, and the spirit of enquiry that is gone abroad; scarcely an old woman but is
talking politics’.19
None the less collectively these measures were fairly successful in stemming the
radical tide. At Leicester in late 1792, for example, the radicals were reported to have
become ‘much more moderate lately – since the establishment of government
societies and the rumour of prosecutions in London’. Loyalism was also boosted
tremendously by events in France. Burke’s inflamed paranoia seemed prophetic as
reports of battlefield atrocities, the arrest and imprisonment of the king in August
1792 and the Parisian massacres in September flowed in. French successes on the
battlefield brought radicals swarming back in 1793. But when French armies began
to march across Europe, France now seemed the aggressor. Hundreds of reformers,
consistent in their loyalties, echoed the thoughts of the radical Norwich literary critic
William Taylor, who disliked ‘the cause of national ambition and aggrandisement as
much as I liked the cause of national representation and liberty’. Most important of
all was the outbreak of war between England and France, which made everyone who
compared British injustices and French principles a potential traitor.20
Painism was not immediately defeated on all fronts, however. Following a period
of decline the LCS mushroomed again in 1795 and activities revived in Norwich and

145
 THOMAS PAINE

elsewhere. Several gatherings in London after 1794 attracted 100,000 spectators

(but the Seditious Meetings Act ended these). Food riots also became increasingly
common, particularly in 1795. None the less the threat that mass political
organization would become mass resistance diminished by 1793 and vanished two
years later. Reeves’s and many similar associations thus disbanded after 1793. But
they had done their job well and, with the State Trials of 1794 and the repressive
legislation of 1795 and 1799, played the most substantial role in suppressing
radicalism (though there were other threats to order at the end of the decade). Anti-
Jacobinism revived in the late 1790s in response to Godwinism in particular. But its
character was now primarily literary and its intended audience elite rather than
popular.21

Scurrilous abuse

How much this impressive victory owed to force and how much to propaganda is
difficult to judge. But the public opinion of the literate was probably carried by
argument to an important degree. There were many dimensions to this largely
unexplored debate. Loyalism sometimes assumed classical forms. In Scotland a
government employee published an edition of Aristotle’s Politics to counter
subversive opinion. The Oxford divine Edward Tatham also relied heavily on
Aristotle’s defence of natural subordination and inequality in his contribution to the
defusing of popular discontent, while another anti-Jacobin, James Edward
Hamilton, added (with no apparent sense of double entendre) that modern mechanics
were what ‘Aristotle terms slaves’.22 But while considerable efforts were exerted to
convert educated Whigs, many loyalists sought to sway Paine’s working-class
readers and their success in this regard indeed marked the turning-point in the anti-
revolutionary debate.
This, however, required strategies usually deemed unsuitable to gentlemanly
discourse. Subterfuge, for example, was thought legitimate for patriotic ends. Works
by ‘hireling scribblers’ (as Paine called them) like ‘Oldys’s’ Life were advertised as
including ‘a Defence of His Writings’, while tracts like the Defence of the Rights of
Man also disguised refutations of Paine. A dialogue between ‘Growler’ and
‘Honestus’ entitled Crowns and Sceptres Useless Baubles concluded by proving
Britons were the happiest people in the world. But more serious efforts at black
propaganda were also afoot. At Edinburgh in 1793 appeared Plain Reasons for
Adopting the Plan of the Societies Calling Themselves the Friends of the People …

146
 THE GOVERNMENT PARTY

as Copied from the Works of Mr. Thomas Paine, by one ‘A. Scott, Citizen and
Hairdresser’. But the work, with only the barest elements of satire, in fact counselled
murdering the king and establishing an equality of ranks, power and wealth. Here
and elsewhere Paine’s arguments were ridiculously distorted; his advice that past
generations not dictate to the present, for example, was twisted into the view that ‘It
is time, indeed, that a respect for parents and ancestry, and a love for children and
descendants, should be laid aside with other prejudices’. In keeping with the idea that
Paine had disclaimed ‘all ideas of subordination, as contrary to the natural rights and
equality of mankind’, satires like A Sketch of the Rights of Boys and Girls similarly
caricatured Paine, Wollstonecraft, Barlow and others as all seeking to abolish
parental authority, such that boys need ‘no longer servilely endure the galling stripes
which, till now, their flesh was heir to’. Another such effort even suggested that,
according to Paine, animals, vegetables ‘and even the most contemptible clod of
earth’ were equal to mankind. More serious efforts supposedly advertised the
resolution of the ‘Society of the Friends of Liberty and Equality’ to divide all
property equally, with each receiving ten shillings in total. Related pamphlets
purported to reveal Paine’s employment by the National Convention to gather
highwaymen together to storm prisons and the Bank of England. Conservatives then
pointed to such tracts as evidence of genuinely revolutionary organizations.23
A large proportion of the anti-Painite literature was more abusive of than
subversive of radicalism. By June 1792 Paine himself counted some forty attacks on
the Rights of Man by government agents, Anglican clergymen and landowners in
particular. Loyalists competed to heap calumny on Paine, accusing him of virtually
every form of personal immorality, religious infidelity and treasonable activity. To
William Cobbett, writing as ‘Peter Porcupine’, Paine was ‘the Prince of
Demagogues’ and worse. For others who insisted on demoting him into the
aristocracy, ‘prince of villains, that choice spirit of the devil’ seemed appropriate. He
was not infrequently connected to Robespierre and Marat. The Rights of Man was
treated no better, one pamphlet noting that ‘the chief novelty in it, besides the title, is
the mischief. Nearly every literary form was employed to insult the reformers. Anti-
Jacobinism seemed to release a penchant for verse in its adherents and many a poor
poet scribbled a few bad rhymes for the cause. Even drama was employed after a
fashion, a brief play being written about Timothy Factotum, the son of a staymaker
… the corrector of laws, the ruler of kings, the scourge of princes’. A writer for the
Gentleman’s Magazine offered a parody in 1794 based loosely on Macbeth and
entitled Confusion’s Master-Piece: or, Paine’s Labour’s Lost. Loyalists with vocal
talents could be marshalled by The Anti-Gallican Songster and The Anti-Levelling
Songster. The latter was entirely filled with anti-Paine songs, one of which, for

147
 THOMAS PAINE

example, claimed that Paine’s doctrine of equality meant that ‘An old maid’s as
handsome as Venus. Each man knows as much as his neighbour, And just the same
portion of brains’. Others could hum along to Tom the Boddice Maker, which was
sung to the doubtless rousing but now apparently defunct tune of ‘Bow! Wow!
Wow!’24
Verse attacks on Paine focused on a handful of themes. Paine’s character of course
came in for much abuse. Amongst many other failings – his career and second
marriage were favoured topics – he was frequently accused of vanity. This, proposed
Sir Brooke Boothby, underlay his ‘diabolical counsels’ and ‘certain indications of
evil design’. Plagiarism was another favourite charge against Paine, with the works
of the Dissenter David Williams and Rousseau’s Social Contract being amongst the
supposed sources of the Rights of Man. Paine’s flight to France and his association
with England’s enemies, ‘those conceited monkies the French’, whose money was
purportedly responsible for much of his writings’ success, were also frequently
condemned. A 1792 pamphlet insisted that a newly minted French citizen and
Convention delegate was ‘not your sort, to tell an Englishman anything for his good’.
Hatred of his motherland was accordingly another motive commonly ascribed to
Paine. His election to the Convention had been only to ‘wound the pride of his
country’ and once he had been so used, asserted one pamphlet, Paine had been
‘condemned to silence and inactivity’ (and there was some truth in this). When all
else failed, it was simply claimed that Paine had recanted his principles. The Last
Dying Words of Tom Paine, Executed at the Guillotine in France, for example, gave
his final words as being: ‘I have lived a dishonest and shameful life, and shall die like
a wretch who has been the pest of society.’ His advice before being executed at
Lincoln was ‘Read thy Bible’, while another ‘confession’ recorded Paine’s hanging
in France for having finally told his hosts (‘being a grumbler wherever he goes’) ‘he
thought roast beef and plum pudding better than soup meagre and fried frogs’, by
virtue of which, at least here, and if only for his gastronomic principles, Tom ‘died a
patriot’.25
Amidst such accusations it was easy to assert that Paine sought trouble for its own
sake, and that ‘the levelling principles of Paine’s productions’ had ‘infused
discontent where satisfaction smiled before’. This quickly became an important
conservative theme. A happy and virtuous peasantry had been suddenly rendered
miserable merely by reading Paine’s exaggerations of ‘trifling or imaginary’ evils.
One tract which accused the English Jacobins of causing high bread prices by
sending grain to France was entitled Britons are Happy, If They Will Think So, while
an ‘anti-Gallican song’ contained the verses: ‘So they tell Tommy Paine / O Pray
write a book, / And inform poor John Bull how ill he does look; / For if left to himself,

148
 THE GOVERNMENT PARTY

we’re afraid he’ll not know / How unhappy he is, and his pulse that its low / That his
liberty’s gone, and that trade he has none.’ The campaign to persuade the labouring
classes of their well-being seems to have had some success; in 1793 a Birmingham
loyalist, at least, boasted that ‘the laudable attempts which have been used to
convince the lower orders that they are happy, have already been more successful
than we expected’. Correspondingly, a central theme in Reeves’s association
pamphlets was the unhappiness of the rich, whose ‘good living and idleness’ brought
them ‘the gout and many other disorders, which the poor never have, which torment
them all day, and won’t let them sleep at night’ and which made them ‘rather objects
of pity than envy’. This lament could further be linked to property rights: the rights
of the peasantry, one pamphlet claimed, were ‘to a comfortable subsistence, and the
means of rearing a hardy and laborious family’, adding that ‘All beyond this does
them an injury’.26
The motives of Paine’s audience were also the target of many a loyalist tract. A
Portsmouth naval carpenter said Paine’s readers were ‘the unprincipled, dissipated,
and the extravagant’, especially labourers anxious to sate ‘new created demands’
derived from commerce and unwilling to wait until the price of labour rose naturally.
Many accused them of congregating ‘merely to drink and swear that they are
CLEVER FELLOWS, and expect soon to see one another Parliament Men!’ A
Scottish account similarly thought radicalism appealed solely ‘to drunkards, who
delight in every occasion that can afford them a pretext for meeting to guzzle and
drink; to schoolboys and apprentices, who are weary of the authority which restrains
them from idleness and debauchery; to journeymen and other young men, who,
having become their own masters, are eager to shew, that it is so, by running headlong
into every species of turbulence and licentiousness’. To others the Painites were
‘people of desperate fortunes – men who have nothing to lose, have nothing at stake,
and who may chance to pick up something in the confusion’, such as ‘felons,
mendicants, pick-pockets and vagrants’. Frequently the reformers were derided as
‘Levellers’ liable to the same errors, and imbued with the same spirit, as the English
revolution 140 years earlier, including a Cromwellian dictatorship, some even
saying the French had promised the Presbyterians leadership in a revolutionary
government.27 Some tracts also asserted that Paine was especially popular among
northern manufacturers ‘restless and eager after change’, though the broader
question of Painism’s relation to a possible ‘bourgeois revolution’ is too complex to
pursue here.
A few loyalist arguments were certainly indebted to Burke. One was that the real
‘rights of man’ were embodied in the common law and existing privileges of living
Englishmen rather than the philosophical fantasies of French dreamers. This is

149
 THOMAS PAINE

explored in greater detail below. Emphasis was also given to the need to judge
existing institutions on the basis of their antiquity alone. Paine’s view of the non-
binding nature of past contracts was consequently frequently attacked. To one
clergyman, for example, Paine’s grand error was that he confused ‘the idea of
national with that of an individual existence’. Individuals could not bind those not
yet born, ‘and if the nation died as the individual John does, neither could the nation
do any thing to bind a future nation which should arise after its decease’. But ‘if the
nation died which consented to and approved of the national acknowledgement at the
revolution, when and where was the movement of its decease?’ Correspondingly
important, as we will see, was the view that Britain indeed possessed a constitution
defined by the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and other documents, and that all the
great authorities like Locke and Montesquieu conceded this (and many reformers
indeed agreed). The Reflections’ emphasis on a sinful human race requiring religious
restraint was important, especially after 1795. Burke’s unwillingness to make peace
with France was also echoed in the loyalist pamphlet literature. Finally, Burke
himself, also briefly responding to Paine in An Appeal from the Old to the New
Whigs, strenuously insisted that no constitution could be changed without the
consent of all parties in the nation and that in any case the multitude ‘ought to be the
obedient, and not the ruling or presiding part’ of the population.28
But the form as well as much of the content of most loyalist literature in fact owed
little to the Reflections and consisted instead of short, simple and often
condescending tracts addressed to the labouring classes and concentrating on issues
thought to be of importance to them. Some of Paine’s opponents had difficulties
descending to this level. Archbishop William Paley’s well-circulated Reasons for
Contentment (1792), for example, was a carefully argued tract condemning the envy
of the rich because the poor could often more easily attain true happiness by, for
example, appreciating fully the value of rest after hard work. But Paley’s prose,
though clearly designed for their consumption, was too sophisticated for most
labourers. Simpler, therefore, was his Equality as Consistent with the British
Constitution (1792), a dialogue between a master-manufacturer and a workman – the
choice of characters is noteworthy – which attacked Paine’s supposed doctrine that
all were born equal and should remain so, and defended pensions, titles and existing
taxes. Paley also insisted that the revolution had merely aggravated poverty in
France and condemned the French as Britain’s traditional enemy.29
None the less even here Paley lacked the common touch and his most important
contribution to the debate may indeed have been his popularization of utilitarian
ideas, which conservatives adopted to shore up their defence of precedent and
expediency without ever wholly embracing a felicific calculus. Far more successful

150
 THE GOVERNMENT PARTY

in reaching the people was Hannah More, who earlier had founded schools to
inculcate religion and social subordination in poor children. These evangelical
concerns were now ripe for expansion and More took up where Reeves had left off.
Her first great anti-Jacobin production was Village Politics (1793), a smooth
dialogue between Jack Anvil the blacksmith and the mason Tom Hod. This the
government distributed by the thousands in England and Scotland in the first major
effort to strike at what was thought to be the real level of Paine’s audience. Village
Politics extolled poverty and hard work and emphasized the privilege of obeying
those who comprehended ideas like ‘liberty’, which were confusing to the common
working man (and other tracts sneered at the tougher Painites’ intellectual
pretensions, one dialogue attempting to embarrass a simple reformer by warning that
‘there is not a Ploughman or Miller in all our parish but holds thy poor weak sophistry
in derision’). Taxes and the cost of provisions might be high, More confessed, but
French ‘liberty’ was mere murder. Revolutionary equality would never last, while
resistance to civil power entailed disobedience to God. Village Politics concluded
with Tom Hod burning his copy of the Rights of Man. But this was only the beginning
of More’s efforts. Two million of her later Cheap Repository tracts circulated in their
first year of publication alone (1795) and the genre dominated loyalist literature
thereafter. Indefatigable, More wrote two or three tracts monthly for about three
years, sometimes helped by a few friends, who also corresponded extensively with
committees formed throughout the country. The Cheap Repository tracts tended to
be moral and religious rather than explicitly political; The Shepherd of Salisbury
Plain (1795), for example, lauded the virtues of poverty, while other tales praised
industry, sobriety, frugality, stoicism and the pleasures of husbandry, most being
rural in their setting. More was exceedingly pleased with her success, gloating at
Paine that Village Politics had ‘brought down your huge goliath, the Rights of Man,
to the ground, and laid him firmly on his back, never to rise again’, there being not
now a copy of the book ‘to be found in any of the book clubs or circulating libraries
in our country’.30
The veritable flood of conservative literature in 1792–3 responded to the rapid
growth of reform organizations and soon began to imitate More’s successful
techniques. Many of these writings left subtle political argument by the wayside,
crudely caricaturing the revolutionary cause, dismissing the English Jacobins as
shiftless and lazy and extolling the boundless merits of the British constitution and
the natural, modest monarchism of the British people (whereas the French thought
themselves capable of anything). Some aimed at a female audience, warning Painite
wives that ‘if England is to become like France, they shall lose their husbands, as
Marriage goes for nothing there, now’. Their chief form, with titles like A New

151
 THOMAS PAINE

Dialogue between Monsieur Francois and John English on the French Revolution,
was the ‘dialogue’ spoken in ‘plain language’ and sometimes in dialect; one
Edinburgh production by ‘Tam Thrum’, for example, said that the ideas of the Rights
of Man ‘wou’d never come in ony ordinary man’s noddle, if he were na enlightened
by that jewel of a book’. They nearly always described a confused labourer about to
succumb to ‘the poison of discontent’ instilled by the Rights of Man but finally
rescued by superior wisdom, sometimes purveyed by a solid squire, but as often by
another labourer.31
Let us consider one of these dialogues in greater detail to explore their approach.
Liberty and Equality; Treated of in a Short History Addressed from a Poor Man to
His Equals (1792) begins with an honest young blacksmith named Joe Thomas
assaulting one ‘Judas MacSerpent’ (the Scottish allusion is curious) for terming
Englishmen ‘slaves’ and persuading some, ‘who had hitherto lived Happily and
Contented, and really wanted for nothing’, that they ‘were in want of everything, and
had no right to be Happy and Contented any longer; no, those privileges were not to
be found among the Rights of Man’. MacSerpent sends his lawyer with an assault
charge, but agrees to compromise if Thomas raises £25 by selling his blacksmith
shop, which MacSerpent himself had previously tried to acquire. After much
remonstration and terming himself always a friend to the poor, MacSerpent lowers
his demand to £10. At this point, however, Squire Compton enters and conveniently
produces a treasonous letter ordering MacSerpent to be paid four livres daily to
‘serve the cause of France against England’ by, for example, not blaming high bread
prices on poor harvests and always denying Paine’s French citizenship. Confronted,
MacSerpent begs forgiveness in return for ignoring Thomas’s assault. His former
comrades confess to being ‘ashamed at our own simplicity that such a Wretch should
have talked us so far out of our senses’, but also ‘frightened at the idea how near we
were to having been rebels … we were conscious, too, we have many of us actually
gone so far, as to endeavour to communicate to others, those Maxims MacSerpent
had instilled in us’. The squire then lectures on the benefits of different ranks,
assuring his listeners that ‘the Great have no advantages over You, but what are fully
counterbalanced by sufferings you are free from’. As he begins to speak the
increasingly contrite artisans and labourers still have their hats on, a habit ‘lately
imbibed’ from MacSerpent’s lessons. Gradually, however, all begin to ‘think such
behaviour was a mark, not of our Liberty, but Impudence’, and in succession one
after the other ‘began to assume a more respectful and becoming deportment, and to
bow and thank him for his advice’. The Fat Cooper in particular said that ‘he was
never so pleased in his life, as he was now, to find he had no occasion to be
discontented or envious any longer’. At the end MacSerpent is delivered over to a

152
 THE GOVERNMENT PARTY

constable, while his former associates are treated to a bucket of strong beer and drink
‘CHURCH, AND KING, AND OLD ENGLAND for ever’.32
Religion in fact played no small role in such tracts and Anglican loyalists, while
by no means inevitably Tory’, often spoke of ‘Mr Paine’s Dissenting associates’, as
if Dissent itself were synonymous with rebellion. Some linked Paine to Price, while
others claimed that Price at least accepted the mandate of 1688, which Paine patently
did not (a line John Adams also took). But though the term was primarily directed at
‘French’ ideals, ‘levelling’ was also associated with puritan religious enthusiasm.
One critic noted ‘how similar they all are in their doctrines … the inalienable rights
of the people to form the Government of the Church, taught by Calvin and the
Puritans; and the inalienable right of the People to form the Government of the State,
taught by the French Democrats’.33 Another asserted that Paine and the Dissenters
sought the destruction of all government, their perfect society consisting ‘in every
man following his own will in suppressing all magistracy, gentry, clergy, nobility,
and monarchy’. The most elaborate forms of this theory uncovered a ‘Grand
Conspiracy against Social Order’ which originated with the London Dissenting
intellectuals around the Analytical, Monthly, Critical Reviews and New Annual
Register, who sought to use religion as ‘a mask … for the worst of purposes’. Such
explanations were greatly reinforced by the exiled Abbé Barruel’s Memoirs
Illustrating the History of Jacobinism (1797). Barruel unearthed no less than three
separate conspiracies against the old order: one anti-Christian and broadly
philosophical; another anti-social and grounded in Illuminism in particular; and a
third anti-monarchical. Freemasonry played no small role in these causes, according
to Barruel, whose English translator detailed the parallels between the United
Irishmen’s organization and Masonic ritual, and noted that Paine’s works ‘were
profusely distributed among the Irish’. Barruel was also reinforced by Proofs of a
Conspiracy against All the Religions and Governments of Europe (1797) by John
Robison, the Edinburgh natural philosophy professor, which reached four editions
in its first year alone and attacked Priestley in particular and the Masonic peril
generally.34

Arguments against the Rights of Man: property and civilization

Paine’s antagonists soon realized that ridicule, threats and crude moralizing alone
were insufficient to stem the radical tide. Serious intellectual response was also
required. As one of Adam Smith’s editors, William Playfair, put it, ‘in order to avoid
the last excesses of Jacobins, it will be necessary to abandon and disclaim their first

153
 THOMAS PAINE

principles … the absurd and dangerous declaration of the rights of man must be
exploded’. Fundamental to the more serious responses to Paine was the reassertion
of the glory of the British system of checks and balances, truly a constitution because
it was a body of fundamental laws, the wisdom of virtual representation, the right of
substantial property owners to a preponderant power over legislation, the benefits of
limited, historically grounded rights and liberties, and the location of sovereignty in
the legislature rather than the whole people.35 Also important was the defence of a
natural social hierarchy bound together by ‘duty, affection, and respect’, instead of
Paine’s principles, which in their French practice meant that ‘All the ties which
formerly bound the individual to the community have been destroyed, and every man
has been left free to act from the unrestrained impulse of his own free will’.36
These were not new arguments, but neither were they simply ‘Tory’, though
Toryism was now more respectable than at any previous point in the eighteenth
century. For the French revolution debate also reshaped Whig discourse, killing off
the now dangerously radicalized myths of an older Whiggism, which were struck
down not by the single shafts of Hume or Bentham but the massed volleys of the anti-
Painites. Against the more abstract vision of a community based upon natural rights
enforced by a social contract as well as various historical precedents was now pitted
a more deeply, determinately historical, sceptical and utilitarian view which
challenged the existence of any contract not enshrined in precedent and rejected
natural rights language generally. After 1800 the language of natural rights and the
social contract thus became associated primarily with working-class radicalism, not
Whiggism. Many loyalists, however, remained loosely Whiggish and, if they
admired what they took to be Burke’s energetic avowal of the British constitution,
they were also unwilling to go to his extreme of ‘reviving doctrines superannuated
and obsolete even in Spain and Portugal’, which indeed were thought by many
moderate Whigs to have ‘brought Paine’s Rights of Man upon our backs’. Many
objected in particular to the ‘erroneous political inference’ that the nation had
relinquished ‘the right of electing their Kings, or any other political right’ in 1688.
Their concern was not to defend the divine right theory of monarchy, or to increase
the king’s powers, but to shore up the constitution as a whole. To a degree, as we have
seen, this constitutionalist rhetoric was indeed shared by many Painites as well, in so
far as they continued to appeal to the virtues of the ancient constitution. In this sense,
too, because it defended the status quo, and not some British version of the French
ancien régime, mainstream loyalism was more Whig than Tory, and less ‘a
conservative reaction’ than ‘an attempt to maintain the most liberal constitution in
Europe’, as one historian has recently argued. But it was a Whiggism transformed,
and one whose centre of gravity was indeed much closer in spirit to Mackintosh’s,

154
 THE GOVERNMENT PARTY

Boothby’s and Wollstonecraft’s defences of commercial society and manners than

to Burke’s vindication of the ideals of aristocratic chivalry. Indeed one of the few true
Tories active in the debate, John Reeves, was tried for seditious libel in 1796 for
writing that the king could govern without the Lords or Commons (whereas Paley,
for example, had argued that the king was no master of the common man, and could
not interfere with the liberty of any of his subjects). It is for this reason, in particular,
that the ‘Burke–Paine debate’ is a misnomer when applied to the French revolution
controversy in Britain. For unlike Burke, most loyalists were not only defending
Britain, but believed their country’s achievements rested on distinctly modern
developments as well as historical compromises, rather than merely ‘Gothic’ ideals.
Thus they sought to defend not only an inequality of ranks generally, but the
commercial opulence associated with British inequality in particular.37
Property thus loomed large in the new style of conservative Whiggism, but now
an historical theory of the evolution of both mobile and landed property supplanted
the remnants of the republican theory of the role of landownership in political
stability. For Hume, Smith and the other Scottish theorists of commercial society
whose accounts aided many loyalist arguments, the attainment of opulence entailed
accepting greater inequality than had existed in earlier historical stages. But in
absolute terms the poor were now better off than ever they had been under feudalism,
much less earlier agricultural or hunting and gathering societies. The republican plea
for equality hence seemingly masked a reversion to primitivism from which not even
the poor would benefit, and France was to be condemned, as a London doctor put it,
for reviving ‘these exploded dreams of the golden age, the terrestrial paradise, the
millennium’. Inequality of property permitted doctors, lawyers and other trades and
professions to thrive and in turn to distribute their largesse to meet the real wants of
the poor, the only equality possible between the two being, as one loyalist put it, in
the act of charity. From this perspective, the debate about the revolution in France
itself was, as Arthur Young put it, not between liberty and tyranny, but ‘alone a
question of property. It is a trial at arms, whether those who have nothing shall not
seize and possess the property of those who have something.’ Property-owners were
thus warned that they would soon face beggars with ‘the sword in one hand, and
Rights of Man in the other’, demanding ‘that which good government tells me is my
own’.38
Two great languages of modernity thus clashed in this debate: the language of
natural rights, which proclaimed an equality of citizenship and promised a more
virtuous polity; and the language of civilization, especially in the form of
commercial society rather than Burkean feudalism, combined with the superior,
more pacific manners its habits of trade ostensibly engendered. Republicans

155
 THOMAS PAINE

continued to argue for both formal political equality and relative economic equality,
applying these now to farmers, artisans and merchants, which was the American
resolution of this problem, and not only to landowning elites, as classical
republicanism demanded. Their opponents offered the usual criticisms of classical
republicanism, such as its tendency to become tyrannical and to thrive on war and
conquest. But they concentrated on the argument that while ‘all levelling notions
tend as their ultimate point of perfection’ to the savage state, Britain’s prosperity and
‘all the delicacies of politeness’ rested on the country’s greater inequality. Paine’s
tract, as Hannah More put it, was thus only a way of ‘making ourselves poor when
we are getting rich’. Inequality was not unfair since the rich employed the rest,
insisted a Buckinghamshire farmer. One ‘Plain Man’, probably a shopkeeper,
similarly noted that ‘I have a set of wealthy customers who put a great deal of money
into my pocket in the year, whose expenses, suitable to their rank and situation in life,
enable me to enjoy all the solid comforts suitable to mine’. High taxes, too, could be
understood as benefiting the working classes because labourers’ wages had to be
greater to pay them.39
Republicanism thus suited only poor, agricultural societies which were incapable
of being ‘congenial to science, or friendly to commerce’ (as a Canterbury printer put
it) and implied a return to ‘ancient rusticity’. Paine, wrote another loyalist, evidently
sought ‘to mow down all distinctions of rank and titles, and thereby reduce civilised
society to the primitive level of hunters and shepherds’ (which explained why the
French Jacobins were as ferocious as Indians). Moreover, as one Royal Navy captain
put it, not merely opulence but civilization, manners and refinements depended on
inequality of property. Other critics similarly insisted that ‘Arcadian schemes of
polity are only fit for Arcadian manners’, that only Spartan simplicity could maintain
a government like Paine’s, or that the latter was ‘calculated for infant society, for
shepherds, fishermen, and huntsmen, where the riches of the state is scarce become
an object of temptation, or an excitement to plunder’. Since they sought to return to
the state of nature, Paine’s followers were consequently advised to ‘incorporate
yourselves with the Indians in the Northern and Western parts of America’. Such
comments could be greatly multiplied, for it is clear that the central argument against
Paine was not the question of extending political participation, but the problem of
reconciling republican ideals with unequal, and especially modern, commercial
societies, without destroying their opulence. In essence Paine’s critics simply
rejected the idea of commercial republicanism by pretending that ‘republic’ could
be understood only in classical terms. And the language of republicanism proved too
inelastic to refute this view easily.40

156
 THE GOVERNMENT PARTY

Consequently the most powerful charge in the reactionary arsenal was the
accusation that the Painites sought to undermine the existing system of property.
This became the centre of gravity in the entire revolutionary debate, the logical core
around which other arguments swirled. Much more than merely the abusive idea that
the ‘equality of mankind’ could only mean ‘that we should all be exactly alike’, the
vindication of British opulence became the focus of loyalist exertions. Loyalists
grew fond of quoting Smith’s dictum that the common English labourer enjoyed
more luxury than an African king. Inequality was admissible in a high state of
civilization because even the poorest were better off than in a predominantly
agricultural, more equal republican society; this was indeed the core of Smith’s own
defence of commercial society. The quickest way of ‘refuting’ the Rights of Man was
thus simply to assert that it sought equality of property, even if this ‘equality’, as we
have seen, meant ‘levelling’ landed estates to an annual value of some £13,000,
equivalent to perhaps as much as a million pounds in present terms. But the taxation
scheme in the Rights of Man Part Two was not read this way, though it was
condemned as ‘so unprincipled, as to surpass anything that is to be found in the
history of the Buccaniers of America. It is an advertisement for general pillage.’
Instead Paine was assumed to want to divide all property equally, which, one loyalist
calculated, would leave three acres for each to cultivate and, since no one would be
left for specialized labour, all would quickly sink into barbarism.41
First introduced by Reeves’s association in late 1792, this charge soon took a
variety of forms. Satirical treatments were common. A Trip to the Island of Equality
described Paine’s principles as operating successfully on an island off Alaska, where
all were reduced to wearing fox-skins (there was a small pun here at Whig expense)
and living in caves. Parodies of the Rights of Man, such as Buff; or, A Dissertation on
Nakedness, accused Paine of relinquishing religion, literature, the arts, sciences,
manufactures and the polite professions. Precise examinations of the economic
proposals of the Rights of Man, however, were comparatively rare. One Lt Col.
Chalmers defended Adam Smith against Paine’s criticisms of his treatment of the
Bank of England, but also claimed that Smith had been called ‘the high priest of
democracy’ because he seemed to oppose high taxes. A long tract published in
Germany accused Paine of corrupting Smith’s principles ‘by associating them with
the temerity of language and inaccuracy of assertion which passion has inspired him
with’ and of mistakenly defining wealth as specie rather than labour. Another critic
invoked the free trade principles of Arthur Young, Hume and Smith, and asserted that
Paine intended to prove ‘that we have no right to limit the wages of the labourer’.42
Various writers accused Paine of offering such encouragements to labour. To the
leading anti-Jacobin ‘John Gifford’ (John Richards Green), Paine thought ‘every

157
 THOMAS PAINE

man ought to resign all he possesses, and put all his property into one common stock-
purse, whence it might be distributed in equal parts to all the different members of
the community: the indolent and the industrious, the lazy and the laborious; the
extravagant and the frugal’. Others said the Painites promised labourers three
guineas a week without working by dividing property. And if such promises were not
explicit, many feared they were understood as tacit. A Durham letter of late 1792 said
that local workers ‘talk of equality and expect, that all property will be divided in case
of a Republic’. An Edinburgh pamphlet insinuated the same, while another report
said that the poor had been told each would get ten acres and that ‘French equality
meant an equal distribution of land which Paine had told them was their natural and
original right’. Often it was thus asserted, too, that whatever Paine’s followers
protested and Paine had written, his system implied equality, even though every sane
person knew that inequality based upon differential productivity had been necessary
since the state of nature to support an increasing population.43 If Paine had not urged
equality of property in so many words, thus, he had ‘insinuated it’, and intended
others to seek it, or was, at least minimally, read by others as having done so. For
many loyalists the issue was hence not what the radicals meant ‘or what they now say
they mean, but what … men of plain understandings and common sense would
naturally understand them to mean’. One anti-Jacobin thus wrote that Paine’s readers
‘really did understand’ his notion of equality to mean ‘an equal right at this moment
to equal property’. An equal right to vote, moreover, might be consequently also
understood as tending ‘to subvert the natural order of things’. In France, after all,
universal suffrage had resulted in ‘no laws, no government, no order or rule’.44
A more accurate charge than that of complete equality was that the radicals sought
to transplant American prescriptions to Europe, and here the European implications
of Paine’s central contention that republicanism and commerce could be reconciled
were prominently rejected. America had no indigent poor to support and thus lacked
the chief burden of other governments, said the agricultural writer Arthur Young. Its
population had ‘scarcely become a settled and mercantile people’. Luxury, another
observer added, was ‘but beginning to be known there’, though eventually ‘wealth
and ease’ would ‘produce ambition’, and ambition, faction. Soon an American
commercial and manufacturing aristocracy would overturn the relative equality of
the colonial era. Some who rejected Paine’s conception of the American model were
not ill disposed towards the United States, or at least hastened to insist that its
powerful President and senatorial check on popular government did not imply ‘like
the French, a wild species of republicanism’. John Adams’s response to the Rights of
Man was hence welcomed as proving ‘that the American Government is not founded

158
 THE GOVERNMENT PARTY

upon the absurd doctrine of the pretended rights of man, and that, if it had been, it
could not have stood for a week’. Some thus argued that Paine had used the American
model dishonestly, since universal suffrage did not prevail there. Most agreed,
however, that if Paine’s views applied anywhere, it was only to countries like
America, where commerce and manufacturing had made no extensive inroads and
much free land existed. Such ideas were ‘totally inapplicable to Britain’ because it
was ‘so differently circumstanced in point of wealth and the peculiar dispositions of
its inhabitants’, especially because they were corrupted by the luxuries and vices of
refinement.45
This campaign dealt a heavy blow to the reformers’ cause, and especially the
London Corresponding Society. As Henry Redhead Yorke lamented, the ‘wicked
manoeuvres’ of Reeves’s association were very damaging. Though they repeatedly
abjured ‘the Agrarian position of equalizing property’, insisting only on ‘equal
protection of the law, whereby … the poorest man [has] an equal chance of obtaining
the impartial administration of justice’, LCS leaders conceded in 1797 that the
campaign had been ‘unfortunately too successful’. ‘The word equality became the
constant theme of abuse, and was construed to mean, not equality of rights, but an
equality of property also, in which perverted sense the French had never used it’,
explained one Painite, warning that while radicals first viewed such doctrines with
abhorrence, ‘we became familiarized with the name, and … some of those who do
not take the trouble of thinking for themselves, may possibly not detect that absurdity
of the doctrine’. Painite pamphlets like An Explanation of the Word Equality and
Political Dialogues upon the Subject of Equality (both c. 1792) railed against the
‘perverse sense imposed on the word’. Radicals denied that the ‘ridiculous idea’ of
equality of property could be found either in ‘the heads of the most violent reformers
in France’ or anywhere in Paine’s writings. But this was all to little avail. Yorke even
felt that ‘the general terror occasioned by such an insinuation’ had brought about war
with France.46

Natural rights and the state of nature

The loyalist account of British opulence defended modern property rights, but
played down or rejected entirely the language of natural rights generally. In
dismissing Paine’s account of rights, discussions of the state of nature and the rights
possessed in it were prominent, for the debate about both equality and rights rested
largely upon notions of the origins of society. It was commonly asserted that Paine

159
 THOMAS PAINE

had misunderstood the relationship between natural and civil society (Price and
Priestley had been similarly accused in 1789–90) and that his attempt to replicate
natural rights in civil society underlay his misconceptions about rights, natural
equality being ‘incompatible with the advantages of social life’, as one account
insisted, deriding the late ‘idle and foolish talk about the Rights of Man’. On this
question as elsewhere ridiculously extreme views frequently emerged; one cleric,
for example, seemed to admit only a natural right to celebrate the blessings of the
English constitution. More serious critics usually rejected Paine’s distinction
between society and government as implying that mankind had once been so good
as not to have needed government, or that America had ever lacked such an authority,
or that any security of property could exist without one. Many similarly accused
Paine of forgetting ‘a very essential and operative part of human nature, the
passions’, and assuming that ‘the people will all be regenerated with the
government’. The Rights of Man thus ascribed ‘more virtue and knowledge to
mankind than they are really possessed of’. To Paine’s claim that the system of
commerce mitigated the need for extensive governments, too, one retort was that
commerce was only pacific because governments protected its conductors.47
But most of Paine’s critics were concerned chiefly to deny that rights ‘of any kind
whatsoever’ existed in the state of nature, at least in any sense which might lend
Paine support. Everyone was admittedly independent in the state of nature, one
wrote, but everyone was also miserable, and the strong preyed continuously on the
weak. Yet this ‘was a state which modern philosophers have commended’. None the
less it was also surely a condition in which no rights existed. Power alone had
regulated human relations then, with rights emerging only with society proper, and
support for this view was elicited from Grotius, Pufendorf, Burlamaqui and others.
‘Natural rights’ did not exist for practical men and women: ‘all rights … are properly
civil’ (as Edward Tatham put it) or were only ‘real’ because they were ‘secured … by
that form of government under which we live’ (said the Duke of York’s chaplain).48
A similar argument, close to Burke’s, was that some rights preceded society, but ‘no
natural rights are retained after entering into society’. Another variation on this
theme was to define these original rights as merely ‘the rights of a savage, to prey
upon the weak and helpless’, which had been surrendered for civil rights, ‘the rights
of society, uniting us for our general happiness, and mutual assistance, and
protection’. But this also virtually implied that ‘in a natural state, men were
possessed of no rights at all. None can be called natural rights which were not
possessed in a state of nature; and where the rules of justice are not established, where
the strong can enforce obedience, and the weak must yield to oppression, what

160
 THE GOVERNMENT PARTY

becomes of the Rights of Man?’ Or correspondingly, if such rights were ‘natural’,

they included only the right to eat, drink, sleep, hunt, fish and the like. Some critics
further argued that even if an original contract had marked the passage from the state
of nature it would not have obliged future generations, who would not have been the
real descendants of those who signed such a contract, and who, even if they were,
would now be landed proprietors rather than ‘the people at large’. If only historical
rights were important, too, it was thus legitimate to confine the meaning of terms like
‘rights’ and ‘liberty’. Village Politics, for example, began with workman Tom
demanding ‘I want liberty’, and workman Jack responding ‘Liberty! what, has any
one fetched up a warrant for thee?’ ‘Liberty’ was not admissible as a general concept,
thus, but only as a specific right embedded in British law.49
Some quite extensive and sophisticated arguments were employed against Paine
on this point. In the 620-page jurisprudential account by a conveyancer of the Middle
Temple, Francis Plowden, ‘state of nature’ meant a ‘mere theoretical and
metaphysical state, pre-existing only in the mind, before the physical existence of
any human entity whatever’. Writers like Locke, Plowden asserted, never implied
that any historical transition from a state of nature to civil society took place and used
the concept only as ‘a method of philosophers to discuss the nature of man, before
they enter upon peculiar attributes of existing beings’. This meant rights were
primarily psychological attributes. A similar argument was that if ‘state of nature’
meant ‘what is independent of society and exists at all times, without any
consideration of any thing but itself’, as the Edinburgh professor of civil law argued,
natural rights were neither created nor abrogated by society but only fully enjoyed
there, since they had no security prior to the institution of government. Natural rights
could thus signify jus gentium, or rights ‘co-extensive and coeval with social man’,
or the ‘simple, pure, perpetual, universal dictates of our feelings and our
understanding’, which increased or diminished anyone’s happiness. This could be
construed as part of the instinctual law of nature, but also implied an appeal to
‘general convenience and utility through experience and history’, which was exactly
what in ‘the modern rights of men is not appealed to’. Utility was now to become the
new basis of Whig political thought, and ‘the great principle on which Government
is to be established and maintained’. Because of Paine, clearly, natural rights
doctrines became too dangerous to retain, and with them the associated ideas of the
original contract and state of nature.50
The gist of many of these arguments was thus that Paine’s appeal to natural rights
implied reinstating natural society. Even before the Rights of Man was published, it
had been alleged that ‘the French have adopted the phantastic theory of mankind

161
 THOMAS PAINE

existing in a state of nature, and of their having a right to that liberty which such a
state would give them’. This theme was now deployed extensively. The fact that
Paine thought rights preceded society implied that men could exist individually,
outside of society, and that all had ‘individual sovereignty to govern’ themselves.
Paine was thus the ‘reducer of civilized society into individual independence’. The
counter-argument, of course, was that individuals were secure only where rights
were established by laws and sovereignty normally resided with government. And
here they were far from wholly independent. Instead of individuals (as opposed to
the species) being born free, equal or independent, some of Paine’s opponents thus
maintained that children were born dependent upon their parents, as well as with
different abilities. Many more stressed that while the Adamic patriarchal state might
have been idyllic, the Fall had provoked continuous violence as well as the threat of
overpopulation, which necessitated the formation of civil society. Pufendorf and
Burlamaqui, among others, were enlisted to support the view that while the laws of
nature regulating self-preservation and the pursuit of happiness might have
governed during natural society, appetites and passions soon led to their relaxation,
and to each judging the value of his or her own actions. Consequently all were soon
reduced to avarice, envy and mutual oppression. Finally all renounced independence
and lodged their rights in the supreme power of the state, which at last permitted ‘true
liberty’ and ‘intire independence’. Returning to natural society would thus be
reinstating anarchy.51
One of the more substantial responses to Paine – some 430 pages long – examined
most of these questions, but concentrated on defining the state of nature. Written by
one Robert Thomas, minister of Abdie in Scotland, printed at Dundee in 1797, and
supported by subscriptions from, among others, Adam Smith’s successor at
Edinburgh, Dugald Stewart, and the Rev. Hugh Blair, The Cause of Truth assumed
the state of nature was a fiction in so far as any arrangements made within it could be
binding thereafter, and that any early stage of society should be reconstructed
through conjectural history rather than philosophical speculation. Here a Christian
conception of the state of nature was again important, with the earliest stages of
mankind being characterized by sin as well as misery. But Thomas also presumed
that society was the natural condition of mankind. All were born within it with
‘natural rights’, but the state of nature did not define these. Instead natural rights, as
part of human nature, were summarized in ‘the right which every man has to
himself’, especially the right to life, and included the rights to liberty and property.
Within society, however, men were naturally unequal. Thus, asserted Thomas, ‘Mr.
Paine’s error lies in misrepresenting the original state of man, and in overlooking

162
 THE GOVERNMENT PARTY

those variations in the character and situation of men, produced by an original

inequality in the formation of their minds and bodies, and by numberless
adventitious causes’. A similar view was taken in another lengthy account, William
Brown’s An Essay on the Natural Equality of Man. Professor of moral philosophy
and natural law at the University of Utrecht, Brown levelled his entire classical
armoury against Paine, citing extensively from Cicero, Seneca, Pliny, Epictetus and
Marcus Antonius as well as Bacon, Grotius, Cumberland, Pufendorf, Hutcheson and
many others. He also conceded that natural rights existed, being equal rights to life,
to the fruits of labour, to the preservation of a fair and honest character and to liberty
and private judgement. None the less society rested upon the necessity of
subordination and the just demands of authority. Inequalities arose through different
talents and dispositions and, though a ‘natural equality of man’ existed, this meant
an equality of obligation and mutual dependence, or the equal duty of all to ensure
the preservation and well-being of society.52
Several more explicitly theological responses to Paine also addressed these
themes. When the Baptist minister William Winterbotham was tried in 1793 for
preaching a seditious sermon, his accusers contended that no ‘rights of man’ existed
‘in opposition to the supreme being, while in a state of civil society, man has no rights
but what that society which he lives in allows him’, any defence of ‘absolute’ rights
thus being ‘blasphemy to their Creator, and treason to the constitution’. Other
authors agreed that while all rights were derived from God, none existed where no
title could be shown. Echoing the same idea, the Rev. John Riland entitled his
response to Paine The Rights of God, Occasioned by Mr. Paine’s Rights of Man.
Some critics moreover thought Paine’s proposals for relief of the poor, ill and aged
would undermine existing rights to charity and eventually degrade the poor further.
(This accorded with the clerical explanation that God permitted the existence of rich
and poor to ensure the exercise of those virtues necessary to salvation, a theodicy
common to natural law texts as well.) Theological critics also objected to any use of
the Mosaic account of the Creation to justify modern rights. Some protested that
Genesis was Paine’s only cited authority for the doctrine of equality but that since
only one man was first created, his sons could not have been his equals. No original
equality thus existed, and monarchy was a more likely form of original government.
Paine’s inference that if Genesis was not a divine account it was at least historically
accurate was also contested.53 We will shortly see the relevance of such criticisms to
both The Age of Reason and Agrarian Justice.
Paine’s treatment of natural rights and the state of nature was thus widely
understood as diverging from the mainstream eighteenth-century position on such

163
 THOMAS PAINE

questions. Paine, some felt, was ‘very anxious … to disclaim the authority of those
who have gone before us’. On doctrines like the right of resistance, his views were
seen as quite dissimilar from those of natural law writers like Pufendorf, whose
definition of a right was also contrasted to Paine’s supposed notion of a ‘simple
power’, which might include a right to do wrong (and which we have seen was not
Paine’s view at all). Jurists like Burlamaqui were also frequently quoted on the
disadvantages of popular government, with evidence cited from Greece, Rome,
Carthage, Sparta and elsewhere. In fact such writers were more commonly deployed
against Paine than was Burke’s Reflections, for Burke, if he still remained a natural
law thinker at all, had indeed only formulated an extreme version of the conservative
natural law doctrine, and Paine an extreme rendition of its radical opposite, which
again confirms that the Cold War portrayal of Burke as a natural law thinker and
Paine as merely a ‘radical’ is no longer tenable. Many writers also attempted to show
that Paine had departed from the Whig canon on these matters. One tract, for
example, asserted that Those natural rights, whatever they may be, are placed by
their new champion above the law; so that he directly contradicts Mr. Locke (whom
we are not yet prepared to exchange for him) who says, where there is no law, there
is no freedom’. Another thought that for Locke and Sidney natural rights meant that
man was ‘born with a capacity to acquire that freedom, and all those rights which any
other man is capable of enjoying or acquiring’ rather than being born with this
freedom and these rights himself.54

The Painite counterattack

The campaign detailed here was remarkably successful in curtailing the reformers’
activities, while efforts to relieve the rural poor facing famine helped to calm
discontent for a time. But the cause was by no means defeated after the first wave of
reaction in 1792, though Paine’s friends had a meagre armoury at their disposal for
organized retaliation. At least one Burke was burned in effigy (at Dronfield near
Sheffield in early 1793) and hung twenty feet up on a scaffold after being paraded
through town with a sign reading ‘Edmund Burke the Irish Pensioner. I hate the
Swinish Multitude.’ But such efforts were rare. Cowed by the enormous efforts
marshalled against them, many popular organizations became considerably more
cautious, hoping at least to avoid prosecution. The LCS, for example, virtually
ceased to refer to Paine after 1793. But in 1794 radical efforts revived, particularly
after the London treason trials resulted in acquittals. By the end of the year the LCS

164
 THE GOVERNMENT PARTY

claimed some 10,000 members, and Norwich and Sheffield were similarly
revivified. Rapidly rising food prices caused widespread rioting in late 1795. New
societies were formed and a new campaign to diffuse reform principles was mounted
until the passage of the Two Acts in October curtailed activities once again, after it
seemed the king had been fired upon on his way to open Parliament (a deed the
government tried to lay at the doorstep of the LCS).55
While it lasted, however, the anti-loyalist response was sharp and vigorous. Tracts
lambasted Reeves’s association as ‘the Place and Pension Club … composed of
those who actually derive benefits from the continuance of present abuses’. Threat
begat counter-threat: A Rod in Brine, or a Tickler for Tom Paine (1792) was met by
A Rod for the Burkites. A vast number of satirical tracts played on Burke’s reference
to the ‘Swinish Multitude’. Satirizing the civilization discourse of the loyalists, titles
like The Pernicious Effects of the Art of Printing upon Society Exposed mockingly
decried the ‘unparalleled affrontery’ of ‘the scum of the earth’ in ‘almost demanding,
that political liberty shall be the same to all’. Once it had been proscribed, direct
defences of the Rights of Man were more difficult. The radicals were thus also driven
to subterfuge to disseminate their principles. One strategy was to seemingly assail
Paine while quoting extensively from his works, thus emphasizing, for example, as
Eaton did, Britain’s heavy taxation. Similarly The Pernicious Principles of Tom
Paine, Exposed in an Address to Labourers and Mechanics. By a Gentleman (c.
1793) purportedly attacked Paine, but only made his case appear more reasonable,
while A Defence of the Political and Parliamentary Conduct of the Right
Honourable Edmund Burke (1794) was nothing of the sort. Paine’s name was
avoided, but one tract typically noted that ‘a late popular writer’ described the best
form of government, which meant the highest degree of happiness for the people at
the least expense, as existing in America. Parts of Erskine’s defence of freedom of
speech were also commonly reprinted from the legally published account of Paine’s
trial.56
Many responses to loyalist tracts also tried to meet their chief points. Paine
thought men were born free and equally possessed of natural rights, it was insisted,
but he believed civil distinctions were highly necessary while condemning great
inequalities of property. It was not the radicals, insisted John Thelwall, but instead
‘Mr B. and his college, who would drive us back into the woods, to learn the arts of
civilization and government from the half-naked babarism of the Goths and
Germans’, adding that ‘I would extend civilization: I would encrease refinement’.
Respecting the state of nature, it was frequently emphasized that while no
‘established maxims or rules’ then existed, mankind had none the less been ‘actuated

165
 THOMAS PAINE

by a law antecedent and paramount to all human institutions, REASON, which

taught them to pursue their own happiness without encroaching upon the happiness
of others’. Civil society existed only to remedy the inconveniences of natural society,
the only rights lost being the right to judge in one’s own case, to make war, establish
treaties and so on. All other rights were preserved, and were founded in antecedent
natural rights. There were also several attempts to print natural law tracts
sympathetic to Paine’s views, of which by far the best known was Volney’s Law of
Nature, though it condemned the state of nature in stronger terms than had Paine,
terming man ‘the most abject slave’ in that condition. Earlier radical and republican
authors were also reprinted, and the anti-Painite reaction in fact probably made many
more popular. The Sheffield Constitutional Society, for example, published The
Spirit of John Locke on Civil Government, claiming that since Burke had termed the
Treatise ‘the worst book ever written … it needs no further recommendation’.57
Despite many setbacks, there was some further revival of radicalism again in the
later 1790s. The radical editor Sampson Perry noted in early 1796 that political
associations seemed to be growing rapidly once more, but by the middle of the year
they were again in steep decline, in part because bread prices began to fall. There
were a few new attacks on Burke, with some implying that he was a closet Papist as
well as a supporter of tyranny. A few Painite tracts appeared near the end of the
decade, some condemning large farms and agricultural oppression in particular. Nor
was Paine himself forgotten; Thomas Hardy wrote to him even in 1807 that many
were ‘silently reading … what you have written’. As we will shortly see, small-scale
insurrectionary activities actually increased in importance after 1796, though their
numbers were less threatening and they were often apparently leaderless. There was
to be no substantial rejuvenation of organized radicalism, thus, until after
Waterloo.58
Repression, war and the sad course of the revolution in France hence combined to
defeat the Painite movement. The Jacobin Terror alone, when its results began to be
known, did immeasurable harm to the cause: the ‘phoenix of liberty’ had become a
mere tyranny. Napoleon’s conquest of Europe was as important. As Henry Redhead
Yorke put it in 1798, the French were no longer ‘contending for their liberties and
independence, but on the contrary are aiming continuous blows against the liberties
and independence of other nations, and especially against England’. Those
reformers who visited France during the short peace of 1802–3 returned almost
unanimously convinced that freedom had been exterminated there and that
Napoleon sought to install himself as monarch. Britain’s war against France was thus
no longer unjust, but itself contributed to liberty. Given the degeneration of the

166
 THE GOVERNMENT PARTY

French republic into despotism, radicals now also denied parallels between the
French and American systems and insisted that no matter what had happened across
the Channel, America’s government was tolerant and free. Another important
conclusion commonly drawn from the fate of the revolution was that moral
reformation would have to precede political reform. Until this happened, as Yorke
put it, ‘no real benefit can flow from the extension of the elective franchise, or the
limitation of the duration of parliament. It might be appealing only from one set of
corrupt men to another set of the same description; not from Philip drunk to Philip
sober; but from Philip drunk today to Philip drunk tomorrow.’ This perception
centrally underlay the anti-political stance of many early socialists.59

Religion and revolution

To complete our survey of the Painite movement we need briefly to consider two
final questions which have excited considerable interest: how close Britain in fact
was to revolution during the 1790s and what role religion may have played in
inhibiting greater change. Various views are possible of both the propensity and
capacity of the reformers for violent revolt. Some contemporaries or near
contemporaries felt revolution had been virtually imminent. The Prime Minister,
Pitt, admitted as much in confessing that ‘As things are, if I were to encourage Tom
Paine’s opinions I should have a bloody revolution.’ Courts made much of Paine’s
assertion – it was introduced at Horne Tooke’s treason trial, for example – that
Parliament was incapable of reforming itself, that reform, therefore, could come
only from outside. In 1819, too, the radical Medusa, or Penny Politician asserted that
if the Rights of Man had circulated freely for one year longer, the result would have
been just such an upheaval.60
Some historians have thought this quite unlikely, however. Malcolm Thomis and
Peter Holt, for example, contend that the reformers ‘never came close to leading a
revolution’ because much further education was needed before their societies
became sufficiently popular and because most radicals were supposedly bent upon
reinstating the ancient British constitution rather than re-enacting the French
revolution. Yet this is both an unnecessarily narrow construction of the term
‘revolution’ and an overly limited interpretation of the radicals’ aims. The American
revolution was also in many respects ‘conservative’ in purpose, but it also marked a
dramatic severance from the status quo ante, and the foundation of a far more
democratic polity. The aim of many British reformers, at least, was little different

167
 THOMAS PAINE

from this and if successful their reforms certainly would have constituted a
‘revolution’ in both politics and the system of property (which definition of the term
was used at the time and remains acceptable). Obviously the British revolution never
occurred. But this was not because it was not intended and could not have developed,
but rather because repression, loyalism and war effectively halted the democratic
movement. And in face of these forces most middle-class radicals who could have
lent further assistance deserted the reformers’ standard for the safety of other camps,
or fled the battlefield entirely. Nor is it true that the only real popular political
consciousness of this period lay in the violently conservative ‘sub-political’
responses of Church and King mobs, whose numbers were relatively small and
whose motives were by no means straightforward.61 And even if many were
bystanders, the hundreds of thousands who appeared in some LCS demonstrations
and the thousands active in similar events elsewhere also cannot be dismissed so
easily.
The most exhaustive study of insurrection in the late eighteenth century thus
concludes that ‘in the right circumstances a massive conflagration’ was possible.
Volunteer militia shirked from being used against food rioters and even deserted and
joined in themselves. Deference and obedience faltered even in the regular army and
navy; a regiment moved from Canterbury to London was appraised as unsuitable for
use against rioters, as its common soldiers were ‘Paine’s friends’ who complained of
their pay, while a member of a London-based artillery company claimed in 1794 that
half his comrades would join the LCS if they could. Connections between English
and Irish conspirators were also well developed. A successful revolt in Ireland would
certainly have triggered sympathetic disturbances in England and Scotland, if only
because the Irish were so active in British radicalism. Aid from France was available.
Propaganda was very widespread, and those who could not afford to buy pamphlets
or listen to others read them had merely to open their eyes. A 1793 tract noted that
‘Every wall in London has been covered with inflammatory and seditious writings’,
and broadsides have survived from many other areas. Sufficient numbers were
involved: the LCS alone had as many as 10,000 members in the mid-1790s, while
Burke perhaps not too inaccurately counted some 80,000 Jacobins (or a total of one-
fifth of 400,000 ‘political citizens … above menial dependence’) in the kingdom. Yet
as E. P. Thompson has emphasized, these had very few leaders by 1795 and without
leaders they were helpless. The middling orders in particular, who had played so
important a part in hoisting the Painite petard in 1792, had mostly deserted the
standard a year later. Their role could have been central; Burke greatly feared the
resentments of ‘monied people’ like the East India merchants who supported

168
 THE GOVERNMENT PARTY

‘French principles’ ‘almost to a man’ because ‘their present importance does not
bear a proportion to their wealth’. But it was not.62
Evidence of a propensity to violence is as difficult to assess as the chance of its
success. The government made much in the early 1790s of the spectre of armed mobs
imposing their political will upon the nation. The widespread manufacture of pikes
was reported by spies. At Sheffield, for example, one radical claimed under
interrogation that his comrades had resolved to learn arms ‘that they might be ready
to assist their friends the French in case they landed in England’. Here, too, the
secretary of the reformers’ organization in April 1794 described how pike-blades
required hoops for the shafts to fit the top ends, the bottom end of the shafts to be
about one inch thick, fir being the recommended wood, and the shafts to be ‘selected
by persons who are judges of wood’. Blades and hoops together ‘properly tempered
and polished’ were to be sold for a shilling, well within the means of labourers.
Enquiries a month later revealed that 4,000 such weapons had been ordered for Perth
alone. Some of the wealthier members of the LCS bought muskets and at least
planned, even if they never finally organized, the uniformed ‘Lambeth Association’,
whose announced purpose was supposedly to help repel any invasion. The LCS main
lecturer, John Thelwall, justified arming in self-defence and himself carried a cane-
sword. Prosecutions of the Scottish reformers also led to arming, and one plot, at
Edinburgh in early 1794, included plans to capture the castle, the bank and local food
supplies, and to petition the king to end the French war, or else. Here and elsewhere
in the late 1790s clear connections were also established with Irish rebels which were
renewed during the near-famine conditions of 1801-2. A secret organization also
existed in the West Riding known as the ‘Black Lamp’, some of whose members
were prosecuted in 1802 for administering secret oaths, though their strength has
been disputed. Nor should we isolate the schemes of Colonel Despard, the United
Englishman leader executed in 1803 after plans to seize the bank, the Tower and
other parts of London were discovered, and whose avowed aim was ‘an equalization
of civil, political, and religious rights’.63
Insurrection may have been closest, a recent account has concluded, in the north-
west in particular, where the Two Acts pushed the reformers towards violence in
1796 and later, and the United Englishmen may have had 600 members in 1797–8.
They declined in 1799, but were again active in 1801–02 when distress reached new
heights. The insurrectionary elements of the native radical movement in the late
1790s seem in fact to have been concentrated in the United Englishmen and a similar
group, the United Britons. The former apparently emerged from Manchester reform
circles in 1796 and included many soldiers, one of the group’s main aims being the

169
 THOMAS PAINE

subversion of the military. Some of its adherents evidently contemplated regicide as

a means of commencing revolution or if the French landed. They read the Rights of
Man and The Age of Reason and when they drank, toasted ‘success to Tom Paine …
wishing his works might prosper’. Most were arrested in 1798. How far these
connections constituted a revolutionary ‘network’ remains a moot point. The United
Britons, established in 1797–8, had branches at Spitalfields, Clerkenwell and
elsewhere and had amongst their members several Spenceans as well as Despard.
Most of these were also apprehended in early 1798. The government claimed that
some forty divisions of the United Englishmen existed in London alone, but Francis
Place later contended that ‘there was not one such division’, the society being ‘only
in an incipient state’. The truth is probably somewhere between these views.64
These organizations do not, however, seem to have helped to provoke the most
important insurrectionary action of the period, the naval mutiny of some hundred
ships at the Nore and Spithead in 1797.65 Many sailors were doubtless infected with
revolutionary principles, particularly on one ship, the Inflexible, and one of their
principal aims was ‘to have the power of dismissing their own officers’. Some recent
conscripts, in particular, had read their Paine, some of whose works were in any case
sold secretly by boat at the fleet anchorage. A few LCS members, moreover, sought
to widen the mutinies to bring about peace. Several sailors later arrested were also
connected by the government to a corresponding society at Nottingham. But most do
not seem to have been politically disloyal. Nor did French subversion contribute
significantly to fomenting rebellion in England and Scotland, though there were
rumours of radical workmen suddenly grown flush with French funds. Paine’s plans
for invasion probably would have found little support in Britain, even had he led a
force himself, since for most radicals this passed well beyond what reform
justified.66 At the last debate of the LCS in April 1798, in fact, its secretary
condemned the French government and suggested that members enlist in the
Volunteers (he was opposed). Ireland, of course, was quite another matter. The
United Irishmen were considerably more powerful than their English brethren, quite
prepared to counsel force to meet their ends, and happy to secure French military
support.67
English enthusiasm was muted for many reasons. Traditionally one important
cause ascribed to explain a wider propensity to revolt during the 1790s also has a
bearing on the next chapter: the spread of Methodism, which according to the French
historian Elie Halévy had a powerful conservative influence on the working classes
in this period. John Wesley and many Methodist leaders certainly opposed radical
political change. Had the nearly 100,000 Methodists in 1795 (versus 30,000 in 1770)
thought similarly and acted unanimously, they could have formed the backbone of

170
 THE GOVERNMENT PARTY

the loyalist movement. But it is now widely conceded that Halévy’s hypothesis must
be set aside. Not only did the Methodists make their most substantial inroads into
working-class communities only after the main period of repression (1792–5), but
they were themselves also deeply divided politically. After the split between the
Wesleyan and the Kilhamite Methodists in 1797, in fact, the latter (led by Alexander
Kilham and numbering about 5000) were called the Tom Paine Methodists’ for
insisting upon ‘democracy’ in the form of the popular appointment of new leaders
and stewards within the Methodist conference and local control over the exclusion
of members.68 The Kilhamites, of course, were hardly all Painites, as the Wesleyan
hierarchy alleged, and Kilham himself wisely claimed not to be a political reformer.
But he did invoke the spirit of inquiry generated by the American revolution,
insisting with reference to the Methodist organization that ‘No government under
heaven, except absolute monarchies, or papal hierarchy’ was ‘as despotic and
oppressive as ours is’, and hinted that ‘a few more revolutions’ might be required to
purify the sect. Moreover, some Kilhamites, for example, at Sheffield, were certainly
members of constitutional societies, while a letter from a village near Wakefield
claimed the local Methodists ‘read and approved the works of Tom Paine’. At least
one itinerant Methodist preacher in North Wales also attacked monarchism and
discussed the Rights of Man before an audience of 500 miners. Thus there was no
substantial correlation, either positive or negative, between loyalism and
Methodism. But in one respect and in one area, at least, Methodism did have a
stabilizing influence. The split in the LCS over religion in late 1795 was occasioned
by the Methodist members’ rejection of deism and atheism, and led a large number
to withdraw to form a new society, ‘The Friends of Religious and Civil Liberty’.69
But consequently, as we will see, it was less Methodism than Paine himself who
undermined the cause of popular reform.

Notes to Chapter 6: The government party

1 The Reformer of England (n.d.); A New Song (n.d.); The Republican’s Picture (n.d.).
2 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, p. 480; Critical Review, Vol. 5 (1792), p. 583. On loyalism see R.
Dozier (1983), to which the following several paragraphs are especially indebted, A.
Goodwin (1979), pp. 208–67, H. Butterfield (1949), H. Winkler (1952), G. Newman
(1974), H. Dickinson (1977), pp. 270–318, A. Booth (1979), pp. 103–58 and (1983), G.
Pendleton (1976), T. Schofield (1984) and (1986) and T. McGovern (1988). The best
survey of the war years is C. Emsley (1979). See also Emsley (1985). Some historians see
the reaction beginning as early as 1785, in response to pro-American enthusiasm (e.g. G.
Williams, 1969, p. 5).

171
 THOMAS PAINE

3 Rights and Remedies (1795), pt 2, p. 118.

4 T. Howell, Vol. 22 (1817), cols 365–78 (e.g. Paine, 1987, p. 172). On the prosecutions see
C. Emsley (1981).
5 The Genuine Trial (1792), p. 72; (F. Oldys) (1793), p. 157; T. Howell (1817), Vol. 22, col.
382.
6 W. Sherwin (1819), pp. 137–8; The Trial of Daniel Isaac Eaton (1793), p. 38; Add. MS.
27816 f. 331; J. Cookson (1982), p. 102. See A. Goodwin (1979), pp. 307–58.
7 Add. MS. 27808 f. 110; P. Pindar (1809), Vol. 3, pp. 119–20. See A. Goodwin (1979), pp.
451–99.
8 A. Aspinall (1949), pp. 78–9, 153, 166; P. Brown (1918), p. 85; L. Werkmeister (1963),
p. 331, and generally pp. 317–80.
9 Add. MS. 16925 f. 159; I. Hunt (1791). On the association see A. Mitchell (1961), E.
Black (1963), pp. 233–74, D. Ginter (1966) and J. Walvin (1969), pp. 271–308.
10 R. Dozier (1983), pp. 59–63; E. Black (1963), pp. 249–50; A. Mitchell (1961), pp. 61–7;
Add. MS. 16927 f. 3; J. Walvin (1969), p. 327; A. Booth (1979), p. 115; J. Brims (1983),
p. 339; D. Ginter (1966). See also M. Quinlan (1943).
11 Proceedings of the Association (1792), p. 15; A. Mitchell (1961), pp. 66; R. Webb (1955),
pp. 43–4; E. Black (1963), p. 240. ‘Thomas Bull’ was Sir William Jones.
12 Manchester Herald, no. 25 (15 September 1792), p. 2; The Rights of the Devil (n.d.), p.
23; A. Patterson (1954), p. 71; Add. MS. 27814 f. 43; 16923 f. 127; Proceedings of the
Friends (1793), pp. 4–5. On Walker see F. Knight (1957). Gwyn Williams terms him ‘the
most thorough-going “Painite” in England’ (1969, p. 18).
13 A. Young (1898), p. 204. See J. Western (1956).
14 This is stressed in G. Rudé (1964a), p. 140.
15 J. Priestley (1791a); HO33/1; S. Romilly (1840), Vol. 1, p. 449; R. Rose (1960), p. 77. See
W. Chaloner (1958).
16 E. Robinson (1955); J. Walvin (1969), pp. 332–3; A. Booth (1983), 298–300; HO42/23.
For Manchester see also L. Marshall (1946), pp. 107–20.
17 The Union, no. 1 (26 November 1831), p. 14; Republican, Vol. 9, no. 4 (21 January 1824),
pp. 99–100; J. Walvin (1969), p. 338; HO42/23; Derby Mercury, no. 3139 (14 June 1792),
p. 4; Sheffield Register, no. 294 (18 January 1793), p. 3; no. 299 (22 March 1793), p. 3;
Add. MSS. 16928 f. 5; 16924 f. 62.
18 The Tribune, Vol. 2 (1794), p. 207; E. Thompson (1968), p. 122; R. Dozier (1983), p. 91.
19 A. Aldridge (1960), p. 182; Tom Paine’s Jests (1794), p. 35; Manchester Herald, no. 4 (26
January 1793), p. 2; The Complete Reports (1794), pp. 79–80; Add. MS. 16928 f. 5;
Sheffield Register, no. 292 (4 January 1793), p. 3; TS11/956/3501. Anti-Jacobite
sentiment still had its uses: one old Whig, poring over his newspaper, was heard to
exclaim, ‘Damn these Jacobites! why do they now print ‘em Jacobines? I thought we had
done for ‘em all at the battle of Culloden’ and wished he was young enough to sally forth
once again (Sheffield Iris, no. 14, 3 October 1794, p. 3).
20 C. Jewson (1975), p. 91; TS11/954/3504.
21 A. Goodwin (1979), pp. 359–415.
22 H. Meikle (1912), p. 153; E. Tatham (1791), pp. 21–7; J. Hamilton (1791), p. 6.

172
 THE GOVERNMENT PARTY

23 Signor Pasquinello’ (1792), p. 10; A. Scott (1793), pp. 6–7; Mr. Justice Ashurst’s Charge
(1792); ‘Launcelot Light’ (1792), p. 6; [T. Taylor] (1792), p. 103; Add. MS. 16923 fols
187–8; A Plot Discovered (1793), p. 3.
24 [W. Cobbett] (1797), p. 5; W. Fancourt (1792), p. 6; J. Brown (1793), p. 53; Principles of
Order (1792), p. 8; Principle and Practice (1792), p. 14; Anti-Levelling Songster (1793),
p. 5.
25 B. Boothby (1792), p. 107; An Humble Address (1793), p. 9; One Penny-worth of Truth
(1792); [A. Young] (1792), p. 3; A Conversation (1793), p. 2; Mr. Miles (1793), pp. 251–
3; The Last Dying Words (n.d.), p. 2; A Penitentiary Epistle (n.d.); The End of Pain (n.d.).
26 Thoughts Upon Our Present Situation (1793), p. 4; Britons are Happy (n.d.); The Anti-
Gallican Songster, no. 1 (1793), p. 13; G. Croft (1793), p. 28; A Defence (1791), p. 11; [F.
Hervey] (1791), p. 18; ‘The Plot’ (1792), p. 10; A Defence (1791), p. 54.
27 A. Peter (1792), pp. 6, 11–12; Paine and Burke (n.d.), p. 20; Facts (1792), p. 28; Some
Remarks (1793), p. 3; A Caution (n.d.); J. King (1793), p. 16; A Few Minutes’ Advice
(1792), p. 12; The Alarm (n.d.); [W. Sewell] (1791), p. 20.
28 C. Hawtrey (1792), pp. 10–11; J. Young (1794), p. 40; L. Parsons (1793), p. 15; Portrait
(1792); E. Burke (1826), Vol. 3, pp. 398, 415. See R. Hole (1983), pp. 66–8, for a summary
of several of these points.
29 [W. Paley] (1951), pp. 21–6.
30 H. More (1793); A Few Words (n.d.); W. Roberts (1835), Vol. 1, pp. 413, 456; [H. More]
(1794), p. 3. On the Cheap Repository series see S. Pedersen (1986). The most political
of the early tracts was Hints to All Ranks of People on the Occasion of the Present Scarcity
(1795), which counselled endurance. On the evangelical contribution to the reaction see
T. McGovern (1988). On conservative utilitarianism see T. Schofield (1986) and, for an
example, A Letter to a Friend (1792), p. 20.
31 John Bull (1792); J. Moser (1796), p. 5; ‘Tam Thrum’ (1793), p. 11; Dialogue on the
Rights of Britons (1792) p. 7; John Bull’s Answer (1792).
32 Liberty and Equality (1792), pp. 8, 11, 15–17, 19, 24, 28–9, 32, 35, 39.
33 Letters to a Friend (1792), p. 154; I. Hunt (1791), p. 90; An Address to the Inhabitants
(1793), p. 22; [W. Smith] (1791), p. 12; [J. Adams] (1791), pp. 11–12; C. Hawtrey (1792),
p. 6; [J. Reeves] (1795), p. 22. One William Lewelyn printed ‘Dissenting Minister’
prominently on the title page of a response to the Rights of Man, and accused Paine of
wanting to make the poor pensioners of the state (Lewelyn, 1793, pt 2, p. 118).
34 Considerations (1792), p. 68; R. Bisset (1796), p. 346; [T. Atkinson] (1798), p. 33;
‘Cincinnatus Rigshaw’ (1800); Application of Barruel (1798), pp. iii, 2–7; Barruel
(1797), p. 38; J. Robison (1797), pp. 360–496. On Robison see J. Morrell (1971). For
American parallels see V. Stauffer (1918). Another account thought that revolution was
impossible in Ireland because its 40,000 Masons were all opposed to treason (An
Important Discovery, 1793, p. 14). Apparently unknown to the translator, Paine himself
was intimately acquainted with Masonry, even writing an extended essay on the subject.
Whether he was a Mason has never been proved, however.
35 W. Playfair (1795), p. 13; Constitutional Letters (1792), p. 18; A. Dalrymple (1793), p.
13; Fragment of a Prophecy (1791), p. 27; The Interests of Man (1793), pp. 46–8; An

173
 THOMAS PAINE

Humble Address (1793), p. 15. On these arguments see H. Dickinson (1977), pp. 270–318
and J. Lee (1981).
36 [F. Hervey] (1791), p. 18; J. Jones (1793a), p. 15.
37 A Letter of Condolence (1795), pp. 5–6; [W. Sewell] (1791), pp. 51, 55; R. Dozier (1983),
pp. 82–3; [J. Reeves] (1795), p. 13; [W. Paley] (1951), p. 24. On the few High Tories of
the 1790s see J. Gunn (1983), pp. 164–85. Reeves was aquitted on the basis of the purity
of his motives (T. Howell, 1819, vol. 26, col. 596). On him see M. Weinzierl (1985).
38 W. Black (1793), p. 40; An Exposure (1793), pp. 59–60; J. Scott (1794), p. 10; A. Young
(1792), pp. 4–7.
39 J. Cocks (1793), p. 10; The Address of a Buckinghamshire Farmer (1792); Ten Minutes’
Caution (1792), p. 6; H. More (1793), p. 14; Free Communing (1793), p. 30.
40 J. Jones (1793b), pp. 4–5; Facts (1792), p. 7; A Few Minutes’ Advice (1792); J. Courtenay
(1790), p. 40; C. Patton (1797); B. Boothby (1792), p. 178; P. White (1792), p. 107; T.
Hearn (1793), p. 59; [T. Freeman] (1793), p. 7. On the civilization debate see further my
(1987), ch. 1.
41 A Serious Caution (1792); W. Black (1793), p. 39; [A. Young] (1792), p. 9; The Patriot
(1793), pp. 73–5; Add. MS. 16920 f. 17.
42 A Trip to the Island of Equality (n.d.); Buff (1792), p. 27; Lt Col. Chalmers (1796); R.
Dinmore Jr (1796), pp. 20, 32; S. Joersson (1796), pp. 4, 11; Rights and Remedies (1795),
p 2, p. 161.
43 J. Gifford (1792), p. 32; A Country Curate’s Advice (n.d.); Add. MS. 16927 f. 47; HO102/
6; HO102/60; J. Young (1794), p. 112; W. Fox (1793), p. 12.
44 The Duties of Man (1793), p. 25; R. Thomas (1797), p. 37; [T. Atkinson] (1794), p. 14; A
Few Plain Questions (1793), p. 10.
45 A. Young (1793), pp. 2, 56; An Appeal to the Common Sense (1793), p. 21; A Letter to a
Friend (1792), p. 15; The Anti-Gallican (1793), pp. 30–34; J. Cocks (1793), p. 20; W.
Miles (1890), Vol. 1, p. 364; ‘Martius Modernus’ (1793), p. 23. On Young’s reaction to
the revolution see Young (1898), pp. 198–206. On the use of the American model by
Paine’s opponents see D. Wilson (1988), pp. 89–95.
46 H. Yorke (1793), p. 34; Correspondence (1795), p. 82; A Narrative (1797), p. 13;
Newcastle Chronicle, no. 1484 (8 December 1792), p. 2; Considerations on the French
War (1794), p. 18.
47 An Humble Address (1793), p. 10; Resolutions of Common Sense (n.d.), p. 1; The True
Briton’s Catechism (1793), p. 32; W. Keate (1790), p. 53; C. Coetlogon (1792), p. vi; A.
Dalrymple (1793), p. 4; A Whipper (1793), p. 24; Britannia’s Address (n.d.), pp. 6–7; [F.
Hervey] (1792), pp. 4–5, 9–10; [W. Drummond] (1793), pp. 1–8.
48 Six Essays (1792), p. 2; W. Agutter (1792), pp. 6–7; S. Cooper (1791), p. 63; A Letter
(1791), pp. 19–20; E. Tatham (1791), p. 39; R. Nares (1792), p. xi.
49 A New Dialogue (n.d.), p. 12; Remarks (1792), p. 85; Comparative Display (1970), vol.
2, pp. 360–1; Facts (1792), p. 20; H. More (1793), pp. 3, 12. See also E. Burke (1826),
Vol. 3, p. 419.
50 F. Plowden (1792), pp. 14–32; J. Wilde (1793), pp. 575–8. Wilde identified his views with
a Roman definition of rights.

174
 THE GOVERNMENT PARTY

51 [C. Hawtrey] (1790), p. 14; The Interests of Man (1793), pp. 6, 8–11; Rights Upon Rights
(1791), p. 5; Letters to Thomas Paine (1791), pp. 62, 15–16; T. Molloy (1792), pp. 77–9,
82, 88.
52 R. Thomas (1797), pp. 1, 25–8, 33, 37, 73–5; W. Brown (1794), pp. 14, 50, 108–44, 171–
211, 305.
53 T. Howell (1817), Vol. 22, col. 870; The Origin of Duty (1796), p. 25; A. Dalrymple
(1793), p. 22; Defence of the Rights of Man (1791), p. 11; Remarks on Mr. Paine’s
Pamphlet (1791), pp. 16–17.
54 P. Stanlis (1958), p. 16; Principles of Order (1792), p. 13; The Interests of Man (1793),
pp. 13, 16; A Candid Inquiry (1792), p. 9; An Humble Address (1793), p. 10.
55 J. Cookson (1982), pp. 115–41; Sheffield Register, no. 294 (18 January 1793), p. 3; Derby
Mercury, no. 3192 (31 January 1793), p. 1; Assassination of the King! (1795).
56 E. Burke (1978), Vol. 7, p. 340; The Pernicious Effects (n.d.), p. 9; Knave’s-Acre
Association (1793), p. 3; The Pernicious Principles (n.d.), pp. 2, 8; The Catechism (n.d.),
p. 20; Politics for the People, pt 2, no. 1 (1794), pp. 3–9; Pig’s Meat, vol. 1 (1793), pp. 168
ff.
57 J. Thelwall (1796b), pt 2, pp. 83–4; Remarks on the Conduct (1793), p. 34; Truth and
Reason (1793), p. 11; The Political Crisis (1791), pp. 6, 8, 11–12; C. Volney (1796), p. 4;
The Spirit (1792), p. viii.
58 The Argus, or General Observer (January 1796), p. 248; M. Browne (1796), p. 53; N. Cox
(1971), p. 30; T. Marsters, Jr (1798); Add. MS. 27818 fols 72–3. On the revival of
radicalism see N. Cox (1971) and J. Hone (1982).
59 An Appeal to the Common Sense (1793), p. 10; H. Yorke (1798), pp. 9–10; J. Cookson
(1982), pp. 172–3; G. Watson (1799), p. 27; H. Yorke (1798), pp. 85–6. On the horrors of
the revolution see, e.g., T. Somerville (1793).
60 J. Ehrman (1983), p. 80 n; The Trial of John Horne Tooke (1795), p. 17; Medusa, vol. 1,
no. 6 (27 March 1819), pp. 40–3.
61 M. Thomis and P. Holt (1977), pp. 5–28; R. Palmer (1959), Vol. 1, p. 188. A good
summary of the revolutionary potential of the reformers is H. Dickinson (1985), pp. 43–
61. Pigott’s Political Dictionary defined revolution in 1795 as ‘the sudden overturning of
an arbitrary government by the people’ as well as more generally ‘change in the state of a
government or a country’ and ‘a total alteration of the forms of governments, and a
reassumption by the People of their long lost rights; a restoration of that equality which
ought always to subsist among men’ (C. Pigott, 1795, pp. 117–18).
62 HO42/23; R. Wells (1983), p. 255 (supported by R. Dozier, 1972); PC41/A139; TS11/
956/3501; Opinions Delivered (1793), p. 3; E. Burke (1826), Vol. 4, pp. 338, 14; E.
Thompson (1968), p. 196; C. Emsley (1975).
63 The Decline and Fall (1796), p. 1; Assassination of the King! (1795); Application of
Barruel’s Memoirs (1798), pp. 34–5; TS11/956/3501; TS11/892/3035: HO102/11; The
Trial of Despard (1803), p. 36. On Despard see M. Elliott (1977), J. Hone (1982), pp. 86–
117 and R. Wells (1983), pp. 220–52. On the Black Lamp see J. Dinwiddy (1974a) and F.
Donnelly and J. Baxter (1976).
64 A. Booth (1986); PC1/41/A139; PC1/42/A140; R. Wells (1983), pp. 77, 121–8, 167–9,
and generally Wells (1978) and (1987) (pp. 120–60 in particular). Add. MS. 27808 f. 92;
F. Place (1972), p. 178. See also J. Walvin (1969), pp. 559–604.

175
 THOMAS PAINE

65 So argues J. Dugan (1966), p. 63. The government asserted that the United Irishmen were
active in the mutinies (ibid., p. 454). On this point see R. Wells (1983), pp. 90–9 and G.
Manwaring and B. Dobree (1935), pp. 199–200.
66 PC1/38/A122; Report of the Committee (1799), p. 76; HO102/6; T. Howell (1820), Vol.
27, col. 654.
67 See R. Jacob (1937), A. Goodwin (1979), pp. 416–50 and M. Elliott (1983).
68 [A. Kilham] (1796a), p. iii; D. Simpson (1802), p. 334. See E. Thompson (1968), pp. 45–
50. On this controversy see E. Halévy (1906), E. Hobsbawm (1957), E. Thompson
(1968), pp. 385–440, P. Stignant (1971), J. Walsh (1975), J. Baxter (1974), E. Itzkin
(1975), N. Murray (1975), pp. 216–58, and D. Hempton (1984).
69 [J. Benson] (1796), p. 4; Kilham (1796b), p. 2; Kilham (1795), pp. 12, 60; F. Donnelly and
J. Baxter (1976), p. 96; Add. MS. 16925 f. 121; HO42/22; A. Goodwin (1979), p. 371.
Kilham later wrote that some Methodists believed ‘that I was the same to the Methodists
as Tom Paine was to the nation … that my chief object was to spread anarchy, confusion,
and mischief throughout the societies’, which is hardly an endorsement of Paine
([Kilham], n.d., p. 144). See B. Semmel (1974), pp. 110–45 and D. Hempton (1984), pp.
66–73.

176
 7
Revolution in heaven:
The Age of Reason (1794–95)

Introduction

Though its title is often appropriated to summarize the aspirations of the eighteenth
century, The Age of Reason remains Paine’s most misunderstood and ill-fated work.1
Written to combat atheistical tendencies in France, it has itself often been taken as a
defence of unbelief. An American president, Theodore Roosevelt, notoriously once
termed Paine a ‘filthy little atheist’ (he meant literally dirty, in light of Paine’s later
reputation for self-neglect) in his life of Gouverneur Morris. In fact the text, as we
will see, is a frank confession of deism, and especially the contention that God’s only
revelation lay in nature, not the Bible. Largely ignored in France, where unsold
stacks of it were reported to be gathering dust, The Age of Reason did enormous
damage to Paine’s political reputation in Britain and America.2 Eventually it became
a foundation text of both the British and American secularist movements, but during
the 1790s its impact was primarily negative, and it is difficult not to conclude that its
publication, at least in English, was an imprudent move on Paine’s part.
But it was also a move which to Paine seemed unavoidable. For the rationale of
The Age of Reason lay in the course of the French revolution itself, and specifically
in the spectacular bloodbaths (by standards less inured than our own) Paine had
witnessed. These led him to conclude that the goal of revolution – the improvement
of mankind – required the injunction to sociability which he thought belief in a
Divinity facilitated. Paine’s God, we will discover, is not avenging, punitive and
vindictive, but benign, humane and charitable. Faith in such a Deity, he felt, could
help others to withstand the temptations which power and corruption amply
furnished in the midst of revolution and to remind political actors of the dignity of all
mankind. But Paine did not invent this ideal, and before turning to The Age of Reason
we need first briefly to consider how deism was understood in this period.

177
 THOMAS PAINE

Deism in the eighteenth century

Earlier deist works had not been directed towards the labouring classes, and
correspondingly were not regarded as equally threatening to the established order.
Usually taken to have begun with Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s Of Truth (1624), which
attempted to reduce Christianity to a set of simple, reasonable beliefs, deism was
confined to select groups of the literate upper classes throughout the eighteenth
century. Among others, Hobbes and Shaftesbury in the seventeenth century and
Hume and Gibbon in the eighteenth were leading sceptics or ‘infidels’, while other
well-known deists (many were also Freemasons) included radical Whigs like John
Toland (Christianity Not Mysterious, 1696), Anthony Collins (Discourse on the
Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion, 1733) and Matthew Tindal
(Christianity as Old as the Creation, 1730). Deism could be radical in its politics, as
for Toland, or not; Hume’s Whiggism was highly ‘sceptical’ and verged upon
Toryism on occasion. But in no form did it achieve respectability. Hume’s opinions,
for example, cost him much public approbation.3
Eighteenth-century deism relied centrally upon a Newtonian worldview in which
the universe was assumed to be governed by fixed and identifiable mechanical laws.
Some deists also believed that God suffused nature in a pantheistic manner which
verged on the magical (the roots of this view lay in mid-seventeenth-century
millenarianism and its adherents included many political radicals). The idea of
Providence still had an important role to play, but the notion of direct or miraculous
divine interference in human affairs was receding. Locke’s argument that knowledge
was derived from experience did much to underpin the rationalistic approach to
religion. Deists like Shaftesbury correspondingly also argued that the Christian idea
of heaven and hell only perverted morals, which should rest upon the pursuit of virtue
for its own sake. Consequently deists distinguished centrally between ‘natural
religion’ and ‘revealed religion’. While the latter was conceived as traditional
Christianity associated with biblical knowledge, ‘natural religion’ contended that
the spectacular complexity and apparent harmony of nature proved the existence of
God, though Hume even attacked such arguments from design in his Dialogues on
Natural Religion (1776). Most deists agreed that whatever could not be reasonably
demonstrated as divinely inspired need not be included in Christian belief, but might
be regarded as the mythology of a pre-scientific understanding in which the seeds of
natural religion were present. What was valuable in the Scriptures, thus, as one deist
put it, was only what was ‘founded indiscernably in Truth, and apparently supported
by Reason’ and had ‘a natural tendency to promote purity of Heart and Rectitude of

178
 THE AGE OF REASON

Manners’. Deists assumed that all could possess such knowledge (there were
important links here to the Quaker notion that all were capable of perceiving the
Inner Light). They also asserted that if God’s intentions were properly understood,
his desire for the happiness of all would be apparent, as well as the human duty to
fulfil this mandate by bringing happiness to others.4
Not all deists shared exactly the same beliefs, of course. Many positions were
taken on the question of revelation. Bolingbroke attempted to offer proofs against
the moral character of the Deity and the probability of future rewards and
punishments, a trend continued by Hume. But most deists none the less subscribed
to a few common principles, and particularly the doctrine, as a 1734 summary of
deist principles put it, that nothing could be ascribed to God which was ‘not fully
manifest to all Mankind by the meer Light of Nature’. Deists also generally agreed
that the problem of moral obligation was not insurmountable, since deism taught ‘a
perfect Rule for all religious Duties, as it proceeds from a Being of infinite
Perfection, Wisdom, and Goodness, and needs no Assistance from any external
Revelation’.5
Deism assumed at least a few popular forms in the eighteenth century. An
organization known as the Robin Hood Society, which disappeared around 1773,
apparently debated deistic topics, one of its members receiving a year in Newgate for
his opinions. The Society of Ancient Deists, based near Hoxton, met for some twenty
years between 1770 and 1790. At least one eccentric minister, known as the ‘Priest
of Nature’, preached deist ideas in his chapel in the mid-1770s. It is possible that
Paine moved in such circles prior to emigration, particularly when he lived in
London. His early religious opinions evidence a deep devotion to what he regarded
as the essence of Christianity – benevolence towards all – and a derisory dismissal
of all efforts to foist mystical theologies and priestly hierarchies upon the deluded
majority. Paine may have preached as a Primitive Methodist at least once in his early
years and Arminian Methodism, which stressed that all could attain salvation, may
have influenced him in the early 1770s.6 But his deism, in any case, was certainly
settled by the time of the American revolution.

The Age of Reason

The place of Paine in the history of biblical criticism has not generated much
scholarly concern and interests few modern readers. Some account of it is necessary
here, but two aspects of The Age of Reason are more important: its relevance to

179
 THOMAS PAINE

understanding Paine’s religious beliefs generally, and its relation to his social and
political ideas and their reception.7
The first part of The Age of Reason was written to reverse the growing irreligion
Paine perceived around him. The people of France were running headlong into
atheism’, Paine later recalled, ‘and I had the work translated in their own language,
to stop them in that career, and fix them to the first article … of every man’s creed
who has any creed at all – I believe in God.’ The text itself nearly failed to be
published at all. Its final sections were written on Christmas Day 1793 and the
following two days, shortly before Paine’s arrest. Only the kindness of one of his
guards in allowing the manuscript to be given to Joel Barlow, in fact, prevented its
seizure and possible destruction.8
The text opens with Paine’s plea for toleration of his religious opinions and with
the warning that since France had now abolished the priesthood completely, there
was danger that ‘in the general wreck of superstition, of false systems of government
and false theology, we lose sight of morality, of humanity and of the theology that is
true’. Paine then summarized his religion as entailing a belief in only one God, a hope
for ‘happiness beyond this life’, and devotion to ‘the equality of man’, with religious
duties consisting of ‘doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our
fellow-creatures happy’.9
Such views seem uncontroversial. The problem was that existing religion did
little justice to these beliefs and consisted instead in creeds defined by established
churches, be they Jewish, Roman Catholic, Protestant, or any other. Such
establishments were not only completely unnecessary, but worse, mere ‘human
inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit’.
‘My own mind is my own church,’ declared Paine. No other was required. Indeed the
‘adulterous connection of Church and State’ and the existence of professional priests
selling religion for lucre had made true faith impossible. It was imperative therefore
to overthrow ‘human inventions and priestcraft’ in order to return to a pure belief in
one God.10
This for Paine principally demanded a massive assault upon the idea that the Bible
revealed the will of God. Paine admitted that God was capable of such a
communication. The problem was what authority this later carried, since, for
example, there was no internal evidence of divinity in the commandments ‘revealed’
by Moses. If this was true, moreover, there was no reason to believe Christ was the
son of God, a view Paine thought mere pagan mythology. He had doubtless been a
‘virtuous and amiable man’ whose philanthropic morality was still practised by the
Quakers. But this lent no credence to the doctrine of the resurrection, or the idea of

180
 THE AGE OF REASON

the need for Christ’s sacrifice because Eve had eaten an apple, or the Christian
account of Satan. The Creation itself, and ‘the vast machinery of the universe’ in all
its abundance, were alone necessary to anchor religious belief, not fabulous and
superstitious conjectures.11
The rest of The Age of Reason contrasts false and true religion. Most of the Bible
Paine dismissed as mere myth and hearsay. The account of the Creation in Genesis,
for example, appeared to be a tradition accepted by the Israelites before they went to
Egypt (and Paine’s rejection of this account had considerable implications for his
theory of property, as we will see in the following chapter). Other parts of the Old
Testament were by ‘poets and itinerant preachers’; its ‘prophecies’, for example,
were merely ancient poetry. The New Testament, too, commenced with anecdotes
about the life of Christ. But there followed a series of letters which transformed
Christ’s doctrine into ‘a religion of pomp and of revenue’ whose chief doctrines, like
the idea of purgatory, where souls could be released only by prayers bought from the
Church, and indeed the whole doctrine of redemption, were constructed merely as
‘revenue laws’ to fatten the priesthood.12
By contrast the ‘True Revelation’ was the Creation itself. Its immensity revealed
the power of God, its order his wisdom, its abundance his generosity. This
munificence in turn taught that all should be kind to one another. God could be
conceived only as the first cause of the universe, existing because some first cause
was necessary, perfect given the structure of the Creation. Natural philosophy, or the
study of the Creation, and including mathematics, mechanics and other sciences,
was thus the basis of true theology, not Christianity, which concerned only the
writings of man. Science, Paine argued, was in fact a progressive form of knowledge
which called into question the truth of the Christian faith. Consequently Christianity
had long resisted scientific claims. Deism, however, merely required contemplating
the wisdom, power and benignity of the Deity. The Quakers had verged upon this
religion, but had ‘contracted themselves too much by leaving the works of God out
of their system’, thereby ignoring in their puritan sternness the beauty of a bird’s song
or of flowers. Science, Paine insisted, also introduced the possibility of a plurality of
worlds given the immensity of space. And because God made neither space nor
anything else in vain, but organized the universe ‘in the most advantageous manner
for the benefit of man’, the Christian belief that the son of God died for the inhabitants
of earth was false. All attempts to base religion on mystery, miracle and prophecy
were similarly impositions on mankind, including the idea that mystical withdrawal
from the world served God, or that ‘degrading the Almighty into the character of a
showman’ by imputing miracles to him aided true religion. Declaring that all nations

181
 THOMAS PAINE

and religions at root believed in a God whose attributes were discoverable in nature,
Paine closed the first part of his tract.13
The second part of The Age of Reason, written in late 1795, is a detailed
examination of the Old and New Testaments. Again Paine wanted to challenge the
idea that many events described in the Bible, including assassinations, rapes, the
murder of infants, etc., had been commanded by God. For if this were true, God could
not possibly be the foundation of moral justice in the world. Thus it was ‘a duty
incumbent upon every true Deist, that he vindicate the moral justice of God against
the calumnies of the Bible’. But Paine was now concerned less to ridicule the
miraculous claims of the Bible than to disprove much of its authenticity and to argue
this, moreover, from internal evidence alone. Thus, for example, Paine contended
that Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, the so-called five
books of Moses, were not written by Moses but usually refer to him in the third
person. On the basis of his own biblical chronology, Paine argued that these books
were actually written some 350 years after Moses’ death. This rendered their
testimony highly suspect, or at least no more valid than any other ancient tales or
fables. Thus the butchery and rapine committed in these books could not have been
sanctioned or commanded by God.14
Having dismissed Genesis as ‘an anonymous book of stories, fables and
traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies’, Paine applied the same
method to the rest of the Bible. Any evidence of immorality he castigated as ‘lies,
wickedness and blasphemy’. Absurdities like the story of Jonah and the whale he
poked fun at. Inconsistencies he exposed mercilessly. How could Samuel have
written an account of his own death and burial in the book of Samuel? How could the
Psalms be the Psalms of David, when one of them commemorated an event which
occurred many centuries after his death? Nor was the New Testament more
consistent than the Old. Much of the case for the divinity of Christ Paine again
dismissed as mere pagan mythology. Christ’s character and morality were inspiring.
But this was no reason to presume that the books imputed to the apostles were
historical truth and Paine dismissed them all as ‘manufactured’ long after the fact by
persons other than their alleged authors. He went on to ridicule inconsistencies in the
various biblical accounts of the crucifixion and resurrection, of the later
reappearance of Christ to his disciples and of his supposed ascension into heaven.
Throughout Paine disputed the possibility that those who recounted these events had
themselves been eyewitnesses to them, and argued that the subsequent Christian
Church had adapted the story of Christ to its own purposes, even condoning the
forgery of biblical texts when necessary. But Part Two was not entirely destructive.

182
 THE AGE OF REASON

Paine again reaffirmed his concept of deism, defined as ‘the belief in one God, and
an imitation of His moral character, or the practise of what are called the moral
virtues’. He also defended his faith in an afterlife, arguing that this could be inferred
from observing the natural world. He again praised the Quakers for caring little about
Jesus Christ and calling the Bible ‘a dead letter’. For compared to the beauty, the
overwhelming magnificence and awesomeness of nature, the Scriptures, he
concluded, were ‘fit only to excite contempt’.15
When we consider how much of The Age of Reason was written without the
modern tools of biblical scholarship and textual investigation, Paine’s exploration of
biblical inconsistencies and exposure of illogical assumptions and manifest
contradictions is all the more remarkable. For what Paine actually attempted in The
Age of Reason, without the aid of ancient languages or the comparison of
manuscripts, was an historical reading of the Bible. His reading was exceptionally
careful in the circumstances, and his arguments are often compelling. When we read,
for example, that there is mention of ‘the kings that ruled in Edom’ in Genesis, we
agree that this must describe a period after monarchy has been instituted, and cannot
therefore refer to the beginning of the world. Except for those disproportionately
effectual fundamentalists who persist in believing in the literal truth and divine
origin of every word of the Bible and similar sacred works, this is the historical
method which modern readers accept as appropriate for approaching the ancient
texts of any religion. Paine may have lacked the tools of precise scholarship, but his
general approach was impeccably modern. None the less it is easy to see how Paine’s
readers often took offence at many of his formulations if not his entire enterprise.
Paine retained a respectful tone when referring to Christ’s own morality and aims.
But he was less circumspect about much else. Phrases like ‘the monstrous idea of a
Son of God begotten by a ghost on the body of a virgin’ were not calculated to allay
the sensibilities of non-deistical readers. But directness, not diplomacy, was always
Paine’s strength.16
Paine’s own theology in The Age of Reason was clearly deistic rather than
millenarian, and confirms the view that his ‘millennium’ was explicitly political and
economic rather than theological in orientation. Though his concerns here were
primarily negative and centred on the destruction of biblical revelation, his positive
religious ideal was not future-oriented, and depended upon no direct divine
intervention at all. Instead, Paine stated simply that it was possible to lead a moral
life while believing that the revelation of God was nature and nothing else. This aim
he also sought to put into practice. In early 1797 he founded with a few others the
Church of Theophilanthropy in Paris. This institution, devoted to the love of both

183
 THOMAS PAINE

God and man, flourished for at least a year, during which time its members sang
hymns and discussed ethics, theology and philosophy, and established a small library
to popularize its principles. It celebrated only four annual festivals, to St Vincent de
Paul, Washington (his sins now apparently partially forgiven), Socrates and
Rousseau. Paine also planned to introduce the teaching of natural science to artisans
and others in conjunction with theology, that all might not only improve their own
occupational knowledge, but as well ‘be led to see the hand of God in all things’,
since science was the best proof of God’s existence.17
Clearly Paine sought to create a civil religion, and the theological principles of
The Age of Reason certainly corresponded to some degree to the democratic ideals
outlined in the Rights of Man. But they can also be understood as being even more
individualistic in so far as Paine here abandoned any intermediary between man and
God and denied virtually any role to a priesthood, while in his politics representation
and authority played a more substantial role. A closer parallel is with Paine’s
internationalism. Paine’s deism upheld no narrow church and his conception of the
internationally minded republic was deeply indebted to his notion of the Christian
brotherhood of mankind, now in the form of a deist brotherhood of observers of
nature. To Paine the destruction of revelation did not imply lessening the love of
one’s neighbour, but a refashioning of the sources of obligation which made such
duties necessary. Mutual respect and charity were inscribed in the system of the
universe. The priests would answer otherwise. But that was to be expected.

The reception of The Age of Reason

Though his critics fulminated that there was ‘not one of Paine’s objections in his Age
of Reason that has not been refuted long ago’, the work proved to be highly
controversial, and aroused more than a few tempers (a fight broke out on the
Greenwich-London stage between a gentleman’s servant and a recruiting sergeant
as to whether Paine was a deist or, as the latter thought, an atheist, which was solved
only when the two alighted on the road to settle matters; the sergeant won).18 In
assessing more calmly such reactions we must principally distinguish between the
responses of liberal Dissenters, of more deistic radicals and of Paine’s opponents.
For, far more than with respect to his political writings, the relation between the first
two of these groups was to be marred by the publication of The Age of Reason. Many
Dissenting radicals were simply unable to follow Paine into deism and most felt that
their own positions were threatened by his identification of political with religious

184
 THE AGE OF REASON

extremism. A few others, however, argued that this was the only consistent position
one could adopt.

The intense reaction to The Age of Reason was not simply to its deism. Many of
Paine’s biblical criticisms were hardly strikingly original, though, for example, he
did present the contradictions between the science of astronomy and the Christian
scheme more clearly than earlier deists. Instead The Age of Reason was ‘the most
daring and unmasked attack that had ever yet been made on revelation’, as one writer
put it. None the less its importance often eludes modern readers because it is difficult
for us to recapture the mental world of a society where religion remained vital to the
daily lives of much of the population. Moreover, Paine’s book was probably
shocking and provocative even for lapsed Christians who identified themselves only
with a few vague doctrines. In addition, much of the hostile reaction to the text also
had a secular rationale, as did Paine’s original intention in levelling his heavy
artillery against the church. For religion, clerics in particular were apt to claim, was
amongst the chief pillars of the social order, and an essential element in the loyalty
of the labouring classes. ‘Church and King’ collectively, in fact, were the
‘establishment’. Some infidelity no doubt already existed amongst the poor. But The
Age of Reason gave it a vast new infusion of confidence and consequently seriously
threatened the old order. It is thus easy to agree with a Scottish minister, the Rev. G.
Bennet, that ‘the mischief arising from the spreading of such a pernicious publication
was infinitely greater than any that could spring from limited suffrage and septennial
parliaments’. In some larger Scottish manufacturing towns, he was horrified to learn,
Bibles had actually been burned in reaction to Paine’s doctrines. And it circulated in
Ireland, where there were a great many Bibles to burn, and not a few citizens who
would gladly have added the odd English minister to the pyre.19

Contemporaries thus implied that Paine’s assault was taken so seriously for two
reasons. First, the church was a vital support to the government and the social order,
indeed its primary moral underpinning. God sanctioned a ‘principle of subordination
and dependence … established through all nature’ and frowned upon those who
expressed ‘a discontent of that state which he has allotted to us’. The established
government, some claimed, was ‘for the time, of divine authority, by whatever
method the power hath been acquired, and whatever the conduct of the rulers may
be’. Many opponents of The Age of Reason thus conceded with Paine that a deep
connection existed between theology and politics by accusing his disciples of aiming
to ‘first destroy Christianity, and then the British Constitution will fall of course’.20

185
 THOMAS PAINE

The second rationale went a step further to argue that society would collapse if
Paine’s doctrines were taken seriously because the basis would have been removed
for moral obligation generally, not merely political loyalty. A Liverpool loyalist, for
example, accused the readers of The Age of Reason of being ‘Tired of the galling
yoke of moral obligation’ and wanting to ‘throw off all restraint, and boldly rush into
the wilds of eccentricity’. A Baptist minister writing at the turn of the century
similarly claimed that

the sceptical or irreligious system subverts the whole foundation of morals. It may be
assumed as a maxim, that no person can be required to act contrary to his greatest good, or
his highest interest … As the present world, upon sceptical principles, is the only place of
recompense, whenever the practice of virtue fails to promise the greatest sum of present
good … every motive to virtuous conduct is superseded … Virtue on these principles, being
in numberless instances at war with self-preservation, never can or ought to become a fixed
habit of mind … Rewards and punishments awarded by omnipotent power, afford a
palpable and pressing motive, which can never be neglected without renouncing the
character of a rational creature.

Another account, rejecting in particular Priestley’s denial of any clear connection

between church and state, argued that Burke was ‘certainly right in asserting that
religion is the basis of civil society … it is asked will religion feed or cloath us? we
say it ultimately does both, for without it we cannot have law, and without law we
may be deprived of both … the hinge on which all law turns … is lent by religion;
Property, Safety, Life, depend on that sacred obligation, called an oath: the divine
laws form the ground-work and sources of the human, on that solid foundation, the
noble edifice is raised; they receive a degree of veneration and awful respect from
this connection that no human powers could give them’. Clerics in particular were
apt to insist that religion thus played a vital restraining role and required
commensurate support from government. A minister at Gray’s Inn declared that

This fatal spirit of independence and pride of intellect, evidently proceeds, and is directly
deducible, from … the spirit of irreligion. For when we have accustomed ourselves to
presume entirely upon the sufficiency of our own understanding, to suppose ourselves
equal to the comprehension of universal nature, to disdain the submission of our mind to
the mysterious calculations of natural, much more revealed religion … is it surprising, that
we should reject all submission to the authority of other men …?21

Yet as we have seen, Paine would not have disagreed with many of these
statements, providing they were applied to true and rational religion and not merely

186
 THE AGE OF REASON

a state church. But this was not a point his opponents could concede. Given their
depth of feeling, it is not surprising that attacks on Paine’s ideas soon poured from
the presses. Amongst the approximately fifty (almost entirely hostile) responses to
The Age of Reason between 1795 and 1799, the most important was Richard Watson,
the Bishop of Llandaff’s An Apology for the Bible (1796), itself written ‘in a popular
manner’ for perusal by Paine’s own readers, but conceding so much to Paine’s
arguments that Watson himself was accused of heterodoxy and passed over for
promotion. None the less, the Apology provoked Paine to begin a third part of The
Age of Reason, which was published in 1807, and where, among other things, Paine
again emphasized his belief in a future life.22 Watson acknowledged that what was
objectionable about The Age of Reason was not Paine’s views themselves, but ‘the
zeal with which you labour to disseminate your opinions, and … the confidence with
which you esteem them true’. But though it was widely distributed as an antidote to
Paine, the Apology in fact gave greater currency to his ideas, which were extensively
quoted in the text. Still, this did not help to turn the tide in Paine’s favour. Other critics
seized upon the publication of The Age of Reason as the ideal pretext for renewing
their attacks and launching new pseudo-biographies of Paine, some of which now
described him primarily as the ‘Author of The Age of Reason’. In fact Paine could
hardly have offered a more ideal opportunity to pounce upon the radicals just when
they had begun to recover. Amongst others, the publication of The Age of Reason
drew forth the formidable powers of Hannah More once again. Her A Country
Carpenter’s Confession of Faith (1794) delivered forth such jewels of incisive
reasoning as the narrator’s confession that as a poor man he could not understand
how seeds became plants, but since they did, and he could not understand the Bible
either, there was no reason to doubt its truth. William Cobbett, too, wrote a vitriolic
attack on The Age of Reason describing it as ‘revolting against God’, while the
conservative millenarian Joanna Southcott found time to lambast the third part of
The Age of Reason as late as 1812. Various writers indicated and condemned the
apparent connection between republicanism and deism, both of which seemed to be
grounded on the idea of the uniformity and perfectibility of the human character.
Predictably, perhaps, Paine was abused even more by purely religious writers than
by his political opponents, ‘Apostle of Beelzebub’ and ‘Agent of Lucifer’ being
merely two of the more polite descriptions of his origins and motives.23
More exacting critics focused upon several facets of Paine’s heterodoxy. Many
reviewed the biblical scholarship of the day and attacked Paine’s notion of
revelation. Some contended that a belief in revelation entailed upholding only the
divine missions of Moses and Christ, and their proof by miracles, arguing that only

187
 THOMAS PAINE

the ‘maddest enthusiasts’ thought that the entire Bible was revelation. For others the
entirety of the Scriptures were clearly the ‘word of God’, while some thought that
‘revelation’ meant primarily the means by which God communicated to everyone,
not merely what was recorded in print. A number sought to illustrate the intellectual
sources of The Age of Reason, tracing Paine’s views to Hume, Bolingbroke and
Hobbes. A few were flabbergasted that Paine refused to recognize sin, or to think that
sin deserved any kind of punishment. Some first conceded that he did believe in God,
but then affirmed that ‘As to his religion, I suspect it to be downright Atheism;
because, if God made no revelation to us, and has never discovered himself except
by the powers of nature, it is impossible to know that any being, distinct from these
powers, and the present system of nature, hath an existence’. But even if nature did
demonstrate the wisdom and goodness of the Deity, various critics accounted
reading a few verses of the Bible a far easier path to the same conclusion. Some, too,
simply accused Paine of insincerity, given his apparently repeated
acknowledgement of the divinity of the Scriptures in Common Sense, and of
inconsistency in his use of the Bible, since he, for example, relied upon it to establish
the character of Christ.24
Well aware of the limits of mere criticism, the government, supported by the
evangelical Society for the Suppression of Vice, decided to prosecute The Age of
Reason as blasphemous in June 1797, commencing with one Thomas Williams, who
received a year’s hard labour for selling the work. Williams’s trial established that
while the circulation of the first part had been quite limited, the second had generated
far greater interest. (The Bishop of London later claimed that The Age of Reason even
circulated among miners in Cornwall.) Its influence was all the greater given the
reputation of Paine’s political works, admitted the prosecutor, Paine’s former
defender Thomas Erskine, whose views were soon widely reprinted. Erskine, too,
pointed to the centrality of Christianity to the social order generally. The religious
and moral sense of the people of Great Britain’ he saw as ‘the great anchor, which
alone can hold the vessel of the state amidst the storms which agitate the world’. It
was not possible for the common people to be ‘set free from all the charities of
Christianity’ with ‘no other sense of God’s existence, than was to be collected from
Mr. Paine’s observation of nature, which the mass of mankind have no leisure to
contemplate; which promises no future rewards to animate the good in the glorious
pursuit of human happiness, nor punishments to deter the wicked from destroying it
even in its birth’. Without the threat of hell and hope of heaven, thus, ‘morality’ –
here synonymous with public order and existing inequalities – would disappear.25
Anglican and official reaction of this type was to be expected. It soon became
clear, however, that the Dissenters were also embarrassed by The Age of Reason, for
Paine’s theological views now made it still more difficult to support his politics.
None the less one of the leading Dissenting periodicals, the Analytical Review,

188
 THE AGE OF REASON

acknowledged that Paine’s right to challenge revelation could not be contested.

Truth and good are one’, it insisted, and if massive sections of the biblical edifice fell
before his guns, the purity of the human spirit would remain unharmed, and would
even be enhanced. Nor was Paine’s defence of natural religion intrinsically
objectionable to Rational Dissenters in particular. None the less the latter included
amongst themselves many of the finest biblical scholars of the period. These could
not help but judge, as the Analytical Review did, that Paine appeared ‘ill qualified to
do justice to the subject of revelation from his want of erudition’. They warned, too,
that while Paine opposed the doctrines of the Fall of Man and of the Trinity, so did
other Christians who were still ‘desirous of preserving the main trunk’ of their
religion. More technically, Paine was faulted, for example, for his comparison of the
Book of Job and the Psalms with texts composed both before and after each, for his
ridiculing the titles of the ‘greater’ and ‘lesser’ prophets as if the strength of their
prophecy was somehow related to this, rather than the size of their books, and for
assailing the term ‘New Testament’ when, it was asserted, ‘New Covenant’ was in
fact a superior translation of the title.26
Paine must have regretted the critical response of several of the most respected
radical Dissenters even more. He rarely drew any parallel between his own theology
and that of the Unitarians. But he cannot but have been sorry that Joseph Priestley,
exiled in Pennsylvania, assailed the ‘extraordinary impression that has been made,
especially in America’ by The Age of Reason, and found the book ‘full of palpable
mistakes with respect to notorious facts, or … reasoning manifestly inconclusive’.
Another liberal Dissenter, Gilbert Wakefield, wrote what the Dissenters generally
agreed was the most balanced and successful attempt to refute Paine’s work (and was
in turn attacked as too heterodox). He condemned Paine’s ‘superficial and
declamatory manner of treating this subject and his egregious deficiency even in the
elements of Biblical knowledge’, noting that this contemptibly vulgar approach had
‘compelled some of his most zealous admirers to admit that he had now stepped over
his province’. (Paine replied that Wakefield’s talents ‘would be best employed in
teaching men to preserve their liberties exclusively, – leaving to that God who made
their immortal souls the care of their eternal welfare’.) The leading Cambridge
Dissenting radical and journalist Benjamin Flower, a former SCI member, also
dismissed the work as ‘Paine’s trash’. Amongst the Irish radicals, too, a similar
reaction was evident. The Irish Protestant minister and Jacobin William Jackson
even passed the time in solitary confinement awaiting his Dublin sedition trial
combating the ‘ignorance and misrepresentation’ of The Age of Reason, and was
himself allowed only the Bible with which to do so.27

189
 THOMAS PAINE

Religion thus served as another wedge driven between the ranks of the more
moderate reformers and the Painites. Even those who shared republican beliefs
could now battle over theological issues. None the less The Age of Reason did find
substantial support. The more deistical reformers were of course exceedingly
pleased at its publication. Joel Barlow wrote to a friend that he rejoiced ‘at the
progress of Good Sense over the damnable imposture of Christian mummery’. The
Scottish deist George Mackenzie MacAulay applauded Paine’s ‘plain simple
principle’ of worshipping ‘one Superintending Being, whose powers and existence
nothing that is Human can conceive’ and his rejection of ‘all doctrines resulting from
the Imagination of Man’. At Liverpool ‘Paine’s Age of Reason made its appearance:
And the spirit of enquiry being once set afloat it met with a welcome reception’, as a
spy put it, with a group of atheists (predominantly United Englishmen) convening in
the Jesus Christ Club to discuss its merits. Some reformers, however, simply ignored
the text, or became interested only when it was prosecuted. Major John Cartwright,
for example, did not read The Age of Reason until 1819, when Paine’s disciple
Richard Carlile was tried, writing that he had not done so earlier because ‘I conceived
that he was handling a subject he did not understand’, but now acquiring it ‘that I may
better comprehend the views of our political saints’.28
There is thus no doubt of the wide circulation of The Age of Reason in the mid-
and late 1790s, particularly among the London working classes. As we have seen,
religion in late 1795 forced the splitting of the London Corresponding Society, with
six entire divisions of Methodists, and as many as several hundred sympathizers, or
perhaps a fifth of the membership, seceding when the executive refused to oust deists
and atheists from the organization.29 The conservative William Hamilton Reid, who
detected an atheistical conspiracy behind every liberty tree, later claimed that the
‘early predilection’ of the London Corresponding Society for The Age of Reason
‘made infidelity as familiar as possible with the lower orders’. Even LCS debates
about the book, in which ‘as zeal superseded judgement … the epithets d-m-d fool,
and d-m-d Christian, ultimately prevailed’, Reid thought had resulted in the
publication of 2,000 copies of a cheap edition of The Age of Reason (this was in fact
initiated by Francis Place, and a much larger edition soon sold which some termed
the ‘New Holy Bible’). Reid also claimed, however, that ‘by adding Deism to its
polities’ the LCS ‘engendered the seeds of its own destruction’, with many of its
orators ‘as if they were aware of going too far, after depreciating the character of the
Saviour, in their harangues [God seems to have been christened ‘Mr Humbug’], used
frequently to add the ridiculous assertion, that they believed Jesus Christ was a good
republican’.30 Reid’s is of course a very biased account. None the less it is surprising

190
 THE AGE OF REASON

how few voices were raised in Paine’s defence outside of the radical press. One
Thomas Dutton considered that his notion of redemption was just and probably
derived from his father’s Quaker instruction, and fended off the arguments of
Priestley and Wakefield. Some of The Age of Reason’s opponents also maintained
that despite Paine’s errors, the Quakers still exemplified the model of a new form of
society. Otherwise Paine found little support indeed. By 1800 a great many
recalcitrant Jacobins were being led back into the fold. Repentance became far more
commonplace and anti-Jacobins gloried in the claim that some radicals had been
converted to Paine’s theology, committed various crimes under its influence and
then seen the error of their ways (in the case of the Spithead naval mutineers, on the
scaffold).31
In America The Age of Reason became ‘the axis about which deist thought’
rotated, as one historian has put it. Eight American editions appeared in 1794, seven
the following year and two in 1796. In Philadelphia thousands of copies were sold at
auctions for a mere cent and a half each, ‘whereby children, servants, and the lowest
people, had been tempted to purchase’. Here, as in Britain, deism had been confined
previously to the upper classes. Now, with Volney’s Ruins (1791) and the works of
the American Elihu Palmer, it reached far larger numbers. The strokes of his pen are
sufficient to convert many to any falsehood he wishes them to believe’, lamented one
critic. In Vermont, typically, The Age of Reason was ‘greedily received’. In fact a
deist and French revolutionary vogue seized cottages as well as universities through
the late 1790s. At Yale students called one another ‘Voltaire’, ‘d’Alembert’ and
‘Rousseau’, while at Harvard the authorities finally felt compelled in 1796 to issue
each student with a copy of Watson’s Apology. Of the Dartmouth class of 1799 only
one student was said to be willing to admit publicly to being a Christian. Earlier
rationalist clubs like the Universal Society of Philadelphia were rejuvenated, while
new organizations like the Deistical Society, formed in New York in 1796, extended
Paine’s principles. Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newburgh and other towns had
Theophilanthropic Societies, but deistical speculation spread eastwards to the Ohio
Valley as well as southwards along the Atlantic seaboard. Freemasonry, which
contained a deist element, also grew in popularity throughout this period. This wave
of infidelity evidently reached a peak around 1797–1800. At this point, heralded by
a series of clerical assaults upon Paine (there were at least fifteen responses during
this period), it was met by a fervent movement of religious revivalism which peaked
in Kentucky and Tennessee in 1801. The Awakening vigorously set upon Paine’s
ideas from press and pulpit and deism was virtually eclipsed until its revival after
1820 by Robert Owen and his followers, who were soon linked to Paine’s views.32

191
 THOMAS PAINE

Had Paine lost his head in 1794 he might have kept his reputation, for the latter
was ruined by The Age of Reason, as well as, in America, his simultaneous attack on
Washington. As one historian put it in 1851, ‘Had he published or said nothing
against that religion which is held sacred by the great mass of our nation he would
have remained as he was at first – one of the most popular political men of that time.’
(A contemporary put the same sentiment in a premature epitaph: ‘Here lies Tom
Paine, who wrote in liberty’s defense / And in his “Age of Reason” lost his “Common
Sense”.’) American critics were thus more prone to regret that ‘one who has written
so well on several political points, should not have thought with more justice on
religion’, and even toasted him proclaiming, ‘May his Rights of Man be handed
down to our latest posterity; but may his Age of Reason never live to see the rising
generation’. Paine had been of great service during the Revolution, one remarked,
but he served now only to disseminate ‘VICE and FOLLY, IGNORANCE and
IMPERTINENCE’. At least one critic even feared that every syllable of Paine’s
work evidenced ‘the signature of Satan’. The American clergy united in accusing
him of inconsistency, poor scholarship and hatred of Christianity. How, for example,
asked a Rhode Island Congregationalist minister, could Paine accept the biblical
account of the character of Christ and reject most of its particulars concerning his
life? Could not ‘revelation’ be understood as inspiration rather than immediate
divine disclosure (which was itself a considerable concession) and the Old and New
Testaments in this sense be the word of God? Without such a belief, most contended,
morality, prosperity and happiness were impossible. ‘Christianity proceeding from
God must stand’, thundered an Alexandria Presbyterian, prophesying a fate similar
to Sodom and Gomorrah if unbelief prevailed in America, and defending the Mosaic
account of the Creation as ‘so natural and even necessary, that I cannot conceive how
it could have been otherwise’. A Newark clergyman mocked Paine’s deism as even
less sophisticated and compelling than the earlier systems of, for example, Lord
Herbert of Cherbury. But he also devoted 650 pages to Paine’s arguments and, while
willing to concede that ‘there is a possibility ancient records may be corrupted’, he
none the less insisted upon the validity of the accounts of revelation given in the
Bible and accused Paine of inconsistency for admitting that revelation could exist at
all. Other accounts also denied that the Bible defended equality.33 By 1805, however,
Paine’s critics were pleased to report that they had now passed through ‘a period of
no small importance … ostentatiously indeed denominated the Age of Reason’.
Paine had assumed that reason was unlimited, and had failed to see that ‘man was
meant to be left in ignorance’ about many aspects of existence.34 Sobriety had
supplanted the delirium of revolutionary intoxication. None the less these
controversies continued long into the nineteenth century in America. Abraham

192
 THE AGE OF REASON

Lincoln evidently read The Age of Reason and wrote a similar commentary on the
Bible which a friend, with an eye to his political future, consigned to the flames for
him. The poet Walt Whitman, too, studied The Age of Reason as a child and defended
Paine publicly in 1877.

Conclusion

Paine’s often hostile reception on his return to America in 1802 had, as we have seen,
much to do with his religious views, as did his nineteenth-century reputation
generally in both Britain and America. If the dissemination of his political principles
was the foremost concern in Paine’s mind, the publication of The Age of Reason was
the greatest mistake in his career. But if Paine felt that his political principles could
not survive without religious guidance, that atheism, in other words, undermined the
rights of man, then Paine’s course of action, tragic though it was, was virtually
inevitable. Paine himself was surprised by popular revulsion at the principles of Age
of Reason and later, perhaps with some regret, told a fellow radical that he would not
have published it if he had not thought it calculated to ‘inspire mankind with a more
exalted idea of the Supreme Architect of the Universe, and to put an end to villainous
imposture’. Very few, alas, drew such a conclusion.35 None the less The Age of
Reason remains one of the few late eighteenth-century tracts on religious
controversy still read 200 years later. And while Christian countries no longer rise to
theological debate as they once did, Paine’s deism probably remains the practical
Christianity of many, even if it is still shared by few in theory.

Notes to Chapter 7: The Age of Reason

1 Paine used the phrase, ‘the age of reason’, as early as 1791 (1945, Vol. 2, p. 518).
2 T. Roosevelt (1898), p. 289; Copies (1798), p. 25.
3 On religious unbelief see J. Redwood (1976). Its relation to seventeenth century deism
and Masonry is best examined in M. Jacob (1981). For America see in particular H.
Morais (1934).
4 Deism Fairly Stated (1746), p. 95.
5 Two Letters from a Deist (1730), p. 24; R. Hall (1800), pp. 3–4; The Deist Confuted
(1734), pp. 1–2.
6 W. Reid (1800), pp. 87–91. See G. Hindmarsh (1979). Much of the controversy about
Paine’s early religious practices revolves around the question of the authorship of the so-
called ‘Forester’ articles in the Sussex Weekly Advertiser in 1772–3. See G. Spater (1982)
for the case against Paine’s authorship.

193
 THOMAS PAINE

7 On the text see F. Prochaska (1972), M. Williams (1975 and 1976), R. Smith (1977) and
A. Ayer (1988), pp. 141–56.
8 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, p. 1436. On the French edition see R. Gimbel (1956b).
9 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 463–4.
10 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 464–5.
11 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 465–72.
12 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 472–82.
13 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 482–512.
14 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 514–24.
15 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 515–602.
16 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, p. 553.
17 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 744–56.
18 E. Nares (1805), p. 85; Sheffield Iris, no. 14 (3 October 1794), p. 3.
19 G. Bennet (1796), pp. 88–90; R. Jacob (1937), pp. 189–90. For a typical defence of the
worth of church to state see the Buckingham JP and Rev. D. Scurlock’s tract (1792). On
popular infidelity see M. Williams (1976), but also F. Prochaska (1972), who argues its
strength has been exaggerated. On the reception of The Age of Reason see also D. Roper
(1978), pp. 203–9.
20 J. Scott (1793), p. 9; T. Broughton (1820), p. 20; T. Scott (1792), p. 5. See generally W.
Stafford (1982).
21 R. Hall (1800), pp. 10–11; [W. Odell] (1792), p. 9; A. Binns (1796), p. 19; W. King (1793),
pp. 26–7.
22 See Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 848–93.
23 R. Watson (1796), p. 2; Extracts (n.d.); [H. More] (1794), p. 11; W. Cobbett (n.d.), p. 1; J.
Southcott (1812); Christianity the Only True Theology (n.d.), p. 7; J. Coward (1796), p.
16; T. Scott (1796), p. 113.
24 T. Scott (1796), pp. 104–11; T. Hincks (1796), p. 111; V. Knox (1795), Vol. 1, p. 51; J.
Estlin (1796), p. 12; S. Drew (1820), p. 67; The Age of Infidelity (1796), p. 138; J. Tytler
(1797), p. 54 (which plagiarizes from J. Auchincloss, 1796, p. 35); M. Nash (1794), p. 60.
25 W. Reid (1800), p. 29; F. Place (1972), pp. 159–60; Add. MS. 35143 f. 34; T. Howell
(1819), Vol. 26, cols 653, 668 and generally 653–720. Erskine was accused of hypocrisy
by Williams’s counsel (J. Martin, 1797, pp. 28–9). Paine also responded to Erskine (1945,
Vol. 2, pp. 728–48).
26 Analytical Review, Vol. 19 (1794), pp. 159–70.
27 J. Priestley (1796), pp. 65–6; G. Wakefield (1795), p. 11; Memoirs of Wakefield (1804),
Vol. 2, p. 19; Paine (1945), Vol. 2, pp. 1382–3; J. Priestley (1794), p. 28; M. Nash (1794),
p. 2; M. Smith (1979), p. 91; W. Jackson (1795), pp. 1, 92.
28 J. Woodress (1958), p. 218; W. Mackenzie (1916), p. 170; PC1/44/A161; F. Cartwright
(1826), Vol. 2, p. 156.
29 PC1/23/A38.
30 D. Miles (1988), pp. 32–4; W. Reid (1800), pp. 3, 5–9, 31; Add. MS. 35143 fols 34–52;
PC1/23/A38. Reid also noted that the LCS often proposed the Quakers ‘as a model to
other Christian denominations’ (p. 35).
31 T. Dutton (1795), pp. 8, 123; J. Bonsell (1798), pp. 12–13; D. Simpson (1802), p. vi; W.
Grisenthwaite (1822).
32 H. Morais (1934), p. 120 and, generally, pp. 120–78; E. Boudinot (1801), p. xx; G. Nash
(1965), pp. 402–3; G. Koch (1933), pp. 130–46, and J. Turner (1985), pp. 1–113; Divine

194
 THE AGE OF REASON

Oracles (1797), p. 4; T. Broughton (1820), p. 247. Bibliographical details of American

responses to The Age of Reason are given in A. Morse (1909), pp. 217–19. Also useful is
J. Fowles (1797). The reaction of Virginia clerics to the text is discussed in J. Smylie
(1973). Two British responses are analysed in R. Popkin (1987).
33 L. Judson (1851), p. 461; D. Nelson (1800), p. 61; F. Sheldon (1859), p. 14; U. Ogden
(1795), Vol. 1, p. 14; W. Patten (1795), pp. vii, 22, 46, 105; J. Muir (1795), pp. v, 22–3,
143–64; U. Ogden (1795), Vol. 1, pp. 57, 319–21; S. Stilwell (1794), pp. 5–6.
34 E. Nares (1805), pp. 17, 23.
35 H. Yorke (1804), Vol. 2, p. 360.

195
 8
Revolution in civilization:
Agrarian Justice (1797)

While The Age of Reason caused a great public outcry, Agrarian Justice is the most
neglected of Paine’s chief works. Even major studies of Paine have usually paid it
little heed; Aldridge, for example, cursorily dismisses the pamphlet as ‘a proposal
for an inheritance tax’. Closer examinations have seen its significance as lying in
Paine’s inclination towards communal ownership in his later years, a view which this
chapter shows to be false, and as indicating Paine’s growing interest in religion in the
mid-1790s, which is more plausible. It has also been claimed that Agrarian Justice
opened the way to considerable state intervention in its defence of the poor, though
this tends to ignore a similar trend in the Rights of Man, Part Two.1 A more careful
study of the work, however, shows that its significance lies primarily in Paine’s
articulation of several new arguments for restricting private property, which thereby
refined considerably his theories of both progress and property rights and linked the
two together. For Paine by 1796 had lost much of his earlier bland commercial
optimism and had come to believe that ‘old countries’ like Britain endemically
created a class of poor who required and had a right to public support. This was to be
met by redistributing existing tax revenues and taxing landed estates. But Agrarian
Justice made far more sweeping claims on behalf of the poor to what Paine now
argued was common wealth, particularly all improvements on landed property, than
had the Rights of Man. Moreover, Paine now saw poverty as originating partly in
inadequate wages and economic oppression, and not merely in taxation. This was an
extremely important shift in his ideas of commerce, though some of his supporting
arguments also exposed inconsistencies in Paine’s thinking, particularly in his use of
the natural law tradition.
Central to Agrarian Justice, in fact, was Paine’s attempt to revive natural law
teaching about the original community of property ordained by God. Here a crucial
distinction, never before discussed by Paine, was between ‘natural property’, or that
given us by the maker of the universe, ‘such as the earth, air, water’, and ‘artificial

196
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE

property’ created by mankind. Paine now maintained that man had a ‘natural
birthright’ in the former which was still recognized among primitive societies like
the North American Indian tribes. But since no one could return to this state from
civilization – despite the accusations of many opponents of the Rights of Man – Paine
proposed that landowners should pay both a lump sum and an annuity to all deprived
of their birthright. A large portion of his new plan to tax landed property now
appeared to hinge upon conceding this right.
This argument was more traditional, but less innocent, than it appears. Why did a
confirmed, proselytizing deist like Paine introduce divine intention into a statement
about property rights? Paine had considerable faith in the providential governance
of the natural and social worlds. But did he contradict or subvert his own theological
beliefs, especially those expressed in The Age of Reason, by exploiting popular
preconceptions about more specific mandates of God’s will because more
compelling arguments were unavailable?2 It is suggested here that Paine recognized
the weaknesses of a recourse of this type and introduced two further pillars to shore
up his case: his ‘principle of progress’ (as it will be termed here) and a theory of
‘social debt’ by which the rich as stewards of God’s bequest always owed part of their
wealth to society. These addenda, however, were both secular, one referring to a
historical state of nature where divine intentions were not at issue, the other to any
advanced state of civilization. They help to establish Paine as an important transition
figure in radical debates about property in this period in so far as the secularization
of natural law discussions about God and the state of nature were central to the
evolution of property theory in this period.

Agrarian Justice: natural jurisprudence secularized

The measures for alleviating poverty proposed in Agrarian Justice are often seen as
an improved version of the scheme offered in the Rights of Man, which was to be paid
for out of the redistribution of existing, excessive taxation and the institution of a
plan of progressive taxation on land. No lengthy justification for these measures was
offered in the Rights of Man, a general right to relief in old age being defended on the
basis of taxes already paid. These reforms were aimed at undermining the
aristocratic system and making the overall tax burden fairer. To this end,
condemning large estates as ‘a luxury at all times’, Paine also distinguished between
property justly earned and that for which little or no effort was exerted in order to
justify new types of taxes, claiming that ‘It would be impolitic to set bounds to

197
 THOMAS PAINE

property acquired by industry, and therefore it is right to place the prohibition [on
maximum incomes from land] beyond the probable acquisition to which industry
can extend; but there ought to be a limit to property, or the accumulation of it by
bequest. It should pass in some other line. The rich in every nation have poor
relations, and those very often near in consanguinity.’ But the arguments urged for
redistributing property in Agrarian Justice were quite unlike anything Paine had
previously formulated, and can be interpreted as considerably more radical than the
plans of the Rights of Man. Philip Foner even contended that in Agrarian Justice
‘Paine supported the communistic aspects of Babeuf’s theories’ because these were
‘correctly aimed at the removal of social inequalities in property’.3 But it will be
suggested here that this view mistakes Paine’s arguments for his programme. Only
by considering how each relates to his theory of commerce and the tradition of
natural jurisprudence which underlay this, however, and finally how Paine’s
theology limited his ability to use this tradition, can the proposals in Agrarian Justice
be fully illuminated.
Written in the winter of 1795–6, Agrarian Justice was published when Paine was
provoked by the Bishop of Llandaff’s sermon on ‘The Wisdom and Goodness of
God, in having made both Rich and Poor’, which drove Paine to retort that ‘It is
wrong to say God made rich and poor; He made only male and female; and He gave
them the earth for their inheritance.’ Paine commenced by distinguishing between
natural and artificial forms of property. Equality in the latter was ‘impossible; for to
distribute it equally it would be necessary that all should have contributed in the same
proportion, which can never be the case; and this being the case, every individual
would hold on to his own property, as his right share’. But of ‘equality of natural
property … the subject of this little essay’, Paine insisted that ‘Every individual in
the world is born therein with legitimate claims on a certain kind of property, or its
equivalent’.4
In his initial justification of this right Paine’s starting point differed clearly from
the Rights of Man. Gone was what still remained of the simplistic confidence in the
development of commerce of Common Sense. Instead, Paine asked

whether that state that is proudly, perhaps erroneously, called civilization, has most
promoted or most injured the general happiness of man … On one side, he is dazzled by
splendid appearances; on the other, he is shocked by extremes of wretchedness; both of
which it has erected. The most affluent and the most miserable of the human race are to be
found in the countries that are called civilized.

The great novel claim of Agrarian Justice, then, was that poverty not only resulted
from but also increased with civilization. To condemn the existence of poverty

198
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE

amidst plenty Paine needed to adopt some critical perspective and could now have
moved easily in the direction of Rousseau’s defence of simplicity. He did in fact
advert to ‘the natural and primitive state of man’. The North American Indians, for
example, lacked ‘any of those spectacles of human misery which poverty and want
present to our eyes in all the towns and streets of Europe’. But if poverty only blighted
civilized nations, ‘the natural state’ lacked ‘those advantages which flow from
agriculture, arts, science and manufactures’. An Indian’s life might be ‘a continual
holiday, compared with the poor of Europe’, but it was ‘abject’ compared to that of
the rich in modern societies. Moreover, it was ‘never possible to go from the natural
to the civilized state’, if only because hunting, the principal occupation of the natural
state, required ten times more land to support any population than did agriculture.
What could be done, however, was ‘to remedy the evils and preserve the benefits that
have arisen to society by passing from the natural to that which is called the civilized
state’, by acknowledging ‘the first principle of civilization … that the condition of
every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not
to be worse than if he had been born before that period’. We will later see what
consequences this principle, undeveloped at this point by Paine, would have for the
argument of Agrarian Justice.5
Paine next introduced a new proposition which, it will be suggested, was highly
contentious given his sceptical deism, though he clearly believed it served a vital
function here. This was the view that ‘the earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was,
and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that
state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life
proprietor with the rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions,
vegetable and animal.’ The purpose of invoking this mainstream natural law
supposition was to create a new notion of property rights. Although, in a cultivated
state, it was ‘impossible to separate the improvement made by cultivation from the
earth itself, upon which that improvement is made’, it was ‘the value of the
improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property’. But how
could the improvement but not more remain with the improver? Paine did not
arbitrarily decide that at some point not industry but inheritance was the source of
wealth, which was where the Rights of Man had left the matter hanging, or simply
define ‘a limit to property, or the accumulation of it by bequest’. Instead he
introduced a new principle which justified a tax upon all landed wealth without
having to solve the sticky issue of what portion of landed produce derived from effort
and what from the land itself. By virtue of this new claim of rights, every landed
proprietor owed the community a ‘ground-rent’. Upon this, rather than the mere
condemnation of excessive ‘luxury’, Paine’s new taxation plan was to be based.6

199
 THOMAS PAINE

But it was not merely the contention that the earth historically had once been
common property that was central to Paine’s case. Instead the original bequest of the
whole earth to all by God at the Creation was crucial here. Not only did this argument
seem far more securely rooted than Paine’s attack upon primogeniture. It also
allowed for the provision of rights claims which merely recognizing the existence of
a state of nature did not permit (and in any case as we have seen there were
considerable disagreements about what rights had existed then). Moreover, it lent
Paine’s case an important pedigree. As is well known, this argument was in fact
central in natural jurisprudence theories of property. Its origins lay in the biblical
account of the Creation, by which dominion over the earth was vested in the first man
and woman and all their descendants. Most Christians, however, as well as the
leading natural jurists Paine might have read, Grotius and Pufendorf, had concluded
that God gave the earth to all in common only negatively (in the jurists’ term), that
is, to develop individually as the need arose (principally from the pressure of
population). From this interpretation of the origins of mankind there emerged in the
eighteenth century the four stages theory of the progress of property to which many
Scottish theorists adhered. The latter agreed at the same time that God had not
intended a positive community of property in which goods were to remain in
common in perpetuity.7 Only a few late eighteenth-century writers contested this
conclusion, namely William Ogilvie, to some extent Robert Wallace, and Thomas
Spence.8
Agrarian Justice also sought to invoke the authority of the biblical and
jurisprudential accounts without reaching a communistical conclusion. By rejecting
a more purely historical interpretation of common property and insisting that God
meant all to share the earth, Paine promoted a contemporary right to property which
a strictly stadial theory – in so far as it also historicized the possession of rights as
well, leaving any original rights only in the first stages of society – had necessarily
to reject, at least in this form. Natural law writers usually acknowledged the recurrent
importance of those common property rights granted to all at the Creation in one
important respect, arguing that the needy could invoke the right of charity from the
rich when their survival was threatened, and could (some added) even steal in cases
of dire necessity. Moreover, they also derived from this original inheritance the right
in famine to have grain sold to them at the normal market price, again because God
had ordained the subsistence of all. But Paine’s conception of the application of
original rights to the modern world was much wider than this. His distinction
between agricultural improvements and landed property in fact relied upon
reconceptualizing divine intention. For if God’s intentions had been other than Paine

200
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE

assumed, a labour theory of property might, for example, minimally be conceded

which justified a right to some agricultural produce (at least to that possessed by
slothful or absentee landlords), and other bases for such rights could also be offered,
such as utility. But no collective right to any fixed portion of the proceeds of landed
property, especially by the poor, could be as firmly grounded without a divine
mandate. If it could not be proved that divine intention favoured a wide, later
application of an original community of goods, the right of the poor to any of this
inheritance would accordingly be gravely weakened, as it indeed was when Malthus
dismissed any right to charity in his Essay on Population (1798). Paine’s argument
thus succeeded only because of a theologically based workmanship model. Man had
not made the earth, and ‘though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to
locate as his property in perpetuity any part of it; neither did the Creator of the earth
open a land-office, from whence the first title-deeds should issue.’9
From this argument Paine now declared that since cultivation first began, a landed
monopoly had dispossessed at least half the population from the soil. These should
therefore be compensated by receiving £15 at age 21 (or about half a year’s wage for
an agricultural labourer), and £10 annually from the age of 50 onwards. This would
bring about a ‘revolution in the state of civilization’ analogous to a republican
revolution in government. None the less this was not an argument against private
appropriation, but an attempt to ensure that as social wealth increased the rich would
pay more into the fund supporting the poor, such that all would benefit by affluence.
Yet Paine was apparently not satisfied with his case. For Agrarian Justice also put
forward two further claims on behalf of the dispossessed, which to my mind indicate
Paine’s unease about enlisting theological support for his property doctrines (of
which more below), and his sense that God’s will failed to provide a sufficiently
compelling ground for his taxation scheme.10
The first of these was what I will call Paine’s ‘principle of progress’. This alleged
that ‘no person ought to be in a worse condition when born under what is called a state
of civilization, than he would have been had he been born in a state of nature’, and
consequently that in the case of a worse civilized condition, provision had to be made
‘by subtracting from property a portion equal in value to the natural inheritance it has
absorbed’. Why was this argument, again common to the jurists, required? Paine had
already established, and repeated a few pages later even more bluntly, that land was
‘the free gift of the Creator in common to the human race.’11 If this ensured a natural
right to some proportion of improvements to land, why introduce a further principle,
for which no grounding was offered, and which is not clearly connected to the rest of
Paine’s argument? Was Paine insecurely aware that only divine intention, and not the

201
 THOMAS PAINE

natural jurisprudential account from which he had drawn these ideas (Grotius was a
probable source), could support the kind of indisputable and extensive rights
argument he was making here? Or did he consider no heavenly mandate precise
enough to encompass the rising standard of living since the state of nature and think
some supplementary revelation, so to speak, was necessary to establish that God
intended not only that all were entitled to a subsistence appropriate to the state of
nature, but also to standard-of-living increments?
Evidence of Paine’s insecurity about his interpretation of divine intention can also
be deduced from the fact that he proceeded to offer a second rationale for divided
improvements on land. Now he suggested that while land was given by God to all,

Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire
personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make the land originally.
Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or continent to possess, and he
cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich … All accumulation, therefore, of
personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in
society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of
that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.

As with Paine’s principle of progress, this was a secular argument intended to

augment the inadequacies of the theological account. But the notion of such a social
debt also permitted all property, and not only the land, to be taxed or otherwise
distributed for the common good. The funds by which the national debt was serviced,
for example – which Paine wished to tax – here faced a burden of social
responsibility, while they would be omitted from the scope of divine intention, which
referred only to landed property (Genesis not having foreseen the development of
financial speculation). So did wealth derived from manufacturing. The third of
Paine’s arguments in favour of redistribution in Agrarian Justice thus particularly
permitted a claim of justice for wage-labour, which was impossible under the divine
intention argument, which referred only to the landless, and difficult (because of the
vagueness of the precept) under the principle of progress. This concern with wage-
labour was indeed another dramatic development in Paine’s theory of justice and
proceeded from the realization that ‘the accumulation of personal property is, in
many instances, the effect of paying too little for the labor that produced it; the
consequence of which is that the working hand perishes in old age, and the employer
abounds in affluence’.12
So far it has been suggested that Paine developed three arguments for
redistributing property in Agrarian Justice. He began by accepting a broader

202
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE

interpretation of the consequences of God’s grant of property to all than most jurists
conceded. A contemporary right was extended to all without land, and not merely
the needy, of a portion of any improvements on land in perpetuity, and not merely
subsistence goods for a short period. To this were added two further arguments, one
based on Paine’s principle of progress, the other upon a general duty owed by the
wealthy to society generally. These arguments gave Paine’s claims a much greater
scope than his deductions from divine intention allowed; indeed he might now have
retitled the work ‘Agrarian, Commercial and Manufacturing Justice’. Yet we have
also indicated that Paine may have felt uncomfortable about using the divine
argument to begin with and that this at least partly underlay his reinforced argument.
Let us now examine more closely why there were good reasons, grounded in Paine’s
religious beliefs, for such unease.

Deism and the Creation

We have seen that Paine is better classified as a deist than a Quaker, despite his many
affinities with the latter sect. But even within deism there was a fairly wide spectrum
of belief, and the implications of seemingly minor shifts of theological doctrine for
the social, political and economic theory of particular thinkers remains a difficult and
largely unexplored topic. We must concentrate here, therefore, on the single question
of whether Paine’s deism contradicted his appeal to divine intention to bolster his
account of property rights and duties.
As we saw in the last chapter, Paine’s deism included a belief in one God and the
hope ‘for happiness beyond this life’. The Age of Reason, however, argued that
Christianity was deeply corrupted by priestcraft and superstition. Hence claiming
that the Bible was ‘revelation’ and the work of God was patently ridiculous. The
account of Creation in Genesis, in particular, was merely ‘an anonymous book of
stories, fables and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies’. Paine
again rejected its veracity in his response to Erskine’s prosecution of The Age of
Reason and Richard Watson’s attack upon the book. Revelation lay in nature; only
here was the universal message of God apparent. God was the ‘first cause’ of the
Creation, but otherwise was knowable only through the scientific exploration of the
natural world. And even here there were doubts, for Paine conceded at one point,
somewhat inconsistently, that ‘the power and wisdom He has manifested in the
structure of the Creation that I behold is to me incomprehensible’.13

203
 THOMAS PAINE

But the revelation of nature was hardly devoid of moral implications for mankind,
for divine intention suffused nature in the form of Providence. Though he derided
‘the God Providence’ as one of the five Gods of Christian mythology, Paine as we
have seen was deeply convinced that the Creator had ‘organised the structure of the
universe in the most advantageous manner for the benefit of man’ and that there
existed ‘an Almighty Power that governs and regulates the whole’. Deism in fact
consisted in ‘contemplating the power, wisdom and benignity of the Deity in his
works, and in endeavouring to imitate Him in everything moral, scientifical and
mechanical’. Were the benevolent designs of the Deity not included in Paine’s
religion he would have been a mere worshipper of nature. As it was, his social theory
owed much to his belief in Providence, which underpinned, for example, the
optimistic elements of his theory of commerce. Elsewhere we find him praising ‘the
hand of Providence’, describing God as ‘an infinite protecting power’ and implying
that Providence intended America as an asylum for persecuted Europeans and had
even helped to save Paine himself from the guillotine. He also paid homage to the
‘unerring order and universal harmony reigning throughout the whole’ of the works
of creation, particularly as evidenced by the operations of the planetary system (and
he remained a Newtonian, in 1797 invoking the rotation of the planets as proof of an
external cause of the world).14
Given these views, several disturbing questions arise about Paine’s use of divine
intention to bolster the rights claims in Agrarian Justice. First, having so often
discounted the biblical account of Creation, which stated that God bequeathed the
earth to all in common, how could Paine have supposed that this occurred? It is
unlikely that he altered his views on the Bible during this period, even if he became
more ‘religious’ in some general sense as a consequence of the Terror in France.
Defending The Age of Reason in 1797, in fact, Paine specifically mocked Genesis
again, arguing that it inconsistently asserted that the first man and woman were given
dominion over the whole earth, and then over only a single garden. How then could
land be ‘the free gift of the Creator in common to the human race’, if no certain
account of the will of the Creator remained? No matter how much faith Paine placed
in Providence, and in the intention of the Deity to provide for mankind, we cannot
reason specifically from this that ‘Providence’ offered mankind the earth in common
at the Creation and, more importantly, in perpetuity.15 Such rights could not be
deduced from the motion of the planets. Nor did Paine’s claims exactly coincide with
jurisprudential accounts of property, though he followed their discussions of original
communal property – which did not challenge the veracity of Genesis – in accepting

204
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE

an account of its dissolution which was broadly historical. Paine thus agreed that
landed property arose with cultivation and existed neither ‘in the first state of man,
that of hunters’, nor ‘in the second state, that of shepherds’, where property was only
in flocks and herds. But as was suggested above, the four stages theory of the
evolution of modes of subsistence did not necessarily entail the notion that any
common property rights were given to all in a state of nature which could be invoked
in later stages of society. Such rights were asserted by the jurists because they
followed the Christian account of God’s gift of the world to all in common. This
formed the basis for soft or imperfect rights to charity and the most compelling claim
to subsistence. What Agrarian Justice thus proposed was a variation upon this
conception, substituting a general right to subsistence for the specific right of the
necessitous, or, if we like, transmuting an imperfect right to charity into a perfect
right to assistance. This paralleled his efforts in the Rights of Man and represents, as
we have seen, a step of immense importance in the history of ideas of public
welfare.16 But embracing the theological assumptions and rights conclusions of
natural jurisprudence was inadmissible in a purely secular and historical account, or
one where no biblical account of Creation could be admitted (which for these
purposes was but a step removed from secularity). An historical account or one
which rejected Genesis might well acknowledge that community of property had
once existed, but could not argue logically from this a case for contemporary rights
to assistance.
One other way out of this problem would have been to claim that common
property rights belonged to individuals as psychological properties, and not as the
result of original divine behest. As we saw, Paine defined rights generally as
‘contained within ourselves as individuals’, and pertaining ‘to man in right of his
existence’. Rights inhered in individuals and were not derived from any conjectural
state of nature or specifically granted by divine injunction, though this was their
original source. But Paine’s earlier definitions made no mention of property rights,
either individual or collective, positive or negative. Nor is there reason to assume
Paine altered this aspect of his definition of rights by arguing, for example, that all
mankind were equally God’s children and as such invested with this right.17 Such
rights, indeed, can hardly be construed as inhering in individuals, even if God
intended the general well-being of all. And a more specific interpretation of God’s
intentions was not possible given Paine’s view of the Bible.
Thus Paine either adopted the account in Genesis, by way of extending natural law
arguments, and here violated his own principles of biblical interpretation, or he

205
 THOMAS PAINE

extended his notion of Providence unreasonably far. His theory of natural rights did
not include such a conception of an original community of goods, nor did historical
theories of the evolution of property derive these subsequent rights from this
condition even where their initial existence was conceded. It is also unlikely that
Paine, in reaction to the atheism or immorality around him, became increasingly
Christian and therefore legitimately reintroduced a Christian account of the
disposition of property at the Creation, for he continued to reject Genesis after 1796.
But while Paine lapsed into an inconsistent natural law defence of an original
community of goods in order to strengthen his argument in favour of a limited
redistribution of landed property, he did not believe that a positive community of
goods was possible or accept the communistic implications of Babeuf’s theories.
Paine opposed Watson’s blatantly apologetic defence of inequality, arguing that this
tended only ‘to encourage one part of mankind in insolence’. Between the existing
system and complete equality of property were a vast number of possible social
systems, however. Paine’s new formulation of the question of property did not retreat
as dramatically as might appear from his notions of free commerce as they were
expressed between 1776 and 1791. But he had become more pessimistic about the
natural tendency or even ability of ‘civilization’ to extinguish poverty on its own
accord, at least in the short run. Put another way, he again reformulated his theory of
property to account for the progress of commerce in ‘old countries’, where inequality
of wealth posed a far greater problem than in America. Agrarian Justice thus
strengthened Paine’s argument in favour of redistribution without leaning towards a
Spencean, Godwinian, or Babeuvian scheme for community of goods. A deduction
from divine intention, as we saw above, was, however, merely one of three
arguments for a more favourable distribution of property. The other arguments –
deduced from Paine’s theories of progress and of the social nature of accumulation
– were considerably more secular and did not involve Paine in the kind of
contradictions delineated above. Instead they demarcated a vital shift in thinking
about rights of the poor. To this extent Paine’s efforts represent an important
transitional stage in the radical secularization of natural law arguments. For Paine’s
was a middle position between the Spenceans and others who unabashedly appealed
to divine intention in support of positive community of goods, and the Owenite
socialists of the early 1820s and later, who, both more historicist and more consistent
in their deism, rejected completely appeals to the state of nature and founded
property rights entirely upon labour, and community of goods upon its economic and
moral advantages rather than its divine origins.18

206
 AGRARIAN JUSTICE

The reception of Agrarian Justice

The complex implications of these positions were not of course recognized by most
of Paine’s readers. Very little in fact is known about popular reactions to Agrarian
Justice, though the revival of radical activity in 1796–7 clearly aided its circulation.
Several cheap editions appeared in Manchester and elsewhere, at any rate, and the
LCS founder Thomas Hardy wrote to Paine that it was ‘one of the best little things
you ever wrote’. Segments of Agrarian Justice were reprinted by exiled radicals in
America like Richard Lee, with a full edition appearing in Albany and another at
Philadelphia in 1797. Ironically, it is possible that Paine unintentionally helped to
guide some radicals towards the principle of community of goods. A letter found
among the papers of the London reformer John Bone, later to become one of the first
radicals to ally himself with the founder of British socialism, Robert Owen, praised
Agrarian Justice and asked for fifty copies to be sent to Maidstone. Most reformers,
however, probably accepted the view that Paine mainly sought to articulate or
strengthen a right rather than to establish a new ideal of property. One radical, for
example, argued that ‘THE LAWS OF NATURE allow a community of interest in
the fruits of the earth … THE LAWS OF THE LAND, on the contrary say, every man
shall be secured in the possession of that which he has honestly acquired’, adding that
‘Paine’s Agrarian Justice best reconciles the difficulty arising from the extremes of
natural and acquired right to the soil’ by most clearly promoting the public good.19
Intellectually the most important response to Agrarian Justice (though its
circulation was negligible) was Thomas Spence’s The Rights of Infants (1797).
Spence congratulated Paine on having finally ‘thought fit to own, with the Psalmist,
and with Mr. Locke, that “God hath given the earth to the children of men, given it to
mankind in common” ’. But having acknowledged the principle, Spence thought
Paine had succumbed to expediency in refusing to confront its full implications.
Instead of returning all land to communal ownership, Paine insisted only on the
provision of ‘poor, beggarly stipends’ based upon 10 per cent of land values. But
Spence saw no reason why the other 90 per cent should be retained by landowners,
since all improvements of such property after the state of nature were owed
principally to ‘the labouring classes’, who not only worked the land, but also
constituted the major part of demand for food and hence also paid the costs of
cultivation. Consequently reclaiming all land as common property was justifiable in
Spence’s view and Paine’s efforts at compromise were dismissed.20 This ideal
remained an important undercurrent in British radicalism until at least the mid-
nineteenth century, though it never surpassed Paine’s ideas in influence.

207
 THOMAS PAINE

Notes to Chapter 8: Agrarian Justice

1 A. Aldridge (1960), p. 241; M. Conway (1892), Vol. 2, p. 257; J. Eayrs (1952), p. 300.
2 Paine has been accused of inconsistently using biblical quotations while disbelieving they
were inspired by God as early as Common Sense (A. Aldridge, 1984, p. 105).
3 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 434, 607.
4 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 606–7.
5 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 609–10, 619.
6 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 610–11. This has also been acknowledged by, e.g., G. Gallop
(1983), pp. 229–30.
7 See, e.g., H. Grotius (1925), Vol. 2, p. 186, S. Pufendorf (1934), p. 537. On the
development of the four stages theory of property see I. Hont (1987). See also my (1987),
pp. 1–33.
8 W. Ogilvie (1781), p. 11 (‘the earth having been given to mankind in common occupancy,
each individual seems to have by nature a right to possess and cultivate an equal share’);
R. Wallace (1761), pp. 38–40, 66; T. Spence (1793), pp. 21–2; Spence (1797).
9 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, p. 611. Compare J. Barlow (1792a), p. 88.
10 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 612–13, 621.
11 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 613–20. For an earlier treatment of this theme see V. Gibbens
(1942), pp. 191–204.
12 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, p. 442.
13 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 464, 474, 493, 520, 529, 729–31, 765–71, 482–4, 486. See
further pp. 794–6, 799–800.
14 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, pp. 498, 503, 599, 498, Vol. 2, pp. 90, 920, 305, 752, 816, 748–56,
Vol. 1, p. 164.
15 Paine (1945), Vol. 2, p. 731. See J. Viner (1972), especially pp. 27–85, where Providence
is never connected with such a right.
16 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, p. 611. See, e.g., H. Grotius (1925), pp. 188–9 for the origins of this
view. No natural law thinkers prior to the eighteenth century were in this sense wholly
secular. For Pufendorf, for example, the obligation inherent in the natural law could not
be derived from human association, but required God (1934, pp. 216–17). Such
assumptions were also clearly important to republicans: Sidney, for example, wrote of
natural liberty that ‘God only confers this right upon us, can deprive us of it’ (1750, Vol.
2, p. 288).
17 Paine (1945), Vol. 1, p. 611, Vol. 2, p. 274, Vol. 1, pp. 275–6.
18 See my (1987), pp. 30–32.
19 Add. MS. 27808 fols 72–3; R. Twomey (1974), p. 97; Report of the Committee (1799), p.
53; The British Crisis (1797), p. 39. An important radical text which probably took
Paine’s discussion as its point of departure was by the London doctor Charles Hall (1805).
20 T. Spence (1982), pp. 46–53. There is no evidence that Spence’s works circulated much
outside of London and even in the LCS they do not seem to have been widely read.

208
 Conclusion
Political Saint:
The Legend of
Thomas Paine

Paine’s reputation

The dawn of the new century found British radicalism in virtual eclipse. But though
repression in the 1790s forced hundreds of reformers to emigrate, Britain’s loss was
America’s gain, for the Painites remained politically active in the new world,
assisting in the defeat of Federalism and victory of the more republican views of
Jefferson (whom they supported to a man) in 1800. Over the next decades they also
helped to popularize that ideal of commercial republicanism in which considerable
social egalitarianism coexisted harmoniously with commerce and industry.1 The
early American labour movement thus did not soon forget Paine and radical artisan
organizations like Tammany Hall in New York celebrated his birthday well into the
nineteenth century. But for the wider public, Paine became a pariah because of his
religious principles. When a new edition of Joel Barlow’s great poem The
Columbiad omitted any mention of Paine, T. J. Wooler explained that ‘Thomas Paine
was so unpopular in America, on account of his theological writings, that the mention
of him would have hindered the sale of the book’. Paine thus already had two distinct
reputations, and when in 1803 he was reported to be about to visit New England one
observer hence wrote that The name is enough. Every person has ideas of him. Some
respect his genius and dread the man. Some reverence his political, while they hate
his religious, opinions. Some love the man, but not his private manners. Indeed he
has done nothing which has not extremes in it. He never appears but we love and hate
him. He is as great a paradox as ever appeared in human nature.’2
In Britain Paine cast a long shadow over the radical movement. His doctrines
clearly suffered by the decline of France under Napoleon into what the Cambridge
Intelligencer, welcoming the new century, termed ‘complete DESPOTISM’. For
one conclusion many drew from this development was that ‘the principles of the last
revolution must be renounced, the rights of the people must not be at the mercy of
every villain, who, if he possesses abilities, may watch his opportunity, and by the
sword overturn one Constitution, to place himself at the head of another’. When the

209
 THOMAS PAINE

revival of the reform movement began in the early years of the new century, many
Painites were no longer active, or had grown more cautious, and the ideology and
strategy of the 1790s were less in evidence. The central figures now, as before 1792,
were Whiggish reformers like Sir Francis Burdett, to whom Paine’s appeal and
tactics were anathema. Burdett thus did not emphasize natural rights, but historic
liberties and the costs of government and inadequate state of the representation. To
Burdett the reformers wanted ‘no speculative plans, no new systems or novelties of
any kind; we only want to be put back again in the situation that the country was
formerly placed with respect to its rights’. The only danger in reform, one of his
followers added, was ‘in its being the work of a party, the Jacobins … if it is espoused
by the middle and higher ranks, it can be injurious to none; a limited monarchy is the
best practical form of government, and this we should take care to preserve; a
republic will never thrive in Britain’. Another moderate reflected that Paine had been
‘a man of strong sense, but of no reading, not even on political subjects’ because he
thought an original contract was necessary to grant rights and had asserted that
Britain had no constitution. The radical leader Henry Hunt also deprecated the
republication of Paine’s works. But respectable reformers could not entirely ignore
Paine, and indeed still used his name when it was of value. Burdett himself, referring
to his own imprisonment, dismissed ‘the BILL OF RIGHTS’, noting that ‘Well
might Paine call it the Bill of Wrongs’.3
After Waterloo the reform movement expanded rapidly, and soon the ‘old Jacks’,
as the Painites came to be called, had followers of their own. The new movement
mainly comprised ‘the lowest orders of the people, that is to say, operative tradesmen
and labourers’, who had been Paine’s main readers. By 1817 Paine’s name was once
again on the lips of every working class radical and his enemies sought to blacken
leading reformers like W. T. Sherwin and Richard Carlile by describing them as the
‘avowed and genuine followers of Thomas Paine’ and associating them with his
theology. Radical journalists like Sherwin reprinted the Rights of Man in instalments
and insisted that Paine was ‘the greatest political reasoner that ever existed’. Other
of Paine’s works, notably The Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance,
were also republished by his followers, with the Spencean Thomas Evans arguing in
1819 that all its prophecies had come true.4 Again radicals began to point insistently
at the United States, arguing that its success wholly vindicated Paine’s opposition to
monarchy and, as the journalist T. J. Wooler put it, both ‘the fallacy of the European
system of policy’ and the inadequacies of classical republicanism. Most influential
of all was Paine’s great new champion, the apostate loyalist William Cobbett.
Though his own critics lost little time in reprinting his earlier views as Cobbett’s
Opinion of Tom Paine, Cobbett by 1815 had become an immensely popular critic of

210
 POLITICAL SAINT

pensions, placemen, ‘Old Corruption’ and The Thing’ generally. But he also had
considerable differences with Paine, seeking more to restore an idyllic agricultural
past than to create a commercial republic and opposing both republicanism and
cosmopolitanism in favour of a limited monarchy governing a fervently patriotic
population. The pattern was thus set for Paine’s postwar disciples, who took from the
master what they deemed useful and set aside the rest.5
This process of adaptation was integral to the creation of the mythical Paine, for
Paine the symbol had many uses a precise reading of his works might fail to furnish.
Constructing the Paine legend had several stages. Highly important amongst these
was the celebration of Paine’s birthday, 29 January, which first became important in
the early 1820s. Though this festival appears to have been initiated by Wooler early
in 1818, it may also have been celebrated continuously since Paine’s death in 1809,
at least in London, where its fourteenth anniversary was proclaimed in 1823. At that
meeting some 500 attended and many more went away disappointed, while similar
celebrations took place at Hyde, Bath, Huddersfield, Bolton, Edinburgh, Aberdeen,
Dundee, Leeds, Birmingham, Oldham, Manchester, Hull, Norwich, Stockport,
Stokesley, Ashton-under-Lyme and Newgate. Paine now took his place among many
other radical icons. At Edinburgh in 1822, for example, about fifty ‘freethinkers’
assembled in a High Street tavern from six until midnight to toast Paine, the People,
the republicans of Haiti, relief from an oppressive clergy, the ending of slavery,
freedom of the press, and other causes, and to sing, recite poetry and collect funds for
imprisoned martyrs. At Boston some inhabitants substituted a toast to ‘the immortal
memory of Thomas Paine’ for the usual acknowledgement of the anniversary of
George IV’s accession, since both fell on the same day. Birmingham boasted a Paine
Club. At Stockport those assembled described themselves as ‘republicans’, while at
Stokesley they were ‘lovers of Civil and Religious Freedom’.6
At such events the problem of Paine’s religion occasionally emerged. Rare was
the occasion when, as at Leeds in 1823, a speaker reflected that Paine’s deism was
unacceptable, but only because he was himself a complete materialist. Most
reformers would have nothing to do with Paine’s theology. The radical journalist
John Wade bluntly dismissed Paine’s ‘horrid piece of blasphemy’. Cobbett wisely
evaded the entire issue, insisting that matters of religion be left to private conscience,
and indeed remained an Anglican throughout his life, defending his radicalism in
traditional theological terms. At his trial in 1820 Henry Hunt, too, both denied seeing
any reformer read Paine’s religious works and begged not to have his own views
identified with those of Paine’s main theological disciple, Richard Carlile.7
Carlile in fact did much to fuel the postwar Painite revival. Having in his own
youth been ‘ignorant and silly enough’ to help burn the great radical in effigy, Carlile

211
 THOMAS PAINE

now saw Paine as ‘our great and only prototype … the father of every Representative
Republic and all sound Republican principles’ and the only person to have seen the
true connections between politics and theology. Carlile’s devotion to Paine was
nearly complete. He named his son Thomas Paine Carlile, and when this boy died,
named the next the same, much offending the cleric who registered the fact. He
served several terms in prison for selling Paine’s theological works at his Temple of
Reason’ and endured a lifetime of insults like that delivered by a man who stopped
in front of his shop one day and exclaimed, ‘Ah, Paine is now in hell, and Carlile will
soon follow him.’8 But Carlile, too, did not share all of Paine’s views, conceding one
God or first cause who was wise, powerful and good, the equality of nature, and the
duty of man to ‘do as he would be done by’, but castigating Paine for having been
unwilling to ‘give up that sensual and childish ideal of a paradisical future state’. By
1822, moreover, he rejected Paine’s theological views entirely by becoming an
atheist and materialist. Like Paine he did, however, oppose equality of property,
defending only equality of rights and arguing that necessary inequalities arose
naturally from differences in labour, enterprise and inheritance. But though Carlile
helped to found organizations like the Birmingham Paine Club in the early 1820s, he
felt that ‘no club can give force to the political principles of Thomas Paine’. ‘I saw
that at starting in polities’, he proclaimed, ‘and that is one reason why I have never
joined a political club of any kind.’ Carlile’s failure to form more lasting political
organizations in fact probably helped to dissipate Paine’s influence by the late 1820s.
But in any case he also diverged fundamentally from Paine by insisting (quite
wrongly) that in his theory of rights Paine always intended an historical description
of existing wrongs rather than any abstract, metaphysical account. In fact this was
precisely how Carlile avoided the problems of divine intention and the state of nature
pointed to in the last chapter. Paine, Carlile insisted, had ‘used the phrase, “Rights of
Man”; but he used it in the clear relation to monarchical despotism. It was always so
understood from him, and unless the phrase has some such relation, it is meaningless.
There can be no rights of man, without pre-existing wrongs.’9
The great debate over the first Reform Act renewed Paine’s reputation once again,
and his views were associated with freedom of trade, democracy, and cultivating
waste lands to employ the poor. Several new editions of the Rights of Man appeared
and Carlile claimed that Paine had ‘risen like a phoenix from the embers, and is
becoming, as he ought to be, the universal political preceptor’. In probably the last
important attack on the Rights of Man, the Reverend Francis Thackeray, ‘repeatedly
shocked and disgusted by the glaring parade with which the works of Thomas Paine
are offered for public sale’ in some of the main streets of London, blasted their author
at length, warning that Time has not destroyed the name or opinions of Thomas Paine

212
 POLITICAL SAINT

– both are still producing considerable effects upon society’. Paine’s theological
critics responded once again, too, assailing The Age of Reason and its disciples
(particularly Robert Owen) at great length for creating a ‘modern Babel’ of religious
confusion. In 1833 Paine’s birthday was still celebrated at Glasgow, Paisley,
Greenock, several places in London and many other towns. During the Chartist
movement, too, Paine’s works were again widely read and quoted, with William
Carpenter, for example, invoking his views on paper money in 1837 and George
Jacob Holyoake bringing out a new life of Paine in 1840. As late as 1852, the
Sheffield Chartist and Owenite Isaac Ironside noted that only three birthdays were
publicly celebrated by the Sheffield working classes: those of Paine, the poet Robert
Burns and Christ.10 Even in 1880, in fact, the ex-Chartist W. J. Linton claimed that
Paine’s principles remained ‘the political Gospel of our English working classes’.
Paine’s continental reputation was also long-lived, while in America his birthday
was still celebrated, particularly by the German forty-eighters, until at least the
1890s, when some of the nationalist followers of Edward Bellamy were also among
his admirers.11

The emergence of social radicalism

By 1850, however, Paine’s thought had been widely challenged by other approaches
to society and politics. That the substance of his social and political analysis receded
much more quickly than Paine’s general popularity was partly the result of
innovations by ‘followers’ like Carlile, and partly caused by the emergence in the
1820s and 1830s of new and highly influential forms of radical social analysis more
concerned with industrialization, the division of labour and the rapid expansion of
market and class relationships. Older forms of radicalism and republicanism now
came to be seen as wanting in economic sophistication. Moreover, these new
approaches incorporated two forms of assault upon the language of natural rights.
The first of these came from the socialism of Robert Owen and his followers, many
of whom, though sympathetic to radicalism, were reluctant to discuss rights other
than the right of the labourer to the produce of labour. The second was derived chiefly
from Benthamism and political economy. Together these criticisms – both of which
had a considerable impact on popular radicalism – helped to create what I have
elsewhere termed ‘social radicalism’, where greater emphasis was now given to
economic than political relations. The struggle for political rights, particularly in the
Chartist movement, ensured that Paine’s ideals remained important to working-class
radicalism. But these now had to contend with other, sometimes incompatible, goals

213
 THOMAS PAINE

as well as alternative explanations of working-class distress. This conflict between

newer and more traditional forms of radicalism thus enlarged the spectrum of radical
debate continuously throughout the nineteenth century and in fact still haunts many
important political disputes today.12
The Owenite disagreement with Paine, whose essence would be taken up by later
forms of socialism, concentrated upon the argument that taxation did not chiefly
cause distress and consequently that parliamentary reform would not end poverty.13
Instead the socialists contended taxation was ‘but as a feather in the scale, when
weighed against the wealth that is absorbed by the monopolies practised in the
present competitive system’. Thus Owenism sought to abolish economic
competition and to move the unemployed (and later the entire nation) to mixed
agricultural and manufacturing communities where goods would be held in
common. But such solutions were much less compelling for radicals than the
Owenite analysis of economic distress. The main cause of poverty, the socialists
claimed, was an economic system where ‘buying cheap and selling dear’
overproduced some goods while ignoring the need for others. If the working classes
were remunerated sufficiently to consume in proportion to their needs,
overproduction would not occur. If goods were moreover exchanged on the basis of
their labour value, profit would be eliminated and a fair system of exchange would
ensure a just reward for labour. Such arguments appeared increasingly plausible
given the exceptionally rapid growth of the manufacturing system after 1815 and the
onset of increasingly severe commercial crises. As America began to industrialize,
moreover, it too began to exhibit serious poverty and inequality. Several leading
Chartists, notably Bronterre O’Brien, who had a following of many thousands, were
converted to such a socialist analysis, though without conceding that political reform
was fruitless.14
But the socialist economic analysis alone did not weaken Paine’s appeal. Much
more important to radicals like the woolcomber and journalist John Wade was the
new language of political economy, particularly in conjunction with Bentham’s
critique of natural rights. Wade thought Paine ‘an excellent man’ of many talents
whose none the less terrible ‘ignorance of what constitutes right’ had been shared by
the leaders of the French revolution, which had failed largely through promulgating
‘impracticable nonsense on the natural freedom and equality of man’. For Wade
neither savages with their different degrees of strength nor civilized men divided by
social institutions were ‘born equal’. Powers alone were derived from nature; rights
were possessed only in society and only utility defined their limits. Men, for
example, held no natural right to exercise the franchise at age 21. But since some
maturity of judgement and a degree of independence had been attained by that age,

214
 POLITICAL SAINT

it was regarded as suitable.15 Political economy and its emphasis upon the rights of
labour assisted in partly displacing a Painite discourse on the rights of man by
redefining the sources of working-class oppression. The categories of productive
and unproductive labour, drawn initially from Smith’s Wealth of Nations, helped in
particular to categorize the labouring classes as actively ‘productive’ because they
generated wealth, rather than as merely passively impoverished, disenfranchised,
oppressed and overtaxed. Instead of seeing only the beneficiaries and victims of
taxation, radicals increasingly divided society into only two groups, ‘the
unproductive classes’, who included lawyers, parsons and aristocrats, and who were
‘idle consumers, because they waste the product of the country without giving
anything in return’, and the productive classes, ‘who by their labours increase the
funds of the community, as husbandmen, mechanics, labourers, etc’. Such language
did not necessarily imply seeing working master-manufacturers as exploiters of the
lower orders. But it could be used to condemn ‘capitalists’ who lived from interest
on the national debt or any other funds without working themselves.16 These were
the roots of much of the radical and socialist language of mid- and late Victorian
Britain.
By mid-century, and particularly after the failure of Chartism, few radicals thus
believed that the ‘corruption’ of pensioners and placemen explained unemployment,
a blighted industrial landscape, glutted markets, widespread misery in the factory
districts, long hours of labour and low wages, and the steadily increasing gap
between rich and poor. Paine’s ideas, none the less, remained extremely popular well
into the late nineteenth century. But the ‘social’ analysis of polity and economy
begun chiefly by Owen, together with the growing popularity of liberal political
economy, did displace to a considerable degree older radical views, while the
capacity of the state to reform itself and respond to working-class distress also
undermined the older view that it was too deeply corrupted to perform such acts.17
By 1850, from an analytical rather than merely symbolic viewpoint, the age of Paine
was at an end.

The modernity of Thomas Paine

Yet it is precisely those doctrines which Paine did come to symbolize which have
grown steadily more popular and are once again in the late twentieth century at the
centre of political debate. Today we rarely advert to an original social contract or the
divine origins of rights to support our claims for equality or justice. But the call for
‘human rights’ and the demand for universal recognition of certain inviolable

215
 THOMAS PAINE

principles of freedom of thought, speech and association, gain increasingly in

importance and have become one of the defining characteristics of modern politics.
Burke remains of considerable historical interest, but who today takes his
prescriptions seriously? It is Paine’s message instead which remains relevant to
those substantial parts of the globe which do not yet enjoy those rights which he
insisted were inscribed in the fact of being human. Few monarchies now require a
Painite assault, but there is no shortage of tyrannies awaiting overthrow, or of
oppressed peoples seeking self-determination. Democracy with Paine came to mean
the right of the majority to supersede the political monopolies of a powerful and
wealthy minority. Humanity meant the right of all to a dignified level of subsistence,
and the duty of the affluent to help provide it, which we today associate with the
welfare state.
The two themes of rights and democracy, then, are the chief legacy of Thomas
Paine. More than anyone else, it was he who transformed the narrow vision of the
‘liberties of Englishmen’, which implied no corresponding rights for Frenchmen,
and the natural rights of Christians, not shared by infidels, into a cosmopolitan vision
which afforded protection and sustenance to all. He insisted on an ideal of the
equality of rights and mutual respect which was stunningly radical in his own time,
but is now central to modern civility. Through him millions came to see that
humiliating subservience was degrading and that the average man and woman could
achieve greater dignity. ‘He makes the blind to see / What slaves and dupes they be’,
his followers thus sang to the tune of ‘God Save the King’ in the 1790s. Perhaps only
an apostate Quaker, exiled Englishman and adopted American with French
sympathies could have been so insistently rebellious. But Paine’s belief in
democracy remained part of the principles of 1848, 1871 and 1917, and is as surely
invoked today, from Soweto to Moscow and Beijing to Harlem. In this sense, then,
the age of Paine has barely begun.

Notes to Conclusion: the legend of Thomas Paine

1 Thus it has been argued that Paine helped ‘to modernize’ the exiled radicals by persuading
them of the viability of a commercial republic (M. Durey, 1987, and R. Twomey, 1974,
pp. 138–70). See also Durey (1985). See A. Sheps (1973) for the early period of exile and
Twomey (1974) and (1984) for the later.
2 E. Foner (1976), pp. 264–8; S. Wilentz (1984), pp. 153–5; E. Link (1942), pp. 109, 202,
209; Black Dwarf, Vol. 1, no. 16 (22 April 1818), p. 255; V. Stauffer (1918), p. 77.
3 Cambridge Intelligencer, no. 338 (4 January 1800), p. 2; Flower’s Political Review (May
1808), p. 331; ibid. (April 1800), p. 256; ibid. (January 1810), p. 59; ibid. (Suppl. 1807),
p. 555; ibid. (October 1811), pp. 150–8 et seq.; Republican, Vol. 6, no. 11 (9 August 1822),

216
 POLITICAL SAINT

p. 322. On Hunt see J. Belchem (1985). On Paine’s British reputation see E. Royle (1988)
and George Spater (1988). On the longevity of his political ideals see J. Belchem (1981).
4 Hints (1819), p. 21; J. Harford (1819), pp. 18–19; Sherwin’s Political Register, vol. 1, no.
7 (17 May 1817), p. 111; T. Evans (1816), p. 1.
5 Black Dwarf, vol. 1, no. 34 (17 September 1817), p. 567; The People, no. 3 (3 May 1817),
p. 79. On Cobbett and Paine see C. Young (1977), I. Dyck (1988) and D. Wilson (1988).
6 Black Dwarf, vol. 2, no. 3 (21 January 1818), p. 39; Republican, vol. 6, no. 6 (7 February
1823), pp. 177, 181; vol. 5, no. 4 (22 February 1822), pp. 234–5; Lion, vol. 2, no. 19 (7
November 1829), p. 577; Black Dwarf, vol. 10, no. 9 (26 February 1823), p. 321;
Republican, vol. 5, no. 10 (8 March 1822), p. 4. On the emergence of these radical
festivals see J. Epstein (1988).
7 Republican, vol. 6, no. 10 (7 March 1823), p. 302; Gorgon, vol. 1, no. 29 (5 December
1818), p. 229; Black Dwarf, vol. 3, no. 49 (8 December 1819), pp. 802–3; S. Bamford
(1984), p. 260.
8 Republican, vol. 1, no. 1 (27 August 1819), p. 1, vol. 5, no. 1 (4 January 1822), pp. 5, 9–
10, no. 2 (11 January 1822), p. 34; vol. 3, no. 8 (16 June 1820), p. 266; vol. 1, no. 10 (29
October 1819), p. 147; J. Jones (1819); The Report of the … Mock Trials of Richard
Carlile (1822), p. iv. On Carlile’s view of Paine see J. Wiener (1988), and generally
Wiener (1983). On early secularism see E. Royle (1974).
9 The Deist (1819), vol. 1, p. 15; Republican, vol. 4, no. 2 (8 September 1820), p. 42;
Gauntlet, no. 26 (13 October 1833), p. 401; J. Wiener (1988), pp. 115–20; E. Royle
(1988), p. 17; Republican, vol. 6, no. 17 (20 September 1822), p. 520; Prompter, no. 30
(4 June 1831), p. 485.
10 The Rights of Nations (1832), pp. 388–90; Prompter, no. 3 (27 November 1830), p. 38; F.
Thackeray (1831), p. iv; Gauntlet, no. 2 (17 February 1833), p. 20; London Journal, no.
39 (7 June 1837), p. 220; Sheffield Free Press, no. 58 (7 February 1852), p. 7.
11 W. Linton (1880), p. 88; G. Spater (1988), pp. 138–45; E. MacNair (1957), p. 119.
12 For further discussion see my (1989), ch. 1.
13 This is not to argue that radicals in the 1790s were not conscious of economic grievances.
High bread prices, for example, were sometimes blamed on an artificial scarcity created
by a ‘cabal of speculators’. Organizations like the Stockport Friends of Universal Peace
and the Rights of Man, composed of yeomen, farmers, manufacturers and labourers, also
believed that ‘it is our labour that is the support of every state’, and specifically the
monarchy, priesthood and aristocracy (Manchester Herald, no. 9, 26 May 1792, p. 4;
ibid., no. 23,1 September 1792, p. 1). See my (1989), chs. 3 and 4.
14 Prompter, no. 19 (19 March 1831), pp. 311, 314.
15 Gorgon, Vol. 1, no. 14 (22 August 1818), pp. 105–10. Wade later noted that he had
managed ‘to offend a great number of our readers’ in his articles on Paine and reiterated
that his only disagreement with Paine concerned natural rights (vol. 1, no. 31, 19
December 1818, p. 248).
16 Gorgon, vol. 1, no. 12 (8 August 1818), pp. 90–1. See generally my (1987).
17 On the latter argument see G. Stedman Jones (1983), pp. 90–178.

217
 Bibliography
(The place of publication of books and pamphlets is London unless otherwise noted.)

(a) Manuscript sources

Additional Manuscripts, British Library

Home Office Papers (HO), Public Record Office
Place Papers, British Library
Privy Council Papers (PC), Public Record Office
Treasury Solicitor’s Papers (TS), Public Record Office

(b) Works by Paine

[Paine, Thomas] (1776), Four Letters on Interesting Subjects (Philadelphia, Pa).

[Paine, Thomas] (1792), Old Truths and Established Facts. Being an Answer to A Very New
Pamphlet Indeed.
Paine, Thomas (1908), Life and Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Daniel Edwin Wheeler (New
York: Parke).
Paine, Thomas (1945), The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Philip Foner (New York:
Citadel Press).
Paine, Thomas (1969a), The Rights of Man, ed. Henry Collins (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
Paine, Thomas (1969b), The Rights of Man, ed. Arthur Seldon (Dent).
Paine, Thomas (1976), Common Sense, ed. Isaac Kramnick (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
Paine, Thomas (1985), The Rights of Man, ed. Eric Foner (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
Paine, Thomas (1987), The Thomas Paine Reader, ed. Isaac Kramnick and Michael Foot
(Harmondsworth: Penguin).

(c) Bibliographies

Aldridge, A. O. (1974), ‘Thomas Paine: a survey of research and criticism since 1945’, British
Studies Monitor, vol. 5, pp. 3–29.
Gimbel, Richard (1956a), Thomas Paine. A Bibliographical Checklist of ‘Common Sense’
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press).
Gimbel, Richard (1959), ‘Thomas Paine fights for freedom in three worlds. The new, the old,
the next. Catalogue of an Exhibition Commemorating the One Hundredth Anniversary of
His Death’, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, vol. 70, pp. 397–492.

218
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gimbel, Richard (1976), The Thomas Paine Collection of Richard Gimbel in the Library of
the American Philosophical Society (Wilmington, Delaware, Scholarly Resources Inc.).
Pendleton, Gayle Trusdel (1979), ‘Three score identifications of anonymous British
pamphlets of the 1790s’, Notes and Queries, n.s. 26, pp. 208–17.
Pendleton, Gayle Trusdel (1982), ‘Towards a bibliography of the Reflections and Rights of
Man controversy’, Bulletin of Research in the Humanities, vol. 85, pp. 65–103.
The Thomas Paine Collection at Thetford. An Analytical Catalogue (Norwich: Norfolk
County Library, 1979).
Wilson, Jerome (1974), ‘Thomas Paine in America: an annotated bibliography 1900–1973’,
Bulletin of Bibliography, vol. 31, pp. 133–51, 180.

(d) Dissertations

Alves, Helio Osvaldo (1981), ‘The Paineites. The influence of Thomas Paine in four
provincial towns 1791–1799’, University of London PhD.
Arnold, Douglas M. (1976), ‘Political ideology and the internal revolution in Pennsylvania,
1776–1790’, Princeton University PhD.
Betka, James A. (1975), ‘The ideology and rhetoric of Thomas Paine: political justification
through metaphor’, Rutgers University PhD.
Booth, Alan (1979), ‘Reform, repression and revolution: radicalism and loyalism in the north-
west of England, 1789–1803’, University of Lancaster PhD.
Brims, John (1983), ‘The Scottish democratic movement in the age of the French revolution’,
University of Edinburgh PhD.
Burnell, Peter J. (1972), ‘The political and social thought of Thomas Paine 1737–1809’,
University of Warwick PhD.
Cox, Nicholas (1971), ‘Aspects of English radicalism: the suppression and reemergence of the
constitutional democratic tradition, 1795–1809’, University of Cambridge PhD.
Elder, Dominic (1951), ‘The common man philosophy of Thomas Paine’, Notre Dame
University PhD.
Gallop, Geoffrey (1983), ‘Politics, property and progress: British radical thought, 1760–
1815’, Oxford DPhil.
Gavre, William (1978), ‘Republicanism and the American revolution: the collapse of the
classical ideal’, University of California, Los Angeles PhD.
Ginsberg, Elaine K. (1971), ‘The rhetoric of revolution: an analysis of Thomas Paine’s
Common Sense ’, University of Oklahoma PhD.
King, Arnold K. (1951), ‘Thomas Paine in America, 1774–1787’, University of Chicago PhD.
McCue, Daniel L., Jr (1974), ‘Daniel Isaac Eaton and Politics for the People ’, Columbia
University PhD.
Murray, Nancy U. (1975), ‘The influence of the French revolution on the Church of England
and its rivals, 1789–1802’, Oxford University DPhil.
Pendleton, Gayle T. (1976), ‘English conservative propaganda during the French Revolution,
1789–1802’, Emory University PhD.
Schofield, Thomas (1984), ‘English conservative thought 1789–1796’, University of London
PhD.
Seaman, W. A. L. (1954), ‘British democratic societies in the period of the French revolution’,
University of London PhD.

219
 THOMAS PAINE

Sheps, Arthur Neal (1973), ‘English radicalism and revolutionary America’, University of
Toronto PhD.
Smith, Martin John (1979), ‘English radical newspapers in the French revolutionary era,
1790–1803’, University of London PhD.
Smith, Robert Francis (1977), ‘Thomas Paine and the American political tradition’,
University of Notre Dame PhD.
Twomey, Richard J. (1974), ‘Jacobins and Jeffersonians: Anglo-American radicalism in the
United States 1790–1820’, Northern Illinois University PhD.
Walvin, James (1969), ‘English democratic societies and popular radicalism, 1791–1800’,
University of York PhD.
Wells, Roger (1978), ‘The grain crises in England, 1794–6, 1799–1801’, York University
DPhil.

(e) Primary sources: periodicals

Analytical Review (1790–3).

The Argus, or General Observer (1796).
Black Dwarf (1817–19).
The Cabinet (3 vols, Norwich, 1795).
Cambridge Intelligencer (1793–1803).
Chester Chronicle (1791–2).
Critical Review (1790–5).
Derby Mercury (1791–3).
Flower’s Political Review and Monthly Register (1808–11).
The Gauntlet (1833).
The Gorgon (1818).
The Lion (1828–9).
The London Journal (1837).
Manchester Herald (1792–3).
The Medusa; or Penny Politician (1819).
The New Annual Register (1790–9).
Newcastle Chronicle (1792–3).
The Parliamentary Register (1792).
The Patriot (Edinburgh: 1793).
The Patriot: or, Political, Moral and Philosophical Repository (3 vols , 1792–3).
Pennsylvania Gazette (1786).
The People (1817).
A Picture of the Times (1795).
Pig’s Meat (3 vols , 1793–5).
Politics for the People (1794).
The Prompter (1830–1).
Public Advertiser (New York), 1807.
The Republican (1819–26).
Sheffield Free Press (1852).
Sheffield Iris (1794).
Sheffield Register (1793–4).
Sherwin’s Political Register (1817).

220
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Tribune (3 vols, 1793–6).

The Union (1831).

(f) Primary sources: books and pamphlets

An Abstract of the History and Proceedings of the Revolution Society (1789).

Account of the Proceedings at a General Meeting of the London Corresponding Society …
29th of June, 1795 (1795).
An Account of the Proceedings of the British Convention (1793).
[Adams, John] (1791), Observations on Paine’s Rights of Man (3rd edn, Edinburgh).
Adams, John (1851), Thoughts on government’ (1776), in The Works of John Adams, Vol. 4
(Boston, Mass.).
The Address of a Buckinghamshire Farmer (1792).
An Address to the Inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland, in Reply to the … Rights of Man
(1793).
The Age of Infidelity, Part Two (1796).
Agutter, William (1792), Christian Politics; or, The Origin of Power and the Grounds of
Subordination.
The Alarm; Being Britannia’s Address to the People (n.d.).
Anketell, Rev. John (1796), Strictures upon Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason (Dublin).
An Answer to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France
(Dublin: 1791).
The Antigallican (1793).
The Anti-Gallican Songster, No. 1 (1793).
The Anti-Levelling Songster, No. 1 (1793).
An Appeal to the Common Sense of the British People on the Subjects of Sedition and
Revolution (1793).
Application of Barruel’s Memoirs of Jacobinism to the Secret Societies of Ireland and Great
Britain (1798).
Assassination of the King! The Conspirators Exposed (1795).
[Atkinson, Thomas] (1794), A Concise Sketch of the Intended Revolution in England.
[Atkinson, Thomas] (1798), An Oblique View of the Grand Conspiracy against Social Order.
Auchincloss, J. (1796), The Sophistry of … Mr. Paine’s Age of Reason (Edinburgh).
Authentic Copy of a Petition … by the Members of the Society of the Friends of the People
(1793).
Bamford, Samuel (1984), Passages in the Life of a Radical (1884) (Oxford: Oxford University
Press).
[Barbauld, Anna] (1792), Civic Sermons for the People, No. 2.
Barlow, Joel (1792a), Advice to the Privileged Orders, Part One.
Barlow, Joel (1792b), A Letter to the National Convention of France.
Barlow, Joel (1795), Advice to the Privileged Orders, Part Two.
Barruel, Abbé (1797), Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism (4 vols).
Belcher, William (n.d.), Holcroft’s Folly.
Bennet, Rev. G. (1796), A Display of the Spirit and Designs of those Who, Under Pretext of a
Reform, Aim at the Subversion of the Constitution and Government (Carlisle).
[Benson, Joseph] (1796), The Discipline of the Methodists Defended.
Bentham, Jeremy (1838), The Works ofjeremy Bentham, Vol. 2.

221
 THOMAS PAINE

Binns, Abraham (1796), Remarks on a Publication, Entitled, A Serious Admonition to the

Disciples of Thomas Paine (Stockport).
Binns, John (1854), Recollections of the Life of John Binns (Philadelphia, Pa).
Bisset, Robert (1796), Sketch of Democracy.
Black, William (1793), Reasons for Preventing the French, Under the Mask of Liberty, From
Trampling Upon Europe.
Blackstone, William (1941), Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Law (1765–9) (Washington
DC: Washington Law Book Co. ).
A Blow at the Root (1794).
Bonsell, John (1798), The Ram’s Horn Sounded Seven Times (Norwich).
Boothby, Sir Brooke (1791), A Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke.
Boothby, Sir Brooke (1792), Observations on the Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.
Boudinot, Elias (1801), The Age of Revelation. Or the Age of Reason Shewn to Be An Age of
Infidelity (Philadelphia, Pa).
Bousfield, Benjamin (1790), Observations on the Right Honourable Edmund Burke’s
Pamphlet, on the Subject of the French Revolution (Dublin).
Britannia’s Address to the People (n.d.).
The British Crisis; or, the Disorder of the State at Its Height (1797).
Britons are Happy, If They Will Think So (n.d.).
Broughton, Thomas (1820), The Age of Christian Reason.
Brown, Rev. James (1793), The Importance of Preserving Unviolated the System of Civil
Government in Every State.
Brown, William (1794), An Essay on the Natural Equality of Man.
Browne, M. C. (1796), A Leaf Out of Burke’s Book … In Reply to His Letter to a Noble Lord.
Buff; or, A Dissertation on Nakedness: A Parody on Paine’s Rights of Man (1792).
Burgh, James (1764), Political Disquisitions (3 vols).
Burke, Edmund (1826), The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (7 vols, Boston,
Mass.).
Burke, Edmund (1978), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press ).
Burke, Edmund (1987), Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. J. G. A. Pocock
(Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett).
Burlamaqui, J. (1763, 1794), The Principles of Natural and Politic Law (2 vols, 1st and 3rd
edns).
Butler, Marilyn (ed.) (1984), Burke, Paine, Godwin and the Revolution Controversy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Callender, James (1792), The Political Progress of Britain (Edinburgh).
A Candid Inquiry into the Nature of Government, and the Right of Representation
(1792).
Carlile, Richard (1819), Life of Thomas Paine.
Cartwright, F. W. (1826), The Life and Correspondence of Major Cartwright (2 vols).
Cartwright, Major John (1774), American Independence the Interest and Glory of Great
Britain.
Cartwright, Major John (1776), Take Your Choice!
Cartwright, Major John (1792), A Letter to the Duke of Newcastle.
Cartwright, Major John (1795), The Commonwealth in Danger.
The Catechism of Man (n.d.).
A Caution Against the Levellers (n.d.).

222
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

[Chalmers, James] (1776), Plain Truth: Addressed to the Inhabitants of America. Containing
Remarks on a Late Pamphlet, Intitled Common Sense (Philadelphia, Pa).
Chalmers, Lt Col. (1796), Strictures on a Pamphlet Written by Thomas Paine on the English
System of Finance.
Cheap Repository Tracts (2 vols, 1795–6).
Cheetham, James (1809), The Life of Thomas Paine (New York),
Christianity the Only True Theology; or, An Answer to Mr. Paine’s Age of Reason (n.d.).
Christie, Thomas (1791), Letters on the Revolution in France.
‘Cincinnatus Rigshaw’ [Professor of Theophilanthropy, member of the Corresponding and
Revolutionary Societies, Brother of the Rosy Cross, Knight Philosopher of the Illuminati,
and Citizen of the French and Hibernian Republics] (1800), Sans Culotides.
Civil Prudence, Recommended to the Thirteen United Colonies of North America (Norwich,
Conn.: 1776).
Cobban, Alfred (ed). (1950), The Debate on the French Revolution 1789–1799 (Nicholas
Kaye).
Cobbett’s Opinion of Tom Paine (1817).
Cobbett, William (n.d.), Observations on the Character and Motives of Paine in the
Publication of His Age of Reason.
Cobbett, William (1796?), Life of Thomas Paine.
[Cobbett, William] (1797), A Letter to the Infamous Tom Paine (Glasgow).
Cobbett, William (1847), A Brief History of the Remains of the Late Thomas Paine.
Cocks, John Somers (1793), A Short Treatise on the Dreadful Tendency of Levelling
Principles.
Coetlogon, Rev. C. E. de (1792), The Peculiar Advantages of the English Nation.
A Comparative Display of the Different Opinions of the Most Distinguished British Writers on
the Subject of the French Revolution (1970) (2 vols, 1793; 3 vols, 1811) (reprint edn, New
York: AMS Press).
The Complete Reports of the Committee of Secrecy of the Houses of Lords and Commons
(1794).
Confusion’s Master-Piece: or, Paine’s Labour’s Lost (1794).
Considerations on Mr. Paine’s Pamphlet on the Rights of Man (Edinburgh: 1791; London:
1792).
Considerations on the French War (1794).
Constitutional Letters in Answer to Mr. Paine’s Rights of Man (1792).
A Conversation … Between Thomas Paine, Marat, Petion, Dumourier and Roland (1793).
Cooper, Samuel (1791), The First Principles of Civil and Ecclesiastical Government
Delineated (Yarmouth).
Cooper, Thomas (1792), A Reply to Mr. Burke’s Invective against Mr. Cooper and Mr. Watt
(2nd edn).
Copies of Original Letters Recently Written by Persons in Paris to Dr. Priestley in America.
Taken on Board of a Neutral Vessel (3rd edn, 1798).
The Correspondence of the London Corresponding Society (1795).
The Correspondence of the Revolution Society in London, with the National Assembly, and
with Various Societies of the Friends of Liberty in France and England (1792).
A Country Curate’s Advice to Manufacturers (n.d.).
Courtenay, J. (1790), Philosophical Reflections on the Late Revolution in France.
Coward, J. (1796), Deism Traced to One of Its Principal Sources.
Croft, George (1793), Plans of Parliamentary Reform, Proved to Be Visionary (Birmingham).

223
 THOMAS PAINE

Dalrymple, Alexander (1793), The Poor Man’s Friend: An Address to the Industrious and
Manufacturing Part of Great Britain (Edinburgh).
Damm, Benjamin (n.d.), An Address to the Public, on True Representation and the Unity of
Man.
The Decline and Fall, Death, Dissection and Funeral Procession of His Most Contemptible
Lowness the London Corresponding Society (1796).
A Defence of the Constitution of England (1791).
A Defence of the Political and Parliamentary Conduct of the Right Honourable Edmund
Burke (1794).
Defence of the Rights of Man (1791).
Deism Fairly Stated and Fully Vindicated (2nd edn, 1746).
The Deist Confuted (1734).
The Deist, or Moral Philosopher (2 vols, 1819).
De Lolme, J. L. (1853), The Constitution of England (1784).
A Dialogue between an Associator and a Well-informed Englishman, on the Grounds of the
Late Associations (1793).
Dialogues on the Rights of Britons, between a Farmer, a Sailor, and a Manufacturer (1792).
Dinmore, R., Jr (1796), An Exposition of the Principles of the English Jacobins (Norwich).
Divine Oracles the True Antidote Against Deism (Providence, Rhode Island 1797).
Drew, S. (1820), Remarks on the First Part of a Book Entitled ‘The Age of Reason’ (2nd edn).
[Drummond, William] (1793), Philosophical Sketches of the Principles of Society and
Government.
The Duties of Man in Connexion With His Rights (1793).
Dutton, Thomas (1795), A Vindication of the Age of Reason.
The End of Pain. The Last Speech, Dying Words and Confession of Tom Paine (n.d.).
Equality No Liberty; or. Subordination the Order of God (Edinburgh: 1793).
Estlin, John Prior (1796), Evidence of Revealed Religion … with Reference to … the Age of
Reason (Bristol).
Evans, Thomas (1816), Christian Policy the Salvation of the Empire.
An Explanation of the Word Equality (c. 1792).
An Exposure of the Domestic and Foreign Attempts to Destroy the British Constitution (1793).
Extracts from the Life of Thomas Paine (Author of ‘The Age of Reason’) (n.p., n.d.).
Facts, Reflections, and Queries, Submitted to … the Associated Friends of the People
(Edinburgh: 1792).
Fancourt, William (1792), Britons and Fellow Countrymen (Wellingborough).
A Few Minutes’ Advice to the People of Great Britain on Republics (Bristol: 1792).
A Few Plain Questions to the Working People of Scotland (3rd edn, 1793).
A Few Words, But No Lies; From Roger Bull to His Brother Thomas (n.d.).
Fowles, John (1797), The Truth of the Bible Fairly Put to the Test (Alexandria).
Fox, William (1793), An Examination of Mr. Paine’s Writings.
Fragment of a Prophecy Lately Discovered in the Cell of a French Hermit. By a Convert from
the ‘Society for Revolutions’ (1791).
Franklin, Benjamin (1982), The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press ).
Free Communing; or a Last Attempt to Cure the Lunatics, Now Labouring Under That
Dreadful Malady, Commonly Called the French Disease (Edinburgh: 1793).
[Freeman, Thomas] (1793), An Address to the Disaffected Subjects of George the Third.

224
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Frend, William (1793), Peace and Union Recommended to the Associated Bodies of
Republicans and Anti-Republicans (St Ives).
Frend, William (1799), Principles of Taxation.
Friends of the People (1795).
The Genuine Trial of Thomas Paine for a Libel (1792).
Gerrald, Joseph (1794a), The Defence of Joseph Gerrald on a Charge of Sedition (Edinburgh).
Gerrald, Joseph (1794b), The Trial of Joseph Gerrald (Edinburgh).
Gerrald, Joseph (1794c), A Convention the Only Means of Saving Us From Ruin (3rd edn).
Gifford, John (i.e. John Green) (1792), A Plain Address to the Common Sense of the People of
England, Containing an Interesting Abstract of Pain’s Life and Writings.
Godwin, William (1976), An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), ed. I. Kramnick
(Harmondsworth: Penguin).
[Green, Thomas] (1793), The Two Systems of the Social Compact and the Natural Rights of
Man Examined and Refuted.
Grisenthwaite, W. (1822), A Refutation of Every Argument Brought Against the Truth of
Christianity and Revealed Religion by Thomas Paine (Wells).
Grotius, Hugo (1925), De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625) (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Hall, Charles (1805), The Effects of Civilization upon the People in European States.
Hall, Robert (1800), Modern Infidelity Considered With Respect to Its Influence on Society
(Cambridge).
Hamilton, James Edward (1791), Reflections on the Revolution in France, By the Rt. Hon
Edmund Burke, Considered; Also, Observations on Mr. Paine’s Pamphlet, Intitled the
Rights of Man.
Hardy, Thomas (1832), Memoir of Thomas Hardy.
Harford, John S. (1819), Some Account of the Life, Death, and Principles of Thomas Paine
(Bristol).
Hartley, David (1794), Argument on the French Revolution (Bath).
[Hawtrey, Charles] (1790), Free Thoughts on Liberty and the Revolution in France.
Hawtrey, Charles (1792), Various Opinions of the Philosophical Reformers Considered,
Particularly Pain’s Rights of Man.
Hearn, Thomas (1793), A Short View of the Rise and Progress of Freedom in Modern Europe.
[Hervey, Frederick] (1791), A New Friend on an Old Subject.
[Hervey, Frederick] (1792), An Answer to the Second Part of the Rights of Man.
Hincks, T. (1796), Letters Originally Addressed to the Inhabitants of Cork, in Defence of
Revealed Religion, Occasioned by the Circulation of Mr. Paine’s Age of Reason in That City
(Cork).
Hints Addressed to the Radical Reformers (Glasgow, 1819).
Hodgson, William (1795), The Commonwealth of Reason.
Holyoake, George Jacob (1840), The Life of Paine.
Howell, T. B. (ed.) (1817–20), A Complete Collection of State Trials Vols 22–7.
H.R.H., Dr. Price and the Rights of Man (1791).
[Hulme, Obadiah] (1771), An Historical Essay on the English Constitution.
An Humble Address to the Most High, Most Mighty, and Most Puissant the Sovereign People
(1793).
Hume, David (1903), Essays Moral, Political and Literary (1741–2) (Grant Richards).
Hunt, Isaac (1791), Rights of Englishmen. An Antidote to the Poison Now Vending by the
Transatlantic Republican Thomas Paine.
An Important Discovery; or, Revolution in Great Britain and Ireland Impossible (1793).

225
 THOMAS PAINE

[Inglis, Charles] (1776), The True Interest of America Impartially Stated (2nd edn,
Philadelphia, Pa).
The Interests of Man in Opposition to the Rights of Man (Edinburgh: 1793).
Is All We Want Worth A Civil War? (1792).
Jackson, William (1795), Observations in Answer to Mr. Thomas Paine’s ‘Age of Reason’
(Dublin).
Jacobson, David L. (ed.) (1965), The English Libertarian Heritage. From the Writings of John
Trenchard and Thomas Gordon in The Independent Whig and Cato’s Letters (New York:
Bobbs-Merrill).
[Jenyns, Soame] (1784), Thoughts on a Parliamentary Reform.
[Jenyns, Soame] (1785), Every Man His Own Law-Maker; or, The Englishman’s Guide to a
Parliamentary Reform.
Joersson, S. A. (1796), Adam Smith, Author of an Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations and
Thomas Paine, Author of the Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance
(‘Germany’).
John Bull, In Answer to His Brother Thomas (1792).
John Bull’s Answer to His Brother Thomas’s Second Letter (1792).
[John Saint John] (1791), A Letter from a Magistrate to Mr. William Rose, of Whitehall, on Mr.
Paine’s The Rights of Man.
Jones, John (1793a), The Reason of Man: With Strictures on Paine’s Rights of Man
(Canterbury).
Jones, John (1793b), The Reason of Man: Part Second. Containing Strictures on Rights of
Man (Canterbury).
Jones, John Gale (1819), The Speech of John Gale Jones Delivered at the British Forum.
Judson, L. Carroll (1851), The Sages and Heroes of the American Revolution (Philadelphia).
Keate, William (1790), A Free Examination of Dr. Price’s and Dr. Priestley’s Sermons.
Kennedy, P. (1798), An Answer to Paine’s Letter to General Washington (Philadelphia, Pa).
Kilham, Alexander (1795), The Progress of Liberty Amongst the People Called Methodists
(Alnwick).
[Kilham, Alexander] (1796a), An Appeal to the Methodist Societies of the Alnwick Circuit.
Kilham, Alexander (1796b), A Candid Examination of the London Methodistical Bulletin
(Alnwick).
[Kilham, Alexander] (n.d.), The Life of Alexander Kilham (Nottingham).
King, John (1793), Mr. King’s Speech at Egham, with Thomas Paine’s Letter to Him (Egham).
King, Walter (1793), Two Sermons Preached at Gray’s Inn Chapel.
Knave’s-Acre Association Resolutions … of the Place and Pension Club (1793).
Knox, Vicesimus (1795), Christian Philosophy (2 vols).
The Last Dying Words of Tom Paine, Executed at the Guillotine in France on the First of
September 1794 (n.p., n.d.).
‘Launcelot Light’ (1792), A Sketch of the Rights of Boys and Girls.
A Letter from a Magistrate to Mr. William Rose (1791).
A Letter of Condolence and Congratulation from Antichrist to John Bull (1795).
A Letter to a Friend in the Country: Wherein Mr. Paine’s Letter to Mr. Dundas is Particularly
Considered (1792).
Letter to a Friend on the Test Laws (1791).
A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791).
A Letter to Thomas Paine, in Answer to His Scurrilous Epistle Addressed to Our Late Worthy
President Washington (New York: 1797).

226
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Letters to a Friend, on the Late Revolution in France (1792).

Letters to Thomas Paine; in Answer to His Late Publication on the Rights of Man (1791).
Lewelyn, William (1793), An Appeal to Men against Paine’s Rights of Men (Leominster).
Liberty and Equality; Treated of in a Short History Addressed from a Poor Man to His Equals
(1792).
The Life and Adventures of Job Knott, Buckle-Maker (11th edn, Birmingham, 1798).
Linton, W. J. (1880), James Watson. A Memoir.
Locke, John (1970), Two Treatises of Government (1690), ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press ).
Lofft, Capel (1790), Remarks on the Letter of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke
Concerning the Revolution in France (Dublin).
Lofft, Capel (1791), Remarks on the Letter of Mr. Burke to a Member of the National
Assembly.
The London Corresponding Society’s Addresses and Regulations (1792).
[Macaulay, Catherine] (1767), Loose Remarks on Certain Positions to Be Found in Mr.
Hobbes’ Philosophical Rudiments of Government and Society. With a Short Sketch of a
Democratical Form of Government.
[Macaulay, Catherine] (1790), Observations on the Reflections of the Right Honourable
Edmund Burke on the Revolution in France.
Mackenzie, Henry (1793), The Life of Thomas Paine.
Mackenzie, W. C. (ed.) (1916), The War Diary of a London Scot (Alderman G. M. Macaulay)
1796–7 (Paisley: Alexander Gardner).
Mackintosh, James (1846), Vindiciae Gallicae, Defence of the French Revolution and Its
English Admirers (1792), in Miscellaneous Works, Vol. 3.
Mackintosh, Robert J. (1836), Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir James
Mackintosh (2 vols).
Margarot, Maurice (1812), Proposal for a Grand National Jubilee (Sheffield).
Marsters, Thomas, Jr (1798), A View of Agricultural Oppressions: And of Their Effects Upon
Society (2nd edn, Lynn).
‘Martius Modernus’ (1793), Political Essays … Interspersed with Constitutional
Disquisitions on the Wild Prospect of Imprescriptible Rights.
The Measures of Ministry to Prevent a Revolution, Are the Certain Means of Bringing It On
(1794).
Memoirs of the Life of Gilbert Wakefield (2 vols, 1804).
Miles, W. (1890), The Correspondence of William Augustus Miles on the French Revolution
1789–1817 (2 vols, Longmans, Green).
Molloy, Tobias (1792), An Appeal from Man in a State of Civil Society to Man in a State of
Nature (Dublin).
Montesquieu, Baron de (1949), The Spirit of the Laws (1748) (New York: Hafner Press ).
More Reasons for a Reform in Parliament (1793).
More, Hannah (1793), Village Politics. Addressed to All Mechanics, Journeymen, and Day
Labourers (Durham).
[More, Hannah] (1794), A Country Carpenter’s Confession of Faith.
Morris, Gouverneur (1939), A Diary of the French Revolution (2 vols, Boston, Mass.:
Houghton Mifflin ).
Moser, Joseph (1796), An Examination of the Pamphlet Entitled Thoughts on the English
Government.
M’Phail, James (1795), Remarks on the Present Times.

227
 THOMAS PAINE

Mr. Justice Ashurst’s Charge to the Grand Jury of the County of Middlesex (1792).
‘Mr. Miles’ (1793), The Conduct of France towards Great Britain Examined.
Muir, James (1795), An Examination of the Principles Contained in the Age of Reason
(Baltimore, Md).
Nares, Edward (1805), A View of the Evidences of Christianity at the Close of the Pretended
Age of Reason (Oxford).
Nares, Rev. R. (1792), Principles of Government Deduced From Reason.
A Narrative of the Proceedings at the General Meeting of the London Corresponding Society
Held on Monday, July 31, 1797 (1797).
Nash, Michael (1794), Paine’s Age of Reason Measured by the Standard of Truth.
[Naylor, James] (1656), Love to the Lost: and a Hand Held Forth to the Helpless.
Nelson, David (1800), An Investigation of That False, Fabulous and Blasphemous
Misrepresentation of Truth … the Age of Reason (Lancaster).
A New Dialogue between Monsieur Francois and John English on the French Revolution
(n.d.).
A New Song (n.d.).
Northcote, Thomas (1781), Observations on the Natural and Civil Rights of Mankind.
[Odell, William] (1792), An Impartial Defense of the Established Church.
Ogden, Uzal (1795), Antidote to Deism. The Deist Unmasked; or an Ample Refutation of All
the Objections of Thomas Paine to the Christian Religion (2 vols, Newark).
Ogilvie, William (1781), An Essay on the Right of Property in Land.
‘Oldys, Francis’ [George Chalmers] (1791, 1793), The Life of Thomas Paine.
One Penny-Worth of Truth, from Thomas Bull, to His Brother John (1792).
Opinions Delivered at a Numerous and Respectable Meeting in the Country (1793).
The Origin of Duty and Right in Man, Considered (1796).
Oswald, John (1791), Review of the Constitution of Great Britain (3rd edn).
Paine and Burke Contrasted (n.d.).
Paley, William (1792), Reasons for Contentment, Addressed to the Labouring Part of the
British Public.
[Paley, William] (1951), Equality as Consistent with the British Constitution (1792) in
Reginald Reynolds (ed.), British Pamphleteers (Allan Wingate).
Parsons, Sir Lawrence (1793), Thoughts on Liberty and Equality.
Patten, William (1795), Christianity the True Theology, and Only Perfect Moral System; in
Answer to ‘The Age of Reason’ (Warren).
Patton, Charles (1797), The Effects of Property upon Society and Government Investigated.
A Penitentiary Epistle, Found in Tom Paine’s Portfolio, the Morning after His Execution at
Lincoln (n.d.).
The Pernicious Effects of the Art of Printing upon Society Exposed (n.d.).
The Pernicious Principles of Tom Paine, Exposed in an Address to Labourers and Mechanics
(n.d.).
Perry, Sampson (1797), The Origin of Government, Compatible With, and Founded on the
Rights of Man, with a Few Words on the Constitutional Object of the Corresponding
Society.
Peter, Alexander (1792), Strictures on the Character and Principles of Thomas Paine
(Portsmouth).
Philo-Theodosius; or, a New Edition of Theodosius, with a New Character of Mr. Burke
(1790).
Pigott, Charles (1791), Strictures on the New Political Tenets of the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke.

228
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Pigott, Charles (1795), Pigott’s Political Dictionary.

Pigott, Charles (1798), The Case of Charles Pigott.
Pilkington, James (1795), The Doctrine of Equality of Rank and Condition Examined and
Supported on the Authority of the New Testament.
‘Pindar, Peter’ [i.e. John Wolcott] (1809), The Works of Peter Pindar (4 vols).
Place, Francis (1972), The Autobiography of Francis Place (1771–1854), ed. Mary Thale
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Playfair, William (1795), The History of Jacobinism. Its Crimes, Cruelties and Perfidies.
A Plot Discovered, or an Intercepted Letter to Thomas Paine, Member of the National
Convention of France, From His Friend in London (1793).
‘The plot found out’, in Publications Recommended to the Perusal of the Public (1792).
Plowden, Francis (1792), Jura Anglorum. The Rights of Englishmen.
The Political Crisis: or, A Discussion of the Rights of Man (1791).
Political Dialogues upon the Subject of Equality (2nd edn, Edinburgh: 1792).
Political Review of Edinburgh Periodical Publications (Edinburgh: 1792).
Pope, Simeon (1796), A Letter to the Rt. Hon. William Curtis … on the National Debt … and
In Reply to Paine’s ‘Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance’.
Portrait of the Constitution (1792).
Pownall, Thomas (1752), Principles of Polity, Being the Grounds and Reasons of Civil
Empire.
Price, Richard (1777), Additional Observations on the Nature and Value of Civil Liberty and
the War with America.
Price, Richard (1785), Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution (Dublin).
Price, Richard (1927), A Discourse on the Love of Our Country (1789), in A. C. Ward (ed.),
A Miscellany of Tracts and Pamphlets (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Price, Richard (1791), Britain’s Happiness, and Its Full Possession of Civil and Religious
Liberty, Briefly Stated and Proved.
Priestley, Joseph (1791a), An Appeal to the Public, on the Subject of the Riots in Birmingham
(Birmingham).
Priestley, Joseph (1791b), Letters to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (Birmingham).
Priestley, Joseph (1794), An Answer to Mr. Paine’s Age of Reason (Northumberland Town).
Priestley, Joseph (1796), Observations on the Increase of Infidelity.
Principle and Practice Combined: or, The Wrongs of Man. An Oration (1792).
Principles of Order and Happiness Under the British Constitution (1792).
Proceedings of the Association for Preserving Liberty and Property Against Republicans and
Levellers (1792).
Proceedings of the Friends to the Abuse of the Liberty of the Press (1793).
Proceedings of the Society of the Friends of the People (1792).
‘Publicola’ (1913), ‘Letters of Publicola’ (1791), in Writings of John Quincy Adams, ed. W.
C. Ford (New York: Macmillan), pp. 65–110.
Pufendorf, Samuel (1934), The Law of Nature and Nations (1672) (Oxford: Clarendon Press ).
[Reeves, John] (1795), Thoughts on the English Government.
The Reformers of England. A New Song (n.d.).
Reid, William Hamilton (1800), The Rise and Dissolution of the Infidel Societies in this
Metropolis.
Remarks on the Conduct, Principles, and Publications, of the Association … for Preserving
Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers (1793).
Remarks on a Late Pamphlet Entitled Plain Truth (Philadelphia: 1776).

229
 THOMAS PAINE

Remarks on Mr. Paine’s Pamphlet, Called the Rights of Man (Dublin: 1791).
Remarks on the Proceedings of the Society of the ‘Friends of the People’ (1792).
Report of the Committee of Secrecy of the House of Commons (1799).
The Report of the Proceedings of the … Mock Trial of Richard Carlile (1822).
The Republican’s Picture. To Be Sung by Every Honest Englishman (n.d.).
Resolutions of Common Sense, for the Preventing of Popular Delusion from Political Orators
(n.d.).
Rickman, Thomas (1908), ‘The life of Thomas Paine’ (1819), in Daniel Edwin Wheeler (ed.),
Life and Writings of Thomas Paine, Vol. 1 (New York: V. Parke).
Rights and Remedies, or the Theory and Practice of True Politics (1795).
The Rights of Nations. A Treatise on Representative Government, Despotism and Reform
(1832).
The Rights of the Devil; or Consolation for the Democrats (n.d.).
Rights Upon Rights with Observations Upon Observations (1791).
Riland, Rev. John (1792), The Rights of God, Occasioned by Mr. Paine’s Rights of Man.
Roberts, William (1835), Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Hannah More (2
vols, New York).
Robison, John (1797), Proof of a Conspiracy against All the Religions and Governments of
Europe (Edinburgh).
Romilly, Samuel (1840), Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romilly (3 vols).
Roosevelt, Theodore (1898), Gouverneur Morris (New York: Houghton Mifflin).
Rous, George (1790), Thoughts on Government: Occasioned by Mr. Burke’s Reflections.
Russell, Lord John (1844), Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox (4 vols).
‘Rusticus’ (1776), Remarks on a Late Pamphlet Entitled Plain Truth (Philadelphia, Pa).
Sandford, Mrs. Henry (1888), Thomas Poole and His Friends (2 vols).
Savory, William (1796), An Alarm: or Three Sermons Preached in Houndsditch.
‘Scott, A.’ (1793), Plain Reasons for Adopting the Plan of the Societies Calling Themselves
the Friends of the People, and Their Convention of Delegates, as Copied from the Works of
Mr. Thomas Paine (Edinburgh).
Scott, James (1793), A Sermon Preached at Park-Street Chapel.
Scott, James (1794), Equality Considered and Recommended, in a Sermon.
Scott, Major (1791), A Letter to the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke (Dublin).
Scott, Thomas (1792), An Impartial Statement of the Scriptural Doctrine, in Respect of Civil
Society.
Scott, Thomas (1796), A Vindication of the Divine Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.
Scurlock, Rev. David (1792), Thoughts on the Influence of Religion in Civil Government.
The Second Report from the Committee of Secrecy of the House of Commons (1794).
A Serious Caution to the Poor (1792).
[Sewell, William] (1791), A Rejoinder to Mr. Paine’s Pamphlet, Entitled The Rights of Man.
Sharp, Granville (1774), A Declaration of the People’s Natural Right to a Share in the
Legislature.
Sharp, Granville (1777), A Tract on the Law of Nature.
Sharp, Granville (1784), An Account of the Ancient Division of the English Nation into
Hundreds and Tythings.
Sherwin, W. T. (1819), Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Paine.
Sidney, Algernon (1750), Discourses Concerning Government (1698) (2 vols, Edinburgh).
‘Signer Pasquinello’ (1792), Crowns and Sceptres Useless Baubles.
Simpson, Rev. David (1802), A Plea for Religion and the Sacred Writings.

230
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Six Essays On Natural Rights, Liberty and Slavery, Consent of the People, Equality, Religious
Establishments and the French Revolution (1792).
Smith, Joseph (1796), An Examination of Mr. Paine’s Decline and Fall of the English System
of Finance.
[Smith, William Cusac] (1791), Rights of Citizens; Being an Inquiry into Some of the
Consequences of Social Union, and an Examination of Mr. Paine’s Principles Touching
Social Government.
Some Remarks on the British Constitution (Salford: 1793).
Somerville, Thomas (1793), The Effects of the French Revolution (Edinburgh).
Southcott, Joanna (1812), An Answer to Thomas Paine’s Third Part of the Age of Reason.
Spence, Thomas (1793), The Rights of Man (4th edn).
Spence, Thomas (1797), The Rights of Infants.
Spence, Thomas (1982), The Political Works of Thomas Spence, ed. H. T. Dickinson
(Newcastle upon Tyne: Avero).
The Spirit of John Locke on Civil Government Revived by the Constitutional Society of
Sheffield (1792).
Stanhope, Earl (1790), A Letter from Earl Stanhope to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke:
Containing a Short Answer to His Late Speech on the French Revolution.
Stephens, Alexander (1813), Memoirs of John Horne Tooke (2 vols).
Stilwell, Samuel (1794), A Guide to Reason or an Examination of Thomas Paine’s Age of
Reason (New York).
Stone, Francis (1792), An Examination of the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the
Revolution in France.
Strictures on the Letter of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, on the Revolution in France (1791).
Sully, Due de (1909), The Great Design of Henry IV from the Memoirs of the Duc de Sully
(Boston, Mass.: Ginn).
‘Tam Thrum’ (1793), Look Before Ye Loup; or, A Healin’ Sa’ for the Crackit Crowns of
Country Politicians (Edinburgh).
Tatham, Edward (1791), Letters to the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke on Politics.
[Taylor, Thomas] (1792), A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes.
Ten Minutes’ Caution from a Plain Man to His Fellow Citizens (1792).
Thackeray, Rev. Francis (1831), Order against Anarchy, Being a Reply to Thomas Paine’s
Attack upon the British Constitution, Entitled ‘The Rights of Man’.
Thale, Mary (ed.) (1983), Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society
1792–1799 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Thelwall, John (1795), The Speech of John Thelwall at the Second Meeting of the London
Corresponding Society.
Thelwall, John (1796a), Sober Reflections on the Seditious and Inflammatory Letter of the
Right Honourable Edmund Burke.
Thelwall, John (1796b), The Rights of Nature against the Usurpations of Establishments.
Thomas, John (1831), The Challenge of a Deist Accepted.
Thomas, Rev. Robert (1797), The Cause of Truth, Containing … A Refutation of Errors in the
Political Works of Thomas Paine (Dundee).
Thoughts on National Insanity (1797).
Thoughts upon Liberty and Equality (Dublin, 1793).
Thoughts Upon Our Present Situation (1793).
Tom the Boddice Maker: To the Tune of Bow! Wow! Wow! (1793).
Tom Paine’s Jests (1794).

231
 THOMAS PAINE

Towers, Joseph (1782), A Vindication of the Political Principles of Mr. Locke.

Towers, Joseph (1788), An Oration Delivered at the London Tavern.
Towers, Joseph (1790), Thoughts on the Commencement of a New Parliament.
Treason Triumphant Over Law and Constitution (1795).
The Trial of Daniel Isaac Eaton … For Selling a Supposed Libel, A Letter, Addressed to the
Addressers, by Thomas Paine (1793).
The Trial of Edward Marcus Despard, Esquire, for High Treason (1803).
The Trial of Henry Yorke (1795).
The Trial of John Horne Tooke, On a Charge of High Treason (Newcastle: 1795).
Trial of Thomas Paine (1792).
The Trial of William Winterbotham … for Seditious Words (2nd edn, 1794).
A Trip to the Island of Equality; or, an Extract from Russian Voyages (n.d.).
The True Briton’s Catechism (1793).
The True Merits of a Later Treatise … Intitled Common Sense (1776).
Truth and Reason against Place and Pension (1793).
Tucker, Josiah (1775), The Respective Pleas and Arguments of the Mother Country and Of the
Colonies (Gloucester).
Tucker, Josiah (1781), A Treatise Concerning Civil Government.
Two Letters from a Deist to His Friend, Concerning the Truth and Propagation of Deism, in
Opposition to Christianity (1730).
Tytler, James (1797), An Answer to the Second Part of Paine’s Age of Reason (Edinburgh).
Vale, Gilbert (1841), The Life of Thomas Paine (New York).
Vattel, Emmerich de (1916), The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law (1758)
(Washington DC: Carnegie Institute).
A Vindication of the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1791).
Volney, C. F. (1796), An Abridgement of the Law of Nature.
Wakefield, Gilbert (1795), A Reply to Thomas Paine’s Second Part of the Age of Reason.
Walker, Thomas (1794), A Review of Some of the Political Events Which Have Occurred in
Manchester during the Last Five Years.
Wallace, Robert (1761), Various Prospects of Mankind, Nature, and Providence.
Washington, George (1931), The Writings of George Washington (Washington DC:
Government Printing Office ).
Watson, George (1799), Thoughts on Government.
Watson, Richard (1796), An Apology for the Bible in a Series of Letters Addressed to Thomas
Paine (3rd edn).
A Whipper for Levelling Tommy (1793).
White, Peter (1792), Rational Freedom: Being a Defence of the National Character of
Britons, and of Their Form of Government (Edinburgh).
White, William (1792), A Dissertation on Government.
The Whole of the Proceedings at the Meeting of the Friends of the Liberty of the Press (1792).
Wilde, John (1793), An Address to the Lately Formed Society of the Friends of the People.
Wilks, Mark (1791), The Origins and Stability of the French Revolution.
[Williams, David] (1790), Lessons to a Young Prince (4th edn).
Wollstonecraft, Mary (1790), A Vindication of the Rights of Men (2nd edn).
Wollstonecraft, Mary (1794), An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the
French Revolution.
The Wonderful Flights of Edmund the Rhapsodist (1791).
Wyvill, Christopher (1792), A Defence of Dr. Price and the Reformers of England.

232
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Wyvill, Christopher (ed.) (1794–1802), Political Papers (6 vols, York).

Yorke, Henry Redhead (1793), These are the Times That Try Men’s Souls!
Yorke, Henry Redhead (1794), Thoughts on Civil Government.
Yorke, Henry Redhead (1798), A Letter to the Reformers.
Yorke, Henry Redhead (1804), Letters from France in 1803 (2 vols).
[Young, Arthur] (1792), A Plain and Earnest Address to Britons (Ipswich).
Young, Arthur (1793), The Example of France a Warning to Britain (Bury St Edmunds).
Young, Arthur (1898), The Autobiography of Arthur Young, ed. M. Betham-Edwards (Smith,
Elder).
Young, John (1794), Essays on the Following Interesting Subjects (Edinburgh).

(g) Secondary sources I: books

Adams, Randolph G. (1922), Political Ideas of the American Revolution (Durham: Trinity
College Press ).
Aldridge, A. O. (1960), Man of Reason. The Life of Thomas Paine (Cresset Press).
Aldridge, A. O. (1984), Thomas Paine’s American Ideology (Associated University Presses ).
Alger, John G. (1889), Englishmen in the French Revolution (Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle
& Rivington).
Appleby, Joyce (1984), Capitalism and a New Social Order. The Republican Vision of the
1790s (New York: New York University Press).
Aspinall, A. (1949), Politics and the Press c. 1780–1850 (Home & Van Thal).
Ayer, A. J. (1988), Thomas Paine (Seeker & Warburg).
Bailyn, Bernard (1967), The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press ).
Banning, Lance (1978), The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press).
Barker, Ernest (1948), Traditions of Civility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ).
Bauman, Richard (1971), For the Reputation of Truth, Politics, Religion and Conflict among
the Pennsylvania Quakers 1750–1800 (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press ).
Belchem, John (1985), ‘Orator’ Hunt and English Working-Class Radicalism (Oxford:
Clarendon Press ).
Black, Eugene C. (1963), The Association. British Extraparliamentary Political
Organization 1769–1793 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press).
Bloch, Ruth H. (1985), Visionary Republic. Millennial Themes in American Thought, 1756–
1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Bonwick, Colin (1977), English Radicals and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC:
University of North Carolina ).
Boulton, James (1963), The Language of Politics in the Age of Wilkes and Burke (Routledge
& Kegan Paul).
Bradley, James E. (1986), Popular Politics and the American Revolution in England.
Petitions, the Crown, and Public Opinion (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press ).
Brewer, John (1976), Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Brown, P. A. (1918), The French Revolution in English History (Frank Cass).
Cannon, John (1973), Parliamentary Reform 1640–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press ).

233
 THOMAS PAINE

Chase, Malcolm (1988), The People’s Farm. English Agrarian Radicalism 1775–1840
(Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Christie, Ian (1962), Wilkes, Wyvill and Reform. The Parliamentary Reform Movement in
British Politics 1760–1785 (Macmillan).
Claeys, Gregory (1987), Machinery, Money and the Millennium. From Moral Economy to
Socialism, 1815–1860 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Claeys, Gregory (1989), Citizens and Saints. Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British
Socialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Colley, Linda (1982), In Defiance of Oligarchy. The Tory Party 1714–60 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press ).
Cole, G. D. H. (1950), Essays in Social Theory (Macmillan).
Cone, Carl B. (1968), The English Jacobins. Reformers in Late 18th Century England (New
York: Scribner).
Conway, Moncure (1892), The Life of Thomas Paine (2 vols, Knickerbocker Press).
Cookson, J. E. (1982), The Friends of Peace. Anti-war Liberalism in England, 1793–1815
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Crowley, J. E. (1974), This Sheba, Self. The Conceptualization of Economic Life in
Eighteenth-Century America (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press).
Davis, Richard W. (1971), Dissent in Politics 1780–1830. The Political Life of William Smith,
MP (Epworth Press).
D’Entrèves, A. P. (1972), Natural Law (Hutchinson).
Deny, John (1976), English Politics and the American Revolution (Dent).
Dickinson, H. T. (1977), Liberty and Property. Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century
Britain (Weidenfeld & Nicolson).
Dickinson, H. T. (1985), British Radicalism and the French Revolution 1789–1815 (Oxford:
Blackwell).
Douglass, Elisha (1955), Rebels and Democrats. The Struggle for Equal Political Rights and
Majority Rule during the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina Press ).
Dozier, Robert R. (1983), For King, Constitution and Country. The English Loyalists and the
French Revolution (Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky).
Dugan, James (1966), The Great Mutiny (Deutsch).
Ehrman, John (1983), The Younger Pitt. The Reluctant Transition (Stanford, NJ: Stanford
University Press ).
Elliott, Marianne (1982), Partners in Revolution. The United Irishmen and France (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press).
Emsley, Clive (1979), British Society and the French Wars 1793–1815 (Macmillan).
Erdman, David V. (1986), Commerce des Lumières. John Oswald and the British in Paris,
1790–1793 (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press).
Fennessy, R. R. (1963), Burke, Paine and the Rights of Man (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff ).
Fliegelman, Jay (1982), Prodigals and Pilgrims. The American Revolution against
Patriarchal Authority, 1750–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Foner, Eric (1976), Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (Oxford: Oxford University Press
).
Foner, Philip S. (1976), Labor and the American Revolution (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press ).
Freeman, Michael (1980), Edmund Burke and the Critique of Political Radicalism (Oxford:
Blackwell).

234
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

French, Allen (1934), The First Year of the American Revolution (Boston, Mass.: Houghton
Mifflin ).
Fruchtman, Jack, Jr (1983), The Apocalyptic Politics of Richard Price and Joseph Priestley
(Philadelphia, Pa: American Philosophical Society ).
Gay, Peter (1977), The Enlightenment. An Interpretation (New York: Norton).
Gierke, Otto (1957), Natural Law and the Theory of Society 1500 to 1800 (Boston, Mass.:
Beacon Press ).
Goodwin, Albert (1979), The Friends of Liberty. The English Democratic Movement in the
Age of the French Revolution (Hutchinson).
Gunn, J. A. W. (1983), Beyond Liberty and Property. The Process of Self-Recognition in
Eighteenth-Century Political Thought (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press ).
Guttridge, G. H. (1966), English Whiggism and the American Revolution (Berkeley, Calif.:
University of California Press ).
Haakonssen, Knud (1981), The Science of a Legislator. The Natural Jurisprudence of David
Hume and Adam Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ).
Hall, Walter P. (1912), British Radicalism 1791–1797 (New York: Columbia University Press
).
Hampsher-Monk, Iain (ed.) (1987), The Political Philosophy of Edmund Burke (Longman).
Harrison, J. F. C. (1979), The Second Coming. Popular Millenarianism 1780–1850
(Routledge & Kegan Paul).
Hawke, David (1961), In the Midst of a Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press ).
Hazen, Charles (1897), Contemporary American Opinion on the French Revolution
(Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press).
Hemleben, Sylvester John (1943), Plans for World Peace through Six Centuries (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press).
Hempton, David (1984), Methodism and Politics in British Society 1750–1850 (Hutchinson).
Hone, J. Ann (1982), For the Cause of Truth. Radicalism in London 1796–1821 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press).
Jacob, Margaret C. (1981), The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and
Republicans (Allen & Unwin).
Jacob, Rosamond (1937), The Rise of the United Irishmen, 1791–94 (Harrap).
James, Sydney V. (1963), A People Among Peoples. Quaker Benevolence in Eighteenth-
Century America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press).
Jewson, C. B. (1975), The Jacobin City. A Portrait of Norwich in Its Reaction to the French
Revolution 1788–1802 (Blackie).
Jones, T. Canby (1972), George Fox’s Attitude Toward War (Annapolis, Md.: Academic
Fellowship ).
Knight, Frida (1957), The Strange Case of Thomas Walker (Lawrence & Wishart).
Koch, G. Adolf (1933), Republican Religion. The American Revolution and the Cult of Reason
(New York: Henry Holt ).
Kramnick, Isaac (1977a), The Rage of Edmund Burke: Portrait of an Ambivalent
Conservative (New York: Basic Books).
Laprade, William (1970), England and the French Revolution 1789–1797 (1909) (New York:
AMS Press ).
Lincoln, Anthony (1938), Some Political and Social Ideas of English Dissent 1763–1800
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

235
 THOMAS PAINE

Lincoln, Charles (1901), The Revolutionary Movement in Pennsylvania 1760–1776

(Philadelphia, Pa: University of Pennsylvania).
Link, Eugene P. (1942), Democratic-Republican Societies, 1790–1800 (New York: Columbia
University Press ).
Lock, F. P. (1985), Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (Allen & Unwin).
Logue, Kenneth J. (1979), Popular Disturbances in Scotland 1780–1815 (Edinburgh: John
Donald ).
Lutz, Donald S. (1980), Popular Consent and Popular Control. Whig Political Theory in the
Early State Constitutions (Baton Rouge, La: Louisiana State University Press ).
Lynd, Staughton (1968), Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism (New York: Vintage
Books ).
Maccoby, S. (1955a), English Radicalism 1762–1785 (Allen & Unwin).
Maccoby, S. (1955b), English Radicalism 1786–1832 (Allen & Unwin).
MacNair, Everett (1957), Edward Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement, 1889–1894
(Milwaukee, Wise.; Fitzgerald).
MacPherson, C. B. (1980), Burke (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Maier, Pauline (1972a), From Resistance to Revolution. Colonial Radicals and the
Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765–1776 (New York: Knopf).
Manwaring, G. E. and Dobree, Bonamy (1935), The Floating Republic. An Account of the
Mutinies at Spithead and the Nore in 1797 (New York: Harcourt, Brace).
Marshall, Leon S. (1946), The Development of Public Opinion in Manchester, 1780–1820
(Syracuse, New York: University of Syracuse Press).
Marston, Jerrilyn (1987), King and Congress. The Transfer of Political Legitimacy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
McCalman, Iain (1988), Radical Underworld. Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographers
in London, 1795–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
McCoy, Drew (1980), The Elusive Republic. Political Economy in Jeffersonian America
(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press).
Meikle, H. W. (1912), Scotland and the French Revolution (Glasgow: Maclehose).
Mekeel, Arthur J. (1979), The Relation of the Quakers to the American Revolution
(Washington DC: University Press of America).
Miles, Dudley (1988), Francis Place 1771–1854 (Brighton: Harvester Press).
Mingay, G. E. (1963), English Landed Society in the Eighteenth Century (Routledge & Kegan
Paul ).
Mitchell, B. R. (1988), British Historical Statistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
).
Mitchell, L. G. (1971), Charles James Fox and the Disintegration of the Whig Party (Oxford:
Oxford University Press).
Money, John (1977), Experience and Identity. Birmingham and the West Midlands 1760–1800
(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press).
Morais, Herbert M. (1934), Deism in Eighteenth-Century America (New York: Columbia
University Press ).
Morgan, Edmund S. (1988), Inventing the People. The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in
England and America (New York: Norton).
Morse, Anson (1909), The Federalist Party in Massachusetts to the Year 1800 (Princeton, NJ:
University Library).
Nash, Gary B. (1979), The Urban Crucible. Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the
Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press ).

236
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

O’Gorman, Frank (1967), The Whig Party and the French Revolution (Macmillan).
O’Gorman, Frank (1973), Edmund Burke: His Political Philosophy (Allen &
Unwin).
Olton, Charles S. (1975), Artisans for Independence. Philadelphia Mechanics and the
American Revolution (Syracuse, New York: University of Syracuse Press).
Osbourne, John (1972), John Cartwright (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Palmer, R. R. (1959), The Age of the Democratic Revolution. A Political History of Europe
and America, 1760–1800 (2 vols, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press ).
Patterson, A. Temple (1954), Radical Leicester. A History of Leicester 1780–1850 (Leicester:
University College).
Paul, Charles Kegan (1876), William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries (2 vols,
Henry S. King).
Paulson, Ronald (1983), Representations of Revolution (1789–1820) (New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press ).
Plumb, J. H. (1973), In the Light of History (Allen Lane).
Pocock, J. G. A. (1975), The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the
Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Pocock, J. G. A. (1985), Virtue, Commerce and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press ).
Pole, J. R. (1966), Political Representation in England and the Origins of the American
Republic (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press).
Postgate, Raymond (1956), That Devil Wilkes (Dobson).
Powell, David (1985), Tom Paine. The Greatest Exile (New York: St Martin’s Press).
Raphael, D. D. (ed.) (1967), Political Theory and the Rights of Man (Bloomington, Ind.:
Indiana University Press ).
Redwood, John (1976), Reason, Ridicule and Religion. The Age of Enlightenment in England
1660–1750 (Thames & Hudson).
Reid, John Phillip (1988), The Concept of Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Robbins, Caroline (1959), The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press ).
Rock, Howard B. (1979), Artisans of the New Republic. The Tradesmen of New York City in
the Age of Jefferson (New York: New York University Press).
Rommen, Heinrich (1949), The Natural Law. A Study in Legal and Social History and
Philosophy (Herder).
Roper, Derek (1978), Reviewing Before the Edinburgh 1788–1802 (Methuen).
Royle, Edward (1974), Victorian Infidels: The Origins of the British Secularist Movement,
1791–1866 (Manchester: Manchester University Press).
Royle, Edward, and James Walvin (1982), English Radicals and Reformers 1760–1848
(Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky).
Rudé, George (1962), Wilkes and Liberty (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Rudé, George (1964a), The Crowd in History, 1730–1848 (New York: John Wiley ).
Rudé, George (1964b), Revolutionary Europe 1783–1815 (Fontana).
Rudé, George (1980), Ideology and Popular Protest (Lawrence & Wishart).
Selsam, J. Paul (1936), The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 (Philadelphia, Pa: University
of Pennsylvania Press ).
Semmel, Bernard (1974), The Methodist Revolution (Heinemann).

237
 THOMAS PAINE

Shapiro, Ian (1986), The Evolution of Rights in Liberal Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press ).
Sigmund, Paul E. (1971), Natural Law in Political Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Winthrop ).
Stanlis, Peter (1958), Edmund Burke and the Natural Law (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of
Michigan Press ).
Stauffer, Vernon (1918), New England and the Bavarian Illuminati (New York: Russell &
Russell ).
Stedman Jones, Gareth (1983), Languages of Class. Studies in English Working-Class History
1832–1982 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Thomis, Malcolm I. and Peter Holt (1977), Threats of Revolution in Britain 1789–1848
(Macmillan).
Thompson, E. P. (1968), The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth: Penguin
).
Tolles, Frederick B. (1948), Meeting House and Counting House. The Quaker Merchants of
Colonial Philadelphia 1682–1763 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina ).
Tolles, Frederick B. (1960), Quakers and the Atlantic Culture (Macmillan).
Toohey, Robert E. (1978), Liberty and Empire. British Radical Solutions to the American
Problem 1774–1776 (Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky).
Tuck, Richard (1979), Natural Rights Theories. Their Origin and Development (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press).
Turner, James (1985), Without God, Without Creed. The Origins of Unbelief in America
(Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press).
Tuveson, Ernest (1968), Redeemer Nation. The Idea of America’s Millennial Role (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press).
Veitch, George (1913), The Genesis of Parliamentary Reform (Constable).
Vile, M. J. C. (1967), Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers (Oxford: Clarendon
Press ).
Viner, Jacob (1972), The Role of Providence in the Social Order (Philadelphia, Pa: American
Philosophical Society ).
Webb, R. K. (1955), The British Working-Class Reader 1790–1848 (Allen & Unwin).
Wells, Roger (1983), Insurrection. The British Experience 1795–1803 (Gloucester: Alan
Sutton ).
Wells, Roger (1987), Wretched Faces: Famine in Wartime England (New York: St Martin’s
Press ).
Werkmeister, Lucyle (1963), The London Daily Press 1772–1792 (Lincoln, Nebr: University
of Nebraska Press ).
Weston, Corinne (1965), English Constitutional Theory and the House of Lords 1556–1832
(Routledge & Kegan Paul).
Wiener, Joel (1983), Radicalism and Freethought in Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Life of
Richard Carlile (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press).
Wilentz, Sean (1984), Chants Democratic. New York City and the Rise of the American
Working Class, 1788–1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Wilkins, Burleigh (1967), The Problem of Burke’s Political Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon
Press ).
Willey, Basil (1957), The Eighteenth-Century Background (Chatto & Windus).
Williams, Gwyn A. (1969), Artisans and Sans-Culottes. Popular Movements in France and
Britain during the French Revolution (New York: Norton).
Williamson, Audrey (1973), Thomas Paine. His Life, Work and Times (Allen & Unwin).

238
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Williamson, Chilton (1960), American Suffrage. From Property to Democracy 1760–1860

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Wilson, David A. (1988), Paine and Cobbett. The Transatlantic Connection (Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s University Press ).
Wood, Gordon (1969), The Creation of the American Republic 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, NC:
University of North Carolina Press ).
Woodress, James (1958), A Yankee’s Odyssey. The Life of Joel Barlow (New York: Lippincott
).
Wright, Benjamin F. (1931), American Interpretations of Natural Law (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press ).
Young, Alfred (1967), The Democratic Republicans of New York 1763–1797 (Chapel Hill,
NC: University of North Carolina Press).
Young, Alfred (ed.) (1976), The American Revolution. Explorations in the History of
American Radicalism (DeKalb, Ill: Northern Illinois University Press).

(h) Secondary sources II: articles

Abel, Darrel (1942), The significance of the letter to the Abbé Raynal in the progress of
Thomas Paine’s thought’, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 66, pp.
176–90.
Adams, W. P. (1970), ‘Republicanism in political rhetoric before 1776’, Political Science
Quarterly, vol. 85, pp. 397–421.
Aldridge, A. O. (1949), ‘Why did Thomas Paine write on the bank?’, Proceedings of the
American Philosophical Society, vol. 93, pp. 309–15.
Aldridge, A. O. (1951), ‘Some writings of Thomas Paine in Pennsylvania newspapers’,
American Historical Review, vol. 56, pp. 832–8.
Aldridge, A. O. (1953), Thomas Paine and the New York Public Advertiser’, New York
Historical Society Quarterly, vol. 37, pp. 361–82.
Aldridge, A. O. (1957), Thomas Paine’s plan for a descent on England’, William and Mary
Quarterly, vol. 14, pp. 74–84.
Aldridge, A. O. (1968), ‘Thomas Paine and the classics’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 1,
pp. 370–80.
Aldridge, A. O. (1976a), ‘Paine and Dickinson’, Early American Literature, vol. 11, pp. 125–
38.
Aldridge, A. O. (1976b), ‘Thomas Paine and the idéologues’, Studies on Voltaire and the
Eighteenth Century, vol. 151, pp. 109–17.
Aldridge, A. O. (1976c), ‘The influence of New York newspapers on Common Sense’, New
York Historical Society Quarterly, vol. 60, pp. 53–60.
Aldridge, A. O. (1978), ‘The problem of Thomas Paine’, Studies in Burke and His Time, Vol.
19, pp. 127–43.
Andrews, Stuart (1983), ‘Tom Paine in France’, History Today, vol. 33, pp. 5–11.
Appleby, Joyce (1976), ‘Liberalism and the American revolution’, New England Quarterly,
vol. 49, pp. 3–26.
Appleby, Joyce (1978), ‘Modernization theory and the formation of modern social theories in
England and America’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 20, pp. 259–85.
Appleby, Joyce (1985), ‘Republicanism and ideology’, American Quarterly, vol. 37, pp. 461–
73.

239
 THOMAS PAINE

Armytage, W. H. G. (1951), ‘Thomas Paine and the Walkers: an early episode in Anglo-
American co-operation’, Pennsylvania History, vol. 18, pp. 16–30.
Ashworth, John (1984), ‘The Jeffersonians: classical republicans or liberal capitalists?’,
Journal of American Studies, vol. 18, pp. 425–35.
Bailyn, Bernard (1973), ‘The most uncommon pamphlet of the revolution. Common Sense’,
American Heritage, vol. 25, pp. 36–41, 91–3.
Banning, Lance (1976), ‘Jeffersonian ideology and the French revolution: a question of
liberticide at home’, Studies on Burke and His Time, vol. 17, pp. 5–26.
Banning, Lance (1986), ‘Jeffersonian ideology revisited: liberal and classical ideals in the
new American republic’, William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 43, pp. 3–19.
Barry, Alyce (1977), ‘Thomas Paine, privateersman’, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and
Biography, vol. 101, pp. 451–61.
Baxter, John (1974), ‘The great Yorkshire Revival 1792–6: a study of mass revival among the
Methodists’, Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain, vol. 7, pp. 46–76.
Belchem, John (1981), ‘Republicanism, popular constitutionalism and the radical platform in
early nineteenth-century England’, Social History, vol. 6, pp. 1–32.
Bernstein, Samuel (1945), ‘English reactions to the French revolution’, Science and Society,
vol. 9, pp. 147–71.
Berthoff, Rowland (1979), ‘Independence and attachment, virtue and interest: from
republican citizen to free enterpriser, 1787–1837’, in Richard Bushman et al. (eds),
Uprooted Americans (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1979), pp. 97–124.
Berthoff, Rowland and John Murrin (1973), ‘Feudalism, communalism and the yeoman
freeholder: the American revolution considered as a social accident’, in S. Kurtz and J.
Hutson (eds), Essays on the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina Press ), pp. 256–88.
Bockelman, Wayne and Owen Ireland (1974), ‘The internal revolution in Pennsylvania: an
ethnic-religious interpretation’, Pennsylvania History, vol. 41, pp. 125–59.
Bonwick, Colin (1976), ‘English Dissenters and the American revolution’, in H. C. Allen and
Roger Thompson (eds), Contrast and Connection: Bicentennial Essays in Anglo-American
History (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press), pp. 88–112.
Booth, Alan (1983), ‘Popular loyalism and public violence in the north-west of England,
1790–1800’, Social History, vol. 8, pp. 295–313.
Booth, Alan (1986), ‘The United Englishmen and radical politics in the industrial north-west
of England, 1795–1803’, International Review of Social History, vol. 31, pp. 371–97.
Brewer, John (1980a), ‘English radicalism in the Age of George III’, in J. G. A. Pocock (ed.),
Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press),
pp. 323–67.
Brewer, John (1980b), ‘The Wilkites and the law, 1763–74: a study of radical notions of
governance’, in John Brewer and John Styles (eds), An Ungovernable People. The English
and Their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Hutchinson), pp. 128–71.
Brims, John (1987), ‘The Scottish “Jacobins”, Scottish nationalism and the British union’, in
R. A. Mason (ed.), Scotland and England 1286–1815 (Edinburgh: John Donald ), pp. 247–
65.
Browne, Ray (1964), ‘The Paine-Burke controversy in eighteenth-century Irish popular
songs’, in Ray Browne, W. Roscelli, A. Loftus (eds), The Celtic Cross: Studies in Irish
Culture and Literature (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press ), pp. 80–97.
Buel, Richard (1964), ‘Democracy and the American revolution: a frame of reference’,
William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 21, pp. 165–90.

240
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Burns, J. H. (1971), ‘The rights of man since the reformation: an historical survey’, in Francis
Vallat (ed.), An Introduction to the Study of Human Rights (Europa), pp. 16–30.
Bushman, Richard (1979), ‘“This new man”: dependence and independence, 1776’, in R. L.
Bushman et al. (eds), Uprooted Americans (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown ), pp. 77–96.
Butterfield, Herbert (1947), ‘The Yorkshire Association and the crisis of 1779–80’,
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, vol. 29, pp. 69–92.
Butterfield, Herbert (1949), ‘Charles James Fox and the Whig opposition in 1792’,
Cambridge Historical Journal, vol. 9, pp. 293–330.
Canavan, Francis (1976), ‘The Burke-Paine controversy’, Political Science Reviewer, vol. 6,
pp. 389–420.
Chaloner, W. H. (1958), ‘Dr. Joseph Priestley, John Wilkinson and the French revolution,
1789–1802’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, vol. 8, pp. 21–40.
Christian, William (1973a), ‘The moral economics of Tom Paine’, Journal of the History of
Ideas, vol. 34, pp. 367–80.
Christian, William (1973b), ‘James Mackintosh, Burke, and the cause of reform’, Eighteenth-
Century Studies, vol. 7, pp. 194–206.
Christie, Ian (1960), ‘The Yorkshire Association, 1780–4: a study in political organization’,
Historical Journal, vol. 3, pp. 144–61.
Claeys, Gregory (1988a), ‘Reciprocal dependence, virtue and commerce: some sources of
early socialist cosmopolitanism and internationalism in Britain, 1790–1860’, in F. L. van
Holthoon and Marcel van der Linden (eds), Internationalism in the Labour Movement to
1940 (Leiden: Brill), Vol. 1, pp. 234–58.
Claeys, Gregory (1988b), ‘Thomas Paine’s Agrarian Justice (1796) and the secularization of
natural jurisprudence’, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, vol. 52, part
3, pp. 21–31.
Clark, Harry Hayden (1932), ‘Thomas Paine’s relation to Voltaire and Rousseau’, Revue
Anglo-Américaine, vol. 9, pp. 305–18, 393–405.
Clark, Harry Hayden (1933a), ‘An historical interpretation of Thomas Paine’s religion’,
University of California Chronicle, vol. 35, pp. 56–87.
Clark, Harry Hayden (1933b), ‘Toward a reinterpretation of Thomas Paine’, American
Literature, vol. 5, pp. 133–45.
Cohen, Lester (1978), ‘The American revolution and natural law theory, Journal of the
History of Ideas, vol. 59, pp. 491–502.
Colley, Linda (1981), ‘Eighteenth-century English radicalism before Wilkes’, Transactions
of the Royal Historical Society, vol. 31, pp. 1–19.
Collins, Henry (1954), ‘The London Corresponding Society’, in John Saville (ed.),
Democracy and the Labour Movement (Lawrence & Wishart), pp. 103–34.
Creasey, John (1966), ‘Some Dissenting attitudes towards the French revolution’,
Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society, vol. 13, pp. 155–67.
Cronin, Sean (1980), ‘Thomas Paine and the United Irishmen’, Bulletin of the Thomas Paine
Society, vol. 6, pp. 93–6.
Dickinson, H. T. (1976), ‘The rights of man from John Locke to Tom Paine’, in O. D. Edwards
and G. A. Shepperson (eds), Scotland, Europe and the American Revolution (Edinburgh:
EUSP), pp. 38–48.
Dinwiddy, J. R. (1971), ‘Christopher Wyvill and reform 1790–1820’, Borthwick Papers, no.
39, pp. 1–32.
Dinwiddy, J. R. (1974a), ‘The “Black Lamp” in Yorkshire 1801–1802’, Past and Present, no.
64, pp. 113–23.

241
 THOMAS PAINE

Dinwiddy, J. R. (1974b), ‘Utility and natural law in Burke’s thought: a reconsideration’,

Studies in Burke and His Time, vol. 16, pp. 105–28.
Ditchfield, G. M. (1974), ‘The parliamentary struggle over the repeal of the Test and
Corporation Acts, 1787–1790’, English Historical Review, vol. 89, pp. 551–77.
Donelly, F. K. and John Baxter (1976), ‘Sheffield and the English revolutionary tradition,
1791–1820’, in Sidney Pollard and Colin Holmes (eds), Essays in the Economic and Social
History of South Yorkshire (Sheffield: South Yorkshire County Council ), pp. 90–117.
Dorfman, J. (1938), ‘The economic philosophy of Thomas Paine’, Political Science
Quarterly, vol. 53, pp. 372–86.
Dozier, Robert (1972), ‘Democratic revolution in England: a possibility?’, Albion, vol. 4, pp.
183–92.
Dunn, John (1969), ‘The politics of Locke in England and America in the eighteenth century’,
in John Yolton (ed.), Problems from Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ), pp.
45–80.
Durey, Michael (1985), ‘Transatlantic patriotism: political exiles and America in the age of
revolutions’, in Clive Emsley and James Walvin (eds), Artisans, Peasants and Proletarians
1760–1860 (Croom Helm), pp. 7–31.
Durey, Michael (1987), ‘Thomas Paine’s apostles: radical emigrés and the triumph of
Jeffersonian republicanism’ William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 44, pp. 661–88.
Dyck, Ian (1988), ‘Debts and liabilities: William Cobbett and Thomas Paine’, in Ian Dyck
(ed.), Citizen of the World. Essays on Thomas Paine (New York: St Martin’s Press ), pp. 86–
103.
Eayrs, James (1952), ‘The political ideas of the English agrarians, 1775–1815’, Canadian
Journal of Economics and Political Science, vol. 18, pp. 287–302.
Elliott, Marianne (1977), ‘The “Despard Conspiracy” reconsidered’, Past and Present, no. 75,
pp. 46–61.
Elliott, Marianne (1983), ‘French subversion in Britain in the French revolution’, in Colin
Jones (ed.), Britain and Revolutionary France: Conflict, Subversion and Propaganda
(Exeter: University of Exeter Studies in History, No. 5), pp. 40–52.
Emsley, Clive (1975), ‘Political disaffection and the British Army in 1792’, Bulletin of the
Institute of Historical Research, vol. 48, pp. 230–45.
Emsley, Clive (1981), ‘An aspect of Pitt’s “Terror” prosecutions for sedition during the
1790s’, Social History, vol. 6, pp. 155–84.
Emsley, Clive (1985), ‘Repression, “Terror” and the rule of law in England during the decade
of the French revolution’, English Historical Review, vol. 100, pp. 801–25.
Epstein, James (1988), ‘Radical dining, toasting and symbolic expression in early nineteenth-
century Lancashire: rituals of solidarity’, Albion, vol. 20, pp. 271–91.
Falk, Robert (1938), ‘Thomas Paine: deist or Quaker?’, Pennsylvania Magazine of History
and Biography, vol. 62, pp. 52–63.
Falk, Robert (1939), ‘Thomas Paine and the attitude of the Quakers to the American
revolution’, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 63, pp. 302–10.
Forbes, Duncan (1982), ‘Natural law and the Scottish Enlightenment’, in R. H. Campbell and
A. S. Skinner (eds), Origin and Nature of the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh: John
Donald), pp. 186–204.
Fruchtman, Jack (1981), ‘Politics and the apocalypse: The republic and the millennium in late-
eighteenth century English political thought’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, vol.
10, pp. 153–64.

242
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fruchtman, Jack (1984), ‘The revolutionary millennialism of Thomas Paine’, Studies in

Eighteenth-Century Culture, vol. 13, pp. 65–77.
Garrison, Frank (1923), ‘Paine and the physiocrats’, The Freeman, vol. 8 (November), pp.
205–6.
Gibbens, V. E. (1942), ‘Tom Paine and the idea of progress’, Pennsylvania Magazine of
History and Biography, vol. 66, pp. 191–204.
Gimbel, Richard (1956b), ‘The first appearance of Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason’, Yale
University Library Gazette, vol. 31, pp. 87–9.
Gimbel, Richard (1956c), ‘New political writings by Thomas Paine’, Yale University Library
Gazette, vol. 30, pp. 94–107.
Gimbel, Richard (1959), ‘The resurgence of Thomas Paine’, Proceedings of the American
Antiquarian Society, vol. 69, pp. 97–111.
Gimbel, Richard (1960), ‘Thomas Paine fights for freedom in three worlds. The new, the old,
the next’, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, vol.70, pp. 397–492.
Ginter, Donald (1966), ‘The loyalist association movement of 1792–93 and British public
opinion’, Historical Journal, vol. 9, pp. 179–90.
Greene, Jack P. (1978), ‘Paine, America, and the “modernization” of political consciousness’,
Political Science Quarterly, vol. 93, pp. 73–92.
Gummere, Richard (1965), ‘Thomas Paine: was he really anticlassical?’, Proceedings of the
American Antiquarian Society, vol. 75, pp. 253–69.
Halévy, E. (1906), ‘La Naissance du Méthodisme en Angleterre’, La Revue de Paris, pp. 518–
39.
Hampsher-Monk, Iain (1978), ‘Civic humanism and parliamentary reform: the case of the
Society of the Friends of the People’, Journal of British Studies, vol. 18, pp. 70–89.
Hampsher-Monk, Iain (1989), ‘John Thelwall and the eighteenth-century radical response to
political economy’, Historical Journal, vol. 32 (forthcoming).
Handforth, Pauline (1956), ‘Manchester radical politics, 1789–1794’, Transactions of the
Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, vol. 66, pp. 87–106.
Harrison, J. F. C. (1988), ‘Thomas Paine and millenarian radicalism’, in Ian Dyck (ed.),
Citizen of the World. Essays on Thomas Paine (New York: St Martin’s Press ), pp. 73–85.
Hill, Christopher (1954), ‘The Norman yoke’, in John Saville (ed.), Democracy and the
Labour Movement (Lawrence & Wishart), pp. 11–66.
Hindmarsh, G. (1979), ‘Thomas Paine and the Methodist influence’, Bulletin of the Thomas
Paine Society, vol. 6, pp. 59–78.
Hinz, Evelyn J. (1972), ‘The “reasonable” style of Tom Paine’, Queen’s Quarterly, vol. 79,
pp. 231–41.
Hobsbawm, Eric (1957), ‘Methodism and the threat of revolution in Britain’, History Today,
vol. 7, pp. 115–24.
Hole, Robert (1983), ‘British counter-revolutionary popular propaganda in the 1790s’, in
Colin Jones (ed.), Britain and Revolutionary France: Conflict, Subversion and
Propaganda (Exeter: University of Exeter Studies in History, No. 5), pp. 153–69.
Hont, Istvan (1987), ‘The language of sociability and commerce: Samuel Pufendorf and the
theoretical foundations of the “Four-Stages Theory”’, in Anthony Pagden (ed.), The
Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press), pp. 253–76.
Hont, Istvan (1989), ‘Economic limits to national politics: a reconsideration of neo-
Machiavellian political economy’, in John Dunn (ed.), Economic Limits to Modern Politics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) (forthcoming).

243
 THOMAS PAINE

Itzkin, Elissa (1975), ‘The Halévy thesis–a working hypothesis? English revivalism: antidote
for revolution and radicalism 1789–1815’, Church History, vol. 44, pp. 47–56.
Jensen, Merrill (1957), ‘Democracy and the American revolution’, William and Mary
Quarterly, vol. 20, pp. 321–41.
Jordan, Winthrop (1973), ‘Familial politics: Thomas Paine and the killing of the king’,
Journal of American History, vol. 60, pp. 294–308.
Keane, John (1988), ‘Despotism and democracy. The origins and development of the
distinction between civil society and the state 1750–1850’, in John Keane (ed.), Civil
Society and the State. New European Perspectives (Verso), pp. 35–71.
Kennedy, W. Benjamin (1976), ‘The Irish Jacobins’, Studia Hibernica, vol. 16, pp. 109–21.
Kenyon, Cecilia (1951), ‘Where Paine went wrong’, American Political Science Review, vol.
45, pp. 1086–99.
Kenyon, Cecilia (1962), ‘Republicanism and radicalism in the American revolution: an old-
fashioned interpretation’, William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 19, pp. 153–82.
Kerber, Linda (1985), ‘The republican ideology of the revolutionary generation’, American
Quarterly, vol. 37, pp. 474–95.
Kirby, John (1970), ‘Early American politics – the search for ideology: an historiographical
analysis and critique of the concept of “deference”’, Journal of Politics, vol. 32, pp. 808–38.
Kistler, Mark (1962), ‘German-American liberalism and Thomas Paine’, American
Quarterly, vol. 14, pp. 81–91.
Knudson, Jerry W. (1969), ‘The rage around Tom Paine. Newspaper reaction to his
homecoming in 1802’, New York Historical Society Quarterly, vol. 53, pp. 34–63.
Kramnick, Isaac (1977b), ‘Religion and radicalism. English political theory in the Age of
Revolution’, Political Theory, vol. 5, pp. 505–34.
Kramnick, Isaac (1980), ‘English middle-class radicalism in the eighteenth century’,
Literature of Liberty, vol. 3, pp. 5–48.
Kramnick, Isaac (1982), ‘Republican revisionism revisited’, American Political Science
Review, vol. 87, pp. 629–64.
Kramnick, Isaac (1986), ‘Tommy Paine and the idea of America’, in Paul J. Korshin (ed.), The
American Revolution and Eighteenth-Century Culture (New York: AMS Press ), pp. 75–
91.
Lee, Janice (1981), ‘Political antiquarianism unmasked: the Conservative attack on the myth
of the ancient constitution’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, vol. 54, pp. 166–
79.
Libiszowska, Zofia (1980), ‘Thomas Paine et la Gironde’, Acta Universtitatis Lodziensis, s.
1, no. 71, pp. 87–105.
Lockridge, Kenneth (1977), ‘The American revolution, modernization, and man: a critique’,
in Richard Maxwell Brown and Don E. Fehrenbacher (eds), Tradition, Conflict, and
Modernization. Perspectives on the American Revolution (New York: Academic Press ),
pp. 103–19.
Lokken, Roy (1963), ‘The concept of democracy in colonial political thought’, William and
Mary Quarterly, vol. 16, pp. 568–80.
Lucas, Paul (1968), ‘On Edmund Burke’s doctrine of prescription; or, an appeal from the new
to the old lawyers’, Historical Journal, vol. 11, pp. 35–63.
Maier, Pauline (1963), ‘John Wilkes and American disillusionment with Britain’, William and
Mary Quarterly, vol. 20, pp. 373–95.
Maier, Pauline (1972b), ‘The beginnings of American republicanism’, in The Development of
a Revolutionary Mentality (Washington DC: Library of Congress ).

244
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

McGovern, Trevor (1988), ‘Conservative ideology in Britain in the 1790s’, History, vol. 73,
pp. 238–47.
McKenzie, Lionel (1980), ‘The French revolution and English parliamentary reform: James
Mackintosh and the Vindiciae Gallicae’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 15, pp. 264–82.
Meader, Lewis (1898), ‘The Council of Censors’, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and
Biography, vol. 22, pp. 265–300.
Meng, John J. (1946), ‘The constitutional theories of Thomas Paine’, Review of Politics, vol.
8, 283–306.
Mitchell, Austin (1961), ‘The Association Movement of 1792–3’, Historical Journal, vol. 4,
pp. 56–77.
Money, John (1980), ‘British history and the French revolution’, Canadian Journal of
History, vol. 15, pp. 416–30.
Morrell, J. B. (1971), ‘Professors Robison and Playfair, and the Theophobia Gallica: natural
philosophy, religion and politics in Edinburgh, 1789–1815’, Notes and Records of the Royal
Society of London, vol. 26, pp. 43–63.
Morris, Richard B. (1962), ‘Class struggle and the American revolution’, William and Mary
Quarterly, vol. 19, pp. 3–29.
Muzzey, David S. (1926), ‘Thomas Paine and American independence’, American Review,
vol. 4, pp. 278–88.
Myers, Mitzi (1977), ‘Politics from the outside: Mary Wollstonecraft’s first vindication’,
Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, vol. 6, pp. 113–32.
Nash, Gary (1965), ‘The American clergy and the French revolution’, William and Mary
Quarterly, vol. 22, pp. 392–412.
Nash, Gary (1976), ‘Poverty and poor relief in pre-revolutionary Philadelphia’, William and
Mary Quarterly, vol. 33, pp. 3–30.
Newman, Gerald (1974), ‘Anti-French propaganda and British liberal nationalism in the early
nineteenth century’, Victorian Studies, vol. 18, pp. 385–418.
Newman, Stephen (1978), ‘A note on Common Sense and Christian eschatology’, Political
Theory, vol. 6, pp. 101–8.
Nursey-Bray, P. F. (1968), ‘Thomas Paine and the concept of alienation’, Political Studies,
vol. 16, pp. 223–42.
Palmer, R. R. (1942), ‘Tom Paine. Victim of the Rights of Man’, Pennsylvania Magazine of
History and Biography, vol. 61, pp. 161–75.
Parsinnen, T. M. (1973), ‘Association, convention and anti-parliament in British radical
politics, 1771–1848’, English Historical Review, vol. 88, pp. 504–33.
Pedersen, Susan (1986), ‘Hannah More meets Simple Simon: Tracts, Chapbooks, and Popular
Culture in late eighteenth-century England’, Journal of British Studies, vol. 25, pp. 84–113.
Penniman, Howard (1943), ‘Thomas Paine – Democrat’, American Political Science Review,
vol. 37, pp. 244–62.
Popkin, Richard (1987), ‘The Age of Reason versus The Age of Revelation : two critics of Tom
Paine: David Levi and Elias Boudinot’, in J. A. Lemay (ed.), Deism, Masonry and the
Enlightenment (Newark, Del: University of Delaware Press ), pp. 158–70.
Porter, J. and R. Farnell (1976), ‘John Adams and American constitutionalism’, American
Journal of Jurisprudence, vol. 21, pp. 20–33.
Prochaska, Franklyn K. (1972), ‘Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason revisited’, Journal of the
History of Ideas, vol. 33, pp. 561–76.
Quinlan, Maurice (1943), ‘Anti-Jacobin propaganda in England, 1792–1794’, Journalism
Quarterly, vol. 16, pp. 9–15.

245
 THOMAS PAINE

Raphael, D. D. (1967), ‘Human rights, old and new’, in D. D. Raphael (ed.), Political Theory
and the Rights of Man (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press ), pp. 54–67.
Ripley, R. (1965), ‘Adams, Burke, and eighteenth-century conservatism’, Political Science
Quarterly, vol. 80, pp. 216–35.
Robbins, Caroline (1983), ‘The lifelong education of Thomas Paine (1737–1809)’
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 127, pp. 135–42.
Robbins, Caroline (1986), ‘William Penn, 1689–1702: eclipse, frustration, and achievement’,
in Richard S. Dunn and Mary Maples Dunn (eds), The World of William Penn
(Philadelphia, Pa: University of Pennsylvania Press), pp. 71–84.
Robinson, Eric (1955), ‘An English Jacobin: James Watt, Junior, 1769–1848’, Cambridge
Historical Journal, vol. 11, pp. 349–55.
Roper, Ralph (1944), ‘Thomas Paine: Scientist-Religionist’, Scientific Monthly, vol. 58, pp.
101–11.
Rose, R. B. (1960), ‘The Priestley riots of 1791’, Past and Present, vol. 18, pp. 68–88.
Rose, R. B. (1965), ‘The origins of working-class radicalism in Birmingham’, Labour
History, vol. 9, pp. 6–14.
Roshwald, Mordecai (1959), ‘The concept of human rights’, Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, vol. 19, pp. 354–79.
Royle, Edward (1988), ‘The reception of Paine’, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour
History, vol. 52, no. 3 (November), pp. 14–20.
Ryerson, R. A. (1974), ‘Political mobilization and the American revolution: the resistance
movement in Philadelphia, 1765 to 1776’, William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 31, pp. 565–
88.
Schofield, Thomas (1986), ‘Conservative political thought in Britain in response to the French
revolution’, Historical Journal, vol. 29, pp. 601–22.
Seaman, Allan (1957), ‘Reform Politics at Sheffield, 1791–97’, Transactions of the Hunter
Archaeological Society, vol. 7, pp. 215–28.
Shalhope, Robert (1972), ‘Toward a republican synthesis: the emergence of an understanding
of republicanism in American historiography’, William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 19, pp.
49–80.
Shalhope, Robert (1982), ‘Republicanism and early American historiography’, William and
Mary Quarterly, vol. 39, pp. 334–56.
Sheldon, Frederick (1859), ‘Thomas Paine’s second Appearance in the United States’ Atlantic
Monthly, vol. 4, pp. 1–17.
Sheps, Arthur (1973), ‘Ideological immigrants in revolutionary America’, in Paul Fritz and
David Williams (eds), City and Society in the Eighteenth Century (Toronto: Hakkert), pp.
231–47.
Sheps, Arthur (1975a), ‘The American revolution and the transformation of English
radicalism’, Historical Reflexions, vol. 2, pp. 3–28.
Sheps, Arthur (1975b), ‘The Edinburgh Reform Convention of 1793 and the American
revolution’, Scottish Tradition, vol. 5, pp. 23–37.
Shoemaker, Robert (1966), ‘“Democracy” and “republic” as understood in late eighteenth-
century America’, American Speech, vol. 41, pp. 83–95.
Smelser, Marshall (1951), ‘The Jacobin phrenzy: federalism and the menace of liberty,
equality, and fraternity’, Review of Politics, vol. 13, pp. 457–82.
Smylie, James (1973), ‘Clerical perspectives on deism: Paine’s The Age of Reason in
Virginia’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 6, pp. 203–20.

246
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Spater, George (1982), ‘The author of “A Forester” Article’, Bulletin of the Thomas Paine
Society, vol. 7, pp. 53–6.
Spater, George (1988), ‘The legacy of Thomas Paine’, in Ian Dyck (ed.), Citizen of the World.
Essays on Thomas Paine (New York: St Martin’s Press), pp. 129–48.
Stafford, William (1982), ‘Religion and the doctrine of nationalism in England at the time of
the French revolution and Napoleonic wars’, in S. Mews (ed.), Religion and National
Identity (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 381–95.
Stignant, P., ‘Wesleyan Methodism and working-class radicalism in the north, 1792–1821’,
Northern History, vol. 6, pp. 98–116.
Thale, Mary (1989), ‘London debating societies in the 1790s’, Historical Journal, vol. 32, pp.
57–86.
Twomey, Richard (1984), ‘Jacobins and Jeffersonians: Anglo-American radical ideology,
1790–1810’, in Margaret Jacob and James Jacob (eds), The Origins of Anglo-American
Radicalism (Allen & Unwin), pp. 284–99.
Walsh, J. D. (1975), ‘Elie Halévy and the birth of Methodism’, Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society, vol. 25, pp. 1–20.
Walvin, James (1977), ‘The English Jacobins, 1789–1799’, Historical Reflections, vol. 4, pp.
91–110.
Wecter, Dixon (1942), ‘Hero in reverse’, Virginia Quarterly Review, vol. 18, pp. 243–59.
Weir, Robert (1976), ‘Who shall rule at home: the American revolution as a crisis of
legitimacy for the colonial elite’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 6, pp. 679–700.
Western, J. R. (1956), ‘The Volunteer Movement as an anti-revolutionary force’, English
Historical Review, vol. 71, pp. 603–14.
Wiener, Joel (1988), ‘Collaborators of a sort: Thomas Paine and Richard Carlile’, in Ian Dyck
(ed.), Citizen of the World. Essays on Thomas Paine (New York: St Martin’s Press ), pp.
104–28.
Weinzierl, Michael (1985), ‘John Reeves and the controversy over the constitutional role of
parliament in England during the French revolution’, Parliaments, Estates and
Representation, vol. 5, pp. 71–7.
Williams, Michael J. (1975), ‘The 1790s: Paine and the Age of Reason’, Bulletin of the
Thomas Paine Society, vol. 5, pp. 13–27.
Williams, Michael J. (1976), ‘The 1790s: the impact of infidelity’, Bulletin of the Thomas
Paine Society, vol. 6, pp. 21–30.
Winkler, Henry R. (1952), ‘The pamphlet campaign against political reform in Great Britain,
1790–5’, Historian, vol. 15, pp. 23–40.
Wood, Gordon (1979), ‘The democratization of mind in the American revolution’, in Robert
Horwitz (ed.), The Moral Foundations of the American Republic (Charlottesville, Va:
Virginia University Press), pp. 102–28.
Young, Claribel (1977), ‘A reexamination of William Cobbett’s opinions of Thomas Paine’,
Journal of the Rutgers University Library, vol. 39, pp. 7–28.

247
 INDEX

Abdie 162 Augustine 95

Aberdeen 211 Awakening (religious revival) 191
Adams, John 1, 35, 52, 57, 112, 153, 159 Aylesbury 15
Adams, John Quincey 112
Africa 2, 84, 157 Babeuf, Grachus 198, 206
agrarian laws 9, 125, 130-1, 133, 159 Bacon, Francis 163
agriculture 41, 77, 80, 96-7, 101, 117, 126, ballot 16-17
155, 157, 166, 199- 201, 211, 214 Baltimore 34, 191
Aikin, John 132-3 Bank of England 108, 147
Alaska 157 Bank of North America 56, 89-90, 100
Albany 52, 207 banks 18, 56
Alexandria (Va.) 192 Baptists 123, 163, 186
Alford 21 Barbauld, Anna 132
Alfred 10, 123 Barlow, Joel 27, 30-1, 111, 122, 147, 180,
Alien and Sedition Acts 113 190, 209
Alien Bill 127 Barruel, Abbé 153
America, British colonies in 12, 14-17, Bastille 1, 26-7, 64, 72, 115, 143
21-2, 39-62, 159 Bath 211
America, United States of 28, 30-34, 36, 66, Bellamy, Edward 213
76-8, 82, 87, 97, 105, 108, 112, 114, 121, Bellers, John 84n, 109
133, 142, 156-60, 165, 167, 174, 177, Belper 118
191-3, 204, 206, 209-10, 213-14 benevolence 12, 102, 179, 204
American Philosophical Society 23 Bennet, Rev. G. 185
American revolution 13, 15-16, 23-6, 39-62, Bentham, Jeremy 11, 92, 154, 214
70, 75, 94, 100, 122, 128, 167, 171, 179 Benthamism 213
Analytical Review 70, 132, 153, 189 Bible 10, 61, 72-3, 86, 178-95, 200, 204-5,
ancient constitution 10, 16, 90, 167 208
Anglicanism ( see Church of England) Bibliothêque Nationale 34
animals 22-3 bicameral assemblies 47, 57, 78, 89
anti-Federalists 90, 112 Bill of Rights 78, 150, 210
anti-Jacobinism 146-7, 150, 158 Binns, John 136
Arcadia 156 Birmingham 63, 69, 111, 116, 118, 120-1,
aristocracy 9-10, 41-3, 46, 48-9, 51-2, 58, 143-4, 149, 211-12
66, 72, 74-5, 77, 89-90, 94, 102, 104-6, black Americans 36, 102
121, 126, 147, 153, 155, 158, 197, 215, Black Lamp 169
217 blacksmiths 141, 152
Aristotle 95, 146 Blackstone, William 86, 92
Articles of Confederation 57, 77, 90 Blair, Hugh 162
artisans ( see also mechanics, labourers, Bolingbroke, Lord 179, 188
working classes) 15, 48, 52, 57-9, 60, Bolton 211
104, 115, 118, 152, 156, 184, 209 Bone, John 207
Ashton-under-Lyme 211 Bonneville, Nicolas de 33, 36
Association for the Preservation of Liberty Boothby, Sir Brooke 70, 148, 155
and Property against Republicans and Bordentown 25, 36
Levellers 142, 159, 165 Boston 211
Associated Counties Movement 16-18 Boston (US) 25
astronomy 185 Bradford 118
atheism 135, 171, 177, 180, 184, 188, Brandywine 54
190, 193, 206, 212 brewers 15

248
 INDEX

Bridgwater 129 69-70, 113, 134-5, 147, 153, 188, 211

Brissot, Jacques 27, 30 Cicero 93, 163
Bristol 7, 118 cities 17
Bristol Society for Constitutional citizenship 46-7, 96, 155
Information 110 civil society 65, 126, 160-1, 166, 186
British Convention 119, 141 civilization 55, 67, 76, 78-9, 86, 94-6, 126,
Brown, William 163 132, 153-9, 165, 197-8, 201, 206
Buckingham 194 class, class consciousness 7, 18, 40-1, 48,
Buckinghamshire 156 59, 61, 72, 74, 104, 120, 131, 213
Burdett, Sir Francis 210 clergy 17, 36, 52-3, 69-70, 74, 102, 112-13,
Burgh, James 16, 87 121, 142, 144, 146, 153, 160, 180-1, 184,
Burke, Edmund 3-5, 14, 26, 61, 63-84, 87, 186, 191-2, 195, 211-12
91-2, 94, 105, 112, 116, 119-20, 123, Clerkenwell 170
127, 129, 131, 133, 145, 149, 154-6, 160, Clootz, Anacharsis 30
164-6, 168, 216 Cobbett, William 20, 36, 147, 187, 210-11,
and An Appeal from the Old to the New 217
Whigs 150 Collins, Anthony 178
and Reflections on the Revolution in Cold Norton 133
France 3, 26, 63-84, 112, 120, 123, Coleridge, S.T. 134
129, 149, 154-6, 160, 164 colonial legislatures 41
and Thoughts and Details on colonies 2, 12, 14-16, 22-3, 39-41, 44,
Scarcity 65 49-54, 69, 79
Burlamaqui, Jean Jacques 12-13, 93-4, 160, Combination Acts 141
162, 164 commerce 9, 18, 33, 41, 44-50, 53-6, 59, 61,
Burns, Robert 213 68-9, 74-5, 77-80, 82, 84, 94, 96-101,
Bute, Lord 14 121, 126, 156, 158-60, 196, 198, 204,
206, 209, 211
commercial society 5, 18, 126, 155-6, 159
Calais 28 Committee of General Security 31
Calvin, Jean 153
common law 92, 149
Cambridge 10, 63, 118, 133, 189
Commonwealthmen 40
Cambridge Constitutional Society 11
communism (see community of goods)
Cambridge Intelligencer 117, 209
community of goods ( see also equality of
Canterbury 156, 168
property, levelling’) 125, 134, 158, 196,
capitalists 215
199-201, 204, 206-8
Carlile, Richard 190, 210, 212-13
competition 214
Carlile, Thomas Paine 212
Concord 15, 39
Carmichael, Gershom 86
Condorcet, Marquis de 26, 29-30, 32
Carpenter, William 213
Congress 24-5, 35
carpenters 116
Connecticut 35
Carthage 164
consent 7, 9, 12, 15-16, 40-41, 45, 56-7, 60,
Cartwright, Major John 10, 15-17, 49, 64,
78, 87-8, 150
87-8, 127, 130, 190
passive vs. active consent 87-8
Catholics 17, 135, 166, 180
conservatism/conservatives 147, 150-1,
Chalmers, James 53
Constantinople 34
Chapman, Thomas 75
constitution, American 49, 57
charity 81, 99, 102, 155, 163, 177, 184,
constitution, British/English 9-11,
200-1, 205
17, 39-40, 43, 50-2, 65, 71, 73, 78, 90,
Charles 16
115, 123, 129-32, 136, 142, 151, 154,
charters 36, 80
160, 185
Chartism 92, 213-15
constitution, French 28, 30, 32, 74, 82, 90,
Chatham 112
112, 118
Cheetham, James 20
constitution, mixed/balanced 9-11, 41, 45,
Christ 103, 109, 111, 180-3, 187-8, 190-2,
57-8, 74, 89-90, 113, 128, 154
213
constitution, written 50, 73, 77
Christianity 6, 20, 177-95
constitutional convention 41, 49, 58, 77-8,
Christie, Thomas 30, 68-9, 71, 75, 127
86-90
Church and King mobs 143, 168
constitutionalism 9-11, 16, 28, 32, 35, 40,
Church of England 16-17, 21, 52, 62, 63, 66,
43, 50, 61, 86-90, 94, 103, 121, 130, 150, 154

249
 INDEX

Constitutionalist party 58-9 Dorchester 114

Continental Congress 44 Dover 21, 27
convention 16, 28-32, 73, 86, 94 Dronfield 144, 164
Cooper, Thomas 124, 133 Dublin 27, 118, 189
coopers 152 duelling 22
Coventry 118 Dumouriez, General Charles 29
Conway, Moncure 31, 102 Dundas, Henry 117
Corday, Charlotte 30 Dundee 117, 162, 211
corporations 80 Durham 158
Cornwall 7, 21, 188 duties 74, 90-2, 97, 99, 179-80, 184, 203
Cornwallis, General 25, 55 Dutton, Thomas 191
corruption 5, 7-9, 14-17, 40-1, 45, 47-8, 53,
66-7, 69-70, 74, 87, 97, 103, 105, 122,
East Indies 55, 168
134, 167, 177, 211, 215
Eaton, Daniel Isaac 120, 125, 165
cosmopolitanism 49, 90, 103, 211, 216
Edinburgh 117-19, 122-3, 131, 146, 152-3,
Council of Censors 51, 61
158, 169, 211
country party 40, 103
education 81, 99, 108, 167
Critical Review 153
Egypt 181
Cromwell, Oliver 149
elections 6-7, 15, 17, 57, 123, 127
Culloden, Battle of 172
emigration 44
Cumberland, Richard 93, 163
enclosures 117
cutlers 119
Enfield, William 133
England ( see Great Britain)
D’Alembert, Jean 191 Epictetus 163
Danton, Georges Jacques 28-9, 100 Erskine, David 61
Dartmouth University 191 Erskine, Henry 131
Davenant, Charles 101 Erskine, Thomas 28, 85, 132, 165, 188, 203
David 182 Essex 133
de Lolme, J.L. 40 equality 9, 12, 26, 39-40, 49, 58-9, 68, 70,
Deane, Silas 24-5, 100 72, 100, 102, 104, 106, 115, 122, 124-5,
Declaration of Independence 23, 51, 77 128, 131, 147-8, 150-2, 155-8, 163, 212,
deference 46, 49, 60, 66, 104, 113-14, 168 214, 216
Deforgues, Chemin 31 equality of property ( see also ‘levelling’)
deism 5, 34, 49, 102, 108, 113, 135, 171, 124-5, 133, 157-9, 206
177-95, 197, 203-4, 206, 211 equality of natural property 198
Deistical Society 191 evangelicism 173, 188
democracy 6, 53, 56-8, 62, 66, 90, 107, 122, Evans, Thomas 210
153, 167, 171, 184, 212, 216 exchange 97, 214
democracy, Athenian 77, 122 executive power 9, 29, 32, 40, 45, 57, 59, 78,
democracy, direct 41, 88 90
democracy, representative ( see also Exodus 182
representation) 77, 88, 94
Denmark 140
Derby 118 faction ( see also party) 89, 126, 158
farmers 7, 46, 48, 58, 97, 104, 142, 156, 217
Derbyshire 118
Federal Convention 49
Despard, Col. Edward 170
Deuteronomy 182 Federalists 34-6, 57, 89-90, 111, 209
feudalism 67-8, 70, 72, 155-6
Devon 144
Filmer, Robert 70
Devonshire 145
Dickinson, John 39 Fitzgerald, Lord Edward 28
Fitzwilliam, Lord 140
dictatorship 29
Flower, Benjamin 117, 189
Directory 32
Dissenters 6, 8-9, 16, 19, 63-4, 69-70, 75, food prices 15, 101, 114, 119, 133, 148,
151-2, 165-6, 200, 217
82, 83, 93, 116, 124, 132-4, 141, 143,
four stages theory of property 126, 205, 208
153, 184, 188-9
divine right theory of monarchy 8, 83, 91, Fox, Charles James 17, 26, 127, 140
Foxite 114
154
France 24-6, 30-1, 33-4, 36, 44, 55, 64,
division of labour 94, 134, 157, 213
66-70, 72, 74-5, 78, 81-2, 84, 86-8, 103,

250
 INDEX

112-15, 118-19, 122, 129-31, 140, 145, Grotius, Hugo 86, 93, 160, 163, 200, 202
148, 150, 155, 158-9, 166, 168, 177, 180
franchise 6-7, 9, 48, 58, 167
Habeus Corpus Act 141
Franklin, Benjamin 22-5, 89, 102
Habsburg, House of 84
Frederick, King of Prussia 21
Haiti 211
freedom of trade 46-7, 50, 59, 76, 79, 81,
Halifax 118
96-101, 108, 126, 157, 206, 212
Hall, Charles 208
Freemasonry 36, 153, 173, 191, 193
Hall, John 85
French revolution of 1789 6, 16-18, 63-9,
Hamilton, Alexander 112
72, 103, 128, 150, 152, 155, 166-7, 177,
Hamilton, James Edward 146
191, 209, 214
Hanover 33
Frend, William 133
happiness 42, 78, 99, 150, 162, 165-6,
Frost, John 122
179-80, 188
Fulton, Robert 33
Hardy, Thomas 118, 141, 143, 166, 207
fundholders, funding system 9, 33
Harrington, James 7, 9, 130
Harringtonianism 5, 98, 109
game laws 74 Hartley, David 113
general will 74 Harvard University 191
Genesis 163, 181-3, 202-6 Hatfield 115
gentry 7, 9, 110, 142, 153 Henri IV 75
George III 13, 23, 42, 51, 53, 55, 61, 66, 87, Henry, Patrick 49
127, 165 Herbert of Cherbury, Lord 178, 192
George IV 211 hereditary succession 43, 45-6, 65, 68, 74,
Georgia 23, 57 77, 88, 130
German-Americans 61-2, 213 Hereford 118
Germany 140, 157, 165 Hertford 118
Gerrald, Joseph 123 Hicks, Willett 36
Gibbon, Edward 178 Hobbes, Thomas 12, 93, 178, 188
Girondins 28-31 Hodgson, William 133, 141
Glasgow 117-18, 213 Holcroft, Thomas 111
God 7, 10-12, 21, 35, 43, 53, 67, 101-3, 124, Holland 26, 39, 55, 82, 86
130, 163, 177-84, 187-90, 192, 196, 198, Hollis, Thomas Brand 127
200-5, 208 Holt, Daniel 126
Godwin, William 3, 27, 111, 134, 135, 146, Holyoake, George Jacob 213
206 Home Office 143
gold 97-8 Horne Tooke, John 27, 86, 128, 141, 167
Goldsmith, Oliver 22 Hounslow 127-8
Gomorrah 192 House of Commons 6-7, 14-17, 40, 43, 51,
Gordon, Thomas 7, 9 70, 74, 87-8, 155
Gordon Riots 76 House of Lords 43, 70, 80, 105, 155
government 8-9, 22, 42, 44, 46, 49, 52, 57-8, Howe, Lord 54
63, 65, 67, 71-80, 82, 86-91, 94-7, 99, Huddersfield 118, 211
101-3, 105, 119, 121-4, 132, 140-1, 149, Hull 211
153, 158, 160-2, 164, 167 Hulme, Obadiah 10, 16, 87
Grafton, Duke of 20 Hume, David 11, 46, 56, 91-2, 94, 97, 154-5,
Grantham 21 157, 178-9, 188
Great Britain 1-5, 7, 11-12, 24-8, 32-3, 36, Hunt, Henry 210-11
42, 50-5, 73, 79, 82, 103, 110, 111-13, Hutcheson, Francis 12, 86, 163
129-30, 145, 148, 150, 168-70, 177, 188, Hyde 211
191, 193, 196, 209
Greece 9-10, 54, 67-8, 88, 164
illuminism 153
Green, John Richards 158
independence 15-17, 23, 32, 39-40, 42,
Green, Thomas 129
44-7, 49, 51-9, 63, 72, 82, 91-2, 103,
Greene, Nathaniel 23
105, 113-14, 130, 162, 166, 186, 215
Greenock 213
American independence 1, 23, 32, 39-40,
Greenwich 184
42, 44-7, 49, 53-4, 56-7, 63, 72, 103
Grenada 142
and property 15, 17, 57-8, 91, 130
Grey, Charles 127, 131
and the state of nature 12, 56, 160, 161-2

251
 INDEX

as a radical ideal 10, 15, 17, 56, 58, 91, King’s Bench Prison 14
113, 130, 186 Kippis, Andrew 127
India 2, 22, 39 Kirkbride, Joseph 25
Indians (Native Americans) 23, 78, 156,
197, 199
labour, productive/unproductive 215
industry ( see manufacturing)
labourers ( see also artisans, mechanics,
Inglis, Charles 52
working classes) 7, 15, 17, 42, 48, 57-8,
inheritance 81, 134, 197-200, 204-5, 212
100, 104, 112, 117, 126, 129, 142,
insurrection 90, 168-70
149-50, 152, 156-8, 165, 169, 178, 185,
intellectuals 48-9
202, 207, 210, 213, 215, 217
interdependence 50, 56, 92, 97
Lafeyette, Marquis de 26, 88
interest 8, 40, 42, 45, 47, 49, 55, 58-9, 72-3,
laissez-faire (see freedom of trade)
76-7, 79, 89, 91, 96, 100, 114, 144, 186,
Lambeth Association 169
207
Lanarkshire 117
‘internal revolution’ 57-8
land 9, 15, 46, 95, 97-8, 123, 133, 155-6, 159,
international law 11
196-8, 201-3, 205-7, 212
internationalism ( see also cosmopolitanism)
language 86, 104-6, 109
55, 88, 184
Lauderdale, Lord 64, 127
Ipswich 115
Laurens, Col. John 24
Ireland 4, 28, 39, 66, 112, 118, 168, 170, 173,
lawyers 65, 68, 98, 117, 155, 215
185
Le Havre 33-4
Irish 168, 189
Lee, General Charles 51
Irish-Americans 36
Lee, Richard 207
iron-mongers 15
Leeds 118, 211
Ironside, Isaac 213
Leicester 118, 143, 145
isolationism 53
Leicester Constitutional Society 114
Italy 140
Leith 118
Levellers 90
Jackson, Andrew 36 ‘levelling’ 65, 121, 125-6, 133, 148-9, 153,
Jackson, William 189 156
Jacobinism 3, 27-8, 131, 143, 148, 151, 153, Leviticus 182
156, 166, 191, 210 Lewes 21
Jacobitism 145, 172 Lexington 1, 15, 23, 39, 42
Jamaica 142 liberalism 5, 18, 47, 60, 96-7
Jay, John 112 liberty ( see also negative liberty, positive
Jay’s Treaty 32 liberty) 8-9, 12, 22, 26-7, 39-40, 42,
Jebb, John 16, 87 44-5, 54, 56, 65, 67-8, 87, 89-90, 97, 99,
Jefferson, Thomas 23, 26, 31, 34-6, 107, 123-6, 128-30, 132, 145, 151-2, 155,
112-13, 209 162-3, 165-7
Jeffersonianism 47 Lincoln 148
Jenyns, Soame 10, 17 Lincoln, Abraham 193
Jesuits 145 Lincoln College, Oxford 142
Jesus Christ Club 190 Lincolnshire 141
jewellers 15 Linton, W.J. 213
Jews 43, 135, 180 Liverpool 186
Joan of Arc 54 Llandaff, Bishop of ( see Watson, Richard)
Job 189 Locke, John 2, 5, 7, 9-12, 18, 45, 70, 72,
Johnson, William 29 85-8, 91-3, 99, 106, 124, 129, 135, 150,
Johnson, Joseph 133 161, 164, 166, 178, 207
Jonah 182 Lofft, Capel 70
Joyce, Jeremiah 133 London 7, 14, 17, 21-2, 27, 63, 81, 118-19,
justice 27, 66, 68, 71, 81, 99, 101, 161, 202, 141, 143, 145-6, 168, 170, 184, 208, 211,
216 213
London, Bishop of 188
London Corresponding Society 115,
Kant, Immanuel 103 118-20, 123, 128, 131, 135, 145, 159,
Kent 21
165, 168-70, 190, 194, 207-8
Kentucky 191
Louis XVI 26, 28, 30, 71-2, 112, 115
Kilham, Alexander 171, 176

252
 INDEX

Louisiana 35 Monroe, James 31-3

loyalism (American) 23, 25, 39, 58 Montesquieu, Baron de 27, 40, 53, 86, 129,
loyalism (British) 111-13, 116-17, 120, 123, 150
125, 129, 131, 139-76, 186, 210 Monthly Review 153
Luxembourg prison 31 moral economy 100, 108
luxury 8-9, 17-18, 41, 46, 81, 97, 125-6, More, Hannah 151, 187
157-9, 165, 199 and A Country Carpenter’s Confession of
Faith 187
and Village Politics 151, 161
Macaulay, Catherine 64, 70, 129, 133
Morris, Gouverneur 29-31, 36, 177
MacAulay, George Mackenzie 190 Moses 10, 43, 72, 163, 180, 182, 187, 192
Machiavelli 9-10, 124 Mountain 28
Mackintosh, James 67-8, 124, 127, 131, 155
Moyle, Walter 7
Magna Carta 70, 78, 150 Muir, Thomas 141
Maidstone 207
majority rule 9, 57, 88-9, 216
Malthus, T.R. 201 Napoleon Bonaparte 15, 33-4, 166, 209
Manchester 63, 111, 116, 118, 130, 133, 136, Nares, Robert 142
143-4, 207, 211 National Assembly 27, 69, 74, 127
manners 67-8, 155-6 National Convention 27, 100, 119, 147-8
manufacturers 7, 9, 76, 97, 104, 116, 142, national debt 9, 18, 44, 47, 55-6, 68, 80, 82,
149-50, 199, 215, 217 202, 215
manufacturing 1, 59, 68, 77, 98, 157, 159, nationalism 55, 136
185, 202-3, 213-14 natural jurisprudence (see natural law)
Marat, Jean-Paul 29-30, 147 natural law 5, 10-13, 56, 66, 83, 86, 90-6,
Marcus Antonius 163 98-9, 107, 161-4, 166, 196, 198-200,
Margarot, Maurice 116, 126 202, 204, 206, 208
market ( see commercial society, freedom of needs ( see also wants) 79, 94, 96, 98, 200, 214
trade) negative liberty 95, 99
Martyn, Henry 101 Neville, Henry 7
Marvell, Andrew 135 New Annual Register 153
Maryland 20 Newark 126
masons 117 Newark (NJ) 23, 192
Massachusetts 41 Newburgh 191
materialism 211-12 Newcastle upon Tyne 118
mechanics 97, 104, 146, 215 Newfoundland 142
mercantilism 97-8 Newgate 33, 141, 211
merchants 9, 15, 58-9, 76, 79, 97, 103, 116, New Hampshire 41
142, 156, 168 New Jersey 25
Methodism 170-1, 179, 190 New Rochelle 25, 35-6
middle classes/orders 6, 17, 59, 67-8, 80, Newspaper Act 141
127, 129, 131, 133-4, 168, 210 newspapers, government control over 141
Middlesex 16 Newtonianism 101, 204
‘modernization’ 45, 60, 216 ‘New Whigs’ 63, 66, 71
military capacity/defense 45, 47 New York 23, 35-6, 51-2, 54, 191, 209
militia 133-4, 168 Nonconformists (see Dissenters)
Millar, John 117 Nore mutiny 170
millennium, millenarianism 40, 60, 64, 69, Norfolk 116
86, 101-4, 110, 155, 183, 187 Norfolk, Duke of 129
Milton, John 85, 135 Normans, ‘Norman Yoke’ 8, 10, 18, 76, 78,
Miranda, General Francisco 29 123
mixed government ( see mixed constitution) North, Dudley 101
monarchy 8-10, 16, 26-8, 31-3, 39-43, 45-6, Norwich 115-16, 118, 121, 128, 135, 145-
49-51, 58, 65-6, 69, 72, 74-7, 88-9, 6, 165, 211
94-5, 103-6, 110, 119, 122, 128, 130, Nottingham 118, 143, 170
134, 141, 153-4, 163, 166, 171, 211-12, Nottinghamshire 10
216-17 Numbers 182
money 25, 54, 56, 65, 98, 124
monopolies 74, 80, 125-6
O’Brien, Bronterre 214

253
 INDEX

Ogilvie, William 124, 133, 200 emigrates to America 22

Ohio Valley 191 his election to the National Convention
‘old countries’/‘new countries’ 59, 85, 95-7, 28, 148
99, 101, 196, 206 ideas of property of 5, 54, 96-101, 196-
Oldham 211 208
Old Sarum 7 in France 25-34
‘Oldys, Francis’ (George Chalmers) 20, 22, spurious biographies of 20, 142, 187
142, 146 supporters of (see Painites)
Oswald, John 133 trial of for seditious libel 28, 165
overproduction 214 Painites 4, 110-76, 184, 190-2, 207, 209-13
Owen, Robert 192, 207, 213, 215 Paisley 118, 213
Owenite socialists (see also socialism) 206-7, Paley, William 11, 92, 150, 155
214 and Reasons for Contentment 150
Oxford 63, 142, 146 and Equality as Consistent with the British
Constitution 150
Palmer, Elihu 35-6, 191
Paine, Thomas Palmer, Thomas Fyshe 141
and The Age of Reason 30, 32-5, 93, 102, paper money 18, 54, 56, 98, 108, 213
105, 144, 164, 170, 177-95, 203, 213 Paris 25-8, 31, 33, 85, 100, 119, 131, 145, 183
and Agrarian Justice 33, 95, 101, 126, Partick 117
164, 196-208 party 40, 47, 56, 74, 89, 106, 114-15, 210
and The American Crisis 23, 53-6 paternalism 45-6
and American independence 23-5, 39-62, patriarchalism 45, 162
75-6 patriotism 45-7, 143, 211
and The Case of the Officers of the Excise 22 patronage (see corruption)
and commerce 44, 46-51, 55-6, 60, 76, peace movement 133
78-82, 96-101, 198, 203, 206, 209 Penn, William 84, 102-3, 109
and Common Sense 2, 17, 23, 39, 42-53, Pennsylvania 23-5, 36, 42, 47, 51, 57-9,
61, 85, 95, 97, 102-3, 106, 135, 198 61, 62, 77-8, 89, 100, 103, 122
and The Decline and Fall of the English perfectibility 103-4, 109, 187
System of Finance 33, 86, 98, 108, Perry, Sampson 119, 123, 125, 166
210 Perth 112, 117-18, 169
and the Dissertation on First Principles of Philadelphia 22-3, 42, 49, 52, 54, 56, 58,
Government 32 108, 109, 191, 207
and the Dissertations on Government; the physiocracy 97-8
Affairs of the Bank; and Paper Pigott, Charles 70, 120-2, 124
Money 56, 98 Pilkington, James 125
and Edmund Burke 3, 5, 26, 72-3 Pindar, Peter 141
and Four Letters on Interesting Subjects Pitt, William (the Elder) 14, 26
50, 61 Pitt, William (the Younger) 98, 121, 127,
and the Letter Addressed to the Addressers 140, 167
27, 82, 113 Pittite 114
and the Letter to the Abbe Raynal 55-6 Place, Francis 115, 141, 170, 190
and the Letter to George Washington 32 Playfair, William 153
and the Letter to Mr. Secretary Dundas Pliny 163
114 Plowden, Francis 161
and natural law 13, 90-6 politeness 67, 83
and Prospects on the Rubicon 56, 97-8 political economy 101, 213, 215
and religion 20-1 political obligation 66
and republicanism 45-51, 57-9, 76-9, 86- Poole, Thomas 129
90, 209-11, 213-15 poor, poverty 17, 33, 48, 62, 67, 76, 78-80,
and rights 13, 73-4, 90-6, 196-208, 216 94-7, 99-101, 104-5, 108, 115, 125,
and the Rights of Man 2, 20, 27-8, 33, 130, 133, 150-2, 155, 158, 163-4, 196,
46, 50, 53, 65, 71-176, 184, 196-9, 198-9, 201, 206, 212, 214-215
212-13 population 45, 47, 77, 98, 162, 199-200
and Theophilanthropy 33 Portland, Duke of 26, 127
appeal of his works 4, 104-6, 111-14, Portsmouth 149
120-6 Portugal 50, 140, 154
as exciseman 21-2
positive liberty 95
burnt in effigy 144
celebration of his birthday 2, 211, 213 potters 116

254
 INDEX

Potteries 116 13
Pownall, Thomas 7, 9, 88, 108 classical republicanism 8-9, 46, 54, 122,
Presbyterians 42, 111, 143, 145, 149 156, 210
President (US) 57, 159 commercial republicanism 5-6, 46-7, 56,
press, freedom of the 127, 143, 211 95-6, 156, 209, 211, 216
price regulation 58, 100-1, 108, 126, 133 democratic republicanism 45, 47, 49, 56,
Price, Richard 16, 18, 46, 63, 65, 70, 72, 86, 76, 87
88, 91, 103-4, 127-9, 132, 153, 160 Harringtonian republicanism 5-7, 9
Priestley, Joseph 11, 18, 27, 64, 69-70, 85, 97, resistance, right of 7, 15, 70, 90, 127, 164
103-4, 132, 143-4, 153, 160, 189, 191 revelation 177, 180-1, 183, 187-8, 192,
primogeniture 74, 81, 109, 200 203-4
prison reform 17 revolution 1-4, 15-16, 26, 30, 32, 34, 39-
progress 34, 68, 126, 181, 196, 201-3 69, 122, 139-40, 167-70, 175, 177
proletariat 120 Revolution of 1688 10, 16, 27, 52, 64-6,
property 5, 7, 9, 12, 15, 32-3, 44, 46, 48, 70, 72, 78, 80, 86-7, 123, 153-4
50, 56-9, 65-7, 70, 88, 90-1, 96-8, Revolution Society 63, 71, 127
100-1, 123-5, 127, 129, 132, 142, 153- Rhode Island 192
9, 160, 168, 181, 186, 196-9, 201-3, Ricardo, David 98
205-7 Rickman, Thomas Clio 22, 27, 34
labour theory of property 99, 124, 201, 213 Riland, Rev. John 163
Providence 103, 178, 197, 204-5 rights 5, 7-8, 10-13, 40, 49-50, 57, 65, 67-
Psalms 189 74, 83, 86-7, 90-6, 105, 107, 108, 113,
publicans 142-3 118, 122-5, 127, 129-30, 134, 154-5,
Pufendorf, Samuel 11-12, 93-4, 124, 160, 158-65, 174, 199-206, 210, 212-17
162-4, 200, 208 and the state of nature 10, 13, 65, 67-8,
puritans, puritanism 18, 48, 153 70, 73, 90-6, 123-4, 159-64
Robespierre, Maximillien 26, 28-31, 147
Robinhood Club 15, 179
Quakers, Quakerism 2, 5, 20, 22, 25, 28, 36, Robinson, George 133
42, 49, 52, 54, 62, 86, 90, 93, 98, 101- Robison, John 153
4, 108, 109, 125, 135, 136, 143, 179- Rockingham Whigs 17
81, 191, 194, 203, 216
Rome 8-9, 54, 67-8, 88, 164, 174
Romney, George 38
radicalism 6-18, 40-1, 46, 48, 58, 71, 86-7, Roosevelt, Theodore 177
99, 109, 112, 124, 126-7, 130, 134, Ross, Charles 27
136, 154, 166, 168, 175, 184, 209 Rotherham 26
reason 13, 66, 68, 72, 86-7, 93, 121, 130, Rous, George 70
166, 193 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 70, 86, 92, 122, 124,
Rees, Abraham 127 148, 191, 199
Reeves, John 120, 142, 145-6, 149, 155, Royal Proclamation against Sedition 139
159, 165, 174 Royal Society 21
refinement (see luxury) Royston 118
Reform Act of 1832 212 Rush, Benjamin 23, 49
Reid, William Hamilton 190, 194 Russia 140
religion 44, 48, 69, 74-5, 101-4, 125, 132,
153, 157, 167, 170-1, 211 saddlers 15
religious toleration 45, 63-4, 69, 82, 114, Saint-Pierre, Abbé de 84
121, 180
Samuel 43, 182
rent 80, 199 Sandwich 21
representation 11, 15, 40-2, 45, 49, 52, 56, Santo Domingo 35
70, 74, 77, 112-13, 125, 145, 154, 210
Satan 180, 192
Republican Society 27 Saxons 10, 87, 90, 123
republicanism (see also representation, Scarborough 144
democracy, government, property) 5,
science 21, 26, 56, 181, 184, 199, 203-4
8-10, 14, 16-18, 27, 31, 33-5, 40, 43- Scotch-Irish 62
7, 51-3, 56, 59, 60, 68, 70-1, 74-5, 77, Scotland 4, 7, 117, 119, 146, 150, 162, 168,
80, 86, 88, 95-6, 99-100, 104, 106,
170, 185
113, 115, 118, 121, 124, 128, 130-1, Scottish Enlightenment 12, 126
155-9, 166-7, 184, 187, 191, 201, 208-

255
 INDEX

Scottish nationalism 136 Spenceans 170, 206, 210

secret service 141-2 Spencer, Herbert 108
secularism 177, 217 Spitalfields 14, 170
Seditious Meetings Act 131, 141, 146 Spithead mutiny 170, 191
Senate (US) 57, 159 Stamp Act 40
Seneca 163 stamp duties 39
separation of powers 40, 50 standing army (see also militia) 8, 68, 134
servants 91 Stanhope, Earl 70
Shaftesbury, Third Earl of 178 state of nature 7, 10-12, 65-6, 79, 91, 93-4,
Sharp, Granville 10, 12, 16 96, 108, 123, 156, 158-66, 197, 200,
sheep-farming 117 202, 205-7, 212
Sheffield 113-14, 116, 118-19, 132, 140, stewardship 134, 197
145, 164-6, 169, 171, 213 Stewart, Dugald 117, 162
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley 64, 127-8 Stirling 117-18
Sherwin, W.T. 112, 210 Stockport 118, 211, 217
shoemakers 115-18 Stokesley 211
shopkeepers 97, 116 Stone, Francis 133
Shrewsbury 144-5 St Vincent de Paul 184
Sidney, Algernon 7-8, 124, 135, 164, 208 students 117
silver 97-8 style (see language)
sin 95, 150, 162, 188 Suffolk 20, 144
size of nations 27, 41, 52, 77, 88-9, 122 suffrage 6-7, 9, 12, 15-17, 32, 48, 57, 62,
slavery 10, 17, 22, 34-5, 53-4, 67, 86, 93, 82, 91, 123, 127, 134, 158-9
114, 121, 146, 166, 211 Surrey 119
Smith, Adam 5, 46, 50, 56, 86, 92, 94, 97-9, Sweden 140
108, 153, 155, 157, 162, 215 Switzerland 31
Smith, Sir Robert 33
Smith, William 53
tailors 115
sociability 11, 92-3, 95, 177
Tammany Hall 209
social contract/compact 9-11, 42, 72-4, 87,
Tatham, Edward 146, 160
91, 93, 113, 124, 126, 129, 150, 154,
taxation 7, 17, 39-40, 54-8, 70, 74, 76, 78-
161, 216
82, 95-6, 99, 104, 117, 121, 124, 126,
socialism 92, 167, 214-15
132-3, 150-1, 156-7, 165, 196-7, 199-
‘society’ 42, 52, 76-9, 94-5, 99, 108, 117,
202, 214-15
121, 134, 160
Taylor, William 133, 145
Society for Constitutional Information 11, 17,
Temple of Reason 212
26, 64, 70, 114, 119, 128, 130-1, 136
Tennessee 191
Society for the Promotion of Christian
Terror, French revolutionary 31, 166, 204
Knowledge 142
Test and Corporation Acts 63, 69
Society for the Suppression of Vice 188
Tewkesbury Society for Political and Moral
Society of Ancient Deists 179
Information 145
Society of Supporters of the Bill of Rights 15
Thackeray, Rev. Francis 213
Society of the Friends of the People 64, 82,
Thatcher, Margaret 143
83, 117, 119, 127, 130
Thelwall, John 111, 121, 124-6, 141, 144,
Socrates 184
165, 169
Sodom 192
theology 34-5, 102, 177-95, 198, 210
soldiers 142-3, 168-9
Theophilanthropy 33-4, 183, 191
Somerset 129
Thetford 20, 25, 102
South America 51, 82
Thomas Paine Society 2
South Carolina 23
Thomas, Robert 162-3
Southcott, Joanna 187
Thomson, William 133
sovereignty 10, 16, 25, 40-1, 58, 60, 70, 74,
timber merchants 15
93, 112, 117, 119, 121, 124, 154, 162
Tindal, Matthew 178
Spain 44, 50, 82, 140, 154
titles 22, 74, 105, 150, 156
Sparta 156, 164
Toland, John 178
speculation 8-9, 47, 65, 98, 100, 202
Tories, Toryism 6, 18, 51, 54, 66, 68, 89,
Spence, Thomas 107, 124, 133-4, 137, 200,
106, 112, 153-5, 174, 178
207-8
Towers, Joseph 7, 70, 127

256
 INDEX

trade (see commerce) Washington, George 24-6, 30-3, 36, 51, 53-
Treason Act 131, 141 4, 122, 184, 192
treason and sedition trials 117-18, 127, 140- waste lands 133
1, 163, 165, 190 watchmaker 36
Trenchard, John 7, 9 Waterhouse, Benjamin 1
Trenton 53 Waterloo 166, 210
True Whigs 9-10, 13, 118 Watson, Richard 141, 187, 191, 198, 203,
Tucker, Josiah 49, 83 206
tythes 121 wealth (see property)
tyranny 9, 39-40, 43, 46, 59, 64, 67, 70, weavers 14, 115-16
72, 77, 88, 216 Wedgewood, Josiah 6
tyranny of the majority 66, 89-90, 129 welfare state 81, 99-100, 216
Wesley, John 170
Westminster Bridge 119
unicameral assemblies 47, 52, 59, 78, 89
West Riding 169
Unitarians 132-3, 143, 189
Wexford 118
United Britons 169-70
Whigs, Whiggism (see also ‘New Whigs’) 5-
United Englishmen 169-70, 190
6, 8-10, 16-17, 18, 20-1, 40, 43, 45-6,
United Irishmen 118, 136, 153, 170, 175
58, 63-4, 66-8, 71, 83, 86-91, 93, 102,
United Scotsmen 121
106, 118, 122, 126-31, 133, 136, 140,
Universal Society 191
146, 154-5, 157, 164, 178
University of Pennsylvania 24
Whiston, William 86
Unlawful Oaths Act 141
Whitbread, Samuel 64
usury 56
Whitman, Walt 193
utility, utilitarianism 11, 65-6, 83, 91-3, 96,
Wilkes County, North Carolina 14
126, 150, 154, 161, 201, 215
Wilkes, John 13-15, 19, 22, 39, 114
utopianism 104, 109, 133
Wilkesbarre 14
Utrecht 163
Wilkesboro 14
William the Conqueror 43, 73
Valley Forge 24 Williams, David 124, 148
Valmy 119 Williams, Thomas 188, 194
Vatican 34 Wimbledon 143
Vattel, Emmerich de 12, 93-4, 101 Winchester 144
Vermont 57, 122, 191 Windham, William 128
Versailles 32 Winterbotham, William 123, 163
Virginia 25, 51, 195 Wolff, Christian 93
virtue 5-6, 8-9, 11, 15, 18, 41, 43, 45, 47, Wollstonecraft, Mary 27, 30, 67, 147, 155
59, 60, 69, 89, 93, 96, 148, 155, 160, women 35, 53-4, 151, 160, 204
163, 178, 186 Wooller, T.J. 209-11
Volney, Charles 166, 191 Worcester 142
Voltaire, Francois 191 Wordsworth, William 134
volunteer militia 168, 170 working classes (see also artisans, labourers,
voting (see suffrage) mechanics) 4, 7, 27, 81, 104, 146, 154,
156, 210, 213-15
Wyvill, Christopher 17, 87, 128-9, 142
Wade, John 211, 214
wages 81, 101, 125, 133, 158, 202, 215
Wakefield 118 Yale University 191
Wakefield, Gilbert 141, 189, 191 yellow fever 36
Wales 118, 171 York 118
Walker, Thomas 111, 116, 136, 143 York, Duke of 160
Wallace, Robert 86, 200 Yorke, Henry Redhead 34,86
Walpole, Robert 78 York, Duke of 160
wants 12, 42, 46, 52, 55-6, 65-6, 76, 94, Yorke, Henry Redhead 34, 86, 123, 159,
96-7, 124 166-7
war 11, 26, 28, 43, 54-5, 69, 74, 76-8, 94, Yorkshire 16-18, 26, 145
102-3, 109, 143, 156, 159, 166, 168-9 Yorktown 25, 55
Washington D.C. 35 Young, Arthur 131, 155, 157-8, 174

257