THOMAS PAINE (1737-1809)

Thomas Paine, the most democratic vyriter of Enlightenment in America, was an international revolutionary publicist whose works served three countries: America, England and France. His fiery ardour flamed like a beacon guiding patriots in trying times and was a battle-cry during the war.
Thomas Paine was born in Norfolk, England, in a family of poor artisans. At an early age he became interested in Newtonian science and social philosophy. His father could not afford to give him an educa¬tion, so when he was sixteen, he went to sea and served two years as a sailor in the Seven-Year War, during which he took part in a terrific sea battle. When he returned to England, he found employment in Sussex as a tax-collector. Here he learned social science at first hand seeing the hardships of the tax-burdened masses. The tax-collectors were no better off. In 1773 he went to London as a representative of his fellow-workers to petition Parliament for better wages. The result of this'*civil revolt" was that he lost his job.
About this time Paine met Benjamin Franklin in London and Franklin noted his unusual talents. With a letter of recommendation, in which Franklin characterized him as"an ingenious, worthy young man", Paine sailed for America. In Philadelphia he began to work for the Pennsylva¬nia Magazine. In 1776, when relations between Britain and the colonies were drawing to a crisis, Paine's famous pamphlet "Common Sense" appeared, in which he urged a declaration of independence. At the out¬break of the war he enlisted in the American army and was appointed
aide-de-camp (assistant otlicer) to Ue-neral Greene at Fort Lee in New Jersey.
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During the military campaigns between 1776-1783 Paine wrote six¬teen pamphlets dealing with the revo¬lutionary war, under the general title "The American Crisis". The first was written in December 1776, when Wash¬ington's army, having suffered heavy losses, retreated from the Hudson Ri¬ver southward, starving and frozen. Seated by a camp-fire, using a drum¬head as a desk, Paine started writing his great work. It was printed, and Washington had it read before all the regiments encamped in Pennsylvania. The pamphlet restored the morale of the soldiers, helped them to face the hardships and inspired them to achieve victory.
The pamphlet begins with the words: "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 his country; but he that stands it Now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
After the war Paine found himself out of work and stricken with poverty. The states of Pennsylvania and New York came to his aid, and he was given a little farm in New Rochelie. While there, he tried out his engineering talents and attempted to design an iron bridge without pjers. He went to London and Paris with the plans hoping to nnd someone interested in bridge-building. But the political scene of Europe absorbed all his attention. In England he defended the French revolution against reactionary statesmen by writing his now famous Pamphlet “The Rights of Man", in which he tried to open the eyes of Englishmen to the madness and stupidity of their government. He also sug¬gested the overthrow of British monarchy. The pamphlet was denounced as treasonable literature, Paine was accused of treason and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Warned by the poet William Blake, he fled to France that same night and avoided arrest. He offered his services to the champions of the French Revolution, Paine's creed being: "My count¬ry is the world, my religion — to do good" He was welcomed as an international figure, and General Lafayette gave him a key to the Bastille to be presented to Washington. Paine was elected an honorary member of the National Convention; but during the tense year of 1793 he opposed the Jacobin dictatorship. Paine did not understand that the French Revolution was not the same as the American War of Independence. In France the roots of tyranny went deep into history, down a thousand years, and the French masses knew that when they uprooted this tyranny, they would come up against the reactionary forces of all of Europe.
In December 1793 Paine was imprisoned. This did not shake his loyalty to the Revolution. In the Luxembourg prison he continued to work on his pamphlet "The Age of Reason", part of which was already in press. This treatise, gave such a rational view on religion that it bordered on atheism. The author later said that in this work he had gone "marching through the Christian forest with an axe" He wrote: “All national institutions of churches — whether Jewish, Chris¬tian, or Turkish — appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind and monopolize power and profit." "The Age of Reason" was followed by another pamphlet, "Agrarian Justice", in which Paine developed the idea that land should never be anybody's private property, but should be the "common property of the human race". It is not hard to guess what an uproar these pamphlets produced in bourgeois America and among American churchmen.
Released from prison after the death of Robespierre, Paine returned to America to find that his services during the war had been forgotten. Ignored by all, he retired to New Rochelle, but the attacks of his enemies, the Federalists and reactionary clergymen, against him continued till the end of his days. They slandered Paine as a religious infidel even after his death. A torrent of abuse had been heaped upon Thomas Paine for about a hundred and fifty years. But in working-class circles he was always remembered. Paine's birthday was celebrated annually by the early American labour movement. The workers loved this hard-hitting pamphleteer who had fought the people's fight against tyranny.