WEBVTT NOTE Thomas Paine: From Pirate to Revolutionary 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:10.400 The Ludwig von Mises Institute presents The Libertarian Tradition, an audio series with 2 00:00:10.400 --> 00:00:13.360 Jeff Brigenbach. 3 00:00:13.360 --> 00:00:19.300 Depending on whether you reckon by the Julian calendar or the Gregorian calendar, Thomas 4 00:00:19.300 --> 00:00:27.840 Paine was born late in January or early in February of 1737 in Thetford, England, a small 5 00:00:27.840 --> 00:00:34.840 The Theory of Money and Credit The Theory of Money and Credit 6 00:00:57.840 --> 00:01:25.840 At 16, in 1753, he brought it off. He shipped out on a privateer, a private warship authorized by the English government to attack and loot commercial vessels sailing under the flag of any nation with whom England was legally at war. 7 00:01:25.840 --> 00:01:50.840 England was then at war with France in North America in the conflict Americans know as the French and Indian War, which would evolve in a couple of years into the Seven Years War, a truly worldwide war that included battles in such far-flung places as Europe, Africa, India, South America and the Philippines, as well as North America. 8 00:01:50.840 --> 00:01:56.840 All the major European powers of the period participated in the Seven Years' War. 9 00:01:56.840 --> 00:02:00.840 More than a million people lost their lives in it. 10 00:02:00.840 --> 00:02:04.840 And the map of the world underwent major changes as a result. 11 00:02:04.840 --> 00:02:07.840 Canada passed from France to England. 12 00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:11.840 Florida passed from Spain to England. 13 00:02:11.840 --> 00:02:17.840 But when Thomas Paine signed on as a crewman on a privateer in 1753, 14 00:02:17.840 --> 00:02:19.840 all this was in the future. 15 00:02:19.840 --> 00:02:31.340 For the next few years, he and his fellow crewmen concentrated on robbing whatever French commercial vessels they could locate, and they seemed to have done pretty well for themselves. 16 00:02:31.340 --> 00:02:41.840 The costs of commissioning privateers were borne by private investors who hoped to make a profit from the value of the goods seized by their crew members. 17 00:02:41.840 --> 00:02:55.840 Politicians liked them, too. They argued that privateering was less destructive and wasteful than conventional warfare, since the privateer's goal was to capture ships rather than sink them. 18 00:02:55.840 --> 00:03:07.840 Also, and more to the point, privateering was a way of mobilizing armed ships and sailors without spending public money or commissioning naval officers. 19 00:03:07.840 --> 00:03:27.840 Craig Nelson, author of the 2006 book Thomas Paine, Enlightenment, Revolution and the Birth of Modern Nations, told WNYC interviewer Leonard Lopate in 2007 that Thomas Paine's brief career as a privateer was a definite financial success. 20 00:03:27.840 --> 00:03:34.840 When Paine was a young man, he made a lot of money during the Seven Years' War working as a pirate. 21 00:03:34.840 --> 00:03:41.840 And he took two years off and really educated himself in the ideas of the Enlightenment, primarily the theories of Isaac Newton. 22 00:03:41.840 --> 00:03:50.840 And this self-education, which also Benjamin Franklin and George Washington did, is really what made him a figure of his time. 23 00:03:50.840 --> 00:03:56.840 He was able to impress very successful, very famous men, starting with Franklin most importantly. 24 00:03:56.840 --> 00:04:04.840 Payne's meeting with Franklin was still some years in the future, however, for now he had his education to get on with. 25 00:04:04.840 --> 00:04:16.840 He moved to London and spent his two years hanging around bookshops and discussing ideas with the often rather widely read and knowledgeable types he met in such places, 26 00:04:16.840 --> 00:04:25.840 something that became a lifelong habit for him. In 1759, at the age of 22, he married a servant girl. 27 00:04:25.840 --> 00:04:33.340 By then, his two years as a full-time student behind him, he had gone back to corset-making. 28 00:04:33.340 --> 00:04:34.900 It was work he knew. 29 00:04:34.900 --> 00:04:37.080 It enabled him to pay the bills. 30 00:04:37.080 --> 00:04:41.140 But he didn't like it any better than he had as a teenager. 31 00:04:41.140 --> 00:04:46.660 After his wife and their infant child both died less than a year after his marriage, 32 00:04:46.660 --> 00:04:51.100 he began struggling once more to put corset-making behind him. 33 00:04:51.100 --> 00:04:55.800 He tried working as a cobbler, a cabinet-maker, a school teacher. 34 00:04:55.800 --> 00:04:58.400 He failed at everything he tried. 35 00:04:58.400 --> 00:05:03.720 He wasn't as expert a worker in leather or wood as he was at making corsets, much as 36 00:05:03.720 --> 00:05:09.480 he hated it, and since his work wasn't so expert in those trades, his inability to get 37 00:05:09.480 --> 00:05:13.600 along with people raised further problems for him. 38 00:05:13.600 --> 00:05:20.100 As Harvard historian Jill Lepore put it recently in an article on pain in the New Yorker, even 39 00:05:20.100 --> 00:05:24.280 at his best, pain was rough and unpolished. 40 00:05:24.280 --> 00:05:31.020 He was plain-spoken, direct, tactless, blunt. People might put up with that from a man whose 41 00:05:31.020 --> 00:05:36.240 work was of the very highest quality, but they wouldn't put up with it from a man whose 42 00:05:36.240 --> 00:05:43.640 work was only average. Nor were headmasters and fellow teachers too keen on it. As Craig 43 00:05:43.640 --> 00:05:48.880 Nelson put it in that 2007 interview on WNYC, 44 00:05:48.880 --> 00:05:55.160 He made a lot of people mad. He was something of a hard-nosed kind of guy when it came to 45 00:05:55.160 --> 00:06:00.040 philosophical purity, so he made a lot of enemies. 46 00:06:00.040 --> 00:06:07.720 And so it was that in 1762, at the age of 25, Paine turned to thievery once again, this 47 00:06:07.720 --> 00:06:14.400 time as a tax collector for the English government. To his credit, he hated that occupation at 48 00:06:14.400 --> 00:06:20.720 at least as much as he hated sewing whale bones into corsets, and fortunately an opportunity 49 00:06:20.720 --> 00:06:26.120 to escape another despised line of work soon presented itself. 50 00:06:26.120 --> 00:06:32.000 He was living in London, in a boarding house operated by an elderly tobacconist who owned 51 00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:35.200 and managed his own tobacco shop. 52 00:06:35.200 --> 00:06:39.040 The tobacconist, whose health was not good, died. 53 00:06:39.040 --> 00:06:43.160 Payne married the man's daughter and took over the tobacco shop. 54 00:06:43.160 --> 00:06:45.740 And his new career was short-lived. 55 00:06:45.740 --> 00:06:51.720 He lost the shop and had to go back to tax collecting and corset making. 56 00:06:51.720 --> 00:06:55.680 By the summer of 1774 he had had enough. 57 00:06:55.680 --> 00:07:00.220 He was 37 years old and poor as the proverbial church mouse. 58 00:07:00.220 --> 00:07:05.120 He had been forced to sell almost everything he owned to pay his debts. 59 00:07:05.120 --> 00:07:09.720 He and his second wife had split up and gone their separate ways. 60 00:07:09.720 --> 00:07:15.080 He had no prospects, but more corset-making and more tax-collecting. 61 00:07:15.080 --> 00:07:20.520 Willing to try almost anything else, he presented himself to Benjamin Franklin, who was living 62 00:07:20.520 --> 00:07:27.120 in London at that time as a sort of lobbyist or diplomat seeking to influence English policies 63 00:07:27.120 --> 00:07:30.720 that affected the colony of Pennsylvania. 64 00:07:30.720 --> 00:07:35.920 Payne talked with the 68-year-old Franklin and made a major impression on him. 65 00:07:35.920 --> 00:07:43.960 As I say, Paine was plain-spoken, tactless, blunt, but he was also insightful, even brilliant. 66 00:07:43.960 --> 00:07:49.160 He asked Franklin for a letter of recommendation to someone in the American colonies who might 67 00:07:49.160 --> 00:07:52.360 provide him with work of some sort. 68 00:07:52.360 --> 00:07:57.160 Then he packed up what few possessions he could still call his own and boarded a ship 69 00:07:57.160 --> 00:07:59.520 for America. 70 00:07:59.520 --> 00:08:02.480 The voyage over did not go well. 71 00:08:02.480 --> 00:08:07.220 According to Jill Lepore, Paine had sickened with typhus during the journey. 72 00:08:07.220 --> 00:08:13.700 He arrived in Philadelphia in December 1774, so weak that he had to be carried off the 73 00:08:13.700 --> 00:08:15.020 ship. 74 00:08:15.020 --> 00:08:19.260 What saved his life was a letter found in his pocket. 75 00:08:19.260 --> 00:08:24.600 The bearer, Mr. Thomas Paine, is very well recommended to me as an ingenious, worthy 76 00:08:24.600 --> 00:08:26.600 young man. 77 00:08:26.600 --> 00:08:29.180 It was signed by Benjamin Franklin. 78 00:08:29.180 --> 00:08:32.580 was better than a bag of gold. 79 00:08:32.580 --> 00:08:37.420 Payne recovered his health with the aid of a Philadelphia doctor who was a friend of 80 00:08:37.420 --> 00:08:38.420 Franklin's. 81 00:08:38.420 --> 00:08:43.260 With the aid of his letter from Franklin, he also found work, mostly as a school teacher 82 00:08:43.260 --> 00:08:48.020 and as a freelance writer for local magazines and newspapers. 83 00:08:48.020 --> 00:08:52.900 And he quickly slipped into his old habit of hanging around bookshops. 84 00:08:52.900 --> 00:08:58.760 It was in this way that he met Robert Aitken, a Scot who had come to Philadelphia five years 85 00:08:58.760 --> 00:09:06.200 was before and set up as a bookseller and bookbinder. In 1774, the year of Paine's 86 00:09:06.200 --> 00:09:12.160 arrival on the scene, Aitken had added a print shop to his establishment. Eventually he would 87 00:09:12.160 --> 00:09:19.740 produce the first English-language Bible printed in the colonies. For now, however, in 1774, 88 00:09:19.740 --> 00:09:25.120 he had decided he wanted to establish a new magazine, which he would call the Pennsylvania 89 00:09:25.120 --> 00:09:31.840 magazine. He hired Thomas Paine as editor. Under Paine's editorship, the new 90 00:09:31.840 --> 00:09:36.400 magazine quickly earned a remarkable degree of influence in the colonies, and 91 00:09:36.400 --> 00:09:41.640 Paine himself was able to meet and befriend such men as George Washington, 92 00:09:41.640 --> 00:09:47.800 Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Rush, John Randolph, and Samuel Adams, with all of 93 00:09:47.800 --> 00:09:53.060 whom he seems to have talked at length. The more he talked and listened, the more 94 00:09:53.060 --> 00:09:59.220 More convinced he became that the American colonists needed to act swiftly and decisively, 95 00:09:59.220 --> 00:10:04.700 lest the opportunity for full independence from England pass them by. 96 00:10:04.700 --> 00:10:09.900 He quit the Pennsylvania Magazine after less than a year as editor to write a pamphlet 97 00:10:09.900 --> 00:10:15.280 he hoped would make his case as persuasively as it could be made. 98 00:10:15.280 --> 00:10:21.460 It was published in January 1776 under the title Common Sense. 99 00:10:21.460 --> 00:10:23.380 It was a huge success. 100 00:10:23.380 --> 00:10:28.920 It sold like hotcakes, in both its original edition and in pirated editions issued by 101 00:10:28.920 --> 00:10:32.140 printers throughout the colonies. 102 00:10:32.140 --> 00:10:39.140 By April of 1776, according to Howard Fast, almost every adult in the thirteen colonies 103 00:10:39.140 --> 00:10:44.020 had read, or had read to him, some part of the booklet. 104 00:10:44.020 --> 00:10:50.940 In December of 1775, only wild-eyed radicals called for independence. 105 00:10:50.940 --> 00:10:56.580 Six months later, only the most conservative elements, and few they were, of the American 106 00:10:56.580 --> 00:11:01.100 Popular Front, stood out against independence. 107 00:11:01.100 --> 00:11:07.120 In that six-month period, the country united itself, tightened itself, and set its face 108 00:11:07.120 --> 00:11:13.660 solidly against the enemy, the loose alliance of thirteen far-flung colonies becoming a 109 00:11:13.660 --> 00:11:16.120 solid coalition. 110 00:11:16.120 --> 00:11:23.120 And by testimony of many, not a little of this was due to the slim book Tom Paine wrote. 111 00:11:23.120 --> 00:11:29.520 Paine was, Fast wrote, catapulted overnight to a position as foremost protagonist of the 112 00:11:29.520 --> 00:11:32.320 rebel cause. 113 00:11:32.320 --> 00:11:37.500 By the end of the year, Paine had become, as Jill Lepore puts it, the first embedded 114 00:11:37.500 --> 00:11:40.360 journalist in American history. 115 00:11:40.360 --> 00:11:44.640 You might also describe him as the first syndicated columnist. 116 00:11:44.640 --> 00:11:50.320 He was following General Washington's ragtag Continental Army, which had dwindled in the 117 00:11:50.320 --> 00:11:57.480 mere year and a half of its existence from 20,000 enthusiastic soldiers to what Fast calls 118 00:11:57.480 --> 00:12:01.240 a few hundred beaten and hopeless men. 119 00:12:01.240 --> 00:12:04.240 And Paine got to know those men very well. 120 00:12:04.240 --> 00:12:10.920 He lived with the men, Fast writes, marched with them, spoke with them, pleaded with them. 121 00:12:10.920 --> 00:12:17.000 The idea was that he would work up his experiences with the Continental Army in a series of articles, 122 00:12:17.000 --> 00:12:24.080 The American Crisis, which would appear simultaneously in major newspapers throughout the colonies. 123 00:12:24.080 --> 00:12:31.080 Although according to Fast, Paine never admitted how bad things were, he saw very clearly indeed 124 00:12:31.080 --> 00:12:33.960 just how bad they really were. 125 00:12:33.960 --> 00:12:41.400 We knew from bitter personal experience that, as Fast puts it, December of 1776 seemed close 126 00:12:41.400 --> 00:12:43.400 to the end. 127 00:12:43.400 --> 00:12:49.960 And so it was that in December of 76, camped in New Jersey with Washington and his troops, 128 00:12:49.960 --> 00:12:55.280 Payne wrote the first of his syndicated columns about the war, the first of his so-called 129 00:12:55.280 --> 00:13:02.820 crisis papers, the one that begins famously, These are the times that try men's souls. 130 00:13:02.820 --> 00:13:08.340 The Summer Soldier and the Sunshine Patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service 131 00:13:08.340 --> 00:13:14.780 of their country, but he that stands by it now deserves the love and thanks of man and 132 00:13:14.780 --> 00:13:15.780 woman. 133 00:13:15.780 --> 00:13:22.220 Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us that 134 00:13:22.220 --> 00:13:26.620 the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. 135 00:13:26.620 --> 00:13:33.740 A few paragraphs on, Payne stressed his firm opposition to any initiation of force against 136 00:13:33.740 --> 00:13:39.980 the English by the American colonists, even as part of an effort to win the independence 137 00:13:39.980 --> 00:13:42.940 he himself so fervently supported. 138 00:13:42.940 --> 00:13:48.400 "'Not all the treasures of the world,' he wrote, "'could have induced me to support 139 00:13:48.400 --> 00:13:52.260 an offensive war, for I think it murder. 140 00:13:52.260 --> 00:13:58.620 And if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens 141 00:13:58.620 --> 00:14:06.180 to kill me, or those that are in it, and to bind me in all cases whatsoever to his absolute 142 00:14:06.180 --> 00:14:08.860 will, am I to suffer it? 143 00:14:08.860 --> 00:14:14.840 What signifies it to me whether he who does it is a king or a common man, my countryman 144 00:14:14.840 --> 00:14:21.020 or not my countryman, whether it be done by an individual villain or an army of them? 145 00:14:21.020 --> 00:14:26.980 If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference, neither can any just cause 146 00:14:26.980 --> 00:14:32.620 be assigned why we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other. 147 00:14:32.620 --> 00:14:38.440 Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it, but I should suffer the 148 00:14:38.440 --> 00:14:44.880 misery of devils were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose 149 00:14:44.880 --> 00:14:58.560 Howard Fast reports that Washington read this essay and was tremendously moved and ordered 150 00:14:58.560 --> 00:15:02.440 it to be read aloud to the assembled brigades. 151 00:15:02.440 --> 00:15:05.120 Thereafter it appeared in the newspapers. 152 00:15:05.120 --> 00:15:10.600 Then it was independently printed in dozens of editions in dozens of cities, folded and 153 00:15:10.600 --> 00:15:17.240 sold as a pamphlet and posted everywhere as a bill. It was memorized by thousands, and 154 00:15:17.240 --> 00:15:23.320 the phrases summer soldier and sunshine patriot were on every tongue. It became the battle 155 00:15:23.320 --> 00:15:30.640 cry of the day. Altogether, according to Fast, it had, if anything, more of a success than 156 00:15:30.640 --> 00:15:38.000 common sense. Flash forward a few years. It's now 1783. 157 00:15:38.000 --> 00:15:39.480 The war is over. 158 00:15:39.480 --> 00:15:46.020 Payne, now 46 years old, is given a 300-acre farm which had been seized from loyalists 159 00:15:46.020 --> 00:15:48.080 during the war years. 160 00:15:48.080 --> 00:15:53.320 It's near New Rochelle, New York, on Long Island Sound, northeast of New York City on 161 00:15:53.320 --> 00:15:55.520 the way to Connecticut. 162 00:15:55.520 --> 00:16:03.400 He lives there a few years, then travels to France in 1787 and to England in 1788. 163 00:16:03.400 --> 00:16:08.540 He has almost as big a name and almost as many fans in those countries as he has in 164 00:16:08.540 --> 00:16:10.540 the United States. 165 00:16:10.540 --> 00:16:16.580 It was Paine, by the way, who came up with the phrase United States of America and suggested 166 00:16:16.580 --> 00:16:22.680 it in one of his crisis papers as a name for the new nation to be created when the colonies 167 00:16:22.680 --> 00:16:25.800 had won their independence. 168 00:16:25.800 --> 00:16:33.040 It was in London in 1791 that Paine, now in his mid-fifties, would meet the radical journalist, 169 00:16:33.040 --> 00:16:48.040 by the novelist, editor, bookseller and writer of children's books, William Godwin, who was at that time working on his inquiry concerning political justice and its influence on modern morals and manners. 170 00:16:48.040 --> 00:17:02.040 The inquiry was published in 1793 and went on to be widely considered what the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls the founding work of philosophical anarchism. 171 00:17:02.040 --> 00:17:08.520 At the same time, Payne met Mary Wollstonecraft, a freelance journalist and translator who 172 00:17:08.520 --> 00:17:15.400 would publish her Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, and thus make a very plausible 173 00:17:15.400 --> 00:17:20.760 case for herself as the founder of individualist feminism. 174 00:17:20.760 --> 00:17:25.420 Later in the 1790s, Godwin and Wollstonecraft would marry. 175 00:17:25.420 --> 00:17:31.860 Their daughter, Mary Shelley, would become world famous as the author of the novel, Frankenstein. 176 00:17:31.860 --> 00:17:38.420 Interestingly, back in the late 1950s, Robert Lefebvre, a major figure in the early years 177 00:17:38.420 --> 00:17:43.980 of the modern libertarian movement, argued that Frankenstein was really a fable about 178 00:17:43.980 --> 00:17:50.860 what happened when man invented the state, that is, coercive government. 179 00:17:50.860 --> 00:17:57.860 Government alone of all man's inventions is capable of independent life, Lefebvre wrote. 180 00:17:57.860 --> 00:18:03.740 Government alone, like Mrs Shelley's terrifying creation of the monster born in Frankenstein's 181 00:18:03.740 --> 00:18:11.420 mind, has the power and the ability to turn upon its creators and destroy them. 182 00:18:11.420 --> 00:18:16.800 And given the atmosphere Mary Shelley grew up in, the kinds of political ideas she had 183 00:18:46.800 --> 00:19:16.800 In the rights of man, fifteen years ago, 184 00:19:16.800 --> 00:19:22.920 Years later, he wrote that the great part of that order which reigns among mankind is 185 00:19:22.920 --> 00:19:25.340 not the effect of government. 186 00:19:25.340 --> 00:19:31.480 It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. 187 00:19:31.480 --> 00:19:38.480 It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. 188 00:19:38.480 --> 00:19:44.860 The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all the parts 189 00:19:44.860 --> 00:19:52.860 and the influence of civilized community upon each other create that great chain of connection which holds it together. 190 00:19:52.860 --> 00:20:04.860 The landholder, the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and every occupation prospers by the aid which each receives from the other and from the whole. 191 00:20:04.860 --> 00:20:16.360 Common interest regulates their concerns and forms their law, and the laws which common usage ordains have a greater influence than the laws of government. 192 00:20:16.360 --> 00:20:23.860 In fine, society performs for itself almost everything which is ascribed to government. 193 00:20:23.860 --> 00:20:31.860 By way of example, Paine pointed out that, for upwards of two years from the commencement of the American War 194 00:20:31.860 --> 00:20:39.220 and to a longer period in several of the American states, there were no established forms of government. 195 00:20:39.220 --> 00:20:44.540 The old governments had been abolished and the country was too much occupied in defense 196 00:20:44.540 --> 00:20:48.460 to employ its attention in establishing new governments. 197 00:20:48.460 --> 00:20:56.020 Yet during this interval, order and harmony were preserved as inviolate as in any country in Europe. 198 00:20:56.020 --> 00:21:01.260 The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. 199 00:21:01.260 --> 00:21:08.460 A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security. 200 00:21:08.460 --> 00:21:14.180 It is not true, according to Paine, that the abolition of any formal government is the 201 00:21:14.180 --> 00:21:22.100 dissolution of society, for in fact the abolition of formal government acts by a contrary impulse 202 00:21:22.100 --> 00:21:25.820 and brings society the closer together. 203 00:21:25.820 --> 00:21:33.300 For it is but a few general laws that civilized life requires, and those of such common usefulness 204 00:21:33.300 --> 00:21:38.380 that whether they are enforced by the forms of government or not, the effect will be nearly 205 00:21:38.380 --> 00:21:41.020 the same. 206 00:21:41.020 --> 00:21:46.340 To no one's surprise, the rights of man was suppressed by the English government. 207 00:21:46.340 --> 00:21:52.060 By the beginning of 1792, it had become a crime to be found with a copy of the rights 208 00:21:52.060 --> 00:21:54.540 of man in one's possession. 209 00:21:54.540 --> 00:22:14.540 A warrant was issued for Payne's arrest. He had written The Rights of Man in defense of the French Revolution in reply to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which the famed member of parliament who had supported the American Revolution severely criticized the French one. 210 00:22:14.540 --> 00:22:18.040 The rights of man was very popular in France. 211 00:22:18.040 --> 00:22:23.540 Paine himself was at least as famous there as he was in England or even America. 212 00:22:23.540 --> 00:22:26.540 So, Paine fled England for France. 213 00:22:26.540 --> 00:22:33.040 When he arrived, he was celebrated as a hero of the revolution and elected to the National Assembly, 214 00:22:33.040 --> 00:22:39.040 the body that had conferred honorary French citizenship upon him only a month earlier. 215 00:22:39.040 --> 00:22:52.040 But if Paine had problems getting along with people and making enemies in England and English-speaking America, imagine the difficulties he confronted in a country where he didn't even speak the language. 216 00:22:52.040 --> 00:23:07.040 According to his biographer, Craig Nelson, his biggest mistake in the France of the early 1790s was choosing not to affiliate with the Jacobins, the faction that controlled the revolution during the reign of terror. 217 00:23:07.040 --> 00:23:13.640 Payne became involved with a group that we know as the Girondins, who are the group that 218 00:23:13.640 --> 00:23:17.080 came to power between Lafayette and Robespierre. 219 00:23:17.080 --> 00:23:22.800 And the Girondins were purged by Robespierre and his followers and Payne was among them. 220 00:23:22.800 --> 00:23:28.280 But because he was so popular and his writings were so popular across Europe and because 221 00:23:28.280 --> 00:23:32.760 he was associated with the American cause, the French didn't know what to do with him 222 00:23:32.760 --> 00:23:34.080 during the reign of terror. 223 00:23:34.080 --> 00:23:37.980 So finally they threw him in prison on these trumped up charges of being a foreigner trying 224 00:23:37.980 --> 00:23:42.600 to wreak havoc in France and I think left him there to die. 225 00:23:42.600 --> 00:23:46.000 This is something they did when they didn't know that they should chop someone's head 226 00:23:46.000 --> 00:23:47.420 off. 227 00:23:47.420 --> 00:23:53.240 And so it was that Paine wrote his last book, The Age of Reason, in prison. 228 00:23:53.240 --> 00:24:01.160 The Age of Reason, as Craig Nelson explained back in 2007 to WNYC interviewer Leonard Lopate, 229 00:24:01.160 --> 00:24:03.440 is about religion. 230 00:24:03.440 --> 00:24:08.120 From the Age of Reason period, it was very common for people to be a religion that was 231 00:24:08.120 --> 00:24:14.460 called deism, where because of Newton's theories about math underlying the cosmos, people believed 232 00:24:14.460 --> 00:24:20.280 that what was called a first being or providence or the invisible hand had created the world, 233 00:24:20.280 --> 00:24:24.160 but you couldn't pray to him and there wasn't really a reason to have a church. 234 00:24:24.160 --> 00:24:28.920 And this is what Paine and Jefferson and Roche-Pierre and Napoleon and almost every significant 235 00:24:28.920 --> 00:24:33.400 person of the 18th century believed, and this is what Age of Reason is about, frankly. 236 00:24:33.400 --> 00:24:46.400 The Accusation that Paine's Arguments were Arguments for Atheism was spread far and wide 237 00:24:46.400 --> 00:24:52.760 by the clergy and other officials and employees of the churches Paine regarded as unnecessary 238 00:24:52.760 --> 00:24:55.140 and inadvisable. 239 00:24:55.140 --> 00:25:00.240 The minions of organized religion caused Paine a good deal of trouble and torment during 240 00:25:00.240 --> 00:25:02.800 his last years on this earth. 241 00:25:02.800 --> 00:25:08.620 and as Craig Nelson notes, The Age of Reason sold very well indeed, just as his earlier 242 00:25:08.620 --> 00:25:10.580 books had done. 243 00:25:10.580 --> 00:25:13.360 He was the biggest best-selling author of the 18th century. 244 00:25:13.360 --> 00:25:17.540 The Age of Reason was the second biggest best-seller, Rites of Man was first and Common 245 00:25:17.540 --> 00:25:19.380 Sense was third. 246 00:25:19.380 --> 00:25:22.940 Why was Payne so successful an author? 247 00:25:22.940 --> 00:25:27.940 According to Craig Nelson, it was because he wrote in what was, for the 18th century, 248 00:25:27.940 --> 00:25:30.700 a highly unusual style. 249 00:25:30.700 --> 00:25:56.860 More specifically, Nelson argues, Payne wrote for the ear rather than for the eye. 250 00:25:56.860 --> 00:26:07.860 Actually, he wrote To Be Read Aloud. Since so many people were illiterate or had trouble reading at this time, reading was still something for the upper middle class and upper class of the country. 251 00:26:07.860 --> 00:26:15.860 So he actually wrote To Be Read Aloud, and that's a hallmark of good fine writing today, that you hear the writer's voice when you read something. 252 00:26:15.860 --> 00:26:21.860 Paine was eventually released from prison, but he was trapped in France for years. 253 00:26:21.860 --> 00:26:27.860 He couldn't go back to England where he was a wanted man, and he couldn't try to sail for America 254 00:26:27.860 --> 00:26:31.860 for fear his French ship would be interdicted by the British Navy 255 00:26:31.860 --> 00:26:35.860 and he'd be put under arrest and dragged back to England. 256 00:26:35.860 --> 00:26:42.860 Finally, in 1802, at the personal invitation of Thomas Jefferson, now President of the United States, 257 00:26:42.860 --> 00:26:59.860 Thomas Paine returned to America. Seven years later, he died. His name and reputation be smirched by accusations of atheism on the part of those who didn't understand, or pretended not to understand, the age of reason. 258 00:26:59.860 --> 00:27:10.360 Thomas Paine wasn't a fully consistent libertarian. He understood and very memorably articulated the basic principles of libertarianism. 259 00:27:10.360 --> 00:27:16.360 Almost alone among the founding fathers, he spoke out unequivocally against slavery. 260 00:27:16.360 --> 00:27:26.860 But he also advocated government-funded old age pensions and an international organization much like the United Nations to enforce world peace. 261 00:27:26.860 --> 00:27:33.860 On the other hand, where in the 18th century are you going to find a fully consistent libertarian? 262 00:27:33.860 --> 00:27:40.860 You won't. In the 18th century, a man like Payne is the best you're likely to do. 263 00:27:40.860 --> 00:27:45.860 And for my money, he's plenty good enough. He grasped the big picture. 264 00:27:45.860 --> 00:27:50.860 If he got some of the details wrong, well, none of us is perfect. 265 00:27:50.860 --> 00:27:52.860 This is Jeff Riggenbach.