Christopher Hitchens Thomas Paine's Rights of Man

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of the United States Constitution. But by then, Paine had
recrossed the Atlantic.
Before he departed, he did write one essay that gave a clue
to his state of mind, and could to some extent license the view
of Madame Roland. The Abbe Raynal, otherwise known as
Guillaume Raynal, had written a book entitled Revolution
d ' Ame r i q u e . In this volume, this rebel priest had sought to
minimize the importance of 1776, advancing the rather reduc-
tionist and economist view that no greater principle had been
involved than a taxpayers' revolt, of the sort that was com-
monplace in history. He referred to the precipitating events,
slightingly, as 'a slight tax upon the colonies'. This would be,
perhaps, in Christian terms, not unlike weighing and valuing
the thirty pieces of silver. The Abbe may have been correct in
certain narrative respects: there had indeed been a moment in
1778 when the Congress agreed to consider a British offer of
compromise on the taxes. But Paine held a loftier view of
matters in general, and took issue with Raynal on the limited
45 I PAINE IN AMERI CA
character of the revolution. It was by no means, he insisted,
the product of a petty local and fiscal quarrel. It was, rather, a
universal promulgation of inalienable rights:
A union so extensive, continued and determined, suffering
with patience and never in despair, could not have been pro-
duced by common [i.e. banal] causes. It must be something
capable of reaching the whole soul of man and arming it
with perpetual energy. It is in vain to look for precedents
among the revolutions of former ages... The spring, the
progress, the object, the consequences, nay, the men, their
habits of thinking, and all the circumstances of the country,
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are different.
This was, obviously, to have it both ways, if not indeed
three ways. Paine had excellent personal reasons to know that
there had indeed been moments of 'despair' during the
American revolutionary war: if it had been otherwise he
would not have needed to keep churning out the Crisis
papers. Furthermore, either Americans were exceptional, as
his last sentence above seems to suggest, or they were not. On
the general applicability of the lessons, however, he was
unwavering. The true idea of a great nation is that which pro-
motes and extends the principles of universal society/ In
1782, when Paine published this open Letter to the Abbe Raynal,
the time was not far off when the imposing clerical establish-
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*ent in France was to find this out for itself, and in the
hardest way. When Paine made his way back to Europe, he
RIGHTS OF MAN I 46
was one of those slender reeds that contain the flame stolen so
audaciously by Prometheus from the gods themselves.
CHAPTER 2
Paine in Europe
On the return voyage to Europe, Paine was once again
following the advice of Benjamin Franklin, who had told
him that - especially once he had got himself on the wrong
side of a bitter argument about the viability of a bank in
Philadelphia - he would do well to seek sponsors for his
bridge in either Paris or London. He chose the month of April
1787 to depart, and arrived at a time when Europe was
pregnant with revolutionary and radical promise.
In Paris, he did not lack for well-placed friends. His admirer
Thomas Jefferson had been appointed to be American Minister
to France. The Marquis de Lafayette, wreathed with American
laurels, was also at his disposal. Men of learning and wit were
coming to the fore, and 'reason' was the watchword. The pres-
tige of anyone coming from America was high: Lafayette kept a
copy of the American Declaration on one panel of his study,
leaving the opposite panel undecorated until the happy day
when it should be adorned by a similar French one. Many
eminent Parisians expressed interest in the design and scope of
Paine's iron bridge - this being still a wooden age in many
aspects-though none would absolutely commit themselves.
RIGHTS OF MAN I 48
Across the Channel, and in pursuit of the same goal, Paine
took up one of the most improbable friendships - or so at
least it must seem to us in retrospect - that there has ever
been. On more than one of his trips into the country, to scout
a possible location for the bridge, he was in company with
Edmund Burke. He appears to have been Burke's guest, and
to have enjoyed his conversation. 'We hunt in pairs,' as Burke
himself put it. At that moment, there would have seemed no
reason for enmity. To the contrary, if anything. Burke had
published, in 1770, his T h o u g h t s o n t he Caus e s of t he Pr e s e nt
Di s c o n t e n t s . This had argued that it was corrupt and arbitrary
authority, and not the revulsion against it, that required
justification. He had waged an extraordinary campaign in
Parliament for the impeachment of Warren Hastings, and
denounced the hideous depredations of the East India
Company against the exploited and humiliated peoples of
India. His 'Sketch of a Negro Code', written in the early
1780s, had marked him out as an advanced critic of the slave
trade. He had opposed the proposal for the seating of
American slaveholders at Westminster and had been, in his
capacity as lobbyist for the colony of New York, a strong
defender of the violated rights of the American colonists. He
was a man, furthermore, of large personality and wide learn-
ing. We need not take the Tory Dr Johnson's word - given as
it was on several occasions - for this. William Hazlitt, one of
the firebrands of the radical movement of the period,
announced that 'It has always been with me, a test of the
sense and candour of anyone belonging to the opposite
PAINE IN EUROPE
49
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arty, whether he allowed Burke to be a great man.' There
no reason to think that Paine did not share this view,
deed, it is obvious from the shock he expressed, at the tone [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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