Endnotes
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At Lexington, Massachusetts, 1775. —Conway ↩
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Thomas Anello, otherwise Massanello, a fisherman of Naples, who after spiriting up his countrymen in the public market place, against the oppressions of the Spaniards, to whom the place was then subject, prompted them to revolt, and in the space of a day became King. ↩
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Those who would fully understand of what great consequence a large and equal representation is to a state, should read Burgh’s Political Disquisitions. ↩
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This manifesto with which Paris was found placarded on , is described by Dumont as a “Republican Proclamation,” but what its literal caption was I have not found. —Conway ↩
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Translated for this work from Le Patriote François,
, l’an 1er de la République. Supplement au No. 1167
, in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. It is headed, “Essai Anti-Monarchique, à L’Usage des Nouveaux Républicains, Tiré de la Feuille Villageoise.” I have not found this Feuille, but no doubt Brissot, in editing the essay for his journal (Le Patriote François) abridged it, and in one instance Paine is mentioned by name. Although in this essay Paine occasionally repeats sentences used elsewhere, and naturally maintains his well-known principles, the work has a peculiar interest as indicating the temper and visions of the opening revolution. —Conway ↩ -
Royalty was abolished by the National Convention on the first day of its meeting, , the revolutionary Calendar beginning next day. Paine was chosen by his fellow-deputies of Calais to congratulate the Convention, and did so in a brief address, dated , which was loaned by M. Charavay to the Historical Exposition of the Revolution at Paris, 1889, where I made the subjoined translation:
“Citizen President: In the name of the Deputies of the Department of the Pas de Calais, I have the honor of presenting to the Convention the felicitations of the General Council of the Commune of Calais on the abolition of Royalty.
“Amid the joy inspired by this event, one cannot forbear some pain at the folly of our ancestors, who have placed us under the necessity of treating gravely (solennellement) the abolition of a phantom (fantôme).—Thomas Paine, Deputy.”
—Conway ↩
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The Boston Investigator’s compilation of Paine’s Works contains the following “as supposed to be Mr. Paine’s”:
“Royal Pedigree.—George the Third, who was the grandson of George the Second, who was the son of George the First, who was the son of the Princess Sophia, who was the cousin of Anne, who was the sister of William and Mary, who were the daughter and son-in-law of James the Second, who was the son of Charles the First, who was a traitor to his country and decapitated as such, who was the son of James the First, who was the son of Mary, who was the sister of Edward the Sixth, who was the son of Henry the Eighth, who was the cold-blooded murderer of his wives, and the promoter of the Protestant religion, who was the son of Henry the Seventh, who slew Richard the Third, who smothered his nephew Edward the Fifth, who was the son of Edward the Fourth, who with bloody Richard slew Henry the Sixth, who succeeded Henry the Fifth, who was the son of Henry the Fourth, who was the cousin of Richard the Second, who was the son of Edward the Third, who was the son of Richard the Second, who was the son of Edward the First, who was the son of Henry the Third, who was the son of John, who was the brother of Richard the First, who was the son of Henry the Second, who was the son of Matilda, who was the daughter of Henry the First, who was the brother of William Rufus, who was the son of William the Conqueror, who was the son of a whore.”
—Conway ↩
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J. J. Rousseau, Contrat Social. ↩
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The reader should bear in mind that this phrase, now used vaguely, had for Paine and his political school a special significance; it implied a fundamental Declaration of individual rights, of supreme force and authority, invasion which, either by legislatures, law courts, majorities, or administrators, was to be regarded as the worst treason and despotism. —Conway ↩
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See No. 50. ↩
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In his appeal from prison to the Convention () Paine states that he had, as a member of the Committee for framing the Constitution, prepared a Plan, which was in the hands of Barère, also of that Committee. I have not yet succeeded in finding Paine’s Constitution, but it is certain that the work of framing the Constitution of 1793 was mainly entrusted to Paine and Condorcet. Dr. John Moore, in his work on the French Revolution, describes the two at their work; and it is asserted that he “assisted in drawing up the French Declaration of Rights,” by “Juvencus,” author of an able “Essay on the Life and Genius of Thomas Paine,” whose information came from a personal friend of Paine. (Aphorisms, Opinions, and Reflections of Thomas Paine, etc., London, 1826. Pp. 3, 14.) A translation of the Declaration and Constitution appeared in England (Debrett, Picadilly, 1793), but with some faults. The present translation is from Œuvres Complètes de Condorcet, tome xviii. The Committee reported their Constitution , and was set for its discussion, Robespierre then demanded separate discussion of the Declaration of Rights, to which he objected that it made no mention of the Supreme Being, and that its extreme principles of freedom would shield illicit traffic. Paine and Jefferson were troubled that the United States Constitution contained no Declaration of Rights, it being a fundamental principle in Paine’s theory of government that such a Declaration was the main safeguard of the individual against the despotism of numbers. —Conway ↩
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Printed from the first edition, whose title is as above, with the addition: “By Thomas Paine, Author of Common Sense; Rights of Man; Age of Reason. Paris, Printed at the English Press, rue de Vaugerard, No. 970. Third year of the French Republic.” The pamphlet seems to have appeared early in , and was meant to influence the decision of the National Convention on the Constitution then under discussion. This Constitution, adopted , presently swept away by Napoleon, contained some features which appeared to Paine reactionary. Those to which he most objected are quoted by him in his speech in the Convention, which is bound up in the same pamphlet, and follows this “Dissertation” in the present volume. In the Constitution as adopted Paine’s preference for a plural Executive was established, and though the bicameral organization (the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of Ancients) was not such as he desired, his chief objection was based on his principle of manhood suffrage. But in regard to this see Paine’s “Dissertations on Government,” written nine years before, where he indicates the method of restraining the despotism of numbers. —Conway ↩
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“The Bill of Rights (temp. William III) shows that the Lords and Commons met not in Parliament but in convention, that they declared against James II, and in favour of William III. The latter was accepted as sovereign, and, when monarch. Acts of Parliament were passed confirming what had been done.”
—Joseph Fisher in Notes and Queries (London),This does not affect Paine’s argument, as a Convention could have no more right to bind the future than a Parliament. —Conway ↩
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“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”
—Alexander Hamilton, 1775(Cf. Rights of Man, vol. ii, p. 304):
“Portions of antiquity by proving everything establish nothing. It is authority against authority all the way, till we come to the divine origin of the rights of man at the creation.”
—Conway ↩
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This and the preceding paragraph have been omitted from some editions. —Conway ↩
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Paine may have had in mind the five senses, with reference to the proposed five members of the Directory. —Conway ↩
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The Constitution adopted , was by the determination of “The Mountain,” suspended during the war against France. The revolutionary government was thus made chronic. —Conway ↩
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This pamphlet, as Paine predicts at its close (no doubt on good grounds), was translated into all languages of Europe, and probably hastened the gold suspension of the Bank of England (1797), which it predicted. The British Government entrusted its reply to Ralph Broome and George Chalmers, who wrote pamphlets. There is in the French Archives an order for 1,000 copies, , nineteen days after Paine’s pamphlet appeared.
“Mr. Cobbett has made this little pamphlet a textbook for most of his elaborate treatises on our finances. … On the authority of a late Register of Mr. Cobbett’s I learn that the profits arising from the sale of this pamphlet were devoted [by Paine] to the relief of the prisoners confined in Newgate for debt.”
Life of Paine, by Richard Carlile, 1819—Conway ↩
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The actual expense of the war of 1739 did not come up to the sum ascertained by the ratio. But as that which is the natural disposition of a thing, as it is the natural disposition of a stream of water to descend, will, if impeded in its course, overcome by a new effort what it had lost by that impediment, so it was with respect to this war and the next (1756) taken collectively; for the expense of the war of 1756 restored the equilibrium of the ratio, as fully as if it had not been impeded. A circumstance that serves to prove the truth of the ratio more folly than if the interruption had not taken place. The war of 1739 was languid; the efforts were below the value of money et that time; for the ratio is the measure of the depreciation of money in consequence of the funding system; or what comes to the same end, it is the measure of the increase of paper. Every additional quantity of it, whether in bank notes or otherwise, diminishes the real, though not the nominal value of the former quantity. ↩
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An eminent Member of Parliament. —Conway ↩
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Concerning Chalmers and Hawkesbury see my appendix to The Rights of Man. Also, preface to my Life of Paine, xvi, and other passages. —Conway ↩
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Among the delusions that have been imposed upon the nation by ministers to give a false colouring to its affairs, and by none more than by Mr. Pitt, is a motley, amphibious-charactered thing called the balance of trade. This balance of trade, as it is called, is taken from the customhouse books, in which entries are made of all cargoes exported, and also of all cargoes imported, in each year; and when the value of the exports, according to the price set upon them by the exporter or by the customhouse, is greater than the value of the imports, estimated in the same manner, they say the balance of trade is much in their favour.
The customhouse books prove regularly enough that so many cargoes have been exported, and so many imported; but this is all that they prove, or were intended to prove. They have nothing to do with the balance of profit or loss; and it is ignorance to appeal to them upon that account: for the case is, that the greater the loss is in any one year, the higher will this thing called the balance of trade appear to be according to the customhouse books. For example, nearly the whole of the Mediterranean convoy has been taken by the French this year; consequently those cargoes will not appear as imports on the customhouse books, and therefore the balance of trade, by which they mean the profits of it, will appear to be so much the greater as the loss amounts to; and, on the other hand, had the loss not happened, the profits would have appeared to have been so much the less. All the losses happening at sea to returning cargoes, by accidents, by the elements, or by capture, make the balance appear the higher on the side of the exports; and were they all lost at sea, it would appear to be all profit on the customhouse books. Also every cargo of exports that is lost that occasions another to be sent, adds in like manner to the side of the exports, and appears as profit. This year the balance of trade will appear high, because the losses have been great by capture and by storms. The ignorance of the British Parliament in listening to this hackneyed imposition of ministers about the balance of trade is astonishing. It shows how little they know of national affairs—and Mr. Grey may as well talk Greek to them, as to make motions about the state of the nation. They understand only foxhunting and the game laws. ↩
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Part of the inscription on an English guinea. ↩
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The omissions are noted in the English edition of 1797. —Conway ↩
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This and the preceding sentence are omitted in all previous English and American editions. —Conway ↩
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Expression of Horsley, an English bishop, in the English parliament. ↩
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Cf. Montaigne’s Essays, chap. xii. —Conway ↩