"Who Was Thomas Paine?" - BBC On The Bicentennial Of His Death

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Aware that he is probably facing his own death, he refuses to be reconciled to Christianity:

“From the time I was capable of conceiving an idea,” he writes, “and acting upon it by reflection, I either doubted the truth of the Christian system or thought it to be a strange affair; I scarcely knew which it was, but I well remember, when about seven or eight years of age, hearing a sermon read by a relation of mine, who was a great devotee of the Church, upon the subject of what is called redemption by the death of the Son of God. After the sermon was ended, I went into the garden, and as I was going down the garden steps (for I perfectly recollect the spot) I revolted at the recollection of what I had heard, and thought to myself that it was making God Almighty act like a passionate man, that killed his son when he could not revenge himself in any other way, and as I was sure a man would be hanged that did such a thing, I could not see for what purpose they preached such sermons. This was not one of that kind of thoughts that had anything in it of childish levity; it was to me a serious reflection, arising from the idea I had that God was too good to do such an action, and also too almighty to be under any necessity of doing it. I believe in the same manner at this moment; and I moreover believe, that any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system.”

Paine was by no means safe, even after the fall of Robespierre. A new danger emerged—and probably a more serious one. The revolution was moving in a reactionary direction. With the coup d’état of the 18th Brumaire 1799, which brought Bonaparte to power, Paine was again under suspicion. The revolution, Napoleon declared, was over. By 1802, Paine was back in America where he was to die seven years later.

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How are we to assess Paine’s career?



His career might be looked upon as a failure. The Walkers grew rich making cannon for the British navy. Eighty of the cannon on Nelson’s flagship the Victory were made by Walker’s. It used to be a regular outing to walk out into the fields and see the test firings of Walker’s cannons. Paine did not achieve great wealth. The fortune that might have been his as a bridge builder did not materialise. He made almost nothing from his books, donating his earnings to revolutionary causes.





Paine's burial site in
New Rochelle,
New York



Even politically his achievements seemed to have been eclipsed. As he lay dying, he was harassed by Christian ministers trying to get him to recant his deism. At the time of his death, he was reviled in Britain, France and America. Even Jefferson, his long-time friend, had to be cautious about being publicly associated with the name of Thomas Paine.


But in reality, Paine’s achievements were far more substantial than those of his apparently more successful contemporaries. Paine’s success lay in the part he had played in founding two modern republics. He changed the way in which politics was understood and took place. Before Paine, politics was the preserve of privilege; after Paine, the mass of the population began to find a voice and became political actors.

Paine’s reputation began to revive in the next great revolutionary upsurge—at the time of the American Civil War—and he was one of the political mentors of Chartism. Paine’s memory was revered whenever social equality was put back on the political agenda.

His apparent failures are the failures of someone whose ambitions outstripped the possibilities of the time. His vision of a peaceful global civilisation based on social equality, using the most advanced productive techniques to ensure prosperity for all, was not attainable then, but it remains something worth striving for. Rather than failures, these are the objectives of Paine’s life as yet unfulfilled. Ultimately, we would have to conclude that Paine defined the modern world even more lastingly than did the great manufacturers, and that we still live in many respects in the Age of Paine.





US History
Citizen of the world: a brief survey of the life and times of Thomas Paine (1737-1809)


The Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/pain-j08.shtml