Loading summary
Transcript35 lines
- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [00:05]
B
I'm Caleb Zakrin, CEO and publisher of the New Books Network. Today I'm speaking with Gregory Claes, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of London. To mark the 250th anniversary since the Declaration of Independence, we're discussing the life and work of Thomas Paine. Princeton University Press is publishing a six volume series of the collected writings of one of America's most iconic founding fathers. Thomas Paine was a radical and revolutionary thinker with ideas that are still relevant today. To discuss the work of one of the people that I found to be such a fascinating figure when I was young. And I really realized going through your work, you know, there's so much I didn't know about him. I'm really excited to get the chance to speak with you today about Tom Payne. So, Greg, thanks so much for joining me today on the New Books Network.
- [00:53]
A
My pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.
- [00:55]
B
Of course. Thomas Paine, I think, is the perfect figure to talk about for the 250th. I did an interview recently on Thomas Jefferson, who's, I think, the other figure that people think of too, in connection with the 250th. But I think Thomas Paine in many ways feels more vital, more essential for us today. I think that there are many things that he wrote about and many ideas that he had that really do feel remarkably prescient and important. But before talking about pain, I was wondering if you just tell us a little about yourself and your background.
- [01:30]
A
Yeah. So I was born and I've always identified with pain moving around the world. I was born in France, which he moved to. I moved to America, which he moved to. I moved then back to Britain, where my ancestors had lived for 500 years, very close to where pain was born. So I was educated in Canada and the uk. I've worked in Germany, the US and Britain, primarily in modern British history and especially intellectual history.
- [02:03]
B
It is a remarkable pain, how much pain moved around. And that was something that I wasn't aware of. Like really the extent to which, you know, he really didn't spend that much time in America, all things considered. He was also a relative latecomer. And I'm wondering for you, when you first got interested in the life and work of Thomas Paine, what, what drew you to him?
- [02:24]
A
So today, as it happens, or rather tomorrow, the 30th of June is precisely the right time to ask me that question, because as you said in your introduction, Princeton's publishing a new edition of Paine's writings. Tomorrow is the official publication date for copies have already been sent out to various people. This completely replaces what is usually regarded as the standard work of Paine's writings. Standard edition is Philip Foner's 1945 two volume collection which was itself a real success and a great measure further than earlier works. So our edition was goes much further still. It includes 403 letters of which 166 are new, so about 80% more than in the phone or edition. We've also used text analysis software and author attribution methodology to tentatively identify several hundred new works by Paine, including very controversially parts of about half 34 out of 69 of the famous Junius Letters of 1769-72 which powerfully defended the rights of Britons against corrupt and rapacious governments. In the addition we also deattribute 29 writings. So my interest in Paine started around 1985 and I began work on a book which eventually published as Thomas Paine Social and political thought in 1789. I had started some 10 or 12 years earlier as a student of early 19th century British socialism. So going back to paine in the 1790s and 1780s was a kind of natural regression since as a historian we always want to look at the origins of things. And there were so many unanswered questions from the 1820s and 1830s about how the largely political debates of the American and French Revolutionary period became supplanted by a much more pronounced demand for economic justice several generations later. So from that time onwards I never quite let loose a Pain. He was always there in the background. And fortuitously about 10 years ago I began to work in conjunction with a number of other individuals on putting this edition together. And it's been a full time task for the last five years. So I'm delighted to see it reach the world.
- [05:13]
B
Yeah, there's so much here, I think, for scholars of all stripes, you know, looking at different issues, be it everything from looking at French history to American politics, they can find something useful in this collection. Paine. One of the things that I wasn't aware of was how Paine really was a latecomer in many ways. He didn't arrive into the States until just a couple years before the Declaration of Independence. And I was wondering if you give a very brief overview of Paine's life prior to his arrival in America.
- [05:51]
A
He's born in Thetford In Norfolk in 1737, the son of a staymaker. That's somebody who makes Corsets and sails, and he goes into the family trade initially as an apprentice, spends a bit of time as a privateer, finally becomes an exciseman or tax revenue collector from 1761-68. He lands in the 1760s in a town called Lewes L E W E S in Sussex, where he becomes extremely active locally in the town government and the local debating club, which is called the Headstrong Club and is still there today. His first well known publication, because we think there's quite a lot that he wrote anonymously beforehand, is work called the Case of the Officers of excise in 1772, where basically he acts as a kind of trades union official representing the case for an increase of wages, in particular of his fellow excise officers. So he doesn't emigrate to the colonies, specifically to Philadelphia, until the 30th of November. That's his arrival date, 1774. So it's pretty close to the period that we associate with the outbreak of the Revolution. In fact, a great many things happen in the first six months after his arrival. He comes with a recommendation from Benjamin Franklin, with whom we posit in our edition, he probably likely collaborated in various works in the radical press in the late 1760s and early 1770s. Franklin would later call Paine his adopted political son.
- [07:56]
B
It's not long after his arrival that he does have a rapid ascent in public life in America. What caused this? Could you describe a little bit this period of sudden fame? And then, of course, we'll get into common sense, as that was such a legendary document.
- [08:16]
A
So Payne himself tells us, I quote, it was in great measure owing to my bringing a knowledge of England with me to America, that I was enabled to enter deeper into politics and with more success than other people. So what he's telling us essentially here is that while of course, he estimates about a third or so of the colonists are of English background, we tend to presume the numbers far higher. But most people don't retain a very close, much less daily. There's no Internet, there's no radio, there's no television contact with English politics as a whole, whereas he's been extraordinarily active for 10 to 15 years at this point. So we believe that Paine starts writing under the pseudonym of casca c a s c a about 15 pieces to a small journal called the Crisis. But it's not the American Crisis, which everyone is familiar with, but rather an English version which precedes this. There were about 30 pieces that used the pseudonym of Casca in a total of 92 issues, which commenced publication on 20th January 1775 and occasioned a riot shortly afterwards, and was subsequently burned by a public hangman on the 6th of March for attacking George III. So we have a very good sense here, if our textual identification software is accurate, that Pain has already, so to speak, come out of the closet. Except, of course, he's still writing pseudonymously and adopting positions which will become much more familiar very quickly, namely a year later. So generally, in addition to this background, Paine, of course, came with Franklin's letter of recommendation. Franklin is extraordinarily well connected. He's the leading American, he's often called the first American ambassador to Great Britain. He's the leading American in London. He represents a number of the colonies, and obviously his connections in Philadelphia, where he comes from, are also very, very extensive. So he without doubt helps Paine gain employment on the Pennsylvania Magazine, which is his first real job after he reaches Philadelphia. He also had lots of other connections. He had been following colonial resistance to British rule in the colonies, certainly from the early 60s. He knew many other leading figures in London who were also friends of Franklin, people like Richard Price and James Burr, who'd written on such themes as unequal taxation and lack of representation. He was well acquainted with what's generally called the movement for liberty, which chiefly aimed to combat the abuse of executive power and corruption in the House of Commons by both governing factions or ruling parties, the nobility and the monarchy generally, through bribery. He's also acutely aware that, and of course, the colonists will take up this very issue, that the House of Commons in Britain is extremely unrepresentative. About 300,000 men could vote, but of this total, probably some 6,000 out of a population of about 7 million in 1770 elected a majority of 558 MPs in the House of Commons. So we also speculate in our new edition of Paine's writings that Paine was quite possibly a central participant in the famous junius letters of 1769-72, which is the most famous debate in its time, on liberty of the press and other issues related to freedom and representation. More than anything else, of course, however, what makes Paine distinctive and what leads him to become probably the most famous man in the world in his time, was the style of his writing. It's direct, it's emotional, it's witty, it's sarcastic, but it's always human. It resonated extraordinarily well in the more equal society of the New World. But almost every reader who comes to Paine, even for the first time, recognizes him as simply a great writer.
- [13:35]
B
His most famous work, at least, you know, the work that I first became familiar with him through is Common Sense. And I think that oftentimes common sense is, is assigned to American students, you know, in middle school or early high school, as, as the kind of a. An example of a primary document from that period that is, is readable, is accessible. And I was wondering if you talk about why it was so powerful for readers of the revolutionary period, just a little bit about comp. Like why this document compared to others.
- [14:11]
A
Paine's friend Joel Barlow once wrote, I quote, the great American cause owed as much to the pen of Paine as to the sword of Washington. So this is true not just because of common sense, but also the text I mentioned a little while ago, the American Crisis. Common Sense itself appears on 9 January 1776. It is an extraordinarily powerful piece of writing which makes two grand claims. The first is, and this is really startling for a lot of readers for whom it simply had never occurred before, monarchy is not a useful but a harmful form of government. And secondly, that the colonies can become a representative republic from the stage of a complete break from Britain, in other words, independence. So in the first argument, Paine asserts, I quote again, all men originally being equals, no one by birth could ever have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever. So much of the text is framed in terms of a moral argument where the British monarchy and the British state are regarded as corrupt tyrannies, and the colonists, by contrast, as virtuous citizens. Paine famously stated, you see this quote in almost every commentary on common sense, that society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil in its worst state, an intolerable one. And he would later echo this in Rights of Man in the early 1790s with the similar phrase the more perfect civilization is, the less occasion has it for government, because the more does it regulate its own affairs, which draws directly on his own American experience. So for Paine, the watershed in the colonists struggle, which when he'd first arrived, he seems to have regarded as a kind of legal case where he assumed along with most of his fellow colonists, that there would be claim and counterclaim and some kind of arbitration which would finally reach a compromise. But then came Britain's use of arms against the colonists, the so called Boston Massacre, the Battles of Concord, and then even more, that of Lexington of 19 April 1775 to this. This was the key turning point. The cause now was resistance to tyranny and no kings as we today also frame it. So this is an enormously potent argument. Common sense is read by or to just about everybody in the colonies. It sells perhaps as many as 500,000 copies, which is absolutely astonishing. I'll give you just one more quote to give a sense of the style. There is something Paine says exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of monarchy. It first excludes a man from the means of information by isolating him, yield empowers him to act in cases where the highest judgment is required. The state of a king shuts him from the world. Yet the business of a king requires him to know it thoroughly. Wherefore the different parts, by unnaturally opposing and destroying each other, prove the whole character to be absurd and useless. A full scale demolition job on the concept of monarchy and on the person of George iii.
- [18:08]
B
I think that perfectly leads us actually into my next question, which was if you could dig a little bit into Paine's political philosophical ideas around republicanism. How did he conceive of republicanism in opposition to monarchy? Obviously you've just given us some examples of what he opposes in relation to monarchy. But what were some of his more positive philosophical ideas around republicanism?
- [18:34]
A
So the sources here are both religious and secular. And I think I've changed my own view in part over the five last intense years of preparing this edition. And I give, or we give as a collective of editors, greater stress now to the religious background that Paine is working from than I perhaps would have done 20 to 30 years ago. So Payne early on worked as a Methodist lay preacher. He memorized. He has a phenomenal memory. He memorized the entire Bible and could quote randomly and selectively anything he needed. His worldview, and this comes out in common sense in Rights of Man and in the third of his great works, Agrarian justice of 1797. His worldview is framed around an ideal based on Genesis and the creation and a benign God giving the world to all mankind. All of these three major works adverted to the centrality of God's intention to provide the earth for all. So then of course, there are secular sources. There are many other people writing about liberty in this period. Their names are not today nearly as well known as Paine's. James Burr, for example, who writes a work called the Political Disquisitions, which is the most important contribution to the revolutionary debate of the mid-1770s, is a friend of Paine's. We believe they collaborated on a number of works. He looks back in turn to 17th century British republicans like James Harrington and Algernon Sidney, where the real breach from most of this tradition occurs and where Paine distances himself markedly from most 18th century Republicans, lies in being a Democrat and in insisting pretty much consistently from 1776 onwards that in America, in Britain and later on in France, only universal male suffrage could provide the underlying foundation for any just political regime. So the point is not merely that he's a republican, but that he's a Democratic republican. He insists that only universal male suffrage there very, very few people pumping, of course, for suffrage for women in this period could prevent what he calls the private pilfering of the poor by the rich. So to this, Paine adds a number of other proposals which make his Democratic republicanism distinctive. He supports unicameral legislatures, that's to say, a single house, so no second house, much less one based on property representing the wealthy elite. He adopts the principle, as he puts it, that were there a large equal and annual representation in one house, only the different parties, by being thus blended together, would hear each other's arguments, which advantage they cannot have if they sit in different houses. Elsewhere. He says, my idea of a single legislature was always founded on a hope that whatever personal parties there might be in the state, they would all unite and agree in the general principle of good government, that these party differences and think of how this resonates to us today would be dropped at the threshold of the state house, and that the public good or the good of the whole would be the governing principle of the legislature within it. So later on, he acknowledges that there are some problems with arrangements of this kind and suggests that perhaps a single house might divide into two parts for key debates and then come back and reunite itself. So we need to set these proposals against the background of other Republicans writing in this period. John Cartwright, for example, James Burr, John Wilkes, hold the view that only property holders should hold political office, while more aristocratic Republicans like Thomas Brand Hollis believe that, I quote, the lower class of people should not be taught even to read. And right. Look what an immense distance there is between what Paine is proposing and these types of republicanism. So, by contrast, Paine, in a slightly more mature period in 1795, emphasized that there were two issues governing this set of proposals. The one is, he says, never to invest any individual with extraordinary power, for besides his being tempted to misuse it, it will excite contention and commotion in the nation for the office. Secondly, never to invest power long in the hands of any number of individuals. This is why annual elections are proposed constantly. He thought also that it was, I quote again the nature and intention of a constitution to prevent governing by party by establishing a common principle that shall limit and control the impulse of party. So unicameral legislator Paint says there is always to be the hope that. I'm quoting again. Whatever personal parties there might be in the state, they would all unite and agree in the general principles of good government. The public good or the public or the good of the whole would be the governing principle within the legislature. So this motif pervades Paine's political writings from the 1790s onwards, right through from the 1770s onwards, rather right through the 1790s. It's also noteworthy that Paine takes from one branch of the republican tradition, namely James Harrington and his followers, the Harringtonians, some parts of proposals for a so called agrarian law to limit landed property.
- [25:34]
B
That was a fantastic overview, I think, of Paine's perspective on republicanism and how he differed from other writers of the time, other Founding fathers. And you've already talked a little bit about Paine's relationship with Benjamin Franklin, but I was wondering if you talk about what his relationship was like with various Founding Fathers during this early period, but then also later as well. Like George Washington, et cetera.
- [26:02]
A
Paine initially is closest of all to Franklin and we think that they probably met in his London apartments in Craven street where Franklin if you're ever in London, it's a very interesting little museum there. He became close to Jefferson, we think around 1775 and lives quite close to Jefferson. Philadelphia is not all that large a place during the time that the Declaration of Independence is being composed in June of 1776. This is always been a controversial assertion, but we think that Paine may well have helped write the famous anti slavery clause in the Declaration which was later struck out by the Continental Congress. And it's perhaps less controversial to say with the well known political theorist Judith Clara that Paine's influence upon Jefferson was profound. So when the war began, we don't know the initial date he met Washington. Later on they fell out after Payne attacked Washington in 1796 for not helping him get out of prison in France, where he's been detained under the dictatorship of Robespierre. Later on, amongst the other Founding Fathers, John Adams becomes one of Paine's leading enemies. There's quite a lot of vitriol exchange between them. Paine thinks Adams is a monarchist, but they disagree a great deal on basic rights as well. Adams, for example, holds the view that men without property shouldn't be able to vote at all. And Paine disagrees on limits of terms of office with lots of the other so called Founding Fathers. I mean, Hamilton for example, wants senators appointed for life, which is an interesting proposal in light of modern debates as well.
- [28:26]
B
Yeah, certainly it's interesting to compare Paine with these other Founding Fathers. And the story with George Washington is also quite an interesting one to sort of to look at. Interesting perspective on Washington as well. Let's get into the actual American Revolution itself because that's know what a lot of people's minds are going towards in this moment of time. Obviously I hope people will listen to this interview long after the 250th. But you know, as we are approaching the 250th, people are thinking about the Declaration of Independence and they're thinking about the, the Revolutionary War. And I was wondering if you could talk about Paine's contribution to the war effort.
- [29:13]
A
So he doesn't actually pick up a musket, but he is for a time an aide de camp, as called a kind of personal assistant to General Nathaniel Greene, who's one of the most talented of all the revolutionary generals. His real contribution, however, is of course as a pamphleteer, not just in common sense, but in producing from late 7076 right through 1780 through, through the entire period of the Revolutionary War, 16 famous pamphlets known as the American Crisis, which play an absolutely vital role. He also does a number of other interesting things, however. In 1781, for example, and he later on claims that this plays an absolutely vital role in the success of the Revolution. He goes with a man named Colonel John Lawrence to France to secure a large grant and loan to aid the Revolution. And of course, as no doubt all of your listeners are aware, it's only thanks to French intervention, particularly the arrival of a French fleet in a very timely manner at Chesapeake Bay, that the Revolution is in fact finally successful. Moreover, but this is also contentious, he's active throughout this period in the anti slavery movement. I said a moment ago that it's still not entirely sure whether he assists Jefferson in the phrasing of the anti slavery passages which are struck out from the Declaration. But there is no doubt whatsoever of his opposition to slavery. His own first flat or apartment in Philadelphia is right opposite a place where slaves are sold. And there is no doubt that he regards the retention of slavery as a fatal flaw in the Revolution and in the subsequent constitution of 1787.
- [31:36]
B
I want to jump a little bit to the French Revolution. Obviously, there's so much of Payne's life that it becomes impossible to probably cover everything in this short interview, which is why I think it's very worthwhile for people to actually go and take a look at the collected writings, because there really is so much more there than we could possibly cover. But, you know, Paine, in addition to common sense, is very famous also for his reflections on the French Revolution. And I was wondering if you could talk a little about his observations of the Revolution, in particular his debates with Edmund Burke on the nature of that revolution, how he was interpreting it. Compared to the American Revolution, though, Burke's
- [32:21]
A
text, Reflections on Revolution in France, appears in November of 1790 before Paine's rights of Man. It's a direct attack on the French Revolution and the defense of the absolutism of the French ancien regime. So today it's regarded as the foundational text of modern conservatism. There are a lot of responses to Burke, but Paine's is Rights of Man, which is published in two parts in March of 1791 and then part two in February of 1792. So the key issues that they are debating are rights, monarchy and republicanism. Burke insists in the Reflections that whatever natural rights we had originally been granted or given war had established had been relinquished at the founding of civil society, and that whatever rights did exist in society were essentially only civil rights recognized by a given state. Paine takes a very different view. God's gift to all humanity of such rights is permanent. These rights are universal. Britain's constitutional settlement in particular in 1688, which is the great precedent Burke imagines for the debate that goes on around the French Revolution, could not, for Burke, be altered. So we're simply stuck, as we might say. We're stuck with any constitution. It is for all time. Paine, by contrast, argues that every generation has the right to choose its own form of rule and its own rulers. So there are other contrasts too. Burke calls the lower orders a swinish multitude, to Paine, their equal citizens. To Burke, the nobility were, quote, the Corinthian capital of Polish society. To Paine, they personified what he calls no ability and were just another form of hereditary rule.
- [34:39]
B
What sort of policies did Paine advocate for in the Rights of Man and other works that touched on public policy? We've obviously talked a little bit about some of his policy ideas in general, but the Rights of Man has some very interesting ideas about where he sort of puts forward some idea, you know, some very concrete Proposals, too.
- [34:58]
A
Yeah. So besides supporting these ideas of rights and of democracy and the right of revolution, of course, the most important innovation in both parts comes in Rights of Man, Part 2, where Paine offers what is essentially a plan for what we today call universal basic income. He proposes giving four pounds to kind of calculate what this means. A rural laborer in Britain at this time has an annual wage of about probably 10 pounds. So 4 pounds, he says, should be given to each child under the age of 14 for its education. £6 per annum to the aged poor from age 15 to 60, rising to £10 per annum, and further funds for educating the poorest, assisting birth expenses, and paying for the funeral costs of those who died away from home. He also suggests building workhouses in London to employ perhaps 24,000 of the poor annually at all times. So in 1797, then, he further augments these proposals in the text I mentioned earlier, called Agrarian justice. This proposes a one off payment at the age of 21, so more of £15 more than a rural laborer's annual income and an annual pension of £10 from the age of 50, with local bodies administering a tax of 10% on all inheritances. So it's this social program that really makes Paine's agenda from 1792 to 1797 look extraordinarily like a precursor to debates about the welfare state, which, of course, Americans today will associate initially with the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt and with the maintenance of a system of support for the poor and the elderly. Ever since then,
- [37:26]
B
we've talked a little bit about Paine's religious views. Well, more so specifically about the fact that he had, as you mentioned before, that he had the Bible memorized and that he had worked in the church. But if you could talk a little bit about Paine's religious views, too, and how those come through. Obviously he's a. Has a lot of views about natural rights and such, and I think it's also interesting just to talk about it in the context of the kind of the religious second Great Awakening that was going on in the United States once he finally returns after his time away in France.
- [38:09]
A
So there's quite a lot going on here. Payne is baptized in the Church of England, but he's partly raised as a Quaker, and he much admires the Quaker treatment of the poor. In particular, he works as a Methodist lay preacher, but eventually he becomes a deist. That is to say, someone who believes in God, but believes that the evidence for the existence of God lies in nature and not in the Bible. His famous work called the Age of Reason, published in parts in 1794 and 1795, is a head on attack on the idea that the Bible was divinely revealed, that it is revelation, and on its inconsistencies and what he regards as its barbarous morality. He later recalls, for example, quote, being repelled by the idea that God had acted 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. So Paine is not an atheist, although he's frequently called one. He believes in an afterlife and he believes that God existence is indeed proven by the infinite complexity of the natural world. So science plays a major role in, in his religious evolution. He tells us what was called natural philosophy. I began to compare or to confront the internal evidence that those things afford with the Christian system of faith, and natural philosophy comes out on top. So as I've suggested, Paine is actually a deeply religious man, but what he comes to see religion as is basically just doing good to others. His entire world view is shaped by the Bible, there's no doubt about that. And sometimes he expresses this in semi millenarian terms. He famously wrote, the present age will hereafter merit to be called the Age of Reason, and the present generation will appear to the future as the Adam of a new world. So this whole idea of remaking the world all over again as if we were back in the Garden of Eden and in Genesis persists right through all of his major works.
- [40:41]
B
I think that's an interesting explanation of his religious views and helps to also explain a little bit his time coming back to the United States as well. You know, he's obviously away in France for a while. You mentioned a little bit prior his brief little tiff with George Washington as he's wallowing away in, in prison in France. And you know, when he actually returns, he was not warmly received, even eventually a couple years later, having his right to vote denied. Why was he, why was he not treated, you know, with the kind of the, the praise that we tend to give him today?
- [41:24]
A
Well, there are really three reasons for this. Firstly, the Age of Reason, the religious views, the attack on Revelation expressed there is of course, as you might imagine, extraordinarily unpopular amongst the clergy. In particular, fairly sizable part of the population does assume that the Bible is the revealed word of God. And there are many, many responses to Age of Reason which take issue with his defense of A very contrary view. Secondly, then, as you just mentioned, the attack on Washington doesn't go down all that well in the new United States either. Washington has already been elevated to a kind of canonical status by the later 1790s. Paine's attack in 1796 also goes so far as to suggest that which a few, that a number of modern historians have also adopted. Paine is not that Washington's not really a military. He is an important. He is a successful general, but others do a great deal of work during the Revolutionary wars, and Washington shouldn't be assigned all of the praise for the eventual success of the colonists. And then, of course, there is the strength of the Federalist Party, the passage of the 1787 Federalist Constitution, which is extremely different from the set of proposals that Paine had been backing from 1776 onwards. Now, to his credit, Jefferson does step in when Paine returns and he invites Paine to the White House and incurs certain amount of wrath from the Federalist Press for so doing. But he recognizes with a fair number of other people, it has to be said, I think too much stress is probably given to the negative reception that Paine receives when he returns to the US Quite a lot of people do still recognize his contribution to the Revolution.
- [43:57]
B
Yeah, Today I feel like his legacy is so positive, at least that's how I encountered it, that Pain is this great explainer of many of the more radical thought lines that were present during the Revolution, and we still read him today. As you pointed out, there are many writers that were well read during that period of time that are basically forgotten, with the exception by scholars. How did his legacy evolve to become what it is today, where he is so upheld as this brilliant thinker who essentially represented many of the good ideas and aspects that were present in the Revolutionary period?
- [44:48]
A
So his reputation proceeds in stages. The animosity towards, as I just mentioned, his religious views is pretty continuous all the way from the 1790s right up to the present. But on what we politically usually refer to as the left or in the radical movement, reformers of all types, in particular advocates of democracy, of the extension of the franchise, to, of course, later women to blacks after slavery is abolished, Pain remains a figure to be reckoned with in the he dies in 1809, but in the 1820s on both sides of the Atlantic, his birthday, usually taken to be 29th of January as the calendar changes afterwards, is celebrated in the radical movement for many decades. He has quite a number of prominent supporters on both sides of the Atlantic, again right through the late 19th and into the 20th century, men like Moncure Conway, who's an early biographer of Paine. And while I think there is some perhaps flagging of interest at the beginning of the 20th century, he comes again to be reasonably well known in the 1930s. He's sufficiently well known by the time of the Second World War that US airmen who are stationed just outside Thetford in East Anglia Bomber Cruise put up a statue of him during their residence there, which is still there to be seen today. During the McCarthy period, however, in the early 1950s, Paine is again proscribed and regarded as a communist. And indeed, one of the questions that people sometimes get asked by McCarthy's interrogators is, do you read or have you read Thomas Paine? Paine, of course, is not a communist.
- [47:14]
B
That's. I mean, that's almost hilarious. I mean, in a very dark way and interesting to think about just the diversity of thought of the American Revolution and of the founders and the radicalism of them. In many ways, Paine being. Being one of the more radical ones that, you know, the varying treatments. And it's interesting to think about in the context also of, you know, of originalism in general, what it might mean to read someone like Thomas Paine and what that might. Might mean for certain approaches to thinking about, you know, what the American form of government is all about. You know, Paine is really most famous nowadays for common sense and a few other crucial works that you mentioned as well. But what do you think is most misunderstood about him?
- [48:09]
A
So I think here the issue of religion comes to the fore if we're thinking about misunderstanding. As I said, Pain's often represented to be an atheist, but I think he's an extraordinarily moral man and to him, that is what religion is all about. I think we would also here want to consider how much Pain is in part underestimated today. And the one part of his legacy that I think he would want us to come back to, and to give greater stress than has often been given to it by historians, is his support specifically for the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, which limits executive power far more than in the subsequent Federalist Constitution of 1787, shorter terms of office all round, a plural executive chosen by the legislature. Paine would want us to remember him today as a Democratic Republican, defined by his support for universal male suffrage and for no requirement of property qualifications for voters or office holders. He would want us to recall his anti monarchism and his opposition to single executives. He would want us to recall his antipathy to party and his support for the fact that, as he thought, democracy could not function without a minimal income support for the poor because, as he puts it, destitution and servile financial dependency and electoral freedom were incommensurable. So I won't go through in detail the contrast between the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 and the 1787 US Constitution. Suffice it to say that the crucial issue here is harnessing and restraining the power of the executive. And that issue has never been more vital to our thinking than it is today. Paine calls the 1787 Constitution a monarchical government. And we've had, of course, occasion to reflect in the past year, more than perhaps at any time before in American history, just how far there might be a connection between the current regime and the design of the 1787 Constitution. And finally, of course, Paine would want us to go back to the proposals of Rights of Man, Part 2, and Agrarian justice that we now term a universal basic income.
- [51:17]
B
I'm curious, you know, it's the. With the 250, 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, what do you think is the most important lesson that Paine can teach us today? If there is one thing that you had to sort of share, maybe one thing or a couple things that you had to share with someone, if they're like, okay, you're. You are the, you know, one of the most, you know, eminent scholars of Thomas, Thomas Paine. What does he. What is the message that he has for us today that is relevant? And it might be, when I say us, I might mean Americans, but you might take that more broadly, too.
- [51:51]
A
So I couldn't boil it down to one lesson, but I think there are five main things Peng would want us to remember about him today and apply to the political systems we live under. Firstly, obviously, his opposition to monarchy, this, astonishing though it seemed to be in January 1776, becomes the norm throughout most of the rest of the world. Such monarchies as now exist are nearly all constitutional monarchies. That's to say, the monarch is a notional head of stake but has no real political power. Secondly, Paine's support for democracy in the form of universal male suffrage, which he obviously would have extended to women had he lived long enough. Thirdly, his championing of the idea of universal natural rights, which are now foundational to the entirety of modern political discourse. Fourthly, the proposals just mentioned for universal basic income. And fifthly, his insistence on maximal checks and balances to temper the danger of centralized power. This sounds today like an alarming warning as to what might happen when these checks by the people on terms of office and on executive prerogative are not implemented more fully. Paine repeatedly opposes executive prerogative. In 1805, for example, he attacks Pennsylvania's new constitution. 1776 constitution was thrown out after quite a few loyalists returned to the colonies at the end of the Revolutionary War. And the new Constitution is made to mirror the 1787 Federalist Constitution. And Paine warns in 1805, this negativating power in the hands of an individual ought to be constitutionally abolished. A veto power. In other words, it is a dangerous power. There is no prescribing rules for the use of it. It is discretionary and arbitrary. And I should emphasize this in bold and italics. The will and temper of the person at any time possessing it is its only rule. Think my mind is the only limit to my power. Finally then, Paine possessed, and this is a point really that one could make for virtually any electorate anywhere, an extremely strong sense of the need for duties to be commensurate with rights. He wrote that no man is a true republican or worthy of the name that will not give up his single voice to that of the public. He described the principle of a republic as virtue and public spirit. And look at his definition of government. Government is not a trade which any man or body of men has a right to set up and exercise for his own emolument, remember the emoluments clause, but is altogether a trust in right of those by whom that trust is delegated and by whom it is also always resumable. It has, that is government has. It has of itself no rights. They are all together duties. This is an extremely salutary reminder of the grave dangers which selfish interest and corruption pose to any republic.
- [55:39]
B
There's so much in pain that is still worth reading today. And I think you know this. Hopefully this interview will serve listeners as just a very, very brief introduction to pain. Obviously we've touched on many of the key ideas and aspects of his life, but there is so much more. And in this six volume series that you have edited, you know, there is just an enormous reservoir of letters of essays of all sorts of content that I think historians and even just enthusiasts for American history and for the history of that period of time, we'll find useful, we'll find interesting, and we'll still find relevant today. So, Greg, it was really wonderful to have you on the New Books Network and thank you so much for sharing a little bit about Thomas Paine and your perspectives on him. I think it's really invaluable for listeners. So thank you so much.
- [56:40]
A
Thank you indeed, too, for the interview. Kayla. Much appreciated. Sam.