Left: Thomas Paine’s Common Sense title page. Right: Thomas Paine, copy by Auguste Millière, after an engraving by William Sharp, after George Romney. Photo: Left: www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/history/common-sense-larger.html. Right: Via Wikimedia Commons.
Thomas Paine: Quaker revolutionary?
Anthony Boulton writes about a remarkable radical
Thomas Paine’s father was a Quaker and, as John Keane states in his acclaimed definitive biography, ‘Paine’s moral capacities ultimately had religious roots that were to have a lasting impact on his life and, eventually, the political shape of the modern world.’
In 1774 Paine left for America, where he played an instrumental part in the struggle for that country’s independence. He claimed liberty to be the ‘highest human good’. His pamphlet Common Sense electrified the entire United States and rescued George Washington’s flagging campaign.
Love of liberty
Paine’s love of liberty was not partial, like so many Americans, and in 1775 he published an article lashing out at the African slave trade. He argued that freedom for both white and black Americans was ‘a duty incumbent on all professors of Christianity’.
This article contributed to the formation of the first anti-slavery society in the world. Most of its founding fathers were Quakers.
In 1779 Paine grappled with forming an economic model for the new American Republic and concluded that while a free market was essential, it should be strictly controlled by political and legal regulations, including even public opinion – otherwise it would end up by paralysing itself, generate inflation, widen the gap between rich and poor and impoverish whole layers of society. This was surely a lesson for our times.
In 1787, Paine returned to Britain where, in 1791, he published his phenomenal bestseller Rights of Man in which he argued that all people, whatever their station, are born with equal natural rights which are, ultimately, God-given.
In his advocacy of welfare institutions catering for the needs of the poor, the unemployed, widows and the elderly, he could be regarded as the progenitor of our modern welfare state. Paine wrote in a vigorous, lucid style that eschewed the literary ornament of his day. He said: ‘It is my design to make those that can scarcely read understand.’
Condemned to death
The enormous popularity of Rights of Man frightened William Pitt’s government, who considered Paine a grave threat to a rigid class system which left millions of people trapped in lives of hopeless squalor and degradation. Harassed and hounded by the government, Paine left for France in 1792, subsequently learning that he had been condemned to death should he ever return to Britain.
In France Paine was made welcome, offered French citizenship, and appointed Calais representative to the National Convention, which in January 1793 deliberated on the fate of the former monarchs. It is a tribute to Paine’s humanity that, in spite of repeated dire warnings from his friends, he risked his life to argue so effectively for clemency that revolutionary journalist Jean-Paul Marat leapt to his feet in a fury and shouted ‘Thomas Paine’s reason for voting against the death penalty is that he is a Quaker’, to which Paine responded ‘liberty and humanity are two principles that ensure the grandeur of a nation’. Paine’s plea for clemency was defeated by one vote out of over 700 deputies.
The Age of Reason
Having incurred the wrath of Maximilen de Robespierre, and in anticipation of imminent arrest and probably execution, Paine made haste to complete his next great work The Age of Reason. In the book he described all forms of organised religion as pompous and obfuscatory while, at the same time, defending the concept of a benevolent Creator against the rising tide of atheism.
Thomas Paine argued in The Age of Reason that Revelation entails direct communication from God to humanity without intermediaries such as churches, which were set up to terrify and enslave mankind, as well as monopolise power and profit. He described the Bible as a ‘Book of Riddles’, and likened Christian doctrines to Greek mythology, while agreeing that Christian commandments contained some ‘good moral precepts’.
Paine declared ‘I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life’. At the same time, he condemned atheism as an ‘enemy of liberty and human morals such as compassion, honesty and love’ and believed that it would create a Godless, soulless society of bleak lifelessness.
In 1797, while Paine was recuperating after his release from prison, where he nearly died, a frequent visitor was John Walker, a prominent English Friend. John Walker was a medical doctor who admired Rights of Man and had no antipathy to The Age of Reason. This could suggest that eighteenth century Friends had a more progressive spiritual attitude than their modern-day counterparts. Could this be the reason why Quakers are no longer the distinctive body that they once were, with the consequent decline in their influence?
An inner spiritual force
Two hundred years ago Thomas Paine demonstrated that effective action must be prompted and guided by an inner spiritual force untrammelled by false beliefs. Even voices within Orthodoxy are questioning the validity of doctrines contrived out of political expediency by Roman emperors.
One such voice is that of Hugh Magee, a cathedral canon in the Church of Scotland, who argues that Christianity is obsolete and dying a slow death from within. He says that it needs to be replaced by a more credible Jesus-centred thought system. His booklet An Upgrader’s Guide – How to move on from Christianity and discover Jesus I can heartily recommend to all Friends.
Many years ago, for a time, I took an interest in Spiritualism which, as many will know, is replete with communicators of a North American Indian origin. One of these, named ‘Silver Birch’, on the bicentenary of Thomas Paine’s birth in 1937, praised him in these terms:
This is the day that your world of matter pays tribute to one who, though he did not realise it, was filled with the power of the spirit, and who strove in his own day to uplift those who were oppressed and crushed, who struggled to raise the weak and the fallen, who fought against all injustice, and strove to teach man his rightful heritage. Those who were in high places fought against that one man, but, because the power of the spirit moved him, that which he did triumphed over all the difficulties of your world. Though he was despised in his day, though he was rejected and persecuted, his work lives on.
Comments
Very interesting.
By Kenya Quaker on 11th September 2014 - 10:55
John Keane gives a detailed account of Paine’s last days.
Paine wanted to be buried in a Quaker burial ground. This request was ‘sympathetically’ put to the local Friends by a Quaker who was visiting Paine. It was declined on the grounds that those Keane describes as ‘Paine’s own friends and sympathizers’ “might wish to raise a monument to his memory, which being contrary to their rules, would render it inconvenient to them.’ (p.534)
By JohnN on 11th September 2014 - 11:34
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