Forge."
Shortly after this letter to Washington tidings came that a French fleet, under Count d'Estaing, had appeared on the coast, and was about to blockade the Delaware. The British apparently in panic, really by order from England, left Philadelphia, June 18th. This seeming flight was a great encouragement. Congress was soon comfortably seated in Philadelphia, where Paine had the pleasure of addressing his next Crisis to the British Peace Commissioners.
In Philadelphia Congress was still surrounded by a hostile population; Paine had still to plead that there should be no peace without republican independence. Even so late as November 24, 1778, the French Minister (Gerard) writes to his government: "Scarcely one quarter of the ordinary inhabitants of Philadelphia now here favour the cause (of independence). Commercial and family ties, together with an aversion to popular government, seem to account for this. The same feeling exists in New York and Boston, which is not the case in the rural districts." While Franklin was offered in Paris the bribe of a peerage, and the like for several revolutionary leaders, similar efforts were made in America to subdue the "rebellion" by craft. For that purpose had come the Earl of Carlisle, Sir George Johnstone, and William Eden. Johnstone had retired from the Commission in disgust. Referring to the invitation of the Peace Commissioners, that America should join them against France, he says: "Unless you were capable of such conduct yourselves, you would never have supposed such a character in us." He reminds the commissioners, who had threatened that America must be laid waste so as to be useless to France, that increased wants of America must make her a more valuable purchaser in France. Paine mentions Sir H. Clinton with some significance, and suspects the truth that he had brought orders, received from England, overruling an intention of the peace envoys to burn Philadelphia if their terms were rejected. He says he has written a Crisis for the English people because there was a convenient conveyance; "for the Commissioners—poor Commissioners!—having proclaimed that 'yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown? have waited out the date, and, discontented with their God, are returning to their gourd. And all the harm I wish them is that it may not wither about their ears, and that they may not make their exit in the belly of a whale."
1. See his letter to the President of Congress. Ford's, "Writings of Washington," vol. vi., p. 82.
2. This I learn by a note from Mr. Henry's descendant, John W. Jordan. At this time Paine laid before Henry his scheme for steam-navigation.
3. The house is marked "B. by J. B. Cookis in the year 1761." It is probable that Congress deemed it prudent to keep important documents a little way from the edifice in the centre of the town where it met, a building which no longer stands.
4. I am indebted to Mr. Simon Gratz, of Philadelphia, for this and several other letters of Paine to Laurens.
5. The arrival of the Commissioners caused Paine to address his Crisis VI. to them instead of to Lord North, as he tells Franklin is his intention. The above letter was no doubt written in the old stone house at York.
Chapter IX. French Aid, And The Paine-deane Controversy
In Bell's addenda to "Common Sense," which contained Paine's Address to the Quakers (also letters by others), appeared a little poem which I believe his, and the expression of his creed.
"THE AMERICAN PATRIOT'S PRAYER.
"Parent of all, omnipotent
In heaven, and earth below,
Through all creation's bounds unspent,
Whose streams of goodness flow,
"Teach me to know from whence I rose,
And unto what designed;
No private aims let me propose,
Since link'd with human kind.
"But chief to hear my country's voice,
May all my thoughts incline;
'T is reason's law, 't is virtue's choice,
'T is nature's call and thine.
"Me from fair freedom's sacred cause
Let nothing e'er divide;
Grandeur, nor gold, nor vain applause,
Nor friendship false misguide.
"Let me not faction's partial hate
Pursue to this Land's woe;
Nor grasp the thunder of the state
To wound a private foe.
"If, for the right to wish the wrong
My country shall combine,
Single to serve th' erroneous throng,
Spight of themselves, be mine."
Every sacrifice contemplated in this self-dedication had to be made. Paine had held back nothing from the cause. He gave America the copyrights of his eighteen pamphlets. While they were selling by thousands, at two or three shillings each, he had to apologize to a friend for not sending his boots, on the ground that he must borrow the money to pay for them! He had given up the magazine so suited to his literary and scientific tastes, had dismissed his lucrative school in Philadelphia, taken a musket on his Quaker shoulders, shared the privations of the retreat to the Delaware, braved bullets at Trenton and bombs at Fort Mifflin. But now he was to give up more. He was
"Single to serve th' erroneous throng,
Spight of themselves,"
and thereby lose applause and friendship. An ex-Congressman, sent to procure aid in France, having, as Paine believed, attempted a fraud on the scanty funds of this country, he published his reasons for so believing. In doing so he alarmed the French Ambassador in America, and incurred the hostility of a large party in Congress; the result being his resignation of the secretaryship of its Foreign Affairs Committee.
It has been traditionally asserted that, in this controversy, Paine violated his oath of office. Such is not the fact. His official oath, which was prepared for Paine himself—the first secretary of a new committee,—was framed so as to leave him large freedom as a public writer.
"That the said secretary, previous to his entering on his office, take an oath, to be administered by the president, well and faithfully to execute the trust reposed in him, according to his best skill and judgment; and to disclose no matter, the knowledge of which shall be acquired in consequence of his office, that he shall be directed to keep secret."
Not only was there no such direction of secrecy in this case, but Congress did not know the facts revealed by Paine. Compelled by a complaint of the French Minister to disown Paine's publication, Congress refused to vote that it was "an abuse of office," or to discharge him. The facts should be judged on
