John E. Remsburg

“ The fall of Robespierre stems the crimson torrent and, in time, secures for Paine his freedom. His imprisonment has lasted nearly a year, a year never to be forgotten, a year of chaos, from which is to arise a fairer and a better France.
Let us contemplate, for a moment, this bloody and protracted drama. Let us, in imagination, visit this death-stricken Paris. Buildings—once palaces—have been transformed into prisons. Thousands are crowded within their walls; beings of both sexes, and of every age and rank; grayhaired men who look with stolid indifference upon the scenes around them ”

“ Paine was the prophet of his age. From the dim twilight of the eighteenth century his prophetic eye pierced through the intervening years to and beyond the gray dawn of the twentieth. And when he viewed man's progress and beheld his glorious destiny, this matchless seer "rang out the old, rang in the new," rang out the rule and tyranny of king, rang out the dogmas and the ghosts of priest; rang in the reign of liberty and justice, rang in the faith of Reason and Humanity.
Yes, in the cause of man the battle of his life was fought, a fierce and stormy conflict. ”

“ Each fierce Thermopylae she meets inspires some crowning Salamis. The wrongs of Thomas Paine shall be avenged. In vain his country passed to him the bitter cup; the fetters forged to chain his noble spirit to the dust were forged for naught; loving lips whisper, "It still moves!"
I pity the man whose soul is so small that he cannot rise above the level of his creed to do justice to those whose religious opinions have not been gauged by his particular standard. I am no Christian, but may I never become so ungrateful as to ignore my obligations to those who are. ”

“ Thomas Paine was the creator of this great Republic. He was the real father of our country; Washington was its foster father. Paine's pen transformed a petty rebellion into a mighty revolution and made a rebel chief the triumphant defender of a new-born nation. Washington's fame is secure. His right to a place in the pantheon of earth's immortals will never be denied. And when the clouds of prejudice are dispelled, as they will be, Paine's name will shine with a splendor unsurpassed, never to be obscured again. ”

“ The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, 'Tis time to part."
"The independence of America should have been considered as dating its era from, and published by, the first musket that was fired against her."
"O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger and England hath given her warning to depart. ”

“ Noble L. Prentiss: "Paine's death-bed terrors were used in the pulpit for a long time. It is probable that they never existed. It is living not dying, that troubles most of us. When the inevitable hour comes; when the lights are being put out, the shutters closed, the end is peace."
Concerning Paine's recanting Colonel Ingersoll says: "He died surrounded by those who hated and despised him,—who endeavored to wring from the lips of death a recantation. But, dying as he was, his soul stood erect to the last moment. Nothing like a recantation could be wrung from the brave lips of Thomas Paine." ”

“ From America to France, fresh in the throes of her great upheaval, he passed, not as an incendiary, but as a moderating and constructive influence in her national convention, risking his very life for the cause of clemency in dealing with a traitorous king. From France to England, carrying the same doctrines of liberty in politics and religion, not a cold utilitarian conception of individual rights, but a rich human gospel of a commonwealth sustained by a passion of humanity as deep and real as ever influenced the soul of man. ”

“ If all the world's inhabitants but one accepted the Bible and there was one who could not honestly accept it, its rejection by one human being would prove that it is not from an all-powerful and an all-just God; for an all-powerful God who failed to reach and convince even one of his children would not be an all-just God. Has the Bible been given to all the world? Do all accept it? Three-fourths of the human race reject it; millions have never heard of it.
"The word of God is the creation we behold."—Age of Reason. ”

“ It remained for Thomas Paine, standing upon the shores of this western world, to tear away the blinds of superstition, hypocrisy, selfishness, and imperial pretense, and awaken mankind to a consciousness of its own power and capacity for self-government."
Walter Holloway: "Age after age men have struggled toward the ideal, with toil and tears, praying in their pain, sobbing out their sorrows in the half-light of hope, forever beaten back from the coveted goal. ”

“ Would France's greatest women, Roland and De Stael, have stooped to pay the tribute of praise to a poor, drunken, immoral wretch? Would President Jefferson have offered a national ship to bear to his home a poor, drunken, immoral wretch? Would Washington have acknowledged as one of the most potent factors in achieving American Independence, the pen of a poor, drunken, immoral wretch? Would the Congress of the United States and the National Convention of France have bestowed gifts and conferred, honors upon a poor, drunken, immoral wretch? ”

“ Bowed with the weight of sixty-six years Paine returned to America. Here the evening of his life was passed,—embittered by a world's ingratitude.
"Men never know their saviors when they come."
The apostle of liberty, of mercy, and of truth, became successively a martyr to each. For espousing the cause of liberty England declared him an outlaw; for advocating mercy France gave him a prison; and for proclaiming the truth America placed upon his aged head the cruel crown of thorns. ”

“ Now, if the Christian Bible were a revelation—if it were God's only revelation, as affirmed—would he allow these spurious books to be imposed upon mankind and delude the greater portion of his children?
A divine revelation intended for all mankind can be harmonized only with a universal acceptance of this revelation. God, it is affirmed, has made a revelation to the world. Those who receive and accept this revelation are saved; those who fail to receive and accept it are lost. This God, it is claimed, is all-powerful and all-just. If he is all-powerful he can give his children a revelation. ”

“ Eight days after the execution of the Girondins another of Paine's friends, Madame Roland, the "Inspiring Soul" of the Girondins—one of the greatest, one of the fairest, one of the bravest, and one of the noblest women that ever came to brighten our planet—died on the same scaffold. Beautiful in life, Madame Roland rose to sublimity in death. ”

“ Had Thomas Paine been a Grecian or Roman patriot in olden times, and performed the same services as he did for this country, he would have had the honor of an Apotheosis. The Pantheon would have been opened to him, and we should at this day regard his memory with the same veneration that we do that of Socrates and Cicero. But posterity will do him justice. Time, that destroys envy and establishes truth, will clothe his character in the habiliments that justly belong to it. ”

“ Liberty, hunted around the globe, has ever found its highest hope, its safest refuge, in the affections of those upon whose grand and noble foreheads the tyrants of the world have ever branded the indelible stigma of Infidelity. Thomas Paine, who has done more for human liberty than any other man who ever lived, has borne it with a grace amounting to sublimity. ”

“ Thomas Paine belongs to the ages—not because he was Thomas Paine, but because the light which illumined his mind and the principles which motived his life are the noblest and richest blossoms the tree of human life can bear. ”

“ Horace Seaver: "Paine's writings are a noble monument to the loftiness of his aims, the brilliancy of his genius, the wealth of benevolence in his heart, and the breadth and power of his intellect."
Horace Traubel: "He will always stand there, immortal in history, a contemporary giant in whose aggressiveness and fortitude political literature discovered a new epoch. He will ever be ranked with the masters in theological innovation."
General Nathaniel Greene: "Your fame for your writings will be immortal." ”

“ Thomas Paine was so far beyond his age that a hundred years has not been long enough for the world to catch up. Sometime he will stand out as the wisest, truest, bravest friend of liberty that America can boast. ”

“ Let Ignorance array her countless hosts; let the dark shades of Prejudice becloud the sky; let Hatred rave and curse; let the darts of Calumny pierce the white breast of Truth, and Slander clothe the tongues of all their minions. They strive in vain. The Crisis is past, the Age of Reason has dawned. Common Sense is fast supplanting Superstition, the Rights of Man are bound to triumph, and the author-hero's name will gather lustre as the years roll by. ”

“ But in America the hold is deeper than that. In this self-forgetting insurrection of the human heart against deified Inhumanity there is an expression of the inarticulate wrath of humanity against continuance of the same wrong... There is still visible, however refined, the sting and claw of the Apollyon against whom Paine hurled his far-reaching dart."—Dr. Conway.
Judge Thomas Herttell: "No man in modern ages has done more to benefit mankind, or distinguished himself more for the immense moral good he has effected for his species, than Thomas Paine." ”

“ We come the more willingly and our exercises will be characterized by a deeper earnestness because the one whose merits we celebrate has been the victim of almost infinite injustice. In the popular mind to utter a word in his behalf has been to apologize for wrong—to declare yourself the friend of Paine has been to declare yourself the enemy of man. The world is not prepared to do him full justice yet. Priestcraft, still powerful, uses all its power to prejudice the public mind against him and in too many hearts, where love and gratitude should dwell, ingratitude and hatred have their home. ”

“ Danton, Brissot, and many more of the best men of France are butchered; Roland and Condorcet die by their own hands; Talleyrand is a refugee in America, and Lafayette pines in the dungeon vaults of Austria.
Many noble women, too, are sacrificed. Marie Antoinette follows her Louis to the scaffold. In the Conciergerie, companions for a time, are held captive two of the purest and noblest of women,—the lovely and amiable Josephine Beauhamais, destined to become Napoleon's queen, and the beautiful and gifted Madame Roland, whose innocent blood must wet the cruel knife of the guillotine. ”

“ His heart the world embracing He served our sorest need, His mind his church displacing, Humanity his creed. Humanity his creed, Truth follows in his train, And of all those names the fairest Is that of Thomas Paine. ”

“ Thomas Paine has been pursued with falsehood and calumny for more than a hundred years, but his name and fame grow brighter and brighter as the years roll by. Already he is enrolled among the immortals as one of the real saviors of the World. ”

“ The effect was magical; into the dispirited ranks is breathed new life, and in the minds of the people planted a determination never to give up the struggle. At critical periods during the war number after number of this brave work appeared until, at last, he could triumphantly say, "The times that tried men's souls are over, and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished."
The pen of Paine was as mighty as the sword of Washington. "Common Sense" was the glorious sun that evolved a new political world ”

“ He pleads in vain; the king must die. "Death within four-and-twenty hours," is the decree. Amid the insults and execrations of a frenzied mob Louis is torn from the arms of his queen and children and hurried to the scaffold.
The Mountain has triumphed. The Jacobins, infuriated by the taste of a king's blood, will next devour their fellow-members. The Girondins, the heart and brains of France, are expelled from the convention, dragged to prison and to the guillotine. Paine's plea for mercy can not be forgiven. ”