Paine, Critic or Propagandist of the French Republic? (January 1794 September 1802)

Transcription

1 PART III Paine, Critic or Propagandist of the French Republic? (January 1794 September 1802) On 18 January 1794, while Paine had been in jail for a month and on the day after Vadier s statement on Paine s wrong siding in the Revolution, Achille Audibert, who had been sent by the authorities of the Pas de Calais to England to invite Paine to come back to France in September 1792 and who had served as an interpreter on the dawn of the day of his arrest, delivered a speech before the Société des Jacobins about the crimes of the then British enemy. In this speech, Paine was quoted as an authority on the vices of the British Constitution. 1 On 15 February 1794, Boinvilliers presented before the Convention a little book which contained a translation-summary of some passages of Common Sense together with Rousseau s Social Contract. 2 This summary was apparently based on extracts from the first two sections of Common Sense, especially the definition of government as a necessary evil and the condemnation of monarchy based on biblical quotes from the Book of Samuel. It also compiled sentences from the end of Section III of the pamphlet, in which Paine used the phrase social compact, even if Boinvilliers did not select the very passages in which the latter phrase appeared. Boinvilliers suggested how the ideas defended by Paine in 1776, especially Paine s rhetoric against the British monarchy, could be applied to the situation of France in 1793 while it was at war with European powers including Great Britain. Independence was turned here into a universal idea, which echoed what Paine said in the Introduction of Common Sense. It was France which this time appeared as the asylum for mankind. 3

2 216 PART III: PAINE, CRITIC OR PROPAGANDIST OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC? It is not easy to say whether these were signs that Paine s reputation was still what it used to be in intellectual and political circles at least. Paine was used here as an opponent to the British monarchy in a context in which Vadier s answer to the petition of the Americans of January 1794 distinguished between Paine s ideas and his commitment in the French Revolution. Given his connection or contacts with Paine, Achille Audibert, who would then in August 1794 ask for Paine s release, very likely expressed his support for Paine indirectly by quoting him. In the case of Boinvilliers, who was not a representative of the Convention and who is not known as a political figure but as a specialist of grammar and of education, it is not clear. His tone was in keeping with the propaganda that praised France s military victories and that turned France into the symbol of freedom against the tyranny of the monarchs of Europe. It was an appeal to peoples of other countries to follow the example of the French republic and to overthrow their current governments. The concluding words about the united French republic whose integrity should be preserved may be seen as an allusion to the accusation of federalism which was levelled at Girondins. Yet Paine does not seem to have been aware of this writing, or, rather, no extant document has been found to prove he was. While Paine was still in jail, Lanthenas had a translation of the beginning of the first part of The Age of Reason published. 4 In the Introduction, Paine explained that the dechristianization in France having perhaps gone too far, although legitimate, made it necessary to prevent new superstitions from taking Christianity s place that might lead to los[ing] sight of morality, of humanity and of the theology that is true, which was a clear allusion to the Terror. 5 This edition also contained a piece by another (obscure) author justifying the successive French governments policy regarding the Church, its property and priests. The full translation of The Age of Reason was published in January 1794 and the address it featured is dated 27 January, the day when Americans in Paris presented to the Convention the petition asking for Paine s release. 6 Biographers have also found traces of lost manuscripts that Paine wrote before or during his stay in prison. What is sure is that he revised his previous manuscript of Rights of Man. This new edition was published in 1795 in London. On the cover page, Paine was presented through his role in the French and American Revolutions since he introduced himself as a member of the French Convention; late a prisoner in the Luxembourg at Paris; [the] secretary to Congress during the American

3 PART III: PAINE, CRITIC OR PROPAGANDIST OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC? 217 war and [the] author of Common sense, &c. &c.. He (or the publisher) thus stressed his status as a victim of the Terror and as a potential martyr of the French revolutionary cause. This new version is a combination of the theoretical passages of both parts of Paine s initial work. The Preface, which is dated 19 May 1794, was very optimistic and a revolutionary millenarianism tends to surface in it. Paine still envisioned the coming of a new age of enlightenment and of enlightened governments. His tone was the same as in the original Rights of Man, which is perhaps unexpected given the circumstances in which this Preface was written. Although Paine did not expunge all references to France and the United States, as Aldridge has claimed, he tended to emphasize the more universal meaning of the French Revolution. 7 He turned the first three articles of the French Declaration of Rights into a universal document with no contextual hint. 8 He kept a few allusions to France, Europe and America. The model revolution he proposed was the American precedent, 9 even if the French Revolution was hinted at without any detail. He even did not remove from this edition the remark he had originally made at the beginning of Chapter 5 of the second part of Rights of Man about the exception France represented in Europe in terms of a government based on a genuine form of civilization. 10 He repeated that the position of France against colonial possessions since the Revolution was an example to follow, 11 but took up his criticism of the motto la nation, la loi, le roi. 12 This revised version shows that Paine still believed that the principles underpinning the French Revolution were good even during the Terror. What he did after his release also testifies to his commitment to the French Revolution. After Thermidor, Paine first attempted to defend universal suffrage in and outside the Convention during the debate over the new constitution. However, at least from the spring of 1796 onward, when The Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance was published, he chose to half-close his eyes on the issue of participation to support the Directoire, especially against royalists, but also against communists such as Babeuf. This led him after 1797 to go one step further in the absorption of the propaganda of conservative republicans who viewed property as the foundation of the suffrage and of the republic in general, leaving the poor or the lower classes beyond the pale of political affairs. The promotion of an open access to the res publica had been and remained a keystone of Paine s activism. Paine s Directorial period appears as one of

4 218 PART III: PAINE, CRITIC OR PROPAGANDIST OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC? the most baffling moments of his career. The 18 Brumaire coup might not have immediately convinced Paine that the Revolution had been carried to its grave. Yet his dislike for the new regime soon surfaced, even if Paine still had contacts with Bonaparte and other French officials until he embarked for the United States, a duality of opinion that this time Paine openly played with in the writings he published after His hostility toward the government of his native country never abated and was strong during his whole stay in France, especially during the Directorial period when he encouraged invasion schemes. Furthermore, soon after Paine s release from the Luxembourg prison, the Jay Treaty was signed and altered diplomatic relations between France and the United States after its approval by the US Senate in the summer of 1795 and the vote of appropriations by the House of Representatives the following year. It placed James Monroe, the then ambassador in Paris who welcomed Paine to his house, and Paine in a quite awkward position as Americans opposed to the Treaty. Yet Monroe was to be recalled a few months before George Washington left the White House, and the diplomatic divorce between the two former allies of the War of Independence led Paine along an unofficial and informal diplomatic path. Notes 1. Discours sur les crimes du gouvernement anglais contre le peuple français, prononcé à la Société des Jacobins de Paris dans la séance du 9 pluviose [January 28, 1794], par le citoyen Achille-Audibert, membre de la Société de Calais, affiliée à la Société mère des Jacobins de Paris. Imprimé par ordre de la Société, Archives parlementaires de 1787 à 1860: recueil complet des débats législatifs et politiques des Chambres françaises. Première série, 1787 à 1799, LXXXV, 70. L Esprit du contrat social, suivi de l esprit du sens commun, de Th. Paine; présenté à la convention par le citoyen Boinvilliers (Paris: Cailleau, an II). Alfred Owen Aldridge, Thomas Paine s American Ideology (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1984), 146 and endnote, 304. This paraphrase-quotation is based on Lanthenas s translation, it seems: Thomas Paine, Théorie et pratique des Droits de l homme, suivi du Sens commun, trans. F. Lanthenas (Rennes: R. Vatar fils, 1793). The title page is preceded by another one which says that it is Le Manuel du républicain and the year is an II. It is the title mentioned by Le Mercure de France to announce the publication of Boinvilliers s book. Le Mercure de France, January 1794, 103: Manuel du républicain ou l Esprit du contrat social

5 PART III: PAINE, CRITIC OR PROPAGANDIST OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC? 219 mis à la portée de tous, suivi de l esprit du sens-commun, présenté sous un jour favorable pour éclairer le peuple français sur la prétendue liberté de la nation anglaise. It is the complete title of the second part of Boinvilliers s text. The subtitle appears on p. 49 of the book: l Esprit du sens commun de Th. Paine, analysé dans ses rapports avec les circonstances actuelles et présenté sous un jour favorable pour éclairer le peuple français sur la prétendue liberté de la nation anglaise. Boinvilliers book should not be mistaken for the other Manuel du républicain published the same year (Paris: Impr. nationale exécutive du Louvre, an II) which contains the Constitution of 1793, the republican calendar and a presentation of the system of weights and measures. 3. Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Common Sense and Other Political Writings, ed. Mark Philp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 35; Boinvilliers, L Esprit du contrat social, Le Siècle de la raison, ou Le Sens commun des droits de l homme, suivi d un Tableau frappant du despotisme & fanatisme ancien & moderne dédié à tous les sans-culottes de la République française & à nos descendants; par le citoyen Néez, propagateur de l esprit révolutionnaire. [1793 or 1794] John Keane quite inexplicably says that Néez s text does not appear in the sole surviving copy. John Keane, Tom Paine: A Political Life (London: Bloomsbury, 1995), 389. This copy which is in the French National Library seems to have been damaged though as the translated part of Paine s writing stops in the middle of a sentence and is followed then by Néez s text. The catalogue record of the French National Library says that this edition is a free adaptation of The Age of Reason, of Rights of Man and of Common Sense. Yet except for the title, the content is based only on the first part of The Age of Reason. 5. Thomas Paine, The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Philip S. Foner (New York: The Citadel Press, 1945), II, 464. Robespierre did not approve of dechristianization and would in May 1794 replace it by the cult of the Supreme Being. 6. John Keane contends that during his term in prison Paine wrote two essays, one on the character of Robespierre and one on aristocracy, whose manuscripts have allegedly been lost. Keane, Tom Paine, 410. Observations on the Commerce between the United States and France, was lost during Paine s arrest. Alfred Owen Aldridge, Man of Reason. The Life of Thomas Paine (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1959), 209. Paine, Complete Writings, II, Aldridge, Man of Reason, Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man. For the Use and Benefit of All Mankind. (London: Daniel Isaac Eaton, 1795), Paine, The Rights of Man (1795), 59, 84, 86 and foll.

6 220 PART III: PAINE, CRITIC OR PROPAGANDIST OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC? 10. Paine, The Rights of Man (1795), Paine, The Rights of Man (1795), Paine, The Rights of Man (1795), 108. All contextual references were not suppressed from this edition. Even Burke s name is quoted explicitly (133 and 135). He is also referred to as a monarchical writer of distinction (33) or as a certain writer (80).