Thomas Paine's Thoughts on Man, Government, Society, and Religion

Thomas Paine was one of the most influential political and religious writers of the late eighteenth century. He was born in Thetford, England, in 1737, the son of an expelled Quaker father and an Anglican mother. Apprenticed in his father’s craft as a staymaker, Paine found roving appointments in Norfolk, London, and Kent in the trade before entering the customs service as an excise officer in 1764. The following year, however, he was dismissed and, at various times during the next three years, he worked as a staymaker and sometime teacher. In 1768 he was reappointed as an exciseman at Lewes, Sussex, and over the next five years he married, campaigned, and wrote his first pamphlet on conditions of employment for excisemen. Once again, he was fired from the service. His marriage was to fail soon after, and a disillusioned Paine sailed for America in 1774.

Kaminski describes Paine as “the quintessential revolutionary” (1) and we can trace the beginnings of his revolutionary career to America in 1775. He became editor and contributor to the Pennsylvania Magazine, where he engaged in some distinguished anti-British and anti-slavery discourses that endeared him to Philadelphia’s radical circles. In 1776, he published Common Sense, the first pamphlet to suggest America’s separation from British hegemony, and he continued to promote the cause until 1783 in The American Crisis. After the American Revolution had subsided, Paine turned his attention to scientific matters. He designed a single-span bridge and in 1787 returned to Europe in the hope of funding its implementation. In Paris, he witnessed the outbreak of the French Revolution and moved in Lafayette’s circle. When Edmund Burke published Reflections on the Revolution in France in 1790, Paine offered a rejoinder in his seminal work, Rights of Man. Published in two parts in 1791 and 1792, Rights of Man was his most radical political text and was sold in extraordinary numbers throughout Britain. It essentially became the textbook of reformers during the 1790s and was one of the sources of inspiration for the numerous democratic societies that sprouted during this period. It was also the source of a state prosecution for seditious libel against Paine, who was then living in England, but before proceedings commenced he removed to France and was tried in absentia and outlawed from Britain in 1792.

In France, Paine was elected a member of the National Convention for Calais and was consulted during the process of drafting a new constitution. He opposed the execution of Louis XVI in 1793 and as an associate of the Girondins became increasingly marginalized by the dominant Jacobin circles. Nevertheless, Paine turned his pamphleteering skills to the subject of religion and in 1794 published the first part of the Age of Reason, a work defending deism. The following year, the second part of this work appeared, along with Dissertation on the First Principles of Government. Paine expanded on earlier welfare arguments in Agrarian Justice (1796) and suggested that the British state would enter a fiscal crisis in The Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance (1796). These were to be the last major works written by Paine. In 1803, he returned to America, where his reputation as a Revolutionary hero had turned decidedly sour. He was anathematized as a rabble rouser and atheist and lived his final years quietly at New Rochelle in New York, passing away on 8 June 1809.

Paine’s writings on politics, religion, government and society were as diverse as they were influential. Not surprisingly, there has been no shortage of interest in collecting and collating these writings. Moncure Conway compiled four volumes of writings of Thomas Paine in the 1890s along with a two-volume life of the man (reissued in 1996 by Routledge/Thoemmes Press). Since then reprints of Paine’s works have included The Life and Works of Thomas Paine (10 volumes, 1925); The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine in two volumes (1945, with volume one reissued in 1993 by Citadel Press); Common Sense, the Rights of Man, and Other Essential Writings of Thomas Paine (1988); The Thomas Paine Reader (1989); Thomas Paine: Collected Writings (1995); Thomas Paine Key Writings (2000); and The Writings of Thomas Paine (2003). Add to that list various editions of Common Sense, Rights of Man and Age of Reason as well as numerous published extracts of Paine’s books and it becomes clear that the reprinting of his texts is big business.

It is fair to say that this proliferation of editions of Thomas Paine means there is something of an oversupply, and there is indeed very little to distinguish one edition of the Rights of Man, for example, from another. After all, the words of the text do not change. When I was asked to review this work I expected another run-of-the-mill selection of Paine’s writings, but I was pleasantly surprised to find the editor had come up with an innovative approach. Citizen Paine is a compilation of short extracts from Paine’s works arranged alphabetically by subject. It is essentially Paine’s quotable quotes; ironically, Paine himself avoided quotations: “I scarcely ever quote; the reason is, I always think” (p. 191). The editor of this book has provided the reader with an interesting and easy-to-read insight into some of Paine’s thoughts on government, politics, society, religion, and human nature. Supplemented by a good introduction, Citizen Paine is unlike any other compilation of Paine’s writings and will be useful for scholars and students looking for a quick reference from Paine on a particular topic. This book does not pretend to rival the numerous full editions of Paine’s writings, and for that reason alone I found the approach taken by the editor to be most enjoyable and novel.