APPENDIX TO THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE, BY G. VALE, THOMAS PAINE'S LETTERS TO WASHINGTON. INTRODUCTION. IN introducing these letters to the public for the first time in the United States, we made the following remarks in the Beacon: "These letters have been suppressed in most of the American editions of Paine's works; as the publishers choose to pay the American people the bad compliment to suppose that their publication would hurt the sale of the work; and that the people were so thin skinned that they could not bear to hear faults attributed to the father of the country. We believe they will like to see these suppressed letters, and without altering their opinion of either Washington or Paine, they will be pleased to read them; as exhibiting some curious facts, and Paine's accustomed good sense, accurate information, and sound patriotism, without degrading General Washington. For our part we do not think that Paine could have supplied the place of Washington, or Washington that of Paine; neither do we consider either the one or the other perfect; but both wiser and better men than most who are trusted with power, or move the strings affecting public affairs. These letters were published by Paine himself, and copied by us from a London edition, by T. Williams, Little Turnstile, High Holborn, in the year 1797, when Paine was in Europe. We believe also that they were printed at Philadelphia, but suppressed." G. V. THE LETTERS. PARIS, August 3. 1796. As censure is but awkwardly softened by apology, I shall offer you no apology for this letter. The eventful crisis, to which your double politics have conducted the affairs of your country, requires an investigation uncramped by ceremony. There was a time when the fame of America, moral and political, stood fair and high in the world. The lustre of her revolution extended itself to every individual, and to be a citizen of America, gave a title to respect in Europe. Neither meanness nor ingratitude had been mingled in the composition of her character. Her resistance to the attempted tyranny of England left her unsuspected of the one, and her open acknowledgment of the aid she received from France. precluded all suspicion of the other. The politics of Washington had not then appeared. At the time I left America (April, 1787) the continental convention, that formed the federal constitution, was on the point of meeting. Since that time new schemes of politics, and new distinction of parties, have arisen. The term antifederalist has been applied to all those who combated the defects of that constitution, or opposed the measures of your administration. It was only to the absolute necessity of establishing some federal authority, extending equally over all the states, that an instrument so inconsistent as the present federal constitution is, obtained a suffrage. I would have voted for it myself, had I been in America, or even for a worse, rather than have had none; provided it contained the means of remedying its defects by the same appeal to the people, by which it was to be established. It is always better policy to leave removable errors to expose themselves, than to hazard too much in contending against them theoretically. I have introduced these observations not only to mark the general difference between the anti-federalist and anti-constitutionalist, but to preclude the effect, and even the application, of the former of these terms to myself. I declare myself opposed to several matters in the constitution, particularly to the manner in which what is called the executive is formed, and to the long duration of the senate; and if I live to return to America, I will use all my endeavors to have them altered. I also declare myself opposed to almost the whole of your administration; for I know it to have been deceitful, if not perfidious, as I shall show in the course of this letter. But as to the point of consolidating the states into a federal government, it so happens that the proposition for that purpose came originally from myself. I proposed it in a letter to Chancellor Livingston in the spring of the year 1782, while that gentleman was minister for foreign affairs. The five per cent. duty recommended by congress had then fallen through, having been adopted by some of the states, altered by others, rejected by Rhode Island, and repealed by Virginia, after it had been consented to. The proposal in the letter I allude to, was to get over the whole difficulty at once, by annexing a continental legislative body to congress; for in order to have any law of the Union uniform, the case could only be, that either congress as it then stood, must frame the law, and the states severally adopt it without alteration, or, the states must elect a continental legislature for the purpose. Chancellor Livingston, Robert Morris, Governeur Morris, and myself, had a meeting at the house of Robert Morris on the subject of that letter. There was no diversity of opinion on the proposition for a continental legislature: the only difficulty was on the manner of bringing the proposition forward. For my own part, as I considered it as a remedy in reserve, that could be applied at any time, when the states saw themselves wrong enough to be put right (which did not appear to be the case at that time), I did not see the propriety of urging it precipitately, and declined being the publisher of it myself. After this account of a fact, the leaders of your party will scarcely have the hardiness to apply to me the term of anti-federalist. But I can go to a date and to a fact beyond this, for the proposition for electing a continental convention. To form the continental government is one of the subjects treated of in the pamphlet "Common Sense.” Having thus cleared away a little of the rubbish that might otherwise have lain in my way, I return to the point of time at which the present federal constitution and your administration began. It was very well said by an anonymous writer in Philadelphia, about a year before that period, that "thirteen staves and ne'er a hoop will not make a barrel," and as any kind of hooping the barrel, however defectively executed, would be better than none, it was scarcely possible but that considerable advantages must arise from the federal hooping of the states. It was with pleasure that every sincere friend to America beheld as the natural effect of union, her rising prosperity, and it was with grief they saw that prosperity mixed, even in the blossom, with the germe of corruption. Monopolies of every kind marked your administration almost in the moment of its commencement. The lands obtained by the revolution were lavished upon partisans; the interest of the disbanded soldier was sold to the speculator; injustice was acted under the pretence of faith; and the chief of the army became the patron of the fraud. From such a beginning what else could be expected, than what has happened? A mean and servile submission to the insults of one nation; treachery and ingratitude to another. Some vices make their approach with such a splendid ap pearance, that we scarcely know to what class of moral distinctions they belong: they are rather virtues corrupted than vices originally. But meanness and ingratitude have nothing equivocal in their character. There is not a trait in them that renders them doubtful. They are so originally vice, that they are generated in the dung of other vices, and crawl into existence with the filth upon their back. The fugitives have found protection in you, and the levee-room is their place of rendezvous. As the federal constitution is a copy, though not quite so base as the original, of the form of the British government, an imitation of its vices was naturally to be expected. So intimate is the connexion between form and practice, that to adopt the one is to invite the other. Imitation is naturally progressive, and is rapidly so in matters that are vicious. Soon after the federal constitution arrived in England, I received a letter from a female literary correspondent (a native of New York) very well mixed with friendship, sentiment, and politics. In my answer to that letter, I permitted myself to ramble into the wilderness of imagination, and to anticipate what might hereafter be the condition of América. I had no idea that the picture I then drew was realizing so fast, and still less that Mr. Washington was hurrying it on. As the extract I allude to is congenial with the subject I am upon, I here transcribe it : "You touch me on a very tender point when you say that my friends on your side of the water cannot be reconciled to the idea of my abandoning America even for my native England. They are right. I had rather see my horse, Button, eating the grass of Bordentown, or Morrissania, than see all the pomp and show of Europe. "A thousand years hence, for I must indulge a few thoughts, perhaps in less, America may be what England now is. The innocence of her character, that won the hearts of all nations in her favor, may sound like a romance, and her inimitable virtue as if it had never been. The ruins of that liberty, which thousands bled to obtain, may just furnish materials for a village tale, or extort a sigh from rustic sensibility; while the fashionable of that day, enveloped in dissipation, shall deride the principle, and deny the fact. "When we contemplate the fall of empires, and the extinction of the nations of the ancient world, we see but little more to excite our regret than the mouldering ruins of pompous palaces, magnificent monuments, lofty pyramids, and walls and towers of the most costly workmanship; but when the empire of America shall fall, the subject of contemplated sorrow will be infinitely greater than crumbling brass, or marble can inspire. It will not then be said, Here stood a temple of PAINE'S LETTERS TO WASHINGTON. vast antiquity, here rose a Babel of invisible height, or there a palace of sumptuous magnificence; but, here, ah, painful thought! the noblest work of human wisdom, the greatest scene of human glory, the fair cause of freedom, rose and fell: read this, and then ask if I forget America!" Impressed as I was, with apprehension of this kind, I had America constantly in my mind in all the publications I afterward made. The first, and still more, the second part of the "Rights of Man," bear evident marks of this watchfulness; and the dissertations on first principles of government goes more directly to the point than either of the former. I now pass on to the other subjects. It will be supposed by those into whose hands this letter, may fall, that I have some personal resentment against you: and I will therefore settle this point before I proceed farther. If I have any resentment, you must acknowledge that I have not been hasty in declaring it, neither would it now be declared (for what are private resentments to the public) if the cause of it did not unite itself as well with your public as with your private character, and with the motives of your political conduct. The part I acted in the American revolution is well known. I shall not here repeat it. I know also, that had it not been for the aid received from France, in men, money, and ships, your cold and unmilitary conduct (as I shall show in the course of this letter) would in all possibility have lost America; at least she would not have been the independent nation she now is. You slept away your time in the field, till the finances of the country were completely exhausted, and you have but little share in the glory of the final event. It is time, sir, to speak the undisguised language of historical truth. Elevated to the chair of the presidency, you assumed the merit of everything to yourself; and the natural ingratitude of your constitution began to appear. You commenced your presidential career by encouraging and swallowing the grossest adulation; and you travelled America from one end to the other to put yourself in the way of receiving it. You have as many addresses in your chest as James II. As to what were your views, for if you are not great enough to have ambition, you are little enough to have vanity, they cannot be directly inferred from expressions of your own; but the partisans of your politics have divulged the secret. John Adams has said (and John it is known was always a speller after places and offices, and never thought his little services were highly enough paid)--John has said, that as Mr. Washington had no child, the presidency should be made hereditary in the family of Lun Washington. John might then have counted upon some sinecure for himself, and a provision |