"With his name left out, the history of liberty cannot be written."

Modern psychologists tell us that, if there be any difference between the mind of man and that of the other animals, it is that man conceives the relations between objects, while animals merely perceive the related objects. For many years men have vaguely felt that each man has certain inalienable rights which society or the government may not abridge or infringe; but it was Thomas Paine who converted this hazy animal perception into a rational human conception, who first realized and made others realize that the Rights of Man exist, and that they stand, not on the permission or toleration of society, or the government, or the ruler, but on their own merits.

In the acted history of the United States, Thomas Paine played a great part; in its written histories, his name hardly appears. Historians have not been able to deny the vastness of his influence upon the development of contemporaneous Europe and America; but they have been able to keep it in the background. The religious opinions which he expressed-opinions which, at the present time, would merely give him an orthodox place amongst the so-called "Higher Critics"-had, at the time they were uttered the effect of arousing to wrath the whole Christian world, and of burying his great and well-earned reputation under a flood of slander and vilification. It is the purpose of this essay not to refute the libelous lies which are piously circulated even to the present day, but merely to recount the services rendered by the "Author Hero of the American Revolution."

Born in 1737, in Thetford, England, Paine exhiibted no very marked signs of unusual genius until his emigration to America in 1774. He had, it is true,

published in 1772, a pamphlet, The Case of the Excise Officers, in which he showed up the evils and abuses of the excise system so successfully as to secure

the hatred of his corrupt superiors, and be dismissed from the service on a trivial charge. Shortly afterwards he became intimately acquainted with Franklin, who was then in London pleading the cause of the colonies, and emigrated to Philadelphia on his advice. The reasons for this sudden and extreme intimacy with Franklin are not known, nor is it known how Paine, who was an uneducated man, acquired a style so remarkably clear and forcible, albeit not always grammatical, as in that Common Sense, and his other publications.

The

To bridge these two remarkable lacks of fact about Paine's life, some have supposed that he wrote the celebrated Junius letters. Between them and Paine's works there is a great similarity of style and revealed mental characteristics; and both labored toward the same end-the destruction of monarchy and aristocracy, and the formation of a republic. Junius letters Junius letters stopped shortly before Paine's departure to America; and toward the end of the American Revolution, Paine is known to have desired to return to England and carry on the war there by a series of anonymous letters against the government; that is, by the method of Junius. method of Junius. This hypothesis has the advantage of not merely explaining Junius as well or better than any other, but of also explaining Thomas Painehis remarkable style and the fact that Franklin, at the very beginning of their acquaintanceship, treated him as a bosom friend and a most trustworthy confidant.

No sooner had Paine followed Franklin's advice and emigrated to America, than the was engaged as editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine. His most famous article in it was African Slavery in America, which led to the formation of the first American anti-slavery society (April 14, 1775), and thus began the glorious work which Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth

Another

Amendment have completed. famous article was on the position of women, and anticipated most of the valid contentions of of our contemporaneous women's-suffragists.

The first of Paine's great works was Common Sense. When the colonies protested and rose in revolt, they had absolutely no desire for independence. In May, 1775, Washington wrote to Boucher, the chaplain of Congress: "If you ever hear of me joining in any such measure (as separation from Great Britain), you may have my leave to set me down for anything wicked." About the same time he said of Massachusetts: "It is not the wish of this government, or of any other upon this continent, separately or collectively, to set up for independence." And Franklin made assurances of the same kind to the English government. In short, none of the patriot leaders dreamed of an independent republic: "they were only monarchial rebels, fighting for better terms of union with their mother country."

Then Paine appeared. When the memory of Lexington and Bunker Hill was still vivid, Franklin, John Adams, Washington, and Benjamin Rush-four of the most prominent members of the rebel congress-met in fear and perplexity to discuss the affairs of the colonies. At length Franklin asked the momentous question: "Where is this war to end? Are we fighting only for a change in the British ministry or-or-" the word "independence" stuck in his throat. No one answered: "bound to England by ties of ancestry, language, religion, the very idea of separation from her seemed a blasphemy." At that moment Paine was introduced by Franklin, and began to express his views. At first his hearers were horrified by his political impiety; but, when he finished, they grasped his hand as one man and implored him to publish his views immediately. Paine seized his pen, and, at the beginning of 1776, gave to the world Common Sense, the forerunner and foundation of the Declaration of Independence.

Nothing could have been more oppor

tune. It came out on the very day in which arrived the royal proclamation which stamped the patriots as rebels and outlaws, and threatened them with dire punishment. This proclamation might easily have discouraged the Americans and induced them to give up the struggle, had not its voice been drowned by the thunder-tones of Paine exhorting the colonists to strike for absolute separation and freedom. Common Sense, which, being published anonymously, was was at first attributed to Franklin, John Adams, and other patriots, proved conclusively that the colonists would be better off if independent of Britain, that they had good prospects of obtaining that freedom, and that they could easily give themselves good government.

The scheme of government proposed in Common Sense-a republic of, by, and for the people, had been approached before, but never reached. The pseudorepublics of antiquity were always more or less onligarchic, and held in subjection numerous enslaved countries; and the ideas of Locke, Rousseau, and other republican writers were based, not upon the inherent rights of man, but upon an omnipotent government. Previous thinkers had regarded the right of the individual as conferred by the government, by law or custom: the colonists petitioned for redress on the ground, not that they were men, but that they were British subjects and ought not to be discriminated against because they happened to live in America, on the ground, not that what they asked for was their eternal natural right, but that it was the old, undoubted right of the English people, conferred by custom and act of parliament; these "rights and liberties" were merely the "laws and free customs of the realm." Thomas Paine was the first to realize and prove that every man has certain natural rights, which he possesses, not through the state, but by his own nature.

The influence of Common Sense is agreed by both friends and foes to have been almost incalculable. Richard Carlile, in his Life of Paine, says that "for its consequences and rapid effect it was

the most important production which ever issued from the press." Benjamin Rush stated that "it burst forth from the press with an effect which has been rarely produced by types and paper in any age or country." Conway speaks of it as "a pamphlet whose effect has never been paralleled in literary history." Jefferson speaks of the patriots "rallying about the standard of Common Sense. And Cheetham, one of Paine's most shameless calumniators, admits that the author "was hailed as an angei sent from heaven to save from all the horrors of slavery, by his timely, powerful and unerring counsels, a faithful but abused, a brave but misrepresented people." Similar testimonies could be multiplied indefinitely. No one has ever had the face to deny that Common Sense was one of the great causes, if not the great cause, which produced the Declaration of Independence and the resulting present position of the United States.

The Declaration of Independence is almost wholly founded upon the ideas of Common Sense; and it follows very closely the outlines of a memorial which Paine proposed to send to the governments of Europe. Indeed some have thought that it was originally written by Paine for the committee on drawing it up, of which Jefferson was the chairman. The style of the document-and this is especially true of the original version-is very similar to that of Common Sense; and contrasts strongly with the confused and labored prolixity so frequent in Jefferson's writings. Moreover, the fierce denunciation of slavery and the slave-trade, found in the original version, could hardly have originated with the slave-holding Jefferson, but might easily have been written by the author of African Slavery in America. That

Paine had a hand in this slavery clause is pretty certain; and the whole Declaration is, at the very least, permeated by his ideas.

Shortly after the Declaration had been signed, the British landed on Staten Island, captured New York, and menaced Philadelphia, the continental capi tal. Washington was in despair.

But

Pane, who had been fighting and suffering as a common soldier, was equal to the emergency. On December 23, 1776, he produced the Crisis-the first of a series of pamphlets under that name. It was read at the head of every regiment, and aroused tremendous enthusiasm. Two days later, on Christmas night, Washington crossed the ice-filled Delaware with his re-inspirited army and captured the Hessians. at Trenton, where, standing over the dead body of the Hessian commander, he confessed. the might of Thomas Paine's pen. This victory, followed closely by that at Princeton, completely restored the spirits of the patriots.

From that time to the end of the war, Paine was constantly serving his country; and, at every opportunity, a new Crisis (there were sixteen in all) sprang into being to reanimate the flagging energies of the patriots. Even his hostile biographer, Cheetham, states that, to the continental army, "his pen was an appendage almost as necessary and formidable as its cannon." But his aid was not confined to literary work alone. When, in June, 1780, not a cent was in the treasury for Washington's starving soldiers.

when ruin stared the new-born republic in the face-Thomas Paine, after reading to the congress an appealing letter from Washington, and looking at the blank faces around him, proposed a subscription and offered to begin it with $500 in hard cash. His example fired the other delegates; enough was raised, and the country again was saved.

At the close of the Revolution, Paine stood with Washington and Franklin in the popular estimation. But he determined to leave America. It had attained its independence; he desired that all the world should be in the same condition : in his own words, "Where freedom is not, there is my home." He desired to destroy monarchy, and determined to take up the work which Junius had laid down. In England he published a few pamphlets, the most notable one being, Prospects on the Rubicon, and superintended the structure of an iron bridge which he had invented. Then the

French Revolution broke out, and Paine who was intimate with many of its chief participants, hastened to Paris to assist in its development.

Shortly afterwards Burke published his Reflections on the French Revolution. Paine at once answered it by the first part of his Rights of Man, and exposed the defects and abuses of the vaunted English system of government. The book appeared in March, 1791. In the following May, Paine returned to Paris-just in time for the flight of Louis XVI., and the next morning placarded Paris with posters demanding the organization of a republic. In July he returned to England, and in February published the second part of Rights of Man.

Few books have ever raised such a commotion. The English government had looked upon the first part with furious disapproval; but when the second appeared their rage and terror knew no bounds. They endeavored to purchase the copyright or get control of its sale in some other way, but were unsuccessful. Within a year nearly two hundred thousand copies had been sold. The government was furious. "They saw," says Sherwin, "that it inculcated truths it inculcated truths which they could not controvert; that it contained plans which, if adopted, would benefit at least nine-tenths of the community." Accordingly they resolved to suppress it. Every bookseller who sold it was outrageously persecuted, and Paine himself was compelled to fly for his life to France.

Rights of Man, in addition to refuting Burke's slanders, was a continuation of the republican principles which Paine had previously expressed. Its logic was irresistible: Pitt himself had to admit this. The Government could answer Paine only by prosecutions, imprecations and burnings in effigy-plain confessions of defeat. His ideas, says Conway, were "the earliest complete statement of republican principles;" they were pronounced to be the fundamental principles of the American Republic by Jefferson, Madison and Jackson-the three Presidents who, above all others, represented the repub

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lican idea which Paine was the first to ally with American independence. them, therefore, we should turn for the original, genuine Jeffersonian Democracy.

When Paine arrived in France after his escape from England, he received a tremendous ovation. Four departments -Calais, Abbeville, Beauvais and Versailles-elected him deputy to the National Convention. That of Calais being the first presented, he accepted it. He and Condorcet drew up the masterful constitution of 1793, which would most certainly have provided France with good government, had not the ignorance of the people, the treachery of the king, and the exasperation produced by the conduct of the emigres nobles and the great powers brought on the Reign. of Terror. Paine was no more connected with the Jacobin atrocities than St. Peter with the massacre of St. Bartholomew's. The execution of the king he opposed with all his strength; but the populace refused to listen to reason, and Louis XVI was condemned to the guillotine.

The only result to Paine of his heroic conduct was that he was thrown into prison, where he stayed until the death of Robespierre. He had been sentenced to the guillotine, and escaped only by a mistake of the jailer. Meanwhile he published his "Age of Reason," of which it may be interesting to know that a somewhat expurgated edition of the first part was used in England as a tract against atheism. On his release from prison, at the end of the Reign of Terror, he accepted a unanimous invitation. to resume his seat in the Convention. In 1798, Napoleon, who was preparing to invade England, secured the services. of Paine to establish, after the conquest, a more popular form of government there. But the scheme did not terialize.

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Paine, perceiving that Napoleon had practically overthrown republicanism, then resolved to return to the United States, and, refusing the offer of President Jefferson to go on a special warship, he landed at Baltimore on October 30, 1802. He was welcomed tumultu

ously by his old friends, except a few whom his religious views had estranged; but the more violent of the Federalist journals declared that he should be hung on the same tree with Jefferson. From that time he lived in comparative retirement, rendered necessary by his illhealth, and died on June 8, 1809, at the age of seventy-two years. Ten years

after, in 1819, his remains were removed to England by William Cobbett, on the ground that America had shown herself too ungrateful to retain. them. His former grave, at New Rochelle, is marked by a magnificent stone monument, to which a large bronze bust of the author-hero has been added.

Thomas Paine's was an illustrious

career.

We have seen him rousing in the American colonists the idea of and hope of independence. We have seen him preventing, by purse and pen, any collapse of the. patriot cause; defying the British government in the name of mankind; risking his life in the vain attempt to save a hostile king from the fury of the Jacobin mob. And, last of all-piteous spectacle!-we have seen him leaving France, overwhelmed by the belief that democracy was destroyed. Little did he know what a harvest would spring from his seeds!

Thomas Paine's was a glorious work. He gave to the world the principle that every man has, from his own nature, certain inalienable rights, and that government should be limited to the protection of those rights-that governments were made for man, not man for governments. Thomas Paine formulated the first practical system of true democratic government. He worked for humanity alone at so low a price did he sell Common Sense and the Crisis that, in spite of their enormous sale, he got greatly in debt through them. His relation to the United States can be best stated in the words of Andrew Jackson: "Thomas Paine needs no monument made with hands; he has erected a monument in the hearts of all lovers of liberty." Europe, where he thought he had failed, is permeated with his ideas: every government in it, except Russia and Turkey, is closely modeled on his plans. And England, his birthplace, towards whom his affections were always directed, has pushed on step by step towards his reforms, until Disraeli said to Gladstone: "How does your reform government differ from that of Thomas Paine, except that the sovereign is left in name?" and the great premier made no reply. He could not.

Professor Herman Schumacher, the first man to fill the Kaiser Wilhelm professorship of German institutions and history at Columbia University, has arrived in this country. Prof. Schumacher is from Bonn University, where he has the chair of political economy. During the academic year he will lecture four times a week in English on the development of German commerce, industries and the German banking system.

Professor L. I. Blake of the University of Kansas has sent his resignation to the regents of that institution as head of the department of physics, a position he has. held for many years. The step is taken on account of ill health. Prof. Blake has

been away for more than a year on a leave of absence, but his health has not been improved. He has been spending the time at his old home in Boston, and has devoted some time to his submarine signalling apparatus, which has proved a great success and has been adopted by many countries of the world. Prof. Blake has been with the University of Kansas for many years, and Blake hall, the home of the physics department of the institution, is named for him. He is one of the most widely known educators in the West, and his departure will create a faculty vacancy that will be most difficult to fill.

Three University of Chicago profes