Junius Unmasked Part 29

But when the lad was thirteen he was taken from school, as it had long been too heavy a tax upon his father, and he was put to work in the shop as stay-maker. He enters into full sympathy with his father, and works by his side three years. The "good father," as he afterward calls him, pays out no more for the son's education; he has already been "sorely pressed" for this purpose.

But during these three years at the stay-making business, many thoughts have "bolted into his mind," strange "voluntary visitors," talking of war, the army and navy. These thoughts have been "heated by the false heroism" of his former master, and have set the lad's mind on fire, burning up all peace and contentment. So in the year 1753, a little the rise of sixteen, he began to carve out his own fortune by going to sea in the privateer, "King of Prussia." The "good father" must have "thought him lost," but this was a phantom of the imagination in both father and son. There is a principle in him which shall hold him steady on land and sea. Restless and venturesome, driven by a force he wots not of, the little island of Britain could not confine him, much less his father's shop. Here he satisfies the war spirit, and tinges his skeptical mind with a slight shade of sailors' superst.i.tion. Yet with this adventure of "false heroism against him" in setting out in life, he pa.s.ses through a schooling with the world which shall make for him mightily in the end. He never considered this beginning in his favor, and has said but little about it. I can not find out how long he lived on the sea, but he turns up at Sandwich five or six years afterward as master stay-maker. Here he married to Mary Lambert, a young woman of much personal worth, who, dying a year afterward, leaves a shade on his mind for life.

But his employment did not suit the turn of his mind, and near the close of 1763 he entered the employ of government as exciseman. For a faithful performance of his duty he was dismissed from this office, because the impartial performance of that duty would expose him to the censure of the power which invested him with office. I say for a faithful performance of his duty he was dismissed, and for these reasons I say it:

1. When he is restored to the same office afterward upon his pet.i.tion are these words, "No complaint of the _least dishonesty_ or intemperance appeared against me." And so it was not for a dereliction of duty.

2. Mr. Paine was a man of uncommon abilities, and it could not be for want of capacity.

3. Excise officers were compelled sometimes to violate the law to favor the n.o.bility and the court of the realm, or suffer the penalty of dismissal. See Vale's Life of Paine, p. 19.

Honest and capable he has wounded the corrupt heart of the government.

Too proud to retract, too honest to confess, he is turned out of office to brood over his offense. The government has also stabbed him to the heart, and the stab reaches to the most tender chords, his personal pride, his honor. This sets on fire his whole nature, yet darkly secretive it becomes molten lava in his own breast. It will some day burst forth a consuming fire. "Vengeance is mine," says the war-spirit within him. "Bide thy time," says caution. "Keep thy own council," says secretiveness. He has now an object in view, his resolution is made.

"I will strike the dagger to the heart of profligate lords and courtiers. I will trample on the pride of kings, and fortified with that proud integrity, that disdain to triumph or to yield, I will advocate the rights of man." He now steps forth to begin his _life's work_.

He waits not long to brood over his miseries, but immediately sets off for London to inform the mind. A little the rise of twenty-eight he enters fully into the study of the natural sciences, and teaches in an academy to defray expenses. He attends the philosophical lectures of Mr.

Martin and Ferguson, and becomes acquainted with Dr. Bevis, the astronomer and member of the Royal Society. He made himself master of the globes and orrery, and acquired a knowledge of _natural philosophy_, a term which then took in a wide field of science. We find him well acquainted with chemistry, and also the higher mathematics. Here he doubtless studied French, for afterward we find when called from an active life to visit France he could read but not speak the language.

Yet this, as well as rhetoric and law, and many other branches of learning, he could acquire while in the employ of government.

It is evident that while at London this year he threw his whole soul into study.

How easily he could have risen to preferment in any branch of natural science must have been well known to himself when coming in contact with these great minds of his age. But he has other work on hand.

There are many reasons for concluding he became acquainted with Franklin this year, among them these five:

1. Because he was eager to cultivate the acquaintance of great men of science, and Franklin, then in London, stood at the head of all.

2. Franklin was easy of access to the friends of learning.

3. Mr. Paine would be brought in hearty sympathy with the representative of the new world, who was at court, to represent the rights of man.

4. At this very time, Feb. 3, 1766, when we know Mr. Paine was attending to his studies and cultivating the acquaintance of the learned, Dr. Franklin was brought more conspicuously before the English nation than ever before, or thereafter, by undergoing an examination in the House of Commons upon the policy of repealing the Stamp Act; and never were the great talents of this great man exhibited so fully and favorably as then.

5. Mr. Paine says: "The favor of Dr. Franklin's _friends.h.i.+p_ I possessed in England [and _friends.h.i.+p_ with Mr. Paine means _time to prove it_], and my introduction to this part of the world was through his _patronage_." Patronage means to aid or promote a design. This _design_, and this _friends.h.i.+p_ formed upon which it was founded, would take some few years with both of these men, for they were both secretive, reserved, and noncommittal, slow in forming attachments, and extremely cautious in the selection of _friends_. "The first foundation of friends.h.i.+p," says Junius, "is not the power of conferring benefits, but the _equality_ with which they are received and may be returned."

Mr. Paine now makes application to be restored to the office from which he was dismissed. On his pet.i.tion was written: "JULY 4TH, 1766; to be restored on a proper vacancy." The FOURTH OF JULY is ominous. Great events are in store for this young man within the next ten years. He quits the society of the learned and the halls of learning, and goes down at the most hopeful and ambitious period of life into this "inferior office of the revenue" to serve for the "petty pittance of less than fifty pounds a year." Does he go there to satisfy his taste for learning, or to get rich? No; but to reach the object of his ambition. He goes there to spy out the meanness, the corruption, the villainy, the abandoned profligacy of the British Government.

The British Government has now a masked enemy who is coming in and going out at the nation's doors, not a spy upon her liberties, but her villainies, a foe to the one and a friend to the other.

But he has not forsaken his studies, he is just entering upon them.

Taking up English history he makes it a study, which becomes the history of the civilized world, for it reaches out into Spain, France, Austria, Prussia, Russia, America, India, and Rome. Mr. Paine followed its lines into all countries. He also made a study of her laws and the principles of her const.i.tution, and read the French commentators thereon, at the same time he had an eye to politics and the personal history of her living public men. For three years and a half, together with his public duties, he labored to lay a foundation for a long and active literary life.

Do you ask how I know this? I answer, because when he came to America he was thus accomplished, and when he went into the excise office he was not.

It is now six years since he first entered the employ of government, one year of which time he spent in the arts and sciences, and nearly four as student, officer, and detective for the sons of freedom throughout the world. He is, by nature, a detective of the highest order. He has formed the friends.h.i.+p of Benjamin Franklin, who, at the court, is also a detective, and what he knows of America and the English court shall now be made known. He has written "numberless trifles" for the public press to get his hand in, and now, having a definite plan formed, and a n.o.ble object in view, he opens the new year of 1769, with something which indeed is _new_. It was the first Letter of "Junius," named after Junius Brutus, who stabbed Caesar for having usurped the liberties of Rome.

Junius thrust home his dagger. This stab went to the heart of a rotten court, and, since Cromwell, it was the greatest thing that ever happened to England. The people read it with mingled sentiments of fear and hope; the partisan read it with fear and rage; the scholar, with feelings of respect; the courtesan, with pallor on his cheek, and trembling in his limbs; and the king and ministers, with sentiments of torture and frenzy. But when Franklin took it up, with what feelings of hope and pride did he read and re-read the paragraphs in regard to the colonies, which began with this sentence: "A series of inconsistent measures has alienated the colonies from their duty as subjects, and from their natural affection to their common country." This is the key note to the Declaration of Independence, which shall appear seven years afterward.

The dagger was driven to the hilt. Paine long afterward said: "The cause of America made me an author."

Three years, to a day, and he is Junius no more. His object was revolution on British soil, the ministers brought to trial, and the king deposed. He called for a leader in vain--he wrote against fate. But the work must go on. He consecrates himself anew to the cause; he dedicates his life to the good of man. Friend, kindred, wife, and the dear, native land, weigh lightly in the balance against the "_business of a world_."

He leaves them all. His mind has been liberated from the prejudices of an island by the study of astronomy, and a life on the sea, and schooled by disappointment in political strife, he turns his face to the _West_.

He has left his second wife; parted with her forever. Mr. Paine was a man of strong personal attachment; he had deep and lasting affection.

But what was wife to the "_business of a world_." Long after this separation, in his old age, after he had gone through two revolutions, the American and the French, Mrs. Paine, though not agreeing with Thomas in religious opinions, on hearing him disrespectfully spoken of because he had written the Age of Reason, indignantly left the company of his revilers. And Mr. Paine, when asked why did you leave your wife, would respond: "I had a cause; it is no business of any body." True to her during life, and she to him, there is more in this than has been revealed.

But before he leaves England there is a definite plan formed, it is revolution and reconciliation; but if not reconciliation, it is revolution and independence. Tyranny shall be destroyed at all hazards.

He prepares himself for war, "and if the English Government wins in the contest," says Paine, "she wins from me my life." He leaves all his world's goods for the support of his wife, his capital stock is his pen.

Franklin understands it all. He knows full well this son of a Quaker, this Junius of the quill, and he feels the need of him for America's sake, and that scientific head of his thinks soundly on the work which shall tell for the ages. Franklin was then acknowledged to be the greatest man in the world, as he was; and the same judgment which never led him wrong, and which made for him renown, p.r.o.nounced also on the character and abilities of Thomas Paine. These two men perfectly agreed in politics and religion, and this covers the whole realm of opinion.

Their origin and their leading traits of character were the same; secretive, cautious, courageous, and proud of heart, witty and sarcastic, deeply read in the history of the world and of the human heart, having come out of the loins of toil and the lap of poverty, the history of their lives blend and conspire to unite their affections and direct their labors. What these two men shall do, the world is yet too stupid to think about. But their plan is made in England, and under the patronage of the one the other is introduced to America.

If you truly believe Benjamin Franklin to be a fool, let me tell you how you can demonstrate it. Prove to the world that Thomas Paine began his literary life in America, and that Franklin intrusted the greatest work of a nation, and the business of a world to an obscure English exciseman, without previous history or character, and your point is made. Yet this is just what chronologists would have us believe; _but history delves beneath recorded events_.

Franklin was then an old man, he had almost reached his three-score years and ten; Paine was thirty-one years and twelve days the younger.

Franklin has fifteen years of life and labor before him yet; Paine thirty-four. The young scion of Democracy is growing up from the same root by the side of the old stalk. Here youth supports old age, and the boughs interlock, and they shall thus stand firm, supported by each other against the terrible shocks which are yet to come during the "hurricane months" of political revolution. "I am the sole depository of my own secret, and it shall perish with me," said Junius; but Franklin had been taught of nature, and the secret was kept.

Near the close of the year 1774, Junius lands in America, and begins to dwell in the capital of the colonies, Philadelphia. Many things conspired to take him there: it was the Quaker city of brotherly love; it was Franklin's home; and, above all, the Continental Congress sat there.

Immediately, that is, within two months after landing, he is employed as editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine. He did not write as editors do, but his contributions appeared over the signature of ATLANTICUS--a name which, like Junius, was the shadow of the writer. From the first he wielded a mighty pen, and his contributions were noticed and highly commended. The following extract is from one of his first efforts in America, and consequently stands almost a year closer to Junius than Common Sense. As it shows the hand of a master, long trained at the art, I give it here, as a perfect sample of Junius:

"Though nature is gay, polite, and generous abroad, she is sullen, rude, and n.i.g.g.ardly at home. Return the visit, and she admits you with all the suspicion of a miser, and all the reluctance of an antiquated beauty retired to replenish her charms. Bred up in antediluvian notions, she has not yet acquired the European taste of receiving visitants in her dressing-room; she locks and bolts up her private recesses with extraordinary care, as if not only resolved to preserve her h.o.a.rds, but to conceal her age, and hide the remains of a face that was young and lovely in the days of Adam. He that would view nature in her undress, and partake of her internal treasures, must proceed with the resolution of a robber, if not a ravisher. She gives no invitation to follow her to the caverns: the external earth makes no proclamation of the internal stores, but leaves to chance and industry the discovery of the whole. In such gifts as nature can annually recreate she is n.o.ble and profuse, and entertains the whole world with the interest of her fortunes, but watches over the capital with the care of a miser. Her gold and jewels lie concealed in the earth in caves of utter darkness; the h.o.a.rds of wealth, heaps upon heaps, mould in the chests, like the riches of the necromancer's cell. It must be very pleasant to an adventurous speculatist to make excursions into these gothic regions, and in his travels he may possibly come to a cabinet, locked up in some rocky vault, whose treasures shall reward his toil, and enable him to s.h.i.+ne, on his return, as splendidly as nature herself."

The ma.s.sacre of Lexington takes place the 19th of April, this year.

Paine had been but a few months in America. Franklin is in the middle of the Atlantic, on his way home. He arrives in May, and the _Declaration of Independence_ is now in existence, but only conceived in thought. It will have to bide its time, locked up there in the brain; besides, events are yet to happen which shall be put in it, and the country is not yet prepared for it. The people have no unanimity of sentiment.

Congress is weak and trifling; it wants reconciliation, and permits the British to land troops, to destroy the liberties of the people, and to steal the powder of the colonies. The country must be roused to sentiments of patriotism, and the magazines must be filled with powder, to support the Declaration of Independence, before it appears to the world.

Mr. Paine now sets about the work. He wishes the American people to be consistent--to not talk of liberty without acting it out; and he gives them "Serious Thoughts" on negro slavery to think about. It is a feeler, sent out to test public sentiment, and to put the people to thinking in the right direction. He struck--as he always did--when the iron was hot; and, between the hammer and the iron, sparks were emitted which kept burning in America for ninety years. His words were: "Stop the importation of negroes, soften the hard fate of those already here, and in time procure their freedom." He believed that the justice of Heaven would some day blot it out. This piece brought Mr. Paine many friends and high hopes. Common Sense shortly afterward came from the press, to stir up revolution in the hearts of the people.

He now turns his attention to chemistry, experiments in the art of making saltpeter cheaply, publishes his researches, and organizes a company to gratuitously supply the public magazines with powder. He is boldly working out his plan. He gives Common Sense to each colony by copyright, and the poor, ignorant dolts of that age and this age wonder why he did not make himself rich in the sale of it. The fools must learn that he was making patriots, not pounds and pence, to serve his purpose and plan. Franklin smiles at the work as it goes on, for to effect a revolution the country will be sorely in need of powder and patriotism.

But Was.h.i.+ngton they can rely on for this latter. When others fail whose mouths were always open to profess liberty, he shall stand firm; when _they_ desert the cause, he shall strike the harder and more n.o.bly.

When war begins public sentiment changes quickly. The American people are now ready for war, made so within a few months. Congress comes together with more strength in its back-bone, more pluck in its heart; and, on the 7th of June, a committee of five is appointed to draft a Declaration of Independence. Thomas Paine makes a concise reproduction of Common Sense; constructs it upon mechanical principles, so that it will first convince the understanding, and, having entered the head, will soon reach the heart, for it is made on purpose to storm the pa.s.sions of men. He privately hands it to Thomas Jefferson. It is quite fortunate that he was chairman of that committee. But in the act the _honor_ of Thomas Paine is pledged for secrecy; it is an honor without spot, and he locks up the act forever in his own breast with Junius.

The Declaration is read on the streets amid cheers; it is read in churches with thanksgiving and praise; it is read in the legislative halls of the states, and at the firesides of patriots; it is read in the camp of the soldier, and by officers to their battalions; it is proclaimed by the congress of the new nation, and from the house-tops to all mankind. It is the second child of a man who has on his hands the "BUSINESS OF A WORLD."

Now let the nation buckle on its armor, and look forward to peace won only in blood. The Declaration of Independence is an easy thing compared with what is to come. We shall see this man's work in war.

Was.h.i.+ngton is at the head of the army; John Adams, whose head is a perfect battery of war forces, is at the head of the board of war. Upon this man's office depends more than any other in the nation, for he is _Secretary of War_. Mr. Paine has no office, no power of position, not known to the nation, nor to the world, for Common Sense was thought to be the production of Franklin or John Adams. Thomas Paine had great faith in Was.h.i.+ngton, not so much in Lee. John Adams distrusted Was.h.i.+ngton, and called him "a dolt," but put great confidence in Lee, an English deserter, and more than an American traitor. Paine never misjudged a man; John Adams never judged a man rightly. As colonies, this country has done much for independence; as a nation, nothing. She is now to be tried.

Paine enlists as a soldier with the "Flying Camp."

The British fleet is repulsed from Charleston, S.C., and can not land her army of English, Scotch, and Hessians; but now, in August, she effects a landing on Long Island. Was.h.i.+ngton is there with twenty thousand men with guns, but no soldiers in arms. He loses a battle on Long Island, and retreats therefrom. In October, he loses the battle of White Plains. In November, Fort Was.h.i.+ngton, with two thousand six hundred men, and our best cannon and arms are taken by the British command, and Fort Lee falls, leaving commissary and quartermasters'

stores and cannon in the hands of the British. Was.h.i.+ngton now retreats through the Jerseys, the British hard after. As they retreat, Paine writes at night on a drum-head. In nineteen days, "often in sight and within cannon-shot of each other, the rear of the one employed in pulling down bridges, and the van of the other in building them up,"

Was.h.i.+ngton effected a march of ninety miles. The weather was severe, the roads bad, and his army without blankets, tents, or provisions. In four months his army dwindles from twenty thousand down to less than three thousand. In the meantime, the Indians have been committing ravages on the frontier, and in the heart of the country a great party demand absolute submission. The Quakers oppose the war. There is no money to pay soldiers, nor clothing to put on them; they are poorly armed, and there is but little powder to put in the guns. Congress has only _voted_ for battalions, and there is an enemy "in the nation's bowels" that votes can not resist. After Congress had voted for battalions, it took its flight from Philadelphia to Baltimore, destroying public credit and throwing upon Was.h.i.+ngton the responsibility of directing all things relative to the operations of the war. The fate of the nation rests in the balance; the beam is not equally poised, the nation is going down.

Was.h.i.+ngton is beyond the Delaware; the Hessians are at Trenton. He makes a stand to look into the faces of but "twenty-four hundred men strong enough to be his companions." And on the 20th of December, he tells a voting and cowardly Congress: "Ten days more will put an end to this army." These are "black days."

Where now are the hopes of America? Where are the committeemen who took the Declaration of Independence into Congress? Franklin has gone to France to work for the nation; Jefferson has refused to go with him, and is at home in Virginia safe with his slaves. But where is John Adams, who said that Jefferson had stolen his ideas from him to put into the Declaration of Independence? Where is the chief representative from New England, this "Colossus" of debate, this chief of the war committee?

_Where is John Adams_ in this darkest hour of his country's trial? He has deserted her; he went home on the 13th of October after the first reverse, and is "brave in his home by the sea," but will not come back till four months are past, and Was.h.i.+ngton makes himself famous. The poor dupe to his pa.s.sions. Lee he loved, Was.h.i.+ngton he hated; a patriot this, a traitor that. But where is the man who has on hand the _business of a world_? We shall see. In this midnight of the revolution he has been writing something. He has been in the army as a soldier, but has found time to write. It is his first crisis, and it runs thus: