LITERARY NOTICES. 



563 



exaggerating the ill in the men upon whose 

 conduct he was called to comment, and 

 in the institutions he aimed to overturn." 

 Dr. Denslow makes out a specious case for 

 Paine as the author of the " Letters of Ju- 

 nius " ; but Mr. Ingersoll interposes to pro- 

 tect the great freethinker against this scan- 

 dalous imputation, and protests that Paine 

 " was neither a coward, a calumniator, nor 

 a sneak," and he gives a few reasons that 

 are weighty against the hypothesis that 

 Paine was the author of these celebra'ted 

 letters. 



Dr. Denslow maintains, with more show 

 of reason, that he wrote the " Declaration 

 of Independence," and Mr. Ingersoll is in- 

 clined to think that this claim is well found- 

 ed. Decisive reasons are given why Jef- 

 ferson could not have been its author, and 

 there is much forcible evidence that Paine 

 was the only man who could have done it. 

 The following passages will afford a good 

 illustration of our author's manner of deal- 

 ing with his topics, and also sum up his es- 

 timate of Mr. Paine : 



But, enough i The Declaratiou of ludepen- 

 dence must hereafter be construed as a fabric 

 whose warp and woof were Thomas Paine's. It 

 was admirably adapted, as a revolutionary pro- 

 nunciamiento, to Are the colonial heart to a war 

 for separation which, though placed on utterly 

 inadequate and untenable grounds by that Dec- 

 laration, yet had good grounds which are not 

 mentioned in it. Those were, simply, that not 

 having any of the materials for an aristocracy 

 in this country, we could not coalesce into one 

 government with Great Britain, whose govern- 

 ment was aristocratic. If we had been permit- 

 ted to elect members to her House of Commons, 

 what should we have sent to her House of Lords ? 

 The alleged grievance of taxation to reimburse 

 the British Treasury for expenses incurred in 

 our defense was in no sense a money grievance. 

 The money having been expended for our bene- 

 fit, it was our duty to pay it. There could sure- 

 ly be no duty resting on Londoners or York- 

 shiremen to pay the expenses of Montgomery's 

 march to Quebec or Braddock's to Pittsburgh. 

 The real difficulty was, that we needed a sov- 

 ereign government, and could not be admitted 

 into the British one, because that was aristo- 

 cratic and we had no aristocracy. This was not 

 a grievance, but it was a good cause for na- 

 tional separation. The Declaration, like many 

 popular documents, substituted sentiment for 

 sense, passion for wisdom, fiction and rhetoric 

 for history and fact, concealed the double mer- 

 its of the case and helped on the war, in the 

 same way that the stupidity of George III did. | 



We may now fairly estimate Thomas Paine ] 

 in his two most marked characters, as a master 1 



of rhetorical invective and as a revolutionist ; 

 for, after attributing to him the authorship both 

 of "Junius " and of the Declaration of Indepen- 

 dence, as well as "Common Sense," "The Cri- 

 sis," and ' The Rights of Man," he still subsides 

 into the category of brilliant sensational agita- 

 tors endowed with a considerable force of pro- 

 phetic insight, who fell far short of the qualifica- 

 tions essential to a statesman, or even of the ap- 

 preciation of what statesmanship is. There can 

 be no statesmanship without cool-headed can- 

 dor, judicial calmness, capacity for guarded, 

 just, and moderate statement, which will bear 

 the test of time, perfect fairness toward adver- 

 saries, gratitude toward supporters, and a capa- 

 city for harmonizing adverse or conflicting ele- 

 ments by practicing, in non-essentials, unity, 

 and in essentials, charity. Webster, Clay, Cal- 

 houn, Hamilton, Madison, Washington, and 

 Franklin possessed these qualities, but Paine, 

 the scathing and withering accuser, lacked 

 them all. If it be a galling and unbearable tyr- 

 anny for a conscientious man, with a tongue 

 that has an infinite capacity for accusation, and 

 none for pardon, to go about, like a section of 

 the day of judgment, applying to every one who 

 stands in his way such exacting and ideal testa 

 and standards of virtue that human nature, 

 which seems very tolerable to those who are 

 looking at it without the blasting motive, is 

 foredoomed by it to certain damnation and in- 

 famy, then Paine was a species of moral tyrant, 

 always demanding the impossible of others. 

 Notwithstanding his profession and belief that 

 he was an apostle of freedom, Paine's funda- 

 mental belief in politics was that the govern- 

 ment was always wrong, that it was inherently 

 an evil ; that the less there was of it the better, 

 but that, however reduced in dimensions, what- 

 ever should be left of it would still be bad by 

 reason of its being government. It was as wrong 

 when vested in Washington as in George III, and 

 he had good reason to know that it was as wrong 

 when wielded by Robespierre as when presided 

 over by Louis XVI. On the contrary, Paine imag- 

 ined that the aggregated ignorance and incapaci- 

 ty of all the vast unskilled millions who had been 

 pushed out of the work of government by the 

 superior force and cunning of those in power 

 were the actual repository of political wisdom 

 and purity. The iceberg needed only turning 

 over. He began with the creed, which he re- 

 tained to his death, that government was not 

 an affViir of skill, but merely of honesty ; not a 

 problem of difficulty, but merely of good inten- 

 tions. Holding these views, it followed that if 

 it could in some way be got out of the hands of 

 the skilled and interested few who were edu- 

 cated to it, and had made a profit out of it, into 

 the hands of the unskilled and disinterested 

 masses, who were not educated to it. and who, 

 he assumed, would not seek to make a profit out 

 of it, then good government would be perfectly 

 secured. The inverted iceberg would bloom 

 into an enchanted island, melodious with the 

 songs of biids and mellifluous with the scent 

 of floners. It did not occur to him that the 

 hereditary principle in government might sup- 



