 | Washington and his generals, or, Legends of the Revolution |  |
THE VIOLATOR OF THE GRAVE.
A SEQUEL TO THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1776.
SEQUEL TO THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1776.
THE VIOLATOR OF THE GRAVE.
Among the many wretches who skulk in the dens of a large city, there
is one whose very name excites a sensation of overwhelming disgust.
It is not the Thief, for even he driven mad by hunger and pilfering a
crust, to keep life in him, may have some virtues. Nor is it the Murderer,
who plunges his knife from a dark alley into the back of the wayfarer, returning
home to his wife and children. Nor yet the Hangman, who for a
few dollars, puts on a mask of crape, mounts a gibbet, and chokes a human
being in slow agony to death, all in the name of the Law. Nor is it the
miserable vagabond of the large city, who covered with rags and sores,
sleeps at night in the ditch, picks his food from the gutter's filth, and is
found dead some morning with a bottle of alcoholic poison beside him, and
no one, not even a dog, to claim his corse.
The Wretch of whom we speak, must in point of ignominy claim precedence
over all these, Thief, Murderer, Hangman, Vagabond. He goes at
dead of night, into the silence of the graveyard, and with spade and axe in
hand, roots out from the consecrated earth the coffin of some one, fondly
beloved—it may be a Father, a Sister, a Wife, a Mother—and coolly
splintering the lid drags forth the corse, huddles it grotesquely in his
sack, and sells it for a few dollars.
Polite language has no name for this wretch, who like a fiendish beast
makes a meal from the dead, but in the language of those who purchase his
wares, he is called a Body-Snatcher.
A great painter once maintained a learned argument in favor of the
strange fancy, that every human face bore a striking resemblance to the face
of some animal. I am not disposed to affirm the truth of this supposition,
but a fancy has often arisen in my mind, that for every depraved wretch
whom we find skulking in rags in the holes of a large city, there may be
found another wretch precisely similar, in the fine mansions, and beneath
the broadcloth garments of the wealthy and educated classes.
The thief who shivering in rags and gnawed with hunger rots in the
ditch, has his parallel in the Thief who dressed in satin, sits perched on a
banker's desk, robbing widows and orphans with religious deliberation. So
the Hangman who chokes to death for a few dollars, reminds us of the
Bribed Judge, who for his price—say a thousand dollars—will sentence to
the gallows an innocent man, or set free the murderer of a mother.
But where shall we find the fellow of the grave-violator—the Body-Snatcher
of polite life?
Look yonder, my dear friend, and behold a magnificent saloon brilliantly
lighted, and crowded with one dense mass of ladies and gentlemen, who
wear rich apparel and come elegantly in carriages, with liveried negroes,
aristocracy.
These ladies and gentlemen all turn their eyes to one point. Behold the
point of interest! While silks rustle, and plumes wave, and eye-glasses
move to and fro, behold under the glare of the chandelier, a man of middle
age, clad in sober black, with a roll of paper in his hand. He lays the roll
of paper on the desk, erected in the centre of the platform, covered with
green baize, and lifts his head.
It is a striking face! The hue yellow, its texture parchment, the eyes
pale grey, the lips pinched until they are invisible, the whole physiognomy
reminding you of a skull, dressed up for a Christmas pantomime by the
buffoon of a circus.
Who is this individual? Hark? He speaks in a soft silvery voice, with
a gesture that reminds you of a hyena prowling round the fresh mould of a
new made grave.
That my friends, is the Body-Snatcher of polite life. He does not, like
his brother, the grave-violator of the hut, steal a corse and sell it for a few
dollars, but he does something more. He takes up the Memories of the
Dead, and so covers them with his venom, that History can no more recognize
her heroes, than you can the corse which lies mangled on the
dissecting table.
This Body-Snatcher of the lecture room does not ravage graveyards; no!
History is a graveyard to him, and he tears souls from their shrines, and
withers hearts into dust. He would be very indignant, were you to introduce
him to his brother, the Body-Snatcher of the hut, and yet the graveyard
mould, on the hands of the ragged wretch, is holy in the sight of
Heaven, compared with one shred of the apparel worn by the finely-dressed
Body-Snatcher of the lecture room.
Behold him as he stands there, before his aristocratic audience, in his
sober black apparel and skull-like face; listen to his voice, as for a weary
hour, he belabors dead men with libels, calls their corses—Coward! and
lets his base soul forth, to slander among the graves of heroes.
How far these remarks will apply to a recent Reviewer of Thomas
Paine, we will leave to the judgment of the impartial reader.
This Reviewer, whom it is not necessary to name, as he merely forms
one in the large class of lecturers and essayists to which he belongs, determined
to deliver before an American audience, a sketch of the life, writings,
and death of the author of “Common Sense.” It must be confessed, that
he had made ample preparations for the task. To a knowledge of the law,
he had added an intimate acquaintance with the arts and mysteries of banking,
and all the ways and windings of the science of politics. The complete
statue of his character, moulded from the bar, the bank, and the barroom,
shapen of the most incongrous materials, was mellowed and refined
by a warm glow of morality. This was what made it so charming to hear
financially pure, so legally just and politically religious!
As he rises before us, with his green bag in one hand, his last political
letter in the other, let us hear him discourse of the man whom Washington
delighted to call his friend.
He observed:
`That to dig from an almost forgotten grave, the intellectual character of
Thomas Paine, the object of violent obloquy during life, and of contumely
after death, might not be without its uses. It might be done now, without
offence, without injustice. Many a teacher of pernicious doctrine, had by
the purity of his domestic relations, left behind him a sort of protective
character.—There were surviving relatives and friends, or those who knew
surviving relatives and friends, who disarmed even just criticism, and standing
around the grave claimed pity for themselves if not for the poor inhabitants
below.—'
This is beautiful, considered merely as a classic sentiment, but divine as
a moral apothegm. Let us illustrate its force by an exanple. We all
know that there were other Traitors beside Arnold in the Revolution, who
escaped disgrace and the gallows, made money by chaffering with both
parties, and died in the odour of a suspicious sanctity, leaving a dubious
fame to their children. Suppose I was to go forth on some dark night, to
the grave of one of those Traitors, take up his corse, strip from it the mark
of patriotism, and show it by the light of history, a base and dishonored
thing, for all its thick coating of gold? Would not this be perfectly fair,
admirably just? Yes, shrieks a Relative of the Traitor, who stands palsied
and trembling on the brink of his Ancestor's grave, `It is fair, it is just!
But spare the traitor for the sake of his descendants! It is true, he bargained
with both parties, it is true he heaped up gold by his double treason,
it is true that these facts are written down by men who never lied, and
only kept in the shade by the wealth of the Traitor's descendants, but
spare him for the sake of those descendants! Spare him for the sake of
his respectable connections! Spare him for the sake of his Gold!”
And I would spare him. Who can doubt it? The lecturer himself,
with all his serene purity, and severe love of morality, would deal gently,
very gently with the memory of a Masked Traitor, who died wealthy and
left a dubious glory to his children.
“But—” continues our gifted friend, “Thomas Paine had none of these.
He was childless, friendless. Nor was there a human being in this wide
world, who cared a jot for him or his memory.”
Yes, it is just! Go to the grave of this childless, friendless man; lift
from his ashes the coffin lid; bring forth his skull, and cover it with the
saliva of an honest lawyer's indignation! He has no gold to buy immunity
from history; no friends to stand beside his grave, beseeching pity for the
poor inhabitant below. `The Lion is dead, and a dog may rend him now.'
It may be true, eloquent and honest Reviewer, that not a “human being
in the wide world cares a jot for him or his memory now,” but there was
Rush styled him the forerunner of Jefferson, in the great work of Independence.
These men after a fashion, may be called human beings.
But what estimate do you place on the phrase `human being?' Does it
mean, in your way of thinking, an artful pettifogger, who fattens on the
frauds of banks, and grows famous in the annals of political iniquity? Then
not a `human being' in the wide world cares a jot for Thomas Paine or
his memory. For Thomas Paine, with all his errors, ever directed the
lightning of his pen against such human beings.
Or, by `human being,' do you mean a man who gets his bread by honest
toil, and scorns to bow down to treason, though it comes masked in gold, and
refuses to reverence a Traitor's blood, though it has been diluted in the veins
of some half dozen generations?
Ten thousand such `human beings,' scattered through this Union, at this
hour, `care a jot' for the memory of Thomas Paine. Ten thousand noble
hearts pity his faults, admire his virtues, and throb with the strong pulsations
of scorn, when they behold his skull polluted by the leper's touch.
The lecturer, in his career about the grave of Paine, exhibits two remarkable
qualities in great perfection, critical acumen and love of truth. So well
does he love truth, that he dangles at her heels continually, his deep passion,
for the coy beauty filling with modest blushes, and preventing him forever,
from any actual contact with her. So fine is the temper of the critical steel
which he wields, that even while he is supposed to be flashing it before your
eyes, you cannot see it. He seems indeed to have made an art, perfect in
all its parts, of avoiding a solemn truth, without seeming to do so, and criticising
a book or passage into nothing, apparently unconscious of the maxim:
“It is a base thing to lie at all, but to lie like truth, or lie by insinuation
is the work of an intellectual assassin.”
Our Reviewer, in his attempts to display his great powers, occasionally
rises into the sublime, or at all events, into something very near it, the
ridiculous: he reminds us of Paine's remark:
“The sublime of the critics, like some parts of Edmund Burke's sublime
and beautiful, is like a wind-mill just visible in a fog, which imagination
might distort into a flying mountain, or an archangel, or a flock of wild
geese.”
Let us look at his criticism: He calls “Common Sense” a diatribe
against king, queens and prelates.
There is a great deal in a word. It would not do for our lecturer to call
this book a vulgar attack against kings, queens and prelates, for he is well
aware, that its most violent passages, in relation to these holy personages,
are copied, word for word, from the Book of God; Samuel's eloquent appeal
to the Hebrews, against the monstrosites of monarchy, being quoted in
full. But he calls it a `diatribe.' Choice word! Let us see how it will
look in another connection. `The Declaration of Independence was a
against the evils of party spirit.' There is about as much vulgarity in either
of those productions, as in Paine's Common Sense; the word `diatribe'
would, in the mouth of our lecturer, eminently apply to them.
Again, with a gravity as commendable as that of the Italian friar, who
addressed his cap as Martin Luther, and completely vanquished his speechless
antagonist, who of course, did not utter a word in reply,—the Reviewer
of Paine observes:
“Common Sense—a book of no particular merit, owing its celebrity and
power to its being well-timed.”
Very good. Washingtons attack at Trenton, was by no means, such a
great affair as Napoleon's battle of Waterloo, yet still it had one merit—it
was well-timed. Napoleon's coming back from Elba, was remarkably
common-place, but—well-timed. Cortez burning his ships, did a very tame
thing, imitated from Alexander the Great, yet withal it was well-timed.
That Common Sense should have been well-timed, seems a small thing
in our reviewer's eyes. To be sure, it aroused a nation into Thought, or
rather, gave its burning thought a tongue as deep and tempestuous as the
voice of thunder; to be sure, it wrote the word “Independence” in every
heart, by one bold effort, prepared the way for the Declaration, yet still it
is a very tame affair: merely “well-timed.”
We wish we could say as much of our lecturer's production. It may be
as powerful as a speech in the Criminal Court, adroit as a banker's speculation,
impetuous as a politician's letter, offering to bribe voters, by whole
counties, yet still it is not well-timed. The day may come when it will
merit that praise. In some distant golden age, when the temples of religion
will bear the inscription `To lie is to worship God,' and the only capital
offence, punishable with death, will be the utterance of a Truth, and then—
but not till then—this Reviewer's lecture will be well-timed.
Let us look at this book of “no particular merit:” for a work so weak,
this is a somewhat forcible sentence.
“Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of
kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise.”
Listen to Common Sense on Monarchy:
“For monarchy in every instance is the Popery of government. To the
evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession; and as the
first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the second, claimed as a
matter of right, is an insult and imposition on posterity. For all men being
originally equals, no one by birth, could have a right to set up his own
family, in perpetual preference to all others for ever, and though himself
might deserve some decent degree of honors of his cotemporaries, yet his
descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them. One of the strongest
natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in Kings, is that nature disapproves
it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule, by
giving mankind an Ass for a Lion.”
Here is an opinion which no doubt shocked King George, and our eloquent
reviewer, with the same deep horror:
“Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God,
than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.”
With regard to the oft-repeated watch-word of American admirers of
England—“Great Britain is the Mother country,”—thus speaks Common
Sense:
“But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more shame
upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages
make war upon their families; wherefore, the assertion, if true, turns to her
reproach; but it happens not to be true, or only partly so, and the phrase
parent or mother country hath been jesuitically adopted by the king and
his parasites, with a low papistical design of gaining an unfair bias on the
credulous weakness of our minds. Europe, and not England, is the parent
country of America. This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted
lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither
have they fled, not from the tender embraces, but from the cruelty of the
monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which
drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still.”
Speaking to those persons who still advocated a reconciliation with
England:
“But if you say, you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, hath
your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your
face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to
live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself
the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then are you not a
judge of those who have. But if you have, and can still shake hands with
the murderers, then are you unworthy the name of husband, father, friend,
or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart
of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant.”
Again:
Ye that tell us of harmony and reconciliation, can ye restore to us the
time that is past? Can ye give to prostitution its former innocence? Neither
can ye reconcile Britain and America. The last cord now is broken, the
people of England are presenting addresses against us. There are injuries
which nature cannot forgive; she would cease to be nature if she did. As
well can the lover forgive the ravisher of his mistress, as the continent forgive
the murders of Britain. The Almighty hath implanted in us these
inextinguishable feelings, for good and wise purposes. They are the guardians
of his image in our hearts, and distinguish us from the herd of common
animals. The social compact would dissolve, and justice be extirpated
from the earth, or have only a casual existence were we callous to the
touches of affection. The robber and the murderer would often escape unpunished,
did not the injuries which our tempers sustain, provoke us into
justice.
“O! ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny,
but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with
oppression. Freedom hath been haunted around the globe. Asia, and
Africa, have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and
England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and
prepare in time an asylum for mankind.”
This rude author of Common Sense had some idea of our resources;
hear him in his iron-handed style:
“In almost every article of defence we abound. Hemp flourishes even to
rankness, so that we need not want cordage. Our iron is superior to that
of other countries. Our small arms equal to any in the world. Cannon
we can cast at pleasure. Saltpetre and gunpowder we are every day producing.
Our knowledge is hourly improving. Resolution is our inherent
character, and courage hath never yet forsaken us. Therefore, what is it
we want? Why is it that we hesitate? From Britain we can expect
nothing but ruin. If she is once admitted to the government of America
again, this continent will not be worth living in. Jealousies will be always
arising, insurrections will be constantly happening; and who will go forth
to quell them? Who will venture his life to reduce to own countrymen to
a foreign obedience? The difference between Pennsylvania and Connecticut,
respecting some unlocated lands, shows the insignificance of a British government,
and fully proves that nothing but continental authority can regulate
continental matters.”
One passage more, in order to prove the puerility of the work:
“We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation,
similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now.
The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as
numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom
from the events of a few months. The reflection is awful—and in this
point of view, how trifling, how ridiculous, do the little paltry cavilings, of
a few weak or interested men appear, when weighed against the business
of a world.”
Here is a specimen of Paine's advice to great men. It was originally
applied to Sir William Howe, but will eminently suit our reviewer:
“But how, sir, shall we dispose of you? The invention of a statuary is
exhausted, and Sir William is yet unprovided with a monument. America
is anxious to bestow her funeral favors upon you, and wishes to do it in a
manner that shall distinguish you from all the deceased heroes of the last
war. The Egyptian method of embalming is not known to the present
age, and hieroglyphical pageantry hath outlived the science of decyphering
it. Some other method, therefore, must be thought of to immortalize the
new knight of the windmill and post. Sir William, thanks to his stars, is
not oppressed with very delicate ideas. He has no ambition of being
wrapped up and handed about in myrrh, aloes and cassia. Less expensive
odors will suffice; and it fortunately happens, that the simple genius of
America hath discovered the art of preserving bodies, and embellishing them
too, with much greater frugality than the ancients. In balmage, sir, of humble
tar, you will be as secure as Pharoah, and in a hieroglyphic of feathers,
rival in finery all the mummies of Egypt.”
Do you not think that these passages indicate a work of some particular
merit?—The Reviewer continues his critical excursion in this style:
“He next wrote the “Crisis,” a series of papers, sixteen in number; and
designed as popular appeals. They bore the signature of “Common Sense.”
The first words of the first number, written two days before the battle of
Trenton, have become part of our household words:—“These are the
times that try men's souls.” Yet, it is manifest that with all Paine's
aptitude at coining popular phrases, there was no spring of true eloquence
without an opportunity of revision and slow elaboration, no matter how
great the occasion or intense the excitement—he wrote feebly and impotently.
The fourth paper dated the day after the battle of Brandywine is
given as an instance.”
These remarks made in the face of day, in the Nineteenth Century, can
only be answered with a sentence of Thomas Paine: “There is dignity in
the warm passions of a whig, which is never to be found in the cold malice
of a Tory. In the one nature is only heated—in the other she is
poisoned.”
We must admit that the lecturer has the best right to think meanly of
Paine, for as we see by this sentence, Paine had but an inferior opinion of
the party to which our critical friend appertains.
You will perceive that he gives this short article, published the day after
the battle of the Brandywine, as an instance of impotence in style.
This impotent essay, written in the fear of British occupation amid the
palpitations of popular panic, comprises this weak line:
“We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room
upon the earth for honest men to live in.”
—“There was no spring of true eloquence in him!” Pity poor Tom
Paine! The fountain of his thoughts did not flow from the marble portals
of a bank—chartered to rob by wholesale—nor from the miasmatic corridors
of a Criminal Court. “There was no spring of true eloquence in
him!” Weep for Tom Paine! Had he but wielded a green bag, and
written letters on the eve of a popular election, kindly offering to pay for a
handsome majority, there might have been a spring of true eloquence in his
breast, but as the case stands in history, he was but an Author and Poor!
Our rich, and of course virtuous reviewer, thus disposes of a work which
Washington and La Fayette did not hesitate to honor with their names on
the dedication page:
“It was not long before he began to write again; and in rapid succession,
a batch of revolutionary pamphlets were published. Among them was the
“Rights of Man,” in reply to Mr. Burke's “Reflections;” and though the
reader of the present day may smile at the contrast, it is idle to deny that
Paine made an impression in Great Britain. His grotesque and often
vigorous phrases told on the excited mind of the populace.
“A batch of revolutionary pamphlets!” Singular felicity of phrase!
Take all the addresses issued by Conventions in 1775, all the papers
penned by Jefferson or Henry, all the eloquent appeals impressed with the
power of Adams or the weight of Washington's name, and you have not a
selection of the noblest gems of patriotism and literature, but a—`batch of
revolutionary pamphlets!'
Our lecturer's morality and patriotism all must admire. To slander the
childless dead is no sin. To write Common Sense, and awake a Nation
into a sense of their rights, is merely to pen `a diatribe.' To defend the
thought the carcass of monarchy was beautiful because he flung flowers
upon its festering pollution, and concealed the worms upon its brow with
the mushroom blossoms of metaphor, is not to do a noble deed, but simply
to write one of a—“batch of revolutionary pamphlets.”
But it seems the fellow's“grotesque and vigorous phrases told on the excited
mind of the populace.” Yes: so the grotesque and vigorous phrases
of Samuel Adams told on the excited mind of the populace, who in Boston
Harbor disguised as Indians, drowned a cargo of British tea.
Here is one of the grotesque and vigorous phrases of Thomas Paine,
selected at random from the Rights of Man:
“If systems of government can be introduced less expensive, and more
productive of general happiness, than those which have existed, all attempts
to oppose their progress will in the end prove fruitless. Reason, like time,
will make its own way, and prejudice will fall in the combat with interest.
If universal peace, harmony, civilization and commerce are ever to be the
happy lot of man, it cannot be accomplished but by a revolution in the
present system of governments. All the monarchical governments are
military. War is their trade, plunder and revenue their objects. While
such governments continue, peace has not the absolute security of a day.
What is the history of all monarchical governments but a disgustful picture
of human wretchedness, and the accidental respite of a few years repose?
Wearied with war, and tired of human butchery, they sat down to rest and
called it peace. This certainly is not the condition that heaven intended
for man; and if this be monarchy, well might monarchy be reckoned among
the sins of the Jews.
Doubtless the reader of the present day, will smile at the contrast between
Mr. Burke's reflections and Thomas Paine's Rights of Man. Burke
was an elegant gentleman in a court dress, with a nosegay in his button-hole.
Paine but a man, with the garb of a freeman upon his form. Burke
with his pretty figures and dainty words, wept for the French King and
cried his eyes out of their sockets for Marie Antoinette. Paine the vulgar
fellow, reserved his tears for the hundred millions of France, who had been
ground into powder by this king and his predecessors in iniquity, for the
women, the poor women of that enslaved land, who for ages had been
made the tool of a tyrant's lust or the victims of his power. Burke reminds
us of a spectator of a barbarous murder, who instead of defending the prostrate
woman from the knife of the assassin, coolly takes paper and pencil
from his pocket and begins a sketch of the scene, exclaiming as the blood
streams from the victim's throat—“What a striking picture!” Paine is
merely an honest member of the “populace,” for while Burke makes his
picture, he springs at the murderer's throat, and rescues the bleeding woman
from his knife.
Meanwhile our lecturer stands quietly by, and `smiles at the contrast'
between the elegant Burke and the vulgar Paine.
We might crowd our pages with illustrations of Thomas Paine's power.
style. And yet whole pages, extracted from his works, stamped
with genius and glittering with beauties, bear no more comparison to the
full volume of his intellect, than a drop to the ocean, or—to use an imperfect
comparison—than the instinctive malignity of a hyena, to the cold-blooded
malice of our Reviewer.
They have been more read, more quoted, more copied, than any political
papers ever written. We hazard nothing, when we state, that our ablest
statesmen, for the last fifty years, have freely used the pages of Paine, in
their best papers, in some instances without a word of credit. Such phrases
as “These are the times that try men's souls,” have become republican
scripture in every American heart.
You will be surprised, reader, after perusing these passages, at the hardihood
of our lecturer, who with all his love of truth, prepers Burke to Paine,
King George to Washington, the applause of an aristocratic audience to the
good opinion of the populace.
You will be somewhat indignant withal; while the strong throb of honest
anger,—if the bite of a reptile can excite anger—swells your bosom, you
will be induced to ask this Reviewer—`Could you not be a man for once
in your life? Scorned by the living, could you not leave the dead alone?
Were there not other graves to desecrate, other skulls on which to vent
your venom. Nay! Why, in your ferocious appetite for dead men's
bones, you did not dis-inter a Traitor of the Revolution, who has come
down to our time, baptised in a miserable glory?'
But these words would have been lost on the Violator of the Grave. He
wished to build a character for religion and morality. Paine was the author
of a deistical work; Paine died childless. The Grave-Violator beheld this
glorious opportunity! He could abuse the deistical author, and slander the
childless dead! His reputation as a defender of religion would be established;
he, the coiner of falsehoods as base as a Malay's steel, would be
quoted as a—Christian!
Christianity was to be indebted for a character to him, who in sober
charity, had none to spare.
But he overshot his mark. While he dealt a just rebuke to the Infidel,
he should have spared the Patriot. While he took the last years of Paine's
life, and held them up to the laughter of the cold and heartless crowd, he
should have stepped lightly over his Revolutionary career. For in the sound
of his voice, there was an old man, who remembered Thomas Paine, writing
his Crisis, in 1776, and tracking his bloody footsteps in the snow, while a
certain officer of the Continental army, was basely bargaining with the
enemy and hungering to be bought.
While he struck his coward's blow upon the dead man's skull, he should
have heard the whisper of prudence—“Take care! There are other dead
than Thomas Paine! There are other traitors than Benedict Arnold!”
As a specimen of our Reviewer's love of truth, we need only make a
reference to the passage of his lecture, in which he states, that Paine, in
Paris, `voted for the abolition of Royalty, and the trial of the King.'
This is all he tells us. He does not say how he voted on the trial of the
King; that would not serve his purpose. He merely “voted.” He may
have voted life! or death! but the lecturer dares not condescend to say a
word. His object is to leave the impression on your mind, that Paine voted
for the execution of the Monarch, when the fact is notorious, that he nobly
defended Louis from the penalty of death, and in the most lowering hour of
the Convention, pointed to the United States as an asylum for guilty Royalty.
Which is most contemptible, the bold utterance, or the snake-like insinuation
of a Lie? The bite of the bull-dog, or the hiss of the viper?
The hatred which the lecturer bears to Paine, does not even cease with
his death. Listen—
“About ten years after Paine's death, Cobbett made a pilgrimage to New
Rochelle, disinterred the mouldering bones, and removed them to Great
Britain. It was a piece of independent and ineffectual mockery. The
bones of the scoffer were looked on by such of the British people as knew
any thing about them, with no more regard than the anatomical student
bestowed on the unknown carcass before him.”
I do not know your opinion, but were I to meet the wretch who wrote
the italicized sentence, on a dark night, by the lonely roadside, I would at
once look for the knife or pistols in his hands, and prepare to defend my
life from the attack of an assassin.
“The unknown carcass” had once embodied a soul which Washington
recognized in words like these:
I have learned since I have been at this place, that you are at Bordentown.
Whether for the sake of retirement or economy, I know not. Be
it for either, for both, or whatever it may, if you will come to this place,
and partake with me, I shall be exceedingly happy to see you.
Your presence may remind congress of your past services to this country;
and if it is in my power to impress them, command my best exertions
with freedom, as they will be rendered cheerfully by one, who entertains a
lively sense of the importance of your works, and who, with much pleasure
subscribes himself,
If it were possible at this late day, to recover the skeletons of Judas
Iscariot and Benedict Arnold, much as I despise these melancholy examples
of human frailty, I would not insult even their bones, by placing the
“carcass” of this Reviewer in their company.
The wretch who can thus insult the dead, is not worthy of a resting
place, even among traitors. Did I believe the Pythagorean doctrine of
transmigration of souls, I would know where to look for the soul of this
Reviewer, after death. There is an animal that fattens on corses: it is
called the hyena.
But our task is done. We have gone through the nauseous falsehoods,
the vulgar spite, the brutal malignity of this man, and felt inclined in his
case, to reverse our religious creed and believe in Total Depravity. He
cannot claim from me, nor from any human being, the slightest pity. He has
violated the grave of the dead, and must not complain, if his own life is
made the subject of scathing analysis. Will it bear the light?. All the
talent ever possessed by himself, or anything of his name, bolstered by
wealth and puffed by pedantry, would not be sufficient to create one line,
worthy of Thomas Paine.
By this time, it is to be hoped, that the lecturer, and others of the same
class, will have learned that Thomas Paine is not altogether friendless. It
is not a safe thing to attack his Patriot Name. The man who consents
to do the work of a grave violator, must not expect favor from the People.
His only support will prove, only a broken and rotten reed. At all events, the
person who makes the attack, must look to his own life, and expect to be
treated in the same manner as he treats the dead. Stand forth, calumniator!
Will you submit your life to this scrutiny? You dare not. You can bluster
over dead men's graves, but you fear the living. Yes, you are afraid of
Light, of History, of the Past: well you know why; too well! Behold
the man of courage! He only attacks childless dead men!
But Thomas Paine is not childless. He left behind him Common Sense,
the Crisis and the Rights of Man; children that can never die, but will
outlive all Traitors and descendants, to the end of time.
| Washington and his generals, or, Legends of the Revolution | |