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It was not Washington, nor the Adamses, nor Franklin, nor Jefferson; the men we call, and rightly call, the Fathers of the Republic, who were chosen as the instrument of Providence, in this emergency, but the calumniated Thomas Paine. His "CRISIS" went forth to the country like the clarion peal of victory, in the midst of disaster and defeat. It opens with the inspiration of genius, and its first sentence is the sound of a trumpet which will reverberate through all time:

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it Now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

The disheartened soldier, who was leaving the army, turned back and renewed his enlistment; the farmer left the plough in the furrow; the mechanic, his unfinished work on the bench. Men and means gathered around the Standard of Liberty. Members of the Continental Congress returned to their post of duty. The CRISIS was read to every corporal's guard in the army; and courage and confidence succeeded to terror and despair.

A man of the people, Thomas Paine knew how to appeal to the popular heart. Sincere and earnest in his devotion to Liberty, he inspired others with the same zeal. His appeals were prompted by a higher feeling even than patriotism-by the principles of Justice, and the dictates of Humanity.

"Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods," he says, in this remarkable production, "and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated."

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength by distress, and grow brave by reflection."

"We live in a large world, and have extended our ideas beyond the limits and prejudices of an Island. We hold out the right hand of fellowship to the universe."

It was in this spirit that Thomas Paine incited and led on the Revolution, which owes as much to his single pen, as to the swords of all its heroes. At every stage of that great struggle, he wrote a number of the Crisis, which was distributed to the army and country. Well has he been denominated the "Author-Hero" of the Revolution; and well might Jefferson bear testimony to the fact, which bigots have almost made the world forget, that Thomas Paine "had done as much as any man living, to establish the Freedom of America." During the war, he served, also, as Secretary of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, of the Continental Congress; as Clerk of the Legislature of Pennsylvania; he volunteered to be one of a party to burn the British fleet in the Delaware; and he accompanied Mr. Laurens to France, and aided to secure a loan of ten millions livres, and a present from the French Crown, of six millions.

For these great and inestimable services, he received, in 1785, the thanks of Congress; and a pecuniary remuneration of $3,000. The State of Pennsylvania voted him five hundred pounds currency; and the State of New York granted him a farm of three hundred acres, at New Rochelle. This may have been enough to satisfy the simple tastes of Thomas Paine, but scarcely enough to evince the gratitude of a magnanimous nation. In his case, our Republic has not been merely ungrateful; but it has permitted religious bigotry and proscription to cover with ignominy, the name of one who deserves both honor and gratitude.

The war was over, and Paine turned his attention to the arts of peace. He invented an Iron Bridge, and went to France and England to secure patents in those countries. This project, which had but a moderate success, seems to have been a means by which Providence led him to new fields of labor in the cause of Freedom and Humanity. It was the period of the French Revolution, which followed the American. Its principles were attacked with eloquent sophistries by Edmund Burke, but Thomas Paine defended them by publishing, in 1791, in England, bearding the British Lion in his den, his immortal work, "THE RIGHTS OF MAN."

In this work he asserted the great principles of Human Liberty; eternal, impregnable, and as fresh to-day as in all the cycles of the past. He overthrew the basis of hereditary power, by showing that man never could have the right of binding or controlling his posterity by institutions, or governments, or creeds, or laws.

He defined the natural rights of man, as those which always appertain to him, in right of his existence. Life, itself, brings to every being the right of seeking his own happiness, or the greatest enjoyment of that life, which can be exercised without injury to the equal rights of others.

Thus every civil right rests on natural right. Society and government are for the guarantee and protection of every natural right; none are surrendered; but only, as a matter of convenience, in certain cases, delegated to others.

"Public good," he says elsewhere, in his Discourse on Government, "is not a term opposed to the good of individuals; on the contrary, it is the good of every individual collected. It is the good of all, because it is the good of every one."

It is this principle I have tried to bring to the comprehension of those who are placing institutions above humanity; and who would have every individual suffer, for the general good.

Paine understood the true basis of Human Society, or of whatever government or regulation it requires, in the affections or attractions of the Human Soul-those Attractions which, as Fourier has said, are proportional to Destinies.

"The wants and affections of man," he says, "impel him to form societies."

"Formal government makes but a small part of civilized life." "The more perfect civilization is, the less occasion has it for government, because the more does it regulate its own affairs, and govern itself."

'All the great Laws of Society are Laws of Nature." "Man has no authority over posterity in matters of personal right. All hereditary government is, in its nature, tyranny."

"All delegated power is trust and all assumed power is usurpation."

Such are some of the fundamental principles, announced in Paines' treatise on "The Rights of Man;" principles which have a wider application, it may be, than he suspected-principles which are universal and unchangeable-because true; for there are axioms in ocial and political science, as in mathematics.

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No man ever comprehended the Age in which he lived, and the great thought and work of that Age, better than did Thomas Paine, and no man has given clearer evidence of genius or inspiration. Thus he says:

"The present Age will hereafter merit to be called the Age of Reason, and the present generation will appear to the future as the Adam of a New World."

"An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers can not; it will succeed, where diplomatic management will fail; it is neither the Rhine, the Channel, nor the Ocean, that can arrest its progress; it will march on the horizon of the world, and it will conquer."

Such was this man's faith in principles; such his consciousness of the power of truth; for he believed that

"Such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing."

Has any man, in any Age, given utterance to a more sublime faith?

And these principles, stated with great clearness, and supported by a power of illustration that rendered them irresistible, are radical, fundamental, and universal. They are the basis of all right; and opposed to every wrong. The most advanced reformer of this day does no more than to extend, to a wider and more comprehensive sphere, the application of the principles of the "Rights of Man," as stated, and in the statement demonstrated, by Thomas Paine. It was this work that excited Mary Wollstonecraft to write her noble "vindication of the Rights of Woman." And these principles, the basis of the Declaration of American Independence, and its claim to the great rights of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," have only to be carried out to their legitimate ultimations, to accomplish for Humanity that integral and Universal Freedom which is the condition of Progress, Development, Harmony and Happiness. Political independence and reforms in Government did not satisfy his principles or his philanthropy. Paine was a Socialist. He pressed upon legislators the duty of securing to all men the means of happiness; of protecting the rights of honest poverty against the

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rivers. I congratulate the country that embosoms this glorious h of plenty and of liberty. I congratulate the universal humanity

queenly city so free, so intelligent, so generous and heroic, an celebrate this anniversary, to vindicate the truth of histo help to right the wrongs of half a century.

It is right, that the examples of courage, genius and phil in the past, should be held in remembrance for the emul gratitude of the present and the future.

It is true, and it is a part of my duty to make it ma who hear me, that the life and writings of THOMAS P philosopher, and a philant

worthy of our admiration and gratitude. It is true, as will abundantly appear, that his emi qualed services, in the cause of American Indepen Civil and Religious Liberty, entitle him especially t gratitude of every American; and it was, theref nobly resolved to celebrate, here and now, the 1 of the Birth-day of the Author-Hero of the Revo cator of the rights of man, and the champion of C Liberty, THOMAS PAINE; Whose COMMON SEN Declaration of Independenc men's souls, gave vigor ed the Principles of Repub was the uncompromising

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