"The Godfather of the United States" Thomas Paine. Common sense

Introduction

Thomas Paine, also Pan (eng. Thomas Paine; January 29, 1737 (17370129) - June 8, 1809) - Anglo-American writer, philosopher, publicist, nicknamed "the godfather of the United States." First arriving in America at the age of 37, Payne espoused secessionist sentiments in his popular pamphlet Common Sense (1776). In the treatise "Rights of Man" (1791) he made a rationale for the French Revolution from the positions of the Enlightenment, for which he was elected to the Convention in 1792 (although he did not speak French). In 1794 he wrote the most important philosophical work, The Age of Reason, imbued with the ideas of deism and faith in the triumph of reason.

1. Biography

An Englishman by origin; comes from a poor Quaker family. His education was limited to the local school, where he did not even learn Latin. In his youth, Payne worked in the excise office. Knowing about his ability to eloquence, the authorities asked him to write a petition for a pay increase. He wrote a letter to the government, for some reason they did not read it again and sent it. In it, Payne, with childish spontaneity, wrote: "Please raise our wages, otherwise we have a small one, that we have no choice but to take bribes." And he described in detail who takes, when and how much. After that, the entire excise office was sent to court. However, Payne himself managed to escape, boarded a ship and arrived in America in 1774, with a letter of recommendation from Franklin, whom he met in England. This was just on the eve of the break of the United States with England. At a huge meeting gathered on this occasion, Payne described the then government of England in the most gloomy colors, and assured that you would not expect good from him, and advised the Americans to declare independence.

Pamphlet "Common Sense"

In 1775, Payne, on behalf of Congress and the senator, took to England the petition of the colonists to the king. This petition remained unanswered, and Payne returned to America, where he published the pamphlet Common Sense, in which he argued that every people has every right to arrange a government in its own way. According to Washington, Paine's pamphlet made a revolution in the minds. After the Declaration of Independence was written and the war between England and the United States began, Payne went to the camp of Washington, and began to publish the American Crisis newspaper, supporting the courage of the small American army. One of his articles was, by order of George Washington, read to the troops instead of the day's order, and so inspired the soldiers that, rushing into battle with the British, they repeated the opening words of Payne's article: "The time has come to test the strength of the human soul!" .

Thanks to his published works, Payne became the most popular person in America after George Washington. In 1780, when Charleston was taken by English troops and Washington found himself in the most desperate situation, Paine offered to arrange a national subscription to cover emergency military expenses, and was the first to sign $500. In 1781, Paine was sent by the American government to Paris to negotiate a loan, and this assignment was successfully completed.

At the end of the war, Payne returned to England. Paine, along with Burns and Wordsworth, hailed the French Revolution that broke out in 1789 as the dawn of freedom for all mankind. When Burke published his Meditations on the French Revolution in 1790, Payne countered him with an extensive pamphlet, Rights of Man, in which he defended the natural, innate rights of man. According to Payne, a person enters into a social union not to diminish his inherent rights, but to ensure them; giving up part of his rights in the interests of society, he reserves freedom of thought, freedom of religious conscience and the right to do everything for his own happiness that does not harm others. Arguing on this point with Bork, Payne passionately defends the new constitution of France, which gives the right to vote to all who pay even the smallest tax, and gives an evil characterization of the English constitution, which is all aimed at giving the king the means to bribe his subjects. Touched to the quick, the government decided to prosecute the author of the pamphlet.

In May 1792, Payne was put on trial on charges of insulting the king and the constitution. Payne could not attend the trial; elected a member of the national convention, he lived in Paris, entrusting the protection of his book and personality to the famous lawyer Thomas Erskine. Despite Erskine's brilliant speech, which aroused the enthusiasm of the youth, the jury found Payne guilty. Unable to imprison the author of the pamphlet, the government persecuted all those who could find it. As a member of the convention, Payne was a supporter of the Girondins and always voted with them. In the trial against the king, he stood for the expulsion of Louis XVI and warned the assembly that the execution of the king would be a huge political mistake, and would make an extremely unfavorable impression in America, where Louis XVI is very popular. Instead of execution, he advised sending the king into exile in America; there he will see "how the public welfare grows under a republican government based on liberty and fair representation."

The Montagnards could not forgive Payne for his intercession for the king; after the fall of the Girondins, he was arrested, sentenced to death, and escaped only by a lucky chance. During his imprisonment, Payne wrote his once-famous essay, The Age of Reason, in which he attempted to apply the techniques of rationalist criticism to the explanation of the Bible.

In 1804 Payne went to America. President Jefferson, remembering Paine's service to American freedom, placed an entire ship at his disposal. Thinking that he would now be accepted with enthusiasm, Payne was cruelly mistaken in his calculations. The "Age of Reason" armed the religiously inclined American society against him; urged on by the clergy, his former friends turned away from him. He could not bear it, and began to seek consolation in wine.

Payne died in New York, abandoned by almost everyone, but calm, with the comforting knowledge that he had not lived his life in vain. “My life,” he wrote to one of his friends a few days before his death, “has been useful for mankind; I, as far as I could, did good and I die peacefully, hoping for the mercy of the Creator.

2. The views of T. Payne

In 1797, he founded, in opposition to the society of atheists, a theophilanthropic circle, in whose meetings he expounded the foundations of his religion, cleansed of superstitions.

Payne was a typical representative of both political and religious rationalism. No one trusted the human mind as much as he did. He was self-taught, did not know much, and therefore often spoke of naivety, which were vividly picked up by his enemies. There is no doubt, however, that he was distinguished by common sense, strong logic and remarkable clarity of exposition. He was a people's tribune in the full sense of the word, not only because he knew how to speak in a language understandable to the people, but also because the guiding idea of his life was serving the people. To Franklin's famous expression: "My fatherland is where freedom is," Payne made the following correction: "My fatherland is where there is no freedom, but where people fight to get it." These words are his best characteristic.

Analyzing the forms of the state, Payne distinguished between "old" (monarchist) and "new" (republican) forms. This classification was based on the principles of the formation of the board - inheritance or election. Rule based on the transfer of power by inheritance, he called "the most unjust and imperfect of all systems of government." Without any legal basis, Payne argued, such power is inevitably tyrannical, usurping popular sovereignty. Absolute monarchies "are a disgrace to human nature."

3. Compositions

The complete works of P. ("Writings of Th. P.", collected and edited by Moneure Conway) was published in New York in 1895.

Payne T. Selected Works. M., 1959.

Literature

Vale, The Life of Thomas P. (New York, 1842);

Moneure Conway, "The Life of P." (London, 1893).

Voronov V.V. Progressive trends in the sociological views of Thomas Pan // Philosophical Sciences, 1959, No. 3.

Goncharov L.N. Socio-political ideas of T. Payne. Frunze, 1959.

Gromakov B.S. Political and legal views of Thomas Paine. M., 1960.

Goldberg N.M. Thomas Payne. M., 1969 (Library "Thinkers of the Past").

Fast G. Citizen Tom Payne/Roman; translation from English M.Kan. M.: Terra. 1997.

DocumentsThomas Paine - "Common Sense"

The Godfather of the United States, The Seagull Magazine

Rukshina K. Why America Didn't Accept Thomas Paine

Rukshina K. Thomas Paine (1737-1809) and the birth of modern democracies. Part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.

Bibliography:

These are the times that try men's souls

Alisa Skovorodina

"Let us exterminate the names of Whigs and Tories, and let no other name be heard among us but good citizens, open and true friends, and courageous defenders of the rights of man and the rights of the free and independent States of America."

Thomas Paine, Common Sense.

History knows many cases when people who have made a huge contribution to any cause were rejected by their contemporaries due to a simple misunderstanding of the whole scale of the perfect. Such a fate befell one of the great people of Thomas Paine - the smartest man, a fighter for truth and justice. Having been at the peak of fame for a short time, at the end of his life, despite all the results he actually achieved, he was subjected to "exile" both morally and physically. But first you need to figure out who Thomas Paine is and why he can undoubtedly be called the greatest Founding Father of the United States.

Thomas Paine was born in 1737 and raised in a Quaker family. Having received an incomplete school education, he started working early: first for his father, then in the tax office, but both times turned out to be a failure for him, and in 1756 he decides to leave his father's house. Until the age of 37, Thomas wandered around various jobs and actually lived in poverty, but luck turned to face him when, in 1774, in London, fate brought him together with Benjamin Franklin. He advised him to emigrate to Philadelphia and helped Payne in this, accompanying him with a letter of recommendation. In the New World, a completely different life for Thomas began.

From that moment on, Payne decided to devote himself to journalism, and in 1775 he became editor pennsylvania magazine, in which several of his articles were published in the same year, among which was one on the need to abolish slavery (African Slavery in America). This article largely influenced the creation of the anti-slavery movement in Philadelphia, of which Payne was actually a member and founder. Although abolitionists naturally existed before that, it was with the publication of Payne's article that the movement became widespread among the American people.

But the greatest response from the revolutionary-minded society of the United States, which was noticeably activated in its actions at that time, was caused by the publication of Paine's pamphlet entitled "Common Sense" (Common sense). In it, the author subjects the English constitution and the monarchy as such to severe criticism. Examining the constituent parts of the constitution, he says that "they are vicious remnants of two ancient tyrannies" (monarchical tyranny and aristocratic tyranny), and in general comes to the conclusion that the constitution is nothing but "absurdity". He urged the people to resort to extreme measures, namely, to start armed actions against the colonialists. “The period of debate is over. The weapon as a last resort now decides the dispute ”- this is precisely how Payne decisively and without alternative declares the need to start a serious struggle. None of the numerous pamphlets of other authors published at that time could be compared with Payne's "Common Sense", since it uniquely combined all the main ideas reflecting the issue of the speedy separation from England, and the rationale for this from all points of view: economic , political, moral, religious, etc.

The pamphlet "scattered" all over America with incredible speed. Each of the 500 thousand published copies has become literally a reference book in many homes. And this is not surprising, because such a thorough description of all the shortcomings of the existing situation in America firmly convinced the people, already rising to the struggle, that active actions were needed for the final establishment of an independent democratic republic. The colonists, inspired by Payne's pamphlet, were almost immediately swept over by a wave of patriotism: everyone longed for independence. George Washington literally made Paine's proclamations for the creation of the United States be read to the troops, which no doubt greatly inspired the army. As a result, in 1776 at the Second Continental Congress of 13 colonies on July 4, the Declaration of Independence was adopted - the most important historical document of America (which, by the way, from that moment on was referred to as the "United States of America").

Payne himself, who, naturally, was far from alien to the spirit of the liberation movement, decided to join the ranks of the fighting army. Although he did not succeed in his activities as a soldier, but being a direct eyewitness to everything that was happening, Payne wrote 13 proclamations under the general title "The American Crisis". These proclamations were very supportive of the soldiers, who needed support, faith in the righteousness of their cause. In them, the author especially fiercely defends the idea that England is to blame for many of America's troubles, and calls the American Revolution an undoubted blessing.

Payne's works made him incredibly famous and, in fact, the second most popular after Washington. After the formation of the United States, he received a fairly high post only for his merits - he was appointed secretary of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. In theory, such a responsible position should be occupied by a qualified specialist in this field, and not by a publicist, who, in essence, was Thomas. Due to his relative unprofessionalism and lack of skills for such a job, Payne made several irreparable mistakes. He was accused of divulging state secrets, and as a result, he was fired.

He continued his activities already in Europe, where he left in the late 80s. Revolutionary France just turned out to be close to him in spirit at that moment, and he began to defend the ideas of the revolution there with renewed vigor. Then his book “Rights of Man” (1791) was published, in which, for the first time in history, the principles of building a democratic society were thoroughly stated. The treatise received approval and an enthusiastic reaction from France and America, because it reflected completely innovative ideas for that time: the equality of women, the separation of religion from the state, the abolition of the monarchical system. But trying to promote his ideas in France in the same way as he did in America - persistently, abruptly and too bluntly - Payne was recognized by the Convention as a "hostile foreigner" and in 1793 was arrested. In conclusion, Payne wrote a large work, The Age of Reason, which caused a violent reaction and turned him into an eternal enemy of all the clergy and all believers, since in the book the author rejected all churches, ironically treated the Bible, and that's not all. Payne's supporters became less and less, but there was hope for release from prison. With the help of the American ambassador, Payne was released and returned to the United States of America after nearly 15 years of absence.

What was Thomas' surprise when he discovered for himself a completely different America, so unlike the revolutionary country that he had once left. His ideas were practically forgotten by the people, and the attitude towards him changed radically - now, if in any newspaper they mentioned him, then, undoubtedly, next to words like “blasphemer” and “criminal”. But Payne, despite all the difficulties he encountered, did not give up and did not leave the idea of \u200b\u200bstruggle for truth, common sense and democracy. In 1803, Payne's last essay, Letters to the Citizens of the United States, was published, consisting of 7 letters to President Jefferson. Their content is amazing - Thomas Paine was actually a hundred years ahead of his time, trying to describe the model of an international organization (the prototype of which was the League of Nations much later, and then the UN), which, in his opinion, was vital for the whole world. But Payne's letters were not understood by the people and not taken seriously. Never getting back at least part of the approval that Thomas once enjoyed, he was finally forgotten by his contemporaries and died abandoned by everyone on June 8, 1809. The life of a great man ended tragically, without whom, perhaps, America would not have become what it is now.

Thomas Paine, the man who influenced America like no other, should be honored and immortalized in the memory of all Americans. But people mostly remember only such Founding Fathers as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and hardly remember the most ardent defender of democracy, the one who gave the name to America and created its political foundations and influenced the moral foundations of many people. It can be said that the American nation is forever indebted to the greatest thinker, philosopher and champion of truth, Thomas Paine.

Payne (Paine) Thomas (January 29, 1737, Thetford - June 8, 1809, New York) - a revolutionary thinker, public and political figure in Great Britain, the USA and France, a representative of the revolutionary wing of the enlightenment of the 18th century.

Thomas Paine - a native of the people, a revolutionary and a public and political figure, a publicist, an advanced thinker and an encyclopedic scientist - left a noticeable mark on the philosophy of the American Enlightenment.

The views of Payne, the most consistent representative of the radical democratic trend in the American socio-political movement of the late 18th century, had a direct influence on the formation of the ideology of the Chartist movement in Great Britain.

1. Childhood and youth

Born in England in the family of a poor craftsman. Because of the need, he is forced to quit school at the age of thirteen and start helping his father in the workshop, but after five years he leaves the family, trying to get out of his difficult financial situation. He was a sailor, a corset craftsman, a teacher, a tax collector ... - while constantly educating himself.

2. Community activities

2.1. United Kingdom

In 1772, Payne appeared for the first time as a public figure: at the request of his comrades, he wrote an appeal to Parliament, outlining the complaints of excise officials about their hard lot. As a result, the Excise Bureau fired the restless official, and in 1774 Payne came to London in search of work, where he met Franklin, with whose assistance he went to the United States of America.

2.2. North America

Payne arrives in the American colonies on the very eve of their struggle for independence, and with the outbreak of war he is involved in active revolutionary activity: in 1775 he edits the Pennsylvania Journal newspaper, propagating radical views - the abolition of the monarchy, the slavery of blacks, etc., and in At the beginning of 1776, he published the pamphlet "Common Sense", where he convincingly proves the need for a war against England for the independence of her American colonies and urges the people to take up arms. In the summer of that year, Payne volunteered for the revolutionary American army.

During the war years, Payne wrote a number of bright revolutionary pamphlets under the general title "The American Crisis", directed against the English monarchy and in defense of the young American republic.

In 1777 - 1779. Payne is secretary of the Congress Committee on Foreign Affairs, and in 1781 participates in Paris negotiations with the French government on aid to the North American colonies.

After the war, Payne continued to write on social and political issues, while also turning to scientific pursuits and invention.

2.3. France

In 1787, Payne went to France and then to England, hoping to find funds for the construction of the single-arch iron bridge he designed. From London, Payne often travels to Paris, where he meets with prominent figures of the French Enlightenment at the home of the American Ambassador Jefferson.

With the beginning of the French bourgeois revolution, Payne immediately comes out in its defense: in 1791-1792. he publishes the pamphlet The Rights of Man, where he explains the events of the French Revolution. At the end of 1792, the British government accuses Paine of plotting against the monarchy; a lawsuit starts against him. Outlawed in England, Payne, fleeing arrest, flees to France. In the same year, the legislature grants Paine, as an outstanding revolutionary, French citizenship, he is elected a deputy to the convention.

With the coming to power of the Jacobins, Payne's position worsens (in particular, he disagrees with them on the issue of the execution of Louis XVI). The intrigues of his political and ideological opponent, the US Ambassador to France, Morris, as well as the condemnation by the Jacobins of Paine's ties with the Girondins, also play their role. In December 1793, on the basis of the law on hostile foreigners, which meant the British, Payne was arrested. He spends more than ten months in prison and only accidentally escapes execution on the guillotine. The result of Payne's activity in France is the development of his social views in the field of criticism from the petty-bourgeois positions of bourgeois property relations. Finally, Payne, one of the founders of atheist traditions on American soil, writes the first part of his work against religion and the church, The Age of Reason, and then publishes Agrarian Justice.

2.4. Return to the USA

In 1802, only after Jefferson assumed the presidency, Payne managed to return to the United States. However, during the fifteen years of his absence from the United States, the situation in the country changed significantly: the domination of capital was completely determined in the republic, and the revolutionary-democratic ideals, which the ruling circles began to change already during the war, were largely forgotten. In a situation of struggle between progressive and reactionary forces grouped around two parties - the Republican and the Federalist, Payne's arrival could not go unnoticed. The big property owners and their Federalist party greeted Payne with outright hostility. His radical philosophical and political ideas contradicted their views and beliefs. On the contrary, Republicans and progressive groups of American deists find in him a militant propagandist of their ideas.

In addition, Paine's political and social views are outraged by the bourgeois plantation circles that dominate America. Especially dangerous for them are Payne's calls for the elimination of inequality in property, with which he speaks in Agrarian Justice. Payne, although he did not go as far as the Babouvists on this issue, "objectively justified the uprising with the aim of eliminating social inequality in relation to property" (Foner).

In America, Payne wrote works whose material was intended for the third part of the "Age of Reason" and which saw the light only after the death of the author.

Payne, persecuted by enemies and slanderers who discredit him, is ready to leave the United States, but his health does not allow him to do so. Bedridden and forgotten by former friends, Payne dies in poverty. Two and a half months before his death, he asks the Quaker community for permission to be buried in its cemetery. His request is denied.

3. Main scientific and socio-political works

3.1. Common Sense (1776)

An anonymous pamphlet arguing for the necessity of the American Colonial War of Independence. Based on rationalistic theories of natural law and the social contract, Payne defends the idea of the sovereignty of the people and their right to revolution, proves the need to break the North American colonies with Great Britain and form an independent republic.

Payne makes a clear distinction between wars, pointing to American independence as an example of a just act: "their cause is just," Payne writes, and so they must "in good conscience take up arms" to free themselves from the violence of the English crown and obedience. her.

The ideas of the pamphlet were reflected in the US Declaration of Independence in 1776.

3.2. American Crisis (1776 - 1783)

During the War of Independence in North America, in the difficult days of the retreat of American troops from the Hudson to the Delaware, Payne, to maintain the morale of the soldiers, wrote the pamphlet "Crisis", in which, stigmatizing the English king and his American supporters (Tory), expresses confidence in victory.

Following the first pamphlet, a whole series of similar pamphlets followed (there were 16 in total), which Paine wrote and published throughout the war, promoting the American Revolution. In these proclamations, for the first time, the name of the new state being created was heard - the "United States of America".

These articles were reprinted by newspapers that campaigned for the independence of America, by order of Commander-in-Chief George Washington they were read aloud to the soldiers of the Liberation Army. The significance of this series of pamphlets is not limited to explaining the immediate goals of the war, calling for the rallying of the forces of all Americans, exposing the Tories as traitors, detailed information about the course of hostilities - in them Payne continues to explain his political views.

3.3. Human Rights (1791 - 1792)

A pamphlet in which Payne explained the events of the French Revolution, condemning the monarchy and exposing the apologist of the English crown, Burke, who slandered the revolution. Defending the revolutionary principles of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, Payne developed the ideas of popular sovereignty and republicanism. In the UK, writing was banned and publishers were put under pressure.

3.4. Age of Reason (1794 - 1795)

Title page of the first English edition of the first part of The Age of Reason, 1794

In this essay, Payne expressed the anti-religious sentiments of his era, contrasting scientific knowledge with ignorance and the sermons of religious retrogrades. However, Payne's spontaneous materialistic views did not receive deep development: philosophical problems, as such, were not the object of his special study, and he turned to them only in connection with criticism of widespread religious views.

The lack of the necessary philosophical preparation could not but affect the author's position, weakening it. Payne's philosophy is characterized by inconsistency, deviations from materialism. The mechanical, metaphysical approach explains why Payne failed to escape from the captivity of deism. Defending at the end of the XVIII century. the already outdated Newtonian idea of the first push, he was inferior in this respect to Toland, Holbach and other materialists of the 18th century, who long before the “Age of Reason” had overcome the deistic ideas about God as the first cause.

Having considered the internal inconsistency of the story of the legendary Christ contained in the gospels, Payne comes to the conclusion that the New Testament is not authoritative. He tries to find out the social prerequisites for the emergence of Christianity. Assuming the existence of a historical Christ, he sees in him a man who intended to free the Jewish people from Roman dependence and the domination of Jewish priests. He also believes that it was in the popular environment that ideas about "saviors" arose, whose names acquired "the widest popularity", and that the founders of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions came from a democratic environment.

The first part of the work was written in 1793, the second - in 1794, in the Luxembourg prison, completed after the release of the author. The third part included The Origin of Freemasonry (1805) and Predestination, which condemned the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, written by Payne shortly before his death.

Not only reactionaries of all stripes attacked the "Age of Reason", but Priestley also spoke out against him, assuring that Payne's attacks on Christianity were not convincing, since enlightened Christians no longer believed in such ridiculous dogmas as, for example, the Trinity, and there was no reason to discredit Christianity on the basis of such dogmas. And Rush, with whom Payne maintained friendly relations, in turn stated that "the principles proclaimed in his ''Age of Reason'' are so unacceptable to me that I do not want to renew communication with him."

The Rev. Y. Ogden, in his anti-Paine pamphlet The Antidote to Deism, warned: “What can be expected when religious restrictions are removed, except that people will give in to the impulses of their passions? Human laws and punishments will not be sufficient to keep people from their vicious desires where there is no real religious feeling - no foreboding of another world, retribution, sinfulness and otherworldly Creation of virtue. The ethics of the Enlightenment was guided by the opposite conviction: it did not need any religious foundations or religious sanctions - intimidation and illusions.

3.5. Agrarian Justice (1797)

A political and economic work in which Payne, deeply convinced that "revolution in the very state of civilization is an indispensable companion of revolution in the system of government", develops a bold but utopian idea of eliminating wealth inequality, dividing society into rich and poor while maintaining the existing social - economic system. He developed a specific plan for the implementation of this idea was reduced to the payment of rent by the owners and the creation of a fund from it for compensation to the landless, as well as for pensions for the elderly.

According to Payne, wealth and poverty are not eternal phenomena. They are a violation of the natural right of people: "...poverty is a phenomenon generated by the so-called civilized way of life, and does not exist in the state of nature." Payne fights against inequality in the distribution of wealth, which violates natural law, and constantly repeats: defending the cause of the disadvantaged, "I seek not mercy, but right, not generosity, but justice."

Influenced by the Physiocrats and highly regarded by him Adam Smith, Paine explored the sphere of production, not circulation, in order to find the real source of wealth. He condemns the system of distribution of property and conjectures about the labor of workers as a source of capitalist profit: “... the accumulation of movable property is in many cases the result of too little payment for the labor that created this property, as a result of which a terrible old age awaits the worker, and the entrepreneur bathes in luxury” .

Thomas Paine(1737-1809) is one of the most radical representatives of the democratic, political and legal ideology of the period of the War of Independence. Later than its other representatives, joining the liberation movement of the colonies (Payne in 1774, i.e. on the eve of the start of the War of Independence, moved from England to North America), he was the first among them in 1775 in the article "Serious Thought" raised the question about the separation of the colonies from England and the creation of an independent state. In the pamphlet "Common Sense" (1776) - his most famous work - he showed the imperfection of the political system of England and proposed the name of the state that the colonists should form - "the United States of America". The ideas of this pamphlet were reflected in the Declaration of Independence, the main author of which was T. Jefferson. Being in France during the beginning of the revolution there, Payne welcomed her and in 1791 published the work "Rights of Man", in which he defended the democratic rights and freedoms proclaimed in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789.

In 1792, Payne was elected a member of the Convention, sided with the Girondins, and when the Jacobins came to power, he was arrested and sentenced to death, but managed to escape. While imprisoned, Payne wrote The Age of Reason, a pamphlet that gave a rationalist critique of the Bible and was not accepted by religious Americans, to whom he returned late in life.

Like many other representatives of the natural law theory of that time, Payne distinguished between natural and civil human rights. The first are inherent in him by nature, "by the right of his existence." To them, Payne attributed the right to happiness, freedom of conscience, freedom of thought. Man possessed these rights in the state of nature, which, according to Payne, was a historical fact (here he is close to Locke) and which, in his opinion, was still preserved among the North American Indians.

With the formation of society and the state, which Paine distinguished ("society is created by our needs, and the government - by our vices ... The first is a protector, the second is a punisher"), people transferred part of their natural rights to the "common fund". This is how civil rights arise, which belong to a person as a member of society. These are the rights that a person is not able to protect with his power. Payne also referred to them the right of property - an acquired right, and not a natural one.

Like Rousseau, Payne believed that in the state of nature there was no private ownership of land - the land was "the common property of the human race." Private property appears with the transition to agriculture, and also as a result of "underpayment to workers." Along with it, there is also a division of people into rich and poor. By nature, all people are equal in their rights, and the division into rich and poor is a consequence of the emergence of private property (the ideological opponent of Payne A. Hamilton has a natural origin in the division into rich and poor).

Back in 1775, Payne was one of the first in North America to speak out against slavery and demand the emancipation of slaves.

The state, according to Payne, arises after the unification of people into society, because the united people are not able to maintain justice in their relations with each other. The purpose of the state is not to diminish the innate human rights, but to ensure them. By ceding some of his rights to society, a person reserves for himself the freedom of thought, conscience and the right to do everything for his own happiness that does not harm another. The state is created by people under a social contract - the only possible way to form a state. Therefore, the supreme power in the state should belong to the people themselves. From this idea of popular sovereignty, Payne infers the right of the people to establish or destroy any form of government—the right of the people to revolt and revolution. With the same ideas of popular sovereignty and the right to revolution, Payne substantiated the admissibility and necessity of separating the colonies from England and forming their own independent state.

Analyzing the forms of the state, Payne distinguished between "old" (monarchist) and "new" (republican) forms. This classification was based on the principles of the formation of the board - inheritance or election. Payne sharply criticized the political system of England and pre-revolutionary France. Rule, based on the transfer of power by inheritance, he called "the most unjust and imperfect of all systems of government." Without any legal basis, Payne argued, such power is inevitably tyrannical, usurping popular sovereignty. Absolute monarchies "are a disgrace to human nature."

Republican government, according to Payne's ideas, should be based on the principle of popular representation. It is "government established in the interests of society and exercised in its interests, both individual and collective." Since such governance is based on popular sovereignty, the legislative body, elected on the basis of universal suffrage as the realization of the natural equality of people, should have supreme power.

From these positions, Payne criticized the US Constitution of 1787, during the adoption of which he was in Europe. Thus, in fixing the system of "checks and balances" in the Constitution, he rightly saw the influence of Montesquieu's theory of separation of powers, with which he did not agree. Payne also saw the lack of the Constitution in the creation of a bicameral legislature, formed on the basis of the qualifying suffrage that existed in the states. Too long (six years) was, in his opinion, the term of office of senators. He preferred the collegiate head of executive power (president), provided for by the Constitution, to the sole head of the executive branch. Payne also objected to giving the president the right to veto, to the irremovability of judges, who, he believed, should be re-elected and be accountable to the people. Finally, Payne argued that each generation should decide for itself what suits its interests; and therefore have the right to change the Constitution.

Payne's political views expressed the democratic and revolutionary tendencies in the liberation movement of the colonists, the interests of the broadest sections. They had a tremendous impact on the course and outcome of the War of Independence. Moreover, they influenced the liberation movement in Latin America against Spanish colonial domination and even crossed the Atlantic Ocean and in Payne's homeland, England, later contributed to the formation of the political ideology of the Chartist movement with its demands for universal suffrage and annual parliamentary elections.

Political views Thomas Jefferson(1743-1826), who became their third president after the formation of the United States, were close to Payne's political views. Like Payne, Jefferson embraced the natural law doctrine in its most radical and democratic interpretation. Hence the proximity of his political and legal views to the ideas of Rousseau. True, before the outbreak of the War of Independence, Jefferson hoped for a peaceful resolution of the conflict with England and was influenced by Montesquieu's theory of the separation of powers. But this did not prevent him from subsequently criticizing the US Constitution of 1787, which perceived the separation of powers as a system of "checks and balances" and gave the president the opportunity to be re-elected an unlimited number of times and thereby, in Jefferson's opinion, turn into a lifelong monarch. He considered the absence of a Bill of Rights in it, especially freedom of speech, press, and religion, to be a major drawback of the Constitution.

A radical and democratic interpretation of the natural law concept was manifested in Jefferson's idea of a social contract as the basis for the organization of society, giving all its participants the right to constitute state power. From this logically flowed the idea of popular sovereignty and equality of citizens in political, including electoral, rights.

Jefferson criticized capitalism, which was gaining strength in the United States, leading to the ruin and impoverishment of large sections of the population. However, he considered the development of large-scale capitalist production to be the main cause of these disasters and idealized small-scale farming. His ideal was a democratic republic of free and equal farmers. This ideal was utopian, but Jefferson's active promotion of it played a large role in drawing the broad masses of the people into active participation in the Revolutionary War.

Even more important was the fact that Jefferson was the main author of the draft Declaration of Independence - a constitutional document that, based on a democratic and revolutionary interpretation of the natural law doctrine, justified the legitimacy of the separation of the colonies from England and the formation of an independent, independent state by them. Adams, Franklin, Sherman, and Lewington were on the committee drafting the Declaration, but Jefferson was commissioned to prepare the draft.

A break with religious ideas about state power, still characteristic of that era (the mention of the creator god was made in passing in the Declaration and does not change anything in its content), and natural law argumentation, popular sovereignty and the right to revolution, protection of individual freedom and human rights citizens - all this made the Declaration of Independence an outstanding theoretical and political document of its time. It should not be forgotten that feudal-absolutist arbitrariness still reigned on the European continent in those years, and the English monarchy tried to maintain its dominance in the North American colonies by practically feudal-absolutist means.

For Jefferson, as the author of the Declaration, "the following truths are evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The natural equality of people proclaimed in the preamble of the Declaration was directly opposed to the class privileges inherited from feudalism, inalienable rights - to feudal lack of rights. These ideas also had a specific practical and political meaning in the struggle against the British colonialists, who denied the equality of the colonists with the inhabitants of the metropolis and encroached on the rights of the colonists.

In the list of inalienable rights named in the Declaration of Independence, there is no property right contained, as noted, in the Declaration of Rights of the First Continental Congress. The absence of this "sacred" right is due to the influence of Paine, who in American historical literature is sometimes called the author of the Declaration of Independence, although he himself unequivocally indicated that Jefferson was its author (it was said above that Payne considered the right of property to be an acquired right and, therefore, not related to to inalienable human rights). We must keep in mind another, no less important practical-political circumstance. Drafting the Declaration, Jefferson took into account that as the conflict between the colonists and England escalated, their ideas about freedom and property became more and more merged. After all, the source of the conflict lay primarily in the encroachment of England on the material interests of the colonists. It was these encroachments that helped the colonists to understand that they were not free. The colonists saw their freedom in the unhindered development of property; the main thing for them was not so much abstract-theoretical freedom from foreign power, but practical freedom, ensuring their material interests. Therefore, freedom as a natural and inalienable right was seen by the colonists (and Jefferson had to take this into account) as a guarantee of freedom of property. In practice, freedom in the Declaration of Independence included the right to freely use and dispose of one's material goods, i.e. the right to property.

Government, Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, is created by the people to protect the natural rights of man, and the power of government derives from the consent of the people to obey it. Consistently developing the idea of popular sovereignty, Jefferson concludes that by virtue of such an origin of government power (created by the people) and such a condition for its existence (the consent of the people), the people have the right to change or destroy the existing form of government (the existing government), that the "duty and right" of people is the overthrow of the government, striving for despotism. The right to revolution is justified, and convincingly justified.

Further, the Declaration of Independence contains 27 points of accusing the English king of striving for despotism, giving reason to proclaim "in the name and authority of the good people of our colonies" their separation from England (the overthrow of a government striving for despotism - the right to revolution) and the formation of an independent United States.

To characterize Jefferson's political views, it is important to pay attention to the fact that in the draft Declaration of Independence he compiled, there were not 27, but 28 points of accusation against the English king. The paragraph, which did not make it into the final text of the Declaration as a result of the strong objections of the planters of the southern colonies, condemned the slavery of the Negroes that flourished in the southern colonies. Jefferson, who back in 1762, as a member of the Virginia Legislature, advocated the abolition of slavery, and then introduced a bill to abolish slavery in the northwestern states, was convinced that it was contrary to human nature and the natural rights of people. Therefore, in the draft Declaration, he accused the English king of "capturing people and turning them into slavery in another hemisphere, and often they died a terrible death, unable to withstand transportation."

Jefferson entered the history of political thought and modern history in general as the author of the Declaration of Independence of the United States. The significance of the Declaration is not only that it proclaimed the formation of the United States, but even more so in the proclamation of the most advanced political and legal views and ideas. The ideas of the Declaration and of Jefferson himself had and continue to influence the political life in the United States.

Thomas Paine- politician, public figure of Great Britain and the USA, publicist, philosopher, writer, "godfather of the USA" - was born in Great Britain, in Thetford, on January 29, 1737 in a Quaker family. Parents did not live well, Thomas was educated only at a local school, and even then without much success. In his youth, Payne was an employee of the excise office, and already at that time he knew how to be eloquent. Knowing this, the management turned to him with a request to compose a petition to the government for a salary increase. Because of Payne's message, sent and not reread by anyone, in which he innocently admitted that all their employees take bribes because of the small salary, the excise office was sent to court in its entirety. However, the culprit of the incident managed to board the ship and arrived in the USA in 1774, having with him a letter of recommendation from B. Franklin (they met in England).

At this time, America's break with England was just brewing, and Payne, speaking at a crowded rally, called on the Americans to fight for independence. In 1775, Payne returned to England again, this time with a petition to the king on behalf of a senator and congress. Having completed his mission, he returned to America and in 1776 published the pamphlet "Common Sense", which, as J. Washington put it, made a real revolution in the minds. In it, he defended the right of the people to sovereignty and revolution, argued in favor of the need to break with the metropolis; the ideas he expressed were reflected in Jefferson's 1776 Declaration of Independence.

During the years 1776-1783, when there was a war with England for the independence of North America, Payne, while in the Washington camp, published the newspaper "The American Crisis" and thereby supported the morale of the American army. The articles published there made Payne the best publicist in the country, the second most popular figure after George Washington.

After the United States was formed, in 1777-1779. Payne served as Secretary of the Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee. In 1780 he initiated and successfully carried out a national subscription campaign for the conduct of military operations in support of Washington; in 1781, he did an excellent job of obtaining a loan from France.

Returning to England after the war, he was forced in 1792 to emigrate to France. The turning point in the biography is connected with his attitude to the French Revolution and the treatise “Rights of Man” written in its wake (1791). Payne passionately defended the revolution, the new French constitution, the human right to freedom of thought and religious belief. At the same time, he caustically characterized the British constitution, for which he acquired a malicious enemy in the person of the government. In the spring, Thomas Paine was charged with insulting the king and the constitution, but at that time he was in France, was a member of the national convention. Despite the fact that the most famous lawyer defended his interests in court, Payne was declared guilty.

However, in Paris, major troubles fell upon Payne. Taking the position of the Girondins, he advocated not for the execution of King Louis XVI, but for his exile in America, and such intercession did not get away with him. After the Girondins fell, Payne was arrested and sentenced to death, and only a happy coincidence saved him from a tragic end. While imprisoned, Payne worked on The Age of Reason, his main atheistic philosophical work, permeated with a belief in the triumph of reason.

In 1804, the famous publicist arrives in America, counting on a warm welcome. However, the religiously minded American society reacted with hostility to the "Age of Reason", even friends stopped maintaining relations with Payne. He curtailed his socio-political, journalistic activities, tried to find peace of mind with the help of alcohol. In the last years of his life, the publicist was practically alone, but the thought that his life was useful for mankind was comforting. On June 8, 1809, while in New York, Thomas Paine died.

Biography from Wikipedia

Thomas Paine, also Payne, sometimes Peng(Eng. Thomas Paine; January 29, 1737, Thetford, UK - June 8, 1809, New York, USA) - Anglo-American writer, philosopher, publicist, nicknamed "the godfather of the United States."

First arriving in America at the age of 37, Payne espoused separatist sentiments in the popular pamphlet Common Sense (1776) and became the ideologue of the American Revolution. In the treatise "Rights of Man" (1791) he made a rationale for the French Revolution from the positions of the Enlightenment, for which he was elected to the Convention in 1792 (although he did not speak French). In 1794 he wrote the philosophical work The Age of Reason, imbued with the ideas of deism and faith in the triumph of reason.

Thomas Paine was born on January 29, 1737 in Thetford, Norfolk, England. He was from a poor Quaker family. His education was limited to the local school, where he did not even learn Latin. In his youth, Payne lived in poverty. He worked in a workshop, then served in an excise office. His wife died in childbirth.

Knowing about his ability to eloquence, the authorities asked him to write a petition for a pay increase. He wrote a letter to the government, for some reason they did not read it again and sent it. In it, Payne, with childish spontaneity, wrote: “Please raise our wages, otherwise we have such a small one that we have no choice but to take bribes.” And he described in detail who takes, when and how much. After that, the entire excise office was sent to court. However, Payne himself managed to escape, boarded a ship and arrived in America in 1774 with a letter of recommendation from Franklin, whom he met in England. This was on the eve of the break of the United States with England. At a huge meeting gathered on this occasion, Payne described the then government of England in the most gloomy colors, assuring that you would not expect good from him, and advised the Americans to declare independence.

In the North American colonies

Under the auspices of Franklin, Payne went into business in America. He invested in risky projects, in particular those associated with the construction of bridges, which he considered as an outstanding "invention of mankind, allowing you to master nature without disturbing its power and without destroying its beauty." Prepared by Payne in 1787, an innovative bridge project over the Schuylkill in Philadelphia was implemented 9 years later in the English Sunderland.

In 1775, Payne, on behalf of Congress, took to England the petition of the colonists to the king. This petition remained unanswered, and Payne returned to America, where he published the Common Sense pamphlet, in which he argued that every people has every right to arrange a government that they like. According to Washington, Paine's pamphlet made a revolution in the minds. He debunked the hopes of the colonists for the intercession of the king and declared the monarchy an unnatural way of government. Examples of incompetent or worthless monarchs he drew in abundance from the Old Testament. It is estimated that one in two families in the Thirteen Colonies owned a copy of this pamphlet, making it the most successful book in New World history. The phenomenal success of the treatise was facilitated by the fact that it was distributed almost free of charge, because Payne refused copyright to his work.

"Common sense" prepared the colonists for the final break with the mother country. Payne is also credited with authoring the anonymous article "African Slavery in America" ( African Slavery in America, March 1775), containing one of the first expositions of the ideology of abolitionism; under her influence, the first abolitionist society in America was created. After the Declaration of Independence was drawn up and the war with England began, Payne went to the Washington camp and wrote a series of 13 pamphlets called "The American Crisis" in the hope of bolstering the courage of the small American army. One of his articles was, by order of George Washington, read to the troops instead of a day's order and so inspired the soldiers that, rushing into battle with the British, they repeated the opening words of Payne's article: "The time has come to test the strength of the human soul!".

Thanks to his published works, Payne became the most popular person in America after Washington. In 1780, when Charleston was taken by English troops and Washington was in the most desperate situation, Paine offered to arrange a national subscription to cover emergency military expenses and was the first to contribute $500. In 1781, Payne was sent by the American government to Paris to negotiate a loan and successfully completed this assignment.

In revolutionary France

At the end of the war, Payne returned to England. Paine, along with Burns and Wordsworth, hailed the French Revolution that broke out in 1789 as the dawn of freedom for all mankind. When Burke published his Meditations on the French Revolution in 1790, Payne countered him with a vast pamphlet, Rights of Man, in which he defended the natural, innate rights of man. According to Payne, a person enters into a social union not to diminish his inherent rights, but to ensure them; ceding part of his rights in the interests of society, he reserves freedom of thought, freedom of religious conscience and the right to do everything for his own happiness that does not harm others. Arguing on this issue with Burke, Payne passionately defends the new constitution of France, giving the right to vote to everyone who pays even the smallest tribute, and gives an evil characterization of the English constitution, which is all aimed at giving the king the means to bribe his subjects. Touched to the quick, the government decided to prosecute the author of the pamphlet.

In May 1792, Payne was put on trial on charges of insulting the king and the constitution. Payne could not attend the trial; elected a member of the national convention, he lived in Paris, entrusting the protection of his book and personality to the famous lawyer Thomas Erskine. Despite Erskine's brilliant speech, which aroused the enthusiasm of the youth, the jury found Payne guilty. Unable to imprison the author of the pamphlet, the government persecuted all those who could find it. As a member of the convention, Payne was a supporter of the Girondins and always voted with them. In the trial against the king, he stood for the expulsion of Louis XVI and warned the assembly that the execution of the king would be a huge political mistake and would make an extremely unfavorable impression in America, where Louis XVI was very popular. Instead of execution, he advised sending the king into exile in America; there he will see "how the public welfare grows under a republican government based on liberty and fair representation."

The Montagnards could not forgive Payne for his intercession for the king; after the fall of the Girondins, he was arrested, sentenced to death, and escaped only by a lucky chance. During his imprisonment, Payne wrote his famous essay, The Age of Reason, in which he tried to apply the techniques of rationalist criticism to the explanation of the Bible.

Later years

In 1804 Payne returned to America. President Jefferson, remembering Paine's service to American freedom, placed an entire ship at his disposal. Thinking that he would now be accepted with enthusiasm, Payne was cruelly mistaken in his calculations. The "Age of Reason" armed the religiously inclined American society against him; urged on by the clergy, his former friends turned away from him. He could not bear it and began to seek consolation in wine.

Payne died on June 8, 1809 in the New York quarter of Greenwich Village, abandoned by almost everyone, but calm, with the comforting knowledge that he had not lived his life in vain. “My life,” he wrote to one of his friends a few days before his death, “has been useful for mankind; I, as far as I could, did good and I die peacefully, hoping for the mercy of the Creator.

Payne asked to be buried in New York at a Quaker cemetery, but the local community refused to provide a place for the famous "godless". He was buried under a chestnut tree on his farm. At the funeral of the once most popular man in America, only 6 people were present (including 2 Negro servants).

In 1819, the radical English publicist William Cobbet dug up the remains of Payne and transported them to his homeland, intending to achieve an honorary reburial of the "great son of England." This did not happen, and the fate of Payne's ashes after Cobbet's death remains a mystery. Many subsequently claimed that they own the skull or right hand of one of the founders of the United States, referring to the fact that they received these "relics" from Cobbet himself.

T. Payne's views

In religious views, Payne was a follower of the English deists; his goal was to shake, as he put it, biblical and Christian mythology. In 1795, Payne published a short tract summarizing his political beliefs. In 1797, he founded, in opposition to the society of atheists, a theophilanthropic circle, in whose meetings he expounded the foundations of his religion, cleansed of superstitions. Freemasonry was considered a continuation of the Druidic rituals of the ancient Celts.

Payne was a typical representative of both political and religious rationalism. He was self-taught, did not know much, and therefore often spoke of naivety, which were vividly picked up by his enemies. There is no doubt, however, that he was distinguished by common sense, strong logic and remarkable clarity of exposition. He was a people's tribune in the full sense of the word, not only because he knew how to speak in a language understandable to the people, but also because the guiding idea of his life was serving the people. To the well-known expression of Franklin: "My fatherland is where freedom is", Payne made the following correction: "My fatherland is where there is no freedom, but where people fight to get it."

Compositions

The complete works of P. ("Writings of Th. P.", collected and edited by Moneure Conway) was published in New York in 1895.
Payne T. Selected Works. M., 1959.

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