0:00:07 > 0:00:10When Barack Obama became President of the United States,
0:00:10 > 0:00:14he quoted the 18th-century English writer, Thomas Paine,
0:00:14 > 0:00:17in order to rally the American people and strengthen their
0:00:17 > 0:00:20resolve to face the challenges which lay before the nation.
0:00:21 > 0:00:24In the year of America's birth,
0:00:24 > 0:00:28at a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt,
0:00:28 > 0:00:32the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people.
0:00:34 > 0:00:38"Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter,
0:00:38 > 0:00:42"when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and
0:00:42 > 0:00:46"the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it."
0:00:50 > 0:00:53President Obama was recalling a moment from the darkest hour
0:00:53 > 0:00:55of the American War of Independence
0:00:55 > 0:00:58when, here on the banks of the Delaware River,
0:00:58 > 0:01:02General Washington rallied his weary and frostbitten troops
0:01:02 > 0:01:05by quoting to them the words from a pamphlet
0:01:05 > 0:01:06by Thomas Paine.
0:01:09 > 0:01:12Thomas Paine, depicted here writing on a soldier's drum,
0:01:12 > 0:01:15was one of the key figures in the Americans' fight
0:01:15 > 0:01:19for independence, voicing the fears and hopes of the American people.
0:01:19 > 0:01:23He even gave the country its name - The United States of America.
0:01:26 > 0:01:28He was a man who, by his words and his actions,
0:01:28 > 0:01:31placed himself at the centre of foundation events
0:01:31 > 0:01:34for the modern world - the American Revolution,
0:01:34 > 0:01:37the French Revolution and the fight for liberty in England.
0:01:40 > 0:01:42Thomas Paine wrote three books
0:01:42 > 0:01:45which were both bestsellers and had the greatest impact
0:01:45 > 0:01:49of any books of political theory in the late 18th century
0:01:49 > 0:01:51and, arguably, since -
0:01:51 > 0:01:54Common Sense, The Age of Reason and Rights of Man.
0:01:55 > 0:01:59His story is one of the most remarkable of literary lives.
0:01:59 > 0:02:03As much as any writer in history, he used the pen as a sword.
0:02:03 > 0:02:06He risked his own life and freedom to challenge the status quo,
0:02:06 > 0:02:08he used the language of the common man
0:02:08 > 0:02:11to refute the most eloquent philosophers of the day
0:02:11 > 0:02:14and his democratic spirit lived on in the writing of fellow radicals,
0:02:14 > 0:02:17such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Walt Whitman,
0:02:17 > 0:02:20John Steinbeck, George Orwell and, in our own time,
0:02:20 > 0:02:21Christopher Hitchens.
0:02:25 > 0:02:27Thomas Paine seemed to rise from nowhere.
0:02:27 > 0:02:30How could a humble corset maker
0:02:30 > 0:02:33from rural Norfolk become the most influential English writer
0:02:33 > 0:02:35of the 18th century?
0:02:35 > 0:02:38How did he end up a friend of the leading political figures
0:02:38 > 0:02:41of the age, from George Washington to the young Napoleon?
0:02:41 > 0:02:43And how did he come to write
0:02:43 > 0:02:47a series of incendiary works, which transformed the world
0:02:47 > 0:02:48and shaped modern democracy?
0:03:00 > 0:03:03For someone who would play such a crucial role in the creation of
0:03:03 > 0:03:08modern, democratic societies, Thomas Paine's origins were inauspicious.
0:03:09 > 0:03:14He was born in 1737 in the small Norfolk town of Thetford.
0:03:16 > 0:03:19Paine's father was a Quaker, his mother, an Anglican.
0:03:19 > 0:03:22Later, Paine would renounce all organised religion
0:03:22 > 0:03:24in favour of a universal creed.
0:03:24 > 0:03:26As he famously said,
0:03:26 > 0:03:31"My country is the world, my religion is to do good."
0:03:31 > 0:03:33Though he came from the artisan class,
0:03:33 > 0:03:35Paine's family found the money to send him
0:03:35 > 0:03:37to Thetford Grammar School when he was seven years old.
0:03:39 > 0:03:41Here, in this classroom, he learned to love
0:03:41 > 0:03:44the writing of Milton, Bunyan and Shakespeare
0:03:44 > 0:03:47and developed an ear for the rhythms of the English language.
0:03:48 > 0:03:51The school taught Latin, but he didn't learn it here.
0:03:51 > 0:03:54His father, a Quaker, forbade him to learn it, because he thought
0:03:54 > 0:03:59that Latin kept hidden from ordinary people the word of God.
0:03:59 > 0:04:04Perhaps that was a benefit to Paine in his fierce, direct English prose.
0:04:04 > 0:04:10He wasn't burdened by the long cadences of a droning Latin.
0:04:10 > 0:04:13He went straight for the point, you could say,
0:04:13 > 0:04:14like John Ball before him,
0:04:14 > 0:04:18and like, so magnificently, William Tyndale before him.
0:04:18 > 0:04:20He aimed his prose at the common people.
0:04:22 > 0:04:25The boy had an insatiable appetite for learning,
0:04:25 > 0:04:28but, at the age of 12, his formal education
0:04:28 > 0:04:31came to an end, probably due to lack of funds,
0:04:31 > 0:04:34and he was apprenticed to his father as a corset maker.
0:04:40 > 0:04:43Growing up and working in 18th-century Thetford,
0:04:43 > 0:04:46Paine would have experienced the rigidity and injustices
0:04:46 > 0:04:49of the British class system.
0:04:49 > 0:04:51Thetford was one of England's so-called Rotten Boroughs,
0:04:51 > 0:04:54where, out of the town's 2,000 citizens,
0:04:54 > 0:04:57only 31 were eligible to vote.
0:04:57 > 0:04:59Most of these would have been under the influence,
0:04:59 > 0:05:03and in the pocket, of the town's ruling aristocratic family,
0:05:03 > 0:05:06the Graftons, who lived at Euston Hall.
0:05:07 > 0:05:09The Graftons had a God-like omnipotence
0:05:09 > 0:05:11over the world around them.
0:05:11 > 0:05:13The second Duke of Grafton, for example,
0:05:13 > 0:05:16redirected the course of the River Ouse
0:05:16 > 0:05:18and had nearby Euston Village removed
0:05:18 > 0:05:21because it spoiled the view from his bedroom.
0:05:22 > 0:05:25From about 1733, the Graftons had it all sewn up.
0:05:25 > 0:05:26As a young man with ideals,
0:05:26 > 0:05:29what would have upset him and annoyed him?
0:05:29 > 0:05:32Well, I think, obviously, the injustices of the electoral system
0:05:32 > 0:05:34is something which he must have taken notice of.
0:05:34 > 0:05:39I think his maternal grandfather was in the patronage of the Graftons
0:05:39 > 0:05:41and would have gotten a position as Town Clerk because of that.
0:05:41 > 0:05:45But also, obviously, the assizes that were held in the town,
0:05:45 > 0:05:47the Lent assizes that were held in Thetford every year -
0:05:47 > 0:05:51so the judges would take people and send them off to the gallows -
0:05:51 > 0:05:54they walked past his house to go to the gallows.
0:05:55 > 0:05:58Thomas Paine was brought up in this part of Thetford, which was
0:05:58 > 0:06:01then known as the Wilderness, in a cottage just behind me,
0:06:01 > 0:06:04just below the site of a place called Gallows Hill.
0:06:04 > 0:06:05And he would have seen
0:06:05 > 0:06:08many men led to their execution and perhaps witnessed them,
0:06:08 > 0:06:11often for the most trivial offences.
0:06:11 > 0:06:13It was a time when the poor were destitute,
0:06:13 > 0:06:17often dying of hunger, a time of land enclosures
0:06:17 > 0:06:20and he would have been face to face with that condition.
0:06:21 > 0:06:25This early experience shaped Paine's lifelong opposition
0:06:25 > 0:06:28to the death penalty and his strong sense of injustice.
0:06:32 > 0:06:36Paine later said that life should be "a daring adventure or nothing."
0:06:36 > 0:06:39So, in 1756, at the age of 19,
0:06:39 > 0:06:42Paine left this suffocating backwater for a taste of adventure
0:06:42 > 0:06:44on the high seas.
0:06:44 > 0:06:46He enlisted in London on a privateer
0:06:46 > 0:06:50and set sail to raid French enemy ships and steal their cargo.
0:06:52 > 0:06:54When the ship returned,
0:06:54 > 0:06:59Paine's share of the booty amounted to around £5,000 in today's money.
0:06:59 > 0:07:01Rather than spend the money on women and drink,
0:07:01 > 0:07:04as many sailors would, Paine chose to invest it
0:07:04 > 0:07:05in self-improvement.
0:07:06 > 0:07:10London, at that time, fizzled with intellectual activity.
0:07:10 > 0:07:16Paine was largely self-taught and London was an autodidact's paradise.
0:07:16 > 0:07:19He had a metropolitan education in coffee houses, lecture halls,
0:07:19 > 0:07:21bookshops, shops of all kinds.
0:07:23 > 0:07:28The conversation at that time was driven by scientific enquiry,
0:07:28 > 0:07:31about a new ordering of the universe and man's place in it.
0:07:31 > 0:07:35Paine's mind was moulded by Newtonian science
0:07:35 > 0:07:37and Enlightenment philosophy.
0:07:37 > 0:07:41And radical science went hand in hand with radical politics,
0:07:41 > 0:07:45articulated in radical coffee houses and taverns, like this one.
0:07:46 > 0:07:48There is no university in London
0:07:48 > 0:07:50for another 70 years
0:07:50 > 0:07:55and what university established itself in London?
0:07:55 > 0:07:58I mean, there's a huge amount of education going on,
0:07:58 > 0:08:00but it's a more informal world
0:08:00 > 0:08:05of coffee houses, public houses, lecture rooms
0:08:05 > 0:08:08and the world of print, which is burgeoning at that point in time.
0:08:08 > 0:08:11There's an intellectual democracy, if you like,
0:08:11 > 0:08:12of sharing information.
0:08:12 > 0:08:16One thing we know about that century is that because dissenters,
0:08:16 > 0:08:18people who are not in the Church of England,
0:08:18 > 0:08:20were not allowed to go to university,
0:08:20 > 0:08:22they, in effect, set up their own universities.
0:08:22 > 0:08:24This is a world where dissent,
0:08:24 > 0:08:28disavowing the traditional discipline of a church,
0:08:28 > 0:08:34but also questioning the traditional discipline of court, government
0:08:34 > 0:08:37and so on, would have been part of the milieu into which he's entering.
0:08:38 > 0:08:42Paine's privateering profits couldn't last for ever and, in 1759,
0:08:42 > 0:08:45he returned to work as a corset maker
0:08:45 > 0:08:46in the Kent town of Sandwich.
0:08:50 > 0:08:52Here, he married a local girl, Mary Lambert,
0:08:52 > 0:08:55but both Mary and their baby died in childbirth,
0:08:55 > 0:08:57less than a year after the wedding.
0:08:57 > 0:08:59Paine was 23.
0:09:01 > 0:09:04After this devastating blow, his life took a new direction
0:09:04 > 0:09:05and he gave up corset making
0:09:05 > 0:09:07in favour of the profession of Mary's father,
0:09:07 > 0:09:09a government Excise officer.
0:09:10 > 0:09:13But Paine would for ever be caricatured by his enemies
0:09:13 > 0:09:15as a maker of ladies' corsets.
0:09:17 > 0:09:22In 1768, Paine took up a job in the Sussex county town of Lewes.
0:09:22 > 0:09:25Excise Officers were inspectors of coffee, tea, tobacco,
0:09:25 > 0:09:28chocolate and alcohol, who collected what Dr Johnson called
0:09:28 > 0:09:31"a hateful tax, levied upon commodities".
0:09:35 > 0:09:38Paine was an outrider. It was a dangerous job.
0:09:38 > 0:09:40He moved round the county and confronted smugglers -
0:09:40 > 0:09:42the mafia of their day.
0:09:44 > 0:09:46Paine lived here in Bull House,
0:09:46 > 0:09:49first as a lodger above the grocer's and tobacconist shop.
0:09:49 > 0:09:51He later married the owner's daughter,
0:09:51 > 0:09:54Elizabeth Olive, and took over the running of the shop.
0:09:56 > 0:09:58Lewes, unlike Thetford, had a history of dissenting politics
0:09:58 > 0:10:02stretching back to the English Civil War.
0:10:02 > 0:10:04It had a large non-conformist population
0:10:04 > 0:10:07and an active political culture.
0:10:07 > 0:10:10Here, at the White Hart Inn, there was a regular debating society
0:10:10 > 0:10:12known as the White Hart Evening Club,
0:10:12 > 0:10:15or the Headstrong Club, and Paine became a skilled debater,
0:10:15 > 0:10:19with a reputation for being argumentative and outspoken.
0:10:19 > 0:10:21The Headstrong Club still meets today.
0:10:21 > 0:10:24..in this whole business of anti-terrorism,
0:10:24 > 0:10:27because, basically, it makes an excuse to impose
0:10:27 > 0:10:32the state in whatever form it wishes to impose itself on your privacy.
0:10:32 > 0:10:34Tom Paine would have been appalled.
0:10:34 > 0:10:36Many governments throughout history
0:10:36 > 0:10:40have branded their opponents as terrorists.
0:10:40 > 0:10:44Imagine how many e-mails and texts are generated every day.
0:10:44 > 0:10:46Paul Myles has been researching Paine's time in Lewes
0:10:46 > 0:10:49and has found evidence that he started to write for
0:10:49 > 0:10:51the local paper under pseudonyms.
0:10:52 > 0:10:57The important thing here is that he embeds into society
0:10:57 > 0:10:59and meets the owner and editor
0:10:59 > 0:11:03of the Sussex Weekly Advertiser, William Lee.
0:11:03 > 0:11:05I think this is the defining moment for Paine.
0:11:05 > 0:11:08We know that he writes two letters under Humanus
0:11:08 > 0:11:09early on in his stay in Lewes...
0:11:09 > 0:11:11That's him under a pseudonym, yeah.
0:11:11 > 0:11:14..criticising the Poor Law, the iniquities of the Poor Law.
0:11:14 > 0:11:17He observes someone dying at the bottom of Kier Street
0:11:17 > 0:11:20and writes about it in beautiful prose.
0:11:20 > 0:11:24"In such a state of torment had this poor miserable creature lain
0:11:24 > 0:11:26"36 days, good God!
0:11:26 > 0:11:28"How could he survive it?"
0:11:34 > 0:11:37Paine's outspokenness and acute sense of injustice
0:11:37 > 0:11:39and his emerging skills as a writer led him
0:11:39 > 0:11:43to be chosen by his fellow Excise men in 1772 to draft
0:11:43 > 0:11:47a petition to Parliament requesting improved wages.
0:11:47 > 0:11:50This petition, entitled The Case for the Officers of Excise,
0:11:50 > 0:11:52was not just a plea for money.
0:11:52 > 0:11:56Paine was speaking with one voice for 2,700 officers,
0:11:56 > 0:11:59so the petition represented an organising of labour -
0:11:59 > 0:12:02in effect, an early form of a trade union.
0:12:03 > 0:12:08This pamphlet argued that bribery and corruption among tax collectors
0:12:08 > 0:12:11was due to the fact that they were paid low wages.
0:12:11 > 0:12:15Their wages had been frozen for 100 years.
0:12:15 > 0:12:18Paine argued that if you paid them proper wages,
0:12:18 > 0:12:20there would be no bribery and corruption.
0:12:20 > 0:12:24If a man can't feed his family, then you would expect him to steal.
0:12:24 > 0:12:27If he has enough money to feed his family,
0:12:27 > 0:12:28he deserves the gibbet.
0:12:28 > 0:12:29He says that.
0:12:29 > 0:12:32And he says the officers of Excise
0:12:32 > 0:12:35observe the rise in money in the country -
0:12:35 > 0:12:37this was a period of high inflation -
0:12:37 > 0:12:39like a map of Peru.
0:12:39 > 0:12:43So he shows his writing abilities beautifully in this pamphlet.
0:12:43 > 0:12:46The petition had no effect.
0:12:46 > 0:12:48It never made it into Parliament.
0:12:48 > 0:12:51Those in authority took no notice of it whatsoever.
0:12:51 > 0:12:55Paine was dismissed from the service.
0:12:55 > 0:12:58But he'd set out his stall, he'd set out the path he would take
0:12:58 > 0:13:01and cultivate for the rest of his life.
0:13:02 > 0:13:06In 1774, Paine separated from his wife Elizabeth,
0:13:06 > 0:13:10after three years of an apparently unconsummated marriage.
0:13:10 > 0:13:11The contents of the shop were sold
0:13:11 > 0:13:15and Elizabeth gave him £35 as a final settlement.
0:13:16 > 0:13:20With a failed second marriage, a closed business and no job,
0:13:20 > 0:13:22Paine's options had now dried up.
0:13:22 > 0:13:26Both his professional and private life had hit the skids. He was 37.
0:13:28 > 0:13:31Through the Lewes newspaper owner, William Lee,
0:13:31 > 0:13:34a meeting was arranged for Paine with Benjamin Franklin,
0:13:34 > 0:13:37the American scientist, author, printer and inventor,
0:13:37 > 0:13:40who was living in London as an agent of the Pennsylvania Assembly.
0:13:42 > 0:13:44Franklin clearly took to Paine
0:13:44 > 0:13:46and wrote him a letter of introduction
0:13:46 > 0:13:50in which he described him as "an ingenious, worthy young man".
0:13:50 > 0:13:54Later, he was to call him "my adopted political son".
0:13:55 > 0:13:57This letter was an introduction
0:13:57 > 0:14:01to a world-changing adventure for Paine.
0:14:01 > 0:14:04It was the vital lucky break that changed his life.
0:14:09 > 0:14:12In September 1774, Paine set sail for America.
0:14:18 > 0:14:21Crossing the Atlantic was a long and perilous journey.
0:14:21 > 0:14:23It took about nine weeks to get to America,
0:14:23 > 0:14:26and when Paine arrived here in Philadelphia,
0:14:26 > 0:14:28he was half dead with typhus contracted on board.
0:14:28 > 0:14:31In fact, he was carried off the ship on a stretcher.
0:14:34 > 0:14:35Philadelphia at this time
0:14:35 > 0:14:38was the wealthiest and largest city in America,
0:14:38 > 0:14:40with a population of 30,000,
0:14:40 > 0:14:44and it was the intellectual capital of the colonies.
0:14:44 > 0:14:47Once Paine had recovered from his fever, his letter
0:14:47 > 0:14:49of introduction from Benjamin Franklin gave him an entry into
0:14:49 > 0:14:53Philadelphia society and its lively literary and political scene.
0:14:55 > 0:14:58He was quite a witty, charming, charismatic fellow.
0:14:58 > 0:15:03He'd learned how to turn a phrase at taverns and coffee shops
0:15:03 > 0:15:06and you see this reflected in both his friendships - he knew everyone
0:15:06 > 0:15:09worth knowing - and in his writing, which reads like someone talking
0:15:09 > 0:15:13to you, a very clever and very charming man whispering in your ear.
0:15:13 > 0:15:15At a time when he'd accomplished nothing at all,
0:15:15 > 0:15:16he'd go and see the top person,
0:15:16 > 0:15:19and have the nerve to go and try to convince them of his case.
0:15:19 > 0:15:20Well, if you take his history in England,
0:15:20 > 0:15:22he fails at being a tax man,
0:15:22 > 0:15:25he fails at being a ladies' undergarment manufacturer,
0:15:25 > 0:15:27he fails at many things.
0:15:27 > 0:15:30His first wife dies, his only child dies,
0:15:30 > 0:15:32the second wife ends in separation.
0:15:32 > 0:15:35He literally has this horrible litany of failure.
0:15:35 > 0:15:38So he starts as some kind of Dickensian character
0:15:38 > 0:15:39of woe and tragedy
0:15:39 > 0:15:40and he works his way right up
0:15:40 > 0:15:42into the very heart of the American Revolution.
0:15:47 > 0:15:50As in London, Paine was drawn to the city's intellectuals
0:15:50 > 0:15:52and public speakers.
0:15:52 > 0:15:55Paine loved drinking and debating late into the night.
0:15:55 > 0:15:59He attended lectures hosted by the American Philosophical Society,
0:15:59 > 0:16:00here at Carpenters' Hall.
0:16:03 > 0:16:06Of course, there would have been a lot of discussion in this
0:16:06 > 0:16:10magnificent hall about the strained relations between Britain
0:16:10 > 0:16:14and America, but as far as we know, at this point, there was
0:16:14 > 0:16:16no talk of independence.
0:16:16 > 0:16:19Paine wrote, "I supposed the parties would find a way either to
0:16:19 > 0:16:21"decide or settle it.
0:16:21 > 0:16:25"I had no thoughts of independence or arms.
0:16:25 > 0:16:27"The world could not have persuaded me
0:16:27 > 0:16:29"that I should either be a soldier or an author.
0:16:29 > 0:16:32"If I had any time for either, they were buried in me."
0:16:35 > 0:16:36This all changed
0:16:36 > 0:16:39when Paine struck up a friendship with a Scotsman, Robert Aitken,
0:16:39 > 0:16:44who ran a print shop and bookstore next to Paine's rooming house.
0:16:44 > 0:16:47He goes to a little print shop, and the print shop at this time
0:16:47 > 0:16:51was the 18th-century version of the internet.
0:16:51 > 0:16:54You got letters there, you sent letters there,
0:16:54 > 0:16:56you bought books and magazines and pamphlets there
0:16:56 > 0:16:59and you published books and magazines and pamphlets there.
0:16:59 > 0:17:03And so, he was at one of these print shops and he falls into idle
0:17:03 > 0:17:06conversation with a fellow, and this fellow turns out to own something
0:17:06 > 0:17:10called Pennsylvania Magazine and the fellow, Robert Aitken,
0:17:10 > 0:17:13gives him the editorship of Pennsylvania Magazine
0:17:13 > 0:17:14just from their conversation.
0:17:14 > 0:17:17He makes it a huge success and his career is launched.
0:17:18 > 0:17:21And here it is - the first issue, 52 pages long,
0:17:21 > 0:17:25published on January the 24th, 1775.
0:17:25 > 0:17:29The contents include an article on North American beavers,
0:17:29 > 0:17:31an article on Voltaire,
0:17:31 > 0:17:33commodity prices, weather reports
0:17:33 > 0:17:35and poems and book reviews.
0:17:39 > 0:17:43The first issue sold 600 copies, but within months,
0:17:43 > 0:17:46under Paine's stewardship, the circulation rose to 1,500,
0:17:46 > 0:17:49making it the biggest-selling periodical in America.
0:17:50 > 0:17:52More importantly,
0:17:52 > 0:17:55Paine used the force of his words to steer the magazine in a more
0:17:55 > 0:17:58political direction, in particular to address the growing
0:17:58 > 0:18:02arguments about the position of the colonies within the British Empire.
0:18:02 > 0:18:06Writing under the pseudonyms Atlanticus, Vox Populi,
0:18:06 > 0:18:07Esop, Justice
0:18:07 > 0:18:13and A Lover of Peace, Paine became a prolific writer.
0:18:13 > 0:18:16These pseudonyms were a way of disguising the fact that
0:18:16 > 0:18:18almost all the articles were by the same author,
0:18:18 > 0:18:23but they also gave him protection when he expressed radical ideas.
0:18:23 > 0:18:26Thomas Paine had finally found his calling at the age of 37.
0:18:28 > 0:18:32One of the issues which offended Paine's humanitarian instincts
0:18:32 > 0:18:33was America's slavery.
0:18:33 > 0:18:34From his rented room
0:18:34 > 0:18:37at the southeast corner of Market and Front Streets,
0:18:37 > 0:18:41Paine could clearly see the Philadelphia slave market.
0:18:41 > 0:18:42He wrote,
0:18:42 > 0:18:47"Our traders in men must know the wickedness of the slave trade,
0:18:47 > 0:18:48"if they attend to reasoning
0:18:48 > 0:18:52"or the dictates of their own hearts. Is the barbarous
0:18:52 > 0:18:57"enslaving of inoffensive neighbours and treating them like wild beasts
0:18:57 > 0:19:01"subdued by force, reconcilable with the Divine precepts?
0:19:01 > 0:19:06"Is this doing to them as we would desire they should do to us?"
0:19:07 > 0:19:11Just five weeks after the article appeared, Philadelphians formed
0:19:11 > 0:19:16the Pennsylvania Society for the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage.
0:19:16 > 0:19:19It was the first abolitionist organisation
0:19:19 > 0:19:21in the Western Hemisphere.
0:19:21 > 0:19:23But what he does, when he gets that magazine,
0:19:23 > 0:19:26he goes straight for the jugular almost immediately, doesn't he?
0:19:26 > 0:19:28With that article on slavery.
0:19:28 > 0:19:31Way ahead of his time, and it's a wonderful piece.
0:19:31 > 0:19:35Well, I think actually, Paine was slightly ahead of his time.
0:19:35 > 0:19:38It was considered intemperate to publish these things,
0:19:38 > 0:19:39but I think what he was publishing
0:19:39 > 0:19:42were the conversations that he was having
0:19:42 > 0:19:45with the other members of the Philadelphia elite
0:19:45 > 0:19:46that he was meeting.
0:19:46 > 0:19:49And he was taking what they said and writing about them in a plain
0:19:49 > 0:19:53style that anyone could understand, and that was his revolutionary act -
0:19:53 > 0:19:57where he's exhorting people to change, he's telling them why,
0:19:57 > 0:19:59and he's using this very plain language
0:19:59 > 0:20:03and these very clever turns of phrases to enlighten people
0:20:03 > 0:20:05and to turn them towards being good citizens.
0:20:06 > 0:20:08But over and above the issue of slavery,
0:20:08 > 0:20:11another political storm was brewing.
0:20:11 > 0:20:13Tensions had been rising in the American colonies
0:20:13 > 0:20:17since the Boston Tea Party rebellion in December 1773.
0:20:17 > 0:20:20The following year, the first continental congress
0:20:20 > 0:20:22met in Philadelphia's Carpenters' Hall
0:20:22 > 0:20:25to discuss the colonies' grievances about taxation
0:20:25 > 0:20:27and lack of representation.
0:20:27 > 0:20:30But separation with Britain was not on the agenda.
0:20:31 > 0:20:35It was the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775
0:20:35 > 0:20:37which upped the stakes.
0:20:37 > 0:20:40The blood of 95 Americans was spilled.
0:20:40 > 0:20:43These were the first battles in what later became known
0:20:43 > 0:20:45as the American War of Independence.
0:20:45 > 0:20:49But, even at this stage, independence was not a clear goal.
0:20:50 > 0:20:52Paine was to help change that.
0:20:52 > 0:20:56He wrote about the situation here in the Pennsylvania Packet.
0:20:56 > 0:20:59"When the country into which I had just set my foot was
0:20:59 > 0:21:03"set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir.
0:21:03 > 0:21:05"It was time for every man to stir."
0:21:07 > 0:21:10Fired up by developments in Lexington and Concord,
0:21:10 > 0:21:13Paine decided to devote his energies to a major essay on
0:21:13 > 0:21:16the history of the American colonies and their position in the empire.
0:21:16 > 0:21:18This essay, called Common Sense,
0:21:18 > 0:21:22would make Paine's name in America and change the course of history.
0:21:23 > 0:21:29In Common Sense, Paine used Enlightenment logic and his own
0:21:29 > 0:21:33ferocious clarity to deride the notion of hereditary monarchy.
0:21:34 > 0:21:37He wrote "One of the strongest natural proofs
0:21:37 > 0:21:40"of the folly of hereditary right in kings
0:21:40 > 0:21:43"is that nature disapproves it,
0:21:43 > 0:21:48"otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule
0:21:48 > 0:21:51"by giving mankind an ass for a lion."
0:21:52 > 0:21:55The book was uncompromising in its argument.
0:21:55 > 0:21:58In vigorous, plain English, it attacked the empty pomp
0:21:58 > 0:22:00and the tyranny of monarchy.
0:22:00 > 0:22:03He pointed out that the British king, George III,
0:22:03 > 0:22:06was a descendant of William the Conqueror, whom Paine described
0:22:06 > 0:22:09as "a French bastard landing with an armed banditti
0:22:09 > 0:22:12"and establishing himself as King of England,
0:22:12 > 0:22:15"against the consent of the natives."
0:22:15 > 0:22:18Having dared denounce the British monarchy,
0:22:18 > 0:22:22Paine went on to say what had hitherto been unsaid.
0:22:22 > 0:22:26He called for America to make a clean break with England,
0:22:26 > 0:22:31to set up an independent state with a new constitution.
0:22:31 > 0:22:36He wrote, in what became famous and often-quoted passage,
0:22:36 > 0:22:41"We have every opportunity to form the noblest, purest constitution
0:22:41 > 0:22:43"on the face of the earth.
0:22:43 > 0:22:47"We have it in our power to begin the world over again."
0:22:47 > 0:22:50By "we", he meant America and the Americans
0:22:50 > 0:22:53among whom he counted himself one.
0:22:53 > 0:22:56The enemy was now the country of his birth, England.
0:22:58 > 0:23:01Common Sense was the most important political document
0:23:01 > 0:23:03of the early stages of the revolution.
0:23:03 > 0:23:05It convinced George Washington and Thomas Jefferson
0:23:05 > 0:23:10of the case for independence, but it also spoke to the common man.
0:23:11 > 0:23:13It was structured like a sermon,
0:23:13 > 0:23:15as if it were designed to be read aloud
0:23:15 > 0:23:17to people unfamiliar with books.
0:23:17 > 0:23:20Paine described his style in this way -
0:23:20 > 0:23:23"I dwell not upon the vapours of imagination,
0:23:23 > 0:23:25"I bring reason to your ears,
0:23:25 > 0:23:28"and, in language as plain as A, B, C,
0:23:28 > 0:23:30"hold up truth to your eyes."
0:23:30 > 0:23:32It was explosive.
0:23:32 > 0:23:34It immediately sold almost a quarter of a million copies
0:23:34 > 0:23:36in a nation of three million.
0:23:36 > 0:23:39So today, that would be equivalent of selling 35 million copies
0:23:39 > 0:23:40in a couple of months.
0:23:40 > 0:23:43It was just titanic and it travelled all over the world.
0:23:44 > 0:23:46Measured against the size of the population,
0:23:46 > 0:23:50Common Sense is America's best-selling book of all time.
0:23:50 > 0:23:53Paine forswore royalties from the publication,
0:23:53 > 0:23:56and donated his profits to George Washington's army.
0:23:56 > 0:23:59Paine described his philanthropy in this way -
0:23:59 > 0:24:03"I am a farmer of thoughts, and all the crops I raise, I give away."
0:24:04 > 0:24:07In Common Sense, Paine changed the political agenda.
0:24:07 > 0:24:11He gave shape to his readers' unformed ideas,
0:24:11 > 0:24:13he said what others wouldn't
0:24:13 > 0:24:17and urged his readers to speak out and to act.
0:24:17 > 0:24:20He encouraged Anglo-Americans to think of themselves
0:24:20 > 0:24:25not as traitors, but as pioneers, building for a better future.
0:24:25 > 0:24:29And in doing that, he lit the fuse for American independence.
0:24:32 > 0:24:36Independence was declared here, on the 4th of July, 1776,
0:24:36 > 0:24:39in Philadelphia's Independence Hall,
0:24:39 > 0:24:44with the great proclamation that "All men are created equal,
0:24:44 > 0:24:48"endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,
0:24:48 > 0:24:53"among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
0:24:53 > 0:24:58Nevertheless, at that time, the war against Britain was far from won.
0:24:59 > 0:25:01Writing a rallying cry for revolution
0:25:01 > 0:25:05was not enough for Paine - he wanted to see action.
0:25:05 > 0:25:08He offered his services as a secretary to an American general
0:25:08 > 0:25:12and became a field correspondent for the Philadelphia Press.
0:25:12 > 0:25:16At the front, he met and was befriended by George Washington.
0:25:16 > 0:25:19Paine believed that political writing could help shape
0:25:19 > 0:25:22soldiers' conduct in the field by lifting the spirits.
0:25:22 > 0:25:27His next major work would put that idea to the test.
0:25:27 > 0:25:31On December the 13th, 1776, General Washington
0:25:31 > 0:25:35and about 500 troops retreated here to the banks of the Delaware River.
0:25:35 > 0:25:38Across the river were German mercenaries,
0:25:38 > 0:25:41hired by the British for about £500,000.
0:25:41 > 0:25:43Seeing the apprehension and fear
0:25:43 > 0:25:47among the battered American soldiers, Thomas Paine acted.
0:25:47 > 0:25:52He walked to Philadelphia, 35 miles away, wrote an essay,
0:25:52 > 0:25:54had 18,000 copies of it printed
0:25:54 > 0:25:58and came back just before the battle commenced.
0:25:58 > 0:26:01The pamphlet was called The American Crisis,
0:26:01 > 0:26:05one of the greatest political essays in the English language.
0:26:05 > 0:26:06On Christmas Day,
0:26:06 > 0:26:10George Washington read from it to the assembled troops, here.
0:26:12 > 0:26:15"These are the times that try men's souls", Paine wrote.
0:26:15 > 0:26:18"The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot
0:26:18 > 0:26:22"will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country.
0:26:22 > 0:26:26"But he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks
0:26:26 > 0:26:28"of man and woman.
0:26:28 > 0:26:32"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.
0:26:32 > 0:26:34"Yet we have this consolation with us -
0:26:34 > 0:26:39"that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
0:26:39 > 0:26:42"Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter,
0:26:42 > 0:26:45"when nothing but hope and virtue could survive,
0:26:45 > 0:26:49"that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger,
0:26:49 > 0:26:51"came forth to meet it."
0:26:53 > 0:26:58It took nine hours to ferry 4,000 men across the icy Delaware River.
0:26:58 > 0:27:01The German troops, camped outside the town of Trenton,
0:27:01 > 0:27:03were exhausted and the worse for wear
0:27:03 > 0:27:05after over-celebrating Christmas.
0:27:05 > 0:27:07They were caught off guard.
0:27:07 > 0:27:10American soldiers rushed into battle,
0:27:10 > 0:27:13shouting, "These are the times that try men's souls,"
0:27:13 > 0:27:16and Paine's words gave them courage to win the day.
0:27:16 > 0:27:19And that phrase has resounded down through the ages.
0:27:22 > 0:27:26This blood-stained copy of the American Crisis is a reminder,
0:27:26 > 0:27:29not only of Paine's contribution to the freedoms
0:27:29 > 0:27:34gained by the American Revolution, but how hard that victory was won.
0:27:35 > 0:27:38The victory at Trenton showed the Americans
0:27:38 > 0:27:40that the British could be defeated.
0:27:40 > 0:27:42In many ways, this was the high point
0:27:42 > 0:27:44of Paine's involvement in the war.
0:27:45 > 0:27:49As war turned into the need to shape a representative government
0:27:49 > 0:27:50and a new constitution,
0:27:50 > 0:27:54Paine's outspokenness started to become a liability.
0:27:54 > 0:27:58Truth speaking wasn't always the best policy in the political arena.
0:27:58 > 0:28:02Paine began to criticise the new American power elite
0:28:02 > 0:28:05when he saw them misusing their position.
0:28:05 > 0:28:08In the most damaging scandal of the American revolution,
0:28:08 > 0:28:10Paine demanded a public inquiry
0:28:10 > 0:28:13into the activities of colonial agent Silas Deane,
0:28:13 > 0:28:18who, in 1779, was accused of being a war profiteer.
0:28:18 > 0:28:20The accusation split the government
0:28:20 > 0:28:23and Paine fell out of favour with many supporters of Deane.
0:28:23 > 0:28:27Animosity towards Paine was so strong during this time
0:28:27 > 0:28:30that he was beaten in the streets.
0:28:30 > 0:28:33Both his language and his attitude were much too democratic for them.
0:28:33 > 0:28:36For many of the elites who were leading the revolution,
0:28:36 > 0:28:40they wanted the people to feel like they were represented
0:28:40 > 0:28:42in the political process,
0:28:42 > 0:28:45but they wanted the freedom to do what they thought was best.
0:28:45 > 0:28:48And for someone like Paine, if you look at Common Sense,
0:28:48 > 0:28:50he advocates direct elections,
0:28:50 > 0:28:54he advocates annual elections in the House of Representatives,
0:28:54 > 0:28:57he wanted the people to control their representatives.
0:28:57 > 0:29:00Once he publishes Common Sense and he adopts this style
0:29:00 > 0:29:05that is not only more democratic, but is also very much personal,
0:29:05 > 0:29:08Paine constantly personalises battles,
0:29:08 > 0:29:10as he would do throughout the rest of his career,
0:29:10 > 0:29:13and they found that deeply disturbing.
0:29:13 > 0:29:17It's a much less gentlemanly form of political dialogue.
0:29:17 > 0:29:19So it was a strength in terms of its directness
0:29:19 > 0:29:21and its appeal to a lot of people.
0:29:21 > 0:29:24It was a weakness for Paine in terms of the influence he had
0:29:24 > 0:29:28on that elite in America, who wanted democracy but not much democracy.
0:29:28 > 0:29:29And they wanted a republic,
0:29:29 > 0:29:32but not a republic that didn't let them lead it.
0:29:32 > 0:29:35Yeah, I think that's a really good way to put it
0:29:35 > 0:29:38and it exposed him to personal attacks from them.
0:29:38 > 0:29:41I think that that's the side of it that Paine didn't see.
0:29:41 > 0:29:44When he made it personal, he made himself fair game.
0:29:44 > 0:29:47Well, he had an awful lot of enemies,
0:29:47 > 0:29:51and I think he could have watched his mouth sometimes, you know.
0:29:51 > 0:29:55There are certain moments where he makes an enemy out of someone
0:29:55 > 0:29:56and that was an awfully bad idea.
0:29:58 > 0:30:01Paine became increasingly disappointed,
0:30:01 > 0:30:03understandably I think, by the lack of support
0:30:03 > 0:30:06he was given for his services to the revolution.
0:30:06 > 0:30:10He had given his not inconsiderable royalties to the cause,
0:30:10 > 0:30:13he petitioned Congress, but there was no reply.
0:30:13 > 0:30:15He was virtually jobless.
0:30:15 > 0:30:17Being Paine, he went directly to the top
0:30:17 > 0:30:19and he wrote to George Washington.
0:30:19 > 0:30:21"There is something peculiarly hard
0:30:21 > 0:30:24"that the country, which ought to have been to me a home,
0:30:24 > 0:30:26"has scarcely afforded me asylum."
0:30:26 > 0:30:29He had been essential to the articulation
0:30:29 > 0:30:32and the development of the independence of this country
0:30:32 > 0:30:33and it dumped him.
0:30:34 > 0:30:36It wouldn't be until 1785
0:30:36 > 0:30:38that Congress finally agreed to give Paine
0:30:38 > 0:30:41an honorarium of 3,000 -
0:30:41 > 0:30:45250,000 in today's money.
0:30:45 > 0:30:47Pennsylvania donated 500
0:30:47 > 0:30:49and New York gave 277 acres
0:30:49 > 0:30:52and a farmhouse outside the town of New Rochelle.
0:30:56 > 0:31:00In April 1783, the British gave formal assent
0:31:00 > 0:31:02to American independence
0:31:02 > 0:31:07and Paine wrote, "The times that tried men's souls are over,
0:31:07 > 0:31:11"and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew,
0:31:11 > 0:31:15"gloriously and happily accomplished.
0:31:15 > 0:31:18"I, therefore, take my leave of the subject."
0:31:20 > 0:31:21With the revolution over,
0:31:21 > 0:31:24Paine turned his attention to a completely new interest -
0:31:24 > 0:31:26designing bridges.
0:31:26 > 0:31:30Many Enlightenment figures were both men of letters and men of science.
0:31:30 > 0:31:32Paine became obsessed with the design
0:31:32 > 0:31:36for a new kind of single-span iron bridge.
0:31:36 > 0:31:39No-one in Philadelphia would build his bridge, so Benjamin Franklin
0:31:39 > 0:31:42suggested he present it to the French Academy of Sciences.
0:31:44 > 0:31:48Paine set sail for France in 1787, aged 50.
0:31:48 > 0:31:51He presented his idea in Paris, where he was celebrated
0:31:51 > 0:31:53as the revolutionary author of Common Sense.
0:31:53 > 0:31:56When the French failed to offer money for his design,
0:31:56 > 0:31:59he took his bridge model to the Royal Society in London -
0:31:59 > 0:32:01again to no avail.
0:32:02 > 0:32:04Back in England, Paine made friends
0:32:04 > 0:32:05with the political theorist Edmund Burke.
0:32:05 > 0:32:07They shared lodgings for a while.
0:32:07 > 0:32:11Like Paine, Burke had supported the American Revolution.
0:32:11 > 0:32:14Like Paine, Burke believed in representative government
0:32:14 > 0:32:17and had a contempt for unchecked power.
0:32:17 > 0:32:18But within a couple of years,
0:32:18 > 0:32:22these two men were to be bitter, even vicious, enemies.
0:32:22 > 0:32:24The disagreement between these two writers
0:32:24 > 0:32:27was to lead to the most brilliant literary political debate
0:32:27 > 0:32:29in British history.
0:32:30 > 0:32:33Both Paine and Burke had paid close attention
0:32:33 > 0:32:36to the unfolding of the revolution in France in 1789.
0:32:36 > 0:32:40Indeed, Paine had been given the key to the stormed Bastille
0:32:40 > 0:32:41by General La Fayette
0:32:41 > 0:32:45to pass on to George Washington as a gift to the American people.
0:32:45 > 0:32:48But the reactions of Paine and Burke to the revolution
0:32:48 > 0:32:51were diametrically opposed.
0:32:51 > 0:32:54On November the 1st, 1790, Edmund Burke published this book,
0:32:54 > 0:32:57Reflections on the Revolution in France.
0:32:57 > 0:33:01Replying to Rousseau's idea of society as a contract
0:33:01 > 0:33:04between the government and the governed,
0:33:04 > 0:33:07Burke wrote "Society is indeed a contract,
0:33:07 > 0:33:09"but it becomes a partnership,
0:33:09 > 0:33:11"not only between those who are living,
0:33:11 > 0:33:14"but between those who are living, those who are dead
0:33:14 > 0:33:15"and those who are to be born."
0:33:15 > 0:33:17He was saying, in effect,
0:33:17 > 0:33:21that the centuries-old British constitution was perfect
0:33:21 > 0:33:24and should never be tampered with again.
0:33:24 > 0:33:29Tradition and inherited values kept society together.
0:33:29 > 0:33:33Burke saw the destructive forces in France as a contagion.
0:33:34 > 0:33:38Burke's fear of mob rule had been realised ten years earlier
0:33:38 > 0:33:42when the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots had unleashed violence and anarchy
0:33:42 > 0:33:43on the streets of London.
0:33:43 > 0:33:45Burke's attitude towards the mob
0:33:45 > 0:33:48is revealed in his description of English working men
0:33:48 > 0:33:49as "a swinish multitude".
0:33:52 > 0:33:55Paine attacked Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France
0:33:55 > 0:33:56by writing a book of his own.
0:33:56 > 0:33:57It was a book that would rock
0:33:57 > 0:34:00and threaten to roll over the British establishment.
0:34:00 > 0:34:03It was in here, in his digs in New Cavendish Street in London.
0:34:03 > 0:34:06It was called Rights of Man.
0:34:06 > 0:34:08In it, Paine rejected Burke's view
0:34:08 > 0:34:11that society had to abide by tradition.
0:34:11 > 0:34:13He wrote, "Government is for the living,
0:34:13 > 0:34:14"and not for the dead.
0:34:14 > 0:34:18"Only the living can exercise the rights of man."
0:34:18 > 0:34:20Dedicated to George Washington,
0:34:20 > 0:34:22the book called for an American-style transformation
0:34:22 > 0:34:25of the British government with a written constitution,
0:34:25 > 0:34:29an elected head of state, universal male suffrage
0:34:29 > 0:34:32and an end to feudal privileges for aristocrats and clergy.
0:34:34 > 0:34:38Rights of Man was published in February 1791.
0:34:38 > 0:34:40It sold like no other book in British history.
0:34:42 > 0:34:47Paine, on the streets of London, is a tremendously popular figure
0:34:47 > 0:34:51because he has so accurately
0:34:51 > 0:34:54put into writing what
0:34:54 > 0:34:59so many people feel about the corrupt autocracy of the king
0:34:59 > 0:35:01and the court and the government.
0:35:02 > 0:35:05Rights of Man shook the establishment.
0:35:05 > 0:35:09Burke claimed that Paine was aiming to "destroy in six or seven days
0:35:09 > 0:35:11"what all the boasted wisdom of our ancestors
0:35:11 > 0:35:16"has laboured to bring to perfection for six or seven centuries."
0:35:16 > 0:35:18Government lawyers analysed the book,
0:35:18 > 0:35:22looking for ways to bring charges against Paine at London's Guildhall.
0:35:22 > 0:35:24The first minister, William Pitt,
0:35:24 > 0:35:26was not going to let Britain go the way of France.
0:35:27 > 0:35:32This grandiose memorial to Prime Minister William Pitt
0:35:32 > 0:35:36expresses his mission "to check the contagion of opinions
0:35:36 > 0:35:41"which tended to dissolve the frame of civil society."
0:35:42 > 0:35:43That word "contagion" -
0:35:43 > 0:35:47Burke's word, a contagion spread by Thomas Paine.
0:35:47 > 0:35:52Pitt's government used a succession of dirty tricks, black propaganda,
0:35:52 > 0:35:54to combat the "threat", as they saw it,
0:35:54 > 0:35:56which came from the Rights of Man.
0:35:56 > 0:36:00They employed a Scottish lawyer, George Chalmers,
0:36:00 > 0:36:02to write this scurrilous biography.
0:36:02 > 0:36:07In it, he accused Paine of being a debtor, a bad son,
0:36:07 > 0:36:12a bad husband, an adulterer, a mangler of the English language.
0:36:12 > 0:36:13And, in other accounts,
0:36:13 > 0:36:18he's accused of committing carnal acts with his cat.
0:36:22 > 0:36:24By this point, Paine was an active participant
0:36:24 > 0:36:25in the French Revolution,
0:36:25 > 0:36:29travelling backwards and forwards across the Channel.
0:36:29 > 0:36:31"A share in two revolutions is living indeed,"
0:36:31 > 0:36:34he wrote to George Washington.
0:36:34 > 0:36:37Paine had been made an honorary French citizen in 1790,
0:36:37 > 0:36:40and he fully believed that the revolution would soon spread
0:36:40 > 0:36:43to Britain, and he worked to that end.
0:36:43 > 0:36:47In March 1792, Paine raised the stakes.
0:36:47 > 0:36:50He published Rights of Man, Part the Second,
0:36:50 > 0:36:54and he dedicated it to the French General La Fayette
0:36:54 > 0:36:57and he was even more outspoken here.
0:36:57 > 0:37:01He constructed a very fiercely reasoned attack
0:37:01 > 0:37:03on the upper classes and the aristocracy
0:37:03 > 0:37:06for setting themselves totally apart from the mass of people
0:37:06 > 0:37:09in this country with dire consequences
0:37:09 > 0:37:13and concluded, "The aristocracy are not the farmers who work
0:37:13 > 0:37:15"the land and raise the produce,
0:37:15 > 0:37:18"but are the mere consumers of the rent
0:37:18 > 0:37:21"and, when compared with the active world, are the drones,
0:37:21 > 0:37:25"a seraglio of males who neither collect the honey
0:37:25 > 0:37:26"nor form the hive
0:37:26 > 0:37:29"but only exist for lazy enjoyment."
0:37:30 > 0:37:33He exposed the financial corruption of the Crown
0:37:33 > 0:37:35and he predicted that within seven years,
0:37:35 > 0:37:38in enlightened countries in Europe,
0:37:38 > 0:37:41the aristocracy and the crown would have fallen.
0:37:43 > 0:37:46Paine also came to the defence of the mass of humanity,
0:37:46 > 0:37:48which Burke had disparagingly referred to
0:37:48 > 0:37:50as the "swinish multitude".
0:37:50 > 0:37:53He wrote, "There is in all European countries
0:37:53 > 0:37:56"a large class of people of that description,
0:37:56 > 0:37:58"which in England is called the mob.
0:37:58 > 0:38:00"It is by distortedly exalting some men
0:38:00 > 0:38:03"that others are distortedly debased,
0:38:03 > 0:38:05"until the whole is out of nature.
0:38:05 > 0:38:07"The vast mass of mankind
0:38:07 > 0:38:10"are degradedly thrown into the background of the human picture
0:38:10 > 0:38:12"to bring forward, with greater glare,
0:38:12 > 0:38:15"the puppet show of state and aristocracy."
0:38:16 > 0:38:20Rights of Man Part Two even envisaged a welfare state.
0:38:20 > 0:38:23"When it shall be said in any country in the world,
0:38:23 > 0:38:27"'my poor are happy, neither ignorance or distress
0:38:27 > 0:38:28"'is to be found among them,
0:38:28 > 0:38:31"'my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars,
0:38:31 > 0:38:35"'the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive' -
0:38:35 > 0:38:37"when these things can be said,
0:38:37 > 0:38:41"then may that country boast its constitution and its government."
0:38:42 > 0:38:46Rights of Man became the biggest seller ever, after the Bible.
0:38:46 > 0:38:48Paine was now the most celebrated man of letters,
0:38:48 > 0:38:52not only in America, but in the whole of Europe.
0:38:52 > 0:38:54Rights of Man became a key foundation text
0:38:54 > 0:38:58in the long haul to democracy in the 19th century.
0:38:58 > 0:39:01It was adopted by reform groups,
0:39:01 > 0:39:03by friendly associations of working men,
0:39:03 > 0:39:05by Chartists, by trade unionists,
0:39:05 > 0:39:08and Mary Wollstonecraft used it as the template
0:39:08 > 0:39:10for her early feminist book,
0:39:10 > 0:39:12A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
0:39:12 > 0:39:16Rights of Man continued to inspire writers
0:39:16 > 0:39:18and campaigners for human rights and freedoms
0:39:18 > 0:39:21throughout the 20th century, and it still does so today.
0:39:23 > 0:39:26By now, Paine was a serious thorn in the side of Pitt's government
0:39:26 > 0:39:30and its response was to try to get Paine out of the way for good.
0:39:32 > 0:39:37In June 1792, Paine was arrested of charges of sedition
0:39:37 > 0:39:40and brought to court here, at the Guildhall in London.
0:39:40 > 0:39:45But the government feared that his trial might cause civil unrest
0:39:45 > 0:39:48and make him a martyr, therefore they delayed it.
0:39:48 > 0:39:52Paine, depicted here being tormented by judges in his dreams,
0:39:52 > 0:39:55wrote an unapologetic letter of defence.
0:39:55 > 0:39:59"If, to expose the fraud and imposition of monarchy
0:39:59 > 0:40:01"and every species of hereditary government,
0:40:01 > 0:40:04"to lessen the oppression of taxes,
0:40:04 > 0:40:07"to propose plans for the education of helpless infancy
0:40:07 > 0:40:10"and the comfortable support of the aged and distressed,
0:40:10 > 0:40:13"to extirpate the horrid practice of war,
0:40:13 > 0:40:16"to promote universal peace, civilisation and commerce,
0:40:16 > 0:40:19"and to break the chains of political superstition
0:40:19 > 0:40:22"and raise degraded man to proper rank,
0:40:22 > 0:40:25"if these be libellous, let me live the life of a libeller
0:40:25 > 0:40:29"and let the name of libeller be engraved on my tomb."
0:40:30 > 0:40:33The campaign to silence Paine was intensified.
0:40:33 > 0:40:36Book sellers were persecuted for selling the book,
0:40:36 > 0:40:39the government distributed anti-Paine literature
0:40:39 > 0:40:41and incited demonstrations and mass riots.
0:40:41 > 0:40:45Effigies of Paine were burned in cities across the country,
0:40:45 > 0:40:48aristocrats wore shoe nails inscribed with his initials
0:40:48 > 0:40:51so that they could trample on him with every step.
0:40:51 > 0:40:54One unfortunate man was sentenced to 14 years' transportation
0:40:54 > 0:40:58for simply suggesting that others might want to read Rights of Man.
0:40:59 > 0:41:02They even struck commemorative medals for Paine -
0:41:02 > 0:41:04well, for and against.
0:41:04 > 0:41:07For, the pig, trampling down the crown,
0:41:07 > 0:41:09against, Paine on the gibbet.
0:41:12 > 0:41:16Paine was watched - there was a complete network of surveillance
0:41:16 > 0:41:21run by government agents who were penetrating the pub meeting rooms.
0:41:21 > 0:41:27Almost nothing went on in reforming London
0:41:27 > 0:41:30that didn't get to the attention of the Home Secretary
0:41:30 > 0:41:32and the Bow Street Police Office.
0:41:32 > 0:41:36Surveillance was extraordinarily rife in the 1790s.
0:41:38 > 0:41:41The pressure was on to push Paine out of the country.
0:41:41 > 0:41:45In May 1792, the London Times wrote, "It is earnestly recommended
0:41:45 > 0:41:48"to Mad Tom that he should embark for France
0:41:48 > 0:41:51"and there be naturalised into the regular confusion of democracy."
0:41:52 > 0:41:55That year, Paine received an invitation to represent
0:41:55 > 0:41:58a French department in the French National Convention.
0:41:58 > 0:42:01But he said he preferred to stay here in England and foster dissent.
0:42:01 > 0:42:04However, in September, he was approached
0:42:04 > 0:42:07by the poet and visionary William Blake, who said,
0:42:07 > 0:42:09"Don't go home or you're a dead man."
0:42:09 > 0:42:12So, on September the 14th, Paine set sail for France
0:42:12 > 0:42:15and he'd never see England again.
0:42:15 > 0:42:17But he would leave behind, through his books,
0:42:17 > 0:42:20an enduring radical legacy.
0:42:20 > 0:42:23Paine arrived in Paris and received a hero's welcome.
0:42:23 > 0:42:25He took his seat in the National Convention
0:42:25 > 0:42:27as the representative for Calais.
0:42:27 > 0:42:32He was cheered by fellow delegates, "Vive Thomas Paine, Vive La Nation."
0:42:34 > 0:42:38The question of what to do with the monarchy in the new France
0:42:38 > 0:42:40was still being ferociously debated.
0:42:40 > 0:42:43As Paine rode through these gardens to the National Convention,
0:42:43 > 0:42:46he would pass a palace which was once there in which,
0:42:46 > 0:42:49in virtual imprisonment, were the king and Marie Antoinette,
0:42:49 > 0:42:52waiting to see what would be their fate.
0:42:54 > 0:42:56On September the 21st 1792,
0:42:56 > 0:43:01the first year of liberty was announced by the legislature.
0:43:01 > 0:43:04"Royalty, from this day, is abolished in France."
0:43:06 > 0:43:08Paine, the anti-monarchist,
0:43:08 > 0:43:11suddenly found himself defending the royal family against execution.
0:43:11 > 0:43:15He argued that the new republic should set a noble example
0:43:15 > 0:43:17and not resort to revenge.
0:43:17 > 0:43:20Paine knew about the gallows from his childhood in Thetford,
0:43:20 > 0:43:23and thought capital punishment abhorrent.
0:43:23 > 0:43:27And he stuck to his guns, despite the risk.
0:43:27 > 0:43:32His ideas were picked up in the constitutional debates.
0:43:32 > 0:43:36He even had the courage to remind Robespierre
0:43:36 > 0:43:38that earlier in the revolution,
0:43:38 > 0:43:40Robespierre had also objected
0:43:40 > 0:43:43to capital punishment and thought it should be outlawed.
0:43:43 > 0:43:47The response to that was Robespierre and his colleagues
0:43:47 > 0:43:51pointing out to Paine that this was no ordinary man.
0:43:51 > 0:43:54This was not just another condemned criminal,
0:43:54 > 0:43:59this was actually a king who must, in their view, either reign or die.
0:43:59 > 0:44:02This was an enemy of the revolution, and the way they put it
0:44:02 > 0:44:05was the king must die so the revolution can live.
0:44:05 > 0:44:08On January 16th 1793,
0:44:08 > 0:44:12the National Convention voted for the king's death.
0:44:12 > 0:44:15The following day, Paine addressed the delegates he said,
0:44:15 > 0:44:20"The decision in favour of death has filled me with genuine sorrow."
0:44:20 > 0:44:21From the time he set himself
0:44:21 > 0:44:24against the execution of the king and Marie Antoinette,
0:44:24 > 0:44:26he was regarded, not only as a foreigner,
0:44:26 > 0:44:28but an enemy of the republic.
0:44:28 > 0:44:32Again and again, Thomas Paine would speak out of his feelings,
0:44:32 > 0:44:34his logic and his convictions, all intertwined,
0:44:34 > 0:44:37that the truth had to come out, whatever the consequences,
0:44:37 > 0:44:39whatever the price to be paid,
0:44:39 > 0:44:43and very often, he was the one who paid the price.
0:44:44 > 0:44:47On January 21st 1793,
0:44:47 > 0:44:50in the Place de la Revolution, King Louis XVI was executed.
0:44:52 > 0:44:53Paine had earlier said,
0:44:53 > 0:44:55"If the French kill their king,
0:44:55 > 0:44:57"it will be a signal for my departure,
0:44:57 > 0:45:00"for I will not abide among such sanguinary men."
0:45:02 > 0:45:04But it wasn't easy for Paine to leave.
0:45:04 > 0:45:07Back in London, he'd been tried in his absence in the Guildhall
0:45:07 > 0:45:11for sedition and found guilty and sentenced to death.
0:45:11 > 0:45:13To make matters worse, war had broken out
0:45:13 > 0:45:14between Britain and France,
0:45:14 > 0:45:17so if he'd tried to escape from France in a French ship,
0:45:17 > 0:45:21he could have been intercepted by a British warship.
0:45:21 > 0:45:24Surely there would be hope from America?
0:45:24 > 0:45:26But things were going to get much worse.
0:45:26 > 0:45:28With the death of the king,
0:45:28 > 0:45:31the French Revolution quickly descended into factionalism,
0:45:31 > 0:45:34paranoia, violence and personal vendettas.
0:45:34 > 0:45:37Enemies of the revolution were seen everywhere.
0:45:37 > 0:45:39This period became known as the Terror.
0:45:39 > 0:45:43Its symbol and its control mechanism was the guillotine.
0:45:43 > 0:45:47Paine's position was now even more precarious.
0:45:47 > 0:45:49The journalist Jean-Paul Marat said,
0:45:49 > 0:45:52"Frenchmen are mad to allow foreigners to live among them.
0:45:52 > 0:45:56"They should cut off their ears, let them bleed for a few days
0:45:56 > 0:45:57"then cut off their heads."
0:45:57 > 0:45:59The blood lust rose,
0:45:59 > 0:46:02and was whipped up to cries of "Purgez la Convention!"
0:46:02 > 0:46:04"Tirez le mauvais sang!"
0:46:04 > 0:46:08"Purge the Convention, spill out the bad blood."
0:46:08 > 0:46:11Paine wrote, "My friends were falling
0:46:11 > 0:46:15"as fast as the guillotine could cut off their heads."
0:46:15 > 0:46:16Anybody suspected -
0:46:16 > 0:46:20not necessarily proven, but suspected -
0:46:20 > 0:46:22of being an enemy of the revolution
0:46:22 > 0:46:25could be brought before the revolutionary tribunal
0:46:25 > 0:46:28and condemned for their thoughts, effectively.
0:46:28 > 0:46:35The Jacobin faction were taking over and it became increasingly clear
0:46:35 > 0:46:38that Paine's life was going to be threatened
0:46:38 > 0:46:40along with those of his closest allies.
0:46:40 > 0:46:43Unable to leave the country,
0:46:43 > 0:46:46Paine's response was to bury himself in writing another book,
0:46:46 > 0:46:49this time attacking another institution - the Church.
0:46:51 > 0:46:53The Jacobins made de-Christianisation
0:46:53 > 0:46:55part of state policy.
0:46:55 > 0:46:58They closed down churches all over the place, including the magnificent
0:46:58 > 0:47:03Notre Dame behind me, which they renamed the Temple of Reason.
0:47:03 > 0:47:07Paine believed that all organised religions were despotic
0:47:07 > 0:47:09but he did believe in a God.
0:47:09 > 0:47:10He thought without that belief,
0:47:10 > 0:47:13people would lose their moral compass,
0:47:13 > 0:47:16and France was charging towards atheism.
0:47:16 > 0:47:20The Age of Reason was an attack on organised religion,
0:47:20 > 0:47:23but a defence of deism - the belief in one, unknowable God.
0:47:25 > 0:47:27He wrote, "I do not believe in the creed professed
0:47:27 > 0:47:31"by the Jewish Churches, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church,
0:47:31 > 0:47:34"by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church.
0:47:34 > 0:47:36"I believe in one God and no more.
0:47:36 > 0:47:38"I believe in the equality of man,
0:47:38 > 0:47:42"and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice,
0:47:42 > 0:47:46"loving mercy and endeavouring to make our fellow creatures happy.
0:47:46 > 0:47:49"I do not believe in the creed of any church I know of.
0:47:49 > 0:47:51"My own mind is my own church."
0:47:53 > 0:47:56Paine had barely finished the manuscript when,
0:47:56 > 0:47:58on the morning of December the 28th 1793,
0:47:58 > 0:48:02he was arrested in his lodgings and brought to the revolutionary prison,
0:48:02 > 0:48:05here at the Palace of Luxembourg.
0:48:05 > 0:48:08Questions were raised by the American Embassy
0:48:08 > 0:48:10about the reasons for which he'd been arrested,
0:48:10 > 0:48:12but Paine was in an unfortunate position -
0:48:12 > 0:48:15he was an honorary American citizen and an honorary French citizen,
0:48:15 > 0:48:19but when it suited the authorities, he was a foreigner.
0:48:19 > 0:48:22He was effectively abandoned to the Terror.
0:48:22 > 0:48:24Paine's chances of survival were slim.
0:48:24 > 0:48:30By June 1794, 80,000 French citizens had been incarcerated.
0:48:30 > 0:48:34Disease in the prisons was rife, and Paine contracted typhus.
0:48:34 > 0:48:37How close did he come to being executed?
0:48:38 > 0:48:39This close.
0:48:40 > 0:48:45He was on a list for execution the next morning,
0:48:45 > 0:48:49and they came round to mark the doors
0:48:49 > 0:48:54and because Paine had been so ill and it was very hot,
0:48:54 > 0:48:58the door to his cell, there was permission for it to be open,
0:48:58 > 0:49:02and they marked on the inside of the door.
0:49:02 > 0:49:04And the temperature fell overnight
0:49:04 > 0:49:06and they closed the door the next morning
0:49:06 > 0:49:12and they went past without calling for Paine.
0:49:13 > 0:49:15Paine spent eight months in the prison.
0:49:15 > 0:49:18He was eventually released when the Terror was brought to an end
0:49:18 > 0:49:20and Robespierre himself was guillotined.
0:49:20 > 0:49:24He returned to work at the French National Convention.
0:49:24 > 0:49:26Paine's bitter disappointment at the outcome
0:49:26 > 0:49:29of the French Revolution was compounded by his sense
0:49:29 > 0:49:32of abandonment by the American government while in prison.
0:49:32 > 0:49:34They'd made no attempt to get him out.
0:49:34 > 0:49:39In particular, he felt betrayed by his old friend, George Washington.
0:49:39 > 0:49:42His response was to fire off an angry, personal attack
0:49:42 > 0:49:44on his famous former ally,
0:49:44 > 0:49:48calculated to be published in Philadelphia in 1796 at the time
0:49:48 > 0:49:52of the presidential elections to cause the maximum possible damage.
0:49:52 > 0:49:55Of Washington, he says, "Had it not been for the aid
0:49:55 > 0:49:59"received from France, in men, money and ships, your cold
0:49:59 > 0:50:03"and unmilitary conduct would in all probability have lost America.
0:50:03 > 0:50:05"You slept away your time in the field
0:50:05 > 0:50:08"until the finances of the country were completely exhausted
0:50:08 > 0:50:13"and you have but little share in the glory of the final event."
0:50:13 > 0:50:15Such a scathing, personal attack on Washington
0:50:15 > 0:50:19damaged Paine's reputation in America irredeemably.
0:50:21 > 0:50:24For the next five years, Paine lived in the home of his French publisher,
0:50:24 > 0:50:26Nicolas de Bonneville.
0:50:26 > 0:50:28During this time, the Age of Reason
0:50:28 > 0:50:31became a best seller in France, Britain and America.
0:50:31 > 0:50:34And, as usual, Paine's writing rattled the establishment.
0:50:37 > 0:50:38By the end of 1796,
0:50:38 > 0:50:42the British government had declared the Age of Reason to be blasphemous
0:50:42 > 0:50:45and confiscated every copy that the book police could find.
0:50:45 > 0:50:49Meanwhile, in America, Paine's reputation was being tarnished.
0:50:49 > 0:50:51He was accused of infidelity - that is, atheism.
0:50:51 > 0:50:54He attacked Christianity and, just as dangerously,
0:50:54 > 0:50:57he attacked the good name of George Washington.
0:50:57 > 0:50:59In talking and writing about the big political picture,
0:50:59 > 0:51:00Paine was masterful.
0:51:00 > 0:51:03In fact, he helped to make the big political picture.
0:51:03 > 0:51:07In the politics of his own career and advancement, he was a disaster.
0:51:09 > 0:51:13More belligerence followed. Between 1797 and 1798,
0:51:13 > 0:51:17Paine wrote a series of articles for Bonneville's newspaper
0:51:17 > 0:51:20in which he discussed strategies for a French invasion of England.
0:51:22 > 0:51:26This was no less than treason, and France's new autocrat,
0:51:26 > 0:51:28Napoleon Bonaparte, took note
0:51:28 > 0:51:32and visited Paine in Bonneville's home in Spring 1800.
0:51:32 > 0:51:33He told Paine that, every night,
0:51:33 > 0:51:36he slept with a copy of Rights of Man under his pillow,
0:51:36 > 0:51:39and that a statue of gold should be erected to him
0:51:39 > 0:51:41in every city in the universe.
0:51:41 > 0:51:44Later, Paine would describe Napoleon
0:51:44 > 0:51:47as the "completest charlatan that ever existed",
0:51:47 > 0:51:50but for a while, he was taken in by the Corsican dictator.
0:51:52 > 0:51:56On March 27th 1802, the Anglo-French war came to an end.
0:51:56 > 0:51:59Peace meant that it was finally safe for Paine to cross the Atlantic
0:51:59 > 0:52:00and return to America.
0:52:02 > 0:52:04At the invitation of Thomas Jefferson, he set sail.
0:52:04 > 0:52:07He was now 65.
0:52:07 > 0:52:10America was undergoing a religious revival,
0:52:10 > 0:52:13known as the Second Great Awakening,
0:52:13 > 0:52:17and Paine seemed increasingly at odds with the spirit of the age.
0:52:17 > 0:52:21He was immediately attacked for what they thought of as his atheism.
0:52:21 > 0:52:24The General Advertiser described him as,
0:52:24 > 0:52:26"that living opprobrium of humanity.
0:52:26 > 0:52:30"The infamous scavenger of all the filth trodden by all
0:52:30 > 0:52:31"the revilers of Christianity."
0:52:31 > 0:52:35The Baltimore Republican referred to him as "this loathsome reptile."
0:52:35 > 0:52:39What a change from the first time he came to America,
0:52:39 > 0:52:42and, besides the hate campaign in the press,
0:52:42 > 0:52:46he was snubbed in society and sometimes attacked in the streets.
0:52:48 > 0:52:50Paine spent time in the new capital city of Washington
0:52:50 > 0:52:53in the company of his friend Thomas Jefferson,
0:52:53 > 0:52:55who was now President of the United States.
0:52:55 > 0:52:58But Paine was a political liability to Jefferson
0:52:58 > 0:53:01and his attempt to acquire a position in government,
0:53:01 > 0:53:04even suggesting a post as special envoy to Napoleon,
0:53:04 > 0:53:05came to nothing.
0:53:05 > 0:53:06He came back and he was disappointed
0:53:06 > 0:53:08at what had happened in the United States,
0:53:08 > 0:53:12and thought he could turn things around and re-inspire people
0:53:12 > 0:53:15and he was just out of his time.
0:53:15 > 0:53:17He was broken-hearted at the end -
0:53:17 > 0:53:20he thought that he'd done so much and they'd done so well
0:53:20 > 0:53:23and there was he, abandoned really.
0:53:23 > 0:53:25Well, all of the Founding Fathers felt that way, actually.
0:53:25 > 0:53:28Both Adams and Jefferson at the end of their lives
0:53:28 > 0:53:30wrote about how they had failed,
0:53:30 > 0:53:33about how they had not succeeded because look at what
0:53:33 > 0:53:36America was like now, and people were not following civic virtue
0:53:36 > 0:53:40and they only wanted to make money and get drunk and it was terrible.
0:53:40 > 0:53:45So, he actually felt the mainstream sense of loss and disappointment
0:53:45 > 0:53:46that all of them had.
0:53:49 > 0:53:53Paine spent his last years here at New Rochelle.
0:53:53 > 0:53:56They were years lived in sadness and, some people said, in squalor,
0:53:56 > 0:53:58those who visited him.
0:53:58 > 0:54:01He'd let his nails grow, he smelled, he wore old clothes,
0:54:01 > 0:54:02he looked terrible.
0:54:02 > 0:54:05He wasn't short of money, but he looked neglected
0:54:05 > 0:54:07because he was neglected.
0:54:07 > 0:54:10Those whom he'd empowered had deserted him.
0:54:10 > 0:54:14His great friends and grandees had gone their way,
0:54:14 > 0:54:18often emboldened by Paine's words, but they left him out of it.
0:54:20 > 0:54:22When the winters got cold,
0:54:22 > 0:54:24Paine would spend time with the few friends he had left
0:54:24 > 0:54:25in New York City.
0:54:25 > 0:54:28In his final decline, he lay bedridden here,
0:54:28 > 0:54:30at 59 Grove Street, Greenwich Village.
0:54:35 > 0:54:40Thomas Paine died on June the 8th 1809. He was 74.
0:54:43 > 0:54:45New York City's Quakers wouldn't allow him
0:54:45 > 0:54:49to be buried in their graveyard, which had been his wish.
0:54:49 > 0:54:52So he was buried in the grounds of his New Rochelle home.
0:54:52 > 0:54:54There were only six people at his funeral.
0:54:56 > 0:54:59Paine may have been rejected by America in his final years,
0:54:59 > 0:55:02but his writing remained a touchstone for other writers
0:55:02 > 0:55:06in the 19th century when they wanted to rediscover the democratic spirits
0:55:06 > 0:55:10of the nation's birth, among them, two of America's defining writers -
0:55:10 > 0:55:13the novelist Herman Melville and the poet Walt Whitman.
0:55:13 > 0:55:17Whitman was really deeply concerned that Paine was being erased,
0:55:17 > 0:55:18was being forgotten -
0:55:18 > 0:55:21Whitman, who's trying to write this democratic poetry,
0:55:21 > 0:55:24this poetry that captures the spirit of America.
0:55:24 > 0:55:29For him, Paine was part of that strong spirit, American spirit,
0:55:29 > 0:55:34that idea of someone who speaks on behalf of the people.
0:55:34 > 0:55:36He was forgotten and erased,
0:55:36 > 0:55:38as people are for centuries, sometimes,
0:55:38 > 0:55:39it's quite curious.
0:55:39 > 0:55:42But Herman Melville took him up.
0:55:42 > 0:55:47So, Melville was very interested in the way that American society
0:55:47 > 0:55:48was becoming fractured
0:55:48 > 0:55:52and the way that the legacy of the revolution was becoming lost
0:55:52 > 0:55:54in the middle of the 19th century.
0:55:54 > 0:55:58And he saw Paine as a heroic figure
0:55:58 > 0:56:01and in his last great work, Billy Budd,
0:56:01 > 0:56:05the ship that the sailor Billy Budd, the hero of the novella
0:56:05 > 0:56:08is taken off of is called the Rights of Man.
0:56:08 > 0:56:11And the novella really thinks very carefully
0:56:11 > 0:56:15about the question of rights, of liberty and freedom.
0:56:15 > 0:56:19A new generation is taking up Thomas Paine today.
0:56:19 > 0:56:22Is there more interest in him now than before?
0:56:22 > 0:56:26Paine is taken up in the United States over and over again,
0:56:26 > 0:56:30by people, by champions, especially when you look at people interested
0:56:30 > 0:56:31in the disenfranchised in America.
0:56:31 > 0:56:36So Steinbeck has this wonderful moment in Grapes of Wrath
0:56:36 > 0:56:39where he puts Paine alongside Jefferson and Lenin and Marx
0:56:39 > 0:56:41as this advocate for the people
0:56:41 > 0:56:44which is what, you know, Steinbeck is about,
0:56:44 > 0:56:46and I think we're in a period now in the last 20 years
0:56:46 > 0:56:49where we see this real excitement and interest
0:56:49 > 0:56:51in recovering Paine again,
0:56:51 > 0:56:55and thinking about the ways in which he helps us articulate a critique
0:56:55 > 0:56:58of some of the disenchantment we see in the United States today.
0:56:58 > 0:57:02Paine's attacks on injustice and his loyalty to the truth
0:57:02 > 0:57:05at any cost have also been echoed in the writing of George Orwell,
0:57:05 > 0:57:07and, more recently, Christopher Hitchens,
0:57:07 > 0:57:10to whom Paine was a hero.
0:57:10 > 0:57:14Here in America, whenever the founding spirit of the republic
0:57:14 > 0:57:19is invoked, it's most often Paine's words that are reached out for -
0:57:19 > 0:57:21Barack Obama, Franklin Roosevelt
0:57:21 > 0:57:24and Ronald Reagan when he quoted Paine,
0:57:24 > 0:57:28"We have it in our power to begin the world over again."
0:57:28 > 0:57:30Thomas Paine believed that.
0:57:33 > 0:57:35And that was the belief he lived by, even if it did cost him
0:57:35 > 0:57:37his own personal happiness.
0:57:39 > 0:57:41There are those lines of WB Yeats,
0:57:41 > 0:57:45"The intellect of man is forced to choose
0:57:45 > 0:57:48"Perfection of the life, or of the work"
0:57:48 > 0:57:50Paine chose work.
0:57:50 > 0:57:55His life was rumbustious, brawling, rascally, unexpected, went to sea,
0:57:55 > 0:58:00bust businesses, marriages failed, all over the place until he was 37.
0:58:00 > 0:58:04Who would have thought that, at 37, this man who turned up
0:58:04 > 0:58:08on the doorstep of America was going to be one of the great
0:58:08 > 0:58:10public intellectuals of one of the greatest
0:58:10 > 0:58:14ages of thought in history, the Enlightenment,
0:58:14 > 0:58:16and that his influence would continue for centuries,
0:58:16 > 0:58:18who would have thought it?
0:58:18 > 0:58:21Probably only Paine. It was buried in him.
0:58:21 > 0:58:24And out it came in works which are imperishable
0:58:24 > 0:58:27and which help to change and shape, for the better,
0:58:27 > 0:58:29the world we all live in.