The Life of John Marshall (Volume 2 of 4). Beveridge Albert Jeremiah
a doctrine of paralysis to all government. As was the case with his "Common Sense," Paine's "Rights of Man" abounded in attractive epigrams and striking sentences which quickly caught the popular ear and were easily retained by the shallowest memory.
"The cause of the French people is that of … the whole world," declared Paine in the preface of his flaming essay;24 and then, the sparks beginning to fly from his pen, he wrote: "Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government… It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished… The instant formal government is abolished," said he, "society begins to act; … and common interest produces common security." And again: "The more perfect civilization is, the less occasion has it for government… It is but few general laws that civilised life requires."
Holding up our own struggle for liberty as an illustration, Paine declared: "The American Revolution … laid open the imposition of governments"; and, using our newly formed and untried National Government as an example, he asserted with grotesque inaccuracy: "In America … all the parts are brought into cordial unison. There the poor are not oppressed, the rich are not privileged… Their taxes are few, because their government is just."25
Proceeding thence to his assault upon all other established governments, especially that of England, the great iconoclast exclaimed: "It is impossible that such governments as have hitherto [1790] existed in the world, could have commenced by any other means than a violation of every principle sacred and moral."
Striking at the foundations of all permanent authority, Paine declared that "Every age and generation must be … free to act for itself in all cases… The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies." The people of yesterday have "no right … to bind or to control … the people of the present day … in any shape whatever… Every generation is, and must be, competent to all the purposes which its occasions require."26 So wrote the incomparable pamphleteer of radicalism.
Paine's essay, issued in two parts, was a torch successively applied to the inflammable emotions of the American masses. Most newspapers printed in each issue short and appealing excerpts from it. For example, the following sentence from Paine's "Rights of Man" was reproduced in the "Columbian Centinel" of Boston on June 6, 1792: "Can we possibly suppose that if government had originated in right principles and had not an interest in pursuing a wrong one, that the world could have been in the wretched and quarrelsome condition it is?" Such quotations from Paine appeared in all radical and in some conservative American publications; and they were repeated from mouth to mouth until even the backwoodsmen knew of them – and believed them.
"Our people … love what you write and read it with delight" ran the message which Jefferson sent across the ocean to Paine. "The printers," continued Jefferson, "season every newspaper with extracts from your last, as they did before from your first part of the Rights of Man. They have both served here to separate the wheat from the chaff… Would you believe it possible that in this country there should be high & important characters27 who need your lessons in republicanism & who do not heed them. It is but too true that we have a sect preaching up & pouting after an English constitution of king, lords, & commons, & whose heads are itching for crowns, coronets & mitres…
"Go on then," Jefferson urged Paine, "in doing with your pen what in other times was done with the sword, … and be assured that it has not a more sincere votary nor you a more ardent well-wisher than … Thoṣ Jefferson."28
And the wheat was being separated from the chaff, as Jefferson declared. Shocked not more by the increasing violence in France than by the principles which Paine announced, men of moderate mind and conservative temperament in America came to have misgivings about the French Revolution, and began to speak out against its doings and its doctrines.
A series of closely reasoned and well-written articles were printed in the "Columbian Centinel" of Boston in the summer of 1791, over the nom de guerre "Publicola"; and these were widely copied. They were ascribed to the pen of John Adams, but were the work of his brilliant son.29
The American edition of Paine's "Rights of Man" was headed by a letter from Secretary of State Jefferson to the printer, stating his pleasure that the essay was to be printed in this country and "that something is at length to be publickly said against the political heresies which have sprung up among us."30 Publicola called attention to this and thus, more conspicuously, displayed Jefferson as an advocate of Paine's doctrines.31
All Americans had "seen with pleasure the temples of despotism levelled with the ground," wrote the keen young Boston law student.32 There was "but one sentiment… – that of exultation." But what did Jefferson mean by "heresies"? asked Publicola. Was Paine's pamphlet "the canonical book of scripture?" If so, what were its doctrines? "That which a whole nation chooses to do, it has a right to do" was one of them.
Was that "principle" sound? No! avowed Publicola, for "the eternal and immutable laws of justice and of morality are paramount to all human legislation." A nation might have the power but never the right to violate these. Even majorities have no right to do as they please; if so, what security has the individual citizen? Under the unrestrained rule of the majority "the principles of liberty must still be the sport of arbitrary power, and the hideous form of despotism must lay aside the diadem and the scepter, only to assume the party-colored garments of democracy."
"The only genuine liberty consists in a mean equally distant from the despotism of an individual and of a million," asserted Publicola. "Mr. Paine seems to think it as easy for a nation to change its government as for a man to change his coat." But "the extreme difficulty which impeded the progress of its [the American Constitution's] adoption … exhibits the fullest evidence of what a more than Herculean task it is to unite the opinions of a free people on any system of government whatever."
The "mob" which Paine exalted as the common people, but which Publicola thought was really only the rabble of the cities, "can be brought to act in concert" only by "a frantic enthusiasm and ungovernable fury; their profound ignorance and deplorable credulity make them proper tools for any man who can inflame their passions; … and," warned Publicola, "as they have nothing to lose by the total dissolution of civil society, their rage may be easily directed against any victim which may be pointed out to them… To set in motion this inert mass, the eccentric vivacity of a madman is infinitely better calculated than the sober coolness of phlegmatic reason."
"Where," asked Publicola, "is the power that should control them [Congress]?" if they violate the letter of the Constitution. Replying to his own question, he asserted that the real check on Congress "is the spirit of the people."33 John Marshall had said the same thing in the Virginia Constitutional Convention; but even at that early period the Richmond attorney went further and flatly declared that the temporary "spirit of the people" was not infallible and that the Supreme Court could and would declare void an unconstitutional act of Congress – a truth which he was, unguessed at that time by himself or anybody else, to announce with conclusive power within a few years and at an hour when dissolution confronted the forming Nation.
Such is a rapid précis of the conservative essays written by the younger Adams. Taken together, they were a rallying cry to those who dared to brave the rising hurricane of American sympathy with the French Revolution; but they also strengthened the force of that growing storm. Multitudes of writers attacked Publicola as the advocate of "aristocracy" and "monarchy." "The papers under the signature of Publicola have called forth a torrent of abuse," declared the final essay of the series.
Brown's "Federal Gazette" of Philadelphia branded Publicola's doctrines as "abominable heresies"; and hoped that they would "not procure many proselytes either to monarchy or aristocracy."
Compare with Jefferson's celebrated letter to Mazzei (
Jefferson to Paine, June 19, 1792;
The sagacious industry of Mr. Worthington C. Ford has made these and all the other invaluable papers of the younger Adams accessible, in his
Jefferson to Adams, July 17, 1791;
Jefferson wrote Washington and the elder Adams, trying to evade his patronage of Paine's pamphlet; but, as Mr. Ford moderately remarks, "the explanation was somewhat lame." (
Jefferson at this time was just on the threshold of his discovery of and campaign against the "deep-laid plans" of Hamilton and the Nationalists to transform the newborn Republic into a monarchy and to deliver the hard-won "liberties" of the people into the rapacious hands of "monocrats," "stockjobbers," and other "plunderers" of the public. (See next chapter.)
Although John Quincy Adams had just been admitted to the bar, he was still a student in the law office of Theophilus Parsons at the time he wrote the Publicola papers.