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OF

THOMAS PAINE;

OVER OF THE "DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE;" SECRETARY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS UNDER THY
FIRST AMERICAN CONGRESS; MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL CONVENTION OF FRANCE; AUTHOR OF
""RIGHTS OF MAN," "AGE OF REASON," &C., &C.:

" COMMON SENSE,"
"THE CRISIS,

THE MAN,

WHOSE MOTTO WAS,

THE WORLD IS MY COUNTRY; TO DO GOOD, MY RELIGION."

EMBRACING

PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS ON HUMAN RIGHTS;

DEMONSTRATING THAT

MAN TENDS IRREPRESSIBLY TO ACTUAL FREEDOM;

AND SHOWING

A LIBERTY-AIM CONNECTION

IN THE ACTION OF THE WORLD'S

THREE GREAT AUTHOR-HEROES,-

ROUSSEAU, PAINE, AND COMTE.

BY CALVIN BLANCHARD.

D. M. BENNETT:

ERAL AND SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING HOUSE.
141 EIGHTH STREET, NEW YORK.

1877.

JC 178
V2 B55

INTRODUCTION.

A full and impartial history of THOMAS PAINE alone can supply that, the omission of which falsifies every work pretending to give an account of the war for the national independence of the United States.

The American Revolution of 1776, of which THOMAS PAINE was the author-hero, was the prelude to that far more sanguinary struggle against oppression and wrong which overturned, or irreparably shook, every throne in Western Europe; including, in the category, even the chair of St. Peter; and of which struggle the most prominent author-hero was JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU.

This is generally understood. But a truth incalculably more important has hitherto been either wholly overlooked, or but glimmeringly perceived; it is this: Both the American and French Revolutions were but prominent incidents, or crisis-stages, in the irrepressible struggle for human rights which commenced when nature implanted in her highest organism, man, that instinct which points to the goal of development; that unconquerable desire for perfect and sufficiently-lasting or "eternal" happiness, which indicates the common aim and attainable end of science, of art, and of all natural, materialistic, or intelligible activities: that thirst for liberty which can be satisfied by nothing short of the revolution vhich will remove all constraint-which will accomplish revolution -and thus justify LUTHER, ROUSSEAU, PAINE, FOURIER, and all other evolutionists. Of this crowning revolution, the text-book is "The Positive Philosophy" of AUGUSTE COMTE.

Had Thomas Paine been seconded as valiantly when he made Liestcraft howl, as he was when he hurled defiance against kings, spotism by this time would really, instead of only nominally, have 1 as low as did its minions at Trenton and Yorktown. The land r which the star-spangled banner waves would not have become prey of corrupt, spoil-seeking demagogues, nor would Europe tremble at the nod of a military dictator.

Not but that priestcraft itself has a substructure, all but "superrally" profound, which must be sapped before justice can be e than a mockery, freedom aught but a mere abstraction, or hapss little else than an ignis fatuus. But man should have coned the great battle for his rights when the soldiers and authores of liberty were in the full flush of victory; instead of making vain, mischievous and ridiculous (except as provisional) comse with the human inclinations, called duty; and falling back t miserable armistice between the wretched poor and the un

M342005

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