The Forms of Life

Loyalist Propaganda and the Scandalous Life of Tom Paine: ‘Hypocritical Monster!’

“…Inevitably, Paine was found to be lacking 'the ordinary sensibilities of an ordinary man'. 43 Charles Harrington Elliot's The Republican Refuted takes Chalmers' Life as a starting point, but focuses more intimately on the theme of Paine's unnaturalness. Elliot expresses his shock to find that Paine not only fails to display a shred of decency and civility, but that he lacks that most basic human instinctthe desire to procreate.…”

“…Loyalists argued that though he had stopped short of a full deathbed confession, he had made it quite clear that he did not want others to follow his e~ample.~4 According to Cheetham and Harford, eyewitnesses had reported that, in the final days of his life, 'no one could recommend matrimony with greater force than Paine'. 85 In one case, he had reportedly declared 'the marriage institution [...I an excellent one' and in another instance, had congratulated 'a very respectable householder of New-York' for burning her copy of the Age ofReason ('the most dangerous book she had seen'). 86 It was said that he had confided to her that 'if ever the Devil had an agent on earth, I have been Thus the Paine who, in the fist years of the French Revolution almost three decades earlier, had been represented by reactionaries as the son of the Devil, the 'Devil's Advocate' and the spiritual father of characters named 'Mac Serpent', now uttered counterrevolutionary warnings against his own writings and testified to his own dangerous infidelity.…”

“…85 In one case, he had reportedly declared 'the marriage institution [...I an excellent one' and in another instance, had congratulated 'a very respectable householder of New-York' for burning her copy of the Age ofReason ('the most dangerous book she had seen'). 86 It was said that he had confided to her that 'if ever the Devil had an agent on earth, I have been Thus the Paine who, in the fist years of the French Revolution almost three decades earlier, had been represented by reactionaries as the son of the Devil, the 'Devil's Advocate' and the spiritual father of characters named 'Mac Serpent', now uttered counterrevolutionary warnings against his own writings and testified to his own dangerous infidelity. 88 As all of these representations indicate, Paine proved to be an incredibly malleable figure who was regularly subjected to ideological appropriation by propagandists of all political persuasions well into the nineteenth century.…”