An Example of Paine's writing and inspiration for the true 13th Amendment:
The following is a short sample of Thomas Paine's writing that is less accessible than his earlier work. It was written on the 1805 anniversary of the 1788 ratification of the Constitution (approved by Congress, 17 Sept. 1787) and attached to his August 1805 letter on constitutional reform "To the Citizens of Pennsylvania on the Proposal for Calling a Convention." The version below came from Daniel Wheeler's 10-volume collection on the Life and Writings of Thomas Paine (1908), website above. We selected this item because it helped inspire the overwhelming passage of the true 13th Amendment by Congress (Senate: 26 to 1 on 27 April, House affirmed 87 to 3 on 1 May 1810), also called TOHA for Title of Honor Amendment. It was directed against the threat of American aristocracy. TOHA then went to the States for ratification and it soon was (including PA. 6 Feb. 1812). The War of 1812 and British burning of Washington confused Virginia's ratification until 1819. Then it was published for over forty years until being erased by the esquires.
The mechanics of its removal are unclear but it involved Supreme Court judges and the war of Southern expansion into Mexico. It was replaced by another 13th Amendment in 1860 bhy the same sort that gave us the Dred Scott decision (1857). Like the one of 1860, the current 13th Amendment permits slavery, a term that did not previously appear in the Constitution. It reads: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdistion. This eventually empowered lawyers to "duly convict" someone beyond the scope of the Constitution. Now we have a fourth of the world's prison population with most of it "enslaved" without jury trial or by laws that are entirely unconstitutional. The current 13th Amendment seems a bright, shining lie meant to replace TOHA.
If any such addition was needed at all, perhaps for emphasis, then it belonged within the context of the 14th Amendment, which is clear enough without it. Instead it was eventually used (after 1886) to empower the corporate weapon of the new aristocracy and the phoney money printed by their banksters. Granting undue honor or privilege creates aristocracy. In effect, it helped politicians and judges become enslaving lawmakers, rather than the true lawkeepers, who need public approval for amendments. Master and slave are two sides of the same coin.
Slavery is the legal fiction that human persons are property. Corporatism is the legal fiction that property is personhood.
Thomas Paine spent his life making clear how aristocracy is the historic enemy of democracy. For that reason we feel that this Compass, and the August letter to which it was attached, were over 200 years ahead of their time. He exposed the "judicial review" fraud. Meanwhile the Pennsylvania legislature and its judiciary is probably more corrupt than it was in 1805. Neither to the so-called Public (corporate) Schools emphasize teaching the Constitution, even as Civics, much less TOHA or the original 1st Amendment in the Bill of Rights, wherein the founders defined the proper ratio for democracy. Both are discussed in later pages.
Compass on Constitutions, Governments, and Charters (1805)
The people of Pennsylvania are, at this time, earnestly occupied on the subject of calling a convention to revise their State Constitution, and there can be but little doubt that a revision is necessary. It is a Constitution, they say, for the emolument of lawyers.
It has happened that the constitutions of all the states were formed before any experience had been had on the representative system of government; and it would be a miracle in human affairs that mere theory without experience should start in perfection at once. The Constitution of New York was formed so early as 1777.
The subject that occupied and engrossed the public mind at that time was the Revolutionary War, and the establishment of independence, and in order to give effect to the Declaration of Independence by Congress it was necessary that the states severally should make a practical beginning by establishing state constitutions, and trust to time and experience for improvement. The general defect in all the constitutions is that they are modeled too much after the system, if it can be called a system, of the English Government, which in practise is the most corrupt system in existence, for it is corruption systematized.
An idea also generally prevailed at that time of keeping what were called the legislative, the executive, and the judicial powers distinct and separated from each other. But this idea whether correct or not, is always contradicted in practise; for where the consent of a governor or executive is required to an act before it can become a law, or where he can by his negative prevent an act of the legislature becoming a law, he is effectually a part of the legislature, and possesses full half of the powers of a whole legislature.
[Paragraph on New York ommited.]
When we see maxims that fail in practise, we ought to go to the root, and see if the maxim be true. Now it does not signify how many nominal divisions, and subdivisions, and classifications we make, for the fact is, there are but two powers in any government, the power of willing or enacting the laws, and the power of executing them; for what is called the judiciary is a branch of executive power; it executes the laws; and what is called the executive is a superintending power to see that the laws are executed.
Errors in theory are, sooner or later, accompanied with errors in practise; and this leads me to another part of the subject, that of considering a constitution and a government relatively to each other.
A constitution is the act of the people in their original character of sovereignty. A government is a creature of the constitution; it is produced and brought into existence by it. A constitution defines and limits the powers of the government it creates. It therefore follows, as a natural and also a logical result, that the governmental exercise of any power not authorized by the constitution is an assumed power, and therefore illegal.
There is no article in the Constitution of this State, nor of any of the states, that invests the Government in whole or in part with the power of granting charters or monopolies of any kind; the spirit of the times was then against all such speculation; and therefore the assuming to grant them is unconstitutional, and when obtained by bribery and corruption is criminal. It is also contrary to the intention and principle of annual elections.
Legislatures are elected annually, not only for the purpose of giving the people, in their elective character, the opportunity of showing their approbation of those who have acted right, by reelecting them, and rejecting those who have acted wrong; but also for the purpose of correcting the wrong (where any wrong has been done) of a former legislature. But the very intention, essence, and principle of annual election would be destroyed, if any one legislature during the year of its authority, had the power to place any of its acts beyond the reach of succeeding legislatures; yet this is always attempted to be done in those acts of a legislature called charters.
Of what use is it to dismiss legislators for having done wrong, if the wrong is to continue on the authority of those who did it? Thus much for things that are wrong. I now come to speak of things that are right, and may be necessary.
Experience shows that matters will occasionally arise, especially in a new country, that will require the exercise of a power differently constituted to that of ordinary legislation; and therefore there ought to be in a constitution an article, defining how that power shall be constituted and exercised. Perhaps the simplest method, that which I am going to mention, is the best; because it is still keeping strictly within the limits of annual elections, makes no new appointments necessary, and creates no additional expense. For example,
That all matters of a different quality to matters of ordinary legislation, such, for instance, as sales or grants of public lands, acts of incorporation, public contracts with individuals or companies beyond a certain amount; shall be proposed in one legislature, and published in the form of a bill, with the yeas and nays, after the second reading, and in that state shall lie over to be taken up by the succeeding legislature; that is, there shall always be, on all such matters, one annual election [which] takes place between the time of bringing in the bill and the time of enacting it into a permanent law.
It is the rapidity with which a self-interested speculation, or a fraud on the public property, can be carried through within the short space of one session, and before the people can be apprised of it, that renders it necessary that a precaution of this kind, unless a better can be devised, should be made an article of the Constitution.
Had such an article been originally in the Constitution, the bribery and corruption employed to seduce and manage the members of the late Legislature, in the affair of the Merchants' Bank, could not have taken place. It would not have been worth while to bribe men to do what they had not the power of doing. The Legislature could only have proposed, but not have enacted the law; and the election then ensuing would, by discarding the proposers, have negatived the proposal without any further trouble.
This method has the appearancce of doubling the value and importance of annual elections. It is only by means of elections that the mind of the public can be collected to a point on any important subject; and as it is always the interest of a much greater number of people in a country, to have a thing right than to have it wrong, the public sentiment is always worth attending to. It may sometimes err, but never intentionally, and never long.
The experiment of the Merchants' Bank showed it is impossible to bribe a small body of men, but it is always impossible to bribe a whole nation; and therefore in all legislative matters that by requiring permanency differ from ordinary legislation, which are alterable or repealable at all times, it is safest that they pass through two legislatures, and a general election intervene between. The elections will always bring up the mind of the country on any important proposed bill; and thus the whole state will be its own Council of Revision. It has already passed its veto on the Merchants' Bank bill, notwithstanding that the minor Council of Revision approved it.
COMMON SENSE.
(June 21, 1805)
Finally, some video presentations.
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He took a musket to join Washington in New York after anonymously publishing A Serious Thought (18 Oct.1775) suggesting that God would
grant American independence. This went far beyond the Declaration for Taking Up Arms (July 1775).
He is most famous for Common Sense (Dec.1775). It is probably this country's most powerful political document because it transformed what
was a successful revolution (Dec. 1775) into a War for Independence and announced a constitution as the Genesis of our values:
"Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be
brought forth, placed on the divine law, the Word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as
we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king ...and there ought to be no other."
He announced in Common Sense that: We have it in our power to begin the world over again …the birthday of a new world is at hand..." and
warned against reconciliation with "Interested men, who are not to be trusted; weak men who cannot see; prejudiced men who will not see;
and a certain set of moderate men, who think better of the European world than it deserves".
He concluded Common Sense with "free and independent states of America" and it likely that he wrote the draft copy of the Declaration of
Independence, edited by Jefferson for a committee appointed by Congress. In recognition, he was made Secretary of State and Benjamin
Franklin said: "Others can rule, many can fight, but only Thomas Paine can write for us the English Tongue." Paine penned "United States of
America", when helping Franklin write international correspondence (1776). The new name began wide circulation in Crises II (13 Jan.1777).
He consistently, unequivocally, promoted emancipating slaves with newspaper essays like "African Slavery in America" (8 March/18 Oct.1775)
and several books credit Paine with introducing the idea into the Declaration of Independence, where it appeared in the first draft as:
"He has waged cruel war against human Nature itself, violating its most Sacred Rights of Life and Liberty in the Persons of a distant
people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere."
He rose to the rank of Major in the Continental Army and wrote fifteen Crises dispatches to rally the troops and explain American values. The
first of these condemned offensive war as it rallied Washington's Army on Christmas Eve, 1776. It began with:
"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crises, shrink from the service
of his country; but he that stands it now deserves the love of man and woman. Tyranny like hell, is not easily conquered yet we have
this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
He called Native Americans "brothers" and admired ther natural state without poverty, thanks to relatively equal distribution of property. He praised
their love of liberty as symbolized by the eagle, which helped in making it the national emblem. With a thousand dollars worth of presents he
negotiated a Treaty at Easton (Jan.1777) with the Iroquois allied nations. If the British had not undermined it, relations with the original
Americans could have been much better after the War for Independence.
He received a Master of Arts degree from the University of Philadelphia and was accepted in the American Philosophical Society.
He served as Clerk of the Pennsylvania state assembly (1779-81) and wrote a Preamble Emancipation of Slaves Act of 1 March 1780, that
made it the first state to end this British form of serfdom. If Virginia had taken a similar step, as Jefferson had often proposed, then the 1861
Civil War might have been avoided. His essay Public Good (1780) opposed Virginia's claim on western land for the sake of national unity.
Virginia politicians later denied him a pension, probably with these two incidents in mind.
He gave a third of his salary to feed Washington's troops and initiated a mission to France (March 1781) with John Laurens. He helped
negotiate a large loan and escorted 2.5 million livres in silver (Aug.1781) back to America to help pay the troops.
He wrote a Letter on Affairs of North America (1782) to correct British lies, lessen war debts, and define the Treaty of Paris.
He helped Franklin structure a Articles of Confederation government and wrote a Memo (1783) and Dissertations (Feb.1786) On Government;
the Affairs of the Bank; and Paper Money, as the first outline for the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
He was technically gifted and invented an iron bridge (1787), and helped build one as a model upon traveling to England (3 Sept.).
He had promoted women's equality since 1775 with "An Occasional Letter On The Female Sex" and, while in London, shared ideas with Mary
Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), who wrote Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). If such views had been adopted in America then women
would have had the right to vote as part of the Bill of Rights Constitution.
He inspired the Revolution in France, where the wealthy LaFayette was a strong supporter. His writings were "as powerful as an army" against
European despotism. French publishers bound translations of Common Sense together in one volume with Rousseau's Social Contract.
He advocated human rights in France as declared in America and, with Jefferson, helped wite the famous French Declaration of Rights. His
Rights of Man (Part I, Feb. 1791), dedicated to Washington, shook Europe and inspired the world's second written Constitution in Poland
(3 May), which prompted him to seek Polish citizenship. Here are his memorable words emphasizing that a constitution must exist as a fact:
...It has not an ideal, but a real existence; and wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing
antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its
government, but of the people constituting its government. It is the body of elements, to which you can refer, and quote article by
article; and which contains the principles on which the government shall be established, the manner in which it shall be organized, the
powers it shall have, the mode of elections, the duration of Parliaments, or by what other name such bodies may be called; the powers
which the executive part of the government shall have; and, in fine, everything that relates to the complete organization of a civil
government, and the principles on which it shall act, and by which it shall be bound. A constitution, therefore, is to a government what
the laws made a afterwards by that government are to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make laws, neither can it
alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made: and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution.
He co-auhored and popularized the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens (1789) in Rights of Man I. This promoted
"universal civilization" to oppose Edmund Burke's attack on a still moderate French Revolution. It did not yet oppose England’s “Foxite”
aristocracy but if its republican ideals had spread, Hanoverian imperialism might have come to a swift end.
He exchanged ideas (1791) in England with visitors such as Joel Barlow, Thomas Christie, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, William Goodwin, John
Oswald, Joseph Priestley, Clio Rickman, William Sharpe, Horne Tooke, and Mrs.Wollstonecraft to examine how republicanism could replace
misdirected radicalism. In Paris, as Louis XVI deserted (20 June), he circulated A Republican Manifesto (June-July 1791) and formed a
Societe Republicaine with Bonneville, Condorcet, and others who had similar ideals.
He noted in "Address and Declaration to the Friends of Universal Peace and Liberty" that: "We fear not proud oppression, for we have truth
on our side" (Aug. 1791). This inspired English and Irish committees of correspondence to form a Society for Constitutional Information. It
spread the idea of republicanism as synonymous to ‘democracy' throughout the British Empire.
He barely escaped England (12 Sept.1791) after Poet William Blake warned him of impending arrest. After King George III issued a "Proclamation
against Sedition, Subversion, and Riot," a bribed royal court later found him guilty in absentia (Dec.1792).
He completed Rights of Man part 2 (Feb.1792), dedicated to LaFayette. It became the most popular work of the English language but meant that
he and his republican followers would be charged as “radicals” with accusations of "treason against the crown." His publishers went to prison
for 3 years and this royalist sentiment found an echo in American Alien and Sedition Acts.
He was the only American to serve as Deputy of France in its Chamber (Sept.1792, represented Calais) as an honorary Frenchman (Franklin,
Jefferson, and Washington had similar offers) with the purpose of developing a Constitution for the French people.
He staunchly resisted French terrorism because it undermined republican ideals. For example, he pleaded (15 Jan.1793) for the French Assembly
to spare Louis XVI despite his treason -- "Kill the tyrant, spare the man." The vote for death was 387 to 334 (17th) and even in the next three
days there was chance for a reprieve. If they had exiled its former benefactor to America, as Paine asked, then the royal world might have been
sympathetic to republicanism and avoided the Napoleonic wars.
He was imprisoned on 28 December 1793 and Robespierre signed his death warrant. Facing death, Paine wrote Age of Reason (part 1, 1794)
to attack atheism, materialism, and religious corruption. This textbook for a Deism included a judgement day and afterlife. It aimed to stop
atheism by creating a moral anchor matching the Reformation (see above dedication to fellow citizens). Unknown to Paine, Jefferson wrote a
political preface of the book in America, which incited Federalists and religious reaction.
He was released from prison to reside with Monroe (to Nov.1796) and dined with prominent men such as Barlow, Condorcet, Fulton, LaFayette,
Kosciuszko, and even Napoleon, who said that Paine deserved golden statues for Rights of Man and that he always slept with a copy at his
side as he spread its ideas (see some statues, shown below).
He emphasized First Principles of Government (July 1795) to conclude that "in the absence of a constitution, men look entirely to party; and
instead of principle governing party, party governs principle." His dissertation foresaw the recent Bush brutality [&} and its rush to torture:
The executive is not invested with the power of deliberating whether it shall act or not; it has no discretionary authority in the case;
for it can act no other thing than what the laws decree, and it is obliged to act conformably thereto....[&] An avidity to punish is always
dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty
secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
He continued promotion of social protection laws and other democratic reform, including a specific social security and welfare system based on
progressive taxation. Agrarian Justice (1796) rejected patronizing aristocratic paternalism and its insight on equal rights stopped short of
class conflict (to abolish private property or confiscate wealth) but it did describe the earth as "the common property of the human race."
He built a working model for an iron crane (1795) and made plans for gunboats, submarines, steamboats (with Fulton), internal combustion
engines, and after returning to America scientifically analyzed The Cause of Yellow Fever (June 1806).
He helped plan French support for Irish liberation (1798) with ex-lord Ed Fitzgerald, Wolfe Tone and Napper Tandy. American help might have
freed Ireland. Tone said "The Rights of Man are the Rights of God, to vindicate the one is to maintain the other."
He helped Vice President Jefferson avoid a U.S. war with France (1799) by exposing the Federalist schemes to support the British
He developed principles for international arbitration and drafted specific measures to reduce militarism in a 40-page Maritime Compact (1800) that
proposed a "Law of Nations" for a neutral Association of Nations united under the Rainbow Flag. If British sympathizers had not assassinated
Czar Paul I (1801) this early "United Nations" might have ended Napoleonic Wars.
He wrote a Christmas Letter (25 Dec.1802) to make "a present of a thought" to President Jefferson on how to peacefully acquire the Louisiana
territories. Within weeks, Jefferson wrote to Monroe (13 Jan.1803) about French problems in St. Domingue and began a purchase process.
A slave insurrection meanwhile overthrew the French (by 1804 Haiti proclaimed independence & outlawed slavery). Monroe went to France
with negotiating suggestions from Paine (March 1803). For fifteen million dollars the Louisiana Purchase doubled America's size (May).
He exchanged ideas with Sam Adams who wrote that Common Sense and Crises had inspired national independence, adding:
"Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age by inculcating the minds of youth the
fear and love of the Deity and universal philanthropy." Paine answered "this exactly is my religion" (1 Jan. 1803).
He wrote a Letter to the French Inhabitants of Louisiana (22 Sept. 1804) to denounce their petition for ...rights, to import and enslave Africans!”
Napoleon left the Caribbean (Haiti), after selling Louisiana to the United States (still a fourth of U.S. land). This diplomatic effort emplaced an
informal alliance with France (and Poland) in the War of 1812 as defined by Paine' friend, U.S. diplomat and "honorary French citizen", Joel
Barlow. If the Anglo-Hanoverian armies were not tied up on the European continent, then America's "Second War of Independence" (1812-14),
could have ended differently. Paine predicted that the Louisiana territory would eventually include a dozen states and asserted that the owner
must uphold the "principles and interest of a republic" and not permit slavery therein. Such a policy could have avoided the future Civil War.
He denounced the "emolument of lawyers," based on Marshall's corrupt invention of Judicial Review, in a Compass to a letter to Pennsylvanians
(21 June1805, copied below), as contrary to the principle of juries and annual election. This inspired the first 13th Amendment (1810) that,
despite ratification, was subverted by black-robed esquires to again empower lawyers. One key phrase was:
"There is no article in the Constitution of this State, nor of any of the states, that invests the Government in whole or in part with the
power of granting charters or monopolies of any kind; the spirit of the times was then against all such speculation; and therefore
the assuming to grant them is unconstitutional, and when obtained by bribery and corruption is criminal."
He warned how enemies "unable to conquer will stoop to corrupt." If his warning about "granting charters and monopolies" (1805) were heeded
then the law-takers could not have sliced U.S. government into over 85,000 separate, unequal pieces dominated by chambers of corporatism.
He was well respected by opponents. John Adams, after recognizing the royalist nature of the Hamiltonians, half-seriously proposed (Oct.1805)
that the Age of Reason be renamed the Age of Paine because he did not know any other man who had influenced the inhabitants or affairs of
the world more for the previous thirty years. In 1814, he paraphrased Joel Barlow's sentiments to write:
There is but one element of government and that is THE PEOPLE," and ...Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would
have been wielded in vain." In a 1818 letter to Jefferson, Adams reminded his countrymen that: "...a change in the principles,
opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution."
He joined with American Deists in a NY Theistic Society (1804) and wrote the Prospect Papers (Age of Reason, Part IV) to conclude his views on
morality (1807) and caution against fanaticism. Never an atheist, he ended his Will in "resignation to the will of my creator, God" (1809).
He is largely been removed from our Anglophile history, except for Common Sense, and his grave was desecrated in 1819 by a British fanatic.
No 18th Century political writer has more books in print but the American ruling class wants to dismiss him as a "radical". Perhaps the best
answer to his detractors was in President Franklin Roosevelt's speech to the Daughters of the American Revolution on 20 April 1938:
Remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
Isn't it time for you to understand American values?
