I raise my glass this evening to the great Thomas Paine, who died two hundred years ago today, on June 8th, 1809, in Greenwich Village, New York. He was seventy-two, and all but forgotten. Only six people attended his funeral...
He was the author of the Rights of Man, (1791), a passionate defense of the French Revolution. Paine was, in fact, elected to the Convention, in 1792, by the voters of the Pas-de Calais, in northern France...Though imprisoned by the radicals of the Robespierre faction, he was released ten months later, and returned to the Convention.
He left France in 1802, disappointed by Napoleon's failure to spread the ideals of the French Revolution throughout Europe...May he rest in peace, wherever he may be for his body was taken back to England and misplaced...
An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot
Thomas Paine
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