The Age of Reason | Page 9

execration, by these very objects of his benevolent intentions, in every corner of the
kingdom?" After the execution of Louis XVI., for whose life Paine pleaded so earnestly,
-- while in England he was denounced as an accomplice in the deed, -- he devoted
himself to the preparation of a Constitution, and also to gathering up his religious
compositions and adding to them. This manuscript I suppose to have been prepared in
what was variously known as White's Hotel or Philadelphia House, in Paris, No. 7
Passage des Petits Peres. This compilation of early and fresh manuscripts (if my theory
be correct) was labelled, "The Age of Reason," and given for translation to Francois
Lanthenas in March 1793. It is entered, in Qudrard (La France Literaire) under the year
1793, but with the title "L'Age de la Raison" instead of that which it bore in 1794, "Le
Siecle de la Raison." The latter, printed "Au Burcau de l'imprimerie, rue du
Theatre-Francais, No. 4," is said to be by "Thomas Paine, Citoyen et cultivateur de
I'Amerique septentrionale, secretaire du Congres du departement des affaires etrangeres
pendant la guerre d'Amerique, et auteur des ouvrages intitules: LA SENS COMMUN et
LES DROITS DE L'HOMME."
When the Revolution was advancing to increasing terrors, Paine, unwilling to participate
in the decrees of a Convention whose sole legal function was to frame a Constitution,
retired to an old mansion and garden in the Faubourg St. Denis, No. 63. Mr. J.G. Alger,
whose researches in personal details connected with the Revolution are original and
useful, recently showed me in the National Archives at Paris, some papers connected
with the trial of Georgeit, Paine's landlord, by which it appears that the present No. 63 is
not, as I had supposed, the house in which Paine resided. Mr. Alger accompanied me to
the neighborhood, but we were not able to identify the house. The arrest of Georgeit is
mentioned by Paine in his essay on "Forgetfulness" (Writings, iii., 319). When his trial
came on one of the charges was that he had kept in his house "Paine and other
Englishmen," -- Paine being then in prison, -- but he (Georgeit) was acquitted of the
paltry accusations brought against him by his Section, the "Faubourg du Nord." This
Section took in the whole east side of the Faubourg St. Denis, whereas the present No. 63
is on the west side. After Georgeit (or Georger) had been arrested, Paine was left alone in
the large mansion (said by Rickman to have been once the hotel of Madame de
Pompadour), and it would appear, by his account, that it was after the execution (October
31, 1793) Of his friends the Girondins, and political comrades, that he felt his end at hand,
and set about his last literary bequest to the world, -- "The Age of Reason," -- in the state
in which it has since appeared, as he is careful to say. There was every probability, during
the months in which he wrote (November and December 1793) that he would be executed.
His religious testament was prepared with the blade of the guillotine suspended over him,
-- a fact which did not deter pious mythologists from portraying his death-bed remorse
for having written the book.
In editing

Part I. of "The Age of Reason," I follow closely the first
edition, which was printed by Barrois in Paris from the manuscript, no doubt under the
superintendence of Joel Barlow, to whom Paine, on his way to the Luxembourg, had
confided it. Barlow was an American ex-clergyman, a speculator on whose career French
archives cast an unfavorable light, and one cannot be certain that no liberties were taken
with Paine's proofs.
I may repeat here what I have stated in the outset of my editorial work on Paine that my
rule is to correct obvious misprints, and also any punctuation which seems to render the
sense less clear. And to that I will now add that in following Paine's quotations from the
Bible I have adopted the Plan now generally used in place of his occasionally too
extended writing out of book, chapter, and verse.
Paine was imprisoned in the Luxembourg on December 28, 1793, and released on
November 4, 1794. His liberation was secured by his old friend, James Monroe
(afterwards President), who had succeeded his (Paine's) relentless enemy, Gouvemeur
Morris, as American Minister in Paris. He was found by Monroe more dead than alive
from semi-starvation, cold, and an abscess contracted in prison, and taken to the
Minister's own residence. It was not supposed that he could survive, and he owed his life
to the tender care of Mr. and Mrs. Monroe. It was while thus a prisoner in his room, with
death still hovering over him, that Paine wrote Part Second of