ABSTRACT
The dawn of the new century found British radicalism in virtual eclipse. But though repression in the 1790s forced hundreds of reformers to emigrate, Britain’s loss was America’s gain, for the Painites remained politically active in the new world, assisting in the defeat of Federalism and victory of the more republican views of Jefferson (whom they supported to a man) in 1800. Over the next decades they also helped to popularize that ideal of commercial republicanism in which considerable social egalitarianism coexisted harmoniously with commerce and industry. 1 The early American labour movement thus did not soon forget Paine and radical artisan organizations like Tammany Hall in New York celebrated his birthday well into the nineteenth century. But for the wider public, Paine became a pariah because of his religious principles. When a new edition of Joel Barlow’s great poem The Columbiad omitted any mention of Paine, T. J. Wooler explained that ‘Thomas Paine was so unpopular in America, on account of his theological writings, that the mention of him would have hindered the sale of the book’. Paine thus already had two distinct reputations, and when in 1803 he was reported to be about to visit New England one observer hence wrote that ‘The name is enough. Every person has ideas of him. Some respect his genius and dread the man. Some reverence his political, while they hate his religious, opinions. Some love the man, but not his private manners. Indeed he has done nothing which has not extremes in it. He never appears but we love and hate him. He is as great a paradox as ever appeared in human nature.’ 2
