Thomas Paine

For other people with the same name, see Thomas Paine (disambiguation).

Thomas Paine
Portrait by Laurent Dabos, c. 1792
Deputy of the National Convention
In office September 20, 1792 – December 28, 1793
Preceded by	Constituency established
Succeeded by	Constituency abolished
Constituency	Pas-de-Calais
28th Chief Clerk of the Pennsylvania General Assembly
In office November 2, 1779 – November 3, 1780
Preceded by	John Morris Jr.
Succeeded by	Samuel Sterett
Secretary of the Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs
In office April 17, 1777 – January 8, 1779
Preceded by	William Bingham
Succeeded by	James Lovell
Personal details
Born	Thomas Pain (1737-02-09)February 9, 1737 (N.S.) Thetford, Norfolk, England
Died	June 8, 1809(1809-06-08) (aged 72) Greenwich Village, New York City, U.S.
Spouses	Mary Lambert ​ ​ (m. 1759; died 1760)​ Elizabeth Ollive ​ ​ (m. 1771; sep. 1774)​
Nickname	Republicus (Pen name)
Philosophical work
Era	Age of Enlightenment
School	Liberalism (Radicalism) Republicanism Secular humanism
Main interests	Politics ethics religion
Signature

Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain, February 9, 1737 [O.S. January 29, 1736] – June 8, 1809; /ˈtɒməs ˈpeɪn/) was an English-born American Founding Father, inventor, political philosopher, and statesman. His pamphlets Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783) framed the Patriot argument for independence from Great Britain at the outset of the American Revolution. Paine advanced Enlightenment-era arguments for human rights that shaped revolutionary discourse on both sides of the Atlantic.

Born in Thetford, Norfolk, Paine immigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving in time to participate in the American Revolution. Virtually every American Patriot read his 47-page pamphlet Common Sense, which catalyzed the call for independence from Great Britain. He followed that breakthrough with the pro-independence American Crisis pamphlet series. Paine returned to Britain in 1787 and wrote Rights of Man (1791) to rebut critics of the French Revolution, particularly the Anglo-Irish conservative writer Edmund Burke. His authorship of the tract led to a trial and conviction in absentia in England in 1792 for the crime of seditious libel. Paine was also a staunch critic of fiat currency, arguing in his 1786 essay Dissertations on Government that paper money was a form of state counterfeiting that undermined republican principles and public morality.

The British government of William Pitt the Younger was worried by the possibility that the French Revolution might spread to Britain and had begun suppressing works that espoused radical philosophies. Paine's work advocated the right of the people to overthrow their government and was therefore targeted with a writ for his arrest issued in early 1792. In September, Paine fled to France, where he was quickly elected to the French National Convention, despite not being able to speak French. The Girondins regarded him as an ally; consequently, the Montagnards regarded him as an enemy, especially Marc-Guillaume Alexis Vadier, the powerful president of the Committee of General Security. In December 1793, Vadier arrested Paine and took him to Luxembourg Prison in Paris. He completed the first part of The Age of Reason just before he was arrested. Mark Philp notes that "In prison Paine managed to produce (and to convey to Daniel Isaac Eaton, the radical London publisher) a dedication for The Age of Reason and a new edition of the Rights of Man with a new preface." James Monroe used his diplomatic connections to get Paine released in November 1794.

Paine became notorious because of his pamphlets and attacks on his former allies, who he felt had betrayed him. In The Age of Reason and other writings, he advocated Deism, promoted reason and freethought, and argued against religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular. In 1796, he published a bitter open letter to George Washington, whom he denounced as an incompetent general and a hypocrite. He published the pamphlet Agrarian Justice (1797), discussing the origins of property and introducing the concept of a guaranteed minimum income through a one-time inheritance tax on landowners. Having returned to the U.S. in 1802, Paine was broadly ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity and his attacks on the nation's leaders. Following his death on June 8, 1809, only six mourners attended Paine's funeral.

Biography

Early life and education

Paine was born on January 29, 1736 (NS February 9, 1737), in Thetford, Norfolk, England, to Joseph Pain (1708–1787), a tenant farmer and stay-maker, and Frances (née Cocke) Pain. Joseph followed the Quaker faith and Frances was an Anglican. Despite claims that he adopted a new spelling after emigrating to America in 1774, he was already using "Paine" in 1769 while living in Lewes, Sussex.

Old School at Thetford Grammar School, where Paine was educated

Paine attended Thetford Grammar School from 1744 to 1749, when schooling in England was not compulsory. At age 13 he began an apprenticeship with his father. After completing his apprenticeship, he attempted to sign onto the 26-gun privateer Terrible, captained by William Death, but was dissuaded by his father. At 19, he served aboard another privateer, King of Prussia. He returned to Britain in 1759, became a master staymaker, and opened a shop in Sandwich, Kent.

Paine married Mary Lambert on September 27, 1759, but his business soon collapsed. Mary became pregnant, and after the couple moved to Margate she went into early labour, and both she and their child died.

In July 1761 he returned to Thetford to work as a supernumerary officer. In December 1762 he became an Excise Officer in Grantham, Lincolnshire, and in August 1764 he transferred to Alford with a salary of £50 per annum. On August 27, 1765, he was dismissed for "claiming to have inspected goods he did not inspect". On July 31, 1766, he petitioned the Board of Excise for reinstatement, which it granted the following day when a vacancy arose. While he waited he resumed corsetmaking.

Thomas Paine's house in Lewes

In 1767, he was appointed to a position in Grampound, Cornwall. Later he asked to leave this post to await a vacancy, and he became a school teacher in London.

On February 19, 1768, he was appointed to Lewes in Sussex, a town with a tradition of opposition to the monarchy and pro-republican sentiments since the revolutionary decades of the 17th century. Here he lived above the 15th-century Bull House, the tobacco shop of Samuel Ollive and Esther Ollive.

Paine first became involved in civic matters when he was based in Lewes. He appears in the Town Book as a member of the Court Leet, the governing body for the town. He was also a member of the parish vestry, an influential local Anglican church group whose responsibilities for parish business would include collecting taxes and tithes to distribute among the poor. On March 26, 1771, at age 34, Paine married Elizabeth Ollive, the daughter of his recently deceased landlord, whose business as a grocer and tobacconist he then entered into.

Plaque at the White Hart Hotel, Lewes, East Sussex, south east England

In Danielle Allen's 2026 biography of Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond, she identifies "the radical Duke" as Thomas Paine's first political patron. The two likely first met in London at the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers, and Commerce. Paine's appointment as a tax collector in Lewes was in the Sussex jurisdiction of the Duke; the office gave Paine a stable income. Allen contends that the Duke created a consortium of radical thinkers and gifted writers who published anti-government criticism pseudonymously as "Junius" and that Paine was one of the major contributors to the Letters of Junius. Allen also identifies Paine as the author of a 95-page essay in pamphlet form entitled The Journeyman's Touch-stone published under the pen name "Censor-General" in 1771. It offered a defense of the rights of jurors in support of the publisher Henry Woodfall who faced criminal prosecution by the Crown for printing and distributing the Letters of Junius.

From 1772 to 1773, Paine joined excise officers asking Parliament for better pay and working conditions, publishing, in summer of 1772, The Case of the Officers of Excise, a 12-page article, and his first political work, spending the London winter distributing the 4,000 copies printed to the Parliament and others. In spring 1774, he was again dismissed from the excise service for being absent from his post without permission. The tobacco shop failed. On April 14, to avoid debtors' prison, he sold his household possessions to pay debts. He formally separated from his wife Elizabeth on June 4, 1774, and moved to London. In September, mathematician, Fellow of the Royal Society, and Commissioner of the Excise George Lewis Scott introduced him to Benjamin Franklin, who was there as a voice for colonial opposition to British colonial rule, especially as it related to the Stamp Act, and the Townshend Acts. He was publisher and editor of the largest American newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette and suggested emigration to Philadelphia. He gave a letter of recommendation to Paine, who emigrated in October to the American colonies, arriving in Philadelphia on November 30, 1774.

In Pennsylvania Magazine

Paine barely survived the transatlantic voyage. The ship's water supplies were bad and typhoid fever killed five passengers. On arriving at Philadelphia, he was too sick to disembark. Benjamin Franklin's physician, there to welcome Paine to America, had him carried off ship; Paine took six weeks to recover. He became a citizen of Pennsylvania "by taking the oath of allegiance at a very early period". In March 1775, he became editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, a position he conducted with considerable ability.

Before Paine's arrival in America, sixteen magazines had been founded in the colonies and ultimately failed, each featuring substantial content and reprints from England. In late 1774, Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken announced his plan to create what he called an "American Magazine" with content derived from the colonies. Paine contributed two pieces to the magazine's inaugural issue dated January 1775, and Aitken hired Paine as the Magazine's editor one month later. Under Paine's leadership, the magazine's readership rapidly expanded, achieving a greater circulation in the colonies than any American magazine up until that point. While Aitken had conceived of the magazine as nonpolitical, Paine brought a strong political perspective to its content, writing in its first issue that "every heart and hand seem to be engaged in the interesting struggle for American Liberty."

Paine wrote in the Pennsylvania Magazine that such a publication should become a "nursery of genius" for a nation that had "now outgrown the state of infancy", exercising and educating American minds, and shaping American morality. On March 8, 1775, the Pennsylvania Magazine published an unsigned abolitionist essay titled African Slavery in America. The essay is often attributed to Paine on the basis of a letter by Benjamin Rush, recalling Paine's claim of authorship to the essay. The essay attacked slavery as an "execrable commerce" and "outrage against Humanity and Justice."

Consciously appealing to a broader and more working-class audience, Paine also used the magazine to discuss worker rights to production. This shift in the conceptualization of politics has been described as a part of "the 'modernization' of political consciousness", and the mobilization of ever greater sections of society into political life.

American Revolution

Common Sense, published in 1776

Common Sense (1776)

Main article: Common Sense

Paine has a claim to the title The Father of the American Revolution, which rests on his pamphlets, especially Common Sense, which crystallized sentiment for independence in 1776. It was published in Philadelphia on January 10, 1776, and signed anonymously "by an Englishman". It was an immediate success, with Paine estimating it sold 100,000 copies in three months to the two million residents of the 13 colonies. During the course of the American Revolution, one biographer estimated a total of about 500,000 copies were sold, including unauthorized editions. However, some historians dispute these numbers. Paine's original title for the pamphlet was Plain Truth, but Paine's friend, pro-independence advocate Benjamin Rush, suggested Common Sense instead. Finding a printer who was daring enough to commit his print shop to the printing of Common Sense was not easy. At the advice of Rush, Paine commissioned Robert Bell to print his work.

The pamphlet came into circulation in January 1776, after the Revolution had started. It was passed around and often read aloud in taverns, contributing significantly to spreading the idea of republicanism, bolstering enthusiasm for separation from Britain, and encouraging recruitment for the Continental Army. Paine provided a new and convincing argument for independence by advocating a complete break with history. Common Sense is oriented to the future in a way that compels the reader to make an immediate choice. It offers a solution for Americans disgusted with and alarmed at the threat of tyranny.

Paine's attack on monarchy in Common Sense was essentially an attack on King George III. Whereas colonial resentments were originally directed primarily against the king's ministers and Parliament, Paine laid the responsibility firmly at the king's door. Common Sense was the most widely read pamphlet of the American Revolution. It was a clarion call for unity against the corrupt British court, so as to realize America's providential role in providing an asylum for liberty. Written in a direct and lively style, it denounced the decaying despotisms of Europe and pilloried hereditary monarchy as an absurdity. At a time when many still hoped for reconciliation with Britain, Common Sense demonstrated to many the inevitability of separation.

Paine was not on the whole expressing original ideas in Common Sense, but rather employing rhetoric as a means to arouse resentment of the Crown. To achieve these ends, he pioneered a style of political writing suited to the democratic society he envisioned, with Common Sense serving as a primary example. Part of Paine's work was to render complex ideas intelligible to average readers of the day, with clear, concise writing unlike the formal, learned style favored by many of Paine's contemporaries. Scholars have put forward various explanations to account for its success, including the historic moment, Paine's easy-to-understand style, his democratic ethos, and his use of psychology and ideology.

Common Sense was immensely popular in disseminating to a very wide audience ideas that were already in common use among the elite who comprised Congress and the leadership cadre of the emerging nation, who rarely cited Paine's arguments in their public calls for independence. The pamphlet probably had little direct influence on the Continental Congress' decision to issue a Declaration of Independence, since that body was more concerned with how declaring independence would affect the war effort. One distinctive idea in Common Sense is Paine's beliefs regarding the peaceful nature of republics; his views were an early and strong conception of what scholars would come to call the democratic peace theory.

Loyalists vigorously attacked Common Sense; one attack, titled Plain Truth (1776), by Marylander James Chalmers, said Paine was a political quack and warned that without monarchy, the government would "degenerate into democracy". Even some American revolutionaries objected to Common Sense; late in life John Adams called it a "crapulous mass". Adams disagreed with the type of radical democracy promoted by Paine (that men who did not own property should still be allowed to vote and hold public office) and published Thoughts on Government in 1776 to advocate a more conservative approach to republicanism.

Sophia Rosenfeld argues that Paine was highly innovative in his use of the commonplace notion of "common sense". He synthesized various philosophical and political uses of the term in a way that permanently impacted American political thought. He used two ideas from Scottish Common Sense Realism: that ordinary people can indeed make sound judgments on major political issues, and that there exists a body of popular wisdom that is readily apparent to anyone. Paine also used a notion of "common sense" favored by philosophes in the Continental Enlightenment. They held that common sense could refute the claims of traditional institutions. Thus, Paine used "common sense" as a weapon to de-legitimize the monarchy and overturn prevailing conventional wisdom. Rosenfeld concludes that the phenomenal appeal of his pamphlet resulted from his synthesis of popular and elite elements in the independence movement.

According to historian Robert Middlekauff, Common Sense became immensely popular mainly because Paine appealed to widespread convictions. Monarchy, he said, was preposterous and it had a heathenish origin. It was an institution of the devil. Paine pointed to the Old Testament, where almost all kings had seduced the Israelites to worship idols instead of God. Paine also denounced aristocracy, which together with monarchy were "two ancient tyrannies". They violated the laws of nature, human reason, and the "universal order of things", which began with God. This was, Middlekauff says, exactly what most Americans wanted to hear. He calls the Revolutionary generation "the children of the twice-born" because in their childhood they had experienced the Great Awakening, which, for the first time, had tied Americans together, transcending denominational and ethnic boundaries and giving them a sense of patriotism.

Possible involvement in drafting the Declaration of Independence

The Committee of Five working draft of the Declaration of Independence, dated June 24, 1776, copied from the original draft by John Adams for Roger Sherman's review and approval

Inscription on reverse of Sherman Copy of the Declaration of Independence referencing "T.P." during the drafting process

While there is no historical record of Paine's involvement in drafting the Declaration of Independence, some scholars of Early American History have suspected his involvement. As noted by the Thomas Paine National Historical Association, multiple authors have hypothesized and written on the subject, including Moody (1872), Van der Weyde (1911), Lewis (1947), and more recently, Smith & Rickards (2007).

In 2018, the Thomas Paine National Historical Association introduced an early draft of the Declaration that contained evidence of Paine's involvement based on an inscription of "T.P." on the back of the document. During the early deliberations of the Committee of Five members chosen by Congress to draft the Declaration of Independence, John Adams made a hastily written manuscript copy of the original draft of the Declaration of Independence on June 24, 1776, known as the Sherman Copy. Adams made this copy shortly before preparing another neater, fair copy that is held in the Adams Family Papers collection at the Massachusetts Historical Society. The Sherman copy of the Declaration of Independence is one of several working drafts of the Declaration, made for Roger Sherman's review and approval before the Committee of Five submitted a finalized draft to Congress. The Sherman Copy of the Declaration of Independence contains an inscription on the back of the document that states: "A beginning perhaps – Original with Jefferson – Copied from Original with T.P.'s permission." According to the Thomas Paine National Historical Association, the individual referenced as "T.P." in the inscription appears to be Thomas Paine.

The degree to which Paine was involved in formulating the text of the Declaration is unclear, as the original draft referenced in the Sherman Copy inscription is presumed lost or destroyed. However, John Adams' request for permission of "T.P." to copy the original draft may suggest that Paine had a role either assisting Jefferson with organizing ideas within the Declaration, or contributing to the text of the original draft itself.

Naming the United States

Paine's June 29, 1776 "Republicus" letter in the Pennsylvania Evening Post, advocating the name "United States of America".

Historians connect Paine to the rise of the national title "United States of America". Writing as "Republicus" in the June 29, 1776, issue of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, he urged Congress to adopt the name so the new polity could present itself as a nation, and the phrase reached a wider audience days later in the Declaration.

EVERY moment that I reflect on our affairs, the more am I convinced of the necessity of a formal Declaration of Independance. Reconciliation is thought of now by none but knaves, fools and madmen; and as we cannot offer terms of peace to Great-Britain, until, as other nations have done before us, we agree to call ourselves by some name, I shall rejoice to hear the title of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in order that we may be on a proper footing to negotiate a peace.

REPUBLICUS.

Paine contrasted the prevailing habit in which revolutionary leaders used "united States" as a descriptive phrase for their coalition with the diplomatic urgency of 1776. He argued that only a capitalized title would show foreign governments that the colonies had formed a single American nation ready to negotiate alliances.

Historian James H. Hutson situates the letter within widespread June 1776 anxiety that Britain might broker a partition treaty before Congress acted. He notes newspaper warnings that European powers would not remain neutral unless American envoys carried an explicit declaration of nationhood abroad.

As June progressed, "tensions and apprehensions about a partition treaty became pervasive, cropping out in brief, fugitive newspaper pieces." As Hutson notes, one example was "Republicus" writing in Philadelphia on June 29, warning that "the foreign European powers will not be long neutral, and unless we declare an independence and send embassies to seek their friendship, Britain will be beforehand with US." Hutson further observes that this apprehension was evident even among lukewarm Whigs and Tories—groups who believed the colonies were threatened by partition and recognized the need for action, though they concluded, in contrast to their "radical" colleagues, that continued allegiance to George III was the only way to save the continent.

The "Republicus" appeal echoed Paine's broader call for shared sacrifice and collective identity by urging readers to embrace a national name that implied reciprocal obligations among the colonies. Within weeks he carried the same urgency into The American Crisis.

The American Crisis (1776)

Main article: The American Crisis

In late 1776, Paine published The American Crisis pamphlet series to inspire the Americans in their battles against the British army. He juxtaposed the conflict between the good American devoted to civic virtue and the selfish provincial man. To inspire his soldiers, General George Washington had The American Crisis, first Crisis pamphlet, read aloud to them. It begins:

These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks 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. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.

Foreign affairs

In 1777, Paine became secretary of the Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs. The following year, he alluded to secret negotiation underway with France in his pamphlets. His enemies denounced his indiscretions. There was scandal; together with Paine's conflict with Robert Morris and Silas Deane, it led to Paine's expulsion from the Committee in 1779.

However, in 1781, he accompanied John Laurens on his mission to France. Eventually, after much pleading from Paine, New York State recognized his political services by presenting him with an estate at New Rochelle, New York and Paine received money from Pennsylvania and from Congress at Washington's suggestion. During the Revolutionary War, Paine served as an aide-de-camp to the important general, Nathanael Greene.

Silas Deane Affair

In what may have been an error, and perhaps even contributed to his resignation as the secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs, Paine was openly critical of Silas Deane, an American diplomat who had been appointed in March 1776 by the Congress to travel to France in secret. Deane's goal was to influence the French government to finance the colonists in their fight for independence. Paine largely saw Deane as a war profiteer who had little respect for principle, having been under the employ of Robert Morris, one of the primary financiers of the American Revolution and working with Pierre Beaumarchais, a French royal agent sent to the colonies by King Louis to investigate the Anglo-American conflict. Paine uncovered the financial connection between Morris, who was Superintendent for Finance of the Continental Congress, and Deane.

Wealthy men, such as Robert Morris, John Jay and powerful merchant bankers, were leaders of the Continental Congress and defended holding public positions while at the same time profiting off their own personal financial dealings with governments. Amongst Paine's criticisms, he had written in the Pennsylvania Packet that France had "prefaced [their] alliance by an early and generous friendship", referring to aid that had been provided to American colonies prior to the recognition of the Franco-American treaties. This was alleged to be effectively an embarrassment to France, which potentially could have jeopardized the alliance. John Jay, the President of the Congress, who had been a fervent supporter of Deane, immediately spoke out against Paine's comments. The controversy eventually became public, and Paine was then denounced as unpatriotic for criticizing an American revolutionary. He was even physically assaulted twice in the street by Deane supporters. This much-added stress took a large toll on Paine, who was generally of a sensitive character and he resigned as secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs in 1779. Paine left the Committee without even having enough money to buy food for himself.

Much later, when Paine returned from his mission to France, Deane's corruption had become more widely acknowledged. Many, including Robert Morris, apologized to Paine, and Paine's reputation in Philadelphia was restored.

"Public Good"

In 1780, Paine published a pamphlet entitled "Public Good", in which he made the case that territories west of the 13 colonies that had been part of the British Empire belonged after the Declaration of Independence to the American government, and did not belong to any of the 13 states or to any individual speculators. A royal charter of 1609 had granted to the Virginia Company land stretching to the Pacific Ocean. A small group of wealthy Virginia land speculators, including the Washington, Lee, and Randolph families, had taken advantage of this royal charter to survey and to claim title to huge swaths of land, including much land west of the 13 colonies. In "Public Good", Paine argued that these lands belonged to the American government as represented by the Continental Congress. This angered many of Paine's wealthy Virginia friends, including Richard Henry Lee of the powerful Lee family, who had been Paine's closest ally in Congress, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, all of whom had claims to huge wild tracts that Paine was advocating should be government owned. The view that Paine had advocated eventually prevailed when the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was passed.

The animosity Paine felt as a result of the publication of "Public Good" fueled his decision to embark with Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens on a mission to travel to Paris to obtain funding for the American war effort.

Funding the Revolution

Paine accompanied Col. John Laurens to France and is credited with initiating the mission. It landed in France in March 1781 and returned to America in August with 2.5 million livres in silver, as part of a "present" of 6 million and a loan of 10 million. The meetings with the French king were most likely conducted in the company and under the influence of Benjamin Franklin. Upon returning to the United States with this highly welcomed cargo, Paine and probably Col. Laurens, "positively objected" that General Washington should propose that Congress remunerate him for his services, for fear of setting "a bad precedent and an improper mode". Paine made influential acquaintances in Paris and helped organize the Bank of North America to raise money to supply the army. In 1785, he was given $3,000 by the U.S. Congress in recognition of his service to the nation.

Henry Laurens (father of Col. John Laurens) had been the ambassador to the Netherlands, but he was captured by the British on his return trip there. When he was later exchanged for the prisoner Lord Cornwallis in late 1781, Paine proceeded to the Netherlands to continue the loan negotiations. There remains some question as to the relationship of Henry Laurens and Paine to Robert Morris as the Superintendent of Finance and his business associate, Thomas Willing, who became the first president of the Bank of North America in January 1782. They had accused Morris of profiteering in 1779 and Willing had voted against the Declaration of Independence. Although Morris did much to restore his reputation in 1780 and 1781, the credit for obtaining these critical loans to "organize" the Bank of North America for approval by Congress in December 1781 should go to Henry or John Laurens and Paine more than to Morris.

In Fashion before Ease;  – or, – A good Constitution sacrificed for a Fantastick Form (1793), James Gillray caricatured Paine tightening the corset of Britannia and protruding from his coat pocket is a measuring tape inscribed "Rights of Man".

Paine bought his only house in 1783 on the corner of Farnsworth Avenue and Church Streets in Bordentown City, New Jersey and he lived in it periodically until his death in 1809. This is the only place in the world where Paine purchased real estate. In 1785, Paine was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.

In 1787, Paine proposed an iron bridge design for crossing the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia. Having little success in acquiring funding, Paine returned to Paris, France seeking investors or other opportunities to implement his, at the time, novel iron bridge design. Because Paine had few friends when arriving in France aside from Lafayette and Jefferson, he continued to correspond heavily with Benjamin Franklin, a long time friend and mentor. Franklin provided letters of introduction for Paine to use to gain associates and contacts in France.

Later that year, Paine returned to London from Paris. He then released a pamphlet on August 20 called Prospects on the Rubicon: or, an investigation into the Causes and Consequences of the Politics to be Agitated at the Meeting of Parliament. Tensions between England and France were increasing, and this pamphlet urged the British Ministry to reconsider the consequences of war with France. Paine sought to turn the public opinion against the war to create better relations between the countries, avoid the taxes of war upon the citizens, and not engage in a war he believed would ruin both nations.

Later years

Portrait by John Wesley Jarvis, c. 1806–1807

Paine remained in France until 1802, returning to the United States only at President Jefferson's invitation. Paine also paid for the passage for Bonneville's wife Marguerite Brazier and the couple's three sons, Benjamin, Louis, and Thomas Bonneville, to whom Paine was godfather. Paine returned to the U.S. in the early stages of the Second Great Awakening and a time of great political partisanship. The Age of Reason gave ample excuse for the religiously devout to dislike him, while the Federalists attacked him for his ideas of government stated in Common Sense, for his association with the French Revolution, and for his friendship with President Jefferson. Also, still fresh in the minds of the public was his Letter to Washington, published six years before his return. This was compounded when his right to vote was denied in New Rochelle on the grounds that Gouverneur Morris did not recognize him as an American and Washington had not aided him.

Brazier took care of Paine at the end of his life and buried him after his death. In his will, Paine left the bulk of his estate to her, including 100 acres (40.5 ha) of his farm so she could maintain and educate Benjamin and his brother Thomas.

Death

Paine's death mask

This plaque hangs on the site where Thomas Paine died, on Grove Street in Greenwich Village

On the morning of June 8, 1809, Paine died, aged 72, at 59 Grove Street in Greenwich Village, New York City. Although the original building no longer exists, the present building has a plaque noting that Paine died at this location.

After his death, Paine's body was brought to New Rochelle, but the Quakers would not allow it to be buried in their graveyard as per his last will, so his remains were buried under a walnut tree on his farm. In 1819, English agrarian radical journalist William Cobbett, who in 1793 had published a hostile continuation of Francis Oldys (George Chalmer)'s The Life of Thomas Paine, dug up his bones and transported them back to England with the intention to give Paine a heroic reburial on his native soil, but this never came to pass. The bones were still among Cobbett's effects when he died over fifteen years later but were later lost. There is no confirmed story about what happened to them after that, although various people have claimed throughout the years to own parts of Paine's remains, such as his skull and right hand.

At the time of his death, most American newspapers reprinted Paine's obituary notice from the New York Evening Post that was in turn quoting from The American Citizen, which read in part: "He had lived long, did some good, and much harm". Only six mourners came to his funeral, two of whom were black, most likely freedmen. Months later appeared a hostile biography by James Cheetham, who had admired him since the latter's days as a young radical in Manchester, and who had been friends with Paine for a short time before the two fell out. Many years later the writer and orator Robert G. Ingersoll wrote:

Thomas Paine had passed the legendary limit of life. One by one most of his old friends and acquaintances had deserted him. Maligned on every side, execrated, shunned and abhorred – his virtues denounced as vices – his services forgotten – his character blackened, he preserved the poise and balance of his soul. He was a victim of the people, but his convictions remained unshaken. He was still a soldier in the army of freedom, and still tried to enlighten and civilize those who were impatiently waiting for his death. Even those who loved their enemies hated him, their friend – the friend of the whole world – with all their hearts. On the 8th of June 1809, death came – Death, almost his only friend. At his funeral no pomp, no pageantry, no civic procession, no military display. In a carriage, a woman and her son who had lived on the bounty of the dead – on horseback, a Quaker, the humanity of whose heart dominated the creed of his head – and, following on foot, two negroes filled with gratitude – constituted the funeral cortege of Thomas Paine.