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Initial Studies in American Letters by Henry A. Beers
page 48 of 340 (14%)
establishment of a republic, published in periodical form, though at
irregular intervals. Paine's rough and vigorous advocacy was of great
service to the American patriots. His writings were popular and his
arguments were of a kind easily understood by plain people, addressing
themselves to the common sense, the prejudices and passions of
unlettered readers. He afterward went to France and took an active
part in the popular movement there, crossing swords with Burke in his
_Rights of Man_, 1791-92, written in defense of the French Revolution.
He was one of the two foreigners who sat in the Convention; but falling
under suspicion during the days of the Terror, he was committed to the
prison of the Luxembourg and only released upon the fall of Robespierre
July 27, 1794. While in prison he wrote a portion of his best-known
work, the _Age of Reason_. This appeared in two parts in 1794 and
1795, the manuscript of the first part having been intrusted to Joel
Barlow, the American poet, who happened to be in Paris when Paine was
sent to prison.

The _Age of Reason_ damaged Paine's reputation in America, where the
name of "Tom Paine" became a stench in the nostrils of the godly and a
synonym for atheism and blasphemy. His book was denounced from a
hundred pulpits, and copies of it were carefully locked away from the
sight of "the young," whose religious beliefs it might undermine. It
was, in effect, a crude and popular statement of the deistic argument
against Christianity. What the cutting logic and persiflage--the
_sourire hideux_--of Voltaire had done in France, Paine, with coarser
materials, essayed to do for the English-speaking populations. Deism
was in the air of the time; Franklin, Jefferson, Ethan Allen, Joel
Barlow, and other prominent Americans were openly or unavowedly
deistic. Free thought, somehow, went along with democratic opinions,
and was a part of the liberal movement of the age. Paine was a man
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