A Ray of Light

v. the despicable craft of preferring expedient to right

Paine returned to the United States in 1802 at the invitation and under the protection of then President Thomas Jefferson. The America he found on his return was not the land of liberty, equality, justice, and fraternity that he had envisioned as a young revolutionary propagandist and journalist.

”My anxiety to get back to America was great for several years. It is the country of my heart, and the place of my political and literary birth. It was the American revolution that made me an author, and forced into action the mind that had been dormant, and had no wish for public life; nor has it now. By the accounts I received, she appeared to me to be going wrong, and that some meditated treason against her liberties lurked at the bottom of her government. I heard that my friends were oppressed, and I longed to take my stand among them; and if other “times to try men’s souls” were to arrive that I might bear my share.”

Perhaps the last of his great works were a series of letters addressed to his fellow countrymen and women, that is YOU: Thomas Paine to the Citizens of the United States. We have discussed them here previously and, per our announced intention, we will continue to revisit them. How do you think this may apply to the leadership we see in front of us today?

“In my publications, I follow the rule I began with in Common Sense, that is, to consult nobody, nor to let any body see what I write till it appears publicly. Were I to do otherwise, the case would be, that between the timidity of some, who are so afraid of doing wrong that they never do right, the puny judgment of others, and the despicable craft of preferring expedient to right, as if the world was a world of babies in leading strings, I should get forward with nothing. My path is a right line, as straight and clear to me as a ray of light. The boldness (if they will have it to be so) with which I speak on any subject, is a compliment to the judgment of the reader. It is like saying to him, I treat you as a man and not as a child. With respect to any worldly object, as it is impossible to discover any in me, therefore what I do, and my manner of doing it, ought to be ascribed to a good motive.”

Thomas Paine to the Citizens of the United States
Letter IV