“Revolutions are the Order of the Day”: Atlantic Fragments of Thomas Paine, c. 1819-1832

At the end of the Atlantic revolutions, the counter-revolutionary campaigns against T. Paine played a specific political task in removing democracy from the public horizon. Yet, none other than the disparaging biographies - published by J. Cheetham and G. Chalmers among others - showed his success in having promoted the revolution as a democratic challenge that it was possible to win on both sides of the ocean: reading Paine, English and American workers of the following generations to the revolutionary one understood that poverty and political exclusion were not irrevocable, but something that could be changed. The essay aims at reconstructing such fragmented legacies of Paine in an Atlantic world (1819-1832) marked by a roughly transition from commercial society toward industrial capitalism. In Great Britain, his previous detractor W. Cobbet vindicated his figure, and his works were reprinted by W.T. Scherwin e R. Carlile, editors of The Republican. This was the “first fragment of Paine” that contributed, within a decade, to the early making of Chartism. By referring to labour leaders such as W. Benbow and J. Watson and by reading journals like The Poor’s Man Guardian, the essay show how Paine’s thought both permeated and politicized trade unions (and their struggle for eight hours’ working day) and shaped the six points of the The People's Charter. A turning point in this direction was the watershed of 1832, the year of approval of the Reform Act, when the “second fragment of Paine”, the Paine of Chartists, arised. In United States, reformers and radicals saw Paine as the symbol of the American Revolution's promise of democracy that they considered to be unfulfilled because of money aristocracy of bankers and brokers. While reformers such as F. Wright celebrated Paine uncritically by arguing more about inequality of education than inequality of wealth as the cause of poverty, G.H. Evans and T. Skidmore – the leader of the workingmen’s movement that struck in 1829 New York – pointed out his carelessness about social inequality (Common Sense) in order to denounce the unresolved issues of the Revolution. This was the “third fragment of Paine”. In conclusion, the essay shows how such fragmented legacy crisscrossed the Atlantic and connected the first English and American working class movements, by highlighting the changing meaning of his democratic language: being used by new social figures related to economic changes, his democratic language underwent a conceptual maturation by taking a specific class meaning.