Thomas Paine - King Street - Thetford, Norfolk
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SMacB
N 52° 24.857 E 000° 44.841
31U E 346796 N 5809504
Statue of Thomas Paine outside Kings House, King Street, Thetford. English-American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. One of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
Waymark Code: WMWDP8
Location: Eastern England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 08/20/2017
Views: 2
Statue of Thomas Paine outside Kings House, King Street, Thetford.
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Signatures/Marks |
Sculptor Charles Wheeler P.R.A: Dedicated June 7.1964 |
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Inscriptions |
Front: 'MY COUNTRY IS THE WORLD : MY RELIGION TO DO GOOD' / 'Presented to the people of England / by the Thomas Paine Foundation / New York U.S.A. Secretary Joseph Lewis'
West-facing: 'Independence is / my happiness and / I view things as / they are without / regard to place or / person I had rather / record a thousand / errors dictated / by humanity than / one inspired by a / justice too severe / Wisdom is not the / purchase of a day'
East-facing: 'Justice is due to every / man : I seek no re- / compense - I fear / no consequences / Fortified with that / proud integrity that / disdains triumph or / to yield. I will ad- / vocate the rights / of man : it is an / affront to truth / to treat falsehood / with complaisance
Back left: 'My own mind is my / own church what- / ever is my right as / a man is also the / right of another / And it becomes my / duty to gaurantee / as well as possess / Why do men con- / tinue to practice / on themselves the / absurdities they / despise in others'
Back right: 'It is necessary to / the happiness of / man that he be men- / tally faithful to / himself: I believe / in the equality of / man. I believe that / religious duties con- / sist in doing just- / ice loving mercy / and endeavouring / to make our fellow / creatures happy.'
Foot at rear: 'World Citizen / Englishman by birth - French citizen by decree / American by adoption'
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Description (physical)
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Larger than life-size gilded statue of Thomas Paine wearing a wig and period dress standing on a classical plinth set on a single-step base. The figure is in an animated standing pose with an outstretched right hand holding a quill pen and a down-stretched left hand holding the book 'Rights of Man' upside-down |
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Description (iconographical)
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Paine is represented as a writer and internationalist - the globe signifying his status as 'World citizen'. Given the revolutionary nature of his ideas the siting of the statue outside the King's House is usually taken to be ironic. The upside-down book is a conceit intended to provoke discussion and debate. The tradition of Paine statues being gold and erected in every free-thinking city derives from a probably apocryphal suggestion by Napoleon intended as flattery. The commission for Thetford was prompted by members of the USAAF 388th Bomber Group, who had flown B17 Flying Fortresses out of nearby Knettishall for 2 years. They knew that Thomas Paine was born in Thetford and named one of their B-17's Tom Paine with the inscription "Tyranny like Hell is not easily conquered." After the war they worked with the Thomas Paine Association to raise the funding for the Thetford statue (see under Coney Weston). |
SOURCE - (Visit Link)
"Thomas Paine (or Pain; February 9, 1737 [O.S. January 29, 1736] – June 8, 1809) was an English-American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, he authored the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and he inspired the rebels in 1776 to declare independence from Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era rhetoric of transnational human rights. He has been called "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination."
Born in Thetford in the English county of Norfolk, Paine migrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution. Virtually every rebel read (or listened to a reading of) his powerful pamphlet Common Sense (1776), proportionally the all-time best-selling American title, which crystallized the rebellious demand for independence from Great Britain. His The American Crisis (1776–83) was a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series. Common Sense was so influential that John Adams said, "Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain."
Paine lived in France for most of the 1790s, becoming deeply involved in the French Revolution. He wrote Rights of Man (1791), in part a defense of the French Revolution against its critics. His attacks on Anglo-Irish conservative writer Edmund Burke led to a trial and conviction in absentia in 1792 for the crime of seditious libel. In 1792, despite not being able to speak French, he was elected to the French National Convention. The Girondists regarded him as an ally. Consequently, the Montagnards, especially Robespierre, regarded him as an enemy.
In December 1793, he was arrested and was taken to Luxembourg Prison in Paris. While in prison, he continued to work on The Age of Reason (1793–94). Future President James Monroe used his diplomatic connections to get Paine released in November 1794. He became notorious because of his pamphlets The Age of Reason, in which he advocated deism, promoted reason and free thought, and argued against institutionalized religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular. He also published the pamphlet Agrarian Justice (1797), discussing the origins of property, and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income. In 1802, he returned to the U.S. where he died on June 8, 1809. Only six people attended his funeral as he had been ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity."
SOURCE & further reading - (Visit Link)