The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• General Introduction, With Last Gleanings, Historical and Biographical.
• The Age of Reason. Editor’s Introduction.
• I.: The Age of Reason.
• Chapter I.: The Author’s Profession of Faith.
• Chapter II.: Of Missions and Revelations.
• Chapter III.: Concerning the Character of Jesus Christ, and His History.
• Chapter IV.: Of the Bases of Christianity.
• Chapter V.: Examination In Detail of the Preceding Bases.
• Chapter VI.: Of the True Theology.
• Chapter VII.: Examination of the Old Testament.
• Chapter VIII.: Of the New Testament.
• Chapter IX.: In What the True Revelation Consists.
• Chapter X.: Concerning God, and the Lights Cast On His Existence and Attributes By the Bible.
• Chapter XI.: Of the Theology of the Christians; and the True Theology.
• Chapter XII.: The Effects of Christianism On Education. Proposed Reforms.
• Chapter XIII.: Comparison of Christianism With the Religious Ideas Inspired By Nature.
• Chapter XIV.: System of the Universe.
• Chapter XV.: Advantages of the Existence of Many Worlds In Each Solar System.
• Chapter XVI.: Application of the Preceding to the System of the Christians.
• Chapter XVII.: Of the Means Employed In All Time, and Almost Universally, to Deceive the Peoples.
• Recapitulation.
• The Age of Reason.: Part II.
• Preface.
• Chapter I.: The Old Testament.
• Chapter II.: The New Testament.
• Chapter III.: Conclusion.
• III.: Letters Concerning %u201cthe Age of Reason.%u201d
• IV.: Prosecution of the Age of Reason. 1
• V.: The Existence of God. a Discourse At the Society of Theophilanthropists, Paris. 1
• VI.: Worship and Church Bells. a Letter to Camille Jordan. 1
• VII.: Answer to the Bishop of Llandaff. Editorial Note.
• VIII.: Origin of Free-masonry. 1
• IX.: Prospect Papers. Editor’s Preface.
• X.: Examination of Prophecies. 1 Author’s Preface.
• XI.: A Letter to Andrew Dean. 1
• XII.: Predestination.
• Appendix A.: Atuobiographical Sketch.
• Appendix B.
• Appendix C.: Scientific Memoranda.
• Appendix D.: The Iron Bridge.
• Appendix E.: the Construction of Iron Bridges.
• Appendix F.: to the People of England On the Invasion of England.
• Appendix G.: Constitutional Reform. 1
• Appendix H.: Constitutions, Governments, and Charters.
• Appendix I.: The Cause of the Yellow Fever, and the Means of Preventing It In Places Not Yet Infected With It.
• Appendix J.: Liberty of the Press. 1
• Appendix K.: the Snowdrop and the Critic, 1 to the Editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, 1775.
• Appendix L. 1: Case of the Officers of Excise; With Remarks On the Qualifications of Officers, and On the Numerous Evils Arising to the Revenue, From the Insufficiency of the Present Salary: Humbly Addressed to the Members of Both Houses of Parliament.
• Appendix M.: The Will of Thomas Paine.

APPENDIX E.

THE CONSTRUCTION OF IRON BRIDGES.

As bridges, and the method of constructing them, are becoming objects of great importance throughout the United States, and as there are at this time proposals for a bridge over the Delaware, and also a bridge beginning to be erected over the Schuylkill at Philadelphia, I present the public with some account of the construction of iron bridges.

The following memoir on that subject written last winter at the Federal City, was intended to be presented to Congress. But as the session would necessarily be short, and as several of its members would be replaced by new elections at the ensuing session, it was judged better to let it lie over. In the mean time, on account of the bridges now in contemplation, or begun, I give the memoir the opportunity of appearing before the public, and the persons concerned in those works.

N.B.—The two models mentioned in this memoir will, I expect, arrive at Philadelphia by the next packet, from the federal city and will remain for some time in Mr. Peale’s museum.

ThomasPaine.

• Bordentown,

June, 1803.

TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES.

I have deposited in the office of the Secretary of State, and under the care of the Patent Office, two models of iron bridges; the one in pasteboard, the other cast in metal.1 As they will show, by inspection, the manner of constructing iron bridges, I shall not take up the time of Congress with a description of them.

My intention in presenting this memoir to Congress, is to put the country in possession of the means and of the right of making use of the construction freely; as I do not intend to take any patent right for it.

As America abounds in rivers that interrupt the land communication, and as by violence of floods, and the breaking up of the ice in the spring, the bridges depending for support from the bottom of the river are frequently carried away, I turned my attention, after the revolutionary war was over, to find a method of constructing an arch, that might, without rendering the height inconvenient or the ascent difficult, extend at once from shore to shore, over rivers of three, four, or five hundred feet, and probably more.

The principle I took to begin with, and work upon, was that the small segment of a large circle was preferable to the great segment of a small circle. The appearance of such arches, and the manner of forming and putting the parts together, admit of many varieties, but the principle will be the same in all. The bridge architects that I conversed with in England denied the principle, but it was generally supported by mathematicians, and experiment has now established the fact.

In 1786, I made three models, partly at Philadelphia, but mostly at Bordentown in the state of New-Jersey. One model was in wood, one in cast iron, and one in wrought iron connected with blocks of wood, representing cast iron blocks, but all on the same principle, that of the small segment of a large circle.

I took the last mentioned one with me to France in 1787, and presented it to the Academy of Sciences at Paris for their opinion of it, The Academy appointed a committee of three of their own body—Mons. Le Roy, the abbé Bossou, and Mons. Borda. The first was an acquaintance of Dr. Franklin, and of Mr. Jefferson, then Minister at Paris. The two others were celebrated as mathematicians. I presented it as a model for a bridge of a single arch of 400 feet span over the river Schuylkill at Philadelphia. The committee brought in a report which the Academy adopted—that an arch on the principle and construction of the model, in their opinion, might be extended 400 feet, the extent proposed.

In September of the same year, I sent the model to Sir Joseph Banks, presisident of the Royal Society in England, and soon after went there myself.

In order to ascertain the truth of the principle on a larger scale than could be shown by a portable model five or six feet in length, I went to the iron foundery of Messrs. Walker, at Rotherham, county of Yorkshire, in England, and had a complete rib of 90 feet span, and 5 feet of height from the cord line to the centre of the arch, manufactured and erected.2 It was a segment of a circle of 410 feet diameter; and until this was done, no experiment on a circle of such an extensive diameter had ever been made in architecture, or the practicability of it supposed.

The rib was erected between a wall of a furnace belonging to the iron works, and the gable end of a brick building, which served as butments. The weight of iron in the rib was three tons, and we loaded it with double its weight in pig iron. I wrote to Mr. Jefferson who was then at Paris, an account of this experiment, and also to Sir Joseph Banks in London, who in his answer to me says—“I look for many other bold improvements from your countrymen, the Americans, who think with vigour, and are not fettered with the trammels of science before they are capable of exerting their mental faculties to advantage.” On the success of this experiment, I entered into an agreement with the iron-founders at Rotherham to cast and manufacture a complete bridge, to be composed of five ribs of 210 feet span, and 5 feet of height from the cord line, being a segment of a circle 610 feet diameter, and send it to London, to be erected as a specimen for establishing a manufactory of iron bridges, to be sent to any part of the world. The bridge was erected at the village of Paddington, near London, but being in a plain field, where no advantage could be taken of butments without the expense of building them, as in the former case, it served only as a specimen of the practicability of a manufactory of iron bridges. It was brought by sea, packed in the hold of a vessel, from the place where it was made; and after standing a year was taken down, without injury to any of its parts, and might be erected any where else.

At this time my bridge operations became suspended. Mr. Edmund Burke published his attack on the French revolution and the system of representative government, and in defence of government by hereditary succession, a thing which is in its nature an absurdity, because it is impossible to make wisdom hereditary; and therefore, so far as wisdom is necessary in a government, it must be looked for where it can be found, sometimes in one family, sometimes in another. History informs us that the son of Solomon was a fool. He lost ten tribes out of twelve (2 Chron. ch. x.). There are those in later times who lost thirteen.1

The publication of this work by Mr. Burke, absurd in its principles and outrageous in its manner, drew me, as I have said, from my bridge operations, and my time became employed in defending a system then established and operating in America, and which I wished to see peaceably adopted in Europe. I therefore ceased my work on the bridge to employ myself on the more necessary work, Rights of Man, in answer to Mr. Burke.

In 1792, a Convention was elected in France for the express purpose of forming a Constitution on the authority of the people, as had been done in America, of which Convention I was elected a member. I was at this time in England, and knew nothing of my being elected till the arrival of the person who was sent officially to inform me of it.

During my residence in France, which was from 1792 to 1802, an iron bridge of 236 feet span, and 34 of height from the cord line, was erected over the river Wear near the town of Sunderland, in the county of Durham, England. It was done chiefly at the expense of the two Members of Parliament for that county, Milbanke and Burdon.

It happened that a very intimate friend of mine, Sir Robert Smyth (who was also an acquaintance of Mr. Monroe, the American Minister, and since of Mr. Livingston) was then at Paris. He had been a colleague in Parliament with Milbanke, and supposing that the persons who constructed the iron bridge at Sunderland had made free with my model, which was at the iron works where the Sunderland bridge was cast, he wrote to Milbanke on the subject, and the following is that gentleman’s answer.

“With respect to the iron bridge over the river Wear at Sunderland, it certainly is a work well deserving admiration, both for its structure and utility, and I have good grounds for saying that the first idea was suggested by Mr. Paine’s bridge exhibited at Paddington. What difference there may be in some part of the structure, or in the proportion of wrought and cast iron, I cannot pretend to say, Burdon having undertaken to build the bridge, in consequence of his having taken upon himself whatever the expense might be beyond between three and four thousand pounds sterling, subscribed by myself and some other gentlemen. But whatever the mechanism might be, it did not supersede the necessity of a centre.”∗ (The writer has here confounded a centre with a scaffolding.) “Which centre (continues the writer) was esteemed a very ingenious piece of workmanship, and taken from a plan sketched out by Mr. Nash, an architect of great merit, who had been consulted in the outset of the business, when a bridge of stone was in contemplation.

With respect therefore to any gratuity to Mr. Paine, though ever so desirous of rewarding the labours of an ingenious man, I do not feel how, under the circumstances already described, I have it in my power, having had nothing to do with the bridge after the payment of my subscription, Mr. Burdon then becoming accountable for the whole. But if you can point out any mode according to which it would be in my power to be instrumental in procuring him any compensation for the advantages the public may have derived from his ingenious model, from which certainly the outline of the Bridge at Sunderland was taken, be assured it will afford me very great satisfaction.†

Ra.Milbanke.“

The year before I left France, the government of that country had it in contemplation to erect an iron bridge over the river Seine, at Paris. As all edifices of public construction came under the cognizance of the Minister of the Interior, (and as their plan was to erect a bridge of five iron arches of one hundred feet span each, instead of passing the river with a single arch, and which was going backward in practice, instead of forward, as there was already an iron arch of 230 feet in existence), I wrote the Minister of the Interior, the citizen Chaptal, a memoir on the construction of iron bridges. The following is his answer:

“The Minister of the Interior to the citizen Thomas Paine.—I have received, Citizen, the observations that you have been so good as to address to me upon the construction of iron bridges. They will be of the greatest utility to us, when the new kind of construction goes to be executed for the first time. With pleasure, I assure you, Citizen, that you have rights of more than one kind to the thankfulness of nations, and I give you, cordially, the particular expression of my esteem.—Chaptal.“∗

A short time before I left France, a person came to me from London with plans and drawings for an iron bridge of one arch over the river Thames at London, of 600 feet span, and sixty feet of height from the cord line. The subject was then before a committee of the House of Commons, but I know not the proceedings thereon.

As this new construction of an arch for bridges, and the principles on which it is founded, originated in America, as the documents I have produced sufficiently prove, and is becoming an object of importance to the world, and to no part of it more than to our own country, on account of its numerous rivers, and as no experiment has been made in America to bring it into practice, further than on the model I have executed myself, and at my own expense, I beg leave to submit a proposal to Congress on the subject, which is,

To erect an experiment rib of about 400 feet span, to be the segment of a circle of at least 1000 feet diameter, and to let it remain exposed to public view, that the method of constructing such arches may be generally known.

It is an advantage peculiar to the construction of iron bridges that the success of an arch of a given extent and height, can be ascertained without being at the expense of building the bridge; which is, by the method I propose, that of erecting an experiment rib on the ground where advantage can be taken of two hills for butments.

I began in this manner with the rib of 90 feet span and 5 feet of height, being a segment of a circle of 410 feet diameter. The undertakers of the Sunderland bridge began in the same manner. They contracted with the iron-founder for a single rib, and, finding it to answer, had five more manufactured like it, and erected into a bridge consisting of six ribs, the experiment rib being one. But the Sunderland bridge does not carry the principle much further into practice than had been done by the rib of 90 feet span and 5 feet in height, being, as before said, a segment of a circle of 410 feet diameter; the Sunderland bridge, being 206 feet span and 34 feet of height, gives the diameter of the circle of which it is a segment to be 444 feet, within a few inches, which is but a larger segment of a circle of 30 feet more diameter.

The construction of those bridges does not come within the line of any established practice of business. The stone architect can derive but little from the theory or practice of his art that enters into his construction of an iron bridge; and the iron-founder, though he may be expert in moulding and casting the parts, when the models are given him, would be at a loss to proportion them, unless he was acquainted with all the lines and properties belonging to a circle.

If it should appear to Congress that the construction of iron bridges will be of utility to the country, and they should direct that an experiment rib be made for that purpose, I will furnish the proportions for the several parts of the work, and give my attendance to superintend the erection of it.

But, in any case, I have to request that this memoir may be put on the journals of Congress, as an evidence hereafter, that this new method of constructing bridges originated in America.

ThomasPaine.

• FederalCity,

Jan. 3, 1803.

Editorial Note.—Paine’s Specification is given in vol. ii., chap. 10, of this work, and some facts about his bridge in chap. 11. (See also my “Life of Paine,” Index.) For the convenience of those who wish to pursue the subject I quote Burdon’s declaration: “My Invention consists in applying iron or other metallic compositions to the purpose of constructing arches, upon the same principle as stone is now employed, by a substitution into blocks, easily portable, answering to the keystones of a common arch, which being brought to bear on each other, gives them all the firmness of the solid stone arch, whilst by the great vacuities in the blocks and their respective distances in their lateral position, the arch becomes infinitely lighter than that of stone, and, by the tenacity of the metal, the parts are so intimately connected that the accurate calculation of the extrados and intrados, so necessary in stone arches of magnitude, is rendered of much less consequence.” (Specification of Rowland Burdon, a.d.1795, No. 2066.) Those who are aware of the extent to which Paine’s discoveries and “materials” have been utilized in political and religious structures, while their originator’s effigy (alone known to many people) has been held up to execration, will not wonder that while the literal effigy was being burnt throughout England (1792–93) his Paddington model (210 feet span) was following the usual course, as is stated by Dr. Smiles: “In the meantime the bridge exhibited at Paddington had produced important results. The manufacturers agreed to take it back as part of their debt, and the materials were afterwards used in the construction of the noble bridge over the Wear at Sunderland, which was erected in 1796. The project...is due to Mr. Rowland Burdon, under whom Mr. T. Wilson served as engineer. The details differed in several important respects from the proposed bridge of Paine, Mr. Burdon introducing several new and original features, more particularly as regarded the framed iron panels radiating towards the centre in the form of voussoirs, for the purpose of resisting compression. Mr. Phipps, C. E., in a report prepared by him at the instance of the late Robert Stephenson...observes, with regard to the original design,—‘We should probably make a fair division of the honour connected with this unique bridge, by conceding to Mr. Burdon all that belongs to a careful elaboration and improvement upon the designs of another, to the boldness of taking upon himself the responsibility of applying this idea on so magnificent a scale, and to his liberality and public spirit in furnishing the requisite funds; but we must not deny to Paine the credit of conceiving the construction of iron bridges of far larger span than had been made before his time, or of the important examples both as models and large constructions which he caused to be made and publicly exhibited.’”—Smiles’ “Life of Telford.”—Editor.

[1]For an account of the making of these models see vol. iii., p. 376, of this work.—Editor.

[2]See Guest’s “Historic Notices of Rotherham,” where two letters of Paine appear. The tradition that Paine wrote there his “Age of Reason,” and the similar one at Bromley, Kent, suggest that Paine may already have given expression in conversation to his deistical views. With regard to the model arch the following extract from an unpublished letter, written from London by Paine (Feb. 26, 1789) to Thomas Walker, Rotherham, will be read with interest: “I wrote to the President of the Board of Works last Monday wishing him to begin making preparations for erecting the arch I am so confident of his judgment that I can safely rely upon his going on as far as he pleases without me, and at any rate I shall not be long before I visit Rotherham.—I had a letter yesterday from Mr. Foljambe apologizing for his being obliged unexpectedly to leave town without calling on me, but that he should be in London again in a few days. He concludes his letter by saying: “I saw the Rib of your Bridge. In point of eloquence and beauty it far exceeded my expectations, and is certainly beyond anything I ever saw.” You will please to inform the President what Mr. Foljambe says, as I think him entitled to participate in the applause. Mr. Fox of Derby called again on me last evening respecting the Bridge, but I was not at home. There is a project of erecting a Bridge at Dublin, which will be a large undertaking; and as the Duke of Leinster and the other deputies from Ireland are arrived, I intend making an opportunity of speaking to them on that business.”—Editor.

[1]The thirteen American colonies.—Editor.

[∗]It is the technical term, meaning the boards and numbers which form the arch upon which the permanent materials are laid; when a bridge is finished the workmen say they are ready to strike centre, that is to take down the scaffolding.—Author.

[†]The original is in my possession.—Author.

[∗]The original, in French, is in my possession.—Author. Lewis Goldsmith, in his “Antigallican Monitor” (Feb. 28, 1813) says: “Paine really had a claim on Buonaparte’s government, independent of the revolutionary labours, for a Bridge which he projected to go over the Seine, at Paris, and which is like that of Sunderland; but Buonaparte’s Minister, Chaptal, told him that foreigners could not make any legal claim on the French government, and thus was the application got rid of.”—Editor.