What became of Tom Paine's body? Walt tells the story

Billy Bedammed, from Teaticket MA, asks: "Mr Walt, I have a stamp in my collection showing a man with a big nose named Thomas Paine. Which president was he?"

[Walt chuckles.] I'm afraid your friend loses, Billy. That man was no president. He was Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain, aka Tom Paine) an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. He authored Common Sense and The Rights of Man, the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and inspired the patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era ideals of transnational human rights.

Sadly, Thomas Paine died reviled and nearly friendless, in large part because of his ultra-liberal ideas. Only six people attended his funeral. However, one of his harshest critics, an English pamphleteer named William Cobbett, had a change of heart after seeing the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the poor. Mr Cobbett became a radical reform, inveighing against monied interests and monarchical privileges. In 1817, after serving two years in prison for sedition, he fled to the land of the free, as the USA then was.

Soon after his arrival, William Cobbett visited the grave of his hero in New Rochelle NY. He was outraged at how poorly the grave was being maintained, writing "Paine lies in a little hole under the grass and weeds of an obscure farm in America." He made it his mission to remove Paine's earthly remains to England, where he thought they could be properly venerated, with a monument which would be a rallying place for the poor and downtrodden.

Getting Tom Paine's body was easy enough. Cobbett dug it up in the dark of night and shipped the corpse to Ole Blighty. Unfortunately, he lacked the money needed for the elaborate funeral he had planned, let alone a decent mausoleum. What to do?! He decided to take the relic on a tour of Britain, expecting that thousands of people would pay to see it. He was wrong. No-one came to Cobbett's "bone rallies". Eventually he was reduced to selling locks of Paine's hair. Wrong again.

William Cobbett was forced to realize that nobody in England gave even one piece of excrement about Thomas Paine. Reluctantly, he shelved his plans, and shelved Paine's earthly remains under his bed, where they stayed until Cobbett's death in 1835. The estate, including what was left of Tom Paine, passed to Cobbett's son. When he was arrested for debt, all his possessions, including poor Tom's skeleton, were seized for auction. However, a judge ruled that the skeleton was not a marketable asset, and ordered it returned to the younger Cobbett. What happened to it after that remains a mystery.

Credit where credit is due Dept.: This story was adapted from A Treasury of Great American Scandals, by Michael Farquhar, Penguin 2003.

Anti-immigrant backlash grows across Europe

While I was away [Watch this space for "Tales from Down East". Ed.], Agent 17 sent along the link to "'Enlightenment values': Austria enacts anti-burqa & compulsory integration law", RT News 9/6/17. "Enlightenment values" strikes me as a good phrase. What are those values? They must be the "values" -- a loaded word for the progressive do-good wienies -- which "enlightened" people share and hold dear. "Enlightened" is nowadays equated, quite properly, with the word "civilized". (See the article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.)

Enlightened civilization -- European civilization -- is under threat now as never before from the hordes of unenlightened -- read Muslim -- invaders pouring into Europe from the Middle East and North Africa. Even such famously tolerant peoples as the Swedes and the Austrians are getting tired of it, and fearful of being drowned in the wave of Islamization sweeping across the continent. That's what the article is about.

Like King Canute trying to turn back the tide, the Austrian parliament has passed a law that will fine women who wear Islamic dress covering the whole face, and takes away welfare benefits from immigrants who fail to learn the language. It says, remarkably frankly, that "those who are not prepared to accept Enlightenment values will have to leave our country and society."

According to the law, women will face a fine of €150 ($168 in real money) if they wear Islamic dress, either the niqab or the burqa, in public places. In addition to the fines, all new migrants -- even the "refugees" and asylum-seekers -- coming to Austria will now be forced, if they want to suck on the public tit [receive welfare benefits, surely! Ed.] to take a 12-month "integration course" that includes German language lessons.

But wait (as Vince Offer used to say), there's more! The new law also makes it illegal for newcomers to distribute "incendiary materials". Migrants will also be encouraged to volunteer -- do unpaid community work -- to prepare them for life in the workplace, before acquiring permanent work permits. Good luck with that one.

Austria's latest attempt to integrate new immigrants has come in response to the migrant crisis rocking most European countries. At least 90,000 migrants, mostly from Muslim-majority countries outside Europe, have arrived in Austria since 2015. Nothing like the hundreds of thousands who've entered Germany, but still you have to hand it to the Austrians for trying to do something about the problem before it's too late. Oh... wait....

Meanwhile... Virginia Raggi, the Mayor of Rome, has asked the Italian government to stop the flow of immigrants into the Eternal City. Here's why.

This is one of several "camps" -- read "instant slums" -- which have sprung up in Rome. The unenlightened people who live here in squalor are Roma. That's the PC name for "gypsies", the people our mothers warned us would pick our pockets, steal our horses and kidnap our children. They do do those things, except maybe for the horses, of which there's a dearth in Rome, which is why, this past Tuesday, Sra Raggi asked the Italian interior ministry to suspend migrant arrivals to the capital. "I find it impossible, as well as risky," she wrote, "to think up further accommodation structures." See
Rome mayor promises to close Roma camps in the capital , The Local it, 31/5/17.

Mayor Raggi cited as reasons for the request the "strong migratory presence" in the capital and "the continued influx of foreign citizens". According to the most recent figures published by the administration, on 1 January 2016 -- nearly 18 months ago -- there were approximately 364,632 foreigners living in Rome, almost 13% of the total population.

Across Italy as a whole [Ed., please check spelling] around 8.3% of the population is foreign. In Rome, around half of the foreign population were from Europe, with Romanians -- gypsies -- making up 23.2% of the total. Although over half the 170,000 or so Roma in Italy are Italian citizens with regular jobs and houses, attacks on the ousiders are common. According to a 2015 Pew Research Centre survey, anti-Roma sentiment is significantly stronger in Italy than almost any other European country. Not hard to understand, is it?