The Life and Character of Thomas Paine
Part 1

John Alberger

[Reprinted from The North American Review / Volume 57, Issue 120, July 1843]

ART. I. An Oration delivered at the Celebration in Philadelphia of the 106th Anniversary of the Birthday of THOMAS PAINE

To dig from an almost forgotten grave the intellectual character of Thomas Paine, the object of violent obloquy during life, and of contumely after death, may not be without its uses in these our times. It may be done now without offence ; it may be done, we think, without injustice; without offence, for we are not aware of the existence of any man, woman, or child, any men or set of men, whom criticism on such a theme can wound. Many a teacher of pernicious doctrine has, by the purity of his domestic and social relations, left behind him a sort of protective character. There are surviving relatives and friends, or those who know surviving relatives and friends, who disarm even just criticism, and, standing around the grave, claim pity for themselves, if not for the poor inhabitants below. But Paine had none of these. He was childless, and friendless. Nor is there a human being in this wide world, we verily believe, who cares a jot for him or his memory. There was, perhaps, to use one of his own phrases, something like sentimental union between him and the sparse congregation of freethinkers who looked to him in life as an oracle. But it was a sentimental union in its strictest sense. There were a few, who, when he died, regarded him as a sort of martyr. But the affection or sympathy of such a class scarcely deserves the name. The heart where it dwells is hard and bony. It has no play, no warm life-spring. There is, in pathological phrase, with such folks, a perpetual determination of blood to the head, leaving the sources of feeling and true sentiment dry. No offence, therefore, can be given, even by harsh criticism, if it be deserved.

It may be done, too, without injustice. The time has long since gone by, when the name of Paine would throw good and pious men into paroxysms of indignation. No one nowadays reads The Age of Reason, such is the entire and contemptuous oblivion into which it has fallen; nor would any one take the trouble to mutilate a copy of Paine's Works, as was once the fashion, by cutting out his pages of loathsome infidelity. Revealed religion has too firm a hold on the mind of this age to be weakened by such cavils as Paine's, or to be strengthened by the answers of his adversaries. The Christians faith has truly begun to be something far higher, something that lies far deeper, than any mere act of the understanding; and that something is too secure to be enfeebled or wounded by sneering sophistry, or much invigorated by logical processes. If Paine, or any other infidel, rendered, in any mode or to any extent, service to the cause of liberty or morality, if any one of his fugitive essays, at the time of its publication, made the pulse of patriotism beat more quickly, or awakened any slumbering sense of public duty, there is now no such blinding prejudice as to make us reluctant to admit our obligation, be it what it may, to its full extent. His character may, therefore, be treated with entire impartiality; we repeat it, without offence and without injustice.

And what a strange and eventful career was his! As a little incident of history, how much varying interest was crowded into his life! All climes, regions, habits, and institutions were Paine's by adoption; and yet, such was the strange uncongeniality of his temper, with none did he seem to claim communion. He was a citizen of the world, and, of course, alien to every part of it. Born in Great Britain, he was an exile, and, literally and technically, an outlaw; naturalized in America, he renounced her moderate republicanism for the exaggerations of French democracy; a citizen of France, one of her august Counsellors, he hecame ex officio an inmate of the Conciergerie, and was glad, not grateful, to escape with his head upon his shoulders buried in an American village, the grave, usually a quiet home, was violated, and the bones of the restless cosmopolite were exhumed and carried abroad, in solemn mockery of the relics of holy men of old.

In respect to America, we have a right to cause her share in this fluctuating property to be accurately defined; and one object we now have in view is, without at all derogating from the actual value of Paine's services during the Revolution, to mark their worth very precisely, and to correct a prevalent notion, which in life he was anxious to cultivate, that he was by common consent regarded as a great benefactor to America, and that, as connected with our Revolutionary history, we Americans entertain cordial feelings towards him. There is now before us a letter from Paine, written on his return to America, in 1802, and republished in a British periodical, in which this absurd specimen of self-glorification is contained:

"I arrived at Baltimore on the 30th of October, and you can have no idea of the agitation which my arrival occasioned. From New Hampshire to Georgia, (an extent of fifteen hundred miles,) every newspaper was filled with applause or abuse."

There are those living who remember the agitation of that day, and we shall have occasion hereafter to recur to the circumstances of his return to America, and to see what contemptible exaggeration of his own importance those lines embody. The truth is, that Paine came back a poor pensioner of party, an outcast from abroad, an illegitimate Jacobin, and assumed the congenial trust of a contributor to a ribald press, for which office and those who employed him knew his qualifications he was admirably fitted. Yet we doubt not that there are those abroad, and at home too, who may be deceived by such pompous mendacity as this, and may be led to believe that Paine really was one of the great men of the Revolution, and that when, in old age, he returned to the land which, in early life, he had, in a very limited measure, benefited, the public voice spoke cordial welcome, and the popular mind was moved to ecstatic gratitude. There are those, too, who may be very willing to believe, that the American canon admits such saints, and that Paine, the infidel, the scoffer, the libertine, the drunkard, and, worse than all perhaps in anti-republican judgment, the stay-maker, was just the man for our savage, vulgar democracy to be proud of. Far, very far, is this from the truth.

It has always been with us matter of grateful wonder, that the American Revolution was so little contaminated by the cooperation of unworthy men, and especially of unworthy foreigners. It was a great popular movement, which attracted attention and awakened sympathy throughout the civilized world. A continent in arms against oppression was an imposing and attractive spectacle. The oppressor, too, was England, towards whom Continental Europe bore no love, and from whose government and ministry many Englishmen were alienated. There were, in a revolution, new avenues to honor and emolument, which one might naturally suppose would soon be crowded from abroad. Yet how few came hither, and, with the exception of French military adventurers, how exclusively were the ranks of our armies and the halls of our councils filled with those who were born on the soil, or who were domiciled here before the war began!

There was, in truth, as we perceive when we come to look more closely, a reason why sympathy from abroad, otherwise so natural, in this case met with some check. The Revolution, dating its commencement long prior to actual hostilities, was very gradual. From 1763 to 1774, it was a matter of grave, deliberative remonstrance and reasoning. There were professions of loyalty, not such as the Scotch Covenanters and the Long Parliament made to Charles the First, with arms in their hands, ready and willing to seize what might not be conceded to them, but professions earnest, sincere, and pacific, made by legislative assemblies and peaceful congresses, striving to convince Metropolitan authority, that its pretensions were unconstitutional. The Revolution was no affair of the barricades, of an infuriate, outraged populace rising suddenly to revenge. It was (thank Heaven!) no brigand revolt, no revolution of squatters, who, planting themselves on lands which belonged to others, raised the standard of rebellion, and solicited the kindred aid of all fugitives from justice throughout the world.

What fellow-feeling could there be between an English radical, assuming the breed to have been the same then as it is now, a reviler of kings and queens, lords and ladies, per se, and any one of the leaders of our peaceful, deliberative Revolution? How dilatory would the process of revolt, as it was exhibited in this country, have seemed to the self-sufficient reviler of all established institutions! How nauseous the professions of loyalty, which, till forbearance ceased to be a virtue, were sincerely uttered from the most patriotic lips! Any one who will read Dr. Franklin's correspondence whilst in London, prior to 1774, will see how different his associates were, and how rarely he was approached by men of the stamp which we have referred to.

The friends of America, too, in Great Britain were not of the radical order, though the radical party, by virtue of its hostility to the minister, were so far friends of America. Lords Camden, Chatham, and Shelburne, the Marquis of Rockingham, the Duke of Richmond, Burke, Fox, and General Conway, were friends of America, her advocates and steady defenders; but it was oppressed, not revolutionary, America which they defended, and radicalism saw in their proceedings few inducements to sympathy.

In Continental Europe, there was of course no occasion for sympathy, till actual hostilities commenced; and then the prevalent anxiety to serve America was, with one great exception, little else than a love of military adventure; and the foreign officers who came hither were Dalgettys somewhat etherealized, in whom a love of adventure and a love of pay were strangely blended. Excepting this attraction, Anglo-Saxon, Puritan America not only had no bond of union with France, but there was a positive antipathy between the inhabitants of the two countries. We have heard it from the lips of a venerable survivor of those days, a Frenchman by birth and early education, who came to this country as a military adventurer in 1778, and who yet lives honored and beloved amongst us, that on his arrival in this country the greatest difficulty he encountered was the prejudice against his country and his language. And it was very natural it should be so; for the only civilized enemy Colonial America had ever known was France, and the bloody alliance of Montcalm and Dieskau with the savage frontier tribes was too recent to be forgotten. The difference of national religion was also operative. The love of adventure conquered all these minor obstacles; but national and natural sympathy, as we have shown, never did and never could exist, and the want of it was constantly felt.

As early as May, 1777, Washington thus described the prevalent state of feeling on this point, in the army at least, and his language was, we imagine, a pretty faithful exponent of the feeling throughout the country. These foreigners, says he, in a letter to Richard Henry Lee, have no attachment nor ties to the country, further than interest binds them they have no influence, and are ignorant of the language they are to receive and give orders in; consequently great trouble or much confusion must follow. But this is not the worst; they have not the smallest chance to recruit others; and our officers think it exceedingly hard, after they have toiled in this service, and probably sustained many losses, to have strangers put over them, whose merit perhaps is not equal to their own, but whose effrontery will take no denial.

The truth is incontestable, and we mean only to state it, that the Revolution was our own, and such is our pride in this distinction, that we sometimes feel a shade of regret, as a matter of historical association, at even the French alliance; for we are confident that, although the contest would doubtless have been prolonged, and have been more sanguinary, had Rochambeau and his soldiers never landed on our shores, the result would have been the same, with no one to claim a share of the honor.

But to return to Paine, and his Revolutionary services, which it is almost absurd to mention in the same breath with the French alliance, and the aid actually rendered by the Frenchmen; we repeat, that we choose to define accurately these relations, if it be only as a matter of historical curiosity.

Thomas Paine, the child of humble, though respectable parents, was born at Thetford, in the county of Norfolk, England, in the year 1737. His father was a member of the Society of Friends, and, it is believed, held steadfastly to the tenets and discipline of that exemplary sect. His mother was an Episcopalian. In this difference of opinion between his parents, some of his biographers have seen the cause of his early skepticism. The memorials of his early life are too few to enable either friends or enemies to form any satisfactory conjecture as to the source of his opinions, which, if we are to believe his own testimony, germinated early in his restless mind, and never left it during life. As a matter of mere feeling, we would gladly adopt the theory we have referred to; for, as the experience and observation of all will show, hazardous in the extreme is the spiritual condition of that child, who, at the age of levity and thoughtlessness, sees no devotional concord in those to whom he looks for guidance, or hears nothing from their lips but the bitter words of that worst of domestic evils, family polemics.

The cultivation of the devotional principle in the childish mind is the highest and most delicate trust a parent ought to know. It may be deadened by rigorous exaction, as we too often see in the children of the most pious. It may rot away by utter neglect, and for want of the fostering care which a judicious parent can alone bestow. But, more than this, it may, in the mysterious process of mental development, produce bitter and poisonous fruit, when it is tortured and perplexed by the differences of those who, in its culture, at least, should agree. Momentous indeed let the example about to be illustrated enforce the precept is the responsibility of parents thus situated Be the cause what it may, Paine was, according to his own story, an infidel in the nursery. We quote his own awful language, in which he records his recollections of boyhood:

From the time I was capable of conceiving an idea and acting upon it by reflection, I either doubted the truth of the Christian system, or thought it to be a strange affair. I scarcely knew which it was, but I well remember, when about seven or eight years of age, hearing a sermon read by a relation of mine who was a great devotee of the Church. After the sermon was ended, I went into the garden, and, as I was going down the garden steps, (for I perfectly recollect the spot,) I revolted at the recollection of what I had heard, and thought to myself it was making Almighty God act like a passionate man, that killed his son when he could not revenge himself any other way; and, as I was sure a man would be hanged that did such a thing, I could not see for what purpose they preached such sermons. This was not one of those kind of thoughts that had any thing in it of childish levity. It was to me a serious reflection, arising from the idea I had that God was too good to do such an action, and also too almighty to be under any necessity of doing it. I believe in the same manner to this moment; and I moreover believe that any system of religion, that has any thing in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system. Age of Reason

And what a dismal retrospect is this! The old man of sixty for such he was when these sad words were written travelling back in memory to the hours of infancy, and persuading himself that, at the age of seven years, he was a reasoning infidel! The boy standing upon the garden steps, with the flowers and the singing birds around him, with the sound of familiar prayer in his ears, seriously reflecting on thoughts of blasphemy! And fifty years afterwards, the childless, friendless man, who never knew the softening influence of domestic relations, amid scenes of blood and carnage at which even his heart, cold as it was, must have sickened, for be wrote his Age of Reason in Paris, in the midst of the Reign of Terror, with overpowering proofs of man's depravity before his eyes, boastfully recording his persevering, obdurate skepticism of all in Gods written word, which could not be compassed either by his childish or his matured intelligence!

The story of Brutus immolating his children at the shrine of patriotism, and looking on with calmness as the axe of the Republic shed their blood, was a tale of classic verity, and involved no mystery to his illuminated mind. Mans severe Justice and mans bloody atonement were easily comprehended. But all that God mysteriously ordained, and all that Gods Son was ready to undergo, the incarnation of his spirit, and the self-sacrifice of the mortal frame in which it was incarnate, amid the scoffs and gibes of railing infidels, was scornfully denied as false, because incomprehensible to one who was hourly beholding what to us seems the greater mystery of the forbearance of Omnipotence towards the bloody butchers of revolutionary Paris, Paine's friends and fellow-laborers, and fellow-infidels. To us it seems to be a libel on childhood to assert such precocious blasphemy; but if it be not, and Paine the old man told the truth of Paine the boy, then is it no exception to the fact proclaimed by the poet, that the child was father of the man; and the brazen links of infidelity which bound his years together were never disunited.

Paine's life, till he attained the age of thirty-seven, had no other variety than a constant succession of occupations gave it. A journeyman and master stay-maker, a privateersman, a store-keeper, a tobacconist, a schoolmaster, and an exciseman, to no pursuit was he able or willing steadily and industriously to adhere. In his official career, of whatever kind, he was singularly unfortunate, both before and after his emigration ; for while in America, as will be seen, he forfeited the confidence or incurred the displeasure of his Republican employers, in England he was twice, for some unexplained reason, dismissed from the Excise. To do Paine justice, however, we are free to admit, without attributing to him any actual official delinquency, that the Excise may easily be supposed to have been an uncongenial pursuit for one who could set no example of self-denial to deter violators of such laws, and whose tendencies were to sympathize with those whom its oppressions and restrictions most directly affected.

When poor Burns took refuge in the Excise, he described it as an occupation in which honesty was a rare quality. "For the ignominy of the profession," says he, writing to his friend Mr. Ainslie, "I have the encouragement which I once heard a recruiting sergeant give to a numerous, if not a respectable audience in the streets of Kilmarnock; Gentlemen, for your further and better encouragement, I can assure you that our regiment is the most blackguard corps under the crown, and consequently, with us, an honest fellow has the surest chance of preferment." Paine and Burns, we have a right to assume, were not exactly the men to withstand temptation in such a course of life ; and it is at least within the range of reasonable probability, that other causes, besides the vindictive antipathy of the government to a pair of democratic gaugers, may have led to their dismissal from public service.

In his domestic life, Paine was liable to darker and more reasonable suspicions. Twice married, whilst in Great Britain, his first wife died within a year after marriage, and from his second, Frances Ollive, an exemplary and religious woman, he was in a short time separated. Without speculating on minute causes, or even asserting a truth which all observation authorizes, that, when man and wife without any assigned cause separate, the fault is with the husband, it is enough to know that there was a strange uncongeniality in Paine's temper, which denied him all affectionate communion with persons of either sex; and we can easily imagine, without supposing that immorality was the source of difficulty, how dissonant and ill assorted that union must have been, where the wife's humble, though perhaps ascetic, piety was placed in daily contrast with the husbands scoffing, intolerant infidelity. He never married again; his old age was that of desolate, childless solitude.

In 1774, Paine emigrated to America. His friends and admirers have assumed, that it was Paine's sympathy with a struggling and oppressed people which led to this step, and have asserted that Dr. Franklins countenance was given as to one who had already attracted attention as a writer, and who, he thought, might aid the cause of freedom with his pen. To us it seems far more probable, that he emigrated to America as many clever foreigners now daily do, because he was out of employment at home, and it is very absurd to dignify the act with any higher motives. Paine had written a pamphlet on the Excise System, and a few newspaper squibs in poetry and prose, but had done nothing to attract attention or acquire reputation as a writer; and Franklin's brief and characteristically cautious letter, in which he introduced him to his son-in-law, Mr. Bache, shows that no very exalted expectations were entertained by him of the abilities or usefulness of the stranger:

London, 30 September, 1774.

DEAR SON,

The bearer, Mr. Thomas Paine, is very well recommended to me as an ingenious, worthy young man. He goes to Pennsylvania with a view of settling there. I request you to give him your best advice and countenance, as he is quite a stranger there. If you can put him in a way of obtaining employment as a clerk or assistant surveyor, (of all which I think him very capable,) so that he may procure a subsistence, at least, till he can make acquaintance and obtain a knowledge of the country, you will do well, and much oblige your affectionate father, B. FRANKLIN.

In the autumn or winter of 1774, Paine arrived at Philadelphia, where, it seems, he contemplated the establishment of a female seminary. Being led accidentally to form a union with the proprietor of a periodical publication, which had just been commenced, he relinquished this design, and became, in a small way, a regular contributor to the press.

We learn these facts from the first, if not the only authentic account of Pajne's early career in America, contained in a letter written, in 1809, by Dr. Rush to Cheetham, then about to publish a biography of Paine. His contributions in poetry and prose to the magazine are said to have been very popular, though, from the specimens which have survived, and those, too, the most extravagantly praised, we confess our utter inability to discover the merit which extorted such praise. Take, for example, the Song, as it is called, on the Death of Wolfe, in which a paltry conceit, of Jupiter snatching General Wolfe from earth to fight his battles against some celestial rebels, is rendered in tripping Bacchanalian metre, like the following, for example, though we crave our readers pardon for quoting such trash.

The Sons of the East, the proud giants of old,
Have crept from their darksome abodes,
And this is the news, as in Heaven it was told,
They were marching to war on the Gods.
A council was held in the chambers of Jove,
And this was their final decree;
That Wolfe should be called to the army above,
And the charge was intrusted to me.
To the plains of Quebec with the orders I flew,
He begged for a moments delay,
He cried, 0, forbear! let me victory hear,
And then thy command I'll obey.
With a darksome thick film I encompassed his eyes,
And bore him away in an urn;
Lest the fondness he bore to his own native shore
Should induce him again to return.

Dr. Rush must have been a better judge of pills than of poetry, if he sincerely praised such stuff as this. The reflections in prose on the death of Lord Clive are conceived and expressed with power, and occasionally with a coarse sort of eloquence. We refer to these two productions, because they are cited by his biographers as those which, by their peculiar merit, first attracted attention.

We come now to Paine's participation in revolutionary scenes. The history of the city of Philadelphia, then the colonial metropolis, faithfully written, during the year 1775, or rather from the receipt of the news of the Boston Port Bill, in May, 1774, till the Declaration of Independence, would be full of interest to the student of our history. The first and second Congress sat during that interval, and there was a curious action and reaction of political opinion in the city and the immediate neighbourhood, which might easily be traced.

The population of Philadelphia, in political sentiment, was divided into a great variety of classes. The leaders of each were men of high merit and influence. Dickinson and Reed, Thomson, McKean, Morris, Clymer, Biddle, Mifflin, and others, were all active, and, though differing as to means and time, all influential with their respective friends in the popular ranks. There was, too, a loyalist party, led by Mr. Galloway, sustained by the whole proprietary interest, and strengthened by the peaceful principles and example of the society of Friends, who, openly and without reserve, almost without exception, individually and by accredited organs, deprecated all popular excitement, and exhorted an oppressed people to submit. The mantle of the first Proprietary, the friend of James the Second, had descended without a rent on the Quakers of 1775. The influence of such dissuasives was naturally great. When the interested dependent on proprietary or royal authority proclaimed obedience as his tenet, and submission as his rule of life, when the importer of British goods, unwilling to lose the profits of trade, refused to consider commercial non-intercourse as a means of obtaining redress, when the minister of the church, whose liturgy commemorated the 30th of January as the anniversary of a martyrs death, exhorted his flock to submit to every ordinance of man, it was easy to attribute other than pure motives to the utterance of opinion. But when the ancient, and venerable, and disinterested Friends, men of pure and unspotted lives, independent of all political association, as well of metropolitan as of colonial government, born on the soil, whose ancestors had laid deep the foundations of all the institutions of charity and beneficence, in which the community had so much right to glory, and who themselves sustained them, when such as these uttered earnest admonitions to peace and submission, no one could doubt the purity of their motives, nor was it easy to resist the power which their sincerity gave to all they uttered. We profess no concurrence with the doctrines promulgated by the Friends at the outbreak of the Revolution, but looking back on what they said and did as a mere matter of history, we are not disposed to question their honesty, or to denounce as traitorous their testimony to what they believed to he religious truth.

Admitting freely this purity of intention, we can conceive how deeply such language as that in which, in 1775, the Quakers of Philadelphia addressed their brethren must have sunk into the public mind, and how materially their influence may have retarded the popular movement. It hath ever been our judgment and principle, since we were called to profess the light of Christ Jesus, manifested in our consciences unto this day, that the setting up and putting down kings and governments is Gods peculiar prerogative, for causes best known to himself; and that it is not our business to have any hand or contrivance therein; nor to be busy-bodies above our station, much less to plot and contrive the ruin or overturn of any of them ; but to pray for the King, and safety of our nation, and good of all men; that we may live a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness and honesty, under the government which God is pleased to set over us. This is error, gross error of doctrine, but, in its unquestioned honesty, to many it seemed like truth, and had, more or less, the influence of truth. But on the other side was the whole body of the Presbyterians and Congregationalists, and their clergy, a body of men of high attainments and vigorous intellect, who, without exception, and with equal sincerity, were strenuous in promoting the popular excitement; who saw both their interest and duty in doing so, and looked to the dismemberment of the British empire by the independence of the colonies, as what they supposed would be a fatal blow to the British hierarchy.

In this scene of party strife and conflicting opinions, the Continental Congress, the Provincial Assembly, and the various revolutionary conventions met. And it was for a community thus agitated and excited, that Paine published his celebrated pamphlet, called Common Sense. It bursted from the press, says Dr. Rush, in his letter to Cheetham, with an effect which has rarely been produced by types and paper in any age or country. Such is the testimony of Paine's friend and patron, after the lapse of more than thirty years, and we are not prepared, though marvelling somewhat at the hyperbolical form of the statement, to question its accuracy. It is very manifest, however, that the success of the publication was mainly attributable to its being exceedingly well timed. That this was so, no one, we think, can dispute, who will at this day calmly and without prejudice read the pamphlet; and that even his contemporaries on the popular side thought so can easily be shown.

In the memoirs of Bishop White is the testimony of that venerable man, who, though one of the priests,[3] was true to his allegiance to our republican institutions. Great Britain, says he, threw us out of its protection, independently of all other measures, by what was called the Prohibitory Act, passed in November, 1775, authorizing the seizure of all vessels belonging to persons of this country, whether friends or foes. The act arrived about the time of the publication of Paine's Common Sense. Had the act been contrived by some person in league with Paine, in order to give effect to his production, no expedient could have been more ingenious. To a reader of that flimsy work at the present day, the confessed effect of it at the time is a matter of surprise. Had it issued six months sooner, it would have excited no feeling except that of resentment against the author. But then had come a crisis, which the foremost leaders of American resistance were reluctant to realize to their minds.

Here the perplexity of the modern reader of Paine's ephemeral writings is truly stated. If Common Sense be judged by any ordinary standard of criticism, it is beneath praise; but if the reader will place himself in the relation to all those about him in which the readers of it in January, 1776, were, he can be made to understand the power and effect of this lucky pamphlet. The Colonies were made independent on the 19th of April, 1775, though they hardly knew it. Bunker Hill, Ticonderoga, Montreal, Quebec, had all been witnesses of daring independence and successful resistance. The people had been declared rebels, and put beyond the pale of the law, not, as Bishop White supposes, by an act of Parliament in November, but by the Kings proclamation of the 23d of August, 1775, issued, to quote its own threatening language, to bring to condign punishment the authors, perpetrators, and abettors of such traitorous designs. From June, 1775, Washington's rebel soldiers had kept all the colonial forces of the mother country within the lines of Boston, and were now about to witness their inglorious flight. The thought of independence was in the mind of every one who thought of the morrow; it was in the minds of all, either as matter of hope or fear. Months before Common Sense was dreamed of, a New England woman had written to her husband the words which once were thought so startling: "Let us separate"; what signifies a word? And, besides all this, the public mind was agitated by the very suppression of these well ascertained opinions, by councils held in secret because the issue was doubtful; and all the institutions of social life were looked to, as they must always be in an infant revolution, not as fabrics standing securely for protection, but as the possible means of destruction. It was the scene of the earthquake, when out of doors is safest. In Paine's own language,

without law, without government, without any other mode of power than what is founded on and granted by courtesy, held together by an unexampled concurrence of sentiment, which is nevertheless subject to change, and which every secret enemy is endeavouring to dissolve, our present condition is legislation without law; wisdom without a plan; a constitution without a name; and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect independence contending for dependence. The instance is without a precedent; the case never existed before, and who can tell what may be the event? The property of no man is secure in the present unbraced state of things. The mind of the multitude is left at random, and, seeing no fixed object before them, they pursue such as fancy or opinion presents. Nothing is criminal; there is no such thing as treason; wherefore every one thinks himself at liberty to act as he pleases, & c.

In this state of anxiety, and apparent, rather than real, indecision, Paine's pamphlet appeared, its pages boldly avowing the secret opinions of every thinking man, and proclaiming as desirable what all knew to be inevitable. There should be no wonder that its effects were apparently so great. It is a pamphlet of not more than fifty pages, brief enough to be widely circulated, and written in a style of homely eloquence suited to every comprehension. It is divided into two parts, one an appeal to popular feeling against monarchical institutions all over the world, a diatribe against kings and queens and prelates; the other, an argument in favor of independence, and of the ability and means of the Colonies to maintain a separate existence. There is in the former all the usual slang which can be uttered on such a theme, from which every reflecting mind in its sober moments revolts, though it is suited to the excited appetite of a revolutionary populace. It consists of reasoning from the elementary principles of society to its present complicated relations and condition, the poor sophistry which, asserting the incontestable truth that all men are by nature free and equal, infers that there can be no state of society so artificial as to require distinctions of rank, and to need the control of what is known as absolute authority. The mind of the sober and reflective republican has no difficulty in seeing through this poor sophistry. For ourselves, without claiming any other merit than that of sincere and conscientious devotion to our popular institutions, we are not foolish enough to deny, that there may be, and are, states of society in which democratic institutions are impracticable, or, if practicable, would be pernicious. A Muscovite, an Austrian, or a Turkish republic, no one can be insane enough to believe in. There is not a nation of Continental Europe, except, perhaps, some few of the northern, Protestant states, in which, under existing circumstances, a representative democracy could survive the year of its creation. France is, in technical language, estopped by her own deeds. And even in England, where the principles on which representtive government is founded are better understood, we may be permitted to doubt, reasoning from the past and the present, if such an experiment could succeed.

There are many who think differently, and who will look frowningly on those who question the universal applicability of our theory of government; but if they will look soberly on English society as it is now organized, its habitual consideration for rank and authority, its complicated mechanism, too firm and intricate to be easily disturbed, the dense population crowded into a territory too narrow to allow scope for the ceaseless activity of republicanism, or if (and this is the most impressive consideration) they will study the history of England's great and ineffectual rebellion, when the wisest and purest and ablest of her sons, for such we honestly believe the leaders of the Long Parliament to have been, stimulated by the highest impulses, were arrayed against a feeble, vacillating prince, and a treacherous nobility, and yet failed, signally failed, and were compelled, bowing their necks meekly, if not gladly, to submit themselves to the usurpation of a military adventurer, and to the worse domination of a restored king, the most contemptible and profligate man who ever sat upon a throne, if this story be well read and considered, there will, we repeat, be room at least for doubt as to the fitness of such a nation, and a society so tempered, for popular institutions.

Here, in Anglo-Saxon America, the experiment has been made, and has succeeded; and, though a shade of doubt, a transient misgiving, may some- times darken the minds of the most sanguine, yet it is too transient to disturb the tranquil and abiding confidence, that on this soil, and with a people educated politically as ours has been, representative republicanism is the best and only form of social institution that can exist or endure. It is, after all, and to this point all fair reasoning brings us a matter of social aptitude; and, freely conceding, as we do, that a popular government is the best and most natural, the most conformable to the word of God, proclaimed in his gospel, and written in the heart of intelligent man, we deny the logic which deduces from this admission the expediency of forcing, as Paine and his disciples would have done, all existing societies, no matter how organized, into this mould. Where self is fit for it, self-government is best. Hence is it, that we have no sympathy with the feeling, or agreement with the reasoning, which denounces all monarchy, per se, as detestable and unnatural. Such, however, is the principle which the first part of Common Sense asserts, and asserts in the boldest manner.

As a specimen of style and intelligible argument, let us take the following passage, in which we can readily imagine that the author spoke from his heart.

England, since the Conquest, hath known some few good monarchs, but groaned beneath a much larger number of had ones; yet no man in his senses can say, that their claim under William the Conqueror is a very honorable one. A French bastard, landing with an armed banditti, and establishing himself King of England, against the consent of the natives, is, in plain terms, a very paltry, rascally original. It certainly hath no divinity in it. However, it is needless to spend much time in exposing the folly of hereditary right; if there are any so weak as to believe it, let them promiscuously worship the ass and the lion, and welcome. I shall neither copy their humility nor disturb their devotion.

Yet I should be glad to ask how they suppose kings came at first. The question admits but of three answers, namely, either by lot, by election, or by usurpation. If the first king was taken by lot, it establishes a precedent for the next, which excludes hereditary succession. Saul was by lot, yet the succession was not hereditary, neither does it appear from that transaction, that there was any intention it ever should. if the first king of any country was by election, that likewise establishes a precedent for the next; for to say that the right of all future generations is taken away by the act of the first electors in their choice not only of a king, but of a family of kings for ever, bath no parallel in or out of Scripture, but the doctrine of original sin, which supposes the free-will of all men lost in Adam; and from such comparison, and it will admit of no other, hereditary succession can derive no glory. For, as in Adam all sinned, and as in the first electors all men obeyed; as in the one, all mankind were subjected to Satan, and in the other to sovereignty; as our innocence was lost in the first, and our authority in the last; and as both disable us from reassuming some former state and privilege; it unanswerably follows, that original sin and hereditary succession are parallels. Dishonorable rank! Inglorious connexion! Yet the most subtle sophist cannot produce a juster simile.[4]

May we not well wonder, that such trashy jargon as this could have made an impression on any mind, whether tranquil or excited ?

It is in that part of his pamphlet, in which, dismissing his speculations as to forms of government in the abstract, he urges on the American people the expediency and practicability of independence of Great Britain, that Paine rises to a far better tone and style. He appeals to the fresh recollection of the few years which had passed since the voice of colonial complaint was first raised, and holds up a record of oppressive acts by the mother country before the people. Stamp Taxes, Tea Duties, Navigation Acts, Orders in Council, Proclamations, the revival of old penal acts of Parliament, such as the statute of Henry the Eighth, by which offenders abroad were to be sent to England for trial, the very sight of which, like that of some rusty engine of torture brought to light from the cells of the Inquisition or the Bastile, struck terror everywhere, all these are dwelt upon in eloquent gradation, and at last the climax is reached in the atrocity in the streets of Lexington, the ever memorable 19th of April, 1775.

No man, says he, in eloquent, but ferocious language, was a warmer wisher for a reconciliation than myself, before that fatal day; but the moment the event was made known, I rejected the hardened, sullen-tempered Pharaoh of England for ever; and disdain the wretch that, with the pretended title of Father of his People, can unfeelingly hear of their slaughter, and composedly sleep with their blood upon his soul.

He dwells with earnestness on the resources, social and economical, which the Colonies had within themselves, and on which, developed as they would be in an independent state, they might so surely rely. He sketches a scheme of political organization for the infant community, and concludes with a passage full of sagacious forecast, and to the power of which we readily bear testimony. Let any one look about him now, in 1843, at the clouds which lower around the horizon, and the occasional flash and distant thunder that bursts from them, the rivalry of States, sectional prejudices, and local intolerance, and gratefully acknowledge, that it was the voice of wisdom that looked far into futurity, which bade them in infancy unite.

Youth is the seed time of good habits, as well in nations as in individuals. It might he difficult, if not impossible, to form the continent into one government half a century hence. The vast variety of interest, occasioned by an increase of trade and population, would create confusion. Colony would be against Colony. Each being able, might scorn the others assistance; and, while the proud and foolish gloried in their little distinctions, the wise would lament that the union had not been formed before. Wherefore the present time is the true time for establishing it. The intimacy which is contracted in infancy, and the friendship which is formed in misfortune, are, of all others, the most lasting and unalterable. Our present union is marked with both these characters; we are young, arid we have been afflicted. Our concord hath withstood our troubles.

We have incidentally referred to, without describing it, Paine's scheme of a Constitution for the United Colonies. We notice it again as a new illustration of the impracticability of theoretical systems coined in any single mind; but also with a view to do justice, though perhaps it is quite unnecessary, to the reputation of an individual, whom Paine, in his latter years, took a malignant pleasure in reviling. In the year 1802, Paine returned from France, at the instance of Mr. Jefferson, in a national vessel, and paid his passage by writing for the Administration press abusive essays, which he dignified with the title of letters to the people of the United States. In a letter of the 19th of November, 1802, is the following passage.

I have had my doubts of John Adams ever since the year 1776. In a conversation with me at that time, concerning the pamphlet, Common Sense, he censured it, because it attacked the English form of government. John was for independence, because he expected to be made great by it; but it was not difficult to perceive, for the surliness of his temper makes him an awkward hypocrite, that his head was as full of kings, queens, and knaves, as a pack of cards. But John has lost deal.

And then, in the same tone, he goes on to assert, by direct implication, that a conspiracy existed between General Washington and Mr. Adams, the first President and Vice- President, to make the Executive office hereditary, descending to Mr. Lund Washington, the Presidents nephew, as next of kin, with a sort of contingent remainder to the heirs male of the Vice-President. Such was the incense which a vile party-press offered to its leader, and which his nostrils seemed gratefully to snuff up. We do not stop to nail down this malignant libel, but refer to it in connexion with another matter.

Among Mr. Adams' familiar letters recently published, is one written in March, 1776, to his wife.

You ask me what is thought of Common Sense. Sensible men think there are some whims, some sophisms, some artful addresses to superstitious notions, some keen attempts upon the passions, in this pamphlet. But all agree there is a great deal of good sense, delivered in a clear, concise, and nervous style. His sentiments of the abilities of America, and of the difficulty of a reconciliation with Great Britain are generally approved. But his notions and plans of Continental Government are not much applauded. Indeed this writer has a better hand in pulling down than building. It has been very generally propagated that I wrote this pamphlet. But although I could not have written anything in so manly and striking a style, I flatter myself I should have made a more respectable figure as an architect, if I had undertaken such a work. This writer seems to have very inadequate ideas of what is proper and necessary to be done in order to form Constitutions for single Colonies, as well as a great model of union for the whole.

Mr. Adams' Frame of Government, as developed in his celebrated letter to Mr. Wythe, and Paine, as stated in his Common Sense, are both before us, and it may not be amiss to pause and see what sort of architects they were, each in his own estimation being competent to the task.

Paine's plan was this. For each Colony, there was to be no other government but that of a Legislative Assembly annually elected, with a President as its only officer. Each Colony, the small and the large alike, was to choose thirty members of Congress. The President of Congress was to be chosen annually, and successively from the different Colonies. Three fifths were to form a majority. And this was to be the whole government of the States and of the Union; no other Executive, no Judiciary, no authority but this single chamber for a Legislature, and an annual President. He that could promote discord, says Paine, with admirable complacency, in a government so equally formed as this, would have joined Lucifer in his revolt. And then, after providing for a Continental written charter, to be framed by delegates to be chosen by Congress and the States, thus reversing the natural order, whereby the government is organized after the Constitution, instead of preceding and creating the Constitution, he concludes with a proposed ceremonial for promulgating this organic law, which has a most happy resemblance to the grotesque mummeries practised in revolutionary France.

But where, say some, is the king of America? I'll tell you, friend; he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind, like the royal brute of Britain. Yet, that we may not appear to be defective, even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth, placed on the Divine Law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know that, so far as we approve of monarchy, in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king, and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.

Such was the Constitution and the form of publishing it recommended by Common Sense!

In January, 1776, before Paine's pamphlet was published, Mr. Adams prepared his Thoughts on Government for Mr. Wythe. They embodied the fruit of extensive study and deep meditation, of full and philosophic observation of the existing state of the world, and rich recollections of the past ; but in practice, his scheme, thus elaborated in the closet, would have been found almost as objectionable as Paine's simple machinery. He repudiated earnestly the institution of a single Legislative Assembly, without restriction and control. The frame-work in each Colony was to be as follows, closely resembling the Constitution which in the same year Dr. Franklin prepared for Pennsylvania. There was to be a House of Representatives elected immediately by the people, which was to choose, either from its own body or from the people at large, a Council of twenty or thirty, who were to exercise a negative voice in the Legislature, but not to originate measures. The Governor Was to be chosen annually, by a joint vote of the Representatives and Council, and to be an integral part of the Legislature, with an unqualified veto. All executive officers were to be chosen by the same joint ballot. The Judges (the Judiciary was a part of the scheme which Paine never thought of) were either to be nominated by the Governor to the Council, or elected by joint ballot. They were to hold their offices during good behaviour. The Continental Government was to be vested merely in Congress, whose authority was to be strictly confined to matters relating to war, trade, disputes between Colony and Colony, the Post-office, and the unappropriated crown lands.

How fortunate was it, that to no one man, either such as Paine, a self-sufficient derider of experience, or as Mr. Adams, a learned and sagacious theorist, was the duty intrusted of framing a constitution for this nation! From the time of John Locke downwards, the result in all such cases has been a failure. Equally fortunate is it, that the task was postponed till the work of violent revolution was accomplished, and the defects of the mere voluntary system were detected. Had a government been organized at the beginning of the war, we may infer from the schemes to which we have alluded, that the Federal principle would scarcely have been developed, but a loose, ricketty system of Congressional domination would have been the only Continental authority or restraint. As it was, the Convention of 1787, guided by no constitution-monger, was composed of patriotic and practical men, who deliberated in a spirit of compromise and conciliation ; deliberated, too, with the lessons of disunion and disorganization, State contumacy and Continental imbecility, before them, and made a work so nearly perfect, that every amendment, so called, since made, has unquestionably marred its fair proportions.

Paine's biographers, Cheetham included, who certainly had no disposition to exaggerate his public services, have stated that, in the campaign of 1776, he joined the army as a volunteer. This may be so, and we incline to infer from the positive manner in which it is stated, that it was so; but his military career was certainly brief, and gained for him no peculiar distinction. He was probably attached to the army in some civil capacity, and made himself useful as a writer of despatches and proclamations on a small scale.

The next, and no doubt the ablest, publication of Paine, was The Crisis, a series of papers, sixteen in number, on the occurrences of the times, extending from December, 1776, to December, 1783, and designed as popular appeals to sustain the resolution of the nation during those scenes of trial. They bear the signature of Common Sense. One criticism on these celebrated papers will at once suggest itself. On the face of them they appear to be hastily and carelessly written, with popular, ad captandum rhetoric, but without any thing like deep thought, or philosophical consideration. The two hundred pages of which they consist might be written, one would suppose, with a running pen, and could not have been revised or elaborated. Yet it is curious to observe how much time was occupied in their composition. An average of three months was devoted to each paper; of course, Paine must either no longer be regarded as a ready writer, or some less creditable reason must be given for the sluggish and passive temper with which, patriot as he claimed to be, he regarded the stirring scenes around him. We have, however, a contemporary solution of this problem, which throws light on the personal habits of this strange and wayward being. There is a little volume of Revolutionary memoirs, now rarely met with, written by the late Judge Henry, of Pennsylvania, a man of education, intelligence, and patriotism. It comprises a journal of the campaign against Quebec, in 1775, in which the writer bore an honorable part, and a few memorials of a later period of his life. In 1777 8, when Congress was driven from Philadelphia, and Mr. Henry was a cripple from his wounds, received at the attack on Quebec, Paine became an inmate of his house at Lancaster. His habits of life and composition are thus described.

When my wound, says Mr. Henry, in 1778, was so far mended that I could hobble upon crutches, or creep up stairs, (as you may have seen me of late years do,) my greatest recreation in my distressed state of mind, was, to get into the chamber of Mr. Rittenhouse, where the books were. There, his conversation, for he was most affable, enlivened my mind, and the books would so amuse it, that it became calm, and some desperate resolutions were dissolved. While that excellent man was employing his hours in the duties of his office, for the benefit of the people, Paine would be snoring away his precious time in his easy chair, regardless of those injunctions imposed upon him by Congress in relation to his political compositions. His remissness, indolence, or vacuity of thought caused great heart- burnings amongst our friends. I have heard the late George Bryan, then Vice President of the Council, speak of his gross neglect with remarkable harshness. I would sometimes go into Paine's room, and sit with him. His Crisis, No. V., lay on his table; to day three or four lines would be added; in the course of a week a dozen more, and so on. No. V. is dated March 21, 1778, but it was not published till some months after that date, and it was generally thought that it had been too long delayed. For my own part, I was so passionately engaged at heart in the principles of our cause, that Paine's manner of living and acting gave me a high disgust towards him. No idea could enter my mind, that any one in that noble struggle could be idle or disengaged.

Our limits are such as to prevent us from noticing these papers in detail, or from giving such extracts from them as would enable our readers to understand their scope and merit. Every student of our history, accurately appreciating their authors motives and opportunities, should carefully examine them. The first words of the first number, written two days before the battle of Trenton, have become part of our household words. These are the times which try men's souls. Yet it is very manifest, that, with all Paine's aptitude at coining popular phrases, there was no spring of true eloquence in him, and when he wrote under immediate and outward pressure, and without an opportunity of revision and slow elaboration, no matter how great the occasion or intense the excitement, he wrote feebly and impotently. Take, for example, the Crisis, No. IV., and, meditating on the circumstances under which it was written, observe what a feeble appeal it makes to arouse a dismayed and discomfited people. It is dated at Philadelphia, on the 12th of September, 1777, the day after the battle of Brandy- wine, when the broken remains of the American army were slowly and sadly marching through the empty streets, reluctantly abandoning the capital of the nation to an invading foe. Within twenty miles of the field of bloody victory lay that invading force ready and, as was supposed, willing to advance and take possession of the city. The sound of the cannonade was in the ears of the people. Congress, remembering that, less than a year before, the Providence of God had snatched them from equal peril, remained firm and resolute. In December, 1776, they had fled in no groundless panic to Baltimore. In September, 1777, with a far greater danger impending, they remained firm and constant to their post and duty; nor was it till Washington supplicated them to leave the city, and Sir William Howe, driving our scattered levies before him, was actually surrounding Philadelphia, and cutting off all chances of escape, that they adjourned, first to Lancaster, and then to York. Yet at a Juncture like this, when, if ever, eloquence was needed to drive despair from the popular mind, the style of Paine was dull and listless, and the two or three inanimate pages which he published could not have aroused hope or invigorated patriotic feeling. It was the time to animate the nation with trumpet eloquence, not to tickle its ears with sneers and sarcastic ribaldry. But he was not the man for such occasions as these. His was the maudlin rhetoric, doled out, line by line, in the intervals of his after-dinner nap at Lancaster, when, with a blanket wrapped round him, after eating an in- ordinate dinner, he snored away opportunities so precious. A nations sorrows and a nations terrors have consolations as well as those of individuals ; and never is confidence in a kind and merciful Providence more nobly developed, never is the voice of prayer more eloquent or impressive, than when an oppressed and injured people, deserted by all earth- ly auxiliaries, and bereft of all apparent aid, raises its voice to supplicate for assistance from on high. But it was not for such pick-lock eloquence as Paine's, to open sources of hope and consolation. The example of Washington, of him on whom, in times like these, the whole burden of responsibility and expectation was made to rest, of him who never murmured or repined, but who, without presumptuous confidence, never allowed despondency to weigh him down, it was his example that had an influence in sustaining national hopes, when all the pamphlets that issued from a fertile press had failed to arouse them. The strong religious sentiment of the people, interwoven as it was with their political action, the sentiment of grateful and submissive trust in Heaven, which such men as Washington inculcated and exhibited, was a surer stay than ribald rhetoric could supply.

The winter of 1777 8 was, beyond comparison, the gloomiest period of the war, and it was at this time, that the Crisis, No. V., to which Mr. Henry refers, appeared. It was the dark hour before day. Not only was the suffering of the army more severe than it had ever been, not only was the success of the enemy more apparent, as they remained in undisturbed possession of the two principal colonial cities, New York and Philadelphia, but, for the first time, the spirit of party cabal had insinuated itself into Congress, and, by attacking the person and character of the Commander-in-chief, made progress which seemed to threaten the good genius of the young Republic. It seemed as if removal from a city to the quiet seclusion of Little York had withdrawn all restraint, and given time and opportunity for discontent and jealousy to develope themselves. Washington had been defeated at Brandywine, and had failed, by no fault of his, but still it was a failure, at Germantown. Philadelphia had been lost by the first defeat, and not recovered in consequence of the second. The Fabian system seemed to be at the lowest point of disrepute, while it so happened that at the same time, by one of those turns of luck which warfare often exhibits, the Northern Army under Gates had achieved a brilliant victory. Congress and many of the people could not, or would not, account for Gates's success and Washington's defeat, except by that charitable judgment which civilians are too apt to form of soldiers, that the general who is beaten must be in fault, and that it is genius tbat always succeeds. In this theory, General Gates triumphed, and enjoyed his triumph till the rout at Camden. That General Washington committed what may be regarded as military errors need not be denied; but so have greater soldiers, from Marlborough to Soulf. The campaign on Long Island, in 1776, may be considered one; the affair of Fort Washington another. It is at least questionable, whether he was not wrong, and did not run a risk which no commander is justified in incurring, when he recrossed the Delaware the second time, after the battle of Trenton; and possibly military criticism may detect an omission, in Washington's not crossing at Chads Ford, and attacking Knyphausen, when he learned that Lord Cornwallis had passed the Brandywine above. But what of these? or of what moment would it have been, if worse errors in a military point of view had been committed, so long as such a temper, such deliberative wisdom and undaunted moral resolution, as Washington's was in command ? Let those who weigh the skill of the tactician, to say nothing of those who would contrast the superficial talents of such men as Gates and Lee, with the wisdom, prudence, and self-control of him whose virtues have now survived all question, realize, if they can, the chances of the war, and of the peace which followed it, had the counsels of discontent prevailed in 1778, and Washington been superseded or dismissed to make room for the victor of Saratoga, the future fugitive from Camden.

The means adopted in and out of Congress to attain the object of this conspiracy were exactly such as unscrupulous men would most naturally resort to. Not only were the minds of members of Congress poisoned by open representations to Washington's disadvantage, but the contemptible machinery of anonymous slander was put in active operation. A majority of what remained of Congress was no doubt hostile, and it was a matter of accident only that prevented this hostility from breaking out into some overt act of indignity. During all this time, Paine was in the employment of Congress, having been, in April, 1777, elected secretary to one of its committees, and he was in attendance on that body during its entire session at York. Yet, and it is due to him that it should be stated, he appears never to have lent himself to the purposes of the cabal, but on the contrary, in the fifth number of the Crisis, written when the aspect of affairs was most gloomy, and Washington's enemies were most in the ascendant, he reviews the operations of the previous unfortunate campaigns in a spirit of patriotism and fairness, without a whisper of censure or reproach on him against whom more eminent men, his friends and employers, too, were then confederating. The infamy of that cabal will, at some future day, be fully illustrated. It is the darkest stain upon our history. It illustrates, better than any other incident, the variety of character on that scene, and affords evidence that there were agents at work in that hour of trial, of mean impulses and malignant passions, as well as others of disinterested and generous sentiments. But Washington was surrounded by a band of friends, whom calumny, whether open or concealed, could not alienate. When an anonymous writer wrote to Congress, that the people of America have been guilty of idolatry, by making a man their God, and the God of Heaven and Earth will convince them, by woeful experience, that he is only man; that no good can be expected from the army till Baal and his worshippers are banished from the camp, Mr. Laurens, then president, sent the letter at once to Washington, as the best means of marking his disapprobation of the mode of accusation and of the accusation itself. Nor was this all, (and we blush in dwelling on the cowardly meanness of these acts of social treason,) for within a week, another letter, apparently from the same source, was forwarded to Patrick Henry, then Governor of Virginia, urging him, almost in direct terms, to use his influence to dismiss from his high trust him of whom Virginia had so much reason to be proud. The Northern army has shown us what Americans are capable of doing with a General at their head. The spirit of the Southern, meaning that which was clustering with affectionate reverence around Washington at Valley Forge, is in no way inferior to the spirit of the Northern. A Gates, a Lee, a Conway (!), would in a few weeks make them an irresistible body of men. A great and good God, adds the writer, endorsing a sentiment of General Conway, both decreed America to be free, or the General and weak counsellors would have ruined her long ago. And then, with the true chivalry of an anonymous letter-writer, he thus concludes You may rest assured of each of the facts related in this letter. The author of it is one of your Philadelphia friends. A hint of his name, if found out by the hand-writing, must not be mentioned to your most intimate friend. Even the letter must be thrown into the fire. But some of the contents ought to be made public in order to awaken, enlighten, and alarm our country. But the Philadelphia friend mistook his man, when he made the generous, high-spirited Virginian the recipient of his secret slander, and hoped to make him the agent to scatter calumnies abroad which the author was afraid to endorse. Believe me, said Henry, when sending this letter to the Commander-in-chief, I have too high a sense of the obligations of America to you, to abet or countenance so unworthy a proceeding. While you face the armed enemies of our liberty in the field, and by the favor of God have been kept unhurt, I trust your country will never harbour in her bosom the miscreant who would ruin her best supporter. I wish not to flatter, but when arts unworthy honest men are used to defame and traduce you, I think it not amiss, but a duty, to assure you of the estimation in which the public hold you. The student of our history is aware, that Washington detected his anonymous assailant by the hand-writing, which he so much desired to conceal, and found him to be one who in public had always professed for him the greatest veneration and regard. [Sparkss Washingtoiz, Vol. V. p. 515] How profoundly grateful should we be, that such a conspiracy was frustrated, too, by the manly candor of Washington's friends, and by his own resolute defiance of his enemies, secret and avowed!

Though in this attack on Washington Paine took no offensive part, but rather employed his pen in his defence, yet, at a later period of his life, he expressed his regret that he had not joined the cabal, and reproached Washington with ingratitude for forgetting his assistance. Though I came forward, said he, in 1802, in defence of Mr. Washington, when he was attacked, and made the best that could be made of a series of blunders that had nearly ruined the country, he left me to perish when I was in prison. It is in the same letter from which we make this extract, that Paine charged John Adams, towards whom his animosity never abated, with being an active participator, if not a leader, in the Conway cabal. On this charge we may be allowed to make a passing remark, the more so, as the correspondence of Mr. Adams, recently published, seems to give some color to the accusation. But for this, Paine's attack, like the thousand venomous calumnies which were generated in the councils of the contending parties of that day, might be scornfully disregarded.


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