great mass of people," could not be otherwise than interested in his welfare. Of Washington he speaks cautiously and evasively, thus:-"Of the sense which the President has always entertained of your merits, and of his friendly disposition towards you, you are too well assured to require any declaration of it from me. That I forward his wishes in seeking your safety is what I well know; and this will form an additional obligation on me to perform what I should otherwise consider as a duty."* This almost amounts to an acknowledgment that Washington had given no orders whatever about him.

In a letter written by Paine after his return to America, t we find the following "miraculous intervention:"

"One hundred and sixty-eight persons were taken out of the Luxembourg in one night, and a hundred and sixty of them guillotined the next day, of which I know I was to have been one; and the manner I escaped that fate is curious and has all the appearance of accident. The room in which I was lodged was on the ground floor, and one of a long range of rooms under a gallery, and the door of it opened outward and flat against the wall; so that when it was open the inside of the door appeared outward, and the contrary when it was shut. I had three comrades, fellow-prisoners with me, Joseph Vanhuile or Bruges, since president of the municipality of that town, Michael Robins, and Bastini of Louvain. When persons by scores and hundreds were to be taken out of prison for the guillotine, it was always done in the night, and those who performed that office had a private mark or signal, by which they knew what rooms to go to, and what number to take. We, as I have said, were four, and the door of our room was marked, unobserved by us, with that number in chalk; but it happened, if happening is a proper word, that the mark was put on when the door was open and flat against the wall, and thereby

*Letter to Washington.

† Sherwin, p. 161-2.

JAMES MONROE TO THOMAS PAINE.

T is not necessary for me to tell you how much all

IT

your countrymen-I speak of the great mass of the people—are interested in your welfare. They have not forgotten the history of their own revolution and the difficult scenes through which they passed; nor do they review its several stages without reviving in their bosoms a due sensibility of the merits of those who served them in that great and arduous conflict. The crime of ingratitude has not yet stained, and I trust never will stain, our national character. You are considered by them as not only having rendered important services in our own revolution, but as being on a more extensive scale the friend of human rights, and a distinguished and able defender of public liberty. To the welfare of Thomas Paine the Americans are not, nor can they be indifferent.

JAMES MONROE.

came on the inside when we shut it at night, and the destroying angel passed by it. A few days after this Robespierre fell." Yet though that "sanguinary tyrant" was murdered by the "Moderates" on the 28th of July, 1794, Paine did not obtain his liberty (and then through much exertion on the part of Monroe) till the 4th of November following.* He himself says, "All

that period of my imprisonment, at least, I owe to George Washington."†

After his liberation he found a friendly home in the house of Monroe,‡ (afterwards president of the United States), with whom he resided, for eighteen months. His constitution suffered materially from his confinement: and thus circumstanced he hastened to complete the second part of the AGE OF REASON. The first part had also been produced under great disadvantages. He says, in the preface to the second part :-"It had long been my intention to publish my thoughts upon religion; but I had reserved it to a later period in life, intending it to be the last work I should undertake. The circumstances, however, which existed in France in the latter end of the year 1792, determined me to delay it no longer. I saw many of my most intimate friends" (Brissot among others) "destroyed; others daily carried to prison: and I had reason to believe, and had also intimations given me, that the same danger was approaching myself. Under these disadvantages, I began the former part of the Age of Reason; I had, besides, neither Bible nor Testament to refer to, though I was writing against both; nor could I procure any; notwithstanding which, I have produced a work that no Bible believer, though writing at his ease, and with a library of church books about him, can refute. Towards the latter end of December of that year, a motion was made and carried, to exclude

foreigners from the Convention. There were but two in it, Anacharsis Clootz and myself; and I saw I was particularly pointed at by Bourdon de l'Oise, in his speech on that motion. Conceiving, after this, that I had but a few days of liberty, I sat down and brought the work to a close as speedily as possible: and I had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it has since appeared, before a guard came, with an order for putting me in arrestation."

The first part of the Age of Reason was probably published by Barlow,* during Paine's imprisonment. The second part made its appearance about the end of 1795.†

At the invitation of a unanimous vote of the Convention, Paine resumed his seat; but it would seem that he little accorded with the now unmasked Respectables, then manufacturing a new constitution to displace that of '93, which, principally framed by Robespierre, had received the sanction of four millions of adult Frenchmen. More especially he contended against that odious distinction (formerly so strenuously opposed by the maligned Robespierre) between direct and indirect taxes. as qualifications for the rights of citizenship.§ His objections had little weight with the Convention; and a new election following the formation of the "Constitution," Paine was not re-elected. Possibly his opinions were too extreme for the new regime of shopocrats.

During the English invasion of Holland, he went to Brussels, where he passed a few days with General Brune. "For some years before he left Paris, he lodged at M. Bonville's," (Bonneville), "associating occasionally with the great men of the day, Condorcet, ¶

* Gorton's Biographical Dictionary.

Sherwin says, early in '95. but Paine's Letter to Washington, contradicts this. Buonarroti's History of Babeuf's Conspiracy for Equality.

2 Sherwin, p. 175.

Yorke's Letters from France.

¶Condorcet died 28th of March, 1791. Paine's acquaintance with him must have been previous to his imprisonment.