THOMAS PAINE TO M. DE LA FAYETTE.

A

FTER an acquaintance of nearly fifteen years, in difficult situations in America, and various consultations in Europe, I feel a pleasure in presenting you this small treatise in gratitude for your services to my beloved America, and as a testimony of my esteem for the virtues, public and private, which I know you to possess.

*

The only point upon which I could ever discover that we differed, was not as to principles of government, but as to time. For my own part, I think it equally as injurious to good principles to permit them to linger, as to push them on too fast. That which you suppose accomplishable in fourteen or fifteen years, I may believe practicable in a much shorter period. Mankind, as it appears to me, are always ripe enough to understand their true interest, provided it be presented clearly to their understanding, and that in a manner not to create suspicion by any thing like self-design, nor to offend by assuming too much. Where we would wish to reform we must not reproach.

When the American revolution was established, I felt a disposition to sit serenely down and enjoy the calm. It did not appear to me that any object could afterwards arise great enough to make me quit tranquillity, and feel as I had felt before. But when principle, and not place, is the energetic cause of action, a man, I find, is every where the same.

I am now once more in the public world; and as I have not a right to contemplate on so many years of remaining life as you have, I am resolved to labor as fast as I can; and as I am anxious for your aid and your company, I wish you to hasten your principles and overtake me.

Your sincere, affectionate friend,

*Rights of Man.

THOMAS PAINE.

But he could

his sarcasms were bitter, and his denunciations fierce, let his earnestness excuse him. No politic, mere selfloving prize-fighter was he; but combatted for principles: and if, in the conflict for more than life, he dealt some awkward blows, there was no ungenerous purpose; the fault was in the position of his adversary. His irritability of temperament, and some roughness of demeanor when offended (and little opportunity for annoyance did his dastardly enemies forego,) the obstinacy into which his inflexibility sometimes rankly grew, were more than redeemed by his uniform benevolence. He was gentlemanly at the core, nor ever, save when grossly insulted, threw off the rind of gentlemanly manners. He only took off his coat when compelled to fight it out. forgive and assist his declared foe, though he refused to pardon the treachery of a "friend." In his worst rudeness was a well-meaning sincerity, rendering it far more tolerable than that formal politeness, but too commonly a masking-word for hypocrisy, not a whit more careful of offence-giving than the rough frankness so fashionably condemned. He was religious! a steady Theist, not without faith in "things hoped for," but not evidenced : witness his Age of Reason, his "Thoughts on a future state," and his directions in his last will, that his adopted children be instructed "in their duty to God." "He was always charitable to the poor beyond his means. Few public characters would pass unscathed through the ordeal to which suspicious tyranny and the frenzy of fanaticism have subjected him. Malice has here done its worst; working like Sisyphus, but not eternally. History holds not many names of such integrity. No insufficient occasion might he have pleaded for the self-esteem, the "tincture of vanity" (by no means the worst of human failings) which is manifest in his writings. How should he be blind to his own great

* Letter from Joel Barlow to Cheetham.

ness, whose living monument filled a thousand square miles? What Mirabeau said of Robespierre, might be said of him: "This man believes all he says.' "" And let it not be forgotten that Paine was one of the People, of the hand-laboring class, of the men without political existence, with whom, in the day of his high advancement, he never ceased to sympathize; that, save a little grammar-school ploughing, he was self-taught. Let the Serf bear this in mind; and let the Nobly-born pay homage to this "Son of the lower orders" - the outlawed Stay-maker.

"Paine was about five feet ten inches high, and rather athletic; he was broad-shouldered, and latterly stooped a little. His eye was full, brilliant, and singularly piercing; it had in it the 'muse of fire.' In his dress and person he was generally very cleanly, though careless, and wore his hair queued, with side curls, and powdered, like a gentleman of the old French school.

"His manners were easy and gracious, his knowledge was universal; among friends his conversation had every fascination that anecdote, novelty and truth could give it. In mixed company and among strangers he said little, and was no public speaker.' The power of his memory was so great that he could repeat at will any passage from any of his writings. The only book that he had studied was the Bible, with every part of which he was familiar.

And now, most discriminating reader, what wilt thou say of Paine? "Wilt thou address him-‘Thou art a troubler of privileged orders; we will tar and feather thee: the nobles abhor thee, and kings think thee mad!' or wilt thou rather put on thy spectacles, study his physiognomy, purchase his portrait, hang it over thy chimneypiece, and, pointing to it, say-This is no common This is THE POOR MAN'S FRIEND.'

man.

* Rickman.

WE

CHAPTER VII.

THE SLANDERERS.

E dedicate this chapter to the envious and the malignant; to the depreciator and the libeller; to the snarling, ill-natured critic and the censorius "Christian." We need not answer the calumnious "lives" of "Oldys" and Cheetham. They carry abundant proof of their own falsity. The poisonous lie may be its own antidote. But we desire to disabuse the public mind of certain slanders still palmed upon its uninquiring credulity. Paine was the enemy of abuses:

therefore has he been reviled. Of what is he accused? Of coarseness-intemperance-licentiousness—and recantation of his published religious opinions.

Paine was intimate

The charge of coarseness includes also "want of cleanliness and absence of gentlemanly manners.”’ You may know a man by his companions. with Franklin;* was the welcome guest of Washington and his officers during the American war.† In London he visited, and was visited by Priestley, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Burke, Horne Tooke, and other leading men of the liberal party :‡ dined at the Duke of Portland's ;§ in France, with Dr. Moore and the Earl of Lauderdale, with Bonaparte and his generals; || enjoyed the friendship of La Fayette; associated occasionally with Volney, Condorcet, &c., &c. ; and after his imprisonment resided a year and a half with Monroe, the American ambassador,

* Dr. Rush's Letters to Cheetham, &c., &c.

† Ibid.

Ibid.