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and is unsupported by any evidence: resting on the same authority that originated the foregoing calumnies, the authority of Mr. Carver, of New York, with whom Paine at one time boarded, and who, in consequence of a miserable money-quarrel, wrote a hasty and scurrilous letter to Paine, wherein he indulged in several gross aspersions, which he afterwards was ashamed of and explained away. This letter was invidiously laid hold of by Cheetham, and amplified in his "Life." Madame Bonneville prosecuted Cheetham for the libel, and obtained damages. The following gives some insight

into Cheetham's character:

"MR. CHEETHAM:

"October 27, 1807.

"Unless you make a public apology for the abuse and falsehood in your paper of Tuesday, October 27, respecting me, I will prosecute you for lying.

"It is by your talent for abuse and falsehood, that you have brought so many prosecutions on your back. You cannot even state truth without running it to falsehood. "THOMAS PAINE."

Cheetham was in the first instance an admirer of Paine, and was present at the dinner given to him in New York. Afterwards he became a rancorous opponent, and was strongly suspected of being bought by Pitt. Paine exposed his baseness; and hence the libeller's hatred. Cheetham could not bring the shadow of evidence in support of his assertions: but were the libel true, it is no proof of licentiousness. By what law, human or divine, was Paine bound to celibacy? That, whatever the nature of his intimacy with Madame Bonneville, the public had nothing to do with it, is shown by the conduct of the husband. Bonneville and his wife lived together after the libel, in the very house in which Paine had boarded. In all such cases the world's

interference (and begging the world's pardon, however clean-handed it may be, it is not pure-hearted enough to throw stones, even at those taken in adultery), public prosecution, or persecution, is as indecent as it is useless and mischievous. Bonneville, his wife, and his two sons, are all included in Paine's will.

It remains for us to notice the weakest "invention " the fanatics' lie, that on his death-bed Paine renounced his published opinions of Christianity. It is difficult to discover what could be gained for truth by the clearest proof of such a recantation. Is the utterance of a feverish fear, when a man's mind is enfeebled by disease and confused by pain, to be more regarded than the calm and healthful voice of undisturbed and ripe reflection? or, is it imagined that the dying sees through the grave, and, looking in the face of eternity, dares not lie.

What then? How seldom shall we be able to distinguish the inspirations of the far-world vision from the ravings of delirium. An unstable religion that, which needs so often appeal to the disordered and impressible imaginations of diseased men whose constancy has been worn out by the repeated droppings of priestly venom. It is time this death-bed cant should be exploded. The blasphemous absurdity (if anything is blasphemous) of sinners, terrified into a false and foolish repentance, carried by angels from the deserved gallows to undesired glory, the outcasts of human justice gemming the diadem of Mercy-even this is less offensive than the hateful exultation of lying priests, and sectarians possessed by piety, over the supposed and prayed-for agonies of highsouled men who never flinched or feared, who loved truth better than "belief" inquiry more than authority, and good works rather than damning and unholy words. A recent work, highly spoken of by the press (the Diary of a Physician,) furnishes us with the following piece of ludicrous solemnity. A dying student wildly exclaims

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THOMAS JEFFERSON TO THOMAS PAINE.

You

YOU express a wish in your letter to return to America in a national ship; Mr. Dawson, who brings over the treaty, and who will present you with this letter, is charged with orders to the captain of the Maryland to receive and accommodate you back, if you can be ready to depart at such a short warning. You will in general find us returned to sentiments worthy of former times; in these it will be your glory to have steadily labored and with as much effect as any man living. That you may live long to continue your useful labors, and reap the reward in the thankfulness of nations, is my sincere prayer. Accept the assurances of my high esteem and affectionate attachment.

THOMAS JEFFERSON.

to his medical attendant-" Doctor, keep them off!" to which the pious practitioner appends this interesting note :-"I once before heard these strange words fall from the lips of a dying patient, a lady. To me they suggest very unpleasant, I may say, fearful thoughts— What is to be kept off?" What, indeed? What, indeed? Had the exclaimer been in sound health, the physician would have suggested a strait waistcoat; but in the frenzy of a painenfeebled mind he beheld the Glorious Majesty of Superstition's God, the Devil. But Paine gave no opportunity

for the reveries of the faithful. He retained his intellectual faculties to the last. His eye was not dim, nor the natural force of his mind abated. In the midst of keen bodily pangs, and heartless annoyance, his spirit was unshaken. "He died, as he lived, an enemy to the Christian Religion," placidly, and unhaunted by unnatural apprehensions of a priest-ordered eternity. Even Cheetham (whose word may be taken against himself, if for nothing else) is compelled to acknowledge this. Paine was too clear-headed, and too clear-hearted withal, to dread damnation. He had thought himself dying, in his captivity, in the Luxembourg; and felt then as little inclined to recantation. "It was then," he says, "that I remembered with satisfaction, and congratulated myself most sincerely, on having written the former part of the AGE OF REASON. I had then but little expectation of surviving. I know, therefore, by experience, the conscientious trial of my principles."*

Mr. Bond, an English surgeon of the suite of General O'Hara, was at that time in the Luxembourg. Let us hear him. "Mr. Paine, while hourly expecting to die, read to me parts of his AGE OF REASON; and every night when I left him to be separately locked up, and expected not to see him alive in the morning, he always expressed his firm belief in the principles of that book,

* Preface to the second part of the Age of Reason.

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