GEORGE WASHINGTON TO THOMAS PAINE.

I

Rocky Hill, Sept. 10, 1783.

HAVE learned since I have been at this place, that

you are at Bordentown.-Whether for the sake of retirement or economy I know not. Be it for either or both, or whatever it may, if you will come to this place and partake with me I shall be exceedingly happy to see you at it. Your presence may remind Congress of your past services to this country; and if it is in my power to impress them, command my best exertions with freedom, as they will be rendered cheerfully by one who entertains a lively sense of the importance of your works, and who with much pleasure subscribes himself,

Your sincere friend,

GEORGE WASHINGTON.

business.

She asked, 'What's thy name, friend?' and, the moment I said William Cobbett, up went her mouth as tight as a purse! Sack-making appeared to be her occupation; and that I might not extract through her eyes that which she was resolved I should not get out of her mouth, she went and took up a sack, and began to sew; and not another look or glance could I get from her.

"However, I took out my paper, read it, and, stopping at several points, asked her if it was true. Talk of the Jesuits, indeed! The whole tribe of Loyola, who have shaken so many kingdoms to their base, never possessed a millionth part of the cunning of this drab-colored little woman, whose face simplicity and innocence seemed to have chosen as the place of their triumph. She shuffled; she evaded; she equivocated; she warded off; she affected not to understand me, not to understand the paper, not to remember; and all this with so much seeming simplicity and single-heartedness, and in a voice so mild, so soft, and so sweet, that, if the Devil had been sitting where I was, he would certainly have jumped up and hugged her to his bosom !

"The result was: that it was so long ago, that she could not speak positively to any part of the matter; that she would not say that any part of the paper was true; that she had never seen the paper; and, that she had never given 'friend Charley,' (for so she called him) authority to say anything about the matter in her name. I pushed her closely upon the subject of the 'unhappy French female ;'* asked her whether she should know her again :-'Oh, no! friend: I tell thee that I have no recollection of any person or thing that I saw at Thomas Paine's house.' The truth is, that the cunning little thing knew that the French lady was at hand; and that detection was easy, if she had said that she should know her upon sight!

* Madame Bonneville.

"I had now nothing to do but to bring friend Charley's nose to the grindstone. But Charley, who is a grocer, living in Cherry Street, near Pearl Street, though so pious a man, and, doubtless, in great haste to get to everlasting bliss, had moved out of the city for fear of the fever, not liking, apparently, to go off to the next world in a yellow skin. And thus he escaped me, who sailed from New York in four days afterwards: or, Charley should have found that there was something else, on this side the grave, pretty nearly as troublesome and as dreadful as the yellow fever.

"This is, I think, a pretty good instance of the lengths to which hypocrisy will go. The whole, as far as relates to recantation and to the 'unhappy French female,' is a lie, from the beginning to the end. Mr. Paine declares,

in his last will, that he retains all his publicly expressed opinions as to religion. His executors, and many other gentlemen of undoubted veracity, had the same declaration from his dying lips. Mr. Willet Hicks visited him to nearly the last. This gentleman says, that there was no change of opinions intimated to him: and, will any man believe, that Paine would have withheld from Mr. Hicks, that which he was so forward to communicate to Mr. Hicks' servant-girl?"

The sequel of the story is worth recording.

"For some time a division has existed among the Society of Friends, respecting some opinions advanced by Elias Hicks, one of their principal preachers. Among those who adopted and openly maintained his views, was a young woman, lately deceased, named Mary Lockwood, possessing talents and education which qualified her to become a teacher of the children of Friends. In this dispute, Mary Hinsdale, the calumniator of Paine, avowed herself an opponent of Elias Hicks. Finding of late that her party were losing ground, and recollect

† Republican, February 13th, 1824, vol, ix, p. 221, &c.