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In fact, I scarcely ever see a farmer, who has not some tale to tell me, of the rapacity, immorality, or injustice, of some one of these Parson Justices; one and all exclaiming against the tythe system, which does more to uphold infidelity than ever did all the works of Voltaire, Rousseau, Mirabaud, Paine, and all the theological writers that ever existed, put together.
I offered $1000 in gold to any minister who would prove, or to any person who would prove that Thomas Paine recanted in his last hours. The New York Observer accepted the wager, and then told a falsehood about it.
Paine was standing near the wicket when they were brought in. Danton embraced him. "What you have done for the happiness and liberty of your country I have in vain tried to do for mine. I have been less fortunate, but not more culpable. I am sent to the scaffold." Turning to his friends. "Eh, bien! mes amis, allons y gaiement." Happy Frenchmen!
These birds of prey these unclean beasts are the witnesses produced and relied upon to malign the memory of Thomas Paine. One by one the instruments of torture have been wrenched from the cruel clutch of the church, until within the armory of orthodoxy there remains but one weapon Slander. Against the witnesses that I have produced there can be brought just two Mary Roscoe and Mary Hinsdale.
When peace was proclaimed, Paine, the untiring advocate of independence, had a right to print his "Io Paean." The last "Crisis" announces, "that the times that tried men's souls were over, and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew gloriously and happily accomplished." "America need never be ashamed to tell her birth, nor relate the stages by which she rose to empire."
There is such a thing as being too cordial and good-natured; and he was so very friendly on short acquaintance. "I understand," he said. "I have heard about you, Mr. Paine. This, however, is a different matter. We are not hogs, Mr. Paine, but business men. If our plans go through, Denboro will be grateful to us and to you." "IF they go through? I thought you were certain of their going through."
And he may also be wrong in his literary judgment. William Hazlitt, whose opinion on any subject connected with literature is at least as valuable as an Athenoum critic's, ranked Paine very high as a political writer, and affirmed of his "Rights of Man" that it was "a powerful and explicit reply to Burke."
A new attendant, a shy, awkward young fellow from Devers's troop, was hovering about the bedside, and Davies glanced at him inquiringly. "What became of Paine?" he asked, and the steward shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. "Captain Devers took him away," was the answer. The doctor arose and stood by Davies a minute. "I don't know what to make of that captain of yours," he said.
All these testified to the fact that Mr. Paige was a temperate man. In those days nearly everybody used spirituous liquors. Paine was not an exception, but he did not drink to excess. Mr. Lovett, who kept the City Hotel, where Paine stopped, in a note to Caleb Bingham declared that Paine drank less than any boarder he had.
Up to this time he had never heard of Paine. Now he began to study him, and he began by reading his life. From this he gleaned the fact that Paine had suffered for conscience sake and had been driven out of England, just as he, himself, had been driven out of the church. The three months' suspension having expired, young Bradlaugh was invited to come back into the fold. But he did not come.
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