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SOME ACCOUNT

THE LIFE, DEATH, and PRINCIPLES
OF
THOMAS PAINE,
TOGETHER WITH
REMARKS ON HIS WRITINGS,
AND ON
THEIH INTIMATE CONNECTION WITH THE AVOWED OBJECTS OF THE
REVOLUTIONISTS OF 1793, AND OF THE RADICALS IN 1819.

BY JOHN S. HARFORD, Esq.
THIRD EDITION,
CORRECTED AND CONSIDERABLY ENLARGED.

O quisquis volet impias
Csedes, aut rabiem tollere civicam ;
Si quairet pater urbium
Subscribi statuis, indomitam audeat
fteframare licentiam
Clarus postgenitis. • Hob.
" I have just done a thing which I always, since I came into this country,
vowed that I would do ; that is, taken up the Remains of our famous Country*
Tnan PAINE, in order to convey them to England I The Quakers, even
the Quakers, refused him a grave. We will honor his name, his remains,
and his memory, in all sorts of ways."
" Let this be considered the act of the 'Reformers of England, Scotland,
and Ireland." Cobbett's Register for Nov. 1819.
" By their fruits ye shall know them." Matthew, chap. 7, v. 20.

Bristol :
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY J. M. GUTCH,
AND SOLD BY MESSRS. B.IVIJJGTONS, AND HATCHARD, LONDON; ANJ»
IHE DIFFERENT BOOKSELLERS IN BRISTOL AND BATH.
1820.
Price Two Shillings and Sixpence in boards.

Should any Profit arise from the Sale of this Publication, it will be presented
to the Bristol Infirmary.

TO
Sir THOMAS DYKE ACLAND, Bart.
TO you, my dear friend, I inscribe the following Attempt to
serve the best interests of England, because lam acquainted with
no man, who is more ardently attached to its soil, who is more
deeply sensible of the inestimable value of its institutions, both
civil and religious, or who would be more ready, if the occasion
demanded it, to make any sacrifices, either personal or pecu
niary, for their consolidation and defence, in the spirit of
that Patriot, who lamented that he could die but once for his
country. That your opportunities of public service may be as distin
guished as your ability for it, is the sincere wish of
Your's, most faithfully,
THE AUTHOR.

ERRATA.
Page 7, line 16, for " those of the Girondists," read " that of tlie Girondists."
Page 15, line 26, for " or," read " nor."
Page 23, line 25, for"todieof doinghis duty, /'read "to die for doinghis duty.''
Page 40, line 16, for " ony," read " only."
Page 50, line 12, for " drive his hearers," read " drive his readers."
Page 57, line 5, for "he employed one Derrick," tead" he soon after employed
one Derrick."
Page 91, line 18, for " by tlie seditious press," read " through the seditimis
press."
Page 100, line 23, for « has not yet seen its acme" read " have not yet seen
their acme."

PREFACE.
IT has been observed, that to write Biography well,
the author should be proud of his hero. If the success of
the present writer is to be measured by his admiration, he
fears that his book will meet with a very discouraging recep
tion. Certainly nothing would have tempted him to touch
upon the history of a man whose very name is proverbial for
infamy, had he not, in common with the great body of his
countrymen, witnessed, with indignation, the impudent
attempts lately made, in various ways, to confront the sys
tem of Paine with Christianity ; in other words, to oppose
the kingdom of Darkness, Sin and Contention, to that of
Light, Purity and Love.
The cheap form in which the impious Carlile, subsequently
to his conviction, has again printed the Age of Reason in the
body of his trial, in outrageous defiance of public feeling,
and the industry with which it has been circulated ; united
to the newspaper reports of the proceedings at the prosecu
tion, have given, of late an usual currency to the name and
to the opinions of Paine. The Radical Reformers are also
grown bold enough to acknowledge him as their Apostle and
their Idol. It therefore becomes a duty to expose the
wickedness of this man's principles, and the corresponding
enormity of his life.
Here and there, even among persons professing Christianity,
a doubt has been suggested as to the propriety of such pro
secutions as that of Mr. Carlile under any circumstances ;
but such objectors lose sight of the material difference

VI
which exists between a respectful inquiry into the evidences
of Christianity and a ribaldrous attack upon it.
We can easily conceive, that even unbelievers may exist
candid enough to acknowledge that the indelicate jokes, the
abominable calumnies, and the wilful misrepresentations with
which the Age of Reason assails the Bible, constitute an in
sult to the majesty of those laws and of that constitution
which rest upon it as their basis, such as to render its pub
lication an offence justly cognizable by the secular power.
But independently of such considerations a paternal Go
vernment is bound to consult the happiness of the humbler
classes of society, by guarding their morals and their prin
ciples from the rude assaults of iniquitous meu. It is no
sufficient answer to this remark to say, " give the people
the Bible and let them judge for themselves." A very slight
acquaintance with human nature is sufficient to convince
us, that thousands of men who are animated by devout love
to their Creator and Redeemer, who feel the force and beauty
of the New Testament, and whose hearts have been purified
by its influence, may be utterly unqualified to disentangle
the sophistries or to expose the arts of impiety. In this
class there are many who would be confounded and rendered
miserable by the contents of a book, which, by a roan of
strong and cultivated understanding would be cast away at
once as a contemptible and absurd production. The duties
of men in this class leave them little time to speculate, but
call upon them incessantly to act. We trust however that
our Legislators will not imagine, that because Carlile has
been punished, and the seditious bills have been passed, all
is done. We hope they will discover with one of the most
sagacious of Milton's devils, that " Who overcomes
By force, hath overcome but half his foe."

Vll
There are moral remedies of a prospective and counter
acting character, which it is possible to apply with far
greater force than has yet been attempted to the existing
evils. For the principle facts relative to Paine introduced into
the following pages, the Author is indebted to his life by
Cheetham This work is too prolix, and too much mixed up
with American politics to prove generally interesting in this
country, but it bears upon it in every page the impress of
strict veracity, and has passed through successive editions
in the United States. He has also compared the statements
of Cheetham with those of Cobbett, who formerly published
a life of Paine, chiefly distinguished by the unbounded abuse
which it heaped upon the man now the theme of his equally
unbounded panegyric. From this life the Author might
easily have added very materially to the catalogue of Paine's
crimes, but he felt unwilling to give currency to statements
unaccompanied by sufficient evidence.
We shall detail the sources of Mr. Cheetham's information
nearly in his own words.
" My knowledge of Paine, before he left England, in 1774,
is derived from persons who knew him when he was a boy :
when he was at school : when he worked with his father at
stay-making : when he was in the excise : when he was mar
ried, and when he separated from his wife,
" Of his career in the Colonies, ray information is derived
from the Journals of Congress, &c. ; and from Gentlemen of
the highest political standing.
" I was myself in England when the ' Rights of Man' was
published. " Of Paine's conduct in France my sources of information
are notorious facts, and the testimony of Gentlemen equally
distinguished in diplomacy and literature.

VIII
" After his return to the United States, I became person
ally acquainted with him. The latter part of his life was
spent in New York, in a great measure under my own eye,
but I have also made particular enquiries of the persons, in
whose houses he successively resided, as to his manner of
living, his temper and habits. The facts respecting his death
and burial I had from a sensible and humane Quaker Gentle
man ; from Dr. Manley, his physician ; and from his nurse,
a woman of intelligence and piety."
Vide Preface to Cheetham's Life of Paine.
The facts connected with the history of the French Revo
lution have been chiefly collected from the works of Lacre-
telle, Adolphus, Bertrand de Moleville, and Marmontel.
The Author cannot conclude his preface without expressing
his grateful sense of the reception given to the first edition
of the following work ; a reception far beyond its merits, but
which proves the disposition of a liberal public to patronise
every sincere attempt to support the interests of Religion
and Loyalty, at a time when parricides to their country are
sparing no efforts to undermine the foundations of both.
In this edition several trifling errors have been corrected,
which had crept into the former in consequence of the haste
with which it was prepared for the press, and much new
matter has been introduced.

THE LIFE, &c.

X HOMAS PAINE was born at Thetford, in
Norfolk, in January 1737. He was educated at the Free-
School of this place, by the Rev. Mr. Knowles.
Of his early history only a few particulars are known, that
can be deemed authentic. In the year J 759 he settled at Sand
wich, as a master staynjaker, to which trade he had been
brought up by his father. Here he married Mary Lambert,
who died in the ensuing year,*
In the year 1 761 he obtained a place in the Excise atThet-
ford, from which he was dismissed in 1705, but was subse
quently restored .-~ What the nature of the offence was, which
caused his dismissal, is not known.
We find him acting as Exciseman at Lewes, in Sussex, in
1768, where he lived with Samuel Olive, grocer and tobac
conist. Mr. Olive died the following year. In 1771 Paine
married his daughter, Elizabeth Olive. He was a second
time dismissed from his office of Exciseman in 1774, under
a charge of fraud and dishonesty. He petitioned to be re
stored, but having by this time established the character of
a complete rogue, his efforts were useless. His affairs soon

* According to Oldys, her death was caused by a premature birth, the conse
quence of his ill usage.
li

afterwards fell into so bad a condition, that all his goods
were sold for debt.
In May of the same year Paine and his wife separated by
mutual agreement. He had proved a wretched husband,
and had treated her with such neglect and unkindness, that
her life had been rendered truly miserable. From a man of
his principles she had no reason to expect any other fate.
In this manner commenced the career of our pretended
Reformer. His public character was blackened by dis
honesty, his private behaviour was marked by cruelty and
unkindness. The state of beggary to which he was reduced
was caused by his unprincipled conduct. He now went to
London, in the hope of mending his fortunes. What bis
employments were in the metropolis, we have not been able
to discover.
In England loss of character is attended by consequences
more fatal to a nlan's future success in life than in any other
country. The prospects of Paine beiug entirely blasted from
this very cause, he yielded to the advice of Dr. Franklin, aud
resolved to make trial of America. He arrived in Phila
delphia, April 19th, 1775. Here he engaged in political
writings connected with the American war, and vehemently
embraced the cause of the colonists. His publications were
distinguished by considerable natural talent, but owed the
popularity they obtained still more to their peculiar adapta
tion to the state of public feeling in the colonies. They were
invariably marked by a rancour, a malevolence, and a spirit
of low abuse towards the British Government, which knew
no bounds. To the disgrace, and to the souring influence
of the misfortunes, arising out of his unprincipled conduct
in England, we may fairly attribute all this furious spleen ;

a feeling, which was naturally heightened by the hope of
raising his consequence with the people, whose cause he had
espoused. In this latter object he fully succeeded, for he
not only received a sum of money from Congress as a recom-
pence for his revolutionary wiitings, but was appointed, in
the year 1777, Secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs.
But he soon exchanged the character of a Patriot with the
Americans, for that of an unprincipled Adventurer. Being
found guilty of a scandalous breach of trust, in relation to
his public duties, he was ignominiously expelled from his
office by a vote of Congress, and it was not till some time
after, that he again so far insinuated himself into favor, as
to procure the subordinate employment of Clerk to the
Assembly of Pensylvania.
After the end of the American war Paine received from
Congress the pecuniary compensation to which we have al
luded, and must certainly be deemed to have made a very
good trade of patriotism. He now found himself compara-.
lively neglected and forgotten ; but his restless mind could
not brook obscurity, still less could it settle down into peace*
able and honest habits. Not long before the period to which
we at present refer, he wrote to a General Grpen, proposing
to go over to England, with the view of laying the train of
commotion and revolution in our country, but he was dis
suaded at this time from the ridiculous project.
However he made his appearance in England iq the year
1787, and was grievously disappointed to find the nation in
a calm and flourishing condition, under the able administra
tion of a Ministry which deserved and possessed the confi
dence of the country. He turned his eyes to France for con
solation, and snuffed with delight the air of the Revolution,
 :   - B-2

-1
which Was every day gathering fresh force in that country.
But about the middle of the year 1789 his pleasant specula
tions were unpleasantly interrupted by an arrest for a debt
of £700. He was committed to prison, where he remained
till released by Claggett and Murdock, American merchants.
It is not easy to explain how he had incurred so heavy a
debt ; his general habits were by no means extravagant ; it
is true, that he was a most confirmed drunkard, and that the
quantity of brandy, which he took daily, would have quickly
killed any ordinary man; but his diet was generally the
poorest and filthiest, and he lived in holes and corners, so
that a very mysterious character is suspended over this trans
action, and we are left to imagine any thing as the cause,
that the depravity, which marked his former career, will
warrant. Events in France were now proceeding exactly according
tb Paine's wishes. The Revolution was hastening with rapid
strides to lay low in that unhappy country all religion, and
law, and order, every principle, in short, upon which is
founded the happiness of nations or individuals. A general
discontent, an eager thirst for innovation had long pervaded
the minds of the French people, and this disposition, arising
out of a concurrence of causes which our limits will not
allow us to trace, was assiduously cherished by the literary
efforts of the Philosophers of the day ; a set of men exactly
qualified to excite and inflame the passions of the people, to
unsettle their minds, and to poison their principles, but
wholly unfit to ride on the whirlwind, or direct the storm
which they had raised : for in politics they were inexperi
enced theorists, in religion decided infidels, and as a natural
consequence in morals unblushing libertines. Under kindlier

auspices the disposition for reform might possibly have elided
in delivering the people from various oppressions and
grievances of which they had just reason to complain, and in
imparting to them a rational degree of liberty. It was the
hope of such a result, that led numerous individuals in
England to dwell with favorable anticipations upon the first
ebullitions of the spirit of liberty at Paris, but the course of
events soon converted these impressions into feelings of
horror, dismay and lamentation. The Revolution proceeded ;
the Government was overturned ; the King was barbarously
murdered ; then it was that the eyes of multitudes were fully
opened to the real character of those demagogues, by whose
professions they had been seduced from their loyalty ; then
they learnt that in their mouths Reform was only another
word for Ruin. A band of infamous tyrants had already
placed themselves in the seat of Government, whose edicts
were enforced by the terrors of the guillotine. They were
quickly hurled from the seat of power by a set of opposing
competitors, whose dynasty was of the same transient dura
tion, and thus the reins of Government were seized year
after year, first by one butchering party and then by another,
till scarcely a single family but had writhed in agony be
neath the scorpion lashes of a merciless tyranny. At length
in a favorable moment Buonaparte seized upon the Govern
ment, and ruled the nation with a rod of iron.
To be more particular. The painful embarrassments in
which the French Ministry was involved after the conclu
sion of the American war by the financial difficulties of the
state, and by the aversion of the Parliament from sanctioning
the loans and taxes deemed in consequence necessary for the
public service, first suggested the idea of attempting to
supersede their opposition through the instrumentality of an
Assembly, which it was hoped would prove more compliant.

For ths purpose it was resolved to convoke the Notables, an
Assembly which had formerly been substituted for the States
General, by Henry 4th and Louis 13th. It consisted of 140
persons, chiefly men of rank and influence, nominated by the
King himself, and therefore it might naturally be expected pre
pared to second his wishes. The event, however, quite dis
appointed these hopes. This Assembly, far from attempt
ing to supersede the authority of Parliament, professed itself
incompetent to act, but in subservience to it, and finished its
session by a mere recommendation of two taxes to it, which
upon its meeting, were peremptorily rejected. The breach
was thus widened between the King and the Parliament, and
at length the States General, which had not met since the
year 1614, were summoned in 1789, as a last resource. To
this body, composed of deputies from the Nobility, the Clergy,
and theCommons, was committed the arduous task of amend
ing the Constitution, and of providing for the financial dif
ficulties of the state. Had the privileges and rights of each
order been so defined as to have restrained on all sides un
constitutional innovation, these great objects might have been
fully secured, and yet the basis of the French monarchy
have remained unimpaired. But a faction in the Com
mons, possessed with phrenzied notions of liberty, aimed
at an absolute revolution, and from meeting with no firm
opposition from the Government soon assumed a menacing
attitude. By the intrigues of this party, the three orders
which had hitherto met in separate chambers were consoli
dated into one, which assumed the title of the National
Assembly. In vain was the King warned against the obvi
ous results of sanctioning this measure — in vain was it pre
dicted, that by thus depriving the Aristocracy of its due
influence in the state, the torrent of a furious democracy
would quickly overwhelm all the ancient land-marks of the

Constitution. The warning was neglected, though the con
clusion was quickly verified.
After a stormy session and violent contests between op
posing factions, the Assembly terminated its labours by
presenting to the King and to the nation a constitution which
was a monument of the inexperience and practical ignorance
of its framers. It was a clumsy attempt to unite a degraded
monarchy with a dominant democracy. It prepared no
safeguards for freedom on the one hand, nor for authority on
the other. It paved the way for the unbridled anarchy
which quickly ensued. The Legislative Assembly by which
it was succeeded, tended to completeRepublicanism. It was
split into three factions. Avowed Royalists of the old
school there were none. A considerable party were advo
cates for a Representative Government in connection with a
limited Monarchy. But the two prevailing factions were those
of the Girondists and that of the Jacobins, each composed
of men furious in their hatred to Royalty and to Christianity,
and rather differing in the degree than in the quality of their
wickedness. To the Jacobins'' certainly belonged the palm
of unrivalled iniquity. From this horrible fraternity, at the
head of which were Danton, Robespierre, and Marat, t first
proceeded, in their full perfection, those principles of lawless
violence and cold-blooded wickedness peculiar to the French
Revolution ; principles, which, in defiance of all the lights
of experience, all the most sacred ties of natural affection,
and all the sanctions of Divine Revelation, aimed at nothing
less than a complete dissolution of the whole frame and com
pact of civilized society, which it was their object to convert
under a pretended zeal for " The Rights of Man," into a
* They took this name from a Convent, in which the first meetings of
their club were held.
+ One of the recorded sayings of this monster is, " We must cut off 200,000
heads before things will be put in a right train."

8
vast slaughter-house, and a den of thieves. The Jacobins
had their spies and committees all over France, through whose
agency no arts were spared to excite insurrection, and to
promote every species of lawless wickedness. Before they
actually got into power, they so contrived, by means of
clamour, and threats, and intrigues, that no measure could
be adopted without their sanction. — Oftentimes the pro
ceedings of the National Assembly were over-awed by tu
multuous meetings of their mob, who assembled in immense
numbers under the pretence of seekingaredress of grievances.
On these occasions they carried ensigns and banners, with
seditious and bloody mottos, and threatening vengeance on
all who should oppose them. But even the bloody principles
of the earlier Jacobins were too mild for some of their faction.
It remained for a set of monsters, who composed the Club
of Cordeliers, to push them to their full extreme, and openly
to glory in every thing peculiarly wicked, barbarous, and
profane. Their orators, men of the worst character and
who had nothing to lose, mixed with the multitude, taught
them the most wicked principles and opinions, reviled
all who were distinguished for rank, or wealth, or ta
lent, and loaded Christianity with terms of blasphemy,
which even the Devil himself could hardly have improved
upon. They were very active also in circulating among the
populace blasphemous, obscene, and seditious papers, and
the greediness with which they were read by the deluded
people, was only exceeded by the spirit of unbounded wicked
ness, which they every where diffused. Their efforts were
aided by the labors of clubs of Female Reformists, who
not contented with railing in their own private meetings
against the King and the Government, on some occasions
even paraded the streets, wearing the cap of liberty and the

9
tri-coloured ribband, and compelling others to adopt their
dress and second their clamours.
In this manner was prepared and accelerated the grand
crisis of the Revolution in 1792, which ended in the deposi
tion of the King, and the convocation of a national Conven
tion which should determine the fate of royalty. This new
assembly was composed principally of the violent members
of the Jacobin and Girondist faction, for the reign of terror
was now such that no royalist, and indeed no moderate man
of any party dared to shew his face in it. That the French
nobility and the heads of the Royalist party in general might
have done much for the cause of their King and Country, if
instead of emigrating in the hour of danger, they had united
in a vigorous effort to stem the torrent of rebellion, either in
the capital or in the provinces, as circumstances might have
directed, was clearly proved by the powerful and prolonged
resistance offered to the Republican Government, by the
district of La Vendee. But their precipitate flight left the
game entirely in the hands of their enemies.
The King of France was a man truly amiable and virtuous,
his intentions were most upright, and he was very desirous
to meet the wishes of his people, by yielding to them a larger
share of liberty. But he was at the same time a weak poli
tician, and instead of blending firmness with conciliation,
his easy disposition yielded to every fresh demand of Rebel
lion and Treason. The more he gave the more was demanded,
till at length the name only of a King was left him, and when
he was stripped of power, these base wretches loaded both
him and his family with every species of insult, ridicule and
calumny. Even the calamity of a bad season was charged
on him, and nothing less than his blood could satisfy their

10
rage. The unhappy Monarch was soon consigned with his
illustrious family to prison, when new modes of insult, and
fresh devices of cruelty were exhausted on him. But his
magnanimity of soul triumphed over all the maliee of his san
guinary persecutors, and he appeared greater in his misfor
tunes than he had ever been in his prosperity. The decree
which most acutely wounded his feelings, was that which
separated him from his beloved family, and condemned him
to spend the gloomy hours of bis imprisonment in cheerless
solitude; but even this, however deeply it tried, did not subdue
his fortitude. When at length this august representative of a
race of Kings, who had swayed the French sceptre for more
than eight centuries, was brought to the bar of the Conven
tion to sustain the mockery of a trial, the mild majesty of
his demeanor, the serenity of his countenance, and his replies
equally marked by presence of mind and the clearest preci
sion, offered a powerful contrast to the ferocious aspect and
the groundless accusations of that tribunal of assassins who
sat in judgment on him.
When the nature of his sentence became the subject of
debate, Jacobinism appeared in its darkest character. " The
tyrant must suffer" was the prevailing sentiment. One of
the Deputies was even ferocious enough to propose that the
King's body should be severed into parts aad distributed
throughout the various departments ; another exclaimed,
that the tree of liberty would never flourish,, except it were
watered by royal blood. Louis listened to the sentence of
his death, which was communicated to him by a deputation
from the Convention, without any dismay. The short pe
riod between its announcement and his execution was divided
between his religious duties and the bitter trial of bidding a

11
last adieu to his family. In each and all of these dreadful
scenes, and finally in face of the guillotine itself, so impres
sive was the spirit of Christian heroism with which he met
his fate, that it was far more to be envied than the highest
station which was filled by his persecutors. Upon the scaf
fold with a firm voice be addressed the assembled multitude.
" Frenchmen (he said) I die innocent ; I pardon my enemies ;
I desire that my death"  ,  here the drums drowned
his voice— he bent his neck to the fatal stroke, and instantly
the Jacobins broke forth into cries of hellish joy.
The Ministers of Religion could least of all expect to es
cape in this, period of bloody proscription. Both before and
after the King's death the fury of the sanguinary faction
was particularly levelled against them. They were brought
in multitudes before the revolutionary tribunals, and re
quired to take the oath of the Constitution- As this oath
amounted to no less than a practical abjuration of their God,
it was refused by a large proportion of this venerable order,
upon which they were hacked to pieces by a set of monsters,
who were placed there, eager to act this bloody part. Many
of the Priests thus sacrificed, commanded by their noble de
portment the unwilling homage of their barbarous judges,
and met the stroke of death with a piety and fortitude
worthy of Christian martyrs. At length the triumphs of
atheism and blasphemy appeared to be complete. A grand
fete was held at Paris, in which an infamous strumpet was
exhibited to public view, attired as the Goddess of Reason ;
she was carried in a chair by four men, to receive the em
braces of her worshippers in the Convention, whoallattended
in the Cathedral of Paris to celebrate this Pagau festival ; at
which the Prayer-book was burnt, while multitudes danced
c 2

12
round the flames with every appearance of hellish transport.
When the King was no more, and the Government had
become republican, the principal leaders, as was very natu
ral, began to quarrel among themselves ; and as fast as one
set of wretches got into power, they put to death all of the
opposite parties, whom they knew or suspected to be their
enemies. It was not only at Paris, but in every part of
France, that the guillotine was crouded with victims. Peo
ple were taken up when they least expected it, by the spies
and creatures of the ruling party, and were guillotined with
out ceremony, and almost without the mockery of a trial.—
So entirely dead were all feeling and all principle, that often
men were accused by their nearest friends and relations, who
hoped by this, means to escape suspicion themselves. No man
could consider himself sure of an hour's life, yet no man was
permitted to prepare himself for death; and he who dared to
express the hope of a better life after death, was treated as a
madman and an enthusiast. Yet, in the conduct of the French
people amidst these horrors, the levities of the monkey were
blended with the furies of the tiger. " Whilst courts of jus
tice were thrust out by revolutionary tribunals, and silent
churches were only the funereal monuments of departed reli
gion, there were no fewer than nineteen or twenty theatres,
great and small, most of them kept open at the public ex-
pence, and all of them crowded every night. Among the
gaunt, haggard forms of famine and nakedness, amidst the
yells of murder, the tears of affliction, and the cries of
despair, the song, the dance, the mimick scene, the buffoon
laughter, went on as regularly as in the gay hour of festive
peace. Nay, under the very scaffold of judicial murder, and

13
the gaping planks that poured down blood on the spectators,
the space was hired out for a shew of dancing dogs."*
The number of Frenchmen who fell in Paris, in the Provinces,
and in the French Settlements, during the progress of the
Revolution, by the hands of Frenchmen, is estimated at little
short of 900,000 ; exclusive of 15,000 women, and 22,000
children. More than 22,000 dwelling-houses, and property
to an immense amount were destroyed.
Such were the fruits of Radical Reform in France ; such
the dreadful evils resulting from a want of firmness in the
Government, and of a zealous co-operation of men of prin
ciple throughout the nation to crush jacobinism in the bud,
and to uphold, at the same time that they amended, the con
stitution. It pleased the Almighty to punish the guilty au
thors of the Revolution by means of the very mobs they
themselves had trained and excited, and to render one mob
the scourge of another. Never was any country more dread
fully mangled by the hands of her own children.
There are those who say, that it was only through this
night of horrors that France could have forced her way to
liberty. No sentiment can be more chimerical. If true pa
triotism and christian magnanimity had presided over the
counsels of the leaders in this great convulsion, in the place
of that phrenzied spirit which waged war against every thing
most sacred in earth and heaven, France might have given
to her recovered freedom a correspondent dignity and a re
viving aspect. " She might have rendered the cause of li
berty venerable in the eyes of every worthy mind in every
nation. She might have shamed despotism from the earth,
* Burke, vol. 9, 179.

14
by shewing that freedom is not only reconcileable, but when
well-disciplined, auxiliary to law. She might have had a li
mited monarchy ; a reformed and venerated Clergy ; a mi
tigated but spirited nobility, a liberal order of commons, a
protected, satisfied, laborious and obedient people. A smooth
and easy course of felicity and glory was open to her be
yond any thing recorded in the history of the world."* But
she commenced her new career in erime and licentiousness ;
the meteoric blaze attendant on its progress has only lighted
her to shame and suffering, and there is no pledge in the
principles which still influence the great body of her people
against the future recurrence of direful convulsions.
Yet these were the principles, this the reform which Paine
and his brother Jacobins were eager tointroduce into England.
During the progress of these bloody proceedings he went
over to France, and of course was quite at home among his
revolutionary brethren. They could not foil to give him a
hearty welcome. Upon his return to London, he was ex
tremely active in spreading his infamous principles. On the
4th of Nov. 1791, he assisted on the eve of the gunpowder plot
commemoration, at a meeting of the Revolutionary Society,
where he gave for his toast, " The Revolution of the World."
Jacobin clubs were now very generally established in Eng
land. Fraternal hugs were exchanged by Jacobin Plenipo
tentiaries. Revolutionary dinners were given. Seditious
meetings and corresponding societies were organised ; and
a set of demagogues, under the assumed name of Patriots
and Reformers, began to emulate the French jargon, and to
• Vide Burke's Works, v. 5, 84.

15
pant for the moment when this happy country should became
the scene of anarchy and revolution.
In the years 1791 and 1792 Paine published his infamous
work entitled the " Rights of Man." It was nothing more
than a repetition of all the trash and nonsense of the French
Revolutionary School, applied particularly to the circum
stances and to the institutions of the British nation. Here
and there the cant of affected humanity and of zeal for li
berty are introduced, and various good maximsandwholesome
truths are interlarded with his treasonable doctrines ; but he
smiles only to destroy, and the cloven foot of the demon of-
Anarchy is distinctly visible throughout. The epitome of \
this farrago of ingenious sophistries, revolringabsurdiiies,and
political blasphemies is, that no laws are binding but those
which every man has within bis own breast ; that all here
ditary government is tyranny and usurpation ; that, the peo
ple, without any breach of duty, may, whenever the fancy
seizes them, throw off their allegiance to the King, and sub
vert the Constitution ; that the British Government merits /
not any ©f the praises which have been lavished upon it ; and '
that the happiness of England will take its date from the pe- >
riod when, by common consent, the people shall establish at
Constitution like that of Republican France, emanating from '
the sovereignty of the mob. Paine's scheme of a represen
tative Government founded on universal suffrage, and ba
lanced neither by a Monarchy or an Aristocracy would be to
all intents and purposes a mob-government and therefore
more tyrannical while it lasted, than the most absolute mo
narchy. Thus France rendered by revolution a theatre of
misery and crimes, was the model from which the Constitu
tion-mongers in England were to work. We have already

16
seen what that model was, and therefore need no other com
ment on the tender mercies of Thomas Paine.
The people of Great Britain knew their rights and valued
them, long before Paine wrote his libel on our Constitution.
" They knew they had a right to be free, not only from the
capricious tyranny of one man's will, but from the more af
flicting despotism of Republican factions ; and it was this
very knowledge that attached them to the Constitution of
their country, which steers with such admirable skill between
these direful extremes. The Government never desired that
men should remain in ignorance of their rights ; but it both
desires and demands, that they should not disturb the public
peace, under vain pretences ; that they should make them
selves acquainted not merely with the rights, but with the
duties also, of men in civil society."* As to the levelling
doctrines of Paine and his school, it may briefly be remarked,
that different degrees of talent, industry and good fortune,
will always produce in society different degrees of rank. It
is the Constitution of Nature and of Providence ; and could
we suppose all these distinctions to be levelled to-day by the
hurricane of popular fury, they would rise again to-morrow
among the levellers themselves, by the irresistible influence
of natural and moral causes.
I Among the many fundamental errors which pervade " The
Rights of Man," and the other political productions of Paine,
written at or near the same period there is one peculiarly
prominent, viz. that representation is the natural right of
every person in a common-wealth. Had nothing more been
meant than that every individual has a right to the aid of
Parliament on occasion of any injustice suffered, orarryequ.it>
* Vide Bishop Watson's Apology, Page.376.

17
able claim neglected in cases beyond the controul of law,
we would have echoed back the sentiment, and at the same
time have added, that the poorest man in the country already
possesses this privilege. But the right urged by Paine and .
by his school, is that of " universal suffrage." If the right
be natural no doubt it mnst be equal, and the right of one sex
is as strong as that of the other, yet every plan of represen
tation which has been broached, begins by excluding the
votes of women. The real fact however is, that it is no fur-
ther the right of all than as it conduces to public utility."
Civil Society cannot be upholden unless the interest of the
whole society be binding upon every part and member of it.t
Now the doctrine of universal suffrage, by placing the whole
power of the state in the hands of the commonalty, would.
destroy the boasted balance of our Constitution, and would \
therefore prove destructive and pernicious in its effects, not
only to the interests of the higher classes, but to those also
of the humblest individual. :
It is obvious that the uniform and steady administration of
Government, and its power of affording protection to pro
perly and to industry, rank among the chief sources of na
tional prosperity. Place a Government like that of Great
Britain, at the mercy of a mob by means of universal suf
frage, and the exertion of power will become at all times
head-strong and capricious, and often in the highest degree
tyrannical. The clamorous din of faction will drown the
calm voice of deliberative wisdom, the contests of mob lead- ''
ers, their mutual rancour and ambition will shake the state
with ceaseless convulsions ; it will be impossible to calculate

t Vide Paley's Moral Philosophy, vol. 2, 223.
O

to-day what changes to-morrow may produce, and the rights
of all will be more or less confounded. In such a state of
things no man will be willing to expose himself to toil and
hardship for the attainment of eminence in professions which
may quickly be subverted, for wealth which may to-morrow
be confiscated, or for honors which may wither as soon as
won. War and waste, tumult and confusion will be almost
inevitable, and instead of a steady progress in society to
wards higher and higher degrees of moral and intellectual
eminence or of general prosperity, the course of things will
be the exact contrary, till it finally terminates in universal
ruin. The certainty of such a result would be much greater
in England, than in a country less populous and less civilized,
because of the great facility with which, at the shortest warn
ing, immense mobs might be collected, and the high pitch to
which, through their medium the process of intimidation
might be carried whenever questions were agitated by the
Legislature, upon which public opinion was in any degree
divided. ' Equally founded in absurdity and error is Paine's reason-
ing~against hereditary Monarchy ; for when limited and re
strained as that of England is, instead of being as he asserts
tyranny and usurpation, it proves one of the greatest safe
guards against these evils. The same character of stability
| which this principle applies to the succession of the crown^it
imparts also to all the rights and privileges of the subject.
Once suppose a Constitution to be good, and the very thing to
be desired is the recognition of a principle like this, which will
stamp inviolability upon it. The British Constitution has so
long and so generally commanded the warmest admiration, not
only of all parties at home, but also of all enlightened States-

19
men abroad, that its excellence may be assumed as a politi
cal axiom in spite of all the senseless abuse cast upon it by
the Author of the Rights of Man. Its progress towards this
high pitch of excellence has been very gradual. One im
provement has succeeded another, as experience has dictated
or necessity commanded, but in repairing or amending its
walls its foundations have always been religiously guarded.
Thus in the progressive march of time, a political fabric of nn-
Vt {rivalled excellence has been raised upon the basis of practi-
\cal wisdom, invaluable because it is practical. To perpe
tuate the results of a wisdom thus deeply-founded, and to
impart permanency to institutions thus valued ffom experi
ence of their efficacy, is obviously the general interest of the
society in which they exist; and since the principle of here
ditary transmission is in its mode of operation peculiarly
conducive to these ends, its maintenance in this country,
independently of its sacred character as part of the law of
the land, is equally binding from considerations of civil
utility. The Government of the United States to which Paine re
fers in the course of his works in terms of high panegyric, is
not at all modelled according to his own principles. The
President is not chosen by the body of the people, but by a
small band of electors. Now the very arguments urged in
favor of universal suffrage,* as a natural right, if there were
any force in them would equally establish the right of the
* They who are in love with Republics win not be gratified with Mr.
Cheetham's account of the practical state of the American Government.
" I hazard nothing (he says) in remarking, unless it be hazardous to state
the truth, that however excellent the system of our Government may be in
theory, the whole operation of our system of politics in practice, with the
chiels who lead the two parties, and who by hook or crook govern the nation,
is one of mystery, craft and imposition. In thme articles no nation can vis
with the United States, p. 77.
D 2

20
people to elect in the same way the supreme magistrate,
whether he be called King, or Emperor, or President. This
privilege is very properly denied to the people in the Govern
ment in question on the score of expediency, and thus a
principle is recognised which at once overthrows the whole
foundation of Paine's arguments. To reason, however, gravely
against this man is almost needless. His book confutes itself
» by proving him to be a mere theorist. Let the reader, bear
ing in mind the rapid changes which we have detailed in
the French Revolutionary Government, several of which
he had himself witnessed, read in the following words his
daring prophecy of its permanency. " Those who talk of a
counter revolution in France, shew how little they under
stand man. There does not exist in thecompass of language,
an arrangement of words to express so much as the means of
effecting a counter-revolution."* This was written in 1791.
Soon after a counter-revolution took place, in which the
French National Assembly was annihilated, the National
Convention of which he became a conspicuous member was
established, and by one of its decrees the King of France was
beheaded. The science of Government is so practical in itself, is in
tended for such practical purposes, and requires in those who
attempt to treat of it so much experience, that it is with
infinite caution that any thing like serious changes should be
attempted in a Constitution, which has hitherto in any toler
able degree answered the purposes of its construction. If
this remark, which occurs in the works of Mr. Burke, admit
jn any degree of general application, it will apply with pre.
* Jtights of Man, 1st Part, 128.

21
eminent force to the Government of our country, in relation
to which an enlightened Statesman of America* has justly
observed, that there is not a nation existing which in the
uncertain and hazardous event of a revolution has more to
lose and less to gain than that of Great Britain.
Yet although Paine had quite sense enough to comprehend
all this, the sole object of his Rights of Man is to light up in
England a sanguinary contest, and to incite the people to re
volt and treason. He doesnot respectfully point out abusesand
propose a system of moderate reform, but he waves the torch
of an incendiary against the whole fabric of our Constitution,
and he calls upon all Englishmen to kindle flames and to pile
up faggots against it. From such monsters of iniquity good
Lord deliver us. We would say to the people of England,
whether incited to this infernal work by the writings of
Paine, or by the harangues and the various other arts of the
Radicals, his disciples.— Behold your Constitution, the sacred
legacy bequeathed to you by your pious forefathers, conse
crated by their wisdom, consolidated by their blood, the
grand source of your past prosperity, the pledge of your
future greatness — it may possibly have its imperfections ;
what human work is free from them ? but the same wisdom
which framed it, will, doubtless, whenever the evil shall
prove itself to be practical, gradually do it away; you are its
natural guardians ; will yon suffer it to be violated by those
who have nothing to propose in its room but a compound
of folly, blasphemy, and crime ; or will you preserve it in
violate ? Who can doubt the issue of any such appeal ?
We desire not a better spirit for the nation, in the present
* John Adams, Esq.

22
day, than that which pervaded the bulk of it, at the period
immediately succeeding the publication of the " Rights of
Man." Though its sophistries succeeded in seducing from
their loyalty mauy among the ignorant and discontented,
they only excited, in general, a strong sentiment of disgust
and abhorrence towards their author. The spirit of the na
tion was roused, and loudly declared itself against the vari
ous efforts of the rebellious faction which was plotting the de
struction of every thing most sacred in it. Loyal associations
were formed to counteract the influence of the Revolutionary
clubs. The Attorney-General commenced a prosecution
-x-. lagainstPaine, as the author of the Rights of Man. An action
Iliad been previously brought against Jordan, as the publisher,
| but it was abandoned, upon his throwing himself on the mercy
of the Government. Paine was now evidently awed by the
vigour of the Legislature, and by the loyal spirit of the
people. All over England he was carried about in effigy,
with a pair of stays under his arm ;* and the populace amused
themselves not a little with ridiculing the impudent attempts
of a stay-maker to overturn their Government.
Just as his trial was coming on, Paine, afraid of the issue,
: skulked out of the kingdom. He narrowly escaped being
j seized at Dover. A deputation from his brother Reformers
in France had already announced to him, in London, that in
recompence of his services the department of Calais had
elected him a Member of the National Convention. We
shall soon see how narrowly he escaped passing from the
Convention to the guillotine.
His trial soon after came on in London, before Lord
1 It will be recollected that he was bred to the stay-making trade. Vide page I.

23
Kenyon and a Special Jury. Mr. Perceval, whose memory
is embalmed by the tears of a grateful country, was then at
the bar, and opened the information. On behalf of Paine,
Mr. Erskine amused the Court with an ingenious and elo
quent defence. The Attorney-General rose to reply, but
the Jury told him it was unnecessary, and instantly returned
a verdict of guilty.
Great as was the indignation excited by the libellous pas
sages which were brought forwards on this occasion, as the
foundation of the prosecution, this feeling was raised to a
far higher pitch by the influence of a letter from Paine to
the Attorney-General, dated Paris, which was read in court.
In this letter he even surpassed himself in scurrility and im
pudence. Like a true coward, who is always bold as a lion,
except when danger is at hand, he vented from his hiding
place in France, gross insults on the character of our revered
Monarch, and threatened, that should he be pronounced
guilty, both Judge and Jury should, ere long, be visited with
the same fate that the bloody monsters ot Paris had inflicted
on their opposers. The reply of the Attorney-General to
this threat was manly and dignified. All I can tell Mi-. Paine
(said he) is this, if any of his assassins are here in London,
and there is some ground to suppose that either they, or
the assassins with whom he is connected may be ; if they
are here, I tell them that for a man to die of doing his duty,
is just as good a thing as to die of a fever, or of the stone.
Let him not think, that not to be an incendiary is to be a
coward. It was stated in the course of the evidence delivered at the
trial, thata Printer of the name ofChapman had in the first in
stance been employed to publish the Rights of Man. He com-

24
pleted the first part, but afterproceedlngupoil the second part,
he was so shocked by the many observations interspersed, di
rectly personal against the King and the Government, that he
refused to print the remainder. Having however received
many civilities from Paine, he felt reluctant to adopt this
course ; but on the very afternoon of the day on which the
resolution was formed, he was insulted by him in so gross a
manner, that he no longer felt any thing but pleasure in de
livering up the copy of his work. Upon the 16th Jan. (says
Chapman) Mr. Paine called upon me, and as was not unusual
with him, he was rather intoxicated with liquor ; he had been
dining, I believe, with Mr. Johnson, in St. Paul's Church
yard. He introduced the subject upon which we differed,
Religion ; a favorite topic with him when he was intoxicated.
The debate ran high, till at length it ended (on Paine's part)
in personal abuse, both of myself and Mrs. Chapman. At
length he rose up in a great passion, declaring I was a Dis
senter, and that he had a very bad opinion of Dissenters in
general, believing them to be a pack of hypocrites, and he
should deal with them accordingly. This term, " apack of
hypocrites," was a favorite expression with Paine, and was
frequently applied by him indiscriminately to all Christians.
The Attorney-General now out-lawed him, a measure of
which he afterwards felt the inconvenience.
But the friends of revolution were not yet put down in
England. They yelped hideously in praise of their French
brethren ; a deep conspiracy pervaded the whole country to
subvert the Government, and rebellion was only chained
down in consequence of the vigorous measures adopted by
Parliament to meet the crisis.

25
It is impossible to overlook the striking resemblance which
exists between the Revolutionists of 1793, and the Radicals
of 1819. — They all belong to the same family, and are wed
ded to the same principles. The late election of Sir Charles!
Wolseley by the people of Birmingham, as their Representa-
tive, and the disposition to similar elections in other places,
reminds us of the plan which was formed in 1793 to assem
ble a pretended Convention of the People, for the purpose
of assuming to itself the character of a general Representa
tion of the Nation,* which should supersede the Parliament
and the legislative power of the country at large. Even prior
to the enormities committed in France, the Jacobin Societies,;.
in England were in close correspondence with the Jacobin!
Club in Paris, and went so far as to send delegates to the
French NationalConvention, who received a hearty welcome
from that Assembly. A complete plan of Insurrection was
framed, and the manufacturing towns were chiefly relied
upon to aid this wicked and frantic scheme. — The whole
system of 1793, and that of 1819, are equally founded on ¦
Thomas Paine's doctrines of the Rights of Man : that mon- ]
strous doctrine, the object of which is to seduce the weak
and the ignorant, to unite with the violent and the wicked, in
the object of overturning all religion, government, law, pro
perty, security, order, and of rendering, by these means, our
happy country a naked waste, which the demons of anarchy,
carnage, and confusion, may claim as their own. One part
of the plan in the former, as in the present period, was to
persevere in petitioning for Reform, until the moment should

Vide the Speech of the Eight Hon. Wm. Pitt; May 16, 1794.
E

26
arrive for throwing off the mask, and exchanging petition for
dictation. But not only in their general system of proceed
ing, but in almost every minute particular, the Radicals of
18J9 are copyists of the Revolutionists of 1793. The same
iriflarama'tory language belongs to both. With both, kings
are tyrants, religion a fable, its zealous friends hypocrites
and knaves, the rich plunderers of the poor, all employers
oppressors, rebellion another name for patriotism, and the
assassination of thosc'wnora they deem the enemies'of their
cause, the acm& of public virtue. Even children are taught
to lisp terms of sedition ; and women are transformed into
political -furies, by the subtle poison of the Radical tenets.
As to the scheme of universal Suffrage and annual Parlia
ments, a notion borrowed from Paine, which is the watch
word of this party, it is so triumphantly absurd as hardly to
justify a serious refutation. We can easily conceive, that
the demagogues in question would be highly gratified with
the success of a scheme which would place tbem in the seat
of power, and transfer 'to their use the usurped property of
tlie nation. But we greatly doubt, whether even this age,
with all its 'illumination, is sufficiently advanced to tolerate
the idea of sweeping from the seats of Parliament, all who
are most distinguished by talent, and rank, and property,
and virtue, to niake way for all who are most eminent for
presumptuous ignorance, and shameless effrontery, and match
less' impiety.
The danger from this quarter is already suspended, by the
consentaneous burst of loyalty, and of steady determination
to uphold the Constitution and to support the Government,
which has lately distinguished every portion of the country.
But the Radicals must still be narrowly watched ; they are

27
the avowed and genuine followers of Thomas Paine ; they!
have all the will, and they are only waiting for the oppor-tu- . }
nity to. lay violent hands on the ark of the Constitution. But
even though their present designs should be frustrated, it does
not follow that they will be abandoned ; and should they be
allowed without controul to proceed in the scheme of silently
demoralizing and corrupting the lower classesj by diffusing
among them, with restless zeal, tracts, fraught with blas
phemy, sedition and immorality-, the final consequences may
be such, as to scourge this eovmtvy- with a repetition of all
the horrors, and a|t the crimes of the French Revolution.
It is the part of a paternal government to act with a wise
foresight to the future, as well as to provide for the present.
We are now to view Paine acting the part of a Legislator1
at Paris. On his arrival there he addressed; a letter to the
Freneh people, in which, saluting them as Fellow-citizens,
and thanking them far the honor they had conferred on him,
he observes, '1 A new Constitution must be formed1, in which
the bagatelles of monarchy, royalty, uegeney, and hereditary
succession shall be exposed-"' These sentiments, which he
knew would he cordially greeted by his revolutionary
friends, were only the echo of the voices which now sounded
the dreadful notes of preparation for the approaching trial of
the King. Paine was one of those who voted for his impri
sonment during the war and subsequent banishment. His
next occupation was to aid in the formation of a new Con
stitution ; in other words to propose new plans of confusion
and misery. But the faction with which he was connected
was quickly after pulled down to make way for another still
more brutally wicked ; and in December 1793, Mr. Legis
lator and Reformer Paine was consigned to a French dun-
£ 2

28
geon, where, during a residence of eleven months he had a
pleasant taste of the blessings of Revolution. He very nap*
rowly escaped being brought to the guillotine, whose bloody
platform was daily crowded by victims far more innocent
than himself. Paine was keenly alive to his own sufferings,
though he knew not how to feel for others. In the Preface
to the second part of the Age of Reason, he expatiates
upon the sanguinary character of Robespierre, by whom
he was imprisoned, and upon an alledged departure, in
1790, from the "just and humane" principles of the Revo
lution, forgetful that he had himself supported in the Con
vention, proceedings far more barbarous, than any which
had marked the period last-mentioned, and that the measures
of Robespierre were nothing more than the principles of
his own faction, practically carried to their full extreme.
During his imprisonment he was attacked by a bad fever,
caused by his intemperance. A medical gentleman, who at
tended him in France, has since declared, that his body was
almost in a state of putrefaction, the consequence, in all pro
bability, of constant hard drinking ; and so terribly offensive
was the stench that issued from it, that he could hardly be
approached. After the death of the impious Robespierre, Paine was li
berated from Prison, and was invited to resume his seat at
the Convention.— Mr. Munroe, the American Minister, was
now imprudent enough to offer him an asylum in his house.
He soon found, that he had admitted a most unmanageable
guest, and, for the sake of his own credit, was obliged to
stint him in the use of liquor ; yet what he could not get in
the house, he contrived to procure out of it.
Paine did his best again to make a figure in France, and to

29
write himself into notice, but he had already enjoyed his
short day of popularity, and was henceforth doomed to dis
regard and neglect. Yet lie continued to make nonsensical
speeches, and to write absurd pamphlets, and to contradict
himself in every successive publication. The French Go
vernment had now passed into the hands of five Directors, in
other words of five tyrants ; yet Paine's venal pen was ready
to represent this new form of despotism, as a new modifica
tion of liberty, and his argument in its favor is so gloriously
absurd, that we cannot forbear quoting it. " Three are
too few (he says) either for the variety or the quantity of bu
siness. The constitution has adopted five — nature has given
us exactly five senses, and the same number of fingers and
toes, pointing out to us by this kindness the propriety of an
executive Directory of five" ! Surely tyranny never had a
more fawning parasite, or freedom a more decided enemy.
Though Paine, by tossing all around him the firebrands of
sedition and revolution, bad in numerous instances unsettled
the principles of the ignorant, and confirmed the diabolical
intentions of the Jacobinical, yet one great and impassable
barrier opposed the consummation of his object in this coun
try : we mean the influence of Christianity; which, wherever
it exists in any degree of purity, not only proves a living
principle of virtue in good men, but confers on society the
further benefit of restraining the vices of the unprincipled.
He well knew, that if this pillar of national principle and
happiness were once subverted, and that holy book brought
into discredit, which teaches its disciples on the same prin
ciple that they serve God to honor the King, his licentious
principles would, on all sides, find zealous votaries, and the
triumphs of anarchy be complete.

30
In the Roman Catholic countries of Europe, Voltaire, and
his followers, had found it an easy task to vilify Christianity,
by ridiculing and attacking those errors and superstitions
with which craft and worldly policy, with a view to the ex
altation of the Papacy, had, during the middle ages, encum
bered and polluted it. Infidelity is still playing this game
on the Continent, and it requires little foresight to predict,
that the final issue will he the downfall of Popery. But in
this highly-favored country Christianity presents itself under
a very different aspect, and opposes quite another front to
the attacks of Infidelity. Our Established Church disen
cumbered itself long ago of every revolting ceremony and
unscriptural doctrine, and while it retains in its formularies
every valuable appendage of the primitive times and pays a
due reverence to the authority of tradition it is founded
substantially on the Bible, and therefore can only be shaken,
by bringing the Bible itself into contempt.
Every effort of Paine was now directed to this end. The
fruit of his labors was given to the world, in a work entitled
the Age of Reason, which he published in two parts, the
last of which appeared in 1795.
A more infamous libel on Christianity was never published.
A libel it was altogether : for as far as argument, or learning,
or research, are concerned, nothing could be more positively
contemptible. It would be untrue to say it was marked by
no talent. There was always a certain degree of ingenuity
and cleverness in Paine's writings ; but the objections against
Christianity were stale, and such as had been triumphantly
refuted, long before he saw the light. All that could be
called new in it, was the unequalled degree of ignorance and
impudence displayed throughout by its author. Knowing

31
Ml well that ridicule will often appear to make an impres
sion upon truths, which are impregnable by argument, he
relies for success chiefly upon this weapon. In the spirit of
impious buffoonery, he scoffs at things the most sacred ;
insults, by the lowest abuse, characters justly deemed holy
and venerable ; charges falsehood on narratives confirmed
by irresistible evidence ; makes merry with prophecies the
most clearly accomplished ; and denies the truth of miracles
verified by the most convincing testimony. He every where
represents apparent difficulties, as real ones, without even
hinting at the 'manner in which those difficulties have been
satisfactorily explained.
His work opens with a general objection to the Bible,
more than half of which be represents as being filled with
"the history of voluptuous debaucheries, cruel executions,
and urtrelenting vindictiveness," and he then attacks it in
terms of impious blasphemy.
Though the charge liere quoted is that of an enemy who
wilfally perverts the truth, we readily allow that the por
traiture of human natwre in the Bible is any thing but flat
tering to our natural pride. It evidently does not accord
wifh the system of human perfectibility advanced by the
promoters of t'he French Revolution ; a system founded on
consummate ignorance of themselves, and which after all
its flattering promises conducted its authors and abettors to
a frightful precipice of crime and misery. It is perfectly
true also, that not only the grosser vices of action are dis
played by the sacred historians with unerring fidelity, but
that even the most refined transgressions of the heart are ex
posed in a manner .equally minute. Thus far we subscribe
to the charge which has been quoted, but the inference we

32
draw from it is precisely the reverse of that which is thence
deduced in the Age of Reason. If the historical part of the
Bible were a chronicle only of actions just and good, a re
cord ouly of pure and perfect characters, we should look
around us in vain for any thing parallel to it in other histo
ries, and should thence most justly doubt its claim to vera
city. But as the case really stands it is in perfect harmony
with the results of human experience in all ages. The cha
racters of the Bible and its facts.prescnt throughout, a faith
ful picture of human nature in ages less civilised and in
structed than our own ; of human nature such as it really is,
not such as it is represented in romance. We meet not the
demigods and heroes who people the enchanted gardens of
poetry, but we meet man as we see him on the great theatre
of human life, agitated by unruly passions, exposed to strong
temptations, often hurried by their influence into an abyss
of follies and crimes, but capable by faith in the promises
of that omnipotent and omnipresent God, who is a rewarder
of them that diligently seek him, of becoming eminent in
wisdom, sanctity, and every great and good qualification.
Every history which has ever been written, in proportion as
it desceuds to domestic details exhibits more or less the
same painful display of human depravity. " History (ob
serves Mr. Burke) consists for the far greater part of the
miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice,
revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal and all
the train of disorderly appetites, which shake the public
with the same " Troublous storms that toss
" The private state, and render life unsweet."
These vices are the causes of these storms ; religion, morals,
laws, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights of men are the

33
pretexts. In history a great volume is unrolled for our in
struction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the
past errors and infirmities of mankind. Thus it appears that
Paiue's leading charge against the Bible, when qualified
from his perversions, affords one of the strongest evidences
that can be urged of its truth, and of its consequent title to
our unlimited confidence.
Yet if its authors, in narrating the stories in question, had
written in such a manner as to inspire approbation of vice,
or to allure to contact with it, we should not have dared to
denominate the book which contains them the Holy Bible.
But with the exception of a few passages, in which the best
Orientalists agree, that the original text would admit of a
translation perfectly inoffensive, it may truly be said, that
the purity of feeling in the writers is as eminent as their
unflattering truth. An assertion from an Infidel will carry
more weight with many sceptics than an argument from a
Christian. We therefore gladly refer upon this point to the
authority of Rousseau, one of the most formidable, because
one of the ablest enemies of the Christian faith. The Bible
(he remarks) has been reproached for its impurities, whereas
it is the most modest book that has been written, for although
it records crimes and actions the most offensive, it does it in
simple language, such as leaves no corrupt impression upon
the heart. Coming from such a quarter this remark is highly
important ; its only defect is, that though it speaks the truth,
it does not tell all the truth. Rousseau might justly have
added, that sin is recorded in Scripture only that it may be
detested. It is every where represented as the great object
of Divine Indignation, the cause which expelled our first
parents from Paradise, the Parent of Death, and the fruitful

34
source of all our woes ; indeed so deadly is t!ie evil repre
sented to be, and so wide the breach it had caused Letween
man and his great Creator, that the sufferings and death of
the eternal Son of God, are represented as having been en
dured as the only means of restoring him to the Divine favor
and Image. Thus the authors of the Bible are invariably the
teachers of eminent virtue, and universal holiness. And
it is very worthy of remark, that though living in ages dis
tant from each other, and under a great difference as to those
external circumstances which naturally lead to diversity of
sentiment and opinion, they invariably speak an accordant
language, inculcate the same great truths, and never oppose
to each other a single jarring sentiment. The glory and the
providence of God, his hatred of sin, his purposes of inef
fable mercy in the great scheme of redemption, his providen
tial care of that people whom he had selected to be the de
positaries of his saving truth in the midst of the universal
Apostacy, the wonders of his power, the terrors of his wrath,
the consolations of his love, these are the grand themes to
which the lyres of the sacred Bards are attuned ; these the
subjects of their daring images and magnificent descriptions.
All goes on in regular order, and in a grand march of pro
gressive discovery. The first obscure intimations of future
redemption gradually assume greater distinctness and cer
tainty, till the language of prophecy respecting the Messiah
becomes clear and definite ; and at length every such pre
diction receives its full accomplishment in the person and in
the offices of Jesus Christ. The surrounding world is repre
sented as ministering in various ways to the furtherance of
the divine counsels ; the Israelites act under the special
guidance of a superintending providence, and other nations

35
are subject to its insensible, but positive controul. Thus
the Canaanites when they had filled up the measure of their
crimes were chastised by the arm of Israel ; and thus the
Apostacy of Israel itself was punished through the medium
of the Assyrian Monarch. Cyrus was raised up to deliver the
chosen people from the might of the oppressor, and his suc
cessor seconding his magnanimous conduct, eventually rea
lised their restoration to Sion ; the revolutions of the four
great empires, displayed in the vision of Daniel, are in like
manner described as in no way produced by fortuitous cir
cumstances ; but as successively tending to prepare the way
for the complete establishment of the Messiah's kingdom,
which shall never be overthrown.
" If we behold the events of history in any other way than
this, all will look like confusion, like the tossing of waves ;
it will seem as though one confused revolution came to
pass after another, merely by blind chance, without any regu
lar or certain end. But if we consider the events of Provi
dence in the light in which the Scriptures set them before
us, they then appear an orderly series of events, all wisely
directed in excellent harmony and consistence, tending all to
one end. All God's works of Providence, through all ages,
meet at last as so many lines uniting in one centre."*
* Edwards on Redemption.
This brief sketch of the objects and of the history of the
Bible, imperfect as it is, includes not only an answer to the
objection already quoted, but to many others urged in a si
milar style of blasphemous and wilful perversion.
Paine attacks the miraculous history of Christianity as re
lated in the four gospels, in a similar style of ribaldry and
invective, and with objections equally groundless.
si

36
The miracles of the Gospel, and the leading facts of Scrip
ture history, have been handed down to us better guarded,
and supported by a consistency and concurrence of evidence,
infinitely superior to that which establishes any other facts
of ancient history, however true, that are upon record.
We have eight distinct authors, witnesses to the truth of
the Gospel History, all cotemporary with Jesus Christ ; for
not only the four Evangelists, but four among the authors of
the Apostolical Epistles, who had no share in writing the
history, may be fairly considered as its secondary narrators,
both by direct allusions to its main facts, or to some of its
maxims, as well as by a striking coincidence of sentiment
and spirit with the opinions and views of Him whom fh^y
regarded as their Lord and Saviour.
To the force of this accumulated evidence let the question
be next added,— where shall we find such satisfactory proofs
of honesty and integrity in any other writers ? By far the-
greater number speak and act as eye witnesses of the miracu
lous facts, which they relate, or refer to : one of the remain
der had been a deadly enemy to the Christian cause, but be
came, in a most remarkable manner, a convert to its truth,
and was ever after its boldest champion ; another was the
friend and companion of this heroic character, in whose
views and opinions he fully coincided. Of the four Evange
lists it may justly be remarked, that there is sufficient variety
in their narratives, and in some non-essential particulars suf
ficient diversity to prove, that they were distinct and uncon
nected witnesses ; yet there is such a unity of feelin<* and
impression, as to the actions, the character, and the whole
demeanor of the wonderful Personage, whose history they
write, as fully satisfies us that they drew from an actual

37
model, and that it had made a deep and indelible impression
on their hearts. And what a model that was !— how supe
rior to all that the world had ever before seen or imagined of
excellent or great,— how admirably consistent with itself in
every circumstance, and in every situation, — " how exqui
sitely observant of the most exact decorum, and blending
with the sweetest familiarity a certain character of greatness
which human language is unable to describe"* — what a
matchless union of majesty and mercy, of dignity and sweet
ness — of truth and compassion — of awful purity, yet of in
dulgent love. Even from Infidels a reluctant homage has
often been wrung to the character and to the doctrines of
Jesus Christ, and with an inconsistency which condemned
themselves, they have been forced to acknowledge " Never
man spake like this man."t
The authors of the New Testament, whenever they de
scribe miraculous events, never veil them in any degree of
ambiguity, as though they courted mystery, but speak of
them as events that took place in the face of the whole world;
thus challenging the strictest scrutiny. They are moreover
related in a manner so clear and decided, and with such a
distinct reference to names of persons and places, as well as
to other minute particulars, as must have rendered it easy
to detect fabrication, had it been attempted.
To dwell on a single particular. They speak of the Re
surrection of Christ as an undoubted fact, which proved him
to be, as he asserted, the Eternal Son of God ; yet so far are
they from resting the evidence of this wonderful event merely
* Vide Jebb's Sermons, page 256.
f A famous Passage in Rousseau will immediately occur to the reader.

38
upon their own testimony, however sufficient, that a bold
appeal is made by one of them to no less than 500 persons,
most of them then living, all of whom he declares beheld the
Saviour, after he had risen from the dead.* By another of
them it is asserted, that he shewed himself alive to his
Apostles, after his passion, being seen of them forty days, t
Now it isnot to be supposed, that all these witnesses would
have united their divided interests for the verification of a
falsehood — or that the Apostles would have dared to make
this appeal to them, had they not been existing and ready to
assert the same fact A lie would have shrouded itself in a
less number of witnesses, or the audacity of the appeal would
have instantly been exposed : or were we, as an extreme
case, to suppose, against all possibility, that the whole was
an ingenious imposture, and that the multitude who were
parties to it had faithfully kept the secret, then it would
follow that the authors of the fraud had some worldly object
in view, which we shall be able to trace in their subsequent
proceedings. — But their worldly interest was directly oppo
sed to the cause which they so heroically embraced. They
were taught by Jesus Christ himself, that their portion, on
becoming Christians, would be the loss of allchanceof worldly
fortune, and an exposure to persecution, obloquy, and even
death itself. Was there any thing tempting in this prospect,
any thing that could render it the interest of these men to
endeavour to force a falsehood on the world ' Yet still they
persevered ; they never varied in one tittle of their story ;
they gave the strongest proofs of unbounded devotion to the
cause of their great founder, and of sublime charity towards
* 1st Cor. c 15, v. & t Acts c. 1, v. &

39
their fellow-creatures. They did all this in attestation of the
truth of that miraculous history which we possess in the four
gospels, and many of them joyfully sealed with their blood
the truth of their testimony. The conclusion which thence
results, as to their veracity, is inevitable.
From the same conviction that had influenced the Apostles,
and equally in opposition to their worldly interests, innumer
able persons in the very age in which these facts were asserted
to have taken place, and in which therefore, if imposture had
existed, the opportunity for detecting it would have been
easy, embraced the same faith ; abandoned their vices, re
formed their lives, and adopted a new set of manners, habits,
and customs, some of which had a peculiar and religious re
ference to the matters of fact which form the foundation of
the Gospel history.*
That such was the case, and that such were the convic
tions of the Primitive Christians, is proved, not only by a
reference to the writers whom we deem inspired, but also by
the testimony of various Christian authors, some of whom
wrote in the Apostolic age, and others in those immediately
succeeding it. By these the same Scriptures that we possess
are quoted, and the same miraculous facts are confidently
appealed to, as of undoubted and undisputed authenticity.
The leading features of the Gospel history are verified by
the incidental allusions of some of the i'agan Historians f
They are much more accurately defined in the portions that
still exist of the works of the early imptigners of the Chris-
* They who would wish to see this argument placed in its strongest light
and traced in all its wintlings, are referied to the Evidences of Paley, and the
Works of Lardner. ' It occurs also under a somewhat different form, in that
admirable Tract " Leslie's short and easy method with the Deists."
t Vide Plinii Epis. lib. 10, 87, 98. Tacit. Annal. 15, 44.

40
tian faith, asPorphyry, Celsus, and Julian. The latter writers
so far from disputing the truth of the miracles of Christ, ad
mit them as notorious facts, and only parry the obvious con
clusions by ascribing them to the power of magic.
The only case which has ever been brought forwards by
way of comparison with the one in question, is, the rapid
progress of the Mahometan Religion ; but in what respect
does it offer any parallel to that of Christianity ? Not in the
character of its author, for he was vicious and tyrannical ;
not in the genius of his religion, for it is a compound of
fraud and policy adapted to our basest lusts and most igno
ble passions ; not in the contents of the Koran, for its pre
vailing absurdities are its own, its beauties are borrowed •
from the Bible ; not in Prophecies accomplished and accom
plishing ; not in Miracles verified by the testimony of nume
rous and satisfactory witnesses. The ony point of compari
son then, is the rapid diffusion of this superstition ; but how
was this atchieved ? By the edge of the sword, by the ter
rors of conquest, by the influences of sensuality. From such
a mode of propagation, so contrary to our notions of infinite
purity aud wisdom, Ave turn with pleasure and admiration
to survey the bloodless trophies of the Christian warfare ;
trophies bought with no tears, excepting those of gratitude
and joy ; raised not merely without the aid of violence, or
''fraud, or policy, or learning, or sensual pleasure, but in
direct opposition to all the difficulties, and all the terrors
which their united forces could set in array against it. For
an effect so entirely contradictory to human experience, and
to the common course of events, there is no rational way of
accounting, but by the supposition that this Christian Reli
gion was indeed divine, and supported by Almighty power.

41
This chain of evidence, in proof of the miraculous facts
of the Gospel history, has never yet been broken, and we
defy any Deists either to destroy it, or to offer any thing
parallel to it. They who reject it, and would thus be con
sistent with themselves, are bound to disbelieve every fact
of ancient history, and every record of tradition; for none
can be referred to, supported by such various and concur
rent evidences, or that exhibit such strong internal proofs of
veracity. It follows as a fair consequence, that the authors
of the history were no impostors, and therefore that the
Christian Religion is divine.
The argument from Prophecy is quite as unanswerable as
that we have just considered, but it is much beyond our
limits. We would only just observe, in relation to a living
and accomplishing prophecy, that the present condition of
the Jews, so literally accords with the very letter of the pre
dictions, which foretel their dispersion and persecution, in
consequence of their disobedience to God, and rejection of
the Messiah, that they would appear to be copied from the
event. Infidels, indeed, would have protested it was so, but
that they knew the common sense of mankind would revolt
against them. This is not saying too much, as both Paine
and Voltaire have pretended, contrary to all history and all
evidence, that such was the fact in the case of two noted
predictions, by the force of which they were absolutely con
founded. Paine made this impudent assertion relative to
that wonderful passage in Isaiah,* which calls Cyrus by
name as the future restorer of Jerusalem, considerably more
than 100 years before he appeared in the world. Voltaire,
* Isaiah c. 44, v. 28, compared with Ezra c. 1.
G

42
not a whit behind him in effrontery, protested the same; as
to the literal agreement between our Saviour's predictions of
the siege and destruction of Jerusalem, and the h'storical re
cord of that terrible event * N othing can be more agreeable
to the friends of Christianity than to see its enemies reduced
to subterfuges, for which any schoolboy would deserve to be
flogged. That there are difficulties in the Christian system, every
reflecting man will be ready to acknowledge : but then they
are either difficulties which admit of an easy solution, or such
as arise out of the limited range of our capacities in this in
fancy of our being; and if we will but condescend to believe
that the works of God are as great and marvellous, and his
ways as just and true, in those things which we do not yet
comprehend, as we clearly see to be the case in those that
we do, then every rebellious aspiring of a sceptical nature
will be quelled, and we shall be contented to wait in humility
and faith for those clearer discoveries, which it is reasonable
to conclude will form one great source of increased enjoy
ment to us in a more exalted state of being.
In the mean time, it is of the first importance, when dwell
ing upon the difficulties which may be started by sceptics to
the Christian Revelation, to recollect that most of these dif
ficulties apply with equal force to every system of Deism,
that has beeu or can be framed.! The great difference be
tween the two cases is this, that although each system has its
difficulties inevitable to creatures placed in circumstances of
comparative ignorance, there is on the side of Christianity a
* Luke c. 19, v. 42 to 44 — Luke c. 21, v. 20 to 24.
fThis argument is admirably unfolded by Bishop Butler, in his Analogy, Sec

43
mass of evidence clear, convincing, and incontrovertible, to
prove that it is a system framed by Infinite Benevolence, for
the highest purposes of human happiness : there is practical
proof, that by its influence on the human mind, millions have
been reclaimed from immorality ; and there is an absolute
certainty, from a survey of its principles, that if we could
¦ oonceive them to have their full influence upon the counsels
of nations, and upon the conduct of individuals,. the reign of
sin, the source of all misery, would be extinguished, and earth
would almost wear the aspect of heaven. In the other case,
Deism has to encounter most of the difficulties, and is at the
same time utterly devoid of any of the evidences of Chris
tianity. It is all hopeless uncertainty, and dreary shivering
speculation. In this view of Christianity, what terms shall we find suf
ficiently expressive of the indignation that is due to such an
assailant as Paine, who comes to the charge against it, not
guided by reason, or restrained by reverence, but armed
with profane jests, impious buffoonery, and scurrilous invec
tive. Amidst the fumes of drunkenness, the orgies of pro
fligacy, the delirium of anarchy, and amongst a wretched
herd of Atheists, Deists, and Monsters, drunk with blood,
this Prophet of the New Light had studied the principles of
eternal truth, and flattered himself that he had made disco
veries, which were never granted to the goodly society of the
Prophets, to the glorious company of the Apostles, or to the
noble army of Martyrs. From a combat in which Boling-
broke and Voltaire, Hume and Gibbon had retired, baffled
and confounded, he dared to fancy, that he was destined to
emerge, bearing the palm of victory. He lived long enough
to be disenchanted of this delusion ; he lived to sec his igno-
G2

-14
ranee exposed,* his impertinences chastised, his person hated
by those whom he had most praised and most courted, his
name consigned to infamy and execration. He lived to be a
terror to himself, and a warning to all that approached him.
Triumphs, it is true, he had, and what were they ? They
were confined to that class of men who, from want of educa
tion, are very apt to lend a ready ear to the most distorted
statement of facts, or to the most unfounded arguments, if
urged in a bold and sophistical manner, and seasoned with a
due share of ridicule and merriment. Such statements and
arguments will also find many interested supporters, among
those who are eagerly seeking an apology for the indulgence
of their favorite vices and wicked; propensities. That many
such men have either been corrupted in their principles, or
confirmed in their wickedness by Paine, there can be no
doubt. It is lamentable also to reflect, that he may have
shaken the principles of many more, whom curiosity first
impelled to open his books, and who then found themselves
staggered by sophistries which they were not qualified to
unravel. In this way he has doubtless rooted from the minds
of thousands the only principles upon which morality can
subsist, or happiness be founded ; he has done his best to
despoil our nature of all those tender affections and mild
virtues, which shed a benignant influence upon the scenes of
domestic life ; he has rendered the wicked still more audaci
ous, by freeing them from the dread of future retribution ;
he has planted many a dying pillow with thorns, by the doubts
he has infused, and has thus exerted his faculties to their full

* Bishop Watson's " Apology for the Bible," cannot be too widely circu
lated, as an antidote to Paine's Age of Reason. A cheap edition has lately
been printed by the Society for Pramoti rig Christ ian 1. it v In <^>.

45
stretch . to leave the world, in every respect, more wicked
and more miserable than he found it.*
Such a work as the Age of Reason could not long escape
the notice of the Legislature, h; impious author himself
was out of the reach of Justice, but the Printer, Williams,
was visited by a prosecution, and convicted as the publisher
of a libel on the Christian Religion. Mr. Erskine conducted
the pleadings on this occasion, in a speech which will always
rank among the most splendid effusions of forensic eloquence.
After clearly proving that the Christian Religion is the very
foundation of the law of the land, and that therefore, though
a man may be allowed to investigate, in a respectful manner,
its controversial points, no man, consistently with a law which
exists only under its sanctions, can be allowed to deny its
very existence, and to attack it in terms of ribaldry and in
vective, he breaks out into the following beautiful apostrophe
to those mighty minds, which have adorned and supported
the Christian cause in this country : —
" But it seems this is an age of reason, and the time
aud the person are at last arrived, that are to dissipate the
* Mr. Carlile has established his claim to a full share of Paine's infamy.
The universal burst of satisfaction, which has followed the late decision of the
Jury on this wretched man's trial, is a most gratifying omen of the state of
public principle and feeling. Had it been otherwise, the author of these
pages would then, for the first time, hare despaired of his country. It will
not be forgotten, that Mr. Hunt appeared as the bosom friend of Carlile, and
his constant companion on this occasion ; and that he not only listened with
interest to his impious defence, but was very busy in aiding him with fresh
matter. The whole set of the Radicals no longer attempt to conceal, that
however much they may hate or abuse each other, Thomas Paine is their
Apostle and their Idol. We are much obliged to them for leaving us no
longer in doubt, either as to their principles, or their intentions. Some stress
has been laid upon the testimonials which Carlile brought forwards as to his
moral character. We do not dispute their veracity ; but this we will say, re
move the obligations of Christianity, and there is no longer any pledge for a
man's morals or principles. Robespierre was esteemed a mild and quiet man
till he got into power, and then his principles being allowed their full play, he
proved one of the most hideous monsters that ever wore a human form.

4G
errors which have overspread the past generations of igno
rance. The believers in Christianity are many, but it be
longs to the few that are wise to correct their credulity.
Belief is an act of reason, and superior reason may, there
fore, dictate to the weak. In running the mind along the
long list of sincere and devout Christians, I cannot help la
menting, that Newton had not lived to this day, to have had
his shallowness filled up with this new flood of light. — But
the subject is too awful for irony. I will speak plainly and
directly. Newton was a Christian ! Newton, whose mind
burst forth from the fetters fastened by nature upon our
finite conceptions. Newton, whose science was truth, and
the foundation of whose knowledge of it was philosophy—
not those visionary and arrogant presumptions, which too
often usurp its name, but philosophy resting upon the basis
of mathematics, which, like figures, cannot lie. Newton,
who carried the line and rule to the uttermost barriers of
creation, and explored the principles by which all created
matter exists, and is held together. But this extraordinary
man, in the mighty reach of his mind, overlooked, perhaps,
the errors, which a minuter investigation of the created
things on this earth might have taught him. What shall then
be said of the great Mr. Boyle, who looked into the organic
structure of all matter, even to the inanimate substances
which the foot treads upon ?— Such a man may be supposed
to have been equally qualified with Mr. Paine to look up
through nature to nature's God. Yet the result of all his
contemplations was the most confirmed and devout belief in
all which the other holds in contempt, as despicable and
drivelling superstition.— But this error might, perhaps, arise
from a want of due attention to the foundations of human.

47
judgment, and the structure of that understanding which
God has given us for the investigation of truth. — Let that
question be answered by Mr. Locke, who, to the highest
pitch of devotion and adoration, was a Christian. Mr. Locke,
whose office was to detect the errors of thinking, by going up
to the very fountains of thought, and to direct into the proper
track of reasoning, the devious mind of man, by showing him
its whole process, from the first perceptions of sense to the
last conclusions of ratiocination :  putting a rein upon
false opinion, by practical rules for the conduct of human
judgment. " But these men, it may be said, were only deep thinkers,
and lived in their closets, unaccustomed to the traffic of the
world, and to the laws which practically regulate mankind.
Gentlemen ! in the place where we now sit to administer the
justice of this great country, the never-to-be-forgotten Sir
Matthew Hale presided ; whose faith in Christianity is an
exalted commentary upon its truth and reason, and whose
life was a glorious example of its fruits ; whose justice, drawn
from the pure fountain of the Christian dispensation, will be,
in all ages, a subject of the highest reverence and admiration.
But it is said by the author, that the Christian fable is but
the tale of the more antient superstitions of the world, and
may be easily detected by a proper understanding of the
mythologies of the Heathens. Did Milton understand those
mythologies ? Was he less versed than Mr. Paine in the su
perstitions of the world ? No, they were the subject of his
immortal song; and though shut out from all recurrence to
them, he poured them forth from the stores of a memory rich
with all that man ever knew, and laid them in their order as
the illustration of real and exalted faith, the unquestionable

48
source of that fervid genius, which has cast a kind of shade
upon all the other works of man.
" He pass'd the bounds of flaming space,
Where Angels tremble while they gaze-
He saw, — till, blasted with excess of light,
He clos'd his eyes in endless night."
But it was the light of the body only that was extinguished :
" The celestial light shone inward, and enabled him
" to justify the ways of God to man." — The result of his
thinking was nevertheless not quite the same as the author's
before us. The mysterious incarnation of our blessed Savi
our (which this work blasphemes in words so wholly unfit for
the mouth of a Christian, or for the ear of a Court of Justice,
that I dare not, and will not, give them utterance) Milton
made the grand conclusion of his Paradise Lost, the rest
from his finished labours, and the ultimate hope, expectation,
and glory of the world.
" A Virgin is his Mother, but his Sire,
Tlie power of the Most High ; — he shall ascend
The throne hereditary, and bound his reign
With earth's wide bounds, his glory with the heav'ns."
" The immortal poet having thus put into the mouth of the
angel the prophecy of man's redemption, follows it with that
solemn and beautiful admonition, addressed in the Poem to
our great first parent, but intended as an address to his pos
terity through all generations :
" This having learn'd, thou hast attain'd the sum
Of wisdom ; hope no higher, though all the stars
Thou knew'st by name, and all th' ethereal pow'rs,
AH secrets of the deep, all Nature's works,
Or works of God in heav'n, air, earth, or sea,
And all the riches of this world enjoy 'st,

49
And all the rule, one empire ; only add
Deeds to thy. knowledge answerable ; add faith,
Add virtue, patience, temperance ; add love,
By name to come call'd Charity, the soul
Of all the, rest: then wilt thou not be loth
To leave this Paradise, but shall possess
A Paradise within thee, happier far."
"Thns you find all that is great, or wise, or splendid, or
illustrious, amongst created beings ; all the minds gifted be
yond ordinary nature, if not inspired by its universal Author
for the advancement, and dignity of the world, though divid
ed by distant ages, and ^by clashing opinions, yet joined as it
were in one sublime chorus, to celebrate the truths of Chris
tianity < and laying upon its holy altars the never-fading offer
ings of their immortal wisdom.
" Against all this concurring testimony, we find suddenly
from the author of this book, that the Bible teaches nothing
but "LIES, OBSCENITY, CRUELTY, AND INJUSTICE." —
Had he ever read our Saviour's sermon on the Mount, in
which the great principles of our faith and duty are summed
up 1 Let us all but read and practice it ; and lies, obsceni
ty, cruelty and injustice, and all human wickedness will be
banished from the world !"
In January 1797 Paine addressed a discourse to the Society
of Theophilanthropists of Paris, a set of gloomy wretches
calling themselves adorers of God and lovers of mankind,
the leading member among whom was the Director Lareveil-
liere Lepaux. He was a High Priest every way suited to such
a fraternity. Like Robespierre, who invoked France to be
lieve in a God, and sounded the praises of humanity, at the
very moment that he was reeking with the blood of countless
victims, sacrificed by his barbarity, Lepaux, who had been
H

50
a furious Atheist, arid a tormentor of mankind, now thought
fit to proclaim the glories of Deism, and the charms of bene
volence. He had invented a kind of Koran for the new sect,
which was no less absurd than its author was unprincipled.
The hatred of the whole party to Christianity was most deadly,
and its utter extermination was the final object of their vows
and efforts. To these, his brethren in blasphemy and crime,
Paine addressed the discourse in question. Its object was
to prove the existence of a first cause, or that which man calls
God. Judging by the weakness and silliness of his arguments,
Mr. Cheetham can hardly persuade himself, that it was not
Paine's intention to drive his hearers into Atheism. The
atheistic system, Mr. C. observes, was advocated by Mi-
rabeau, on arguments very similar to those upon which
Paine founds his Deism. Nature, says the Frenchman, is
constantly in brisk motion, decomposing and recomposing ;
so that the dissolution of one body, which we call death, is
but the beginning of life and animation in another; matter is
never at rest. Paine, on the contrary, argues thus : explorers
of nature have overlooked a principle which is alone suf
ficient to introduce us to a knowledge of the existence of
God. This principle is motion, which he adds is not a pro
perty of matter, and yet existing, it leads to the knowledge
of the being of a God.
When Atheists and Deists shall cease to neutralise each
others arguments, and have settled their own quarrels, it will
be quite time enough for Christians to step in and decide,
which of the two parties has most successfully darkened
counsel by words without knowledge.
In the same year he published a tract, entitled Agrarian
Justice, which proposed that landholders should be obliged

51
in every country, to pay a tenth part of the value of their
estates to form a fund, out of which every person, at the age
of twenty-one, should receive the sum of £15. and £10. when
arrived at fifty. This scheme, like all the other quackeries
of its author, is opposed to every sound principle of politi
cal economy. If the principle upon which it is founded be ,;
equitable why take only a tenth of the value of all estates ; j
why not proceed to a general division of lands. This, in fact, ;
is the termination of all such proposals. What then becomes
of property ? It must prove the prey of every band of needy i'
ruffians; for it is folly to suppose that the sharers in the
spoil, would be contented with one division.* Where then
would industry be found? It could not exist, because the grand
incitement to it, the knowledge that the property it acquires
is secure, would be withdrawn. Where then would be im-
iprovement, civilization, morals, order 5 They would be all
swept from the earth, which must be quickly reduced to a state
of savage barbarism, unless the progress of things thitherward
should be arrested, as it probably would, by the stern arm
of military despotism. So much for Paine's scheme of Agra
rian Justice, which, like that of Spence and such other visi
onaries, is founded on principles destructive of the social
compact. His last literary production in France was a letter to the
French armies, and the people of France, in which, forgetful
* The following conversation, the Author is assured by a respectable Genr
tlcman from the midland counties, lately took place between two Radicals :
" Well B, when the general division, of property takes place, I wonder what
you and I shall get — not above :£500. a piece I suppose ? B assented. Ah !
resumed A, you B are an extravagant fellow ; your money will all be spent
in the course of a few weeks, but I shall husband mine, so you see we shan t
be on a level after all. Aye, but 1 know better, replied B, for ther'll be a
second division, after the first."
H2

52
of all his ranting about liberty, he again advocated the cause
of despotism. His object was to defend the new revolution
which had produced the fall and banishment of Pichegru
and his party, by whose influence the tyranny of the French
Directory had been controuled, and the rigor of the decrees
against Christianity and the Royalists, its advocates, softened.
By their overthrow the reign of terror and Jacobinism was
again restored, additional laws of the sternest character were
enacted, and the Directory obtained a power completely
dictatorial, which utterly extinguished the glimmering pros
pect of better days. The heads of the fallen party, and a
large number of their associates were sent to starve and
perish in the savage wilds of Guiana, and that nothing might
be wanting to perfect their sufferings, they were removed
from the prison at Paris in iron cages raised on carriages,
such as are used to transport wild beasts. In this manner
they were drawn in procession before the Luxembourg Palace,
the receptacle of their triumphant enemies, the walls of which
echoed on the occasion with the mirthful plaudits of a ruffian
band. Yet it was in defence of these barbarous proceedings
that Paine's letter was expressly written. It must at least
be allowed that his course of crime was unrelenting and
consistent. He continued in France from the year 1797, the date of
his letter to the French army, to the year 1802, associating
during that time with the lowest company, and indulging
to still greater excess his thirst for liquor. He became so
filthy in his person, so mean in his dress, and so notorious a
drunkard, that all men of decency in Paris avoided him.
We are able to corroborate the truth of this statement, for
which we are indebted to Mr. Cheetham, by evidence of un-

53
doubted authority from a most respectable quarter. About
the period to which, we now refer, a Quaker gentleman of
excellent character left his native country, America, upon a
voyage to France, for the purpose of discovering whether any
remains .existed of some Societies of Friends, which had for
merly been planted in that country. After satisfying himself
upon this point he went to Paris, and during his stay there
he felt a strong curiosity to see Thomas Paine. On enquiring
for him at his lodging, the landlady told him that he was not
visible, for (though itwas an early hour in the morning) he
was so intoxicated as to be utterly unfit to see company,
However upon his intreating to be admitted, she introduced
him into Paine's,room, where be found him so drunk, as to
be absolutely . incapable of any regular conversation. A
brandy bottle was on the table, the whole of which the mis
tress of the house declared that he had emptied that morn
ing. A more squalid or disgusting sight than his per,son
presented he protested, that he had never seen.*
Under the Government of Buonaparte, which was estab
lished in 1799, no occasion was furnished to Paine of at
tracting public attention. Severe laws controuled the free
dom of the press, and a stern military despotism terminated
the irregular movements of revolutionary violence. Finding
that increasing contempt and disregard was the only return
that awaited him, for the fawning servility with which he had
constantly flattered and cajoled the French people, and the
successive heads of the triumphant factions, he at length
resolved to quit a country in which his merits were held so
cheap. * The Author is indebted to his much valued friend Mrs. Hannah More,
for the above Anecdote. Her informant was the identical Quaker Gentleman
referred to in it.

54
Yet where was he to go ? In England he was out-lawed
and detested. Any other part of Europe was out of the
question ; the principal Governments not being very cere
monious in their mode of dealing with such turbulent spirits.
He had insulted America in the person of Washington, from
whom he had recalled all the adulation he had heaped upon
the shrine of his glory, when it was his interest to flatter,
and had thus abused him ; " As to you, Sir, treacherous in
private friendship and a hypocrite in public life, the world
will be puzzled to decide, whether you are an apostate or an
impostor — whether you have abandoned your good princi
ples or ever had any.'' Yet America was the only country
where he had property, or where he could hope to find a
home, we will not say a friend, for this was a blessing which
we firmly believe that Paine never enjoyed. Companions,
indeed, in vice and profligacy he had without number; and
by one of these he was accompanied in the voyage, which he
now undertook to the United States. He had sometime be
fore seduced from her husband a Madame Bonneville, and
persuaded this abandoned woman, with her three sons, to
follow his fortunes over the Atlantic. Every fresh act of this
man's life appears destined to carry with it an antidote to his
principles, and to point out the intimate alliance between
profligacy and irreligion. The details of this profligacy
during the latter years of his life are faithfully recorded by
Mr. Cheetham, and confirmed by the clearest evidence, but
they are so revolting that we would gladly be spared the
task of entering into the odious recital, were we not urged
on by the consideration that the grand moral of our tale
would then be wanting, and that the character of the Author
of the " Age of Reason" would be destitute of its finishing

55
touches. He arrived at Baltimore in October 1802, under
the protection of the President Jefferson, who greatly to his
own dishonor, and to that of the nation which had placed
him in so dignified a situation, had addressed a letter to this
wretched man in contemplation of his return, full of flattery
and encomium. Of course after such a welcome Paine had
reason to expect a corresponding reception from the Presi
dent and the reigning party, but on his arrival at Washington,
he experienced the mortification of being neglected both by
the one and the other, and of finding his company cautiously
shunned by most persons of any character. It required no
great delicacy of nerves to be uncomfortable in his pre
sence, for a more disgusting object can hardly .he imagined.-; _-
Mr. Cheetham who became personally acquainted with him
at New York in 1802, thus describes his first interview
with him :
" I waited on him at Lovett's, in company with Mr.
George Clinton, Jun. We rapped at the door : a small
figure opened it within, meanly dressed, having an old top
coat without an under one ; a dirty silk handkerchief loosely
thrown round his neck ; a long beard, of more than a week's
growth, a face well carbuncled, fiery as the setting sun, and
the whole figure staggering under a load of inebriation. I
was on the point of inquiring for Mr. Paine, when I saw in
his countenance something of the portraits I had seen of him.
"Scarcely a word would he allow us to speak. He always,
I afterwards found, in all companies, drunk or sober, would
be listened to ; but in this regard there were no ' rights of
men' with him, no equality, no reciprocal immunities and
obligations, for he would listen to no one.
"My acquaintance with him continued, with very various

56
views, two or three years. My intercourse with him' was
more frequent than agreeable; but what I suffered in feeling
from his want of good manners, his dogmatism, the tyranny
of his opinions, his peevishness, bis intemperance, and the;
low company he kept, was perhaps compensated by acquir*
ing a knowledge of the man."
During his residence at Washington^ Paine published a
series of letters, addressed to the citizens of- the United
States. They were marked by his usual scurrility and self-
importance. In one of them he observes, with equal coarse
ness and vanity, " The scribblers who know me not, and who
fill their papers with paragraphs about me, besides their want
of talent, drink too many slings and drams in a morning to
have any chance with me." At the time he thus expressed
himself, it was notorious that scarcely any body could con
tend with him in the practice of morning dram drinking.
Disappointed with his reception at Washington, he now
formed the resolution of fixing on his farm, at NewRochelle,
in the neighbourhood of New York. In his way thither, he
staid several days at Lovett's Hotel, in that city. Most of
his time was spent in the tap-room, where he drank grog,
morning, noon and night, strutted and staggered about,
shook hands with all who were desirous of the honor, and
shewed himself off as a wonderful and important personage.
On one occasion, during this period, he fell over a high stair
case, in a fit of drunkenness, and was much bruised. It was
given out that his fall was occasioned by apoplexy.
In June 1803, he went to New Rochelle, and boarded at
his farm, with one Purdy, who occupied it. Madame Bon
neville was left in the city, unprotected and in great distress;
but, after the lapse of six or seven weeks, she followed him,

57
and, together with her children, lived at Purdy's till the
winter, when the whole party returned to New York.
In the spring of 1804, Paine returned to his farm, taking
the young Bonnevilles with him, but leaving their mother in
lodgings at New York. He employed one Derrick to manage
the farm, and took lodgings for himself in New Rochelle, at
the house of Mr. Andrew Dean.
" Mrs. Dean (says Mr. Cheetham) with whom I have con
versed, tells me that he was daily drunk at their house, and
that in his few sober moments he was always quarrelling with
her, and disturbing the peace of the family. She represents
him as deliberately and disgustingly filthy.* It is not sur
prising, therefore, that she importuned her husband to turn
him out of the house; but owing to Mr. Dean's predilection
for his political Writings, her importunities were, for several
weeks, unavailing. Constant domestic disquiet very -natu
rally ensued, which was increased by Paine's peevishness and
violence. One day he ran after Miss Dean, a girl of fifteen,
with a chair whip in his hand, to whip her, and would have
done so, but for the interposition of her mother. The en
raged Mrs. Dean, to use her own language, ' flew at him.'— ¦
Paine retreated up stairs into his private room, and was
swiftly pursued by his antagonist. The little drunken old
man owed his safety to the bolts of his door. In the fall of
the year, Mrs. Dean prevailed with her husband to keep him
in the house no longer. The Bonnevilles were quite neg
lected."

* Mr. Cheetham states, that all the particulars related to him by Mrs. Dean
have been corroborated by the testimony of her husband, whom he represents
as a sensible man, and a Justice of the Peace for the County.

58
" From Dean's he went to live on his farm. Here one of
his first acts was to discharge old Derrick, with whom he
had wrangled, and to whom he had been a tyrant, from the
moment of their engagement. Derrick left him with revenge
ful thoughts."
" Being now alone, except in the company of the Bon
nevilles, of whom he took but little notice, he engaged an
old black woman, of the name of Betty, to do his house
work. Betty lived with him but three weeks. She seems to
have been as intemperate as himself. Like her master, she
was every day intoxicated. Paine would accuse her of steal
ing his New-England rum, and Betty would retort by calling
him ail old drunkard. Often, Mrs. Dean informs me, would
they both lie prostrate on the same floor, dead-drunk, sprawl
ing and swearing and threatening to fight, but incapable of
approaching each other to combat. Nothing but inability
prevented a battle.'' P. 241.
In the mean time Mrs. Bonneville was left behind, br^ew
York, where lodgings had been taken for her in the house of
a Mr. Wilburn. — After some time, he applied to Paine for the
amount of rent then due, which was 50 dollars ; but the only
reply he'could obtain was, an absolute refusal to settle the
account. Mr. Wilburn then had recourse to legal proceed
ings. — The trial came on Nov. 21, 1804. The Court was
crowded to gaze at Paine, who exhibited no signs either of
fear or shame. He denied the debt with incomparable as
surance and intrepidity, and as the Plaintiff had neglected to
subpoena Mrs. Bonneville, to prove that Paine had promised
to pay her board, the scandalous old man obtained a non
suit. Dreading, however, the effect of the subsequent mea
sures which Mr. Wilburn was about to take, he, at length
settled the account.

59
He now returned to his farm, at New Rochelle, taking
the Bonnevilles with him. On his arrival he hired Rachael
Gidny, a black woman, to cook for him. But after two
months' service, she was obliged to quit the place, as she
found that it was not his plan to pay for any thing. She had
even to sue him for five dollars, the amount of her wages.
Upon his apprehension by a warrant, for which she had ap
plied, a Mr. Shute, one of his neighbours and political ad
mirers, was his bail. The poor woman at length obtained
the money, but not without much difficulty.
In February 1805, he removed to New York, where he
boarded with a Mr. Carver for six or eight weeks. Mrs.
Bonneville was consigned to a miserable garret. The boys
were sent to school.
During the summer of 1805 a dreadful fever raged in New
York. The garret in which Madame Bonneville resided was
in the very focus of infection. Abandoned by Paine and
surrounded by scenes of misery she would probably have
perished by hunger or disease, but for the kind assistance
of Mr. Carver. In the course of this year her eldest son,
about fourteen years of age, returned to his father in Paris.
He detested Paine, and young as he was would hardly cpn-
descend to speak to him. Ah ! he would ofteu say, this
Paine is not so well known in America as in France. He
has destroyed the happiness of my father's family. Paine
refused to pay his passage home.
In March 1806 he returned to New Rochelle, but unwilling
to be at the expence of housekeeping he boarded at a little
tavern kept by Mr. Jones, a Welchman. His habits, however,
were so highly offensive to this man, that he at length fairly
i 2

00
turned him out of doors. In this extremity he returned to
Mr. Dean's, intreating admittance. Mrs. D. though much
against her will, was at length persuaded by her husband's
request, and by Paine's promise that his stay should not be
long, to grant him admittance. He brought with him a
gallon of New England rum, and in the evening became so
intoxicated that he fell from his chair, cut his face, and
sprinkled the ropm with his blood. At the end of the week
Mrs. Dean insisted that he should leave the house. And
where shall I go said the wretched old man ? Nobody will
take me in. 0° where you will she replied, you shall not
stay here. Repelled from house to house he finally went
back to the Welchman's, who gave him shelter on condition
that his stay should not exceed one night. This occurred on
the 29th May. On the 1st June, Mr. Carver went to Jones's
for him, and brought him to his house in the city. He re- '
mained there till the following November, where he was
cleaned and treated with the greatest kindness. Upon an
application from Carver, after this long residence, for the
sum due to him for lodging and boarding, a violent alterca
tion took place between them, which ended in a long letter
from Carver, the greater part of which we subjoin notwith
standing its prolixity. It throws much additional light on
the private habits of Paine, and it is the testimony of a
Democrat and an Infidel to his unprincipled character.
" Mr. Thomas Paine, — I received your letter dated the
25th ult. in answer to mine of November 21st, and after
minutely examining its contents, I found that you had taken
the pitiful ground of subterfuge and lying for your defence.
You say that you paid me four dollars per week for your
board and lodging, during the time that you were with me,

61
prior to the first of June last ; which was the day that I went
by your order to bring you to York from New Rochelle. It
is fortunate for me that I have a living evidence that saw
you give me four guineas and no more, in my shop, at your
departure. at that time. You say as you paid by the week, it
matters not how long your stay with me was. I accede to
your remark, that the time of your stay at my house would
have been of no matter, if I had been paid by the week, but
the matter is otherwise, I have not been paid at all, or at
least a very small part : prove that I have if you can, and
then I shall be viewed by my fellow-eitizens in that contemp
tible light that they will view yoij in, after the publication
of this my letter to you.
"J shall pass over a great part of your letterwith silent con
tempt, and oppose your fdise remarks with plain truths. —
You complain, that I left your room the night that you pre
tend you were seized with the apoplexy : but I had often seen
you in those fits before : and particularly after drinking a
large portion of ardent spirits, those fits have frequently sub
jected you to falling. You remember you had one of them
at Lovett's hotel, and fell from the top of the stairs to the
bottom. You likewise know, I have frequently had to lift
you from the floor to the bed. You must also remember that
you and myself went to spend the evening at a certain gentle
man's house, whose peculiar situation in life forbids me to
make mention of his name; but I had to apologize for your
conduct : you had two of those falling fits in Broadway, be
fore I could get you home.
" I believe you have broken up the domestic tranquillity of
several families, with whom you have resided, and I can
speak from experience as to my own. I remember you fell

62
out with my former wife, and one of the foolish epithets you
attempted to stigmatize her with was, that she had been a
servant. Was this a judicions remark from the author of the
" Rights of Man ?"
" I have often wondered that a French woman, and three
children, should leave France, and all their connexions, to
follow Thomas Paine to America. Suppose I was to go to
my native country, England, and take away another man's
wife and his three children, what would be the natural con
clusion in the minds of the people respecting me?
"An old acquaintance of yours and mine called on me a
few days ago;* I asked him, if he had been to see you. His
answer was, he had not, neither did he want to see you. He
said, he believed you had a good head, but a very bad heart.
I believe he gave a true description of you in a few words :
it has been my opinion for some time past, and that of many
more, who you think are your friends, that all you have
written has been to acquire fame, and not the love of prin
ciple : and one reason that led us to think as we do, is, that
all your works are stuffed with egotism.
" From the first time I saw you in this country, to the last
time of your departure from my house, my conscience bears
me testimony that I treated you as a friend and a brother,
without any hope of extra rewards, only the payment of my
just demand. I often told many of my friends, had you come
to this country without one cent of property, then, as long
as I had one shilling, you should have a part. I declare
when I first saw you here, I knew nothing of your posses
sions, or that you were worth four hundred per year sterling.
* Admiral Landay, a French Gentleman, who knew Paine in Paris.

63
I, Sir, am not like yourself. I do not bow down to a little
paltry gold, at the sacrifice of just principles. I, Sir, am
poor, with an independent mind, which perhaps renders me
more comfort than your independent fortune renders you —
You tell me further, that I shall be excluded from any thing,
and every thing, contained in your will. All this I totally
disregard. I believe, if it was in your power you would go
further, and say you would prevent my obtaining the just
and lawful debt that you contracted with me ; for when a
man is vile enough to deny a debt, he is not honest enough
to pay without being compelled. I have lived fifty years on
the bounty and good providence of my Creator, and I do not
doubt the goodness of his will concerning me. I likewise
have to inform you, that I totally disregard the powers of
you mind and pen ; for, should you, by your conduct, permit
this letter to appear in public, in vain may you attempt to
print or publish any thing afterwards. Do look back to my
past conduct respecting you, and try if you cannot raise one
grain of gratitude in your heart towards me, for all the kind
acts of benevolence I bestowed on you. I showed your let
ter, at the time I received it, to an intelligent friend ; he
said it was a characteristic of the vileness of your natural
disposition, and enough to damn the reputation of any man.
You tell me that I should have come to you, and not written
the letter. I did so three times ; and the last you gave me
the ten dollars, and told me you were going to have a stove
in a separate room, and then you would pay me. One month
had passed and I wanted the money, but still found you with
the family that you resided with ; and delicacy prevented me
to ask you for pay of board and lodging ; you never told me
to fetch the account, as you say you did. When I called the

64
last time but orie, you told me to come on the Sunday follow-1
ing, and you would pay or settle with me; I came according
to order, but found you particularly engaged with the French
woman and her boys ; whether the boys are your's I leave
you to judge ; but the eldest son of the woman, an intelligent
youth, I suppose about fourteen or fifteen years of age, has
frequently told me and others, that you were the complete
ruin of their family, and that he despised you ; and said that
your character, at present, was not so well known in America
as in France.
" You frequently boast of what you have done for the
woman above alluded to ; that she and her family have cost
you two thousand dollars ; and since you came the last time
to New York, you have been bountiful to her, and given her
one hundred dollars per time. This may be all right. She
may have rendered you former and present secret services,
such as are not in my power to perform ; but at the same
time I think it would be just in you to pay your debts. I
know that the poor black woman, at New Rochelle, that you
hired as a servant, and I believe paid every attention to you
in her power, had to sue you for her wages, before you would
pay her, and Mr. Shute had to become security for you.
" A respectable gentleman, from New Rochelle, called to
see me a few days past, and said that every body was tired
of you there, and no one would undertake to board and
lodge you. I thought this was the case, as I found you at
a tavern, in a most miserable situation. You appeared as
if you had not been shaved for a fortnight, and as to a shirt,
it could not be said that you had one on ; it was only the
remains of one, and this likewise appeared not to have been
off your back for a fortnight, and was nearly the colour of

65
tanned leather, and you had the most disagreeable smell
possible; just like that of our poor beggars in England.
Do you not recollect the pains I took to clean and wash you ?
That I got a tub of warm water and soap, and washed you
from head to foot, and this I had to do three times before I
could get you clean. I likewise shaved you and cut your
nails, that were like bird's claws. I remember a remark that
I made to you at that time, which was, that you put me in
mind of Nebuchadnezzar, who was said to be in this situa
tion. Many of your toe nails exceeded half an inch in
length, and others had grown round your toes, and nearly as
far under as they extended on the top. Have you forgotten
the pains I took with you, when you lay sick ? I remember
that I got Mr. Hpoton (a friend of mine, and whom I believe
to be one of the best hearted men in the world) to assist me
in removing and cleaning you. He told me he wondered
how I could do it ; for his part he would not like to do the
same again for ten dollars. I told him you were a fellow
being, and that it was our duty to assist each other in dis
tress. Have you forgotten my care of you during the winter
you staid with me ? How I put you in bed every night,
with a warm brick to your feet, and treated you like an in
fant one month old ? Have you forgotten likewise how you
destroyed my bed and bedding by fire, and also a great coat
that was worth ten dollars ? I have shown the remnant of
the coat to a tailor, who says that cloth of that quality could
not be bought for six dollars per yard. You never said that
you were sorry for the misfortune, or said that you would
recompense me for it. I could say a great deal more, but I
shall tire your and the public's patience ; after all this and
ten times as much more, you say you were not treated
K

66
friendly or civilly. Have I not reason to exclaim, and say,
O ! the ingratitude of your obdurate heart !
" You complain of the room you were in, but you know it
was the only one I had to spare— it is quite large enough for
one person to sleep in. Your physician, and many others,
requested you to remove to a more airy situation, but I be
lieve the only reason why you would not comply with the
request was, that you expected to have more to pay, and not
to be so well attended ; you might think nobody would keep
a fire, as I did, in the kitchen, till eleven or twelve o'clock at
night, to warm things for your comfort, or take you out of
bed two or three times a day, in a blanket, as I and my ap
prentice did for a month ; for my part I did so till it brought
on a pain in my side, that prevented me from sleeping after
I got to bed myself.
" I remember during one of your stays at my honse, you
were sued in the justice's court by a poor man, for the board
and lodging of the French woman, to the amount of about
thirty dollars ; but as the man had no proof, and only de
pended on your word, he was nonsuited, and a cost of forty-
two shillings thrown upon him. This highly gratified your
unfeeling heart. I believe you had promised payment, as
you said you would give the French woman the money to go
and pay it with. I know it is customary in England, that
when any gentleman keeps a lady, that he pays her board
and lodging. You complain that you suffered with the cold,
and that there ought to have been a fire in the parlour. But
the fact is, that I expended so much money on your account,
and received so little, that I could not go to any further ex-
pence, and if I had, I should not have got you away. A
friend of yours, that knew my situation, told you, that you

67
ought to buy a load of wood to burn in the parlour ; your
answer was, that you should not stay above a week or two,
and did not want to have the wood to remove ; this certainly
would have been a hard case for you to have left me a few
sticks of wood.
" Now, Sir, I think I have drawn a complete portrait of
your character ; yet to enter upon every minutia would be
to give a history of your life, and to develope the fallacious
mask of hypocrisy and deception, under which you have acted
in your political as well as moral capacity of life. There
may be many grammatical errors in this letter. To you I
have no apologies to make ; but I hope the candid and im
partial public will not view them ' with a critic's eye.'
''WlLLJAM Cabvee."
" To Thomas Paine, New York, Dec. 2, 1202."
This letter induced Paine to pay the money due to .Carver,
when no other means could have extorted it from him.
From Carver's he removed to lodgings at the house of Mr.
Jarvis, a portrait painter. Here he lived five months. At
this place he was not so constantly intoxicated as formerly;
and though frequently falling into violent passions, Mr. Jar
vis appears to have successfully studied the means of calming
his rage. Still he was only comparatively improved, and
would, occasionally, sit up at night tippling, till he fell off
his chair. Mr. Jarvis, on one occasion, sat up with him,
doing all he could to keep him sober, and endeavouring to
.divert him from the bottle by conversation and enquiries. —
At three o'clock he left him : at four he returned to the room
and found him drunk on the floor. He wished to raise him
up, but Paine desired to lie still. I have the vertigo, said
ihe. Yes, said Mr. Jarvis, taking up the bottle and observing
K 2

68
its diminished contents, you have it deep — deep. In this
posture and plight, he talked about the immortality of the
soul !
One day, as he was sitting with a volume of the Age of
Reason before him, a maid servant took it up and began to
read it; Mr. Jarvis instantly seized the book out of her hand ;
upon which Paine rose up angrily, and asked why he did so.
Jarvis professed his fear that the girl, whose character was
then excellent, would become corrupted in her principles by
that book, in which case, he added, she may cheat me, rob
me, and be undone. They had now reached the window,
and Jarvis pointed out a black man to Paine, as a striking
instance of the efficacy of Christianity to enlighten and to
reclaim the ignorant and immoral. This man, it appears,
had been a notoriously bad fellow, without any sense of reli
gion, or even of common moral feeling ; but he had since
been truly converted, and had gained the character of a sin
cere Christian, by his upright and excellent conduct. Paine
had no answer whatever to make, but " Pshaw — I had not
thought you were such a man." He saw, added Jarvis, the
fact, and it was unanswerable.
In 1807 he went to lodge at aMr.Hitts's, who stated, that
his mode of spending his time was as follows : from breakfast
he retired to his room, where he remained till dinner ; after
dinner he usually went to bed and slept till tea-time. From
tea he again retired to his room, and drank grog until late at
night, when, if able, he would crawl into bed, but if not,
which was most probable, he would fall off his chair, and
sleep himself sober on the floor. His room was full of dirt
and confusion.
While at Hitts's, Paine corresponded with the President

69

Jefferson. He left the letters open on his table, so that every
body could read them, who entered his room. The substance
of one crept, in consequence, into the Gazette. This'chiefly
related to the differences between England and America.
Paine, who was a complete Frenchman in heart, was glad
dened by the hope, that one more enemy would probably-
soon be added to those with which Great Britain was then
gloriously contending,
From Hitts's he removed to a tavern, where a sixpenny
show was daily exhibited. Here nobody took care of him ;
he was left entirely to himself, and was reduced by dirt and
drunkenness to a condition in the highest degree disgusting.
From this extremity he was wrested by some of his disciples,
in July 1808, and placed in lodgings at Greenwich, in the
house of a Mr. Ryder. After he had been three days in the
house, Ryder told the person who had introduced him, that
he really must take him away, for he was such a cross,
drunken, morose old man, that he could do nothing with
him. However, upon the offer of increased payment for his
board, he consented to his remaining. He lived at this place
for eleven months ; during which time, excepting the last
ten weeks, he was regularly drunk twice a day. As to his
person, said Mr. Ryder, we had to wash him like a child,
and with much the same coaxing, for he hated soap and
water. He was so peevish, that it was hardly possible to
live with him. He once threatened to beat Mrs. Ryder, but
I came home at the time and prevented his violence. He
would often talk about death, and wished to die, Some
times, though rarely, he was good humored ; but his language
was generally rude, and his conduct insulting and tyrannical.
In January 1809, he became so feeble and infirm, as to be

70
incapable of doing any thing for himself. Often Mr. Ryder
found him in tears, but could not discover whether this pro
ceeded from bodily pain, or from the torment of his own
thoughts. He now became very anxious about the fate of
his body, after death ; and feeling assured that neither the
Episcopal, or the Presbyterian Churches would receive it
into their burial grounds, he applied to the Society of Friends
to grant him this boon. The reply was a decisive refusal,
though communicated with great delicacy. It affected him
very deeply.
Yet what other answer could the miserable man have
anticipated. Of him, it might literally be asserted, in scrip
tural language, that he was " without Christ, an alien from
the common-wealth of Israel ; a stranger from the covenants
of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world."*
That it could have been no bitter or cruel feeling, which dic
tated this refusal, we may be well assured, from the humane
character of that highly respectable society from which it
proceeded ; but, it may naturally be referred to a regard to
public example, to a just jealousy of their own reputation,
and above all, to an anxious desire to manifest their deep
sense of the enormity of that blasphemous language, with
which Paine had dared to assail the sacred name of the ador
able Author of Christianity.
In April 1809, Mr.Golston, collector of the Customs in the
port of New York, paid him a visit. He stated, that he had re
ceived a letter from Mr. Monroe, who, it will be remembered,
received Paine into his house on his liberation from prison
in France, and for many months gratuitously maintained him.
* Ephes. chap, ii, v. 12.

71
It appears, that in addition to this hospitable treatment, he
was indebted to Mr. Monroe for the loan of considerable
sums of money. The letter, which Dr. Manley assured Mr.
Cheetham, was equally elegant and polite, stated, that Mr.
Monroe was not anxious for immediate repayment, but that
he would be obliged to Paine to acknowledge the debt, which
might be finally settled at his convenience. Paine listened
attentively to the letter, but made no reply ; neither could
he, at any time after, be persuaded to do this gentleman even
the common justice of recognizing the transaction.
Madame Bonneville had long been almost entirely neglect
ed by her seducer, and, with the exception of trifling sums,
which he occasionally advanced, had been obliged to scrape
up a livelihood for herself and her sons, by a series of miser
able expedients. But as the symptoms of his approaching
dissolution were now evident, even to himself, he chose to
be removed from Mr. Ryder's, to a small house rented by this
unhappy woman of a Mr. Holbron.
Here it was that he was destined to encounter the attack
of Nature's most terrible enemy, and, notwithstanding the
vain boasts and empty pretensions which, through pride and
obstinacy, he maintained at intervals nearly to the last, we
think it will evidently appear, that he met death with terror
and consternation. He was nursed in his last illness by Mrs.
Hedden, a very worthy and pious woman, who did her best
to serve him, not only as a kind attendant, but also as a spi
ritual counseller. During the first three or four days his
conduct was tolerable, except that he grew outrageous when
ever Madame Bonneville entered the room. About the fifth
day his language to Mrs. Hedden was so bad, that she re
solved immediately to quit the house ; but sensible how ne-

72
cessary she was to his comfort, he made concessions which
induced her to remain. For the first week he drank much
milk-punch, which was his chief sustenance, but afterwards,
he scarcely took any nourishment, and suffered considerable
bodily pain.
Often he would, for long together, exclaim " Oh, Lord
help me ! Oh, Christ help me ! Oh, Christ help me \"
About a fortnight before his death, he was visited by Mr.
MilledoUar, a Presbyterian clergyman, who exhorted him to
repentance, but Paine grew angry, desired that he might not
be disturbed by Popish stuff, and ordered him to quit the
room. Sometimes Mrs. Hedden read the Bible to him for hours
together, and he appeared to listen attentively.
He was attended by Dr. Manley, a respectable physician,
Who, upon application from Mr. Cheetham to furnish him
with any particulars of Paine's deportment, which could be
presented to the public as authentic, addressed him a letter,
from which we have made the following extracts. We for
bear from inserting the whole, as much of it consists of me
dical details of the symptoms of Paine's illness.
" I was called upon by accident to visit Mr. Paine, on the
25th February last, and found him indisposed with fever, and
very apprehensive of an attack of apoplexy, as he stated that
he had had that disease before, and at this time felt a great
degree of vertigo, and was unable to help himself as he had
hitherto done, on account of an intense pain above the eyes.
From this time I considered him as under my care, visited
him frequently, and prescribed for symptoms as they occur
red, endeavouring by every means in my power to alleviate
his distress, and conduce to his comfort, which I assure you
was no easy service.

73
" Cleanliness appeared to make no part of his comfort ;
he seemed to have a singular aversion to soap and water :
he would never ask to be washed, and when he was, he
would always make objections ; and it was not unusual to
wash and to dress him clean, very much against his inclina
tion. In this deplorable state, with confirmed dropsy, at
tended with frequent cough, vomiting and hic-cough, he con
tinued growing from bad to worse, till the morning of the
8th of June, when he died. I may remark, that during the
last three weeks of his life, his situation was such, that his
decease was confidently expected every day, his ulcers having
assumed a gangrenous appearance, and discoloured blisters
having taken place on the soles of his feet, without any os
tensible cause, which baffled the usual attempts to arrest
their progress ; and when we consider his former habits, his
advanced age, the feebleness of his constitution, his constant
practice of using ardent spirits, ad libitum, till the com
mencement of his last illness, so far from wondering that he
died so soon, we are constrained to ask, how did he live
so long ?
" Concerning his conduct during his disease, I have not
much to remark, though the little I have may be somewhat
interesting. " Mr. Paine professed to be above the fear of death, and
a great part of his conversation was principally directed to
give the impression, that he was perfectly willing to leave
this world, and yet some parts of his conduct are with dif
ficulty reconcileable with this belief. In the first stages of
his illness, he was satisfied to be left alone during the day,
but he required some person to be with him at night, urging
as his reason, that he was afraid, that he should die when
L

74
unattended, and at this period, his deportment and his prin
ciple seemed to be consistent; so much so, that a stranger
would judge from some of the remarks he would make, that
he was an Infidel.
" During the latter part of his life, though his conversa
tion was equivocal, his conduct was singular ; he would not
be left alone night or day ; he not only required to have
some person with him, but he must see that he or she was
there, and would not allow his curtain to be closed at any
time ; and if, as it would sometimes unavoidably happen,
he was left alone, he would seream and holla, until some
person came to him. When relief from pain would admit,
he seemed thoughtful nnd contemplative, his eyes being
generally closed, and his hands folded upon bis breast,
altho' he never slept without the assistance of an anodyne.
There was something remarkable in his conduct about this
period (which comprises about two weeks immediately pre-
ceeding his death) particularly when we reflect, that Thomas
Paine was author of the Age of Reason. He would call out,
during his paroxysms of distress, without intermission, ' O
Lord help me, God help me, Jesus Christ help me, O Lord
help me,' &c. repeating the same expressions, without any
the least variation, in a tone of voice that would alarm the
house. It was this conduct which induced me to think that
he had abandoned his former opinions, and I was more in
clined to that belief, when I understood from his nurse (who
is a very serious, and I believe, pious woman) that he would
occasionally inquire, when he saw her engaged with a book,
what she was reading ; and being, answered, and at the same
time asked whether she should read aloud,* he assented, and
* The book she usually read was Mr. Hobart's Companion for the Altar.

75
would appear to give particular attention."
On the 6th of June, Dr. Manley, struck by these expres
sions, which he so frequently repeated, and seeing that he
was in great distress of mind, put the following questions
to him : —
" ' Mr. Paine, what must we think of your present conduct ]
Why do you call upon Jesus Christ to help you 1 Do you
believe that he can help you? Do you believe in the divinity
of Jesus Christ ? Come now, answer me honestly ; I want
an answer as from the lips of a dying man, for I verily believe
that you will not live twenty-four hours.' I waited some
time at the end of every question ; he did not answer, but
ceased to exclaim in the above manner. Again I addressed
him. 'Mr. Paine, you have not answered my questions; will
you answer them ? Allow me to ask again — Do you believe 1
or let me qualify the question — do you wish to believe that
Jesus Christ is the Son of God 1 After a pause of some
minutes, he answered, ' I have no wish to believe on that
subject.' I then left him, and know not whether he after
wards spoke to any person, on any subject, though he lived,
as I before observed, till the morning of the 8th.
" For my. own part, I believe that had not Thomas Paine
been such a distinguished infidel, he would have left less
equivocal evidences of a change of opinion."
Evidences, however, of a change of opinion, less equivocal
than these stated by Dr. Manley, were actually given by Paine,
in the course of his illness. There were, at certain times,
relentings of that hardened impenitence which he strained
every nerve to maintain, even to the last ; and on more than
one occasion remorse of conscience broke out into utterance,
and couched itself in awful warnings to some of those who
L 2

76
were witnesses of his dying agonies, and ill-concealed terrors.
In the neighbourhood of his lodging lived a benevolent person
who, commiserating his extreme sufferings, occasionally visited
him, and furnished from his own table such refreshments as
were likely to be grateful in his sad condition. A young woman
of the family, who became afterwards a respectable householder
of New-York, requested to be the bearer of these, although
the air of his sick chamber was almost intolerable. She fre
quently found him engaged in writing, and believes from what
she saw and heard, that when permitted by his pain, he was
mostly so engaged, or in prayer ; in the attitude of which
she more than once saw him when he thought himself alone.
In one of the interviews thus introduced, he inquired whether
she had ever read his " Age of Reason?" And on being an
swered in the affirmative, he desired to know her opinion of
that book. She replied, that she was but a child when she
read it, and that he probably would not like to hear what
she had thought of it. On this he said, if she was old enough
to read it, she was capable of forming some opinion concern
ing it ; and that from her he expected a candid statement of
what that opinion had been. Thus encouraged, she told him,
that she thought it the most dangerous book she had ever
seen ; that the more she read the more she found her mind
estranged from all good; and that, from a conviction of its
evil tendency, she had burnt it without knowing to whom it
belonged. To this Paine replied, that he wished all its read
ers had been as wise as she ; and added, " If ever the Devil
had an agent on earth, I have been one." At another time,
when she and the benevolent neighbour before alluded to
were with him, one of his former companions came in ; but
on seeing them went hastily out, drawing the door after him

77
with violence, and saying, " Mr. P. you have lived like a
man ; I hope you will die like one." On this, Paine turning
to the elder of his visitors said, " You see, Sir, what misera
ble comforters I have." Mrs. Bonneville, the unhappy fe
male who had accompanied him from France, lamented to his
neighbour her sad case, observing, " For this man I have
given up my family and friends, my property and my religion :
judge then of my distress, when he tells rne, that the princi
ples he has taught me, will not bear me out !"*
At nine o'clock in the morning of the 9th June, the day
after his death, he was taken from his lodgings at Green
wich to his farm at New Rochelle, where he was interred.
Conformably to the directions of his will a stone was placed
at the head of his grave, with the following inscription,
" Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense," died June 8th,
1809, aged 72 years and five months.
These interesting yet affecting particulars exhibit a fearful
picture of the sick chamber and the death-bed of the Infidel
and the Profligate. In the expressions and in the conduct
of this unhappy man in his latter moments, we behold an ob
vious mixture of remorse and terror on the one hand, and on
the other of pride and obstinacy. His heart was lacerated
by the stings of an accusing conscience. He recoiled from
being left alone for a moment, to the intolerable torment of
his own reflections. On the past he could only look with
horror, to the future with consternation. Robbed of bis
sceptical hardihood he learnt to invoke the name of that
Saviour whom it had been the business of his life to revile,
* For the above anecdote we are indebted to the pages of the Philanthro
pist, a highly respectable periodical work, chiefly conducted by Members of
the Society of Friends.— Vide the Number for May 1817.

78
but his ejaculations were not winged by penitence and faith,
and therefore instead of being able to view the Being whom
he addressed as his all-prevailing advocate and the propitia
tion for his sins, he probably regarded him in the awful light
of a just and an avenging Judge. The arrows of conviction
had pierced his inmost soul and fastened there, but notwith
standing his internal misery and the occasional avowal of it,
his ordinary feelings were those of sullen, settled impenitence ;
the dreadful index of a reprobate mind. Charity would have
hoped, that the inward relentings which led him on one oc
casion to exclaim, " If ever the Devil had an agent upon
earth I have been one," would have been succeeded by sen
timents of the deepest self-abhorrence and the profonndest
humiliation. In this way he might have made some atone
ment to injured society ; and under such circumstances who
would have presumed to set limits to the infinite riches of
the Divine Mercy ? But any right feelings, in his case, were
only like stars struggling for a moment through the midnight
gloom. The Devils believe and tremble, yet their nature
still remains unchanged and infernal. He was moreover the
noted Thomas Paine, the head of a party, and therefore jea
lousy of that reputation which he had gone all lengths to obtain
with his disciples, led him to struggle for a shew of fortitude.
By several of these wretches who had been his former bottle-
companions he was frequently besieged at this awful hour,
and encouraged to brave the compunctuous visitiugs of a
troubled conscience. A state of mind more absolutely
wretched, or that must have more truly realized the first
pangs of " the worm that never dies" can hardly be con
ceived, but it will be best appreciated when placed in con
trast with the sweet peace, the heavenly hope, and the

79
humble joy which smile upon the last moments of the pious
Christian, and whose blessed influence frequently transforms
his trying conflict with the kins of terrors into an occasion
of signal victory and immortal triumph.
Ask him at that awful moment how it is that amidst the
frowns, the terrors, and the sufferings of death he fears no
evil and knows no sorrow, and with the most profound sense
of his own unworthiness he will tell you, that it is entirely in
virtue of support derived from Him who expired on the cross,
a sacrifice for the sins of the world. He will tell you, that
though Infidels may blaspheme the Saviour's name, and scoff
at the badge of his humiliation he glories in both, and finds
them to be " the power of God unto salvation." He will
tell you, that through the consolations of the eternal spirit he
already enjoys a foretaste of " the glory that shall be re
vealed," and that he longs for the happy moment when the
veil shall be rent asunder, which now separates him from the
actual presence of his adored Redeemer. Ask him further
in what way he attained a state of mind thus exalted, and he
will direct you to the Bible, as the sole fountain of heavenly
wisdom ; he will tell you, that by the knowledge and love of
its sacred truths he was freed from the slavery of his de
praved appetites and passions, his mind was exalted above
the accidents of life, and a serene joy was communicated to
it, which had now swelled into holy triumph. The Infidel will
perhaps deem such feelings a mere delusion. Even were they
so, the delusion while it lasted would be worth more than all
the realities of ordinary life, from its tendency to rescue us
from the dominion of sin, to raise us in the scale of being,
to direct our affections to the noblest objects, and our ac
tions to the worthiest ends. But as to delusion, it is all on

80
the other side. The Christian hope is founded on the ada
mantine basis of the Christian evidences, and he who is in
any degree a partaker of it, will fearlessly pursue his sub
lime course of glorifying God, and serving mankind, re
gardless of the empty clamors of the enemies of Truth and
Righteousness. " As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm ;
Though round its base the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head."
We have not laid a stress upon the particulars of this
unhappy man's last moments, from an idea that Christianity
requires the aid of any of that homage, which in so many
instances dying Infidels have paid to. its truth; whether
Paine had relented or not, could have been a matter of no
sort of moment, except in the view of that charity which
mingles its notes with the praises of Angles, who we are
assured rejoice in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.*
Yet to those who have in any degree imbibed the poison of
his principles, the particulars of his dying anguish may serve
as a salutary antidote. But a much more powerful antidote
still is to be found in the profligacy of his life, which is easily
resolvable into his avowed principles. His system led to the
dissolution of every principle of moral restraint, and his con
duct in perfect harmony with his creed, was, as we have
proved, in all respects reprobate and depraved. To com
prehend the full misery of his case, we must dwell upon the
force of those evidences of which he was either wilfully igno
rant, or culpably negligent : we must reflect upon the mer
cies which he abused, upon the enormous wickedness of his
* Luke 15th, 20.

81
life, the contagion of his example, and the incalculable mis
chief done to the lower classes of society by the poison of
his writings, both while he was living and now that he is
dead. What the meeting must have been between such a
creature and his offended Maker, we will not attempt to
picture. The character of this man was a compound of all that is
most base, disgusting, and wicked, without the relief of any
one quality that was great or good. Any feelings of natural
affection which he might once have had, appear to have been
wholly extinguished by an inordinate spirit of egotism and
selfishness, which rendered him incapable of friendship to a
single human being. His companions were chiefly low and
disreputable persons, to whom, while he preached liberty,
he acted the despot. None were deemed worthy of being
his associates, who made any scruple of regarding him as an
oracle, or of submitting to be called, at his will, blockheads
or fools. In his private dealings, he was habitually a knave ;
never willing to pay the most just debts, and always cherish
ing the most fixed resentment against those who, by law,
compelled him to do them justice. He was vain, envious,
malignant. His only fixed principle was, hatred toallcs-^
tablished order ; his only idea of national happiness, poli
tical anarchy ; his only ardent pleasures, habitual drunken
ness and sensuality. Any thing in the shape of goodness was
his peculiar aversion, and therefore Christianity, as the per
fection of all goodness, was the object of his deadly and
envenomed dislike. He could not bear its pure principles,
its wise restraints, its unselfish maxims, its sublime and
elevating prospects. He wanted a religion brought down to
the level of his own ignorance, and which would justify its
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82
disciples in the full indulgence of every inordinate appetite,
and every depraved passion. — He died, as he had lived, hating
even his own followers, and hated by them, despising and
despised. Yet there lives a man debased enough to be the
Panegyrist of Paine's memory, and almost the worshipper of
his bones. Cobbett has lately robbed the grave of these
miserable remains, and has brought them with him to England
as a rallying point for sedition and impiety. "We will honour
(he says,) his name, his remains, and his memory in all sorts
of ways." " The day will come when they will be honoured
by the people more than any thing dead or alive." " The
tomb of this 'Noble of Nature,' will be an object of pil
grimage with the people."
Such language as this in praise of the man who has left all
other men behind him in blasphemy, and who has been sur
passed by few in licentiousness, who was the sworn enemy of
the British Constitution, and the warm panegyrist of French
anarchy, can be tolerated by none but those whom its author
has the glory of having rendered by his writings impious,
disloyal, and miserable. We hardly thought that he could
have sunk lower than has long been the case in the public
esteem, but by his recent conduct he has proved that " in
the lowest depth" of his degradation, " a lower still" was
possible. But let him still proceed in this raving style.
Nothing but increased infamy will attach to the name of
Paine from the praises of Cobbett.*
* Cobbett asserts, that with Paine first arose the idea of American inde
pendence, and on this ground he claims eternal veneration for him. Even
had it been so, would any Christian on this account forgive the unutterable
blasphemies with which this wretch has assailed the Bible, the glorious
charter of our claim " to be divinely flee, to soar and to anticipate the skies ;"
or would any Briton forgive the ribaldry and abuse with which he has assailed
our venerated Constitution. But the fact is otherwise. The idea of American

83
To the influence of the French Revolution, which was at
once a system of religious and political anarchy, are to be
traced up all the crude notions, and all the destructive princi
ples which for many years past, have been fermenting in the
minds of speculative men throughout Europe ; and the
phrenzy of which has even reached the lower classes, pro
ducing throughout the various gradations of society a rest
less thirst for change and innovation. The horrors which
were engendered in France by this disposition, suspended
the contagion for a time, but the lesson appears to be for
gotten ; though the effect, wherever the cause is again al
lowed to operate, will lead to results equally dreadful.
Liberty is a blessing of such inestimable value, that it cannot
be too highly prized ; it is our ardent wish, that its triumphs
may extend from shore to shore. But the Liberty we would
invoke is like that which we ourselves possess ; the hand
maid of religion, the friend of order, the companion of
subordination, the nurse of wisdom, the ally of magnanimous

Independence first arose with Dx. Rush, of Philadelphia, and it was at his sug-
festion that Paine wrote " Common Sense." Vide Dr. Rush's letter to
lr. Cheetham, in which this fact is circumstantially detailed.
There was a time when Cobbett thought it a sin to blaspheme the name of
God, and impious to account " the blood of the covenant an unholy thing."
In those days he wrote a Life of Paine, in which among many other passages
equally abusive, the following occurs. We quote it as an antidote to the pre
sent poison of his pen, and to prove that what this writer most solemnly as
serts to-day he may be expected to unsay to-morrow. " How Tom gets a
living now, or what brothel he inhabits, I know not, nor does it much
signify. He has done all the mischief he can in the world, and whether his
carcase is at last to be suffered to rot in the earth, or to be dried in the air, is
of very little consequence. Whenever or wherever he breathes his last, he will
excite neither sorrow nor compassion : no friendly hand will close his eyes ;
not a groan will be uttered ; not a tear will be shed. Like Judas he will be
remembered by posterity; men will learn to express all that is base, trea
cherous, unnatural, and blasphemous, by the monosyllable — Paine." — Of
mob leaders, Cobbett also says, " Give me any thing but mobs ; for mobs
are the Devil in his worst shapes. I would shoot the leader of a mob sooner
than a midnight ruffian."
M2

84
sentiment, of lofty courage, and of noble enterprise. Such
has not been, nor will such ever be the attributes of that
power, usurping her sacred name, whose influence awakened
all the horrors and all the blasphemies of the French Revo
lution, and who in one and another country, and not least in
our own, is at this moment plotting the same mischief, and
inciting rebellion against every thing most sacred in earth
and heaven. " Blasts from Hell," not " Airs from Heaven,"
attend on its progress ; it is powerful to overturn or con
found, but impotent to every purpose of law, order, or
happiness. Whatever reasons for just complaint on the part of the
people may exist in some of the antient monarchies of
Europe (and we believe there are many) no corresponding
grounds of dissatisfaction are to be found in the Government
of Great Britain, beneath whose mild and paternal sway the
path to honor and to eminence is equally open to all, and
under which every individual is secured in the full enjoyment
of an undisturbed right of property in the fruits of his in
dustry, ingenuity, or good fortune, in the full enjoyment of
rational liberty in general, and of liberty of conscience in
particular. We will not say that the Constitution of our
country, admirable though it is, and for long past the theme
of praise and envy throughout Europe, is absolutely perfect,
or incapable of further improvement ; but we are sure that
many points in it theoretically imperfect are practically be
neficial, and we are persuaded, that none of those, who are
known to be radically unsound in their attachment to it,
will ever be suffered to violate one stone of the venerable
fabric under the pretence of reform, or to daub its glorious
walls with their untempered mortar. Thomas Paine was

85
one among the many profligate wretches, who caught the
slang of the French Revolution, and had the knack of re-
tailing it again in a form peculiarly adapted to amaze and to
deceive the uninstructed multitude. He recommended to
.his followers, as an innocent pastime, the work of pulling
down thrones, and levelling altars at their pleasure ; and
another favorite object was that of inciting the lower
against the higher classes of society.
True to the doctrines of their master, the war of the
Radicals is a war against religion, government, and pro
perty. To enrich themselves by the subversion of the latter,
is perhaps their most favorite object ; but they are aware it
can only be effectually secured by the destruction of the two
former. They are anxious for a general scramble, and are
bent upon wresting those temporal blessings by violence,
which Providence has determined, shall only be its own gifts
by inheritance, or else the just rewards of patient, wise, and
prudent industry.
For some time we heard only of " universal suffrage" and
" annual parliaments," and were left to guess the ultimate
objects of the party ; but the whole truth is now displayed
in broad day-light, and the evidences of a deliberate conspi
racy to overturn the government are no longer wanting.
There are certain specious words, such as " redress of
grievances," and " right of petition," both of them, obvi
ously, constitutional objects when properly pursued, under
the covert of which these incendiaries flattered themselves
that they might securely hatch treason, and pave the way to
anarchy. But our common sense was not to be hood -winked
by mere words, when their real objects were emblazoned on
seditious banners, avowed by military training, and proclaimed

86
in treasonable and blasphemous menaces, both in their pub
lications and speeches.
That the bones of the infamous Paine should have been
brought over to this country, by one of the most mischievous
leaders of this faction, as a worthy object of popular venera
tion; that the" immortal memory'' of this miserable wretch
should have been enthusiastically drunk at their most accre
dited public dinners both inLondon and in the provinces; that
their writings should teem with his name, and his praises, are
so many facts which furnish (if it were wanting) a master-key
to their ultimate intentions.* They irresistibly conduct to the
conclusion, that the Jacobin and the Radical faction have
been engendered by the same principles, and therefore in the
horrors perpetrated by the one we behold, as in a glass, those
which are meditated by the other. Though this point has
already been incidentally touched upon in the course of the
foregoing narrative, it is of such great importance as illus
trative of the peculiar character of that enemy against whom
we contend, and who has sworn eternal enmity to the British
Constitution ; that we shall be excused for introducing here
a few observations, the connection of which with the nar
rative itself will be obvious.
It is well known that no mob governs itself. What is
called the will of the multitude is scarcely ever any thing
more than the impulse it receives from a small band of leaders,
who have successfully studied the sure methods of inflaming
its passions, and rendering them subservient to their own
ambition. Thus the organs of the Radical, like those of the
Jacobinfaction, will be found to be a set of unprincipled
* In Cobbett's Register for January 1820, there is a grave proposition to
institute a Paine Club, in imitation of the Pitt and FoxClubsl

87
Orators and seditious Journalists, disputing who shall most
fiercely arraign the Government, and who most successfully!
delude the people.
Appended to each faction will be found secret committees,
and corresponding societies, whose object it is to undermine
by every art, all respect for institutions the most venerable,
truths the most sacred, and laws upon which the whole frame
of society is established.
With each faction the abuse of the liberty of the press has
furnished a powerful engine of at once diffusing contagion
and producing intimidation. In their pamphlets and tracts
they devote to hatred and vengeance all who dare to advo
cate the cause of order, or to expose their abominations.
All that can animate, irritate, or excite the people is studi
ously encouraged. They call liberty the right of extinguishing
all liberty. By a gross abuse of terms they represent the
mob as the people, and this people as sovereign. That
hacknied term the " sovereignty of the people," means no
thing more in their mouths than a despotism, of which they
themselves, under the specious names of Representatives of
the people, are to be the real organs. The levity with which
they treat revolutionary horrors is a striking proof of the
brutalizing tendency of their principles. Suppose, say they,
a revolution should create a little blood-shed, where is the
harm ; the end will justify the means ; liberty is a blessing
that merits great sacrifices ; the flame of patriotism must be
fanned. There are some of our public men who deride the idea
that danger is to be apprehended from the Radicals, and
who affect to regard the tranquillity which has resulted from
the late enactments of Parliament, as a proof that no danger

88
ever existed. The parallels to this species of infatuation
were without number in the French Revolution, and many of
the very persons thus duped were among the first victims of
Jacobinical fury. It is a curious fact, that just before one of
the most dreadful of these explosions the Minister Garat
declared Paris to be in a state of profound calm.*
Christianty is too restraining a system for such deter
mined levellers. It is therefore at any rate to be laid low.
The religious and the patriotic spirit according to them
cannot subsist together, nor ancient principles with modern
virtues. In the same spirit, tyranny is represented as inse
parably allied to royalty, slavery to obedience, oppression
to power.
On the contrary, flaming pictures are drawn of the advan
tages which would ensue, in case the people should enter into
the possession of their alledged right to subvert and to over
turn every existing institution. That reformation, which
religion, armed with the awful sanctions of a superintending
Providence, a future Judgment, and an Eternal World has
hitherto failed to effect in any adequate degree, is to be in
stantaneously produced by a sweeping change in the laws,
and the constitution. With the Jacobins, the National Con
vention which decreed the murder of theKing, and resigned
the nation to the tyranny of Robespierre, was to effect this
wondrous renovation. With the Radicals, a new scene of
things, as if by the stroke of an enchanter's wand, is to
follow the establishment of "Universal Suffrage" and "Annual
Parliaments." By both a more than golden age has been
promised to the world, whenever their plans shall be fully
matured. Its rulers are then to be a race of Patriots, Sages
* Vid. Laccretelle, Convention nat. Vol. 1, 255.

89
and Heroes. The people are to be free, just, wise, and
wealthy ; they are to be alike consistent in their proceed
ings, unerring in their decisions, moderate in the use of
their rights, never deceived, never deluded, never reduced
to slavery by the power they are invited to delegate to their
leaders. Their will is to be the law, and that law is to be
the standard of all practical perfection. In this view of the
subject, our own indignation in common with that of the
country, is chiefly levelled against the unprincipled dema
gogues, who have excited the passions of the multitude by
the basest arts of delusion, while, in relation to its unhappy
victims, our pity almost triumphs over every other feeling.
It is gratifying, however, to reflect that the demagogues in
question have themselves done much to open the eyes of the
reflecting portion even of their own party, to the pollution
both of their morals and their principles, by the torrent of
abuse which they have poured out upon each other, and to
which, as it proceeds from so unsuspicious a quarter, they
will excuse the friends of order for attaching implicit credit.*
In the French Revolution the progress of events towards
the final abyss of crime and confusion was gradual but con
catenated. At first starting in the career of reform loud
were the professions of incorruptible faith, of unshaken
loyalty, and of purest patriotism. But as soon as the Jaco
binical faction, who were its chief promoters, found them
selves strong enough to defy controul, they threw aside
the mask and appeared in all their native hideousness. In-
* It appears by various letters from Dr. Watson and Mr. Thistlewood,
published in the London papers, that these Radical Demagogues regard
Hunt as something worse than a pick-pocket. On the other hand the com
pliment is duly repayed by the enraged Orator.
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90
fidelity ivas proclaimed, blasphemy protected, profligaby
encouraged; The throne was overturned* the ahar levelled.
All the bonds of subordination were broken.; children were
made independent of their parents; the conjugal tie was
rendered little more than legal prostitution ; a connection
that sensuality; or caprice might at any time dissolve.*
Humanity expended itself iii speculation. Benevolence em
braced every living- creature, except such as had the mis
fortune to come in contact with it. Public faith, com
mon decency were violated. Under those specious . terms
"Liberty" and "Equality," a brutal and savage ferocity
was imparted to the manners ; all the fine. draperies of life
were torn off ; those attained the highest influence who were
most exalted above shame, > most infamous in viee, most
towering in. presumption. Tile perverted powers of reason
were deifiied ; every thing was extinguished which can elevate
the mind above the degrading influence of the senses; the
people were taught to regard themselves as brutes, and they
became in a corresponding degree savage and barbarous.t
W'e will not say, that Radicalism has yet dared t© go thus
far. But after an attentive survey of the writings o£ its- chief
promoters we will venture to assert, that it directly tends-
towards the very same goal, and we are fully persuaded that
* Divorce became so much a thing of course during the reign of Jacobinism,
that it had its regular paragraph assigned to it in thfe public Journals. Bur in'g-
the year 1795, the recorded marriages inParis on an average, were 7140, the
Divorces 2248, so that the proportion of Divorces to Marriages' was riot much
less than one to three, a thing almost unexampled before m the annals of
mankind. Upon an enquiry instituted by Mr. Burke's order at Doctor's
Commons, it appeared that the Divorces in all those Courts did not amount
in 100 years To more than one-twentieth of those that passed in the single
city of Paris in one year. i . , ,,,\ ¦„.)< •-,
f Intervoveh with the preceding reflections are seveval remarks from
Marmontel, who in his memoirs has inserted a masterly sketch of the Freurbi
Revolution.

91
if the arena were granted, the appropriate actors would not ¦
be wanting. '
It is the systematical character of this evil which creates
its greatest danger. For the last twenty years it has been -
gradually acquiring augmented force; and it will continue to
be promoted with- restless activity. Parliamentary laws and
regulations like those which have lately been enacted, neces
sary, excellent, and efficacious as they are; cannot unless
aidedby:other counteracting remedies do more than controul
the present danger. They are excellent as remedial mea
sures for the moment, but their tendency is rather to restrain
than to reform the- criminal. The volcano, which lately
blazed so furiously and looked so menacing, is now crusted
over, but its secret fires are still muttering within, and ga
thering force for a future explosion. There is not a Radical
in the country, who is not full of sanguine hope as to the
final triumph of his cause, and this impression is nourished
by the seditious press by every art of sophistry and misre
presentation. Multitudes of the rising generation are train
ing up in the tenets of Radicalism in schools conducted and
supported by-its votaries,* who will finally be let loose' upon
* The following extracts from the speeches of Mr. Plunket and Lord
Lascelles, deserve the most attentive consideration. " He (Mr. -Plunket) ad
mitted that he had said he believed blasphemous libels, which had been made
the subject of public prosecution, had been ibrmfed into primers for the pur
pose of inculcating into the minds of children that description of pestilence :
he believed so still.. Since he came into the house an Hon. Gentleman had
put a letter into his hand, confirmatory of his assertion, in whicli a particular
school was mentioned :" — r-Speech of Mr. Plunket, reported in tlie Courier
Dec. 23, 1819.
Tlje Author is in possession of some striking and well authenticated facts,
strongly corroborative of the literal truth of Mr. Plunket t's assertions.
"As to the Female Reformers, he ( Lord Lascelles) knew them to bring up their
Children in a total disregard of the Christian Religion, and of all established or-;
der, land he would therefore place them on the same footing with the other ob
jects of these measures. Witli regard to irreligious practices, ' Gentlemen not
resident in the country werelittle aware of their pernicious extent. A regular
system for the circulation of irreligious publications was adopted ; they Were
N2

92
the world, trained for every purpose of sedition and impiety.
The same policy which, with such patient forecast, calculates
the means of future success is, we may be assured, in a thou
sand other ways actively promoting these works of darkness.
If there be any force in these reflections, if any justice in
these conclusions, they will necessarily suggest the vast im
portance of becoming duly alive to the crisis in which we are
placed, and of attempting some plan of counteraction which
will not merely tend to chain down rebellion, but to ex
tinguish its spirit.
Could we believe that want of employment and consequent
indigence formed the sole origin of the evils we deplore, we
should confidently hope that their existence would be as tem
porary as the causes into which the distress itself is to be
resolved. But we have already traced back their origin into
far remoter and more inveterate principles, and therefore we
cannot entertain any such sanguine expectations. Distress
has doubtless heightened the spirit of disaffection, and has
furnished political incendiaries with a powerful means of
stirring up the passions of the ignorant, and of gaining
many proselytes to their phrenzied projects. " But occur
rences like these (to use the words of an enlightened and able
Statesman*) are the instruments not the causes of the mis
chief. Much of this evil exists where these distresses have
absolutely put into the houses of such who were too poor to purchase them ;
the consequence was, that immediately after labor was over men read these
works to their families, and from the total want of any other reading, read
them day after day till they got them by heart. These publications were
exposed in every market." — — ^Speech of %nrd LasceUes, reported in the New
Times Dec. 1, 1819.
* Vide Speech of the Rt Hon. Lord Grenville, Ifov.30, 1819  The Author
of these pages has felt much gratified atseeing the principles which in the first
edition of this pamphlet he labored to establish, enforced in the speech here
referred to by the most convincing arguments, and the most powerful
eloquence.

93
had comparatively little operation. Many are most forward
in the sedition whom the pressure has least affected ; while
those on whom it has most severely borne, have, in many
cases conducted themselves with exemplary patience and re
solution, untainted by this pernicious contagion, obedient to
the laws, and inviolably attached to those institutions which
have long been the glory and happiness of Englishmen."
As far as want of employment is concerned in producing
the spirit of Radicalism, though something may possibly be |
devised by Parliamentary wisdom to palliate the evil, its
grand causes, it is perfectly obvious, lie beyond the reach of
any such coutroul. Parliament cannot bend to its sway the
shifting changes of commerce, or prevent the effects of that
competition with our manufacturers which the restoration of
peace has enabled foreign nations to institute.
But the moral disease under which we labour, admits of
some important remedies which it is in our power to supply,
andtheforce of which under due regulation would prove incal
culably advantageous. Unless the voice of public censure is '
most unjustly raised, it maysafely be asserted that the corrupt
and demoralized state of a large portion of the manufacturing
population is in a great measure caused by inherent evils in
the manufacturing system. The soil in which the abettors of
blasphemy and treason have sown their noxious seeds, was
previously prepared by immoral influences to yield a corres
ponding and abundant harvest. When large masses of peo
ple of both sexes (as in the case of these establishments) in
cluding children of all ages, are collected together within a
small compass, and mingled at all hours from day to day,
and from year to year, it must be obvious to common expe
rience, that without a strong counteracting influence, great

94
laxity of morals, and corruption of manners will be inevita
ble. Is any system of counteraction attempted, or even as
much as thougbt.of ? Is it not an obvious fact, that employ
ers from want of reflection, or from less pardonable causes,-
have hitherto been too inclined to regard their working
people only in that relation which concerns their own pecu?
niary profit, forgetful that they are also fellow-christians and
immortal beings, whose morals and whose welfare are in a
great degree committed to their keeping, and upon wfiose
principles their own example and influence, as well as the
due regulation of their manufactories, by a decorous separa
tion between the sexes, by an attention, to the. health of the :
children, and by sedulous religious instruction, might exer?:
cjse a mighty sway 1*
Any public regulations of these points by Parliamentary
interference, if seconded by the zealous efforts of the parties
chiefly interested, might even now be attended with very'
salutary consequences, and would at least manifest the cor
dial desire of the Legislature, to promote the improvement
and the happiness of an immense and widely-scattered ;
population. There exists another paramount evil for which we are
tardily providing a too faint remedy. The great mass of the
* The very superior moral condition of the people in the manufactories of
the late excellent Mr. Dale, at Glasgow, who sedulously attended to these
and other important points, was a practical proof of tlieir efficacy for the ends
recommended. The particulars of the plan are to be found in the Reports
of the Society for bettering the condition of the Poor.
In a conversation with the late Mr. Arkwright, a particular friend of the
writer's, asked, him whether he did not allow that a manufactory was a very
bad school to form the Female character for domestic life, and finished by
enquiring whether he could not contrive to give up one half day in the week
to instruct the women in sewing, and in their Christian duties. He as
sented to the importance of the objects, but said he could not possibly allow
his neighbouring competitors such an advantage over him as the sacrifice of
half a day would prove.

95
manufacturing population have been left as sheep without a
shepherd. They have had no opportunity Of attending di
vine worship Within the walls bf the Established ChUrfch ;*
and had not the zealous efforts bf the various denominations
of Dissenters been directed to these quarters, their Condition
must have beenfar more deplorable; Every zealous friend
bf the Church Establishment, every person who. lbves and
values that spirit of pure and enlightened devotion, and that
wise medium between Contrary extremes in doctrine, Which
stamp upbh her various offices a character of peculiar and
unrivalled excellence, must lament that so little has been"
done by laborers from her own vineyard in the districts to
which we refer ;9nd such regrets must be greatly augmented,
when it is justly inferred, from the success which has at
tended the ministry of many excellent and laborious Clergy
men in these quarters, how much more might have- been
effected had more laborers been employed. But in the ab*
sence of such instructions it would be equally Uncandid and
unjust to refuse to the zealous laborers to whom we have
referred, the well-earned tribute bf grateful encomium, or
to withhold the expression of our strbrig conviction,', that
some of the most sound and uncbrriipted portion of thS

* \Ve are enabled on highly respectable authority from Manchesteivto
nlbfoihtlre'roHowihg statement in c'OrrOboVaWn of the above remarks. Tlie
town of ManchesteV, including the SmnYediate suburbs, contains abrAft
ITO,bub Inhabitants, there is room in the 12 Churches, including Safnt
Gebrge,*s a Free iChur/ch, only for about 13,560! This -is aft appalling
sfcftemeht, sjiidif ho remedy -be applied the evil must IhevitaMy continue to
increase. - Let it be recollected alsd, that 'throughout the manufactures'
districts, similar ekes might be fbun'4. To use the worrls Bf the excet-
rerrt Mr. Gfsbbrne;. " it n)ay reasonably be appreherMea, tPfat in half ft
century, the principal Jrart of the lower 'classes in the populous parts of tfifc
kingdom will have separated a'lmosi 'of necessity troiri the national Church.
In propqrtion.as rrjen -may-dread religious or political results from such it
change ought to be their solicitude to prevent it."

96
manufacturing community is that which has been subjected
to tlieir care and influences.*
Some persons have taken occasion to declaim against
education from the events now passing in the North, and
have even attempted to trace up to its influence the existing
evils. Our own opinion grounded upon the foregoing con
siderations, and upon others less important, into which it
would carry us too far to enter, is decidedly the reverse. If
there be any truth or force in the preceding facts, it will
follow that want of religious education, want of moral and
economical habits, want of good example, and want of pas
toral superintendance, are among the most prominent
causes of the existing evils, and that it is only by reversing
this lamentable state of things, that we can justly indulge the
hope of their permanent eradication. But even those least
inclined to favor a system of general education, must now
see the importance of zealously encouraging it, since the
Radical party, sensible of its powerful influence, are at this
moment making a strong effort to render it subservient to
the future establishment of their revolutionary designs.
But, say the Radicals, if we do not ruin you by our efforts,
you will soon be ruined by your finances. The DEBT, the
DEBT, is now the hue and cry of the whole party,t though
* We have seen with the greatest pleasure a Declaration, with many signa
tures, from the conductors of the Sunday Schools at Stockport, strongly ex
pressive of their abhorrence of the Radical tenets, and of their determination
to oppose them in every way — In the New Times for Nov. 15, 1819, is in
serted a most loyal and excellent Address, from the heads of tlie Wesleian
Methodist Society, to their various congregations, in which they declare then-
abhorrence in the strongest terms of the tenets of the Radicals, and their
determination to expel from their society all persons who shall attend at any
seditious meetings. This production equally distinguished by its wisdom
and its piety reflects the highest honor upon its authors.
t " The paper-bubble (says Cobbett) must be got rid of. But can this be
done without a reform? The thing is impossible. The interest of the debt

97
by far the greater part are quite ignorant what the debt
means. Like vampires, who are represented as eyeing their
prey with malignant joy, these worthless men triumph in the
difficulties, and exult in the distresses of (heir country. Into
this subject we will enter no further than briefly to observe,
that as the causes of the present stagnation of commerce,
which has partially affected the revenue, are to be traced
partly to a too enterprising spirit which has glutted our
markets with imports, and partly to the temporary distresses
which our neighbours have experienced in common with our
selves, it may fairly be anticipated that as these checks cease
to operate, the difficulties which press upon the commercial
world will be gradually diminished, and be succeeded by a
steady demand for the various products of British industry.
But even supposing, for mere argument's sake, that the gloomy
predictions of the disaffected were likely to be verified, and
that, contrary to all just calculation, a crisis of imminent
danger was to occur, yet even then every sacrifice, rendered
necessary by the state of the times, for the support or the
restoration of public credit and confidence, might fairly be
anticipated, from the moral courage, the lofty patriotism,
and the enduring fortitude which peculiarly distinguish the

must be, for the far greater part, swept away, and finally it must be wholly
swept away.'
One of Paine's pamphlets, published in 1796 was an attack "upon the
English system of Finance, which he predicts .will not continue to the end of
Mr. Pitt's life, supposing him to live to the usual age of a .man." Mr.
Pitt's mighty mind was far more alive than that of any one of the host of
petty critics who attacked his plans could be,' to the objections which might
fajrly be urged against them ; but the existence of the country was at stake ;
vast efforts and sacrifices could .alone have preserved its independence, and
he therefore felt justified in having recourse to an extraordinary remedy for
an extraordinary crisis. He was the last man to intend, that the extreme
medicine of the Constitution should be its daily bread.
O

98
people of this country. The trial might be sharp, but under
such influences the issue would not be doubtful.
The power, which the Radicals possess of doing mischief,
is much aided by their system of uniting and acting in con
cert. We ought to do the same. Loyalty is contagious as
well as disaffection. The distinctions of party, or at least
its rivalries, should be suspended, and a general effort made
to crush the viperous brood of those principles which teach
men to violate every right, to confound every duty, to break
all the sacred bonds of society, to dissolve all the relations
of civil life, to use the name of liberty for the perpetration of
the most cruel tyranny, to annihilate all property, to seize on
all possessions, to brutalize, in short, and to debase the
public mind to such a degree, that when the hour of confu
sion arrives, it may recoil from no crimes, and blink at no
scenes bf horror. Yet in pursuing this important end, almost
as much might be effected by individual exertion as by le
gislative enactments. Wise and pious individuals, living
in the disaffected districts, might greatly aid the cause
of their country, by mingling with their charitable deeds to
the indigent and afflicted, salutary warnings, suggested by
the state of the times. The wonderful efficacy which has at
tended the efforts of that benevolent individual, who has
labored for the reformation of Newgate, may justly inspire
the hope that endeavors pursued in the same Christian
spirit, would frequently prove effectual, when harsher mea
sures would only tend to harden and exasperate.
Their means of diffusing and of giving effect to these prin
ciples are much aided by the diligence with which they study
revolutionary and seditious writers. They seize their argu
ments, or rather they swallow their sophistries, and after
wards retail them as their own. The Friends of Religion

99
and Loyalty should be equally prepared, by very contrary
studies, to expose their ignorance, and confound their auda
city,* Should this motive tend generally to induce a deeper
investigation of the Holy Scripture and of the evidences of
Christianity, the good effects would not be bounded by the
immediate result here proposed, but might fairly be ex
pected to extend themselves to the hearts of the readers, and
thus to prepare them to act their part manfully as Christians,
under any possible circumstances of difficulty or peril.
" When storms arise, then is the time to see in what the real
strength of society consists ; who will struggle, who will
hazard, who will be faithful to the last. They that fear God
certainly will ; and we can have no certainty of any other.
Amongst the truly religious, because they are such, there
will be sincere and mutual trust, faithful and unwearied ap
plication ; their counsels will be steady, their undertakings
just, their execution bold, their confidence in Heaven strong,
and their adherence to a righteous cause immoveable.'
When prisons shall be generally rendered, what they ought
to be, not schools of immoral contamination, but of moral dis
cipline; when every individual shall enjoy the opportunity
of worshipping the God of his fathers within the walls
of our venerable Establishment ; when children at that tender
* It is gratifying to witness the zeal now exerted in the distribution and
sale of loyal and religious tracts, to counteract the influence of the blasphe
mous and seditious press. At the very head of those who have thus served
the cause of their country, the revered name of JVlrs. Hannah More will
ever be placed. Her tracts, written for the lower classes, proved of in
calculable service at the period of the French Revolution. It is a fact which
ought to be generally known, that no less than two millions of them were
circulated during the first year of their publication, and among many distin
guished persons whose particular approbation they attracted, we cannot omit
the illustrious name of the late Right Hon. Wm. Pitt. We believe it to be
a very general wish that some of these able and patriotic productions should
be added to the list of the venerable " Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge."
02

100
age, in which impressions are most easily made, shall be
tatight by the general extension of a National System of
Education," the true principles of their duty to God and
man, instead of being exposed in a state of absolute igno
rance to the noxious influences which infest a large propor
tion of our manufactories ; when the heads of these estab
lishments shall use a simultaneous effort to correct as far as
possible their inherent evils, and shall not merely measure
their own success by pecuniary profits, but also by the in
creasing virtue, loyalty and good habits of their numerous
dependants ; when by these means every poor man in the
country shall be able to read his bible,*' and to understand
the intimate connexion which subsists between the re
verence which he owes to his God, and the lawful al
legiance which is clue to his King ; when the great and
the opulent shall be found living on their estates, edify
ing the poor by their example, exciting their industry, in
spiring them by the encouragement of provident institutions
with habits of economy and foresight, and thus creating an
uniting bond of affection between the higher, the middling
and the lower classes of society ; then we shall possess the
strongest possible pledge, that the glory and the greatness bf
our country has not yet seen its acme, but that in a greater

* Such was the paternal wish emphatically expressed by that revered
Monarch, who, while the pen is in our hand has exchanged a mortal for an
immortal crown. The long reign of George the Third has been rendered
scarcely less memorable by the exalted virtues of his character, than by the.
series of momentous events crouded into it. In an age of infidelity he was
a magnanimous " Defender of the Faith ;" in an age ot faction the Rallying-
point of rational Liberty ; in an age of luxury and indulgence a Model of
Temperance and of all the hardier virtues. He loved his subjects and was
enthusiastically beloved by them ; he was proud of being born a Briton, and
Britons were proud of their King. His tomb will be watered by tears of un-
unfeigned reverence and affection, and when sedition breathes out general in
vectives against royalty, his name will be quoted as a refutation of the slander.

101
degree than has ever yet been the case, she is destined 'to
become the sanctuary of true Religion, of rational Liberty,
of social Order, and of unrivalled Happiness.
That there is an increasing approximation to this improved
order of things in many of the particulars enumerated, we
gladly acknowledge ; and this progress is the more remark
able, because it has occurred during a period in wh'ich;the
attention of Parliament has necessarily been distracted from
plans of internal improvement, by the arduous efforts and
sacrifices incident on a war of unexampled magnitude. We
feel confident -from the dispositions manifested by this
Assembly (the most enlightened in the world)' that it will
press onwards in the same noble career, that every year will
increasingly justify the confidence reposed in its measures,
and attest its claims to guide the destinies and to stimulate
the spirit of a great and generous nation.
Modern Infidelity, with Faction and Revolution in his train,
is the grand Enemy whom we have to oppose, and he is mighty.
He reigns supreme over a great part of the Continent, and
under a more varnished aspect has obtained too strong a hold
among ourselves. If he fails— as fail we are confident he
will — to overthrow by force the citadel of our strength, he
will endeavour silently to sap its foundations. Enmity to
Christianity is not only manifested by open and shameless at
tacks levelled at it, but by disgust either implied or expressed
towards its humbling doctrines, which inculcate, that man is
in a fallen condition, and that repentance and faith in Jesus
Christ are the sole principles by which he can approach God
as his Father, or triumph over the corruptions of his nature.
Could we suppose the grand truths of Christianity to be fear
lessly maintained and manfully recognised, their renovating

102
and benignant influence would soon change the whole face of
society, ' and the poisonous weeds of Impiety and Faction
would wither away in their presence. From the loftiest to
the humblest station in society, men would be animated by
the noblest and purest principles. Lifted above sordid inte
rests, low pleasures, and worldly anxieties, they would dread
nothing butoffending their Maker ; they would set their hearts
on nothing but pleasing him ; they would be knit together
by the bonds of mutual kindness, charity, sympathy, and
affection. From such an union, so formed and so cemented, would pro
ceed, by gradual and cautious steps, a RADICAL REFORM,
such as the world has never yet seen, and which, while it
enriched our various establishments, by the introduction of
any real improvements, incident to the progress of know
ledge and experience, would consolidate them all by the
affections of a people resting in peace, piety, and happiness,
beneath their tutelary shade.
In the mean time, whatever progress Infidelity may ap
pear to make in any particular nations, there is absolute
certainty that in tlie end, its power will be signally over
thrown. Prophecies fulfilled and fulfilling, and miracles ac
complished, are such sure pledges, that the various predic
tions which foretel the glory of the Church in the latter
days, will be literally realized, that the servants of God,
instead of feeling any alarm as to the issue of the contest
which is now waging between Light and Darkness, have only
cause to pray, that they may be enabled to act their own
particular part manfully and well.

J. M.Gutch, Printer.

»3* The Second Edition of this Work has
been lately published, in a cheap form
for distribution, price Is. or 10s. pet
dozen, stitched in blue covers*

3 9002

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