FROM MR. PAINE'S ARRIVAL IN AMERICA, TO HIS DEPARTURE FOR FRANCE; EMBRACING HIS TRANSACTIONS IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Shortly after the arrival of Mr. Paine in America, he was engaged as editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, the publication of which had just been commenced, by Mr. Aitkin, bookseller, of Philadelphia. This brought him acquainted with Dr. Rush.

Up to this period, Paine had been a whig. But from the practical tone of much of his editorial, it is probable that he now began to suspect that that speculative abstraction, British constitutionalism, had exhausted its usefulness in the economy of the social organism; and that human progress could reach a higher plane than that, the foundations of which were a theological church establishment, and its corresponding hotch-potch of kings, lords, and commons. And here I will remark, that Paine's distinguishing characteristic-the trait which constituted his greatness-was his capability of being ahead of his time. Were he bodily present now, he would be as far in advance of the miserable sham of freedom to which the majorityism which he advocated, though provisionally necessary, has dwindled, as he was in advance of the governmental expedient, which reached the stage of effeteness in his day. "The Crisis," instead of commencing with "These are the times that try men's "souls," would begin with "These are the times that exhaust men's power of endurance. Demagogism, with the whole power of the majority to enforce its tyranny, has declared that "to the victors belong the spoils;" that it has a right to bind the minority in all cases whatsoever. Its recklessness is in complete contrast with the regard which even Britain pays to the interests of her subjects; and in taxation, and peculation in office, it outdoes Austrian despotism itself."

Majorityism has carried its insolence so far as to despise nothing so much as the name and memory of him who risked his life, his honor, his all, to protect its infancy; it has scornfully refused his portrait a place on the walls of the very hall which once rang with popular applause of the eloquence, which his soul-stirring pleas for elective franchise inspired."

"Yes; the city council of Philadelphia has, in 1859, in obedience to the commands of that public opinion, which was the court of last appeal, of him who first, on this continent, dared pronounce the word American Independence, refused his portrait a place by the side of his illustrious co-workers; thus rebuking, and most impudently insulting Washington, who in an exstacy of admiration grasped the hand of the author of "Common Sense," and invited him to share his table; Franklin, who invited him to our shores; Lafayette, to whom he was dearer than a brother; Barlow, who pronounced him one of the most benevolent and disinterested of mankind;" Thomas Jefferson, who sent a government ship to reconduct him to our shores; and all the friends of popular suffrage in France, who, at the time that tried men's souls there, elected him to their national councils."

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"Like the Turkish despot, who cut off the head, and blotted out of existence the family, of his prime minister, to whom he owed the preservation of his throne, majorityism has crowded the name of its chief apostle almost out of the history of its rise."

"Freedom of speech, particularly on religious subjects, and on the government's pet project, is a myth; every seventh day, the freedom of action is restricted to going to church, dozing away the time in the house, taking a disreputable stroll, or venturing on a not strictly legal ride. We have nothing like the amount of individual freedom which is enjoyed by the men and women of imperially governed France; and notwithstanding the muzzling of the press by Louis Napoleon, there could be published, within the very shade of the Tuileries, a truer and more liberal history of Democracy and its leaders, and of American Independence, than any considerable house, except the one from which this emanates, dare put forth, within the vast area over which the star-spangled banner waves.

This is but a tithe of the despotism which public opinion, free to be formed by priests, and directed by demagogues, has inflicted but a faint view of how abominably prostituted

liberty must inevitably become, if unregulated by science. If democracy has not exhausted all the good there was in itif majorityism has not become effete, and as obnoxious to progress as monarchy ever was-in short, if what is now called liberty, is not slavery, there is not such a thing as slavery on the earth."

At the close of the year 1775, when the American Revolution had progressed as far as the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill, John Adams, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington, had met together to read the terrible dispatches they had received. Having done which, they pause in gloom and silence. Presently Franklin speaks: What," he asks, "is to be the end of all this? Is it to obtain justice of Great Britain, to change the ministry, to soften a tax? Or is it for" He paused; the word independence yet choked the bravest throat that sought to utter it.

At this critical moment, Paine enters. Franklin introduces him, and he takes his seat. He well knows the cause of the prevailing gloom, and breaks the deep silence thus: "These States of America must be independent of England. That is the only solution of this question!" They all rise to their feet at this political blasphemy. But, nothing daunted, he goes on; his eye lights up with patriotic fire as he paints the glorious destiny which America, considering her vast resources, ought to achieve, and adjures them to lend their influence to rescue the Western Continent from the absurd, unnatural, and unprogressive predicament of being governed by a small island, three thousand miles off. Washington leaped forward, and taking both his hands, besought him to publish these views in a book..

Paine went to his room, seized his pen, lost sight of every other object, toiled incessantly, and in December, 1775, the work entitled Common Sense, which caused the Declaration of Independence, and brought both people and their leaders face to face with the work they had to accomplish, was sent forth on its mission. "That book," says Dr. Rush, "burst forth from the press with an effect that has been rarely produced by types and paper, in any age or country."

"Have you seen the pamphlet, Common Sense ?" asked Major General Lee, in a letter to Washington; "I never saw such a masterly, irresistible performance. It will, if I mistake not, in concurrence with the transcendent folly and wickedness of the ministry, give the coup-de-grace to Great Britain.

In short, I own myself convinced by the arguments, of the necessity of separation."

That idea of Independence the pen of Paine fed with fuel from his brain when it was growing dim. We cannot overrate the electric power of that pen. At one time Washington thought that his troops, disheartened, almost naked, and half starved, would entirely disband. But the Author-Hero of the Revolution was tracking their march and writing by the light of camp-fires the series of essays called The Crisis. And when the veterans who still clung to the glorious cause they had espoused were called together, these words broke forth upon them : "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."

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"These are the times that try mens souls," was the watchword at the battle of Trenton, and Washington himself set the pen of Paine above any sword wielded that day. But we need not dwell on the fact of Paine's service's and influence at this eventful period. He stood the acknowledged leader of American statemanship, and the soul of the American Revolution, by the proclamation of the Legislatures of all the States, and that of the Congress of the United States; the tribute of his greatest enemy was in these words : The cannon of Washington was not more formidable to the British than the pen of the author of Common Sense." A little less modesty, a little more preference of himself, to humanity, and a good deal more of what ought to be common sense on the part of the people he sought to free, and he would have been President of the United States; and America, instead of France, would have had the merit of bestowing the highest honor on the most deserving of mankind.

If Paine had been consulted to the extent he ought to have been, by those who modeled the republic he was so instrumental in starting into existence, our social structure would have been so founded, that it might have lasted till superseded by the immeasurably better one to which I shall presently allude, and to which, as I shall show, his measures aimed. It would not now depend upon a base so uncertain that it has to be carefully shored up by such props as gibbets, prisons, alms houses, and soup-dispensing committees, in order

to prevent its being sapped by the hunger-driven slaves of "free labor," nor would our Union be already in such danger of falling to pieces, that the chords which bind it together are as flimsy as cotton, and as rotten as are the souls of those who expose both their religious and their political opinions forsale as eagarly as they do their most damaged goods.

On the 17th of April, 1777, Congress elected Mr. Paine secretary to the committee of foreign affairs. In this capacity, he stood in the same relation to the committee that the English secretary for foreign affairs did to the cabinet; and it was not from vanity, but in order to preserve the dignity of the new government under which he acted, that he claimed the title which was bestowed on the British minister, who performed a function corresponding to his own.

"The Crisis" is contained in sixteen numbers; to notice which, separately, would involve a history of the American Revolution itself. In fact, they comprise a truer history of that event than does any professed history of it yet written. They comprise the soul of it, of which every professed history is destitute. A disgrace which this country can never wipe

out.

In January, 1779, Paine resigned his secretariship, in consequence of a misunderstanding which had taken place between him and congress, on account of one Silas Deane.

In the early part of the war, it appears that Deane had been employed as an agent in France, for the purpose of obtaining supplies, either as a loan from the French government, or, if he failed in this, to purchase them. But before entering on the duties of his office, Dr. Franklin and Mr. Lee were added to the mission, and the three proceeded to Paris for the same purpose. The French monarch, more perhaps from his hostility to the English government, than from any attachment to the American cause, acceded to the request; and the supplies were immediately furnished. As France was then upon amicable terms with England, a pledge was given by the American commissioners that the affair should remain a secret. The supplies were accordingly shipped in the name of a Mr. Beaumarchais, and consigned to an imaginary house in the United States. Deane, taking advantage of the secresy which had been promised, presented a claim for compensation in behalf of himself and Beaumarchais; thinking that the auditing committee would prefer compliance to an exposure of their ally, the king of France, to a rupture with England. Mr. Paine, perceiving the trick, and knowing the