The Political Writings of Thomas Paine

to William Carver's account, who was very intimate with him, was an atheist, believing in no God.

Mr. Carver has just handed me a copy of Cheetham's life of Paine, in which he has written on a blank leaf the following. which he requests me to publish in this work:

"Being one night at Cheetham's house, he said to me, Carver, I believe you have read many good authors, but there is one on the Fable that surpasses all of them. It is Mirabaud's System of Nature.' It never was, never can, nor ever will be answered.' I told him I had read it in four volumes.-I firmly believe that Cheetham was an atheist. He was an uneducated man; nature, however, had given him excellent talents, but he turned an apostate and liar.-I once told him, in his own house, that I believed he had his hands crossed with British gold. A gentleman present (Charles Christian) observed, that is a bold attack;' Cheetham replied, 'Carver will contradict a judge on the bench, when he thinks him in the wrong." "

WILLIAM CARVER.

Mr. Carver has made many annotations in the margin of his copy of Paine's life, charging the biographer with giving statements which, to his knowledge, were utterly false.

This is the man that reprobates Paine's deistical principles. and prates about moral conduct; and thus have the virtuous, honest inquirers after truth, been insulted and imposed upon by designing knaves and impostors.

I will not follow the example of Mr. Cheetham, by entering into an examination of his domestic character; his public political sins are the only legitimate objects of disquisition.

I would not be understood as approving or condemning Mr. Paine's religious opinions; whatever they were, he had as good a right to maintain them, as any other sectarian whatever.

The following short letter from Mr. Jefferson fully conveys his opinion of the merits and services of Thomas Paine, to whom it was addressed :

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

Among other falsehoods that have been published respecting Paine, it has been asserted. that in the latter part of his life, he

was in great distress for want of the means of subsistence It is proper, therefore, to state, that at his death he possessed a farm in New-Rochelle valued at 10,000 dollars, and thirty shares in the New-York Phoenix Insurance Company, worth about 1500 dollars, which he devised by his will to various persons.

"It is somewhat singular," says Mr. Sherwin, "that so great a length of time should have elapsed since the death of Mr. PAINE, without a single author, either in Europe or America, attempting to give an impartial and faithful account of his life. Different reasons may be assigned for the silence of his English admirers, but in the land of freedom, in the land where his principles have flourished and triumphed, in the land which almost owes its form of government to his genius, a person would have thought that some honest biographer would have raised an avenging pen against the calumniators who have endeavored to blacken his name. In a country where literature is a real republic, where the press is neither shackled by despotic laws nor corrupted by treacherous ministers, we are naturally led to suppose that tyranny would scarcly have found a supporter, or superstition an advocate. But the silence which has been observed towards the falsehoods that have been propagated against the character of Mr. Paine, is a proof that letters way be venal without being corrupt.”

EDITOR.