country, and being naturally vindictive, he entered violently into the party squabbles of that day; and possessing a large share of impudence, joined to talents adapted to abusive personal warfare in the conflicts of party, he soon brought himself into some notice. His having been prosecuted by the government of England for political causes, contributed, in some measure, to raise him in the estimation of the party to which he attached himself. They looked upon him as a persecuted patriot, and felt disposed to promote his interest. In fine, David Deniston took him into partnership in a newspaper establishment, called "The Citizen." Of this he became the principal editor.

On Mr. Paine's arrival, he immediately paid his court to him, professing to be an enthusiastic admirer of his principles, political and religious. He took an active part in procuring subscribers to a public dinner, given in honor of Mr. Paine, at the city hotel; and, soon after, invited him, with a number of friends, to dine at his own house.

A friendly intercourse subsisted between them as long as Cheetham adhered to the cause he had espoused. But the latter was at length induced to turn his malignant pen against the administration of Mr. Jefferson. He attacked the then existing embargo, in the most virulent manner, roundly charging the government with being under French influence.

In consequence of the part taken by him upon this occasion, he was expelled from the Tammany society; and a public meeting was called in the Park, of citizens friendly to the measures of the government, and his paper was declared to be no longer the organ of the republican party.

Upon this, Cheetham made a most vehement attack upon Mr. De Witt Clinton, who, by his own solicitation, had presided at that meeting, explicitly charging him with advising the course which had led to his degradation. His rage was levelled equally against the whole republican party, stigmatizing them, as is the custom of vulgar minds, with ridiculous epithets, such as Martling-men, from the name of the person who kept the house in which they held their meetings, and the place itself, the pig-sty.

Finding, at length, that his raving produced little effect; that he could induce but few of those with whom he had formerly acted to join his standard, and that the party which had acted uniformly against the administration of Jefferson, although they loved the treason, despised the traitor, he made up his mind to return to England; and was actually, a little before his death, making arrangements for that purpose. He declared it to be his intention to publish a paper in England, in support of the government against Cobbett, who was then advocating the popular cause. To prepare for himself a favorable reception, he affected to pay great respect to religion; which drew from Paine the following remark, that "Cheetham was a hypocrite in religion, and a John Bull in politics." His abuse of Paine, as he confessed to an

intimate friend, Charles Christian, was with a view of ingratiating himself with the court party in England.

The following facts, place the character of this genuine Iago in its true light.

With a view of injuring the memory of Paine, he takes a circuitous course, by impugning the reputation of a lady of his acquaintance, Mrs. Bonneville. For this calumny, Mrs. B brought an action, in a criminal court, and he was fined $250.

For political effect, he charged a gentleman with cheating at cards; and, on his trial for the libel, acknowledged the falsity of the charge, and threw himself upon the mercy of the court, pleading poverty. In this case, he was mulcted in the sum of $1,000.

To fill up the measure of depravity, and, as it were, to show there was no species of baseness to which he would not descend, he perpetrated the following outrage.

For the purpose of producing a hostile rencounter between two gentlemen, he reiterated for months, in his paper, that one, whom he named, was the greatest villain or the greatest paltroon in the state, if he did not demand satisfaction for the accusations brought against him by the other, which he specified. He thus, in conjunction with Tunis Wortman, who was employed to write a pamphlet to the same import, actually caused the fatal meeting, which terminated in the fall of one of the parties. Then, Iagolike, he dressed his paper in black, the emblem of his heart, and, putting a badge of mourning upon his arm, followed the body of the deceased to the grave. The villainy and wickedness of this course could be equalled only by the conduct of the prompters behind the scenes, who, by tampering with the coroner for six days in succession, finally coerced the inquest which sat upon the case, to return a verdict of murder!

No editor of a paper, or party writer, in this country, ever indulged in personal abuse to a greater extent than James Cheetham. That Mr. Paine should receive a large share of that abuse, will not appear strange to those well acquainted with the two characters. Paine, through the course of a long life, never swerved, for a moment, from a rigid adhesion to the cause he had espoused, the cause of man, the cause of human liberty and justice. Cheetham, a renegado in politics, without principle or stability of character, whose only tact, as a writer, consisted in low vulgar vituperation, in which he has certainly been rivalled by few. But, there are testimonies on record of Mr. Paine's character and worth, which defy the malice of his enemies to invalidate or assail. It is sufficient to notice those of Dr. Rush, Joel Barlow, and Thomas Jefferson. To the two former, Cheetham, when he undertook to write the life of Paine, addressed letters requesting information, taking care, at the same time, to throw out base insinuations against him, with the hope of drawing from them an echo of his vile sentiments. He evidently expected to coerce them into his views, arrogantly presuming

they did not possess sufficient moral courage to vindicate the man who had met with such unqualified censure from the enemies of civil and religious liberty. In this he was mistaken. Mr. Barlow's answer contained truths so flattering to the character and principles of Paine, as to convince Cheetham that no part of it would answer his purpose, and he returned the letter. Dr. Rush's answer he incorporated into his tirade against Paine. Dr. Rush speaks in the highest terms of commendation of his early services to this country in her revolutionary struggle. His humanity and love of justice first attracted the notice of the Doctor, as the following extracts from his letter evince.

"About the year 1775, (says Dr. Rush,) I met him accident ally in Mr. Aitkin's bookstore, and was introduced to him by Mr. Aitkin. We conversed a few minutes, when I left him. Soon afterwards, I read a short essay, with which I was much pleased, in one of Bradford's papers, against the slavery of the Africans in our country, and which I was informed was written by Mr Paine. This excited my desire to be better acquainted with him We met soon afterwards in Mr. Aitkin's bookstore, where I did homage to his principles and his pen, upon the subject of the enslaved Africans.". "I possess one of his letters written to me from France, upon the subject of the abolition of the slave trade. An extract from it was published in the Columbian

Magazine."

I shall now advert to the letter of Joel Barlow, which Cheetham rejected, as unsuiting to his purpose, and which gives as fair a sketch of the character of Paine, as was probably ever drawn of any man. His habits, particularly that of intemperance, which has been mainly relied upon by his enemies as affording a subject of accusation, has been grossly misrepresented. His uniform custom, while he resided on his farm, at New-Rochelle, as his farmer attests, was to drink water at dinner, and one common tumbler of sweetened rum and water immediately after, and the same in the evening. He could, in fact, drink but little ardent liquor, without showing its effects; and when in company, and drinking as others did, it would sometimes appear that he was disguised by it, whilst his company, who had drank as free as himself, would show no signs of inebriety.

"The very head and front of his offending

Hath this extent, no more."

Cheetham writes thus to Barlow:

As you

"I am preparing to write the life of Thomas Paine. were acquainted with him in Paris, your opinion of his manners and habits, the company he kept, &c. would be very acceptable. "He was a great drunkard here, and Mr. M. a merchant of this city, who lived with him when he was arrested by order of Robespierre, tells me he was intoxicated when that event happened." What presumption! He plainly indicated that it was the foi bles of Paine he was hunting for, and not a fair account of his life.

The following are extracts from Mr. Barlow's answer:

xiii

Sir-I have received your letter, calling for information relative to the life of Thomas Paine. It appears to me that this is not the moment to publish the life of that man in this country. His own writings are his best life, and these are not read at pre

sent."

After some remarks upon the effect produced on the public mind by the charges preferred against Paine, of drunkenness and want of faith in revelation, he proceeds:

"The writer of his life who should dwell on these topics to the exclusion of the great and estimable traits of his real character, might, indeed, please the rabble of the age, who do not know him; the book might sell; but it would only tend to render the truth more obscure for the future biographer, than it was before. But if the present writer should give us Thomas Paine complete, in all his character, as one of the most benevolent and disinterested of mankind, endowed with the clearest perception, an uncommon share of original genius, and the greatest breadth of thought; if this piece of biography should analyze his literary labors, and rank him, as he ought to be ranked, among the brightest and most undeviating luminaries of the age in which he has livedyet with a mind assailable by flattery, and receiving through that weak side a tincture of vanity which he was too proud to conceal; with a mind, though strong enough to bear him up, and to rise elastic under the heaviest hand of oppression, yet unable to endure the contempt of his former friends and fellow laborers, the rulers of the country that had received his first and greatest services—a mind incapable of looking down with serene compassion as it ought, on the rude scoffs of their imitators, a new "If you are disposed and generation that knows him not."prepared to write his life thus entire, to fill up the picture to which these hasty strokes of outline give but a rude sketch with great vacuities, your book may be a useful one."

"The biographer of Thomas Paine, should not forget his mathematical acquirements, and his mechanical genius. His invention of the iron bridge, which led him to Europe in the year 1787, has procured him a great reputation in that branch of science in France and England, in both which countries his bridge has been adopted in many instances, and is now much in use.

"You ask whether he took an oath of allegiance to France. Doubtless the qualification to be a member of the convention, required an oath of fidelity to that country, but involved in it no He was made a French citizen abjuration of his fidelity to this. by the same decree with Washington, Hamilton, Priestly, and sir James Mackintosh.

"What Mr. M. has told you relative to the circumstances of his arrestation by order of Robespierre, is erroneous, at least in one point. Paine did not lodge at the house where he was arrested, but had been dining there with some Americans. I never heard

before, that Paine was intoxicated that night. Indeed, the officers brought him directly to my house. He was not intoxicated when they came to me. Their object was to get me to go and assist them to examine Paine's papers. It employed us the rest of that night, and the whole of the next day, at Paine's lodgings; and he was not committed to prison till the next evening."

"It is said he was always a peevish inmate-this is possible. So was Laurence Sterne, so was Torquato Tasso, so was J. J. Rousseau-but Thomas Paine, as a visiting acquaintance, and as a literary friend, the only points of view in which I knew him, was one of the most instructive men I have ever known. He had a surprising memory and brilliant fancy; his mind was a store-house of facts and useful observations; he was full of lively anecdote, and ingenious original pertinent remark, upon almost every subject. He was always charitable to the poor beyond his means, a sure protector and friend to all Americans in distress that he found in foreign countries. And he had frequent occasions to exert his influence in protecting them during the revolution in France. His writings will answer for his pat riotism, and his entire devotion to what he conceived to be the best interest and happiness of mankind.

"As to his religious opinions, as they were those of probably three-fourths of the men of letters of the last age, and of nearly all those of the present, I see no reason why they should form a distinctive character in him.”

I happen to know something of the Mr. M. mentioned above, whose testimony Mr. Barlow proves to be false. It is in this way that Cheetham collected stories injurious to the character of Paine. Mr. M. was an English speculator in France, in the time of the revolution, and was once imprisoned, no doubt justly, as a spy. His enmity to Paine and the principles for which France was contending, I am confident, from my knowledge of the man, would induce him to fabricate any story, calculated to throw obloquy upon either.

The last paragraph in the first edition of the above letter, was omitted by request of the gentleman who furnished it. The editor, however, believing the sentiment to be just, particularly as it was advanced by Mr. Barlow, who had had so great an opportunity to know the fact, inserted the purport of it, in a note, although not exactly correct in the style. It is now corrected by the gentleman who has in his possession the original letter.

Cheetham, in his life of Paine, see page 177, comments, in his usual disingenuous manner, upon the opinion advanced by Barlow, as well as the deistical writings of Paine. Paine was a religious deist, believing in one God, the creator and governor of the universe; and so tenacious was he of this opinion, that, as John Stuart, the pedestrian traveller, told me, he was denominated a superstitious man, in a philosophical club, in London, of which he was a member Cheetham, on the contrary, according