DEDICATION. Celestial TRUTH! the guider of his pen O THOU! whose light enlarges every day, May on the world thy full effulgence beam; So PUBLIC RECTITUDE shall make its way, So PRIVATE VIRTUE be no idle dream. ORDER and BEAUTY follow in thy train, And TASTE and HAPPINESS await on THEE; Lift up thy voice aloud and all the VAIN, And all the WRONG and all the FALSE shall flee. Celestial TRUTH! thy blessings I implore, Thy bright reward I seek, and seek no more. PREFACE. THE two following letters are so explanatory of the reasons why the publication of the life of Mr. PAINE has been so long delayed, and are so well calculated to excite the candor of the reader towards the work, that no apology is offered for making them a part of the preface. "THE public has been, within the "last year or two, led to expect a Life of the from the pen of "celebrated THOMAS PAINE, from the "Mr. CLIO RICKMAN, well known, on various 66 accounts, to be more thoroughly qualified "for that task than any other person in this "This information, however, I repeat as I "received it, uncertain whether it came abroad "in any authenticated shape; and can only "add, that no doubt need be entertained of "sufficient attention from the public in times "like the present, to a well-written life of that "extraordinary character, whose principles and 66 precepts are at this moment in full operation over the largest and richest portion of the "habitable globe, and which in regular process "of time may, from the efficacious influence "of the glorious principles of freedom, become "the grand theatre of civilization. "I have often desired to make a commu"nication of this kind to your Magazine, "but am particularly impelled thereto at this moment, from observing in some periodical publications devoted to political and religious bigotry, a sample of their usual sophistical accounts of the last moments of men who "have been in life eminent for the independ ence and freedom of their opinions; but the "whole that the bigot to whom I allude has "been able to effect in the case of Mr. Paine, "amounts to an acknowledgment that the phi 66 66 losopher died stedfast to those opinions of religion in which he had lived; and the disappointment is plain enough to be seen, that "similar forgeries could not, with any prospect "of success, be circulated concerning Paine's tergiversation and death - bed conversion, "which were so greedily swallowed for a length of time by the gulls of fanaticism respecting Voltaire, D'Alembert, and others, " until the Monthly Review, in the real spirit "of philosophy, dispelled the imposition. "The late Life of Thomas Paine by Cheet"ham, of New York, gave rise to the above Magazine article. Cheetham humph! Now "should it not rather be spelled CHEAT 'EM, as applicable to every reader of that farrago "of imposition and malignity, miscalled the "Life of Paine. |