"I am forcibly struck by truths that either "were not seen before, or were by me, who "did not wish to acknowledge them, carefully

repressed; they sometimes are bluntly deli"vered, but it is often impossible to refuse "immediate assent to those which appear the

boldest, impossible to deny that many others "have been acceded to, when they were spoken "by men to whose authority we have paid

a kind of prescriptive obedience, tho they

66 now have called forth such clamour and abuse

against the author of the Rights of Man.' "My other letters from England are filled with accounts of the rage and indignation which "this publication has excited; I pique myself,

however, on having, in my former letter, cited

against Burke, a sentence of Locke which "contradicts, as forcibly as Paine has contra"dicted, one of his most absurd positions. I "know that, where sound argument fails, abu"sive declamation is always substituted, and "that it often silences where it cannot con"vince. I know too that where the politics

"sonál detraction; therefore wonder not that, on your side of the water, those who are

averse to the politics of Paine will declaim. "instead of arguing, and those who feel the "force of his abilities will vilify his private "life, as if that was any thing to the purpose. "I do however wonder that these angry anta

gonists do not recollect that the clamour "they raise serves only to prove their fears, "and that if the writings of this man are, as

66

they would represent, destitute of truth and "sound argument, they must be quickly consigned to contempt and oblivion, and could "neither be themselves the subject of alarm, or render their author an object of investigation and abhorrence; but the truth is, "whatever may be his private life (with which "I cannot understand that the public have

any concern) he comes, as a political writer, "under the description given of a controvertist.

by the acute author to whom Monsieur "D'Hauteville has so terrible an aversion:"Was there ever so abominable a fellow? "He exposes truth so odiously, he sets before our eyes the arguments on both sides with

"clear and plain, that he enables people who "have only common sense, to doubt, and " even to judge.' Voltaire."

6

It would be unjust to omit the testimony of so great a man as Mr. Monroe* in Mr. Paine's favour, especially as he knew our author thro many years, and was incapable of any thing less than a due appreciation of his cha

racter.

"It is necessary for me to tell you how "much all your countrymen, I speak, of the

great mass of the people, are interested in

your welfare; they have not forgotten the "history of their own revolution, and the dif"ficult scenes through which they passed; nor "do they review its several stages without

reviving in their bosoms a due sensibility "of the merits of those who served them in "that great and arduous conflict. The crime "of ingratitude has not yet stained, nor I "trust ever will stain, our national character.

* Elected President of America in 1817.

"You are considered by them as not only "having rendered important services in our

own revolution, but as being on a more "extensive scale the friend of human rights, "and a distinguished and able advocate in “ favour of public liberty. To the welfare of "Thomas Paine the Americans are not, nor can they be, indifferent."

But Paine is now dead, the test of time must prove him, and the reader will I hope be gratified that I add the elegant and very appropropriate language of my brother-in-law, Mr. Capel Lofft.

"I have learnt that on the writings of men "the grave is a severe and impartial critic; ،، what deserves disesteem will have no long

celebrity, but what has truth and social good "for its principle, and has been the emanation "of a powerful mind, under the influence of "these motives has the germ of immortality; "whatever of perishable frailty may adhere to it will soon drop into oblivion. The fleeting forms of error change in every ge"neration; a wrong is ever a confined and

a capricious taste. Nothing will generally "and permanently please that does not derive "itself from an higher origin. It is needless "therefore to inveigh against the dead, those

especially who have been poor, and persecuted, and traduced through life. Such, if they merit shame and neglect with posterity, "must of course meet it. These are no impo

66

sing circumstances to create a false homage. "But if they have deserved the esteem, the gratitude, the affectionate veneration of succeeding ages, no satire, no invidious exag"gerated selection of their faults will check "their career. The licensed cry that marks "the commencement of their triumph will be hourly fainter, and its last hollow murmurs "will have expired without ever reaching that

temple in which their fame, its solemn pro

gress completed, must reside, while aught of "human glory beams on the earth from the "awful shrine. If men, in other respects of "wisdom and virtue, have so far forgotten "themselves as to aid the cry, those tutelary

powers leave at such a moment the side of "those whom at other times they have most "favoured. They add force to the sacred