characterize his sentiments and principles; they are these:

"As this letter is intended to announce my arrival to my friends, and my enemies. "if I have any, for I ought to have none in "America, and as introductory to others "that will occasionally follow, I shall close "it by detailing the line of conduct I shall pursue.

"I have no occasion to ask, nor do I "intend to accept, any place or office in the government.

"There is none it could give me that "would in any way be equal to the profits "I could make as an author (for I have an "established fame in the literary world) could "I reconcile it to my principles to make

money by my politics or religion; I must "be in every thing as I have ever been, a "disinterested volunteer: my proper sphere "of action is on the common floor of citizen

ship, and to honest men I give my hand "and my heart freely.

N

"I have some manuscript works to publish, " of which I shall give proper notice, and some "mechanical affairs to bring forward, that will employ all my leisure time.

"I shall continue these letters as I see "occasion, and as to the low party prints that "choose to abuse me, they are welcome; I "shall not descend to answer them. I have "been too much used to such common stuff to "take any notice of it.

From this period to the time of his death, which was the 9th of June 1809, Mr. Paine lived principally at New York, and on his estate at New Rochelle; publishing occasionally some excellent things in the Aurora Newspaper, also 'An Essay on the Invasion of England,' ' On the Yellow Fever,' 'On Gun-Boats,' &c. &c. and in 1807,'An Examination of the Passages in the New Testament, quoted from the Old, and called Prophecies concerning Jesus Christ,' &c.

This is a most acute, profound, clear, argumentative, and entertaining work, and may be considered and is now entitled The Third Part of the Age of Reason.'

In the course of Mr. Paine's life, he was often reminded of a reply he once made to this observation of Dr. Franklin's," Where liberty is, there is my country:" Mr. Paine's retort was, "Where liberty is not, there is my country." And unfortunately he had occasion for many years in Europe to realize the truth of his axiom.

Soon after Mr. Paine's arrival in America he invited over Mr. and Mrs. Bonneville and their children. At Bonneville's house at Paris he had for years found a home, a friendly shelter, when the difficulty of getting supplies of money from America, and other and many ills assailed him. Bonneville and his family were poor, and sunk in the world; Mr. Paine therefore, tho he was not their inmate without remuneration, offered them in return an asylum with him in America. Mrs. Bonneville and her three boys, to whom he was a friend during his life and at his death, soon joined him there. If any part can be

marked out as infamous and wicked, in a book full of what is so, it is Cheetham's suggestion upon this just and generous conduct of Mr. Paine's to the Bonneville family, which he attributes to the most base and cowardly motives.

Among other things in Cheetham's Life of Mr. Paine' is the assertion that he wrote The Commentary on the Eastern Wise Men travelling to Bethlehem guided by a Star,' &c. and

The Story of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram,' at Mr. Carver's house at New York. This stands among a large catalogue of other falsehoods, for these and other very pointed satirical poems were given to me some years before this by Mr. Paine in France. The particulars of Mr. Paine's being shot at while sitting by his fire-side at Bordentown is given in his own letters in the appendix, page 224. The bullet from the fire-arm shattered the glass over the chimney-piece very near to him. I find a letter in reply to one of mine, in which he writes "the account you heard of a man's firing into

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my house is true-the grand jury found the "bill against him, and he lies over for trial."

The latter part of 'Cheetham's Life of Mr. Paine' is taken up in giving letters between him and Carver, at whose house he lodged some time at New York, about domestic and pecuniary differences, trifling and local trash, and in detailing the gossip and nonsensical malevolence of the idle, fanatical, and prejudiced.

As the author of these memoirs well knows and corresponds with Mr. Carver, it is very plain to him that Cheetham has supplied much of the style and matter of Carver's letters, for Mr. Carver was a most strenuous advocate and supporter of Mr. Paine's political and religious principles.

That he and Mr. Paine had some private differences while Mr. Paine was his lodger is true; and it should seem that Cheetham, bent upon giving an erroneous bias to every thing concerning Mr. Paine, stirred up and magnified these differences, and made the letters which Carver really wrote, the vehicle of extraneous, bitter, and false matter, which formed no part of the original disagreement between them; in short, Cheetham's work is filled with abuse of a man whose age, for Paine