electric and marvellous influence of Tom Paine's appeal against
kings, against monarchy, against England, and in favour of American
independence.

The following remarks of the London _Athenaeum_ are quoted by the New
York _Observer_ of the 10th of April, 1879:

"A more despicable man than Tom Paine cannot be found among the ready
writers of the eighteenth century. He sold himself to the highest
bidder, and he could be bought at a very low price. He wrote well;
sometimes as pointedly as Junius or Cobbett (who had his bones brought
to England). Neither excelled him in coining telling and mischievous
phrases; neither surpassed him in popularity-hunting. He had the art,
which was almost equal to genius, of giving happy titles to his
productions. When he denounced the British Government in the name of
'Common Sense,' he found willing readers in the rebellious American
colonists, and a rich reward from their grateful representatives. When
he wrote on behalf of the 'Rights of Man,' and in furtherance of the
'Age of Reason,' he convinced thousands by his title-pages who were
incapable of perceiving the inconclusiveness of his arguments. His
speculations have long since gone the way of all shams; and his
charlatanism as a writer was not redeemed by his character as a man.
Nothing could be worse than his private life; he was addicted to the
most degrading vices. He was no hypocrite, however, and he cannot be
charged with showing that respect for appearances which constitute the
homage paid by vice to virtue. Such a man was well qualified for earning
notoriety by insulting Washington. Only a thorough-paced rascal could
have had the assurance to charge Washington with being unprincipled and
unpatriotic."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 68: Frothingham's Rise of the Republic of the United States,
Chap, xi., p. 472.

The pamphlet was called "Common Sense," and was written by Thomas Paine,
an Englishman, who held and expressed extreme opinions upon the "Rights
of Man." He had been a staymaker in England, and was ruined; when, in
the winter of 1774, by Franklin's advice, he came to America and rapidly
grasped and comprehended the position of affairs. (Elliott's History of
New England, Vol. II., Chap, xxviii., p. 383.)

Referring to this demagogue of the American and French Revolution, his
American biographer, Cheetham, says: "All sects have had their
disgraceful members and offspring. Paine's father, a peaceful and
industrious Quaker, c