e me cause to think otherwise. I am sure you
would have found yourself more at your ease, had you acted by me as
you ought; for whether your desertion of me was intended to gratify the
English Government, or to let me fall into destruction in France that
you might exclaim the louder against the French Revolution, or whether
you hoped by my extinction to meet with less opposition in mounting up
the American government--either of these will involve you in reproach
you will not easily shake off.

"THOMAS Paine."

1 Washington Papers in State Department. Endorsed by Bache:
"Jan. 18, 1796. Enclosed to Benj. Franklin Bache, and by him
forwarded immediately upon receipt."--_Editor._.

Here follows the letter above alluded to, which I had stopped in
complaisance to Mr. Monroe.

"Paris, February aad, 1795.

"Sir,

"As it is always painful to reproach those one would wish to respect, it
is not without some difficulty that I have taken the resolution to
write to you. The dangers to which I have been exposed cannot have been
unknown to you, and the guarded silence you have observed upon that
circumstance is what I ought not to have expected from you, either as a
friend or as President of the United States.

"You knew enough of my character to be assured that I could not have
deserved imprisonment in France; and, without knowing any thing more
than this, you had sufficient ground to have taken some interest for my
safety. Every motive arising from recollection of times past, ought to
have suggested to you the propriety of such a measure. But I cannot find
that you have so much as directed any enquiry to be made whether I
was in prison or at liberty, dead or alive; what the cause of that
imprisonment was, or whether there was any service or assistance you
could render. Is this what I ought to have expected from America, after
the part I had acted towards her, or will it redound to her honour or
to yours, that I tell the story? I do not hesitate to say, that you have
not served America with more disinterestedness, or greater zeal, or more
fidelity, than myself, and I know not if with better effect. After the
revolution of America was established I ventured into new scenes
of difficulties to extend the principles which that revolution had
produced, and you rested at home to partake of the advantages. In the
progress of events, you beheld yourself a President in America, and me a
prisoner in France. You folded