accounted for, that
I was persecuted by both at the same time? When I was voted out of
the French Convention, the reason assigned for it was, that I was a
foreigner. When Robespierre had me seized in the night, and imprisoned
in the Luxembourg, (where I remained eleven months,) he assigned no
reason for it. But when he proposed bringing me to the tribunal, which
was like sending me at once to the scaffold, he then assigned a reason,
and the reason was, _for the interests of America as well as of France,
"Pour les interets de l'Amerique autant que de la France_" The words are
in his own hand-writing, and reported to the Convention by the committee
appointed to examine his papers, and are printed in their report, with
this reflection added to them, "_Why Thomas Paine more than another?
Because he contributed to the liberty of both worlds_."(1)

1 See my "Life of Paine," vol. ii., pp. 79, 81. Also, the
historical introduction to XXI., p. 330, of this volume.
Robespierre never wrote an idle word. This Paine well knew,
as Mirabeau, who said of Robespierre: "That man will go far
he believes every word he says."--_Editor._

There must have been a coalition in sentiment, if not in fact, between
the Terrorists of America and the Terrorists of France, and Robespierre
must have known it, or he could not have had the idea of putting America
into the bill of accusation against me. Yet these men, these Terrorists
of the new world, who were waiting in the devotion of their hearts for
the joyful news of my destruction, are the same banditti who are now
bellowing in all the hacknied language of hacknied hypocrisy, about
humanity, and piety, and often about something they call infidelity, and
they finish with the chorus of _Crucify him, crucify him_. I am become
so famous among them, they cannot eat or drink without me. I serve them
as a standing dish, and they cannot make up a bill of fare if I am not
in it.

But there is one dish, and that the choicest of all, that they have not
presented on the table, and it is time they should. They have not yet
_accused Providence of Infidelity_. Yet according to their outrageous
piety, she(1) must be as bad as Thomas Paine; she has protected him in
all his dangers, patronized him in all his undertakings, encouraged him
in all his ways, and rewarded him at last by bringing him in safety and
in health to the Promised Land. This is more than she did by the Jews,
the chosen