ess to the friends of learning.

3. Mr. Paine would be brought in hearty sympathy with the
representative of the new world, who was at court, to represent
the rights of man.

4. At this very time, Feb. 3, 1766, when we know Mr. Paine was
attending to his studies and cultivating the acquaintance of the
learned, Dr. Franklin was brought more conspicuously before the
English nation than ever before, or thereafter, by undergoing an
examination in the House of Commons upon the policy of repealing
the Stamp Act; and never were the great talents of this great man
exhibited so fully and favorably as then.

5. Mr. Paine says: "The favor of Dr. Franklin's _friendship_ I
possessed in England [and _friendship_ with Mr. Paine means _time
to prove it_], and my introduction to this part of the world was
through his _patronage_." Patronage means to aid or promote a
design. This _design_, and this _friendship_ formed upon which it
was founded, would take some few years with both of these men, for
they were both secretive, reserved, and noncommittal, slow in
forming attachments, and extremely cautious in the selection of
_friends_. "The first foundation of friendship," says Junius, "is
not the power of conferring benefits, but the _equality_ with
which they are received and may be returned."

Mr. Paine now makes application to be restored to the office from which
he was dismissed. On his petition was written: "JULY 4TH, 1766; to be
restored on a proper vacancy." The FOURTH OF JULY is ominous. Great
events are in store for this young man within the next ten years. He
quits the society of the learned and the halls of learning, and goes
down at the most hopeful and ambitious period of life into this
"inferior office of the revenue" to serve for the "petty pittance of
less than fifty pounds a year." Does he go there to satisfy his taste
for learning, or to get rich? No; but to reach the object of his
ambition. He goes there to spy out the meanness, the corruption, the
villainy, the abandoned profligacy of the British Government.

The British Government has now a masked enemy who is coming in and going
out at the nation's doors, not a spy upon her liberties, but her
villainies, a foe to the one and a friend to the other.

But he has not forsaken his studies, he is just entering upon them.
Taking up English history he makes it a study, which becomes the history
of the civilized world, for it rea