d without
being known, and only remain in safety till I could get out a
publication, I could open the eyes of the country with respect to the
madness and stupidity of its government. I saw that the parties in
parliament had pitted themselves as far as they could go, and could make
no new impression on each other. General Greene entered fully into my
views, but the affair of Arnold and Andre happening just after, he
changed his mind, and, under strong apprehensions for my safety, wrote
to me very pressingly to give up the design, which, with some
reluctance, I did." He afterward renews the same design. In accompanying
Colonel Laurens to France, certain dispatches from the English
government fell into his hands through the capture of an English
frigate. These dispatches Paine read at Paris, and brought them to
America on his return. He says: "By these dispatches I saw further into
the stupidity of the English cabinet than I otherwise could have done,
and I renewed my former design. But Colonel Laurens was so unwilling to
return alone, more especially as, among other matters, he had a charge
of upward of two hundred thousand pounds sterling money, that I gave in
to his wishes, and finally gave up my plan. But I am now certain that,
if I could have executed it, it would not have been altogether
unsuccessful."--Note, Rights of Man, part ii. Nor is this all. "When
Napoleon meditated a descent upon England by means of gunboats, he
secured the services of Thomas Paine to establish, after the conquest, a
more popular government."--New Am. Cyc., Art. Thomas Paine. From all
that I can gather, Mr. Paine was himself the author of this "plan of
Napoleon's."

COMMON SENSE.

Junius is heard no more in England. The fame of this unknown author has
gone round the world. A score of volumes have been written to prove his
identity with a score of names. But all that has been said is wild with
conjecture, and arguments have only been built upon "_rumor_," and
"_facts_" drawn from the imagination. A scientific criticism has never
been attempted. Truth has been insulted by the imagination in its wild
ramblings, and writers have contented themselves with theory and fancy,
"to pile up reluctant quarto upon solid folio, as if their labors,
because they are gigantic, could contend with truth and Heaven." But
while the king and his cabinet are setting traps, and hunting up and
down the whole realm for this "mighty boar of the forest," in f