eat, and he uses it for the purpose of benefiting his fellow-man.

Thomas Paine was not rich, he was poor, and his father before him was
poor, and he was raised a sailmaker, a very lowly profession, and yet
that man became one of the mainstays of liberty in this world. At one
time he was an excise man, like Burns. Burns was once--speak it
softly--a gauger--and yet he wrote poems that will wet the cheek of
humanity with tears as long as the world travels in its orb around the
sun.

Poverty was his brother, necessity his master. He had more brains than
books; more courage than politeness; more strength than polish. He had
no veneration for old mistakes, no admiration for ancient lies. He
loved the truth for truth's sake and for man's sake. He saw oppression
on every hand, injustice everywhere, hypocrisy at the altar, venality
on the bench, tyranny on the throne, and with a splendid courage he
espoused the cause of the weak against the strong, of the enslaved many
against the titled few.

In England he was nothing. He belonged to the lower classes--that is,
the useful people. England depended for her prosperity upon her
mechanics and her thinkers, her sailors and her workers, and they are
the only men in Europe who are not gentlemen. The only obstacles in
the way of progress in Europe were the nobility and the priests, and
they are the only gentlemen.

This, and his native genius, constituted his entire capital, and he
needed no more. He found the colonies clamoring for justice; whining
about their grievances; upon their knees at the foot of the throne,
imploring that mixture of idiocy and insanity, George III., by the
grace of God, for a restoration of their ancient privileges. They were
not endeavoring to become free men, but were trying to soften the heart
of their master. They were perfectly willing to make brick if Pharaoh
would furnish the straw. The colonists wished for, hoped for, and
prayed for reconciliation. They did not dream of independence.

Paine gave to the world his "Common Sense." It was the first argument
for separation; the first assault upon the British form of government;
the first blow for a republic, and it aroused our fathers like a
trumpet's blast. He was the first to perceive the destiny of the new
world. No other pamphlet ever accomplished such wonderful results. It
was filled with arguments, reasons, persuasions, and unanswerable
logic. It opened a new world. It filled t