gainst the intellectual honesty of Thomas Paine.

A letter was written to the editor of The New York World by the Rev.
A.W. Cornell, in which he says:

"Sir: I see by your paper that Bob Ingersoll discredits Mary Hinsdale's
story of the scenes which occurred at the death bed of Thomas Paine.
No one who knew that good old lady would for one moment doubt her
veracity, or question her testimony. Both she and her husband were
Quaker preachers, and well known and respected inhabitants of New York
City.

"Ingersoll is right in his conjecture that Mary Roscoe and Mary
Hinsdale were the same person. Her maiden name was Roscoe and she
married Henry Hinsdale. My mother was a Roscoe, a niece of Mary
Roscoe, and lived with her for some time.--Rev. A.W. Cornell,
Harpersville, N.Y."

The editor of the New York Observer took up the challenge that I had
thrown down. I offered $1000 in gold to any minister who would prove,
or to any person who would prove that Thomas Paine recanted in his last
hours. The New York Observer accepted the wager, and then told a
falsehood about it. But I kept after the gentlemen until I forced
them, in their paper, published on the 1st of November, 1877; to print
these words:

"We have never stated in any form, nor have we ever supposed, that
Paine actually renounced his infidelity. The accounts agree in stating
that he died a blaspheming infidel."

This, I hope, for all coming time will refute the slanders of the
churches yet to be.

The next charge they make is that Thomas Paine died in destitution and
want. That, of course, would show that he was wrong. They boast that
the founder of their religion had not whereon to lay his head, but when
they found a man who stood for the rights of man, when they say that he
did, that is an evidence that this doctrine was a lie. Won't do! Did
Thomas Paine die in destitution and want? The charge has been made
over and over again that Thomas Paine died in want and destitution;
that he was an abandoned pauper--an outcast, without friends and
without money. This charge is just as false as the rest. Upon his
return to this country, in 1802, he was worth $30,000, according to his
own statement, made at that time in the following letter, and addressed
to Clio Rickman:

"My dear friend, Mr. Monroe, who is appointed minister extraordinary to
France, takes charge of this, to be delivered to Mr. Este, banker, in
Paris, to be forwarded to you.