unprincipled bully can not be reformed, he can be punished." Cheetham
has been so long in the habit of giving false information, that truth
is to him like a foreign language. Mr. Cheetham wrote the life of Mr.
Paine to gratify his malice and to support religion. He was prosecuted
for libel--was convicted and fined. Yet the life of Paine, written by
this liar, is referred to by the Christian world as the highest
authority.

As to the personal habits of Mr. Paine, we have the testimony of
William Carver; with whom he lived; of Mr. Jarvis, the artist, with
whom he lived; of Mr. Purdy, who was a tenant of Paine's; of Mr. Buyer,
with whom he was intimate; of Thomas Nixon and Capt. Daniel Pelton,
both of whom knew him well; of Amasa Woodsworth, who was with him when
he died; of John Fellows, who boarded at the same house; of James
Wilburn, with whom he boarded; of B.F. Haskins, a lawyer, who was well
acquainted with him, and called upon him during h is last illness; of
Walter Morton, President of the Phoenix Insurance Company; of Clio
Rickman, who had known him for many years; of Willet and Elias Hicks,
Quakers, who knew him intimately and well; of Judge Hertell, H.
Margary, Elihu Palmer and many others. All these testified to the fact
that Mr. Paige was a temperate man. In those days nearly everybody
used spirituous liquors. Paine was not an exception, but he did not
drink to excess. Mr. Lovett, who kept the City Hotel, where Paine
stopped, in a note to Caleb Bingham declared that Paine drank less than
any boarder he had.

Against all this evidence Christians produce the story of Grant
Thorburn, the story of the Rev. J.D. Wickham, that an elder in his
church told him that Paine was a drunkard, corroborated by the Rev.
Charles Hawley, and an extract from Lossing's history to the same
effect. The evidence is overwhelmingly against them. Will you have the
fairness to admit it? Their witnesses are merely the repeaters of the
falsehoods of James Cheetham, the convicted libeler.

After all, drinking is not as bad as lying. An honest drunkard is
better than a calumniator of the dead. "A remnant of old mortality
drunk, bloated, and half-asleep," is better than a perfectly sober
defender of human slavery. To become drunk is a virtue compared with
stealing a babe from the breast of its mother. Drunkenness is one of
the beatitudes, compared with editing a religious paper devoted to the
defense of slavery upon the ground