that he had no desire to give
offense but that unfortunately he could not adapt history to suit the
views of the descendants of early statesmen.

To use a terse expression of Hamlet, I have often heard that Paine was
one of the unfortunates who were not treated by our government
"according to their deserts." It is now conceded by students of our
national history that no man rendered more effective service to the
American Revolution than "Tom" Paine. His devotion to the cause and his
conspicuous sacrifices in its behalf were repeatedly acknowledged by
Washington, Franklin and all the lesser lights of the day. After
independence had been secured, still imbued with the spirit of liberty,
his pen and his presence were not wanting when required in behalf of
the liberties of the French people. He was imprisoned with hundreds of
others in the Luxembourg, where he languished for nearly eleven months
in daily expectation of being hurried to the guillotine. Following the
fall of Robespierre he was liberated through the kindly offices of James
Monroe, who had succeeded Gouverneur Morris as our Minister to France,
and was at once crowned with honors by the government in whose behalf he
had suffered. During the term of his imprisonment, it was his belief
that a single word from Washington would effect his release, and he had
a right to expect it, but he waited in vain. He was wholly unconscious,
meanwhile, that the mind of Washington had been poisoned against him by
one high in public counsels, and while still in ignorance of this fact
addressed him the well-known denunciatory letter which evoked such
wide-spread criticism. Washington, however, was not to blame, for he had
been deceived in the house of his friends; but of this Paine was
entirely ignorant. Delaware Davis, a son of Colonel Samuel B. Davis of
Delaware who rendered such distinguished service during the War of 1812,
told me a few years ago that his father was present at a dinner where
Paine was asked what he thought of Washington. Doubtless in a spirit of
acrimony he uttered the following lines:

Take from the rock the rough and rudest stone,
It needs no sculptor, it is Washington;
But if you chisel, let the strokes be rude,
And on his bosom write ingratitude.

There is probably no period of our national history when party rivalries
were so intense and the expression of political animosities were more
bitter than they were a century ago between the dis