I suppose Locke has spoken of hereditary and Elective Monarchy, but the representative as laid down in Common Sense and Rights of Man, is an entire different thing to elective monarchy. So far from taking any ideas from Locke or from any body else, it was the absurd expression of a mere John Bull in England, about the year 1773, that first caused me to turn my mind to systems of government. In speaking of the then king of Prussia, called the Great Frederick, he said, "He is the right sort of man for a king, for he has a deal of the devil in him." This set me to think if a system of government could not exist that did not require the devil, and I succeeded without any help from any body. It is a great deal may be learned from absurdity, and I expect to learn somcthing from James Cheetham. When I do, I will let him know it in the Public Advertiser.

In the conclusion of the piece of mine, which Mr. Cheetham has vomited his spleen upon, I threw out some reproach against those who, instead of practising themselves in arms and artillery, that they might be prepared to defend NewYork, should it be attacked, were continually employing themselves on imaginary fortifications, and skulking behind projects of obstruction. As Mr. Cheetham supposed himself included in this description, (and he thought right,) he made, as he imagined, an effectual retort, but in doing this, as in every thing else he does, he betrayed his want of knowledge, both as to the spirit and circumstances of the times he speaks of.

"I would not," says Mr. Cheetham, "charge with cowardice that gentleman, (meaning me,) who, in the times that tried men's souls,' stuck very correctly to his pen in a safe retreat, and never handled a musket offensively.”

By this paragraph, Mr. Cheetham must have supposed, that when Congress retreated from Philadelphia to Baltimore, in the "times that tried men's souls," that I retreated with them as Secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs.

In the first place, the Committee for Foreign Affairs did not exist at that time.

In the next place, I served in the army the whole of the "time that tried men's souls," from the beginning to the end.

Soon after the declaration of independence, July 4, 1776, congress recommended that a body of ten thousand men, to be called the flying camp, because it was to act wherever necessary, should be formed from the militia and volunteers of Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. I went with one division from Pennsylvania, under General Roberdeau. We were stationed at Perth Amboy, and afterwards at Bergen; and when the time of the flying camp expired, and they went home, I went to Fort Lee, and served as aid-de-camp to Greene, who commanded at Fort Lee, and was with him through the whole of the black times of that trying campaign.

I began the first number of the Crisis, beginning with the well-known expression, ("These are the times that try men's souls,") at Newark, upon the retreat from Fort Lee, and continued writing it at every place we stopt at, and had it printed at Philadelphia the 19th of December, six days before the taking the Hessians at Trenton, which, with the affair at Princeton, the week after, put an end to the black times.

It therefore is not true, that I stuck to my pen in a safe retreat with congress from Philadelphia to Baltimore in the "times that tried men's souls." But, if I had done so, I should not have published the cowardice James Cheetham has done. In speaking of the affair of the Driver sloop of war, at Charleston, South Carolina, he said in his paper, if the Driver and her comrades should take into their heads to come here, (New-York,) we must submit. What abominable cowardice, for a man to have such a thought in his mind, that a city containing twenty thousand able-bodied men, numbers of them as stout in person as himself, should submit to a sloop of war containing about a hundred and fifty men.

1

After this, Mr. Cheetham will take care how he attacks old revolutionary characters, whose undiscouraged intrepidity, in the "times that tried men's souls," made a home for him to come to.

New-York, Aug. 21, 1807.

THOMAS PAINE.

EXTRACT OF A LETTER

TO DR. MITCHELL, SENATOR FOR THE STATE OF

NEW-YORK,

WRITTEN IMMEDIATELY SUBSEQUENT TO THE DISCHARGE

OF AARON BURR.

WHEREAS time, experience, and circumstances, have shown that the article in the Federal Constitution, which establishes the judiciary, is vague and defective, and requires amendment.

According to that article, the judges hold their offices during, that is, on the condition of good behaviour. Yet the Constitution has not authorized any power to take cognizance of that good behaviour, or the breach of it. Every law, and a constitution is the supreme law, point out the mode of redress, at the same time that it specifies the offence. But the Federal Constitution is defective in this important particular. This being the case, therefore resolved,

That the following amendment to the article in the Federal Constitution, which establishes the judiciary, be proposed to the States severally, for their concurrence therein; that is to say,

That after the words as they now stand in the article, “the judges of the supreme and inferior courts shall hold their offices during good behaviour," to add, but for reasonable cause, which shall not be sufficient ground for impeachment, the President may remove any of them, on the address of a majority of both houses of Congress.

It may be proper to observe, that the people of the United States have no share in the appointment of judges, nor any control over them afterwards. And if their representatives in Congress have no cognizance of judges as to good behaviour, the judiciary may become domineering or dangerous. They

lie open to the intrigues of a foreign enemy, or any corrupt party in the States associated with that enemy, or projecting a separation of the union. It is fair to suppose, that those who formed the Constitution, never thought of this, when they made the judges independent of our own executive.

Your's,

THOMAS PAINE.

August, 1807.

REPRIMAND TO JAMES CHEETHAM.

IF James Cheetham, editor of the New-York American Citizen, thinks to draw me into a controversy with him, he is greatly mistaken. In the first place, I hold him too cheap; and his well known character for abuse and black-guarding, renders any altercation with him dishonourable; and besides this, it would take up too much of my time to put his blunders to rights. He cannot write without blundering, neither can he write truth, of which I will give another instance. .

He quotes the following paragraph from the first part of Rights of Man, and then grounds a false assertion upon it.

"Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations that preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave, is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man, neither has one generation a property in the generation that is to follow."

Mr. Cheetham having made this short quotation, says, “Mr. Paine here and there glances at the absurdity of hereditary government, but the passage just quoted is the only attempt at argument against it contained in the Rights of Man."

Is James Cheetham an idiot, or has the envy and malignity of his mind possessed him with a spirit of wilful lying?

The short passage he has quoted, (which is taken from the middle of a paragraph,) is on the third, and in some editions on the fourth page of the first part of Rights of Man. It contains a general principle, on which the arguments and statements against hereditary succession are founded in the progress of that work.

If Mr. Cheetham had looked further into the work, Rights of Man, he would have come to a paragraph ending with the