THERE are four lives of Mr. Thomas Paine now extant; but none in print in the United States. Francis Oldys, or a person under that name, wrote a life of Mr. Paine about the year 1792, while Mr. Paine was yet alive, and active in the progress of the French Revolution. This life was written in fact by George Chalmers, one of the clerks of the Board of Plantation, at the instigation of Lord Hawksbury, afterward Lord Liverpool, for which he gave him five hundred pounds. Mr. Chalmers acknowledged the authorship of this book. This we have never seen; it has sunk into oblivion; it partly served the political purpose for which it was written, but the enemies of Mr. Paine and the Rights of Man were too prudent to endorse its acknowledged calumnies, and identify themselves with this transaction.

Immediately after the death of Paine, Cheetham wrote his life in 1809. Cheetham was an Englishman and had been a zealous disciple of Paine, both in politics and religion; but he had retrogaded in politics, and deserted the principles of the democratic party; Paine had attacked him with his accustomed force, and thus converted him into a personal enemy. Mr. Cheetham at this time edited a party paper (the Citizen) in New York, and while he was yet smarting under the lash of Paine, heated by party politics, and fired with revenge, like the ass in the fable, he kicked, not indeed the dying, but the dead lion, by writing the life of his adversary. Cheet

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ham, however, connected this with a scheme of interest; for,' becoming the deadly enemy of democracy, and losing the support of his old friends (for he was turned out of the Tammany society), he was preparing to go to Europe, and enlist in support of the tory government in England, by publishing a paper opposed to Cobbett, who had just come out in opposition to the government; and Cheetham apparently meant this life of Paine as a passport to the British treasury favor: at least, such was the opinion of the intimate friend of Cheetham, Mr. Charles Christian, who gave this relation to Mr. John Fellows and others, whom we have seen, and from whom we have learned this fact. This life of Paine, the only one published in the United States, abounds in calumnies, and after a lapse of some years caused the production of two other lives, one by Clio Rickman, the intimate friend of Mr. Paine for many years, and another by Mr. W. T. Sherwin, both published in London. Mr. Rickman was an excellent, amiable man, of the quaker profession, with whom Mr. Paine lived both in England and France, at different periods, and with whom he kept up a constant correspondence. The life of Paine, however, by Mr. Rickman, is sullied by a little vanity; he is to Paine, what Boswell was to Johnson. We are indebted to Mr. Rickman for many facts on which we can rely; but with the best intentions he was not the man to do Mr. Paine justice.

The best life of Paine before published, is that of Sherwin; and from this life we shall freely extract. But Mr. Sherwin is incorrect on some points, and his whole work is so exclusively adapted to a London reader, that it is deteriorated for this market. Mr. Paine changed public opinion in favor of a republic at the time of the Revolution; his earliest energies were in favor of American liberty; it was here that his mighty powers were first developed, and here his political principles took root. 'His success in the United States brought him out in Europe; and his "Rights of Man," which shook the corrupt government of England, and endeared him to all France and every friend of liberty, was based upon his "Common Sense," which had concentrated public opinion in favor of a declaration of independence. And when the buds of

PREFACE.

liberty were nipped in England and France, to this country Mr. Paine retired, as his proper home, at the invitation of Jefferson, then the president, and avowedly the greatest and best statesman this country has known. And here, too, he died in peace, in a good old age, the firm and consistent friend of liberty. To this country, then, in a special manner belongs his life; here are his most numerous friends and personal acquaintances; it is here that the calumnies propagated by Cheetham may be effectually rebutted, by living witnesses yet in the sound possession of their faculties; and it is here that Paine can be identified with every crisis in the glorious Revolution which gave birth to this nation, which has set the glorious example of republicanism, whose principles are now progressing in the world. The want of a life thus identifying Mr. Paine with the glories of our Revolution, is our apology for our present undertaking.

The life of Paine by Cheetham has had a considerable influence; for though his calumnies are palpable, and his motives in publishing them apparent, he has given to them a degree of credibility by the free use of names, which the reader necessarily concludes are respectable references for the facts he has stated; fortunately, however, a public trial, in which he was convicted of libel, showed the shallow foundation on which his slander rested, and our acquaintance with some of the persons to whom he refers, enables us flatly to contradict these statements, and to denounce him on the very authority of many of his references as the utterer of gross falsehoods, to which he attached without their consent their names. With much ingenuity he relates a slander as a matter of fact, as if there were abundance of evidence, and apparently refers to the only source of this slander, as if this formed but a small part of his proof. Thus he declared Madame Bonneville to be the mistress of T. Paine, as if that fact were notorious; he produces no proof, but inserts a letter from Mr. W. Carver, written in anger, after a quarrel, in which such an insinuation is made, merely from the fact of that lady bringing her family to America, and leaving her husband in France. Madame Bonneville prosecuted Cheetham for this assertion, and Cheetham on that trial produced no other evidence than

Carver and his angry letter. His counsel admitted the falseness of the charge, and pleaded only the insinuation in Carver's letter as justifying Cheetham as an historian to repeat the slander.

The press

This trial excited great interest at the time. generally reported it; and the brief facts with the counsel's speech have been preserved in a pamphlet form, from which pamphlet we shall give the introduction and a few extracts as pertinent to our object:

[THE INTRODUCTION.]

"One James Cheetham, a man who had once been an editor of a republican paper in New York, had abandoned his past professions, and become the advocate of the British party in America. Among other means to serve them, he undertook to write the life of Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense,' 'Rights of Man,' &c., &c. In this biography, he introduced the name of Madame Bonneville, a virtuous and respectable lady, the wife of N. Bonneville of Paris. He charged her with prostitution; said Paine was her paramour, and that one of her sons had the features, countenance, and temper of Thomas Paine. For this atrocious attack on the character of Madame Bonneville, and outrage to her feelings, Mr. Cheetham was indicted for a libel, and on the 19th of June, 1810, his trial was brought on.

The counsel for the libeller took two grounds of defence: 1st. That the facts charged were true.

2d. That the defendant was an HISTORIAN, and, as such, had a right to publish what he had heard and believed, though it reflected on an innocent person.

The first position was, after a contemptible effort to support it, abandoned even by the libeller's counsel. They were ashamed of it themselves. Several ladies of the first distinction, whose daughters had been intrusted to the care of Madame Bonneville, to learn the French language, appeared in court, and attested to the unblemished character of this muchinjured female.

The counsel for the libeller than had recourse to their last ground, and strenuously maintained the principle they had laid down. They perhaps felt confidence in the court, as it had, in an early stage of the trial, intimated an opinion favorable to the new and extravagant pretension, which set up a libeller under the title of an historian. Nor was this confidence misplaced. Mr. Recorder Hoffman directed the jury, that if they should be of opinion, that Mr. Cheetham had

been informed of what he wrote, and believed it, he was justified, and that, though Madame Bonneville was an innocent woman, they were authorized to acquit Mr. Cheetham. He also read the letter of a man, by the name of Carver, as a justification of the libeller, though his counsel had not mentioned it.

This monstrous doctrine, which leads to the prostration of private reputation, if not to the dissolution of civil society, was promptly rejected by the jury, although composed of men of different political sentiments, who returned in a few minutes a verdict of guilty.

The court, however, when the libeller came up the next day to receive his sentence, highly commended the book which contained the libellous publication, declared that it tended to serve the cause of religion, and imposed no other punishment on the libeller, than the payment of two hundred and fifty dollars, with a direction that the costs be taken out of it.

It is fit to remark, lest foreigners who are unacquainted with our political condition, should receive erroneous impressions, that Mr. Recorder Hoffman does not belong to what is called the republican party in America, but has been elevated to office by men in hostility to it, who obtained a temporary ascendency in the councils of the state."

EXTRACTS FROM MR. SAMPSON'S SPEECH ON THE TRIAL OF MR. JAMES CHEETHAM, FOR A LIBEL ON MRS. MARGARET BONNEVILLE, IN HIS LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE.

"In every other grief than that which this historian has inflicted on her the innocent find comfort; for innocence is in all other wrongs, against all other strokes of man's injustice or oppression, a sevenfold shield. Not so where woman's honor is assailed; suspicion there is worse than death itself. It is that for which alone the innocent wife of Cesar was repudiated. The man who dares attack it is of all other criminals the greatest. If he be not a traitor it is for this alone that he is worse. For many a man has suffered as a traitor, whom after-ages have revered and honored. But never was he who set his cloven-hoof upon a woman's honor worthy the name of man.

[Here the defendant rose and claimed the protection of the court, not so much with a desire to prevent the range of the ingenious counsel, as to prevent the utterance of personalities, that it would not be prudent perhaps to repeat out of court. While the defendant was addressing the court, the counsel calmly advanced, and taking a pinch of snuff, modestly observed, that what he was doing was in court, and what was to be done out of court was not to be talked of here.

Then