DR. BLACKBURN'S REPLY.

The Paine Factor in American Liberty Not as Potent as Ingersoll Imagines-Important and Interesting Facts.

Correct dates are in evidence concerning the priority of Thomas Paine in the cause of American liberty. Years before he came from his native England to this country, in 1774, voices of freedom were in the air. In 1748 a record was made of" the tendencies of American legislatures to independence," and of their presumption in "declaring their own rights and privileges." From 1758 onward, the independence of the colonies was predicted near at hand. In 1765, when James Otis was hailing the dawn of a "new empire," there were men in nearly all the cities, from Boston to Charleston, S. C., giving utterance to such phrases as struck hardest in the Declaration of July, 1776.

Samuel Adams had been for years praying that "Boston might become a Christian Sparta," before he insisted, in 1773, that the colonies should have a Congress to frame a bill of rights, or to "form an independent State, an American common-wealth." In a private letter of Hutchinson to Lord Dartmouth, October 9, 1773, Samuel Adams was described as "the first person that openly and in any public assembly declared for a total independence. Within these seven years his influence has been gradually increasing, until he has obtained such an ascendency as to direct the town of Boston and the House of Representatives, and consequently the Council, just as he pleases."

Will

any one ascribe to Thomas Paine the origin of the

Mecklenburg Declaration, put forth in May, 1775, by North Carolinians who renounced their allegiance to the King of England? The authors of it seem to have been educated at Princeton College, where Dr. Witherspoon was still training young men for the speedy crisis. We might point to the movements of other Christian men, and of patriotic and religious bodies, in behalf of liberty.

In January, 1776, Paine sent forth the little book on which his best reputation rests, and that eminent Christian, Dr. Benjamin Rush, appears to have suggested it, and given it the title of " Common Sense." If the ideas of the book had not been already popular and widely spread, it would have needed almost a miracle to give it a powerful influence; but we are told by Paine's loudest eulogist that "miracles became scarce " in those days. Its effect may have been partly due, however, to the fact thai Paine cited Gideon and Samuel as authorities against monarchy.

It would be easy to show what George Washington thought in those days, but what did Paine and his admirers come to think of "the Father of his country?” In 1795 the Aurora put forth these words:

If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation was debauched by Washington. If ever a nation was deceived by a man, the American nation has been deceived by Washington. Let the history of the federal government instruct mankind, that the mask of patriotism may be worn to conceal the foulest designs against the liberties of the people.

Mr. Hildreth says that "this, indeed, was but a somewhat exaggerated specimen of the abusive articles to be found almost daily in the columns of the Aurora, from the office of which had just issued a most virulent pamphlet, under the form of a letter to Washington from the notorious Thomas Paine, whose natural insolence and dogmatism had now become aggravated by habitual drunkenness.”

The following seems to be quoted from the said pamphlet concerning Washington :

Treacherous in private, and hypocritical in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether he was an apostate or an imposter, whether he had abandoned good principles, or ever had any.

The world has not been at all puzzled on that question, nor on the question of Paine's moral character, and his later influence. Hildreth, writing of the year 1802, says that "Paine, instead of being esteemed as formerly, as a lover of liberty, whose vigorous pen had contributed to hasten the Declaration of Independence, was now detested by large numbers as the libeler of Washington." Hence the damage of Paine's influence to the party of Thomas Jefferson.

"The Lord, by His divine Spirit, has been pleased to give me an understanding of what I read therein."-Emperor Alexander I.

"WE are astonished to find in a lyrical poem of such a limited compass the whole universe-the heavens and the earth-sketched with a few bold touches."--Baron Humboldt on 104th Psalm.

"FOR more than a thousand years the Bible, collectively taken, has gone hand in hand with civilization, science, law; in short, with moral and intellectual cultivation; always supporting, and often leading, the way. Good and holy men, and the best and wisest of mankind, the kingly spirits of history, have borne witness to its influences and have declared it to be beyond compare the most perfect instrument of humanity."-Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

"THE Bible of the Christian is, without exception, the most remarkable work now in existence. In the libraries

of the learned are frequently seen books of an extraordinary antiquity, and curious and interesting from the nature of their contents; but none approach the Bible, taken in its complete sense, in point of age, while certainly no production whatever has any pretensions to rival it in dignity of composition or the important nature of the subject treated of in its pages."-Kitto.

"THE Bible is the book of life, written for the instruction and edification of all ages and nations. No man who has felt its divine beauty and power would exchange this one volume for all the literature of the world."-Dr. Lange.

"So great is my veneration for the Bible, that the earlier my children begin to read it the more confident will be my hopes that they will prove useful citizens to their country, and respectable members of society."-John Quincy Adams.

"I HAVE now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more I wish I could give them, and that is, the Christian religion. If they had that, and I had not given them one shilling, they would have been rich; and if they had not that, and I had given them all the world they would be poor."-Patrick Henry, in his Last Will.

DR. HATFIELD'S REPLY.

Wm. Carver's Letter to Thomas Paine, and Dr. Hatfield's
Comments.

Colonel Ingersoll says that ministers and editors of religious papers have not ceased their falsehoods about Thomas Paine, and if they do not stop he shall convict them at the bar of public conscience of being liars.

Not long since one of Paine's admirers wrote in a daily paper that "the stories of his drunkenness and licentiousness are the wicked invention of the clergy, whose path he has dared to cross, and who only refrain from practising the abominable cruelties of past ages upon those who differ from them, not because of want of will, but because their strength is shorn." This assertion has been shown to be false by the testimony of one who knew him long and intimately, and who had no sinister motives whatever for giving to the world this picture of Paine's manner of life.

But there is another witness whose testimony ought to be taken, inasmuch as he was not only an intimate friend of Paine, but a firm believer in the doctrines that have made his name noted among men. His testimony must be received by his friends as well as his enemies, for in a private letter to the author of the Age of Reason, dated December 2, 1806, and published in the New York Observer November 1, 1877, he (William Carver) makes the following disclosures:

"A respectable gentleman from New Rochelle called to see me a few days back, and said that everybody was tired of you there, and that no one would undertake to board and lodge you. I thought this was the