Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 21, July, 1859

When the nine days of wonder had expired in Washington, and the inhabitants had grown tired of staring at Paine and of pelting him with abuse, he betook himself to New York. On his way thither, he met with an adventure which shows the kind of martyrdom suffered by this political and religious heretic. He had stopped at Bordentown, in New Jersey, to look at a small place he owned there, and to visit an old friend and correspondent, Colonel Kirkbride. When he departed, the Colonel drove him over to Trenton to take the stage-coach. But in Trenton the Federal and Religious party had the upperhand, and when Paine applied at the booking-office for a seat to New York the agent refused to sell him one. Moreover, a crowd collected about his lodgings, who groaned dismally when he drove away with his friend, while a band of musicians, provided for the occasion, played the Rogue's March.

Among the editorial celebrities of 1803, James Cheetham, in New York, was almost as famous as Duane of the "Aurora." Cheetham, like many of his contemporaries, Gray, Carpenter, Callender, and Duane himself, was a British subject. He was a hatter in his native land; but a turn for politics ruined his business and made expatriation convenient. In the United States, he had become the editor of the "American Citizen," and was at that time busily engaged in attacking the Federalists and Burr's "Little Band," for their supposed attempt to elect Mr. Burr in the place of Mr. Jefferson. To Cheetham, accordingly, Paine wrote, requesting him to engage lodgings at Lovett's, afterwards the City Hotel. He sent for Cheetham, on the evening of his arrival. The journalist obeyed the summons immediately. This was the first interview between Paine and the man who was to hang, draw, and quarter his memory in a biography. This libellous performance was written shortly after Paine's death. It was intended as a peace-offering to the English government. The ex-hatter had made up his mind to return home, and he wished to prove the sincerity of his conversion from radicalism by trampling on the remains of its high-priest. So long as Cheetham remained in good standing with the Democrats, Paine and he were fast friends; but when he became heretical and schismatic on the Embargo question, some three or four years later, and was formally read out of the party, Paine laid the rod across his back with all his remaining strength. He had vigor enough left, it seems, to make the "Citizen" smart, for Cheetham cuts and stabs with a spite which shows that the work was as agreeable to his feelings as useful to his plans. His reminiscences must be read multis cum granis .

In New York Paine enjoyed the same kind of second-rate ovation as in Washington. A great number of persons called upon him, but mostly of the laboring class of emigrants, who had heard of the "Rights of Man," and, feeling disposed to claim as many rights as possible in their new country, looked with reverence upon the inventor of the system. The Democratic leaders, with one or two exceptions, avoided Paine. Respectabilities shunned him as a contamination. Grant Thorburn was suspended from church-membership for shaking hands with him. To the boys he was an object of curious attention; his nose was the burden of their songs.

Cheetham carried round a subscription-list for a public dinner. Sixty or seventy of Paine's admirers attended. It went off brilliantly, and was duly reported in the "American Citizen." Then the effervescence of New York curiosity subsided; Paine became an old story. He left Lovett's Hotel for humble lodgings in the house of a free-thinking farrier. Thenceforward the tale of his life is soon told. He went rarely to his farm at New Rochelle; he disliked the country and the trouble of keeping house; and a bullet which whizzed through his window one Christmas Eve, narrowly missing his head, did not add agreeable associations to the place. In the city he moved his quarters from one low boarding-house to another, and generally managed to quarrel with the blacksmiths, bakers, and butchers, his landlords. Unable to enjoy society suited to his abilities and large experience of life, Paine called in low company to help him bear the burden of existence. To the men who surrounded him, his opinions on all subjects were conclusive, and his shrewd sayings revelations. Among these respectful listeners, he had to fear neither incredulity nor disputation. Like his friend Elihu Palmer, and the celebrated Dr. Priestley, Paine would not tolerate contradiction. To differ with him was, in his eyes, simply to be deficient in understanding. He was like the French lady who naïvely told Dr. Franklin, " Je ne trouve que moi qui aie toujours raison ." Professing to adore Reason, he was angry, if anybody reasoned with him. But herein he was no exception to the general rule,—that we find no persons so intolerant and illiberal as men professing liberal principles.

His occupation and amusement was to write for the papers articles of a somewhat caustic and personal nature. Whatever subject occupied the public mind interested Paine and provoked his remarks. He was bitter in his attacks upon the Federalists and Burrites for attempting to jockey Jefferson out of the Presidency. Later, when Burr was acquitted of treason, Paine found fault with Chief-Justice Marshall for his rulings during the trial, and gave him notice, that he (Marshall) was "a suspected character." He also requested Dr. Mitchell, then United States Senator for New York, to propose an amendment to the Constitution, authorizing the President to remove a judge, on the address of a majority of both houses of Congress, for reasonable cause, when sufficient grounds for impeachment might not exist. General Miranda's filibustering expedition against Caracas, a greater failure even than the Lopez raid on Cuba, furnished Paine with a theme. He wrote a sensible paper on the yellow fever, by request of Jefferson, and one or two on his iron bridge. He was ardent in the defence of Mr. Jefferson's pet scheme of a gun-boat navy, and ridiculed the idea of fortifying New York. "The cheapest way," he said, "to fortify New York will be to banish the scoundrels that infest it." The inhabitants of that city would do well, if they could find an engineer to fortify their island in this way.

When the Pennsylvanians called a Convention in 1805 to amend the Constitution of the State, Paine addressed them at some length, giving them a summary of his views on Government, Constitutions, and Charters. The Creoles of Louisiana sent to Congress a memorial of their "rights," in which they included the importation of African slaves. Paine was indignant at this perversion of his favorite specific for all political ailments, and took the Franco-Americans soundly to task:—"How dare you put up a petition to Heaven for such a power, without fearing to be struck from the earth by its justice?" It is manifest that Paine could not be a Democrat in good standing now. Mingled with these graver topics were side-blows at the emissary Cullen, alias Carpenter, an Englishman, who edited a Federal paper,—replies to Cheetham, reprimands to Cheetham, and threats to prosecute Cheetham for lying, "unless he makes a public apology,"—and three letters to Governor Morgan Lewis, who had incensed Paine by bringing an action for political libel against a Mr. Thomas Farmer, laying his damages at one hundred thousand dollars.

Among his last productions were two memorials to the House of Representatives. One can see in these papers that old age had weakened his mind, and that harsh treatment had soured his feelings towards the land of his adoption.

no longer seemed to him as lovely as when he composed these verses for a Fourth-of-July dinner in Paris. He claimed compensation for his services in Colonel Laurens's mission to France in 1781. For his works he asked no reward. "All the civilized world knows," he writes, "I have been of great service to the United States, and have generously given away talents that would have made me a fortune. The country has been benefited, and I make myself happy in the knowledge of it. It is, however, proper for me to add, that the mere independence of America, were it to have been followed by a system of government modelled after the corrupt system of the English government, would not have interested me with the unabated ardor it did." "It will be convenient to me to know what Congress will decide on, because it will determine me, whether, after so many years of generous services and that in the most perilous times, and after seventy years of age, I shall continue in this country, or offer my services to some other country. It will not be to England, unless there should be a revolution."