rst wife died within a year of marriage,
and the second, with whom he had started a "tobacco-mill," agreed on its
failure, apparently for no definite fault on either side, to a mutual
separation. At thirty-seven, penniless, lonely, and stamped with
failure, yet conscious of powers which had found no scope in the Old
World, he emigrated in 1774 to America with a letter from Benjamin
Franklin as his passport to fortune.

Opportunity came promptly, and Paine was presently settled in
Philadelphia as the editor of the _Pennsylvania Magazine_. From the
pages of this periodical, his admirable biographer, Mr. Moncure D.
Conway, has unearthed a series of articles which show that Paine had
somehow brought with him from England a mental equipment which ranked
him already among the moral pioneers of his generation. He advocates
international arbitration; he attacks duelling; he suggests more
rational ideas of marriage and divorce; he pleads for mercy to animals;
he demands justice for women. Above all, he assails negro slavery, and
with such mastery and fervour, that five weeks after the appearance of
his article, the first American Anti-Slavery Society was founded at
Philadelphia. The abolition of slavery was a cause for which he never
ceased to struggle, and when in later life he became the target of
religious persecutors, it was in their dual capacity of Christians and
slave-owners that men stoned him. The American colonies were now at the
parting of the ways in the struggle with the Mother Country. The revolt
had begun with a limited object, and few if any of its leaders realised
whither they were tending. Paine it was, who after the slaughter at
Lexington, abandoned all thoughts of reconciliation and was the first to
preach independence and republicanism.

His pamphlet, _Common-Sense_ (1776), achieved a circulation which was an
event in the history of printing, and fixed in men's minds as firm
resolves what were, before he wrote, no more than fluid ideas. It spoke
to rebels and made a nation. Poor though Paine was, he poured the whole
of the immense profits which he received from the sale of his little
book into the colonial war-chest, shouldered a musket, joined
Washington's army as a private, and was soon promoted to be aide-de-camp
to General Greene. Paine's most valuable weapon, however, was still his
pen. Writing at night, after endless marches, by the light of camp fires
at a moment of general depression, when even Wash