orris "if he did not feel ashamed to take the money of the country
and do nothing for it." Paine thus incurred the personal enmity of
Gouverneur Morris. By his next step he endangered this Minister's
scheme for increasing the friction between France and America; for
Paine advised the Americans to appeal directly to the Convention, and
introduced them to that body, which at once heeded their application,
Morris being left out of the matter altogether. This was August 22d, and
Morris was very angry. It is probable that the Americans in Paris
felt from that time that Paine was in danger, for on September 13th a
memorial, evidently concocted by them, was sent to the French government
proposing that they should send Commissioners to the United States to
forestall the intrigues of England, and that Paine should go with them,
and set forth their case in the journals, as he "has great influence
with the people." This looks like a design to get Paine safely out of
the country, but it probably sealed his fate. Had Paine gone to America
and reported there Morris's treacheries to France and to his own
country, and his licentiousness, notorious in Paris, which his diary has
recently revealed to the world, the career of the Minister would have
swiftly terminated. Gouverneur Morris wrote to Robert Morris that
Paine was intriguing for his removal, and intimates that he (Paine) was
ambitious of taking his place in Paris. Paine's return to America must
be prevented.

Had the American Minister not been well known as an enemy of the
republic it might have been easy to carry Paine from the Convention to
the guillotine; but under the conditions the case required all of the
ingenuity even of a diplomatist so adroit as Gouverneur Morris. But fate
had played into his hand. It so happened that Louis Otto, whose letter
from Philadelphia has been quoted, had become chief secretary to the
Minister of Foreign Affairs in Paris, M. Deforgues. This Minister and
his Secretary, apprehending the fate that presently overtook both, were
anxious to be appointed to America. No one knew better than Otto the
commanding influence of Gouverneur Morris, as Washington's "irremovable"
representative, both in France and America, and this desire of the two
frightened officials to get out of France was confided to him.(1) By
hope of his aid, and by this compromising confidence, Deforgues came
under the power of a giant who used it like a giant. Morris at
once hinted th