hich he affirms no subsequent act had deprived him. The title of
French citizen was a mere nominal and honorary one, which the
Convention chose to confer, when they asked him to help them in making a
Constitution. But let the nature or honor of the title be what it might,
the Convention had taken it away of their own accord. 'He was
excluded from the Convention on the motion for excluding _foreigners_.
Consequently he was no longer under the law of the Republic as a
_citizen_, but under the protection of the Treaty of Alliance, as fully
and effectually as any other citizen of America. It was therefore the
duty of the American Minister to demand his release.'"

To this Sparks adds:

"Such is the drift of Paine's argument, and it would seem indeed that
he could not be a foreigner and a citizen at the same time. It was hard
that his only privilege of citizenship should be that of imprisonment.
But this logic was a little too refined for the revolutionary tribunals
of the Jacobins in Paris, and Mr. Morris well knew it was not worth
while to preach it to them. He did not believe there was any serious
design at that time against the life of the prisoner, and he considered
his best chance of safety to be in preserving silence for the present.
Here the matter rested, and Paine was left undisturbed till the arrival
of Mr. Monroe, who procured his discharge from confinement." ("Life of
Gouverneur Morris," i., p. 417.)l

Sparks takes the gracious view of the man whose Life he was writing, but
the facts now known turn his words to sarcasm. The Terror by which Paine
suffered was that of Morris, who warned him and his friends, both in
Paris and America, that if his case was stirred the knife would fall
on him. Paine declares (see xx.) that this danger kept him silent till
after the fall of Robespierre. None knew so well as Morris that
there were no charges against Paine for offences in France, and that
Robespierre was awaiting that action by Washington which he (Morris) had
rendered impossible. Having thus suspended the knife over Paine for six
months, Robespierre interpreted the President's silence, and that
of Congress, as confirmation of Morris's story, and resolved on the
execution of Paine "in the interests of America as well as of France";
in other words to conciliate Washington to the endangered alliance with
France.

Paine escaped the guillotine by the strange accident related in a
further chapter. The fall of Robespierre