n in liberty under the protection of the Minister during
that interval.

N. B. I should have added that as Gouverneur Morris could not inform
Congress of the cause of my arrestation, as he knew it not himself, it
is to be supposed that Congress was not enough acquainted with the case
to give any directions respecting me when you came away.

T.P.

ADDENDA.

Letters, hitherto unpublished, written by Paine to Monroe before his
release on November 4., 1794.

1. Luxembourg Mem Vendemaire, Old Style Oct 4th 1794

Dear Sir: I thank you for your very friendly and affectionate letter of
the 18th September which I did not receive till this morning.(1) It has
relieved my mind from a load of disquietude. You will easily suppose
that if the information I received had been exact, my situation was
without hope. I had in that case neither section, department nor
Country, to reclaim me; but that is not all, I felt a poignancy of
grief, in having the least reason to suppose that America had so soon
forgotten me who had never forgotten her.

Mr. Labonadaire, in a note of yesterday, directed me to write to the
Convention. As I suppose this measure has been taken in concert with
you, I have requested him to shew you the letter, of which he will make
a translation to accompany the original.

(I cannot see what motive can induce them to keep me in prison. It
will gratify the English Government and afflict the friends I have in
America. The supporters of the system of Terror might apprehend that if
I was in liberty and in America I should publish the history of their
crimes, but the present persons who have overset that immoral System
ought to have no such apprehension. On the contrary, they ought to
consider me as one of themselves, at least as one of their friends. Had
I been an insignificant character I had not been in arrestation. It was
the literary and philosophical reputation I had gained, in the world,
that made them my Enemies; and I am the victim of the principles, and
if I may be permitted to say it, of the talents, that procured me the
esteem of America. My character is the _secret_ of my arrestation.)

1 Printed in the letter to Washington, chap. XXII. The delay
of sixteen days in Monroe's letter was probably due to the
manouvres of Paine's enemies on the Committee of Public
Safety. He was released only after their removal from the
Committee, and the departure of Gouverneur Morris.--