ors would
rifle them, as well as his trunks (though they did not do so
by any one) he took off the lock from his door, and hid the
whole of what he had about him in its inside. He recovered
his health, he found his money, but missed about three
hundred of his associated prisoners, who had been sent in
crowds to the murderous tribunal, while he had been
insensible of their or his own danger." This was probably
the money (L200) loaned by Paine to General O'Hara (who
figured at the Yorktown surrender) in prison.--_Editor._

During the whole of my imprisonment, prior to the fall of Robespierre,
there was no time when I could think my life worth twenty-four hours,
and my mind was made up to meet its fate. The Americans in Paris went in
a body to the Convention to reclaim me, but without success. There was
no party among them with respect to me. My only hope then rested on the
government of America, that it would _remember me_. But the icy heart of
ingratitude, in whatever man it be placed, has neither feeling nor
sense of honour. The letter of Mr. Jefferson has served to wipe away the
reproach, and done justice to the mass of the people of America.(1)

1 Printed in the seventh of this series of Letters.--
_Editor._.

When a party was forming, in the latter end of 1777, and beginning of
1778, of which John Adams was one, to remove Mr. Washington from the
command of the army on the complaint that _he did nothing_, I wrote the
fifth number of the Crisis, and published it at Lancaster, (Congress
then being at Yorktown, in Pennsylvania,) to ward off that meditated
blow; for though I well knew that the black times of '76 were the
natural consequence of his want of military judgment in the choice of
positions into which the army was put about New York and New Jersey, I
could see no possible advantage, and nothing but mischief, that could
arise by distracting the army into parties, which would have been the
case had the intended motion gone on.

General [Charles] Lee, who with a sarcastic genius joined a great fund
of military knowledge, was perfectly right when he said "_We have no
business on islands, and in the bottom of bogs, where the enemy, by the
aid of its ships, can bring its whole force against apart of ours and
shut it up_." This had like to have been the case at New York, and it
was the case at Fort Washington, and would have been the case at Fort
Lee if General