ise he made in England reached our
shores; and English echoes were more attentively listened to then even
than at present. His "Rights of Man" had been much read in this country.
Indeed, it was asserted, and upon pretty good authority, that Jefferson
himself, when Secretary of State, had advised and encouraged the
publication of an American edition as an antidote to the "Davila" of Mr.
Adams. Even the "Age of Reason" had obtained an immense circulation from
the great reputation of the author. It reminded the Rev. Mr. Goodrich,
and other Orthodox New-Englanders, of Milton's description of Death,--

"Black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell."

Yet numbers of people, nothing frightened, would buy and read. "No
work," Dr. Francis tells us, "had a demand for readers comparable to
that of Paine. The 'Age of Reason,' on its first appearance in New York,
was printed as an orthodox book by orthodox publishers,--doubtless
deceived," the charitable Doctor adds, "by the vast renown which the
author of 'Common Sense' had obtained, and _by the prospects of sale_."
Paine's position in the French Convention, his long imprisonment,
poverty, slovenly habits, and fondness for drink, were all well
known and well talked over. William Cobbett, for one, never lost an
opportunity of dressing up Paine as a filthy monster. He wrote his
life for the sake of doing it more thoroughly. The following extract,
probably much relished at the time, will give some idea of the tone and
temper of this performance:--

"How Tom gets a living now, or what brothel he inhabits, I know not, nor
does it much signify. He has done all the mischief he can do in this
world; and whether his carcass is at last to be suffered to rot on
the earth, or to be dried in the air, is of very little consequence.
Whenever or wherever he breathes his last, he will excite neither sorrow
nor compassion; no friendly hand will close his eyes, not a groan will
be uttered, not a tear will be shed. Like Judas, he will be remembered
by posterity; men will learn to express all that is base, malignant,
treacherous, unnatural, and blasphemous by the single monosyllable of
Paine."

Cobbett also wrote an _ante-mortem_ epitaph, a fit inscription for the
life he had composed. It ends thus:--

"He is crammed in a dungeon and preaches up Reason;
Blasphemes the Almighty, lives in filth like a hog;
Is abandoned in death, and interred like a dog."

This brutal