ied men's souls,"
and they knew him not. He was the friend of Jefferson, and Jefferson had
bitter enemies, who said "they both ought to dangle from the same
gallows."

He had been paid but little for his revolutionary services, and he now
felt the ingratitude of the old Congress, which had treated him badly,
and the new one, which could not be bothered with him. Thus his miseries
multiply. "After so many years of service, my heart grows cold toward
America," he writes, a year before his death, to the Speaker of the
House of Representatives. Jefferson ought to have kept the old man aloof
from politics, instead of thrusting him into his party broils, and
bringing down on his head the whole host of his own personal enemies.
Paine had enemies enough of his own without these. But great ideas and
generous affections, it seems, Jefferson never had. Now, in his old age,
the great apostle of liberty is deserted by many he had labored to
befriend, and, though he does not meet death at the hands of his
enemies, they have venom enough in their hearts to slay him.

It is sad to think that his last hours were embittered for the want of a
friend. Washington had long before forgotten him while a prisoner in the
Luxembourg. Samuel Adams had condemned him. John Adams has it in his
heart to blast his memory, and four years after he is dead writes to
Jefferson, "Joel Barlow was about to record Tom Paine as the great
author of the American Revolution. If he was, I desire that my name may
be blotted out forever from its record." This came from the man who
twice deserted his post in the trying hour of his country; once for four
months when at the head of the war committee, and once for seven months
when president of the nation. It came from the man who said: Jefferson
had stolen his ideas from him to put into the Declaration of
Independence. "Blotted out," No! John Adams, your name will live forever
on the records of your country. You were sometimes a great man. But by
the side of Thomas Paine, on the records of your country, you stand
thus:

_History._

John Adams, Member of Congress, the Colossus of
debate, signer of the Declaration of Independence,
famous in the world, chief of the war committee,
on whom great trusts were imposed, in whom great
faith was had, in the first trying crisis of the
new nation DESERTED HER. _Brave in his home by the
sea._

Thomas Paine, the Junius of England, aut