the pride, and the pleasure of it, were I conscious that I
looked for reward."

Popularity-hunting, to use the critic's graceless phrase, was Paine's
next fault; but as, according to the same authority, he was guilty in
this respect only in the same sense as Junius was, the burden of his
iniquity cannot be very great.

Addiction to the most degrading of vices, is a charge difficult to
confute until we know specifically what vice is meant. Paine has been
accused of drunkenness; but by whom? Not by his intimate acquaintances,
who would have detected his guilt, but by his enemies who were never in
his society, and therefore could know nothing of his habits. Cheetham,
who first disseminated this accusation, was a notorious libeller, and
was more than once compelled to make a public apology for his lies;
but he was a shameless creature, and actually in his "Life" of Paine
resuscitated and amplified falsehoods for which he had tendered abject
apologies while his victim was alive. Even, however, if Paine had
yielded to the seductions of strong drink, he should be judged by the
custom of his own age, and not that of ours.

Mr. Leslie Stephen does not rail against Boswell for his drinking
powers; Burns is not outlawed for his devotion to John Barlycorn; Byron
and Sheridan are not beyond pardon because they often went drunk to bed;
and some of the greatest statesmen of last century and this, including
Pitt and Fox, are not considered the basest of men because they
exercised that right which Major O'Gorman claims for all Irishmen--"to
drink as much as they can carry." But no such plea is necessary, for
Paine was not addicted to drink, but remarkably abstemious. Mr. Fellows,
with whom he lived for more than six months, said that he never saw him
the worse for drink. Dr. Manley said, "while I attended him he never was
inebriated." Colonel Burr said, "he was decidedly temperate." And even
Mr. Jarvis, whom Cheetham cited as his authority for charging Paine with
drunkenness, authorised Mr. Vale, of New York, editor of the _Beacon_,
to say that _Cheetham lied_. Amongst the public men who knew Paine
personally were Burke, Home Tooke, Priestley, Lord Edward Fitzgerald,
Dr. Moore, Jefferson, Washington, Volney and Condorcet: but none of
these ever hinted at his love of drink. The charge of drunkeness is a
posthumous libel, circulated by a man who had publicly quarrelled with
Paine, who had been obliged to apologise for former aspersions