, and who
after Paine's death was prosecuted and _condemned_ for libelling a lady
whom he had accused of undue familiarity with the principal object of
his malice.

Finding the charge of drunkenness unequivocally rebutted, Paine's
traducers advance that of licentiousness. But this is equally
unsuccessful. The authority relied on is still Cheetham, who in turn
borrowed from a no less disreputable source. A man named Carver had
quarrelled with Paine over money matters; in fact, he had been obliged
with a loan which he forgot to pay, and like all base natures he showed
his gratitude to his benefactor, when no more favors could be expected,
by hating and maligning him. A scurrilous letter written by this fellow
fell into the hands of Cheetham, who elaborated it in his "Life." It
broadly hinted that Madame Bonneville, the by no means youthful wife of
a Paris bookseller who had sheltered Paine when he was threatened with
danger in that city, was his paramour; for no other reason than that
he had in turn sheltered her when she repaired with her children to
America, after her home had been broken up by Buonaparte's persecution
of her husband. This lady prosecuted Cheetham for libel, and a jury of
American citizens gave her a verdict and damages.

Here the matter might rest, but we are inclined to urge another
consideration. No one of his many enemies ever accused Paine of
licentiousness in his virile manhood; and can we believe that he began
a career of licentiousness in his old age, when, besides the infirmities
natural to his time of life, he suffered dreadful tortures from an
internal abscess brought on by his confinement in the reeking dungeons of
the Luxembourg, which made life a terror and death a boon? Only lunatics
or worse would credit such a preposterous story.

The _Athenoum_ critic alleges that Paine insulted Washington, and was
therefore a "thorough-paced rascal." But he did nothing of the kind. He
very properly remonstrated with Washington for coolly allowing him to
rot in a French dungeon for no crime except that he was a foreigner,
when a word from the President of the United States, of which he was
a citizen, would have effected his release. Washington was aware of
Paine's miserable plight, yet he forgot the obligations of friendship;
and notwithstanding frequent letters from Munro, the American ambassador
at Paris, he supinely suffered the man he had once delighted to honor to
languish in wretchedness, filt