Memoirs Of The Life Of Thomas Paine PDF Download

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE By Thomas Clio Rickman THE following memoirs of Mr. Paine, if they have no other merit, at least have that of being true. Europe and America have for years been in possession of his works: these form the most important part of his life, and these are publicly sold and generally read; nor will the spirit of inquiry and sound reasoning, which the publication of them is so well calculated to promote, be long confined to any part of the world; for, to use his own words, An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot. It will succeed where diplomatic management would fail. It is neither the Rhine, the Channel, nor the Ocean, that can arrest its progress. It will march on the horizon of the world, and it will conquer. What manner of man Mr. Paine was, his works will best exhibit, and from these his public, and much of his private character, will be best ascertained. But, as solicitude about the life of a great man and an extraordinary writer iscommon to all, it is here attempted to be gratified. The Life of Mr. Paine by Francis Oldys was written seventeen years before Mr. Paine's death; and was in fact, drawn up by a person employed by a certain lord, and who was to have five hundred pounds for the job, if he calumniated and belied him to his lordship's and the Ministry's satisfaction. A continuation of this Life, printed at Philadelphia in 1796, is in the same strain as the above, and equally contemptible. A most vile and scandalous memoir of Paine, with the name of William Cobbett as the author, though we hope he was not so, appeared in London about the year 1795 with this motto: A life that's one continued scene Of all that's infamous and mean. Mr. James Cheetham's Life of Mr. Paine, published at New York aft...