Paine was unable to accept the passage offered him in the frigate, and returned in a merchant-vessel in the autumn of the next year (1802).  The excitement had not subsided.  Early in October, the “Philadelphia Gazette” announced that “a kind of tumultuous sensation was produced in the city yesterday evening in consequence of the arrival of the ship Benjamin Franklin from Havre.  It was believed, for a few moments, that the carcass of Thomas Paine was on board, and several individuals were seen disgracing themselves by an impious joy.  It was finally understood that Paine had missed his passage by this vessel and was to sail in a ship to New York.  Under the New York news-head we perceive a vessel from Havre reported.  Infidels! hail the arrival of your high-priest!”

A few days later, the infidel Tom Paine, otherwise Mr. Paine, arrived safely at Baltimore and proceeded thence to Washington.  The journalists gave tongue at once:  “Fire!  Age of Reason!  Look at his nose!  He drank all the brandy in Baltimore in nine days!  What a dirty fellow!  Invited home by a brother Tom!  Let Jefferson and his blasphemous crony dangle from the same gallows.”  The booksellers, quietly mindful of the opportunity, got out an edition of his works in two volumes.

As soon as he was fairly on shore, Paine took sides with his host, and commenced writing “Letters to the People of the United States.”  He announced in them that he was a genuine Federalist,—­not one of that disguised faction which had arisen in America, and which, losing sight of first principles, had begun to contemplate the people as hereditary property:  No wonder that the author of the “Rights of Man” was attacked by this faction:  His arrival was to them like the sight of water to canine madness:  He served them for a standing dish of abuse:  The leaders during the Reign of Terror in France and during the late despotism in America were the same men in character; for how else was it to be accounted for that he was persecuted by both at the same time?  In every part of the Union this faction was in the agonies of death, and, in proportion as its fate approached, gnashed its teeth and struggled:  He should lose half his greatness when they ceased to lie.  Mr. Adams, as the late chief of this faction, met with harsh and derisive treatment in these letters, and did not attempt to conceal his irritation in his own later correspondence.

Paine’s few defenders tried to back him with weak paragraphs in the daily papers:  His great talents, his generous services, “in spite of a few indiscreet writings about religion,” should make him an object of interest and respect.  The “Aurora’s” own correspondent sent to his paper a favorable sketch of Paine’s appearance, manner, and conversation:  He was “proud to find a man whom he had admired free from the contaminations of debauchery and the habits of inebriety which have been so grossly and falsely sent abroad concerning him.”  But the enemy had ten guns to Paine’s