It is now fifty years since Paine died; but the nil de mortuis is no rule in his case.  The evil associations of his later days have pursued him beyond the grave.  A small and threadbare sect of “liberals,” as they call themselves,—­men in whom want of skill, industry, and thrift has produced the usual results,—­have erected an altar to Thomas Paine, and, on the anniversary of his birth, go through with a pointless celebration, which passes unnoticed, unless in an out-of-the-way corner of some newspaper.  In this class of persons, irreligion is a mere form of discontent.  They have no other reason to give for the faith which is not in them.  They like to ascribe their want of success in life to something out of joint in the thoughts and customs of society, rather than to their own shortcomings or incapacity.  In France, such persons would be Socialists and Rouges; in this country, where the better classes only have any reason to rebel, they cannot well conspire against government, but attack religion instead, and pride themselves on their exemption from prejudice.  The “Age of Reason” is their manual.  Its bold, clear, simple statements they can understand; its shallowness they are too ignorant to perceive; its coarseness is in unison with their manners.  Thus the author has become the Apostle of Free-thinking tinkers and the Patron Saint of unwashed Infidelity.

To this generation at large, he is only an indistinct shadow,—­a faint reminiscence of a red nose,—­an ill-flavored name, redolent of brandy and of brimstone, his beverage in life and his well-earned punishment in eternity, which suggests to the serious mind dirt, drunkenness, and hopeless damnation.  Mere worldlings call him “Tom Paine,” in a tone which combines derision and contempt.  A bust of him, by Jarvis, in the possession of the New York Historical Society, is kept under lock and key, because it was defaced and defiled by visitors, while a dozen other plaster worthies that decorate the institution remained intact.  Nevertheless, we suspect that most of our readers, if they cannot date back to the first decade of the century, will find, when they sift their information, that they have only a speaking acquaintance with Thomas Paine, and can give no good reason for their dislike of him.

And it is not easy for the general reader to become intimate with him.  He will find him, of course, in Biographical Dictionaries, Directories of the City of the Great Dead, which only tell you where men lived, and what they did to deserve a place in the volume; but as to a life of him, strictly speaking, there is none.  Oldys and Cobbett tried to flay him alive in pamphlets; Sherwin and Clio Rickman were prejudiced friends and published only panegyrics.  All are out of print and difficult to find.  Cheetham’s work is a political libel; and the attempt of Mr. Vail of the “Beacon” to canonize him in the “Infidel’s Calendar,” cannot be recommended to intelligent persons.  We might expect