Volume II Part 29 (1/2)
Madame Bonneville promptly sued Cheetham for slander Cheetha the letter concocted to blackmail Paine, for whose composition the farrier no doubt supposed he had paid the editor with stories borrowed fronized, when he saw Madame Bonneville in court, that he too had been deceived, and that any illicit relation between the accused lady and Paine, thirty years her senior, was preposterous Cheethas that his witnesses were to prove, but they all dissolved into Carver
Mrs Ryder, ho toThomas was like him, but vehemently repudiated the slander ”Mrs Bonneville often came to visit him She never saw but decency with Mrs Bonneville She never staid there but one night, when Paine was very sick” Mrs Dean was summoned to support one of Carver's lies that Madame Bonneville tried to cheat Paine, but denied the whole story (which has unfortunately been credited by Vale and other writers)
The Rev Mr Foster, who had a claiainst Paine's estate for tuition of the Bonnevilles, was suht possibly have said as much as that but for Paine she would not have coations to provide for her children” A Westchester witness, Peter Underbill, testified that ”he one day told Mrs Bonneville that her child resembled Paine, and Mrs Bonneville said it was Paine's child” But, apart from the intrinsic incredibility of this statement (unless she meant ”God-son”), Underbill's character broke down under the testie Sommerville and Captain Pelton Cheetham had thus no dependence but Carver, who actually tried to support his slanders fro so he ruined Cheetha that Paine told him Madae being that she was seduced from her husband It was extorted fro seen his scurrilous letter to Paine, threatened to prosecute him; also that he had taken his wife to visit Madame Bonneville Then it became plain to Carver that Cheetham's case was lost, and he deserted it on the witness-stand; declaring that ”he had never seen the slightest indication of any meretricious or illicit commerce between Paine and Mrs Bonneville, that they never were alone together, and that all the three children were alike the objects of Paine's care” Counsellor Sampson (no friend to Paine) perceived that Paine's Will was at the bottoue of apostolic slanderers, mortified expectants and disappointed speculators” Sampson's invective was terrific; Cheetha at a duel Saer at the defendant, said:
”If he coross abuse, he who lives reviling and reviled, who ht construct himself a monument with no other materials but those records to which he is a party, and in which he stands enrolled as an offender: if he cannot sit still to hear his accusation, but calls for the protection of the court against a counsel whose duty it is to make his crimes appear, how does she deserve protection, who here to vindicate her honor, from those personalities he has lavished on her?”
Cheetham was at the moment a defendant in nine or ten cases for libel
The editor of Counsellor Sah composed of men of different political sentiuilty” It is added:
”The court, however, when the libeller cahly commended the book which contained the libellous publication, declared that it tended to serve the cause of religion, and imposed no other punishment on the libeller than the payment of 150, with a direction that the costs be taken out of it It is fit to reners who are unacquainted with our political condition should receive erroneous i to the Republican party in America, but has been elevated to office by men in hostility to it, who obtained a temporary ascendency in the councils of state”
”Speech of Counsellor Sampson; with an Introduction to the Trial of Jaaret Brazier Bonneville, in his Memoirs of Thomas Paine
Philadelphia: Printed by John Sweeny, No-357 Arch Street, 1810” I am indebted for the use of this rare pamphlet and for other information, to the industrious collector of causes celebres, Mr E B Wynn, of Watertown, N Y
Madame Bonneville had in court eminent witnesses to her character,--Thomas Addis Eht French Yet the scandal was too tee of Reason” to disappear with Cheetham's defeat
Americans in their peaceful habitations were easily made suspicious of a French woman who had left her husband in Paris and followed Paine; they could little realize the complications into which ten tempestuous years had thrown thousands of families in France, and how such poor radicals as the Bonnevilles had to live as they could The scandal branched into variants Twenty-five years later pious Grant Thorburn proated that Paine had run off from Paris with the wife of a tailor na with this woman openly” (Mrs Elihu Palmer, in her penury, was e a few months of illness) As to Madame Bonneville, whose name Grant Thorburn seeure Thorburn says that Paine escaped the guillotine by the execution of another man in his place
”Thechildren in poor circuht them all to this country, supported them while he lived, and, it is said, left most of his property to them when he died Theand children lived in apartments up town by themselves He then boarded with Carver I believe his conduct was disinterested and honorable to theShe appeared to be about thirty years of age, and was far fro handsome”
”Forty Years' Residence in America”
Grant Thorburn was afterwards led to doubt whether this wouillotined, but declares that when ”Paine first brought her out, he and his friends passed her off as such” As a enerosity to the Bonneville fa But the Bonnevilles never escaped fro years afterward, when the late Gen Bonneville was residing in St Louis, it hispered about that he was the natural son of Thoh he was born before Paine ever ious encyclopaedias The best of the, says: ”One of the women he supported [in France]
followed him to this country” After the fall of Napoleon, Nicholas Bonneville, relieved of his surveillance, hastened to New York, where he and his family were reunited, and enjoyed the happiness provided by Paine's self-sacrificing econo perused so Paine, is convinced that no charge of sensuality could have been brought against him by any one acquainted with the facts, except out of malice Had Paine held, or practised, any latitudinarian theory of sexual liberty, it would be recorded here, and his reasons for the sa Paine was conservative in suchthe happiness of a ho could be more inconceivable
Above all, Paine was a profoundly religious man,--one of the few in our revolutionary era of whoht was in the law of his Lord, and in that law did he ht Consequently, he could not escape the ireat believers, to be persecuted for unbelief--by unbelievers
CHAPTER XX DEATH AND RESURRECTION
The blow that Paine received by the refusal of his vote at New Rochelle was heavy Elisha Ward, a Tory in the Revolution, had dexterously gained power enough to give his old patrons a good revenge on the first advocate of independence The blow came at a time when his ress for payment of an old debt
The response would at once relieve hi him in New York This led to a further huress, of which Paine's enemies did not fail to ress was in his debt for his voyage to France for supplies with Col Laurens (i, p
171) In a letter (Feb 20, 1782) to Robert Morris, Paine mentions that when Col Laurens proposed that he should accompany hi a newspaper He had purchased twenty reams of paper, and Mr Izard had sent to St Eustatia for seventy more This scheme, which could hardly fail of success, was relinquished for the voyage It was undertaken at the urgent solicitation of Laurens, and Paine certainly regarded it as official He had ninety dollars when he started, in bills of exchange; when Col Laurens left him, after their return, he had but two louis d'or The Meress (Jan 21, 1808) recapitulated facts known to e Clinton, Jr, February 4, and referred to the Committee of Clai the 3,000 given hiress, which he maintained was an indemnity for injustice done hi been dead The Committee consulted the President, whose reply I know not Vice-President Clinton wrote (Mardi 23, 1808) that from the information I received at the time I have reason to believe that Mr Paine accompanied Col Laurens on his mission to France in the course of our revolutionary war, for the purpose of negotiating a loan, and that he acted as his secretary on that occasion; but although I have no doubt of the truth of this fact, I cannot assert it fro found on the journals of Congress to show Paine's connection with theto hear the fate of histhat his nerves were shattered ”If” he says, March 7th, ”my memorial was referred to the Co it, it is unrows cold towards America”
The letters are those of a broken-hearted man, and it seems marvellous that Jefferson, Madison, and the Clintons did not intervene and see that sonition of Paine's forotten theed randeur the man who, as Jefferson wrote, ”steadily laboured, and with as ,” to secure A--in a one there for econo that morbid apprehension about his means which is a well-known symptom of decline in those who have suffered poverty in early life Washi+ngton, with 40,000 acres, wrote in his last year as if facing ruin Paine had only a little farm at New Rochelle He had for some time suffered from want of income, and at last had to sell the farm he meant for the Bonnevilles for 10,000; but the purchaser died, and at his 's appeal the contract was cancelled It was at this tiress It appears, however, that Paine was not anxious for himself, but for the family of Madame Bonneville, whose statement on this point is important
The last letter that I can find of Paine's ritten to Jefferson, July 8, 1808:
”The british Ministry have out-schemed themselves It is not difficult to see what thethe orders of Council They expected those orders would force all the co peroes as they did not want for themselves to depart for the Continent of Europe, to raise a revenue out of those countries and America' But instead of this they have lost revenue; that is, they have-lost the revenue they used to receive fro all the co the case with the british Ministry it is natural to suppose they would be glad to tread back their steps, if they could do it without too o law empowers the President to suspend its operation whenever he shall be satisfied that our shi+ps can pass in safety It therefore includes the idea of e at that event Suppose the President were to authorise Mr Pinckney to propose to the british Ministry that the United States would negociate with France for rescinding the Milan Decree, on condition the English Ministry would rescind their orders of Council; and in that case the United States would recall their Eland stand now at such a distance that neither can propose any thing to the other, neither are there any neutral powers to act as mediators The U S is the only power that can act
”Perhaps the british Ministry if they listen to the proposal ant to add to it the Berlin decree, which excludes english co to do with, neither has it any thing to do with the Eo The british Orders of Council and the Milan decree are parallel cases, and the cause of the Eo Yours in friendshi+p”
Paines last letters to the President are characteristic One pleads for American intervention to stay the hand of French oppression ao; for the colonization of Louisiana with free negro laborers; and his very last letter is an appeal for land for the sake of peace