Memoirs Of The Life Of Thomas Paine

W. T. Sherwin's memoirs offer a fascinating glimpse into the life and times of one of the most influential thinkers of the Enlightenment. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, Sherwin provides a vivid and engaging account of Thomas Paine's life and work. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

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...

Speck's biography examines Paine's work afresh, in light of new thinking about the role of religion in the formation of his political ideology, and also places Paine within the recently-developed context of 'Atlantic History'.