We have no doubt that Paine was correct in his facts, however injudicious it may have been to use them in his position. Deane's best friends gave him up, before many years had passed. M. de Loménie, in his interesting sketch of Beaumarchais, has tried hard to show the justice of his demands on the United States, but without much success. He does not attempt to explain how Beaumarchais, notoriously penniless in 1775, should have had in 1777 a good claim for three millions' worth of goods furnished. The American public looked upon Paine as a victim to state policy, and his position with his friends did not suffer at all in consequence of his disclosures. Personally, he exulted in his conduct to the end of his life, and took pleasure in watching and recording Deane's disreputable career and miserable end. "As he rose like a rocket, so he fell like the stick," a metaphor which has passed into a proverb, was imagined by Paine to meet Deane's case. [1] The immediate consequence of Paine's resignation was to oblige him to hire himself out as clerk to an attorney in Philadelphia. In his office, Paine earned his daily bread by copying law-papers until he was appointed clerk to the Assembly of Pennsylvania. [Footnote 1: This Beaumarchais claim was kept alive until the beginning of the present generation. In 1794, Gouverneur Morris, Minister to the French Republic, obtained from the Minister of Finance a receipt to the Crown for a million of francs, signed by Beaumarchais, and sent it home to meet the claim which had again been presented. In 1806 it reappeared, urged by the Imperial Ambassador. In 1816, the Duc de Richelieu, minister of Louis XVIII., sustained it, and declared, on the strength of Gerard's assertions, that the million receipt did not in any way concern the United States. In 1824, the daughter of Beaumarchais came to this country to solicit Congress in person, with no better success. But at last, in 1835, when our claim of twenty-five millions on France was settled, eight hundred thousand francs were allowed to the heirs of Beaumarchais, and the business closed forever,--not creditably to us. The claim was probably unfounded; but our government admitted its validity by the fact of payment; and the money, if due, ought to have been paid forty years before, or a suitable compensation made for the long delay. To be Liberals in borrowing and Conservatives in repayment is not a desirable financial character for a nation to obtain.]