Cornwallis had surrendered, and it was evident that the war could not last much longer. The danger past, the Colonial aversion to pay Union expenses and to obey the orders of Congress became daily stronger. The want of a "Crisis," as a corrective medicine for the body politic, was so much felt, that Robert Morris, with the knowledge and approbation of Washington, requested Paine to take pen in hand again, offering him, if his private affairs made it necessary, a salary for his services. Paine consented. A "Crisis" appeared which produced a most salutary effect. This was followed a few days later by another, in which a passage occurs which may be quoted as a specimen of Paine's rhetorical powers. A rumor was abroad that England was treating with France for a separate peace. Paine finds it impossible to express his contempt for the baseness of the ministry who could attempt to sow dissension between such faithful allies. "We sometimes experience sensations to which language is not equal. The conception is too bulky to be born alive, and in the torture of thinking we stand dumb. Our feelings, imprisoned by their magnitude, find no way out; and in the struggle of expression every finger tries to be a tongue." It will be difficult to describe better the struggle of an indignant soul with an insufficient vocabulary. When peace was proclaimed, Paine, the untiring advocate of independence, had a right to print his "Io Paean." The last "Crisis" announces, "that the times that tried men's souls were over, and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew gloriously and happily accomplished." "America need never be ashamed to tell her birth, nor relate the stages by which she rose to empire." But it is to the future he bids her look, rather than to the past. "The remembrance of what is past, if it operates rightly, must inspire her with the most laudable of all ambition, that of adding to the fair fame she began with." "She is now descending to the scenes of quiet and domestic life,--not beneath the cypress shade of disappointment, but to enjoy in her own land and under her own vine the sweet of her labors and the reward of her toil. In this situation may she never forget that a fair national reputation is of as much importance as independence,--that it possesses a charm that wins upon the world, and makes even enemies civil,--that it gives a dignity which is often superior to power, and commands reverence where pomp and splendor fail." As indispensable to a future of prosperity and dignity, he warmly recommends the Union. "I ever feel myself hurt," he says, "when I hear the Union, that great Palladium of our liberty and safety, the least irreverently spoken of. It is the most sacred thing in the Constitution of America, and that which every man should be most proud and tender of." Thus he anticipated by seventy-five years our "Union-savers" of 1856, few of whom dreamed that their pet phrases, or something very like them,