* "Thetpord, Norfolk, 27th July, 1774. Dear Daughter,--I must beg leave to trouble you with my inquiries concerning my unhappy son and your husband: various are the reports, which I find come originally from the Excise-office. Such as his vile treatment to you, his secreting upwards of 30£. intrusted with him to manage the petition for advance of salary; and that since his discharge, he have petitioned to be restored, which was rejected with scorn. Since which I am told he have left England. To all which I beg you'll be kind enough to answer me by due course of post.--You 'll not be a little surprized at my so strongly desiring to know what's become of him after I repeat to you his undutiful behavior to the tenderest of parents; he never asked of us anything, but what was granted, that were in our poor abilities to do; nay, even distressed ourselves, whose works are given over by old age, to let him have 20£. on bond, and every other tender mark a parent could possibly shew a child; his ingratitude, or rather want of duty, has been such, that he have not wrote to me upwards of two years.--If the above account be true, I am heartily sorry, that a woman whose character and amiableness deserves the greatest respect, love, and esteem, as I have always on enquiry been informed yours did, should be tied for life to the worst of husbands. I am, dear daughter, your affectionate mother, "F. Pain. "P. S. For God's sake, let me have your answer, as I am almost distracted." The letter may have been manipulated, but it is not improbable that rumors, "exaggerated by enmity or misstated by malice," as Oldys confesses, elicited some such outburst from Thetford.* The excisemen, angry at the failure to get their case before Parliament, and having fixed on Paine as their scapegoat, all other iniquities were naturally laid on him. Eighteen years later, when the scapegoat who had gone into the American wilderness returned with the renown of having helped to make it a nation, he addressed a letter to Lewes, which was about to hold a meeting to respond to a royal proclamation for suppressing seditious writings. His tone is not that of a man who supposed that Lewes had aught against him on the score of his wife.