On April 17th, when Congress transformed the "Committee of Secret Correspondence" into the "Committee of Foreign Affairs," Paine was elected its secretary. His friend, Dr. Franklin, had reached France in December, 1776, where Arthur Lee and Silas Deane were already at work. Lord Howe might, indeed, have done worse than take Paine's advice concerning the "opportunity," which did not return. General Howe did, indeed, presently occupy a fine abode in Philadelphia, but only kept it warm, to be afterwards the executive mansion of President Washington. {1777} CHAPTER VIII. SOLDIER AND SECRETARY After their disaster at Trenton, the English forces suspended hostilities for a long time. Paine, maintaining his place on General Greene's staff, complied with the wish of all the generals by wielding his pen during the truce of arms. He sat himself down in Philadelphia, "Second Street, opposite the Quaker meeting,"--as he writes the address. The Quakers regarded him as Antichrist pursuing them into close quarters. Untaught by castigation, the leaders of the Society, and chiefly one John Pemberton, disguised allies of the Howes, had put forth, November 20, 1776, a second and more dangerous "testimony." In it they counsel Friends to refuse obedience to whatever "instructions or ordinances" may be published, not warranted by "that happy constitution under which they and others long enjoyed tranquillity and peace." In his second _Crisis_ (January 13, 1777) Paine refers to this document, and a memorial, from "a meeting of a reputable number of the inhabitants of the city of Philadelphia," called attention of the Board of Safety to its treasonable character. The Board, however, not having acted, Paine devoted his next three months to a treatment of that and all other moral and political problems which had been developed by the course of the Revolution, and must be practically dealt with. In reading this third _Crisis_, one feels in every sentence its writer's increased sense of responsibility. Events had given him the seat of a lawgiver. His first pamphlet had dictated the Declaration of Independence, his second had largely won its first victory, his third had demonstrated the impossibility of subjugation, and offered England peace on the only possible terms. The American heart had responded without a dissonant note; he held it in his hand; he knew that what he was writing in that room "opposite the Quaker meeting" were Acts of Congress. So it proved. The third _Crisis_ was dated April 19, 1777, the second anniversary of the first collision (Lexington). It was as effective in dealing with the internal enemies of the country as the first had been in checking its avowed foes. It was written in a city still largely, if not preponderantly, "tory," and he deals with them in all their varieties, not arraigning the Friends as a Society. Having carefully shown that independence, from being a natural right, had become a political and