In Philadelphia Congress was still surrounded by a hostile population; Paine had still to plead that there should be no peace without republican independence. Even so late as November 24, 1778, the French Minister (Gerard) writes to his government: "Scarcely one quarter of the ordinary inhabitants of Philadelphia now here favour the cause (of independence). Commercial and family ties, together with an aversion to popular government, seem to account for this. The same feeling exists in New York and Boston, which is not the case in the rural districts." While Franklin was offered in Paris the bribe of a peerage, and the like for several revolutionary leaders, similar efforts were made in America to subdue the "rebellion" by craft. For that purpose had come the Earl of Carlisle, Sir George Johnstone, and William Eden. Johnstone had retired from the Commission in disgust. Referring to the invitation of the Peace Commissioners, that America should join them against France, he says: "Unless you were capable of such conduct yourselves, you would never have supposed such a character in us." He reminds the commissioners, who had threatened that America must be laid waste so as to be useless to France, that increased wants of America must make her a more valuable purchaser in France. Paine mentions Sir H. Clinton with some significance, and suspects the truth that he had brought orders, received from England, overruling an intention of the peace envoys to burn Philadelphia if their terms were rejected. He says he has written a _Crisis_ for the English people because there was a convenient conveyance; "for the Commissioners--_poor Commissioners_!--having proclaimed that '_yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown?_ have waited out the date, and, discontented with their God, are returning to their gourd. And all the harm I wish them is that it may not wither about their ears, and that they may not make their exit in the belly of a whale." CHAPTER IX. FRENCH AID, AND THE PAINE-DEANE CONTROVERSY. In Bell's addenda to "Common Sense," which contained Paine's Address to the Quakers (also letters by others), appeared a little poem which I believe his, and the expression of his creed. "THE AMERICAN PATRIOT'S PRAYER. "Parent of all, omnipotent In heaven, and earth below, Through all creation's bounds unspent, Whose streams of goodness flow, "Teach me to know from whence I rose, And unto what designed; No private aims let me propose, Since link'd with human kind. "But chief to hear my country's voice, May all my thoughts incline; 'T is reason's law, 't is virtue's choice, 'T is nature's call and thine. "Me from fair freedom's sacred cause Let nothing e'er divide; Grandeur, nor gold, nor vain applause, Nor friendship false misguide.