In reply, the Secretary of State (Randolph) in a letter to Monroe of March 8, 1795, says: "Your observations on our commercial relations to France, and your conduct as to Mr. Gardoqui's letter, prove your judgment and assiduity. Nor are your measures as to Mr. Paine, and the lady of our friend [Lafayette] less approved." Thus, after an imprisonment of ten months and nine days, Thomas Paine was liberated from the prison into which he had been cast by a Minister of the United States. CHAPTER IX. A RESTORATION As in 1792 Paine had left England with the authorities at his heels, so in 1794 escaped Morris from France. The ex-Minister went off to play courtier to George III. and write for Louis XVIII. the despotic proclamation with which monarchy was to be restored in France*; Paine sat in the house of a real American Minister, writing proclamations of republicanism to invade the empires. So passed each to his own place. While the American Minister in Paris and his wife were nursing their predecessor's victim back into life, a thrill of joy was passing through European courts, on a rumor that the dreaded author had been guillotined. Paine had the satisfaction of reading, at Monroe's fireside, his own last words on the scaffold,** and along with it an invitation of the 27th of December 1792. * Morris' royal proclamations are printed in full in his biography by Jared Sparks. ** "The last dying words of Thomas Paine. Executed at the Guillotine in France on the 1st of September, 1794." The dying speech begins: "Ye numerous spectators gathered around, pray give ear to my last words; I am determined to speak the Truth in these my last moments, altho' I have written and spoke nothing but lies all my life." There is nothing in the witless leaflet worth quoting. When Paine was burnt in effigy, in 1792, it appears to have been with accompaniments of the same kind. Before me is a small placard, which reads thus: "The Dying Speech and Confession of the Arch-Traitor Thomas Paine. Who was executed at Oakham on Thursday." "This morning the Officers usually attending on such occasions went in procession on Horseback to the County Gaol, and demanded the Body of the Arch-Traitor, and from thence proceeded with the Criminal drawn in a Cart by an Ass to the usual place of execution with his Pamphlet called the 'Rights of Man' in his right hand." On December 7, 1794, Thibaudeau had spoken to that assembly in the following terms: