Paine had in New York the most formidable of enemies,--an enemy with a newspaper. This was James Cheetham, of whom something has been said in the preface to this work (p. xvi.). In addition to what is there stated, it may be mentioned that Paine had observed, soon after he came to New York, the shifty course of this man's paper, _The American Citizen_. But it was the only republican paper in New York, supported Governor Clinton, for which it had reason, since it had the State printing,--and Colonel Fellows advised that Cheetham should not be attacked. Cheetham had been an attendant on Elihu Palmer's lectures, and after his participation in the dinner to Paine, his federalist opponent, the _Evening Post_, alluded to his being at Palmer's. Thereupon Cheetham declared that he had not heard Palmer for two years. In the winter of 1804 he casually spoke of Paine's "mischievous doctrines." In the following year, when Paine wrote the defence of Jefferson's personal character already alluded to, Cheetham omitted a reference in it to Alexander Hamilton's pamphlet, by which he escaped accusation of official defalcation by confessing an amorous intrigue.* * "I see that Cheetham has left out the part respecting Hamilton and Mrs. Reynolds, but for my own part I wish it had been in. Had the story never been publicly told I would not have been the first to tell it; but Hamilton had told it himself, and therefore it was no secret; but my motive in introducing it was because it was applicable to the subject I was upon, and to show the revilers of Mr. Jefferson that while they are affecting a morality of horror at an unproved and unfounded story about Mr. Jefferson, they had better look at home and give vent to their horror, if they had any, at a real case of their own Dagon (sic) and his Delilah."--Paine to Colonel Fellows, July 31, 1805. Cheetham having been wont to write of Hamilton as "the gallant of Mrs. Reynolds," Paine did not give much credit to the pretext of respect for the dead, on which the suppression was justified. He was prepared to admit that his allusion might be fairly suppressed, but perceived that the omission was made merely to give Cheetham a chance for vaunting his superior delicacy, and casting a suspicion on Paine. "Cheetham," wrote Paine, "might as well have put the part in, as put in the reasons for which he left it out. Those reasons leave people to suspect that the part suppressed related to some new discovered immorality in Hamilton worse than the old story."