Paine's Will was at the bottom of the business. "That is the key to this mysterious league of apostolic slanderers, mortified expectants and disappointed speculators." Sampson's invective was terrific; Cheetham rose and claimed protection of the court, hinting at a duel. Sampson took a pinch of snuff, and pointing his finger at the defendant, said: "If he complains of personalities, he who is hardened in every gross abuse, he who lives reviling and reviled, who might construct himself a monument with no other materials but those records to which he is a party, and in which he stands enrolled as an offender*: if he cannot sit still to hear his accusation, but calls for the protection of the court against a counsel whose duty it is to make his crimes appear, how does she deserve protection, whom he has driven to the sad necessity of coming here to vindicate her honor, from those personalities he has lavished on her?" * Cheetham was at the moment a defendant in nine or ten cases for libel. The editor of Counsellor Sampson's speech says that the jury "although composed of men of different political sentiments, returned in a few minutes a verdict of guilty." It is added: "The court, however, when the libeller came up the next day to receive his sentence, highly commended the book which contained the libellous publication, declared that it tended to serve the cause of religion, and imposed no other punishment on the libeller than the payment of $150, with a direction that the costs be taken out of it. It is fit to remark, lest foreigners who are unacquainted with our political condition should receive erroneous impressions, that Mr. Recorder Hoffman does not belong to the Republican party in America, but has been elevated to office by men in hostility to it, who obtained a temporary ascendency in the councils of state." * * "Speech of Counsellor Sampson; with an Introduction to the Trial of James Cheetham, Esq., for a libel on Margaret Brazier Bonneville, in his Memoirs of Thomas Paine. Philadelphia: Printed by John Sweeny, No-357 Arch Street, 1810." I am indebted for the use of this rare pamphlet and for other information, to the industrious collector of causes celebres, Mr. E. B. Wynn, of Watertown, N. Y.