3. "While he was a Frenchman." Had Paine ever been a Frenchman, he was one when Morris pretended that he had claimed him as an American. But Paine had been excluded from the Convention and imprisoned expressly because he was not a Frenchman. No word of the Convention's published action was transmitted by Morris. 4. "The fate of the Brissotins," etc. This of course would frighten Paine's friends by its hint of a French hostility to him which did not exist, and might restrain them from applying to America for interference. Paine was already restrained by the new order preventing him from communicating with any one except the American Minister. 5. "Intemperate," etc This is mere calumny. Since the brief lapse in June, 1793, when overwhelmed by the arrest of his friends, Paine's daily life is known from those who dwelt with him. During the months preceding his arrest he wrote the "Age of Reason"; its power, if alcoholic, might have recommended his cellar to Morris, or to any man living. So much for the insinuations and _suggestions falsi_ in Morris' letter. The suppressions of fact are more deadly. There is nothing of what had really happened; nothing of the eulogy of Paine by the President of the Convention, which would have been a commentary on what Morris had said of the contempt in which he was held; not a word of the fact that the petitioners were reminded by the Committee that their application was unofficial,--in other words, that the determination on Paine's fate rested with Morris himself. This Morris hides under the phrase: "slighted the application as totally irregular." But the fatal far-reaching falsehood of Morris' letter to Jefferson was his assertion that he had claimed Paine as an American. This falsehood, told to Washington, Jefferson, Edmund Randolph, paralyzed all action in America in Paine's behalf; told to the Americans in Paris, it paralyzed further effort of their own. The actual correspondence between Morris and Deforgues is now for the first time brought to light. MORRIS TO DEFORGUES, "Paris, 14th February (26 Pluviôse) 1794. "Sir,--Thomas Paine has just applied to me to claim him as a Citizen of the United States. These (I believe) are the facts which relate to him. He was born in England. Having become a citizen of the United States, he acquired great celebrity there through his revolutionary writings. In consequence he was adopted as French Citizen, and then elected Member of the Convention. His behaviour since that epoch is out of my jurisdiction. I am ignorant of the reason for his present detention in the Luxembourg prison, but I beg you, Sir, if there be reasons which prevent his liberation, and which are unknown to me, be so good as to inform me of them, so that I may communicate them to the Government of the United States.--I have the honour to be, Sir, Your very humble servant, "Gouv. Morris." DEFORGUES TO MORRIS. "Paris, 1st Ventose, 2nd year of the Republic [February 19, 1794.]