"The world is my country; to do good, my religion." I ask you again whether these splendid utterances came from the lips of a drunken beast? _Did Thomas Paine die in destitution and want?_ The charge has been made, over and over again, that Thomas Paine died in want and destitution-- that he was an abandoned pauper--an outcast with- out friends and without money. This charge is just as false as the rest. Upon his return to this country in 1802, he was worth $30,000, according to his own statement made at that time in the following letter addressed to Clio Rickman: "My Dear Friend: Mr. Monroe, who is appointed minister extraordinary to France, takes charge of 485 this, to be delivered to Mr. Este, banker in Paris, to be forwarded to you. "I arrived at Baltimore the 30th of October, and you can have no idea of the agitation which my arrival occasioned. From New Hampshire to Georgia (an extent of 1,500 miles) every newspaper was filled with applause or abuse. "My property in this country has been taken care of by my friends, and is now worth six thousand pounds sterling; which put in the funds will bring me £400 sterling a year. "Remember me in affection and friendship to your wife and family, and in the circle of your friends." Thomas Paine. A man in those days worth thirty thousand dol- lars was not a pauper. That amount would bring an income of at least two thousand dollars per annum. Two thousand dollars then would be fully equal to five thousand dollars now. On the 12th of July, 1809, the year in which he died, Mr. Paine made his will. From this instru- ment we learn that he was the owner of a valuable farm within twenty miles of New York. He also was the owner of thirty shares in the New York Phoenix Insurance Company, worth upwards of fif- teen hundred dollars. Besides this, some personal 486 property and ready money. By his will he gave to Walter Morton, and Thomas Addis Emmett, brother of Robert Emmett, two hundred dollars each, and one hundred to the widow of Elihu Palmer. Is it possible that this will was made by a pauper --by a destitute outcast--by a man who suffered for the ordinary necessaries of life? But suppose, for the sake of the argument, that he was poor and that he died a beggar, does that tend to show that the Bible is an inspired book and that Calvin did not burn Servetus? Do you really regard poverty as a crime? If Paine had died a millionaire, would you have accepted his religious opinions? If Paine had drank nothing but cold water would you have repudiated the five cardinal points of Calvin- ism? Does an argument depend for its force upon the pecuniary condition of the person making it? As a matter of fact, most reformers--most men and women of genius, have been acquainted with poverty. Beneath a covering of rags have been found some of the tenderest and bravest hearts.