Paine's subsequent treatment of his wife was in the highest degree honorable. He had but little property, but what he had he gave to her. Regarding his conduct in this matter Clio Rickman, his most intimate friend in England, and a highly honorable man, bears this testimony: "This I can assert, that Mr. Paine always spoke tenderly and respectfully of his wife; and sent her several times pecuniary aid, without her knowing even whence it came." Concerning this slander W. T. Stead says: "No one even among Paine's worst libelers suggests that she had any reason of complaint against him." One of Paine's calumniators, "Francis Oldys" (George Chalmers), a pretended biographer of Paine whose statements are nearly all false or misleading, says that while he was an excise officer he bought smuggled tobacco and was dismissed from the service for the offense. This statement is false. Dr. Conway says: "I have before me the minutes of the Board concerning Paine, and there is no hint whatever of any such accusation." Falsehoods generally grow rather than diminish with age, and now we are told that Paine himself was a smuggler and was dismissed for smuggling. The Excise laws were the most odious laws in England, odious alike to the people and to the excise officers, who were underpaid (fifty pounds a year) and otherwise mistreated. Paine espoused the cause of his fellow excisemen and in a memorial addressed to Parliament pleaded for a redress of their grievances. His activity in this matter offended the Government and a trivial irregularity commonly practiced by the excisemen was made a pretext for his dismissal. The Everyman Encyclopedia: "Became an excise officer, but agitating for the removal of grievances, was dismissed from the service." Had Paine been discharged for any dishonest or immoral act Franklin would have known it and would not have recommended him as "a worthy young man." Paine's dismissal was for him, for England, for America and for the world one of the most fortunate things that ever occurred. His loss of the excise office which occurred in April, 1774, took him to America in November of the same year. The independence of the United States and the agitation in behalf of popular government throughout the civilized world followed as a result. Rev. Willet Hicks, a Quaker minister, who was with Paine when he died, testified that emissaries of the church tried to bribe him to slander Paine. He says: "I could have had any sums if I would have said anything against Thomas Paine, or if even I would have consented to remain silent. They informed me that the doctor was willing to say something that would satisfy them if I would engage to be silent. Mr. Paine was a good man--an honest man." Rev. G. H. Humphrey: "He was honest. Nor was he uncharitable. He abstained from profanity and rebuked it in others."