"Ye great ones of his nation [England]! ye pretended moralists, so forward now to cast your interested indignation upon the memory of Paine!--where were you in the day of his adversity? Which of you, to assist his infant merit, would diminish even the surplus of your debaucheries? Where the mitred charity, the practical religion? Consistent declaimers, rail on! What though his genius was the gift of Heaven, his heart the altar of friendship! What though wit and eloquence and anecdote flowed freely from his tongue, while Conviction made his voice her messenger! What though thrones trembled, and prejudice fled, and freedom came, at his command! He dared to question the creed which you, believing, contradicted, and to despise the rank which you, boasting of, debased." William Lee: "Immortal Paine, thy fame can never die!" C. Fannie Allyn: "Because you left a record that has floated down the years, Because your words undying have conquered low-born jeers, Because the ones who listened are victors over fears, As Thomas Paine the Hero we salute you! "Philanthropist and Patriot, a-down the Yet-to-be! Your thoughts are sweeping deathless as breezes o'er the sea, And hearts of men and women by you are made more free, As Thomas Paine the Future will salute you!" Alden Freeman: "One hundred years ago today there passed from life into the undying fame of assured immortality a chieftain among the Fathers of our Country, the foremost agitator of the American Revolution--Thomas Paine." Samuel H. Preston: "He who will live forever in the history of this republic as the author-hero of the Revolution; he who consecrated a long, laborious life in both hemispheres to the sacred cause of humanity; he who, in his sublime patriotism, adopted the world for his country, and who, in his boundless philanthropy, embraced all mankind for his brethren; this man--this great, and grand, and good, and heroic man--has been robbed of honor and reputation, and blackened and hunted by the sleuth-hounds of superstition, as though he had been the embodied curse of earth. "But, so sure as the affairs of men have an eternal destiny, shall justice be awarded Thomas Paine. The flowers of poesy will be woven in amaranthine wreaths above his last resting-place, and his once-blackened name will whiten with purity through all the wasteless years." Rev. Frank S. C. Wicks: "Why this ingratitude? In one word, bigotry! Religious bigotry, that serpent that has left its trail of slime all over the pages of human history. "He was pursued by religious bigotry, and but for religious bigotry the name of Thomas Paine would share with Washington the love and honor of his countrymen."