THE CLOSING SCENE. CHAP. I. An avowed Enfidel. THOMAS PAINE. "It is no fanciful conjecture that an active Infidel may be doing harm even in his grave. The poison of his principles may be infecting the young and the thoughtless, long after he has ceased upon this earth to live, and move, and have his being."-DR. CHALMERS. IN one of the stirring speeches of Sir Robert Inglis, the animated inquiry occurs: "I appeal to the sagacity with which you regard all questions of commercial policy, and I ask you whether the labours of the missionaries do not open to you new sources of speculation and enterprise, which flow back upon us with increased wealth? Wherever B a missionary settles, the spot becomes the centre of civilisation, and wherever civilisation is established it becomes the centre of commerce. What was it that civilised man but Christianity? Can infidelity point out the green spot that it has won from the wilderness?" The query so ably put recurs to one again and again in pursuing the successful, but pestilential, career of the great Apostle of Infidelity-Thomas Paine. Paine was born in 1737, at Thetford in Norfolk. His father was a Quaker. His education seems to have been limited to a smattering of Latin, some knowledge of arithmetic, and a slight insight into mathematics. At first he followed his father's business, that of a stay-maker; subsequently became an exciseman at Lewes; but was dismissed for keeping a tobacconist's shop, an arrangement clearly incompatible with his duties as a revenue officer. He first attracted attention by a smart pamphlet, advocating the propriety of advancing the salaries of excisemen: became known |