METHOD.

IN the investigation of a subject so startling and novel, and especially when it leads to the criticism of a work which has found favor with the public, and now to be attributed to an author who has been publicly condemned, it becomes the critic to state clearly the plan of his argument, what he designs to do, and how he intends to do it. I therefore ask: Who was Junius? I answer: Thomas Paine. The object of this book is to prove this, and possibly to demonstrate it. To do this, I shall follow as closely as possible the order of events, giving parallels and coincidences in character, conduct, and composition of the masked and the open life.

I do not fear as to the proof of my proposition, but I shall aim higher, I shall try to demonstrate by the overwhelming weight of facts. Proof produces belief, demonstration knowledge. The innocent have been hanged on the evidence of proof, but a fact is established by demonstration. Demonstration follows proof, and knowledge follows belief; and ascending from the individual to mankind, we find the age of reason to succeed the age of faith. Science dwells in demonstration, and establishes principles from observed facts. Why may there not be a scientific criticism? To arrive at this

the writer must ascend to that eminence in feeling where the opposing prejudices of mankind can not reach him; he must rise above praise or censure, he must dwell alone in the light of reason, he must be a child of Truth. Vain, however, would it be to expect to find himself or a public devoid of prejudice. This is impossible, for prejudice is produced by strong conviction. It is a feeling which, like a magnet, points as the electric force directs. To counteract this force is to destroy the magnet. It is those who think deeply, and have investigated thoroughly, who have an enlightened prejudice, and those who take upon authority what others tell them, who have a blind prejudice; but those who neither think nor investigate for themselves may truly be said to have no prejudice. My object is to convince the understanding and thereby build up a prejudice in favor of my proposition, which shall have a foundation of fact and argument, not to be removed, and to be but little disturbed. The world is my jury, they shall decide upon the facts. Lord Bacon gave the world a method, this method is also mine: LET FACTS REVEAL

THE INWARD TRUTH OF NATURE.

MYSTERY.

THERE is a scarcity of facts, a painful obscurity connected with that part of Mr. Paine's life before he removed to America. In fact, history has given him to the world, as almost beginning life on his arrival at Philadelphia, near the close of the year 1774. At this time, in the full stature of manhood, a little less than forty years of age, we find him without a personal history, without any events in life sufficient to predicate his after life upon. Can the great life to come rest on nothing? How came that mighty mind so fully stored with history, so deeply analytic, so skilled in literature and science, so perfect in the art of expressing ideas, so highly disciplined and finely equipped, ready to do battle against kings and ministers and in behalf of human rights? Whence came that mighty pen, which has often been acknowledged to have done more for human freedom than the sword of Washington? Why this dumb silence of history? There comes to us no thought of Mr. Paine worth recording prior to this time. The proud and imposing superstructure stands on a basis fit and substantial, but it rises out of the depths of mystery. And what little we do know of him prior to this time, aside from the great fact of his birth, is only a series of minor facts, with great blanks not even capable of being filled up by the imagination.

When a lad he went to school, but how long he went, or with what proficiency he studied, nobody knows. At sixteen he went aboard a privateer, but how long he served, or what made him quit the service, nobody knows. At twenty-seven he enters the employ of the English government as an exciseman, but was dismissed in a little over a year, nobody knows why. He now teaches school in London a year, but nobody knows with what success, or what were his accomplishments. He now quits London and letters, and the society of the learned, to return to the same petty office from which he had been dismissed, and for the trifling salary of less than fifty pounds a year. This office he now holds eight years more. Only a solitary ray of light illuminates this long period, when in the full tide of life. The chronicler renders it insignificant by a single dash of the pen. It is closed with another dismissal and dismal mystery. He now forever separates from his wife upon amicable terms, nobody knows why. During their after lives they neither of them marry, and never speak disrespectfully of each other. He leaves her all the property, and often sends her money during his after life. This obscure and twice dismissed English exciseman, it is said, now goes to talk with Benjamin Franklin, minister at the court of St. James, for several of the colonies; and, by what means nobody knows, obtains letters of the highest commendation, as an introduction to America, from her greatest and most honored citizen. A few months afterward Benjamin Franklin places in the hands of Mr. Paine important documents, for him to write a history of the political troubles and a defense of the

colonies. A mighty work, worthy of a greater than Franklin! These facts stagger credulity. An obscure English exciseman, whose life is yet a blank, who has never been an author, save perhaps of some fugitive pamphlet to demand more pay for excise officers, is introduced to America, and is solicited and intrusted by America's greatest writer, thinker, patriot, and statesman, to do America's greatest work, and that work, too, which shall decide forever the fate of a world. Franklin! by what mysterious gift of divination hast thou found thy man? Is there no child of America among all the sons of Freedom equal to the task? Where art thou thyself? But the man Franklin found had no need of books or his documents. This obscure Englishman had the facts in his memory, the wrongs in his heart, the logic in his reason, and he thought for himself. His work was half written before Franklin had furnished him with the " necessary papers," and as a New Year's gift surprised the learned doctor with the first pamphlet of COMMON SENSE.

The appearance of this greatest of political works which has blessed a world, with all the attending circumstances the obscure life of Paine, the few wild events connected with it, the unprecedented action of Franklin, the introduction to the world of a profound thinker and almost perfect writer in the full ripeness of his intellect, and the beginning of an unceasing brilliant literary life at its meridian, are mysteries, save in this instance, unknown to history. COMMON SENSE is a child of mystery. It is the best of this great author's productions. He himself so considered it, for he directs