"Whoso looketh on a woman to lust after her." "Jesus" did not condemn the woman, who, under pressure of legal restriction, committed the "very act" of adultery; but he did condemn her accusers, in the severest and most cutting manner possible.

We have already shown the utter disregard which the supposed almighty father of Jesus showed-for monogamic marriage; that he did not even respect vested rights in the connection; that he who is believed to have said—" be ye perfect even as I am perfect," trampled on the marital rules according to which the poor carpenter, Joseph, had been betrothed to his Mary.

How well the son of Mary followed in the footsteps of his "Almighty" father, we have already demonstrated; and I shall close all I have to say on the supposed divinity of this subject, by calling the attention of the reader to the high respect which "Jesus" paid to the woman who had had five husbands, and who was, at the time he did her the honour to converse with her in public, and to even expound his mission to her, cohabiting with a man to whom she was not married. Nothing in scripture is plainer, than that Jesus was such an out and out free-lover in principle, as to hold that as soon as married people looked on others than each other with lustful eyes, they were no longer so, legally; but that their old connections should give place to new ones. In the perfect state which "Jesus" in his parabolical language called “Heaven,” he explicitly declared, in reference to what the old fogies of his time called marriage, "that they neither marry nor are given in marriage;" and if "the Saviour" said this in reprobation of the comparatively slight bondage which encumbered marriage in Judea, eighteen hundred years ago, what would he say were he to visit Christendom at the present time ?

Wouldn't he make the "whip of small cords" with which he thrashed the money changers, whiz about the ears of those legislators and judges, who dare christen their tyrannical and abominable inventions-marriage! who have the audacity to attribute their wretched expedients and stupid blunders to eternal wisdom?

So much as to the scriptural view of marriage. For information as to the effects of "legal marriage" in the cure of licentiousness, and in promoting the welfare of children, consult the records of prostitution, the alms-house registers, and

the swarms of beggars, by which you are continually importuned. As to the effect of the "holy bonds" on domestic felicity, I verily believe that if they were suddenly and completely severed, the dealers in arsenic who happened to have but little stock on hand, would bless their lucky stars.

And I speak from a knowledge of the causes which either favorably or unfavorably affect the human organism, in saying, that it is perfectly certain, that if the unnatural tie which arrogates the name of marriage, was universally severed, suicide would diminish one-half, idiocy and insanity would disappear, prolapsus uteri and hysteria would be almost unknown, the long catalogue of diseases consequent on hopeless despair, dreary ennui, and chronic fretfulness, would be shorn of nine-tenths its present length, the makers of little shrouds and coffins would have little or nothing to do, and the business of abortionists would be ruined. In short, if matrimonial bondage was abolished, and our social structure reorganized, so as to correspond with the change, the "broken spirit" that "drieth the bones," would so give place to "the merry heart, that doeth good like a medicine," that little of the doctor's medicine would be needed; and human life would receive an accession of at least twenty per cent. in length, and one hundred per cent. in value.

But indissoluble marriage, and its correlates, adultery, fornication, prostitution, the unmentionable crime against nature, and masturbation, are part and parcel of the present imperfect condition of all things in man's connection; of the remedy for which, I shall treat, when I come to consider the universality and thoroughness of the revolution in which Paine was, without but glimmeringly perceiving it, so efficient an actor.

In 1774, Mr. Paine went again to London; where, soon after his arrival, he made the acquaintance of Dr. Franklin (then on an embassy to the British government, from one of her North American provinces), who, perceiving in him abilities of no ordinary character, advised him to quit his native country, where he was surrounded by so many difficulties, and try his fortune in America; he also gave him a letter of introduction to one of his most intimate friends in Philadelphia.

Paine left England towards the end of the year 1774, and arrived in Philadelphia about two months thereafter.

PERIOD SECOND.

1774-1787.

FROM MR. PAINE'S ARRIVAL IN AMERICA, TO HIS DEPARTURE FOR FRANCE; EMBRACING HIS TRANSACTIONS IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

SHORTLY after the arrival of Mr. Paine in America, he was engaged as editor of the "Pennsylvania Magazine," the publication of which had just been commenced, by Mr. Aitkin, bookseller, of Philadelphia. This brought him acquainted with Dr. Rush.

Up to this period, Paine had been a whig. But from the practical tone of much of his editorial, it is probable that he now began to suspect that that speculative abstraction, British constitutionalism, had exhausted its usefulness in the economy of the social organism; and that human progress could reach a higher plane than that, the foundations of which were a theological church establishment, and its corresponding hotchpotch of kings, lords, and commons. And here I will remark, that Paine's distinguishing characteristic-the trait which constituted his greatness-was his capability of being ahead of his time. Were he bodily present now, he would be as far in advance of the miserable sham of freedom to which the majorityism which he advocated, though provisionally necessary, has dwindled, as he was in advance of the governmental expedient, which reached the stage of effeteness in his day. "The Crisis," instead of commencing with "These are the times that try men souls," would begin with "These are the times that exhaust men's power of endurance." Demagogism, with the whole power of the majority to enforce its tyranny, has declared that "to the victors belong the spoils;" that it has a right to bind the minority in all cases whatsoever. Its recklessness is in complete contrast with the regard which even Britain pays to the interests of her subjects; and in taxation, and peculation in office, it out-does Austrian despotism itself.

"Majorityism has carried its insolence so far as to despise nothing so much as the name and memory of him who risked his life, his honor, his all, to protect its infancy; it has scornfully refused his portrait a place on the walls of the very hall which once rang with popular applause of the eloquence which his soul-stirring pleas for elective franchise inspired."

"Yes; the city council of Philadelphia has, in 1859, in obedience to the commands of that public opinion, which was the court of last appeal, of him who first, on this continent, dared pronounce the words American Independence, refused his portrait a place by the side of his illustrious co-workers; thus rebuking, and most impudently insulting Washington, who in an ecstacy of admiration grasped the hand of the author of Common Sense,' and invited him to share his table; Franklin, who invited him to our shores; Lafayette, to whom he was dearer than a brother; Barlow, who pronounced him 'one of the most benevolent and disinterested of mankind;' Thomas Jefferson, who sent a government ship to reconduct him to our shores; and all the friends of popular suffrage in France, who, at the time that tried men's souls there, elected him to their national councils."

"Like the Turkish despot who cut off the head and blotted out of existence the family of his prime minister, to whom he owed the preservation of his throne, majorityism has crowded the name of its chief apostle almost out of the history of its rise."

"Freedom of speech, particularly on religious subjects, and on the government's pet project, is a myth; every seventh day the freedom of action is restricted to going to church, dozing away the time in the house, taking a disreputable stroll, or venturing on a not strictly legal ride. We have nothing like the amount of individual freedom which is enjoyed by the men and women of imperially governed France; and notwithstanding the muzzling of the press by Louis Napoleon, there could be published within the very shade of the Tuilleries, a truer and more liberal history of Democracy and its leaders, and of American Independence, than any considerable house, except the one from which this emanates, dare put forth, within the vast area over which the star-spangled banner waves.

"This is but a tithe of the despotism which public opinion, free to be formed by priests, and directed by demagogues, has inflicted: but a faint view of how abominably prostituted

liberty must inevitably become, if unregulated by science. If democracy has not exhausted all the good there was in it—if majorityism has not become effete, and as obnoxious to progress as monarchy ever was-in short, if what is now called liberty, is not slavery, there is not such a thing as slavery on the earth."

At the close of the year 1775, when the American Revolution had progressed as far as the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill, John Adams, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington, had met together to read the terrible despatches they had received. Having done which, they pause in gloom and silence. Presently Franklin speaks: "What," he asks, "is to be the end of all this? Is it to obtain justice of Great Britain, to change the ministry, to soften a tax? Or is it for"- He paused; the word independence

yet choked the bravest throat that sought to utter it.

At this critical moment, Paine enters. Franklin introduces him, and he takes his seat. He well knows the cause of the prevailing gloom, and breaks the deep silence thus "These States of America must be independent of England. That is the only solution of this question!" They all rise to their feet at this political blasphemy. But, nothing daunted, he goes on; his eye lights up with patriotic fire as he paints the glorious destiny which America, considering her vast resources, ought to achieve, and adjures them to lend their influence to rescue the Western Continent from the absurd, unnatural, and unprogressive predicament of being governed by a small island, three thousand miles off. Washington leaped forward, and taking both his hands, besought him to publish these views in a book. Paine went to his room, seized his pen, lost sight of every other object, toiled incessantly, and in December, 1775, the work entitled "Common Sense," which caused the Declaration of Independence, and brought both people and their leaders face to face with the work they had to accomplish, was sent forth on its mission. "That book," says Dr. Rush, "burst forth from the press with an effect that has been rarely produced by types and paper, in any age or country."

"Have you seen the pamphlet, Common Sense?" asked Major General Lee, in a letter to Washington; "I never saw such a masterly, irresistible performance. It will, if I mistake not, in concurrence with the trancendent folly and wickedness of the ministry, give the coup-de-grace to Great Britain.