Excerpt from Life and Writings of Thomas Paine: Containing a Biography Perhaps those two questions, properly asked, and justly answered, would have unraveled a great part of the mystery, and explained the rea son why he threw out, at such a particular time, such a strange address. They might likewise have asked, Whether there had been any former dis pute between Mr. Deane and Arthur or William Lee, and what it was about. Mr. Deane's round about charges against the Lees, are accompanied with a kind of rancor, that differs exceedingly from public-spirited zeal. For my part, I have but a very slender opinion of those patriots, if they can be called such, who never appear till pro voked to it by a personal quarrel, and then blaze away, the hero of their own tale, and in a whirl wind of their own raising; such men are very sel dom what the populace mean by the word stanch, and it is only by a continuance of serv ice that any public can become a judge of a man's principles. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.