Thomas Paine was born at Thetford, Norfolk County, England, on the 29th of January, 1737, one hundred and twenty-one years ago to-day. His father was a Quaker, and a stay-maker, who brought up his son to Follow his own trade. In 1757, young Paine went to London, and soon after to Sandwich, where he married in 1760 a wife who died a year afterward. His fatherin-law was an exciseman, and obtained a similar post for Paine; but he soon left it and returned to London, where he for a time taught in a school; but he was again employed in the Excise and stationed at Lewes, in Sussex. He resigned this post in 1773-4 (his enemies afterward said he was dismissed, having been caught conniving with smugglers; but we believe this was a slander). Repairing again to London, he there sought out Benjamin Franklin, then agent for the American Colonies, by whose advice he migrated to this continent. He reached Philadelphia in 1774, and in January following became editor of "The Philosophical Magazine."

The differences between the mother country and the Colonies were coming rapidly to a head, and Paine-an earnest republican-threw his whole sole into the cause of the Colonies. His first pamphlet, "Common Sense," did more than any other essay to prepare the public mind for independence. The Legislature of Pennsylvania voted him £500 for it. He was after. ward employed by Congress as Clerk of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and wrote at intervals during our Revolutionary struggle fifteen numbers of "The Crisis," each a stirring appeal to the patriotism of the American People. He was constrained to resign his clerkship in 1779, but was sent in 1781 on a mission to negotiate a loan in France, which mission proved succcesful. On his return to America in 1785 he was made Clerk of the Assembly of Pennsylvania, received' from Congress a donation of $3,000, and the State of New-York bestowed on him the confiscated estate of Frederic Devoe, a royalist, containing 500 acres of good land with a good house in the town of New-Rochelle.

Paine returned to Europe in 1787, and published the first part of his "Rights of Man," in London, in 1791, and the second part in 1792. He was prosecuted for this as a "false, scandalous and malicious libel," and though defended by the celebrated Erskine, the jury convicted him without leaving their soats, and without hearing the Attorney-General sum up for the prosecution. For this defense Erskine lost his office of Attorney-General to the Prince of Wales. Paine escaped to France in September, 1792, and was received with open arms, having already been chosen ! from Calais to the National Convention. In that Convention he displeased the Jacobins (then in the ascendant) by voting for the banishment rather than the death of Louis XVIII. Toward the end of 1793, he was excluded from the Convention as a foreigner, and in 1794 was arrested by order of Robespierre, and imprisoned in the Luxembourg. While in prison he fuished his "Age of Reason," which was an able but violent and coarse attack on the Christian Religion.

Call of Robespierre restored him to liberty toward