Paine's dismissal was for him, for England, for America and for the world one of the most fortunate things that ever occurred. His loss of the excise office which occurred in April, 1774, took him to America in November of the same year. The independence of the United States and the agitation in behalf of popular government throughout the civilized world followed as a result.
Rev. Willet Hicks, a Quaker minister, who was with Paine when he died, testified that emissaries of the church tried to bribe him to slander Paine. He says: "I could have had any sums if I would have said anything against Thomas Paine, or if even I would have consented to remain silent. They informed me that the doctor was willing to say something that would satisfy them if I would engage to be silent. Mr. Paine was a good man—an honest man."
Rev. G. H. Humphrey: "He was honest. Nor was he uncharitable. He abstained from profanity and rebuked it in others."
Boston Post (Jan. 29, 1856): "Calumny has blistered her relentless hand in trying to stamp him as profane, intemperate and mendacious. The real truth appears to be that he was never habituated to profanity, to drunkenness, nor to falsehood; and that his calumniators are unconsciously his eulogists."
The Manchester Guardian, probably the most influential journal in the British empire, outside of London, says that while the popular conception of Paine is that of a blatant and immoral demagogue he was noted by his companions "for his shyness, his benevolence, and his gentleness." Joel Barlow, who saw much of him, both in London and Paris, as well as in America, says: "He was one of the most benevolent and disinterested of mankind." "He was always charitable to the poor beyond his means." Clio Rickman, most intimate of all his associates, says: "He was mild, unoffending, sincere, gentle, humble and unassuming." Dr. Bond, who was imprisoned with him in the Luxembourg, says: "He was the most conscientious man I ever knew." James Parton says: "He loved the truth for its own sake; and he stood by what he conceived to be the truth when all around him reviled it." Ellery Sedgwick says: "The goal which he sought was the happiness of his fellow-men."
Hon. George W. Julian, the first Antislavery nominee for Vice-President, one of the founders of the Republican party, and for many years a distinguished leader in Congress, says: "Paine was a perfectly unselfish and incorruptible patriot; he was a philanthropist in the best sense of the word; he was a man of the rarest intelligence and moral courage."
Charles Watts of England says: "Thomas Paine had a generous and affectionate nature, a mind superior to fear and selfish interests; a mind governed by the principles of uniform rectitude and integrity; a mind the same in prosperity and adversity; a mind which no bribe could seduce and no terror overawe."
Eva Ingersoll Brown: "Thomas Paine was one of the mental and moral giants of his time. He ranked among the foremost of his age. He was royal in rectitude, kingly in compassion, sovereign in sympathy. His reverence for truth and justice was sublime; his love of mercy and his ardor for liberty were unsurpassed.... His was a religion untainted by touch of dogma or of sect; a thing stainless and pure; of wondrous beauty and grandeur."
While the orthodox clergy, with a few noble exceptions, have been, to their overlasting shame, mainly responsible for the ignorance and prejudice that have prevailed concerning Thomas Paine, Liberal ministers, many of them, to their eternal honor, have braved public sentiment and dared to do him justice. In an address more than fifty years ago the Rev. Moncure D. Conway paid this tribute to the moral character of Thomas Paine: "In his life, in his justice, in his truth, in his adherence to high principles, I look in vain for a parallel in those times and in these times. I am selecting my words. I know I am to be held accountable for them." Rev. Theodore Parker says: "I think he did more to promote piety and morality among men than a hundred ministers of that age in America."
Prof. L. F. Laybarger: "Great was Thomas Paine intellectually, morally he was greater."