Robert R. Livingston (to Paine in Paris): "Make your will; leave the mechanics, the iron bridge, the wheels, etc., to America."
Joseph N. Moreau: "The Archimedes of the eighteenth century."
Elihu Palmer: "Probably the most useful man that ever lived."
Refutation of Charges of Immorality.
Louis Masquerier:
"Paine who wrote in man's defense,
'Rights of Man' and 'Common Sense,
Let not pious virulence
Stain his honest fame."
Paine has been represented by his religious enemies as the embodiment of all that is bad. He was, they assert, drunken, filthy, and immoral. Banished from respectable society, he associated, they say, only with the low and vile. The following testimony covers all the years that elapsed from the beginning of his public career to the end of his life.
Dr. Franklin, writing from England while Paine was yet a resident of that country, says: "Mr. Thomas Paine is very well recommended to me as an ingenious worthy young man."
That his previous life had been above serious reproach is shown by a letter to the Excise Office in which he says: "No complaint of the least dishonesty or intemperance has ever appeared against me."
James B. Elliot: "Paine's pamphlet ['Case of the Officers of Excise'] secured for him the acquaintance of Oliver Goldsmith, who became and remained his friend until his death, and by whom he was introduced to Benjamin Franklin."