Alexandria Gazette, Commercial And Political

From late London Papers.

Thomas Paine.--The following is an extract of a letter received by Mr. William Dilwyn, of Walthamstow, Essex, from his daughter in America. The writer is of the most unquestionable respectability, and appears recently to have received the information stated in it from a person equally entitled to credit. The latter resided in a family in the near neighborhood of the celebrated Thomas Paine who resided at Greenwich, near New York, and during his last illness had contributed to his comfort, by occasionally preparing and sending him food and refreshments more adapted to his situation than he easily enjoyed. These, the informant chose to be the bearer of to his bedside, although his personal circumstances were so deplorable that the air of his chamber could scarcely be endured. In performing this humane office, she had the opportunities of conversation with him, which authorise the writer's belief, that he exhibited another proof of Dr. Young's assertion, that "Men may live fools but fools they cannot die." The letter proceeds to say, that she found him frequently writing: and believed, from what she saw and heard, that, when his pain permitted, he was almost always so engaged, or in prayer, in the attitude of which she more than once saw him when he thought himself alone. One day he enquired if she had ever read the Age of Reason,' and on being answered in the affirmative, desired to know her opinion on that book. She replied she was but a child when she read it, and probably thought little of it. Upon which he said if her he expected a candid statement of what that opinion had been. She, then old enough to read, she was capable of forming some opinion, and from what she remembered, said she thought it the most dangerous book she had ever seen; that the more she read the more she wished to read, & the more she found her mind estranged from all that is good, and that from a conviction of its evil tendency, she had burnt it, without knowing to whom it belonged.--Paine replied to this, that he wished all who had read it was as wise as she: and added, "If ever the Devil had an agent upon earth, I have been one." At another time, when she was in the chamber, and the master of her family was sitting by his bedside, one of Paine's former companions came in--but seeing them with him, hastily went out drawing the door after him with violence, and saying, "Mr. Paine, you have lived like a man: I hope you will die like one." Upon which Paine, turning to his principal visitor, said, "You see what miserable comforters I have." An unhappy female, who had accompanied him from France, lamented her sad fate, observing, "For this man I have given up my family and friends, my property and religion: judge then of my distresses when he tells me that the principles he has taught me will not bear me out!"