There is a scarcity of facts, a painful obscurity connected with that part of Mr. Paine's life before he removed to America. In fact, history has given him to the world, as almost beginning life on his arrival at Philadelphia, near the close of the year 1774. At this time, in the full stature of manhood, a little less than forty years of age, we find him without a personal history, without any events in life sufficient to predicate his after life upon. Can the great life to come rest on nothing? How came that mighty mind so fully stored with history, so deeply analytic, so skilled in literature and science, so perfect in the art of expressing ideas, so highly disciplined and finely equipped, ready to do battle against kings and ministers and in behalf of human rights? Whence came that mighty pen, which has often been acknowledged to have done more for human freedom than the sword of Washington? Why this dumb silence of history? There comes to us no thought of Mr. Paine worth recording prior to this time. The proud and imposing superstructure stands on a basis fit and substantial, but it rises out of the depths of mystery. And what little we do know of him prior to this time, aside from the great fact of his birth, is only a series of minor facts, with great blanks not even capable of being filled up by the imagination.When a lad he went to school, but how long he went, or with what proficiency he studied, nobody knows. At sixteen he went aboard a privateer, but how long he served, or what made him quit the service, nobody knows. At twenty-seven he enters the employ of the English government as an exciseman, but was dismissed in a little over a year, nobody knows why. He now teaches school in London a year, but nobody knows with what success, or what were his accomplishments. He now quits London and letters, and the society of the learned, to return to the same petty office from which he had been dismissed, and for the trifling salary of less than fifty pounds a year. This office he now holds eight years more. Only a solitary ray of light illuminates this long period, when in the full tide of life. The chronicler renders it insignificant by a single dash of the pen. It is closed with another dismissal and dismal mystery. He now forever separates from his wife upon amicable terms, nobody knows why. During their after lives they neither of them marry, and never speak disrespectfully of each other. He leaves her all the property, and often sends her money during his after life. This obscure and twice dismissed English exciseman, it is said, now goes to talk with Benjamin Franklin, minister at the court of St. James, for several of the colonies; and, by what means nobody knows, obtains letters of the highest commendation, as an introduction to America, from her greatest and most honored citizen. A few months afterward Benjamin Franklin places in the hands of Mr. Paine important documents, for him to write a history of the political troubles and a defense of the colonies. A mighty work, worthy of a greater than Franklin! These facts stagger credulity. An obscure English exciseman, whose life is yet a blank, who has never been an author, save perhaps of some fugitive pamphlet to demand more pay for excise officers, is introduced to America, and is solicited and intrusted by America's greatest writer, thinker, patriot, and statesman, to do America's greatest work, and that work, too, which shall decide forever the fate of a world. Franklin! by what mysterious gift of divination hast thou found thy man? Is there no child of America among all the sons of Freedom equal to the task? Where art thou thyself? But the man Franklin found had no need of books or his documents. This obscure Englishman had the facts in his memory, the wrongs in his heart, the logic in his reason, and he thought for himself. His work was half written before Franklin had furnished him with the "necessary papers," and as a New Year's gift surprised the learned doctor with the first pamphlet of Common Sense.

The appearance of this greatest of political works which has blessed a world, with all the attending circumstances—the obscure life of Paine, the few wild events connected with it, the unprecedented action of Franklin, the introduction to the world of a profound thinker and almost perfect writer in the full ripeness of his intellect, and the beginning of an unceasing brilliant literary life at its meridian, are mysteries, save in this instance, unknown to history. Common Sense is a child of mystery. It is the best of this great author's productions. He himself so considered it, for he directs that his tombstone shall bear the simple inscription, Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense.

That Thomas Paine should have lived an easy, idle life, without any great effort in thought, study, or composition, for fifteen years immediately preceding the appearance of Common Sense, is what no writer, or thinker, or student, or statesman will believe. Great works of genius do not come in this way, much less profound political writings. Even inspiration would desert the connection. And that the proud, ambitious, literary adventurer, who shall dedicate his life to the good of mankind, who shall wrest the power from priests and the scepter from kings, should content himself to fill a poor and petty office under a king he despised, without some nobler object in view, and at that age too when the mind of man is the most aspiring, and drives to the greatest activity, is what no one who knows the heart of man, and the secret springs of action, will believe. But if it can be proven that Thomas Paine was Junius, then will every blank be filled and every mystery dispelled.

There is no external evidence, direct in its nature, as to the authorship of Junius; the evidence is internal. That the secret did not perish with Junius, no one can gainsay. But that he told it to no one, we are not at liberty to conclude. Time has sufficiently removed us from the scene of conflict. We are not bewildered with a multitude of claimants, with an army of witnesses for and against; nor are we disturbed by the clamors of the public, and the hearsay evidence of belligerant. In this universal calm I will bring Junius forth to speak for himself.