Boston May 3d 1759 Sr.,1

Some perticular affairs require my going to Halifax. I should have gone much sooner but have been hindred by Out Winds &c. so that it is uncertain whether I shall return by Taunton June Court.2 If I should not, I pray you to favour me so much as to permit the three Actions against the Widow Eldridge be continued.3

As my absense is not wilful but necessary and I have no time to in the Case I trust I need use ments nor intreatys, but relying on your Accustomed Curtisy I take liberty to subscribe my self with great respect Yr. Most hble. Servt.

R T PAINE

RC (Old Colony Historical Society, Taunton, Mass.); addressed: "To James Otis Esqr. to be delivered him at Taunton"; endorsed. The ellipses indicate missing text due to a hole in the paper.

1.

James Otis (1702–1778), a lawyer from Barnstable, was first elected to the House of Representa-136tives in 1745 and held the seat almost continuously until 1769. In 1760, while speaker of the House, Otis anticipated appointment as chief justice upon the death of Stephen Sewall but was thwarted by the appointment of Thomas Hutchinson to that post. This slight has often been interpreted as the origin of the opposition of his son James (1725–1783) to the standing government (See John W. Waters, The Otis Family in Provincial and Revolutionary Massachusetts [Chapel Hill, 1968]).

2.

RTP left Boston on May 17 but because of the weather did not reach Halifax until the 23d. His diary records only a few incidental occurences and does not discuss the business of Thomas Paine's estate, which was the purpose of the trip. He left Halifax on June 14 and returned to Boston on the 19th.

3.

On these various cases against Deliverance Eldredge, see RTP to Deliverance Eldredge, Taunton, March 21, 1763.

Boston May 6th. 1759 Dear Eunice,

The grand Subject of our Conversation Yesterday has been uppermost in my Mind ever since I heard of it, nor can you wonder that I, who forsook my own Plan of life to promote yours, & who have voluntarily undertaken the Anxious Charge of being yr. Guardian should feell myself alarmed at the bare proposal of so important a Transaction of yr. life. Really I feell many impressions that I don't care to express & more that I dont know how to. However I shall give you on proof of my freindship which you have denyd me & that is, speak my Mind expressly & fully & not leave you to guess it from dark hints; Really Eunice it has been the study of my life to advance the Comfort of yours, & I have always felt what I never cared to express, when I have found it so impracticable, least you should participate my disappointments, but tho' I have hitherto too much faild of that yet the same disposition prompts me to retard what I esteem your Unhappiness tho' I fail to promote the contrary; attend then to the most undisguised, disinterested, & affectionate Remonstrances that ever came from the heart of a brother; And I cannot then think this Overture should be settled in the Affirmative; the Unsurmountable Objection is yr. lamentable state of health; Unable for many Years past to eat, sleep, or work with the least degree of regularity, great part of yr. time entirely laid by & crippled & always the Companion Votary of undisturb'd Solitude & Ease; unable to endure the least Ruffle Contradiction or being diverted from yr. circular Ocomeny by any considerable addition of either Joy or Sorrow in any of their kinds. I might enlarge, but this is sufficient & true; how shall such a person be comfort-137able in that state; Admit yr. best Answer; that you'll then have a home at yr. disposal a bosom freind to solace & comfort you, raise yr. spirits & advance yr. happiness a thousand ways which the vigaries of yr. fancy excite. Well; but he's a sailor; O the tortures of that Extreme wch. Nature will for ever oppose to so much happiness! Absence in this case must be as insufferable as presence agreeable.

Besides, yr. mind which hitherto can bear no disturbance must then become a perfect Weathercock; every turn of Wind every billow Storm will rouze up yr. Passions & the billows of them will overwhelm yr. Soul; If females of strong nerves & strong stupid souls, surmize the dangers of Shipwrecks, founderings, famine Jayls &c. how will you bear the Twinges of perceptable Nerves & a volatile Imagination in this Inexhaustible field of Evils? This reallity of Pandora's Box? I need not enlarge here, for if Composure be your happiness Why enter that State which at its best is Discomposed? & why to a sailor, whose life is a mixture of the greatest Extremes? This is a sketch of those evils which arising in yr. own Mind will be intollerable to you on acct. of yr. bodily Infirmitys; let us now consider some evils which from the same Cause may arise from Another quarter & wch. will be infinitely less tolerable; I shall touch them delicately but yet intelligeably as it is important:

A droll sacrifice to Venus, you, what would the Goddess say? well might she blast you with the breath of Jealosy for mocking her Rites; is it possible you two should be suited? as incompatible as January & May: O but we marry for pure freindship: Well, then be marry'd to Mrs. Palmer; but she cant live with me & take care of me: Well, then it is something beside freindship, come live with me; O but there is Love too, but it is founded on freindship it must be a husband: Well then, Love, undeniably respects the Body as freindship does the Soul, therefore as Souls must be suited so must Bodys; I profess Continency; but it is in vain to deny it, the very pleasure which the Chastest Couple of different sexes take even in Common Conversation, tho' perhaps imperceptably yet really arises from the dictates of Nature & so it proceeds through the different Stages to the final Completion & wherever there is a disappointment it must always disgust & always sometimes prove fatal: pray then Consider that the happiness of every Person bears some proportion to that of its Partner, & I should think yours should be nearly connected; if so how would you bear the chilling Indifference of unsatisfy'd Love; with what Satisfaction part with him, who has the same motive in Love as in Trade138to seek that in foreign Climates which his own don't produce; O but his Virtue, his relish for sublimer Joys, his long growing freindship &c. will sufficiently ballance all those difficultys; I suppose his suppose his morality is equall to other's, but Patience in such a case is not founded on Nature & we have no business to look out of it, so that however much a man in such a case is warned beforehand, yet an overheated Imagination when overheated (which must needs be his case) is treacherous, & tho' it furnishes arguments to urge a man on will supply few to support him when it is cooled, & 'tis dangerous trusting to the assistance of Reason when the Passions are against you; I dont apply this to him any more than to any man of an Atheletick Constitution in the World; only this I would say, that as he has had no advantages of Improving his Mind, of strengthning his Virtue by knowledge & Philosophy & perhaps can only boast an Innocent Simplicity, (the Mock of every Temptation), you have no foundation to expect such constancy from him as from such others; but to drop this; what think you of weekly peevish children, an absent husband, encreased Sickness & in this forlorn Condition the anxietys first discrib'd? what think you of Cursing yr. Infants with a crazy Constitution & bringing a Race into the World to be miserable on many accts. In short you will enter the most troublesome state under the most troublesome Circumstances; I do not mean to inveigh against the state, perhaps it has Joys which vastly overpay the Sorrows, but then how inconsistent that with your Scheme? You require regular undeviating simple Composure & not a feast high relished by opposites; I think this representation quite sufficient without any thing more, but that you may veiw the matter at one glance I'll point out some Consequences which are founded in Nature & not in any Pride Caprice or Contradiction which may be supposed im me & that as they relate to the Person under Consideration I shall mention with all possible tenderness: It will not be in my Power to support that Freindship for you which I have hitherto done, nor express that Respect & Notice towards you which you may expect; you have hitherto been of my Rank but if you descend below it you cant expect me to follow you. How can I mentain that social Joy with a man which I have had with you, with a man so unequal to support it. I can be sociable &c. but the relish is gone? To introduce him into my acquaintance would impose on him, to discourse as suits me would mock him. Here then we grow cold; besides wt. possible comfort could I take in visiting a family the constituting of wch. I so much opposed. Would there not be a shyness139a distrust & suspicion, fatal Enemys to freindship. If I should be thought-full tired or any how Unsociable, why at once I'm disgusted, don't like my Entertainment, Company, the connection & a thousand other things, so that I should be under the fatal necessity of being a slave to ceremony, to observe punctilios that my best freinds don't require of me & to answer Expectations that are never express'd; I've had an Instance already. My not visiting you in your sickness was occasioned by a disgust; weak & ignorant minds, either of them are suspicious & he who is obliged to keep them easy has a Task indeed, such an one as must break freindship. My Girl, for-all all your fond Notions of kind actions, freindly behaviour & all that; I'll never marry a Person capable of such a base Surmise, for depend upon it if it can arise upon so small an occasion 'twill not want for motives; all this is Nature & cant be avoided. Possibly yr. sister may not argue in the same manner, but depend upon it, it must operate alike & a disgust will unavoidably ensue, in spight of any thing that can be done to the contrary; I say nothing all this while of the uneasiness arising in your own mind from the want of a sutable companion; I say nothing of mentainance; that may & may not, be sutable; I say nothing of Birth, Parentage, alliances; I speak only of those objections which result from the Nature of the thing; a State of Life at the best, very contrary to yr. professed disposition, and this proposed the most so of any; involved in the most anxious Cases of all sorts with a constitution quite unable to bear any; your most affectionate and cornerstone Freind as unavoidably as unwillingly estranged from you together with yr. other naturall Relations; Not the addition of one single freind of any importance by the new Connection; all this is certain. As for Widowhood, decay'd circumstances & many other Evils they are possible & following the other must be dismal; but perhaps you'll wonder that I argue so strongly & say that if you suffer 'tis for your self; Indeed if I cannot give reason sufficent to diswade you from the thing yet I trust they are enough to justify my proceedings & now you must consider how nearly some part of my happiness is connected with this transaction; If I have taken pleasure in yr. freindship, yr. Conversation, Correspondance & the hopes of enjoying them to a greater degree it is thus quite natural I should oppose what I think may deprive me of them especially when it appears to me that this alteration must be so much to yr. detriment; this Argument has more force in it than I care to urge for two reasons, first if savours too much of self Interest which I professedly put out of the Question but more140especially because possibly yr. pleasure in our Connection may not be equall to mine, & if it were, as I am not settled, if any overture should disturb it, it might prove a disappointment to you; I therefore chuse to rely on those Reasons which are drawn from yr. own happiness in the affair & as I regard that & act according to my solid Judgment I cannot consent; You must be sensible that I can have no mercenary Veiws in this advice, for they would be most served by consenting; I have endeavoured to act a faithful part by offering what I think sober Reasons void of all Passion of Love or Anger & in so doing have shewed you the highest respect; if you are not tainted with the most distructive of all passions I think these reasons must be sufficient, if you are 'tis in vain to have said so much; Weigh the matter soberly & whatever be the result of yr. determinations, don't suffer any suspicion of my good Will to arise in yr. mind, least as is too often the Case in Consultations of this Nature, I should have occasion to repent my medling, tho' I flatter my self that as my behaviour in this matter is different from what is common in the like case, that so the consequence will be as different, & you instead of growing more fixt from the remonstrances of a freind will hearken to the dictates of Prudence, & instead of recoiling at faithful Warning, will make returns of Gratitude, but upon the whole is if him you think you can find a freind that is nearer than a Brother, may Heaven bless the alliance.1

You see I have not spared for pains. I have wrote a Sermon at a Time when I had not a moment's Leisure, so you must make great allowance for bad writing, Expression & thoughts.

I wish yr. better health, undisturbed chearfullness & that true genuine Catholic stupidity which superiour to Reason can only defend us from the assaults of the Devil when he transforms himself into the appearance of a beneficent being, I mean Love. Yr. Loving brother freind and serv.

R. T. PAINE

Dft ; addressed: "To E.P.." Endorsed by Charles C. Paine: "(his sister Eunice) May, 1759."

1.

Eunice Paine did not marry her unidentified sailor and remained single throughout her life.