United States’ Telegraph, 6 Sept. 1834, p. 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
FROM THE NEW YORK GAZETTE.
AN ORIGINAL THIEF.
By G. T.
A capital likeness of Thomas Paine was stolen from Thornburn’s, in Liberty street, one day last week, and when, too, the sun was at meridian blaze. This thing will sound strange in the London Coffee House, to read of a picture of Mr. Paine, hung up in a Friends’ Meeting House, but it only shows the importance of a word, when in or out of place—to be plain, it was taken from the seed store, late the Friends’ Meeting House.
This portrait hung for many years on a pillar in the store, for the gratification of the curious; but, learning that some of the elders of the sobersided brethren were scandalized for having such a picture hanging on the back of a pillar in the church, we, to remove the stumbling block out of the way, had this likeness of nothing, in, over, or under the earth, suspended above the stairs, (where many a better man has hung both before and since,) there it has hung, I suppose, for twenty-four calender months, ’till only a few days ago, when some trusty brother of the craft cut out the canvass, or drew out the nails, and so carried the head off, no doubt under his arm, leaving the shell (frame) as large as before, but the kernel was gone. This farce was acted while the porter was picking peas in the gallery, and the clerks weighing turnip seed by the counter.
When Cobbett scratched his bones out of the grave and carried them to Liverpool, some of the subalterns at Providence complained that he would not let the bones of the venerated dead lie still; and well might they complain, for it appears as if there had been a conspiracy to keep the bones and every thing connected with this man in a perpetual motion.
When he found that flesh and bones would hold no longer together, he requested of the Friends that they might lie in some snug corner among them; but they being a quiet people, and knowing what a noise he had made above ground, perhaps were afraid he might get at his old tricks and raise an insurrection among the dry bones below, so they would not have him there.
He then ordered his bones to be laid in his own farm at Westchester, but as soon as Cobbett found they were ripe, he digs them up, ships himself and them in one ship, lands at Liverpool, and here again the germ of an insurrection was likely to have sprung up among, and about these same bones. They could not be landed,—there was no law to fix the ad valorem duty on Mr. Paine’s bones: messages and messengers, posts and expresses, went between Liverpool and London. Cobbett stormed, the officers scolded, the people threatened to burn the bones; some to burn both bones and importer.
At length Cobbett got the bones, had them placed in a wagon, whereon he mounted himself, drove through the streets, stopping at the corners and haranguing the scavengers, holding up the bones in his hand, he exclaims at the top of his monstrous voice, “here, sirs, is the bones of a patriot.” This history I got from an eye witness. Having thus made the most of his friends at Liverpool, (if fame speaks true,) he next carried them to Birmingham, where he had them stamped into jacket buttons, and sold them to the Radicals at a very high price.
So this same chap who removed his portrait last week, I presume, must be another of those restless spirits who never let any thing lie, stand, or hang still, but are continually upsetting, confounding and tearing every thing to pieces, all by way of ‘experiment.’ Had he been an artist, and wished to improve in the art, and asked for a loan, he might have had it with pleasure.