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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 81, 6 April 1871, Page 2

To THE EdITOK OF THE NELSON EVENING MAIL. SiR-Uuder the heading of " Tom Paiue's Deathbed," which appeared in yesterday's issue of the Evening Mail, I observe you guve publicity to the notoriously false and malicious fabrication of an apostate priest named Grellefc, concerning the .last moments of that great man. It may be easy and safe -to the dead, but it is nevertheless cowardly and despicable. I have not the least doubt but that you published the story believing it to be true, but, as an impartial journalist, you ought to give publicity to the following statement, made by Judge Stallo during some proceedings that took place in the Supreme Court at Cincinnati in the year 1869 :-i- --" What," says the Judge, " was it that immediately preceded the Protestant Reformation, to which the gentleman owes lus right to speak in this court to-day ? ' There were two things which preceded it. The one was the cultivation of what is called the humanities. The other was the investigation of the physical sciences, by a number of Freethinkers, some of them imprisoned and burnt as such. It was the spirit of free enquiry, of disbelief in authority. It was this, which, injected at that time into the Catholic community produced Protestantism ; I will even go further, and say, that the writings of such men as John Joland, of Lord Bolingbroke, of David Hume, and of Thomas Paine, in this couutry (at whose grave I stood in the year 1846, with a Catholic priest at ray side, and saw the old ladi/ who ministered to him in his last hours —she was a presbyterian, and she remarked —"a nobler death I never witnessed"), strangely enough when that spirit was infused into Christianity of the founders of onr Republic, Republicanism was the consequence." I have only to remark as an additional proof of the falsehood of G-rellet's statement that Mr. Paine at his death, so far from being in a state of destitution wag in receipt of a liberal income from the Government of that Republic, which his writings had so materially contributed to establish. I am, &c> Vox. [We have no obection to inserting the above letter, but we wish it to be understood that we do not intend to open our columns to any further discussion on this subject. Ed. N. E. M.