manuscript copy I have no doubt but it is full of errors. I wish you
would talk to Mr. ----- upon this subject as I wish to know by what
means this trick has been played, and from whom the publisher has got
possession of any copy.

T. PAINE.
"PARIS, December 4, 1795,"

Eaton's cheap edition appeared January 1, 1796, with the above letter
on the reverse of the title. The blank in the note was probably
"Symonds" in the original, and possibly that publisher was imposed
upon. Eaton, already in trouble for printing one of Paine's political
pamphlets, fled to America, and an edition of the "Age of Reason" was
issued under a new title; no publisher appears; it is said to be
"printed for, and sold by all the Booksellers in Great Britain and
Ireland." It is also said to be "By Thomas Paine, author of several
remarkable performances." I have never found any copy of this
anonymous edition except the one in my possession. It is evidently
the edition which was suppressed by the prosecution of Williams for
selling a copy of it.

A comparison with Paine's revised edition reveals a good many
clerical and verbal errors in Symonds, though few that affect the
sense. The worst are in the preface, where, instead of "1793," the
misleading date "1790" is given as the year at whose close Paine
completed Part First, -- an error that spread far and wide and was
fastened on by his calumnious American "biographer," Cheetham, to
prove his inconsistency. The editors have been fairly demoralized by,
and have altered in different ways, the following sentence of the
preface in Symonds: "The intolerant spirit of religious persecution