Tom Paine stole many of his materials from the French writers, and some from their able co-operators in England; but Tom was really so dexterous a manufacturer, that he made his political pieces have the appearance of originals. But most of his successors merely copied and repeated his sayings. Whitfield hitting the temper of the times, framed a new theory of religion, which found many votaries: Whitfield had genius, but a hundred speakers and writers retailed his commodities from tabernacles, joint-stools, cart-sheds, or written sermons, pamphlets, or exhortations. So were the new theories of politics, which originated in misemployed genius, bandied about among speakers and writers of no genius; and as a transmogrified coal-heaver, or a vender of quack medicines, might retail from his chapel the doctrines of Whitfield, and bring in, as a proof of
