My fellow citizens, events in Iraq have now reached the final days of decision. For more than a decade, the United States and other nations have pursued patient and honorable efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime without war. That regime pledged to reveal and destroy all its weapons of mass destruction as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Since then, the world has engaged in 12 years of diplomacy. We have passed more than a dozen resolutions in the United Nations Security Council. We have sent hundreds of weapons inspectors to oversee the disarmament of Iraq. Our good faith has not been returned. The Iraqi regime has used diplomacy as a ploy to gain time and advantage. It has uniformly defied Security Council resolutions demanding full disarmament. Over the years, U.N. weapon inspectors have been threatened by Iraqi officials, electronically bugged, and systematically deceived. Peaceful efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime have failed again and again -- because we are not dealing with peaceful men. Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq's neighbors and against Iraq's people. The regime has a history of reckless aggression in the Middle East. It has a deep hatred of America and our friends. And it has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda. The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other. The United States and other nations did nothing to deserve or invite this threat. But we will do everything to defeat it. Instead of drifting along toward tragedy, we will set a course toward safety. Before the day of horror can come, before it is too late to act, this danger will be removed. The United States of America has the sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own national security. That duty falls to me, as Commander-in-Chief, by the oath I have sworn, by the oath I will keep. Recognizing the threat to our country, the United States Congress voted overwhelmingly last year to support the use of force against Iraq. America tried to work with the United Nations to address this threat because we wanted to resolve the issue peacefully. We believe in the mission of the United Nations. One reason the U.N. was founded after the second world war was to confront aggressive dictators, actively and early, before they can attack the innocent and destroy the peace. In the case of Iraq, the Security Council did act, in the early 1990s. Under Resolutions 678 and 687 -- both still in effect -- the United States and our allies are authorized to use force in ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. This is not a question of authority, it is a question of will. Last September, I went to the U.N. General Assembly and urged the nations of the world to unite and bring an end to this danger. On November 8th, the Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441, finding Iraq in material breach of its obligations, and vowing serious consequences if Iraq did not fully and immediately disarm. Today, no nation can possibly claim that Iraq has disarmed. And it will not disarm so long as Saddam Hussein holds power. For the last four-and-a-half months, the United States and our allies have worked within the Security Council to enforce that Council's long-standing demands. Yet, some permanent members of the Security Council have publicly announced they will veto any resolution that compels the disarmament of Iraq. These governments share our assessment of the danger, but not our resolve to meet it. Many nations, however, do have the resolve and fortitude to act against this threat to peace, and a broad coalition is now gathering to enforce the just demands of the world. The United Nations Security Council has not lived up to its responsibilities, so we will rise to ours. In recent days, some governments in the Middle East have been doing their part. They have delivered public and private messages urging the dictator to leave Iraq, so that disarmament can proceed peacefully. He has thus far refused. All the decades of deceit and cruelty have now reached an end. Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict, commenced at a time of our choosing. For their own safety, all foreign nationals -- including journalists and inspectors -- should leave Iraq immediately. Many Iraqis can hear me tonight in a translated radio broadcast, and I have a message for them. If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you. As our coalition takes away their power, we will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free. In a free Iraq, there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near. It is too late for Saddam Hussein to remain in power. It is not too late for the Iraqi military to act with honor and protect your country by permitting the peaceful entry of coalition forces to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. Our forces will give Iraqi military units clear instructions on actions they can take to avoid being attacked and destroyed. I urge every member of the Iraqi military and intelligence services, if war comes, do not fight for a dying regime that is not worth your own life. And all Iraqi military and civilian personnel should listen carefully to this warning. In any conflict, your fate will depend on your action. Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people. Do not obey any command to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, including the Iraqi people. War crimes will be prosecuted. War criminals will be punished. And it will be no defense to say, "I was just following orders." Should Saddam Hussein choose confrontation, the American people can know that every measure has been taken to avoid war, and every measure will be taken to win it. Americans understand the costs of conflict because we have paid them in the past. War has no certainty, except the certainty of sacrifice. Yet, the only way to reduce the harm and duration of war is to apply the full force and might of our military, and we are prepared to do so. If Saddam Hussein attempts to cling to power, he will remain a deadly foe until the end. In desperation, he and terrorists groups might try to conduct terrorist operations against the American people and our friends. These attacks are not inevitable. They are, however, possible. And this very fact underscores the reason we cannot live under the threat of blackmail. The terrorist threat to America and the world will be diminished the moment that Saddam Hussein is disarmed. Our government is on heightened watch against these dangers. Just as we are preparing to ensure victory in Iraq, we are taking further actions to protect our homeland. In recent days, American authorities have expelled from the country certain individuals with ties to Iraqi intelligence services. Among other measures, I have directed additional security of our airports, and increased Coast Guard patrols of major seaports. The Department of Homeland Security is working closely with the nation's governors to increase armed security at critical facilities across America. Should enemies strike our country, they would be attempting to shift our attention with panic and weaken our morale with fear. In this, they would fail. No act of theirs can alter the course or shake the resolve of this country. We are a peaceful people -- yet we're not a fragile people, and we will not be intimidated by thugs and killers. If our enemies dare to strike us, they and all who have aided them, will face fearful consequences. We are now acting because the risks of inaction would be far greater. In one year, or five years, the power of Iraq to inflict harm on all free nations would be multiplied many times over. With these capabilities, Saddam Hussein and his terrorist allies could choose the moment of deadly conflict when they are strongest. We choose to meet that threat now, where it arises, before it can appear suddenly in our skies and cities. The cause of peace requires all free nations to recognize new and undeniable realities. In the 20th century, some chose to appease murderous dictators, whose threats were allowed to grow into genocide and global war. In this century, when evil men plot chemical, biological and nuclear terror, a policy of appeasement could bring destruction of a kind never before seen on this earth. Terrorists and terror states do not reveal these threats with fair notice, in formal declarations -- and responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not self-defense, it is suicide. The security of the world requires disarming Saddam Hussein now. As we enforce the just demands of the world, we will also honor the deepest commitments of our country. Unlike Saddam Hussein, we believe the Iraqi people are deserving and capable of human liberty. And when the dictator has departed, they can set an example to all the Middle East of a vital and peaceful and self-governing nation. The United States, with other countries, will work to advance liberty and peace in that region. Our goal will not be achieved overnight, but it can come over time. The power and appeal of human liberty is felt in every life and every land. And the greatest power of freedom is to overcome hatred and violence, and turn the creative gifts of men and women to the pursuits of peace. That is the future we choose. Free nations have a duty to defend our people by uniting against the violent. And tonight, as we have done before, America and our allies accept that responsibility. Good night, and may God continue to bless America.

TO THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA. from the Pennsylvania Packet , April 4, 1782 CASTING my eye over a former publication (the Crisis, no. 9) on the loss of Charlestown, I was tempted to introduce this address by a quotation from the first paragraph of that number, as appeared to me exceedingly applicable to the present circumstance of the country. “Had America pursued her advantages with half the spirit she resisted her misfortunes, she would before now have been a conquering and a peaceful people; but lulled in the lap of soft tranquility, she rested on her hopes, and adversity only could convulse her into action.” This hath been the character of America in every part, and in every state and stage of the contest. Warmed by a love of liberty, and provoked by a sense of injuries, she encountered danger without fear, and misfortune without despondency: But no sooner was the point accomplished, then she returned with folded arms to rest, and seemed to wait with patience for new disasters. — Yet there is one reflection to be drawn from this character and conduct that is worth attending to, which is, that it is the sign and the natural effect of right principles, but not of right policy. Misfortune ever separates man in a bad cause, and unites them in a good one. The former are industrious only while they are prosperous, the latter while they are distressed. The one acts from impulse, the other from contrivance; and the whole mode and progress of their conduct, and their times of rest and action, are the reverse of each other. But, as we have learned knowledge from misfortune, let us likewise learn from mistakes; and wisely add for once, if we never do it again, the ardour of adversary to the strength of victory. Let us combine the glowing powers of resolute resistance to the tranquil advantages which conquest bestows; and render the present year as superior in system, as the latter was splendid in success. The progress and revolution of our domestic circumstances are as extraordinary as the revolution itself. We began with paper, and we end, with gold and silver. We sat out with parties, and we are approaching to unity. The strength, the property, and even the fashion of the country, are confederated in her support. Like robust and healthy youth, she hath shook off the agues of the winter, and steps forward with constitutional bloom and vigour. By suffering distresses, she has learned both to bear and to prevent them; and the experience of every day whether drawn from good fortune or from bad, whether from wisdom or mistake, have added something to her cause, and much to her judgment. From this general state of circumstances I shall proceed to more particular matters. In my last publication I stated the yearly expense of the war, namely, eight millions of dollars; the nature of the union by which the States are bound together; and the propriety of keeping the taxes for the defence of the country separate from the expences of government; the right of the people to be regularly informed of the monies received and expended; and the duty of the country to provide its several quotas. — Government and the people do not in America constitute distinct bodies. They are one, and their interest the same. Members of Congress, members of Assembly, or Council, or by any other name they may be called, are only a selected part of the people. They are the representatives of Majesty, but not majesty itself. That dignity exists inherently in the universal multitude, and, though it may be delegated, cannot be alienated. Their estates and property are subject to the same taxation with those they represent, and there’s nothing they can do, that will not equally affect themselves as well as others. If they call for supplies, they call on themselves in common with the country. The situation enables them to know the more secret circumstances of things, and that such or such revenues are necessary for the security and defense of their constituents, and the accomplishment of the great object for which they are chosen. And here the distinction ends. The furnishing ourselves with right ideas, and accustoming ourselves to right habits of thinking, have a powerful effect in strengthening and cementing the mind of the country and freeing it from the danger of partial or mistaken notions. It is not all the ardour which the love of liberty can inspire, nor the utmost fortitude which the most heroic virtue can create, that will of themselves make us successful conquerors. We must come down to order, system and method, and go through the cool and judicious, as well as the animating and elevated parts of patriotism. Method is to natural power, what flight is to human strength, without which a giant would lose his labour, and a country waste its force. At the commencement of the war much political wisdom was not absolutely necessary. The high spirit of the country in a great measure supplied its place, and the printing-presses furnished the means. They became our Peru and Mexico, and as we wanted we drew them forth. Any body of men might at that time have carried on the war, who had resolution enough to proceed; because the difficulties of finance were then unknown, and the money came created to their hands. But those times are changed, and there is now a call on the wisdom and judgment, as well as on the firmness and patriotism of the country. Our situation is such, that the mort is understood the better it will appear; and with the means at our power, we want nothing but the united disposition to employ them. When America resolves on Independence, and determined to be free, she naturally included within that resolution all the means, whether of manner money, necessary to effect it. She had laid herself out for greater sufferings, and the more expence and loss, that she has hitherto experienced, except in Carolina and Georgia. The idea of getting rich had not in those days in existence. While she expected was to live, and all she hope for was to be free. She had resolved to abandon her habitations, to desert her towns, and to form new settlements in the wilderness, rather than submit. There was no condition to which her imagination could extend, that was not preferable to the oppressions that threatened her; and the experience of several years has shewn her opinion just, and proved her resolution firm. Yet while the war was carried on by the massive general opposition, the business of the country got deranged. Agriculture, trade and commerce became neglected, and something like poverty began to appear. Yet the resolution suffered no abatement, and their losses serve to provoke them the higher. But experience has shewn that the way to enrich a country, and render it systematically formidable, is to give every possible rest to the inhabitants, that they may follow their various occupations undisturbed. A man who is harassed about, either by the inroads of the enemy, or by marching to oppose them, soon suffers more by loss of time and the collect of his affairs, somewhat a portion of taxes sufficient for his defence would amount to. And therefore it is to the good of the whole, as well as to the interest of the individual, that everyone, who can, sets himself down to his business, and contributes his quota of taxes is one of the first duties he owes to his family, to himself, and to his country. Every amusement ought to be dispensed with, every indulgence curtailed, and every possible economy practiced, both public and private, until a revenue sufficient for the protection and good of the country is obtained, and the debt to public justice satisfied. I have no idea that kind of policy which ends in expence, disappointment and disgrace; and those have ever been and ever will be the consequence of deficient and unequal revenues. America has resolved to defend yourself, and support her independence at all hazards and events. Every man’s portion of that charge becomes his debt of honor, interest and happiness; and see anyone indulging himself at home while that portion is unpaid, and the soldier who defends him suffering in the field, is the highest dishonour man can undergo. It is pity but some other word beside taxation had been devised for so noble an extraordinary occasion, as the protection of liberty in the establishment of an independant world. We have given to a popular subject and on popular name, and injured the service by a wrong assemblage of ideas. A man would be ashamed to be told that he signed a petition, praying that he might pay less than his share of the public expence, or that those who had trusted the public might never receive their money; yet he does the same thing when he petitions against taxation, and the only differences, that by taking shelter under the name, he seems to conceal the meanness he would otherwise blush at. Is it popular to pay our debts, to do justice, to defendant injured and insulted country, to protect the aged and the infant, and to give to liberty a land to live in? then must taxation, as the means by which those things are to be done, the popular likewise. But to take a more local view of matters. Why has the backcountry been ravaged by the repeated incursions of the enemy and the Indians, but from the inability of the revenue to provide means for their protection? And yet the inhabitants of those countries were among the first to petition against taxation. In so doing, they eventually prayed for their own distraction, and, unhappily for them, their prayer was answered. Their quota of taxes would have been trifling, compared with their losses, and, what is still worse, their domestic sorrows. Alas! how unwisely, how unfeelingly, does a man argue, when he puts the safety of his family in competition with his tax. There is so much of the honour, interest and independence of America staked upon taxation, that the subject must to every reflective mind make a strong impression. As we are now circumstanced, it is the criterion of public spirit; the touchstone over good affections; and he who pays it the instant it is called for, does more for his country’s good than the loudest talker in America. In vain are all our huzzas for liberty, without accompanying them with solid support. They will neither fill the soldier’s belly, nor cloathe his back, they will neither pay the public creditors, nor purchase our supplies. They are well enough in their places, and though they are the effusions of our hearts, they are no part of our substance. The assembly of this State, Pennsylvania, have unanimously gone through the bill for raising the sum of 1,120,000 Dollars, being there quota for the year: And as an example worthy both of notice and imitation, the oppressed and distressed State of South Carolina, notwithstanding the severity of its fate, has already done the same. Those persons know, by woeful experience, the value of defence, and that the inconvenience of struggling with attacks for the protection of the country is not to be named, in competition with the losses they have borne, and the sorrows and sufferings they have undergone. However inconvenient tax may be, we know it can last but for time. Our expences will cease with the war, and our taxation in consequence. But while the war continues, and so great a part of every thing that is dear and valuable tool country depends upon her revenue, I shall consider entry taxation is a popular good. When the war shall be over, the case will be totally altered, and my language, if I then speak at all, will be entirely different. Besides, America is a new character in the universe. She started with a clause divinely right, it struck at an object vast and valuable. A reputation for political integrity, perseverance, fortitude, and all the manly excellencies, stand high in the world, and it would be a thousand pities that, with those happy introductions into life, she suffered the lease spot or blot to fall upon her moral fame. Never let it be said, that the country who could do what America has done, defrauded the widow and the orphan of the property, and the soldier of his pay. The tax would be attended with some inconvenience; but what is inconvenience, when compared with the stress and the rolling and plunderings of an enemy. How many things a far greater inconvenience has America already undergone, nay, even flourished in the midst of, which she once thought impossible to be borne. I hold taxation, which is to be applied to her own defence in her own good, one of the lightest of her difficulties, when considered with those which were occasioned by the want of it. We have several times been on the crisis of destruction by the insufficiency of our public revenues, in the heart of America would have ached with concern and sorrow, could she had all times have known what her exact situation has been. It is now the only point we have to attend to, nay it is the only one that is worth attending to; for let us accomplish this, and the rest will follow; and a consolation which every man’s mind will feel, knowing that the public Treasury is furnished with inability of providing for the defence of the country will amply recompense the difficulties he may go through, and the endeavours he may take, in paying in his allotted share. We shall be freed from the just murmurs of the suffering soldier; our eyes and ears we no longer shocked with details of slighted faith and suspected credit; in the face are public, and of consequence of our private affairs, will wear a new and satisfied countenance. The idea, that the country cannot bear it, is a reproach upon her honour and firmness. She has borne ten times as much. Her fortitude and her principles have been tried in a thousand instances of severer fortune; and it is a paradox not to be explained, in which ought to be exploded, that the people whom no force or misfortune could conquer, no temptation seduce, should, at the summit of success, trepan themselves into destruction by ignoble and impolitical covetousness. Let us be, in every respect, such a nation as we ought to be, and show to the enemy that is no more in her power to conquer us by system than by arms. The press of America, with economy, is longer than that of Britain, managed as it is by corruption and extravagance. The people of America are not a poor people, why should they appear so. We heard our credit, our honour, our reputation in the world, by proclaiming ourselves what we are not, and give encouragement to the enemy to prolong the war, by holding out an idea of our want of money to carry it on. It is easy to see by the complexion of the New-York papers, that the present spirited exertions of the country to keep her public treasury supplied have wanted the last hopes of the enemy. It is a blow they never expected America to give, and their astonishment is as great as their despair. It is a remark, worth making, that the people here always been a step forwarder than their representatives. There never was a backwardness in the country to do its part, when the part to be done became known and understood. National money matters are naturally attended with the degree of intricacy, which renders them not so easily comprehended as those which are more simple and obvious. Those of America have, from the fluctuating state of the former currency, been involved in new and original difficulties, and it required much judicious management to bring them right, and a vigorous exertion in the country afterwards to keep them so. The present condition of our money matters, as concisely as they can be stated, is as follows: There is a large sum due to persons who have lent their money to the Loan-Office, and to those who have otherwise trusted the public. Those debts are to be ascertained and proved, and the money arising from the impost duty of five per cent. on all imported goods is to be applied as a fun for the payment of the interest and principal, until the whole of them shall be discharged. This is a provision made for our debts already contracted, and when once the interest on them shall be regularly drawn, and the principal put into a train for payment, they will become as valuable as bond debts. The sum of eight millions of dollars, which is apportioned out to be raised by United States, is for the maintenance and other expenses of the Army, and to defray the government charges of the continent. If this song is compared with the immense expence was great is that, the difference will appear exceedingly striking. She is obliged to raise upwards of ninety millions of dollars in taxes and loans every year, to do what we can accomplish, with ready money and frugality, for eight millions. So great is the contrast between a country sunk in corruption and extravagance, and one whose object is founded in just principles, and her plans regulated by good management. But the difference may be carried still further. When the war shall cease with us, our taxes for that purpose will cease with it. We know they cannot now last for any long time; whereas the taxes in Britain being late on only the purpose of paying the interest, and never the principle of her debts, must continue forever. The publishing the sums of money received from each State, and extended on their United account, will be attended with several good effects. It will give satisfaction, which is a necessary object in national concerns. It will create emulation, and detect delinquency. The opener and fair public business is transacted, the better it succeeds. Where no fraud is intended, there can be no occasion for concealment, and it is not only necessary that measures should be just, but that every body should know them to be so. A few days will now carry us to the period of seven years war, and so extraordinary is the case, that instead of the country becoming poorer and exhausted, she is grown rich and plentiful. There has been a singular fate attended all are once, for whenever we imagined we should be ruined, by not having something which could not be done without, it arrived, is if of itself, just time enough to prevent the mischief. The last remarkable instance was in the influx of hard money, almost at the very moment when the paper currency failed, by which the circumstances of public and private business are so materially improved, that matters cannot go wrong, if we set hardly about what is right. Common Sense. Source: https://www.thomaspaine.org/works/recently-discovered/the-necessity-of-taxation.html

DISSERTATION ON FIRST PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT THERE is no subject more interesting to every man than the subject of government. His security, be he rich or poor, and, in a great measure, his prosperity, are connected therewith; it is therefore his interest as well as his duty, to make himself acquainted with its principles, and what the practise ought to be. Every art and science, however imperfectly known at first, has been studied, improved, and brought to what we call perfection, by the progressive labours of succeeding generations; but the science of government has stood still. No improvement has been made in the principle, and scarcely any in the practice, till the American revolution began. In all the countries of Europe (except in France) the same forms and systems that were erected in the remote ages of ignorance still continue, and their antiquity is put in the place of principle; it is forbidden to investigate their origin or by what right they exist. If it be asked how has this happened, the answer is easy; they are established on a principle that is false, and they employ their power to prevent detection. Notwithstanding the mystery with which the science of government has been enveloped, for the purpose of enslaving, plundering and imposing upon mankind, it is of all things the least mysterious and the most easy to be understood. The meanest capacity cannot be at a loss, if it begins its enquiries at the right point. Every art and science has some point, or alphabet, at which the study of that art or science begins, and by the assistance of which the progress is facilitated. The same method ought to be observed with respect to the science of government. Instead then of embarrassing the subject in the outset with the numerous subdivisions, under which different forms of government have been classed, such as aristocracy, democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, &c. the better method will be to begin with what may be called primary divisions, or those under which all the several subdivisions will be comprehended. The primary divisions are but two: First, government by election and representation. Secondly, government by hereditary succession. All the several forms and systems of government, however numerous or diversified, class themselves under one or other of those primary divisions; for either they are on the system of representation, or on that of hereditary succession. As to that equivocal thing called mixed government, such as the late government of Holland, and the present government of England, it does not make an exception to the general rule, because the parts separately considered are either representative or hereditary. Beginning then our inquiries at this point, we have first to examine into the nature of those two primary divisions. If they are equally right in principle, it is mere matter of opinion which we prefer. If the one be demonstratively better than the other that difference directs our choice; but if one of them should be so absolutely false as not to have a right of existence the matter settles itself at once; because a negative proved on one thing, where two only are offered, and one must be accepted, amounts to an affirmative on the other. The revolutions that are now spreading themselves in the world have their origin in this state of the case; and the present war is a conflict between the representative system founded on the rights of the people, and the hereditary system founded in usurpation. As to what are called Monarchy, Royalty and Aristocracy, they do not, either as things or as terms, sufficiently describe the hereditary system; they are but secondary things or signs of the hereditary system, and which fall of themselves if that system has not a right to exist. Were there no such terms as Monarchy, Royalty and Aristocracy, or were other terms substituted in their place, the hereditary system, if it continued, would not be altered thereby. It would be the same system under any other titulary name as it is now. The character therefore of the revolutions of the present day distinguishes itself most definitely by grounding itself on the system of representative government, in opposition to the hereditary. No other distinction reaches the whole of the principle. Having thus opened the case generally, I proceed, in the first place, to examine the hereditary system, because it has the priority in point of time. The representative system is the invention of the modern world; and, that no doubt may arise as to my own opinion, I declare it before-hand, which is, that there is not a problem in Euclid more mathematically true than that hereditary government has not a right to exist. When therefore we take from any man the exercise of hereditary power, we take away that which he never had the right to possess, and which no law or custom could, or ever can, give him a title to . The arguments that have hitherto been employed against the hereditary system have been chiefly founded upon the absurdity of it, and its incompetency to the purpose of good government. Nothing can present to our judgment, or to our imagination, a figure of greater absurdity than that of seeing the government of a nation fall, as it frequently does, into the hands of a lad necessarily destitute of experience, and often little better than a fool. It is an insult to every man of years, of character, and of talents, in a country. The moment we begin to reason upon the hereditary system, it falls into derision; let but a single idea begin, and a thousand will soon follow. Insignificance, imbecility, childhood, dotage, want of moral character; in fine, every defect, serious or laughable, unite to hold up the hereditary system as a figure of ridicule. Leaving however the ridiculousness of the thing to the reflections of the reader, I proceed to the more important part of the question, namely, whether such a system has a right to exist? To be satisfied of the right of a thing to exist, we must be satisfied that it had a right to begin. If it had not a right to begin, it has not the right to continue. By what right then did the hereditary system begin? Let a man but ask himself this question, and he will find that he cannot satisfy himself with an answer. The right which any man or any family had to set itself up at first to govern a nation, and to establish itself hereditarily, was no other than the right which Robespierre had to do the same thing in France. If he had none, they had none. If they had any, he had as much; for it is impossible to discover superiority of right in any family, by virtue of which hereditary government could begin. The Capets, the Guelphs, the Robespierres, the Marats, are all on the same standing as to the question of right. It belongs exclusively to none. It is one step toward liberty, to perceive that hereditary government could not begin as an exclusive right in any family. The next point will be whether, having once begun, it could grow into a right by the influence of time? This would be supposing an absurdity; for either it is putting time in the place of principle, or making it superior to principle; whereas time has no more connection with, or influence upon principle, than principle has upon time. The wrong which began a thousand years ago is as much a wrong as if it began to-day; and the right which originates to-day, is as much a right as if it had the sanction of a thousand years. Time with respect to principles is an eternal NOW: it has no operation upon them: it changes nothing of their nature and qualities. But what have we to do with a thousand years? Our life-time is but a short portion of that period, and if we find the wrong in existence as soon as we begin to live, that is the point of time at which it begins to us; and our right to resist it, is the same as if it never existed before. As hereditary government could not begin as a natural right in any family, nor derive after its commencement any right from time, we have only to examine whether there exist in a nation a right to set it up, and establish it by what is called law, as has been done in England? I answer, NO; and that any law or any constitution made for that purpose is an act of treason against the right of every minor in the nation, at the time it is made, and against the rights of all succeeding generations. I shall speak upon each of those cases. First, of the minor, at the time such law is made. Secondly, of the generations that are to follow. A nation, in a collective sense, comprehends all the individuals of whatever age, from just born to just dying. Of these, one part will be minors and the other aged. The average of life is not exactly the same in every climate and country, but in general the minority in years are the majority in numbers, that is, the number of persons under twenty-one years, is greater than the number of persons above that age. This difference in number is not necessary to the establishment of the principle I mean to lay down, but it serves to show the justice of it more strongly. The principle would be equally as good if the majority in years were also the majority in numbers. The rights of minors are as sacred as the rights of the aged. The difference is altogether in the different age of the two parties, and nothing in the nature of the rights; the rights are the same rights; and are to be preserved inviolate for the inheritance of the minors when they shall come of age. During the minority of minors their rights are under the sacred guardianship of the aged. The minor cannot surrender them; the guardian cannot dispossess him; consequently, the aged part of a nation, who are the law-makers for the time being , and who, in the march of life are but a few years ahead of those who are yet minors, and to whom they must shortly give place, have not and cannot have the right to make a law to set up and establish hereditary government, or, to speak more distinctly, an hereditary succession of governors ; because it is an attempt to deprive every minor in the nation, at the time such a law is made, of his inheritance of rights when he shall come of age, and to subjugate him to a system of government, to which, during his minority, he could neither consent nor object. If a person who is a minor at the time such a law is proposed, had happened to have been born a few years sooner, so as to be of the age of twenty-one years at the time of proposing it, his right to have objected against it, to have exposed the injustice and tyrannical principles of it, and to have voted against it, will be admitted on all sides. If, therefore, the law operates to prevent his exercising the same rights after he comes of age as he would have had a right to exercise had he been of age at the time, it is, undeniably, a law to take away and annul the rights of every person in the nation who shall be a minor at the time of making such a law, and consequently the right to make it cannot exist. I come now to speak of government by hereditary succession, as it applies to succeeding generations; and to show that in this case, as in the case of minors, there does not exit in a nation a right to set it up. A nation, though continually existing, is continually in a state of renewal and succession. It is never stationary. Every day produces new births, carries minors forward to maturity, and old persons from the stage. In this ever-running flood of generations there is no part superior in authority to another. Could we conceive an idea of superiority in any, at what point of time, or in what century of the world, are we to fix it? To what cause are we to ascribe it? By what evidence are we to prove it? By what criterion are we to know it? A single reflection will teach us that our ancestors, like ourselves, were but tenants for life in the great freehold of rights. The fee-absolute was not in them, it is not in us, it belongs to the whole family of man, through all ages. If we think otherwise than this, we think either as slaves or as tyrants. As slaves, if we think that any former generation had a right to bind us; as tyrants, if we think that we have authority to bind the generations that are to follow. It may not be inapplicable to the subject, to endeavour to define what is to be understood by a generation in the sense the word is here used. As a natural term its meaning is sufficiently clear. The father, the son, the grandson, are so many distinct generations. But when we speak of a generation as describing the persons in whom legal authority resides, as distinct from another generation of the same description who are to succeed them, it comprehends all those who are above the age of twenty-one years, at the time that we count from; and a generation of this kind will continue in authority between fourteen and twenty-one years, that is, until the number of minors, who shall have arrived at age, shall be greater than the number of persons remaining of the former stock. For example: If France, at this or any other moment, contains twenty-four millions of souls, twelve millions will be males, and twelve females. Of the twelve millions of males, six millions will be of the age of twenty-one years, and six will be under, and the authority to govern will reside in the first six. But every day will make some alteration, and in twenty-one years every one of those minors who survives will have arrived at age, and the greater part of the former stock will be gone: the majority of persons then living, in whom the legal authority resides, will be composed of those who, twenty-one years before, had no legal existence. Those will be fathers and grandfathers in their turn, and, in the next twenty-one years (or less) another race of minors, arrived at age, will succeed them, and so on. As this is ever the case, and as every generation is equal in rights to another, it consequently follows, that there cannot be a right in any to establish government by hereditary succession, because it would be supposing itself possessed of a right superior to the rest, namely, that of commanding by its own authority how the world shall be hereafter governed, and who shall govern it. Every age and generation is, and must be (as a matter of right), as free to act for itself in all cases, as the age and generation that preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man, neither has one generation a property in the generations that are to follow. In the first part of the Rights of Man  I have spoken of government by hereditary succession; and I will here close the subject with an extract from that work, which states it under the two following heads. “First, of the right of any family to establish itself with hereditary power. “Secondly, The right of a nation to establish a particular family. “With respect to the first of these heads, that of a family establishing itself with hereditary powers on its own authority independent of the nation, all men will concur in calling it despotism, and it would be trespassing on their understanding to attempt to prove it.”But the second head, that of a nation, that is, of a generation for the time being, establishing a particular family with hereditary powers, it does not present itself as despotism on the first reflection; but if men will permit a second reflection to take place, and carry that reflection forward, even but one remove out of their own persons to that of their offspring, they will then see, that hereditary succession becomes in its consequences the same despotism to others, which they reprobated for themselves. It operates to preclude the consent of the succeeding generations, and the preclusion of consent is despotism. “In order to see this matter more clearly, let us consider the generation which undertakes to establish a family with hereditary powers, separately from the generations which are to follow. “The generation which first selects a person, and puts him at the head of its government, either with the title of king, or any other nominal distinction, acts its own choice, as a free agent for itself, be it wise or foolish. The person so set up is not hereditary , but selected and appointed; and the generation which sets him up, does not live under an hereditary government, but under a government of its own choice. Were the person so set up, and the generation who sets him up, to live for ever, it never could become hereditary succession; and of consequence, hereditary succession could only follow on the death of the first parties. “As therefore hereditary succession is out of the question with respect to the first generation, we have next to consider the character in which that generation acts with respect to the commencing generation, and to all succeeding ones. “It assumes a character to which it has neither right nor title; for it changes itself from a legislator to a testator, and affects to make a will and testament which is to have operation, after the demise of the makers, to bequeath the government; and it not only attempts to bequeath, but to establish on the succeeding generation a new and different form of government under which itself lived. Itself, as is already observed, lived not under an hereditary government, but under a government of its own choice; and it now attempts, by virtue of a will and testament, which it has not authority to make, to take from the commencing generation, and from all future ones, the right and free agency by which itself acted. “In whatever light hereditary succession, as growing out of the will and testament of some former generation, presents itself, it is both criminal and absurd. A cannot make a will to take from B the property of B, and give it to C; yet this is the manner in which what is called hereditary succession by law operates. A certain former generation makes a will, under the form of a law, to take away the rights of the commencing generation, and all future generations, and convey those rights to a third person, who afterwards comes forward, and assumes the government in consequence of that illicit conveyance.” The history of the English Parliament furnishes an example of this kind; and which merits to be recorded, as being the greatest instance of legislative ignorance and want of principle that is to be found in any country. The case is as follows: — The English Parliament of 1688, imported a man and his wife from Holland, William  and Mary , and made them King and Queen of England. Having done this, the said Parliament made a law to convey the government of the country to the heirs of William and Mary, in the following words: “We, the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, do, in the name of the people of England, most humbly and faithfully submit ourselves, our heirs and posterities , to William and Mary, their heirs and posterities , for ever.” And in a subsequent law, as quoted by Edmund Burke, the said Parliament, in the name of the people of England then living, binds the said people, their heirs and posterities, to William and Mary, their heirs and posterities, to the end of time . It is not sufficient that we laugh at the ignorance of such law-makers, it is necessary that we reprobate their want of principle. The Constituent Assembly of France (1789) fell into the same vice as the Parliament of England had done, and assumed to establish an hereditary succession in the family of the Capets as an act of the Constitution of that year. That every nation, for the time being , has a right to govern itself as it pleases, must always be admitted; but government by hereditary succession is government for another race of people, and not for itself; and as those on whom it is to operate are not yet in existence, or are minors, so neither is the right in existence to set it up for them, and to assume such a right is treason against the right of posterity. I here close the arguments on the first head, that of government by hereditary succession; and proceed to the second, that of government by election and representation; or, as it may be concisely expressed, representative government , in contra-distinction to hereditary government . Reasoning by exclusion, if hereditary government  has not a right to exist, and that it has not is provable, representative government  is admitted of course. In contemplating government by election and representation we amuse not ourselves in inquiring when or how, or by what right it began. Its origin is ever in view. Man is himself the origin and the evidence of the right. It appertains to him in right of his existence, and his person is the title deed. The true and only true basis of representative government is equality of rights. Every man has a right to one vote, and no more in the choice of representatives. The rich have no more right to exclude the poor from the right of voting, or of electing and being elected, than the poor have to exclude the rich; and wherever it is attempted, or proposed, on either side, it is a question of force and not of right. Who is he that would exclude another? — That other has a right to exclude him. That which is now called aristocracy implies an inequality of rights; but who are the persons that have a right to establish this inequality? Will the rich exclude themselves? No! Will the poor exclude themselves? No! By what right then can any be excluded? It would be a question, if any man, or class of men, have a right to exclude themselves; but be this as it may, they cannot have the right to exclude another. The poor will not delegate such a right to the rich, nor the rich to the poor, and to assume it is not only to assume arbitrary power, but to assume a right to commit robbery. Personal rights, of which the right of voting for representatives is one, are a species of property of the most sacred kind: and he that would employ his pecuniary property, or presume upon the influence it gives him, to dispossess or rob another of his property or rights, uses that pecuniary property as he would use fire-arms, and merits to have it taken from him. Inequality of rights is created by a combination in one part of the community to exclude another part from its rights. Whenever it be made an article of a constitution, or a law, that the right of voting, or of electing and being elected, shall appertain exclusively to persons possessing a certain quantity of property, be it little or much, it is a combination of the persons possessing that quantity to exclude those who do not possess the same quantity. It is investing themselves with powers as a self-created part of society, to the exclusion of the rest. It is always to be taken for granted, that those who oppose an equality of rights, never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves; and in this view of the case, pardoning the vanity of the thing, aristocracy is a subject of laughter. This self-soothing vanity is encouraged by another idea not less selfish, which is that the opposers conceive they are playing a safe game, in which there is a chance to gain and none to lose; that at any rate the doctrine of equality includes them , and that if they cannot get more rights than those whom they oppose and would exclude, they shall not have less. This opinion has already been fatal to thousands, who, not contented with equal rights , have sought more till they lost all, and experienced in themselves the degrading inequality  they endeavoured to fix upon others. In any view of the case it is dangerous and impolitic, sometimes ridiculous, and always unjust, to make property the criterion of the right of voting. If the sum, or value of the property upon which the right is to take place be considerable, it will exclude a majority of the people, and unite them in a common interest against the government, and against those who support it, and as the power is always with the majority, they can overturn such a government and its supporters whenever they please. If, in order to avoid this danger, a small quantity of property be fixed, as the criterion of the right, it exhibits liberty in disgrace, by putting it in competition with accident and insignificance. When a broodmare shall fortunately produce a foal or a mule, that by being worth the sum in question, shall convey to its owner the right of voting, or by its death take it from him, in whom does the origin of such a right exist? Is it in the man, or in the mule? When we consider how many ways property may be acquired without merit, and lost without crime, we ought to spurn the idea of making it a criterion of rights. But the offensive part of the case is that this exclusion from the right of voting implies a stigma on the moral character of the persons excluded; and this is what no part of the community has a right to pronounce upon another part. No external circumstance can justify it: wealth is no proof of moral character; nor poverty of the want of it. On the contrary, wealth is often the presumptive evidence of dishonesty; and poverty the negative evidence of innocence. If therefore property, whether little or much, be made a criterion, the means by which that property has been acquired ought to be made a criterion also. The only ground upon which exclusion from the right of voting is consistent with justice, would be to inflict it as a punishment for a certain time upon those who should propose to take away that right from others. The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case. The proposal therefore to disfranchise any class of men is as criminal as the proposal to take away property. When we speak of right we ought always to unite with it the idea of duties: rights become duties by reciprocity. The right which I enjoy becomes my duty to guarantee it to another, and he to me; and those who violate the duty justly incur a forfeiture of the right. In a political view of the case, the strength and permanent security of government is in proportion to the number of people interested in supporting it. The true policy therefore is to interest the whole by an equality of rights, for the danger arises from exclusions. It is possible to exclude men from the right of voting, but it is impossible to exclude them from the right of rebelling against that exclusion; and when all other rights are taken away the right of rebellion is made perfect. While men could be persuaded they had no rights, or that rights appertained only to a certain class of men, or that government was a thing existing in right of itself, it was not difficult to govern them authoritatively. The ignorance in which they were held, and the superstition in which they were instructed, furnished the means of doing it; but when the ignorance is gone, and the superstition with it; when they perceive the imposition that has been acted upon them; when they reflect that the cultivator and the manufacturer are the primary means of all the wealth that exists in the world, beyond what nature spontaneously produces; when they begin to feel their consequences by their usefulness, and their right as members of society, it is then no longer possible to govern them as before. The fraud once detected cannot be re-acted. To attempt it is to provoke derision, or invite destruction. That property will ever be unequal is certain. Industry, superiority of talents, dexterity of management, extreme frugality, fortunate opportunities, or the opposite, or the means of those things, will ever produce that effect, without having recourse to the harsh, ill-sounding names of avarice and oppression; and besides this there are some men who, though they do not despise wealth, will not stoop to the drudgery or the means of acquiring it, nor will be troubled with it beyond their wants or their independence; while in others there is an avidity to obtain it by every means not punishable; it makes the sole business of their lives, and they follow it as a religion. All that is required with respect to property is to obtain it honestly, and not employ it criminally; but it is always criminally employed when it is made a criterion for exclusive rights. In institutions that are purely pecuniary, such as that of a bank or a commercial company, the rights of the members composing that company are wholly created by the property they invest therein; and no other rights are represented in the government of that company than what arise out of that property; neither has that government cognizance of any thing but property . But the case is totally different with respect to the institution of civil government, organized on the system of representation. Such a government has cognizance of every thing , and of every man  as a member of the national society, whether he has property or not; and, therefore, the principle requires that every man  and every kind of right be represented, of which the right to acquire and to hold property is but one, and that not of the most essential kind. The protection of a man’s person is more sacred than the protection of property? and besides this, the faculty of performing any kind of work or services by which he acquires a livelihood, or maintaining his family, is of the nature of property. It is property to him; he has acquired it; and it is as much the object of his protection as exterior property, possessed without that faculty, can be the object of protection in another person. I have always believed that the best security for property, be it much or little, is to remove from every part of the community, as far as can possibly be done, every cause of complaint, and every motive to violence? and this can only be done by an equality of rights. When rights are secure, property is secure in consequence. But when property is made a pretense for unequal or exclusive rights, it weakens the right to hold the property, and provokes indignation and tumult; for it is unnatural to believe that property can be secure under the guarantee of a society injured in its rights by the influence of that property. Next to the injustice and ill-policy of making property a pretense for exclusive rights, is the unaccountable absurdity of giving to mere sound  the idea of property, and annexing to it certain rights; for what else is a title but sound. Nature is often giving to the world some extraordinary men who arrive at fame by merit and universal consent, such as Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, &c. They were truly great or noble. But when government sets up a manufactory of nobles, it is as absurd, as if she undertook to manufacture wise men. Her nobles are all counterfeits . This wax-work order has assumed the name of aristocracy; and the disgrace of it would be lessened if it could be considered only as childish imbecility. We pardon foppery because of its insignificance, and on the same ground we might pardon the foppery of Titles. But the origin of aristocracy was worse than foppery. It was robbery. The first aristocrats in all countries were brigands . Those of later times, sycophants. It is very well known that in England, (and the same will be found in other countries) the great landed estates now held in descent were plundered from the quiet inhabitants at the conquest. The possibility did not exist of acquiring such estates honestly. If it be asked how they could have been acquired, no answer but that of robbery can be given. That they were not acquired by trade, by commerce, by manufactures, by agriculture, or by any reputable employment is certain. How then were they acquired ? Blush, aristocracy, to hear your origin, for your progenitors were Thieves. They were the Robespierres and the Jacobins of that day. When they had committed the robbery, they endeavoured to lose the disgrace of it by sinking their real names under fictitious ones, which they called Titles. It is ever the practise of Felons to act in this manner. As property, honestly obtained is best secured by an equality of rights, so ill-gotten property depends for protection on a monopoly of rights. He who has robbed another of his property, will next endeavour to disarm him of his rights, to secure that property; for when the robber becomes the legislator he believes himself secure. That part of the government of England that is called the house of lords, was originally composed of persons who had committed the robberies of which I have been speaking. It was an association for the protection of the property they had stolen. But besides the criminality of the origin of aristocracy, it has an injurious effect on the moral and physical character of man. Like slavery it debilitates the human faculties; for as the mind, bowed down by slavery, loses in silence its elastic powers, so, in the contrary extreme, when it is buoyed up by folly, it becomes incapable of exerting them, and dwindles into imbecility. It is impossible that a mind employed upon ribbands and titles can ever be great. The childishness of the objects consumes the man. It is at all times necessary, and more particularly so during the progress of a revolution, and until right ideas confirm themselves by habit, that we frequently refresh our patriotism by reference to first principles. It is by tracing things to their origin that we learn to understand them: and it is by keeping that line and that origin always in view that we never forget them. An enquiry into the origin of rights will demonstrate to us that rights  are not gifts from one man to another, nor from one class of men to another; for who is he who could be the first giver? Or by what principle, or on what authority, could he possess the right of giving? A declaration of rights is not a creation of them, nor a donation of them. It is a manifest of the principle by which they exist, followed by a detail of what the rights are; for every civil right has a natural right for its foundation, and it includes the principle of a reciprocal guarantee of those rights from man to man. As therefore it is impossible to discover any origin of rights otherwise than in the origin of man, it consequently follows, that rights appertain to man in right of his existence only, and must therefore be equal to every man. The principle of an equality of rights  is clear and simple. Every man can understand it, and it is by understanding his rights that he learns his duties; for where the rights of men are equal, every man must finally see the necessity of protecting the rights of others as the most effectual security for his own. But if, in the formation of a constitution, we depart from the principle of equal rights, or attempt any modification of it, we plunge into a labyrinth of difficulties, from which there is no way out but by retreating. Where are we to stop? Or by what principle are we to find out the point to stop at, that shall discriminate between men of the same country, part of whom shall be free, and the rest not? If property is to be made the criterion, it is a total departure from every moral principle of liberty, because it is attaching rights to mere matter, and making man the agent of that matter. It is, moreover, holding up property as an apple of discord, and not only exciting but justifying war against it; for I maintain the principle, that when property is used as an instrument to take away the rights of those who may happen not to possess property, it is used to an unlawful purpose, as firearms would be in a similar case. In a state of nature all men are equal in rights, but they are not equal in power; the weak cannot protect themselves against the strong. This being the case, the institution of civil society is for the purpose of making an equalization of powers that shall be parallel to, and a guarantee of, the equality of rights. The laws of a country, when properly constructed, apply to this purpose. Every man takes the arm of the law for his protection as more effectual than his own; and therefore every man has an equal right in the formation of the government, and of the laws by which he is to be governed and judged. In extensive countries and societies, such as America and France, this right in the individual can only be exercised by delegation, that is, by election and representation; and hence it is that the institution of representative government arises. Hitherto, I have confined myself to matters of principle only. First, that hereditary government has not a right to exist; that it cannot be established on any principle of right; and that it is a violation of all principle. Secondly, that government by election and representation has its origin in the natural and eternal rights of man; for whether a man be his own law-giver, as he would be in a state of nature; or whether he exercises his portion of legislative sovereignty in his own person, as might be the case in small democracies where all could assemble for the formation of the laws by which they were to be governed; or whether he exercises it in the choice of persons to represent him in a national assembly of representatives, the origin of the right is the same in all cases. The first, as is before observed, is defective in power; the second, is practicable only in democracies of small extent; the third, is the greatest scale upon which human government can be instituted. Next to matters of principle , are matters of opinion , and it is necessary to distinguish between the two. Whether the rights of men shall be equal is not a matter of opinion but of right, and consequently of principle; for men do not hold their rights as grants from each other, but each one in right of himself. Society is the guardian but not the giver. And as in extensive societies, such as America and France, the right of the individual in matters of government cannot be exercised but by election and representation; it consequently follows that the only system of government consistent with principle, where simple democracy is impracticable, is the representative system. But as to the organical part, or the manner in which the several parts of government shall be arranged and composed, it is altogether matter of opinion . It is necessary that all the parts be conformable with the principle of equal rights ; and so long as this principle be religiously adhered to, no very material error can take place, neither can any error continue long in that part which falls within the province of opinion. In all matters of opinion, the social compact, or the principle by which society is held together, requires that the majority of opinions becomes the rule for the whole, and that the minority yields practical obedience thereto. This is perfectly conformable to the principle of equal rights: for, in the first place, every man has a right to give an opinion  but no man has a right that his opinion should govern the rest . In the second place, it is not supposed to be known before-hand on which side of any question, whether for or against, any man’s opinion will fall. He may happen to be in a majority upon some questions, and in a minority upon others; and by the same rule that he expects obedience in the one case, he must yield it in the other. All the disorders that have arisen in France during the progress of the Revolution have had their origin, not in the principle of equal rights , but in the violation of that principle. The principle of equal rights has been repeatedly violated, and that not by the majority but by the minority, and that minority has been composed of men possessing property, as well as of men without property; property, therefore, even upon the experience already had, is no more a criterion of character than it is of rights . It will sometimes happen that the minority are right, and the majority are wrong, but as soon as experience proves this to be the case, the minority will increase to a majority, and the error will reform itself by the tranquil operation of freedom of opinion and equality of rights. Nothing, therefore, can justify an insurrection, neither can it ever be necessary, where rights are equal and opinions free. Taking then the principle of equal rights as the foundation of the revolution, and consequently of the constitution, the organical part, or the manner in which the several parts of the government shall be arranged in the Constitution, will, as is already said, fall within the province of opinion. Various methods will present themselves upon a question of this kind, and though experience is yet wanting to determine which is the best, it has, I think, sufficiently decided which is the worst. That is the worst, which in its deliberations and decisions is subject to the precipitancy and passion of an individual; and when the whole legislature is crowded into one body it is an individual in mass. In all cases of deliberation it is necessary to have a corps of reserve, and it would be better to divide the representation by lot into two parts, and let them revise and correct each other, than that the whole should sit together and debate at once. Representative government is not necessarily confined to any one particular form. The principle is the same in all the forms under which it can be arranged. The equal rights of the people is the root from which the whole springs, and the branches may be arranged as present opinion or future experience shall best direct. As to that hospital of incurables (as Chesterfield calls it), the British House of Peers, it is an excrescence growing out of corruption; and there is no more affinity or resemblance between any of the branches of a legislative body originating from the right of the people, and the aforesaid House of Peers, than between a regular member of the human body and an ulcerated wen. As to that part of government that is called the executive , it is necessary in the first place to fix a precise meaning to the word. There are but two divisions into which power can be arranged. First, that of willing or decreeing the laws; secondly, that of executing or putting them in practice. The former corresponds to the intellectual faculties of the human mind which reasons and determines what shall be done; the second, to the mechanical powers of the human body that puts that determination into practice. If the former decides, and the latter does not perform, it is a state of imbecility; and if the latter acts without the predetermination of the former, it is a state of lunacy. The executive department therefore is official, and is subordinate to the legislative, as the body is to the mind in a state of health; for it is impossible to conceive the idea of two sovereignties, a sovereignty to will , and a sovereignty to act . The executive is not invested with the power of deliberating whether it shall act or not; it has no discretionary authority in the case; for it can act no other thing  than what the laws decree, and it is obliged to act conformably thereto; and in this view of the case the executive is made up of all the official departments that execute the laws, of which that which is called the judiciary is the chief. But mankind have conceived an idea that some kind of authority  is necessary to superintend the execution of the laws and to see that they are faithfully performed; and it is by confounding this superintending authority with the official execution that we get embarrassed about the term executive power . — All the parts in the governments of the united states of America that are called THE EXECUTIVE, are no other than authorities to superintend the execution of the laws; and they are so far independent of the legislative that they know the legislative only through the laws, and cannot be controuled or directed by it through any other medium. In what manner this superintending authority shall be appointed, or composed, is a matter that falls within the province of opinion. Some may prefer one method and some another; and in all cases, where opinion only and not principle is concerned, the majority of opinions forms the rule for all. There are however some things deducible from reason, and evidenced by experience, that serve to guide our decision upon the case. The one is never to invest any individual with extraordinary power; for besides his being tempted to misuse it, it will excite contention and commotion in the nation for the office. Secondly, never to invest power long in the hands of any number of individuals. The inconveniences that may be supposed to accompany frequent changes are less to be feared than the danger that arises from long continuance. I shall conclude this discourse with offering some observations on the means of preserving liberty ; for it is not only necessary that we establish it, but that we preserve it. It is, in the first place, necessary that we distinguish between the means made use of to overthrow despotism, in order to prepare the way for the establishment of liberty, and the means to be used after the despotism is overthrown. The means made use of in the first case are justified by necessity. Those means are, in general, insurrections; for whist the established government of despotism continues in any country it is scarcely possible that any other means can be used. It is also certain that in the commencement of a revolution, the revolutionary party permit to themselves a discretionary exercise of power  regulated more by circumstances than by principle, which, were the practise to continue, liberty would never be established, or if established would soon be overthrown. It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy. Had a constitution been established two years ago (as ought to have been done), the violences that have since desolated France, and injured the character of the revolution, would, in my opinion, have been prevented. The nation would then have had a bond of union, and every individual would have known the line of conduct he was to follow. But, instead of this, a revolutionary government, a thing without either principle or authority, was substituted in its place; virtue and crime depended upon accident; and that which was patriotism one day became treason the next. All these things have followed from the want of a constitution; for it is the nature and intention of a constitution to prevent governing by party , by establishing a common principle that shall limit and control the power and impulse of party, and that says to all parties, THUS FAR SHALT THOU GO AND NO FARTHER. But in the absence of a constitution men look entirely to party; and instead of principle governing party, party governs principle. An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. THOMAS PAINE. July, 1795. PARIS

from the Pennsylvania Packet , November 7, 1786. Paper Money, Paper Money, and Paper Money! is now, in several of the states, both the bubble and the inequity of the day. That there are some bad people concerned in schemes of this kind cannot be doubted, but the far greater part are misled. People are got so bewildered upon the subject that they put and mistake one thing for another. They say Paper Money has improved the country — Paper Money carried on the war, and Paper Money did a great many other fine things. Not one syllable of this is truth; it is all error from beginning to end. It was CREDIT which did these things, and that credit has failed, by non-performance, and by the country being involved in debt and the levity and instability of government measures. We have so far mistaken the matter that we have even mistaken the name. The name is not Paper Money, but Bills of Credit: But it seems as if we are ashamed to use the name, knowing how much we have abused the thing. All emissions of paper for government purposes is not making of money, but making use of credit to run into debt by. It is anticipating or forestalling the revenue of future years, and throwing the burden of redemption on future assemblies. It is like a man mortgaging his estate and leaving his successors to pay it off. But this is not the worst of it, it leaves us at last in the lurch by banishing the hard money, diminishing the value of the revenue, and filling up its place with paper, that may be like something to-day and to-morrow nothing. So far as regards Pennsylvania, she cannot emit bills of credit, because the assembly which makes such an emission cannot bind future assemblies either to redeem them or receive them in taxes. The precedent of revoking the charter of the bank, established by a former assembly, is a precedent for any assembly to undo what another has done. It circumscribes the power of any assembly to the year in which it sits; that is, it cannot engage for the performance of any thing beyond that time. And as an assembly cannot issue bills of credit and redeem them within the year, and as it cannot by that precedent bind a future assembly so to do, it therefore cannot with the necessary security do it at all; because people will not put confidence in the paper promises or paper emissions of those who can neither perform the engagement within the time their own power exist nor compel the performance after that time is past. The politicians of the project for revoking the bank charter (and it was besides most wantonly done), to use a trite saying, aimed at the pidgeon and shot the crow — they fired at the bank and hit their own paper. As to making those bills what are called legal tenders, we have no such thing in this state, which is one reason they have not depreciated more: But as it is a matter which engrosses the attention of some other states, I shall offer a few remarks on it. The abuse of any power always operates to call the right of that power in question. To judge of the right or power of any assembly in America to make those bills a legal tender, we must have recourse to the principles on which civil government is founded; for if such an act is not compatible with those principles, the assembly which assumes such a power, assumes a power unknown in civil government, and commits treason against its principles. The fundamental principles of civil government are security of our rights and persons as freemen, and security of property. A tender law, therefore, cannot stand on the principles of civil government, because it operates to take away a man’s share of civil and natural freedom, and to render property insecure. If a man had a hundred silver dollars in his possession, as his own property, it would be a strange law that should oblige him to deliver them up to any one who could discover that he possessed them, and take a hundred paper dollars in exchange. Now the case, in effect, is exactly the same; if he has lent a hundred hard dollars to his friend, and is compelled to take a hundred paper ones for them. The exchange is against his consent, and to his injury, and the principles of civil government provides for the protection, and not for the violation of his rights and property. The state, therefore, that is under the operation of such an act, is not in a state of civil government, and consequently the people cannot be bound to obey a law which abets and encourages treason against the first principles on which civil government is founded. The principles of civil government extend in their operation to compel the exact performance of engagements entered into between man and man. The only kind of legal tenders that can exist in a country under a civil government is the particular thing expressed and specified in those engagements or contracts. That particular thing constitutes the legal tender. If a man engages to sell and deliver a quantity of wheat, he is not to deliver rye, any more than he who contracts to pay in hard money is at liberty to pay in paper or in any thing else. Those contracts or bargains have expressed the legal tender on both sides, and no assumed or presumptuous authority of ant assembly can dissolve or alter them. Another branch of this principle of civil government is, that it disowns the practice of retrospective laws. An assembly or legislature cannot punish a man by any new law made after the crime is committed; he can only be punished by the law which existed at the time he committed the crime. This principle of civil government extends to property as well as to life; for a law made after the time that any bargain or contract was entered into between individuals can no more become the law for deciding that contract, than, in the other case, it can become the law for punishing the crime; both of those cases must be referred to the laws existing at the time of the crime was done or the bargain made. Each party then knew the relative situation they stood in with each other, and on that law and on that knowledge they acted, and by no other can they be adjudged — Therefore all tender laws which apply to the alteration of past contracts, by making them dischargable on either side, different to what was the law at the time they were made, is of the same nature as that law which inflicts a punishment different to what was the law at the time the crime was committed: For in all cases of civil government the law must be before the act. But there was no illegality in tender laws, they are naturally defective on another consideration. They cannot bind all and every interest in the state, because they cannot bind the state itself. They are, therefore, compulsive where they ought to be free; that is, between man and man, and are naturally free where, if at all, they ought to be compulsive: for in all cases where the state reserves to itself the right of freeing itself, it cannot bind the individual, because the right of the one stands on as good ground as that of the other. Common Sense *Philadelphia, Nov. 3, 1786. Source: https://www.thomaspaine.org/works/recently-discovered/attack-on-paper-money-laws.html

ON THE AFFAIRS OF THE STATE. from the Pennsylvania Packet , September 21, 1786. At the commencement of the present constitution, it was strongly opposed, and as strongly contended for. This gave existence to two parties, which have since maintained nearly an equal contest, sometimes the one, and sometimes the other, prevailing at elections. Among those who at that time opposed the alteration of the constitution, I bore my share, in a number of publications, entitled “A serious address to the people of Pennsylvania on the present state of their affairs.” Whether a single legislative Assembly, or a legislature composed of two branches, is best suited to support the just principles of equal liberty, is a point I never touched upon in any of those publications. My aim was to quiet the dispute, and prevent it from entangling the country, at a time when the utmost harmony of its powers was necessary to its safety. The constitution was upon experiment, and the manner in which a single House would use such in abundance of power would best determine whether it ought to be trusted with it. — Besides this, the constitution very prudently held out, in the forty-seventh section, the probability of its own defects, by appointing the means (by a convention) at the period of every seven years, of adding new articles or amending defective ones. The words in the said section are: — “The Council of Censors shall also have power to call a convention, to meet within two years after their sitting, if there appears to them an absolute necessity of amending any article of the constitution which may be defective, explaining such as may be thought not clearly expressed, and the adding such as are necessary for the preservation of the rights and happiness of the people.” Therefore, any alteration which experience or circumstances shall prove necessary or proper is consistent with the constitution itself. But the causes or reasons which then operated for not altering the constitution, could not be conclusively taken as causes or reasons for confirming it. With many people, those reasons went no further than to give the constitution a fair trial, or, rather, to give a single legislature a sufficient opportunity to shew with what degree of wisdom and prudence, impartiality and moderation, it would act. With others, the attempt to alter appeared to be ill-timed. And there were many who held an opinion, that has always prevailed among the political part of mankind, which is, that the form of government best calculated for preserving liberty in time of peace, is not the best form for conducting the operations of war; and that as the government of a single house had a considerable resemblance to the government of a single person, the present form, on account of the quickness of its execution, was preferable during the war to the proposed alterations. There is, however, one fact very clearly deduced from experience had, which is, that a single legislature, into the hands of whatever party it may fall, is capable of being made a compleat aristocracy for the time it exists: And that when the majority of a single house is made up on the ground of party prejudice, or fitted to be the dupes thereof, that its government, instead of comprehending the good of the whole dispassionately and impartially, will be that of party favor and oppression. To establish the present form as the best, it was absolutely necessary that the prejudices of party should have no operation within the walls of the legislature; for when it descends to this, a single legislature, on account of the superabundance of its power, and the uncontrouled rapidity of its execution, becomes as dangerous to the principles of liberty as that of a despotic monarchy. The present form was well intended, but the abuse of its power operates to its destruction. It withstood the opposition of its enemies, and will fall through the misconduct of its friends. At the commencement of the revolution, it was supposed that what is called the executive part of a government was the only dangerous part; but we now see that quite as much mischief, if not more, may be done, and as much arbitrary conduct acted, by a legislature. In establishing the Executive Council, the constitution took care to prevent its being subject to inconsistent and contradictory conduct, and sudden convulsions. This is done by providing, that the periods their elections shall not all expire at once. By this means, says the nineteenth section of the constitution, “there will in every subsequent year be found in the council a number of persons acquainted with the proceedings of the foregoing years, whereby the business will be more consistently conducted, and, moreover, the danger of establishing an inconvenient aristocracy be effectually prevented.” The council are as much the choice and representatives of the people as the assembly are, and have the, same common interest in the community; and if it is necessary to guard against such events in the council, it is equally so in the legislature; and this would undoubtedly have been the case, could the convention have foreseen the capricious and inconsistent conduct of assemblies. By the whole legislative power being entrusted to a single body of men, and that body expiring all at once, the state is subject to the perpetual convulsions of imperfect measures and rash proceedings; as by this means it may happen (as it has happened already) that a number of men, suddenly collected, unexperienced in business, and unacquainted with the grounds, reasons and principles, which former assemblies proceeded on in passing certain acts, and without seeking to inform themselves thereof, may precipitate the state into disorder by a confused medley of doing and undoing, and make the grievances they pretend to remove. Of this kind was the attack made by a late assembly on that most useful and beneficial institution, incorporated by a former assembly,* The Bank of North America*. The proceedings on this business are a stain to the national reputation of the state. They exhibit a train of little and envious thinking, a scene of passion of arbitrary principles and unconstitutional conduct; and the disgrace is filled up by assigning an untruth (which themselves have since acknowledged to) in the preamble to the act for annulling the charter of the Bank, as a cause for doing it. Such a disreputable circumstance in government could scarcely have happened, but from the cause I have already stated. For the Assembly which did it was newly formed, and elected on one of those sudden caprices which often happens in a free country, and there was not one man amongst them fully acquainted with the nature of the business they were going upon. Public Banks are reckoned among the honors, privileges and advantages of a free people, and are never found among those under a despotic government. It is the confidence which people have in the measures and principles of government, and the strict observance of faith and honor on the part of government, which encourage people to put their money into circulation by means of a public Bank. A faithless or arbitrary government cannot be trusted, and therefore in free countries only are Banks established. In this state it has been the means of restoring that credit and confidence among individuals, which for many years was lost, and without which, agriculture, commerce, and every species of business, must decline and languish. As gold and silver are not the natural products of Pennsylvania, we have no other hard money than what the produce of the country exported to foreign parts brings in. This being the case, the interest of the farmer and the merchant, the one being employed to raise the produce and the other to export it, are as naturally connected, as that of sowing the grain is connected with reaping the harvest; and any man must be held an enemy to the public prosperity, who endeavours to create a. difference, or dissolve the mutual interest existing between them. The Plough and the Sail are the Arms of the state of Pennsylvania, and their connection should be held in remembrance by all good citizens. As blood, tho’ taken from the arm, is nevertheless taken from the whole body, so the attempt to destroy the Bank eventually operated to distress the farmer as well as the merchant; for if the one is prevented in the means of buying the produce of the country, the other, of consequence, is deprived of the opportunities of selling. I shall conclude this paper with remarking, that so long as it shall be the choice of the people to continue the legislature in a single house, the circumstances of the country and the importance of the trust (being greater than that committed to any single body of men in any state in the union) evidently require, that the persons to be elected thereto be men freed from the bigotry and shackles of party, of liberal minds, and conversant in the means of increasing the riches of the state, and cultivating and extending the prosperity thereof. Common Sense. Philad. Sept.15, 1786. Source: https://www.thomaspaine.org/works/recently-discovered/on-the-affairs-of-the-state.html

Of the term “Liberty of the Press ” from the American Citizen , October 20, 1806. THE writer of this remembers a remark made to him by Mr. Jefferson concerning the English Newspapers, which at that time, 1787, while Mr. Jefferson was Minister at Paris, were most vulgarly abusive. The remark applies with equal force to the federal papers of America. The remark was, that “the licentiousness of the press produces the same effect as the restraint of the press was intended to do if the restraint, said he, was to prevent things being told, and the licentiousness of the press prevents things being believed when they are told.” We have in this State an evidence of the truth of this remark. The number of federal papers in the city and state of New-York, are more than five to one to the number of republican papers, yet the majority of the elections go always against the federal papers, which is demonstrative evidence that the licentiousness of those papers is destitute of credit. Whoever has made observations on the characters of nations will find it generally true that the manners of a nation, or of a party, can be better ascertained from the character of its press than from any other public circumstance. If its press is licentious, its manners are not good. Nobody believes a common liar, or a common defamer. Nothing is more common with Printers, especially of Newspapers, than the continual cry of the liberty of the press , as if because they are Printers they are to have more privileges than other people. As the term liberty of the press is adopted in this country without being understood, I will state the origin of it and shew what it means. The term comes from England, and the case was as follows. Prior to what is in England called the revolution , which was in 1688, no work could be published in that country without first obtaining the permission of an officer appointed by the government for inspecting works intended for publication. The same was the case in France, except that in France there were forty who were called censors , and in England there was but one, called Imprimateur. At the revolution the office of Imprimateur was abolished and as works could then be published without first obtaining the permission of the government officer, the press was, in consequence of that abolition, said to be free, and it was from this circumstance that the term liberty of the press  arose. The press, which is a tongue to the eye, was then put exactly in the case of the human tongue. A man does not ask liberty before hand to say something he has a mind to say, but he becomes answerable afterwards for the atrocities he may utter. In like manner, if a man makes the press utter atrocious things he becomes as answerable for them as if he had uttered them by word of mouth. Mr. Jefferson has said in his inaugural speech, that “ error of opinion might be tolerated, when reason was left free to combat it. ” This is sound philosophy in cases of error. But there is a difference between error and licentiousness. Some lawyers in defending their clients (for the generality of lawyers like Swiss soldiers will fight on either side) have often given their opinion of what they defined the liberty of the press to be. One said it was this, another said it was that, and so on, according to the case they were pleading. Now these men ought to have known that the term, liberty of the press  arose from a FACT, the abolition of the office of Imprimateur, and that opinion has nothing to do in the case. The term refers to the fact of printing free from prior restraint , and not at all to the matter printed whether good or bad. The public at large, or in case of prosecution, a jury of the country will be judges of the matter. COMMON SENSE. Source: https://www.thomaspaine.org/works/essays/american-politics-and-government/liberty-of-the-press.html

TO THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES. LETTER THE SECOND . from The National Intelligencer , Washington, DC, November 22, 1802. As the affairs of the country to which I am returned are of more importance to the world, and to me, than of that I have lately left (for it is through the new world the old must be regenerated, if regenerated at all) I shall not take up the time of the reader with an account of scenes that have passed in France, many of which are painful to remember and horrid to relate, but come at once to the circumstances in which I find America on my arrival. Fourteen years and something more have produced a change, at least among a part of the people, and I ask myself what it is? I meet or hear of thousands of my former connections who are men of the same principles and friendships as when I left them. But a non-descript race, and of equivocal generation, assuming the name of Federalist , a name that describes no character of principle good or bad, and may equally be applied to either, has since started up with the rapidity of a mushroom, and like a mushroom is withering on its rootless stalk. Are those men federalised  to support the liberties of their country or to overturn them? To add to its fair fame or riot on its spoils? The name contains no defined idea. It is like John Adams’s definition of a republic in his letter to Mr. Wythe of Virginia. It is , says he, an empire of laws and not of men. But as laws may be bad as well as good, an empire of laws may be the best of all governments, or the worst of all tyrannies. But John Adams is a man of paradoxical heresies, and consequently of a bewildered mind. He wrote a book entitled, “ A defense of the American Constitutions, ” and the principles of it are an attack upon them. But the book is descended to the tomb of forgetfulness, and the best fortune that can attend its author, is quietly to follow its fate. John was not born for immortality. But to return to federalism. In the history of parties and the names they assume, it often happens that they finish by the direct contrary principles with which they profess to begin, and thus it has happened with federalism. During the time of the old congress, and prior to the establishment of the federal government, the continental belt was too loosely buckled. The several states were united in name, but not in fact, and that nominal union had neither center nor circle. The laws of one state frequently interfered with, and sometimes opposed those of another. Commerce between state and state was without protection, and confidence without a point to rest on. The condition the country was then in, was aptly described by Pelatiah Webster, when he said, “ Thirteen staves and ne’er a hoop will not make a barrel. ” If then by federalist is to be understood, one who was for cementing the Union by a general government, operating equally over all the states in all matters that embraced the common interest, and to which the authority of the states severally was not adequate, for no one state can make laws to bind another, if I say by a federalist is meant a person of this description (and this is the origin of the name) I ought to stand first on the list of federalists , for the proposition for establishing a general government over the Union came originally from me in 1783, in a written memorial to Chancellor Livingston then secretary for foreign affairs to Congress, Robert Morris, minister of finance, and his associate, Governeur Morris, all of whom are now living, and we had a dinner and conference at Robert Morris’s on the subject. The occasion was as follows. Congress had proposed a duty of five per cent on imported articles, the money to be applied as a fund toward paying the interest of loans to be borrowed in Holland. The resolve was sent to the several states to be enacted into a law. Rhode Island absolutely refused. I was at the trouble of a journey to Rhode Island to reason with them on the subject. Some other of the states enacted it with alterations, each one as it pleased. Virginia adopted it, and afterwards repealed it, and the affair came to nothing. It was then visible, at least to me, that either Congress must frame the laws necessary for the Union, and send them to the several states to be enregistered without any alteration, which would in itself appear like usurpation on one part, and passive obedience on the other, or some method must be devised to accomplish the same end by constitutional principles, and the proposition I made in the memorial, was, to add a continental legislature to Congress to be elected by the several states. The proposition met the full approbation of the gentlemen to whom it was addressed, and the conversation turned on the manner of bringing it forward. G. Morris, in talking with me after dinner, wished me to throw out the idea in the newspaper. I replied that I did not like to be always the proposer of new things, that it would have too assuming an appearance; and besides, that I did not think the country was quite wrong enough to be put right. I remember giving the same reason to Doctor Rush at Philadelphia, and to Gen. Gates, at whose quarters I spent a day on my return from Rhode Island, and I suppose they will remember it, because the observation seemed to strike them. But the embarrassments encreasing, as they necessarily must from the want of a better cemented Union, the state of Virginia proposed holding a commercial convention, and that convention, which was not sufficiently numerous, proposed that another convention, with more extensive and better defined powers, should be held at Philadelphia, May 10, 1787. When the plan of the federal government formed by this convention was proposed, and submitted to the consideration of the several states, it was strongly objected to in each of them. But the objections were not on federal grounds, but on constitutional points. Many were shocked at the idea of placing, what is called executive power, in the hands of a single individual. — To them it had too much the form and appearance of a military government, or a despotic one. Others objected that the powers given to a President were too great, and that in the hands of an ambitious and designing man it might grow into tyranny as it did in England under Oliver Cromwell, and as it has since done in France. A republic must not only be so in its principles, but in its forms. The executive part of the federal government was made for a man, and those who consented, against their judgment, to place executive power in the hands of a single individual, reposed more on the supposed moderation of the person they had in view, than on the wisdom of the measure itself. Two considerations however overcame all objections. The one was the absolute necessity of a federal government. The other the rational reflection, that as government in America is founded on the representative system, any error in the first essay could be reformed by the same quiet and rational process by which the Constitution was formed; and that, either by the generation then living, or by those who were to succeed. If ever America lose sight of this principle, she will be no longer the land of liberty . The father will become the assassin of the rights of the son, and his descendants be a race of slaves. As many thousands who were minors are grown up to manhood since the name of federalist began, it became necessary, for their information, to go back and shew the origin of the name, which is now no longer what it originally was; but it was the more necessary to do this, in order to bring forward, in the open face of day, the apostasy of those who first called themselves federalists. To them it served as a cloak for treason, a mask for tyranny. Scarcely were they placed in the seat of power and office, than federalism was to be destroyed, and the representative system of government, the pride and glory of America, and the palladium of her liberties, was to be over- thrown and abolished. The next generation was not to be free. The son was to bend his neck beneath the father’s foot, and live deprived of his rights, under hereditary controul. Among the men of this apostate description is to be ranked the ex-President, John Adams . It has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and finish in contempt. May such be the fate of all such characters. I have had doubts of John Adams ever since the year 1776. In a conversation with me, at that time, concerning the pamphlet Common Sense, he censured it because it attacked the English form of government. John was for independence, because he expected to be made great by it; but it was not difficult to perceive, for the surliness of his temper makes him an awkward hypocrite, that his head was as full of kings, queens and knaves, as a pack of cards. But John has lost deal. When a man has a concealed project in his brain that he wants to bring forward, and fears will not succeed, he begins with it as physicians do by suspected poison, try it first on an animal; if it agree with the stomach of the animal he makes further experiments, and this was the way John took. His brain was teeming with projects to overturn the liberties of America, and the representative system of government, and he began by hinting it in little companies. The secretary of John Jay , an excellent painter and a poor politician, told me, in presence of another American, Daniel Parker , that in a company where himself was present, John Adams talked of making the government hereditary, and that as Mr. Washington had no children, it should be made hereditary in the family of Lund Washington. John had not impudence enough to propose himself in the first instance, as the old French Normandy Baron did, who offered to come over to be king of America, and if Congress did not accept his offer, that they would give him thirty thousand pounds for the generosity of it; but John, like a mole, was grubbing his way to it under ground. He knew that Lund Washington was unknown, for nobody had heard of him, and that as the President had no children to succeed him, the vice-president had, and if the treason had succeeded, and the hint with it, the goldsmith might be sent for to take measure of the head of John or of his son for a golden wig. In this case, the good people of Boston might have for a king the man they have rejected as a delegate. The representative system is fatal to ambition. Knowing, as I do, the consummate vanity of John Adams, and the shallowness of his judgment, I can easily picture to myself that when he arrived at the Federal City, he was strutting in the pomp of his imagination before the presidential house, or in the audience hall, and exulting in the language of Nebuchadnezzar, “ Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the honor of my Majesty! ” But in that unfortunate hour, or soon after, John, like Nebuchadnezzar, was driven from among men and fled with the speed of a post horse. Some of John Adams’s loyal subjects, I see, have been to present him with an address on his birth day; but the language they use is too tame for the occasion. Birth day addresses, like birth-day odes, should not creep along like mildrops down a cabbage leaf, but roll in a torrent of poetical metaphor. I will give them a specimen for the next year. Here it is. When an ant, in traveling over the Globe, lifts up its foot and puts it again on the ground, it shakes the earth to its center: But when YOU the mighty Ant of the East, was born, &c., &c., &c., the center jumped upon the surface. This, gentlemen, is the proper style of addresses from well bred ants to the monarch of the ant-hill, and as I never take pay for preaching, praying, politics or poetry, I make you a present of it. Some people talk of impeaching John Adams, but I am for softer measures. I would keep him to make fun of. He will then answer one of the ends for which he was born, and he ought to be thankful that I am arrived to take his part. I voted in earnest to save the life of one unfortunate king, and I now vote in jest to save another. It is my fate to be always playinh with fools. But to return to federalism and apostasy. The plan of the leaders of the faction was to overthrow the liberties of the new world, and place government on the corrupt system of the old. They wanted to hold their power by a more lasting tenure than the choice of their constituents. It is impossible to account for their conduct and the measures they adopted on any other grounds. But to accomplish that object a standing army and a prodigal revenue must be raised; and to obtain these pretences must be invented to deceive. Alarms of dangers that did not exist even in imagination, but in the direct spirit of lying, were spread abroad. Apostasy stalked through the land in the garb of patriotism, and the torch of treason blinded for a while the flame of liberty. For what purpose could an army of twenty-five thousand men be wanted? A single reflection might have taught the most credulous that while the war raged between France and England neither could spare a man to invade America. For what purpose, then, could it be wanted? The case carries its own explanation, it was wanted for the purpose of destroying the representative system, for it could be employed for no other. Are these men federalists? If they are, they are federalized to deceive and to destroy. The rage against Dr. Logan’s patriotic and voluntary mission to France (see Foner’s footnote at bottom of this letter) was excited by the shame they felt at the detection of the false alarms they had circulated. As to the opposition given by the remnant of the faction to the repeal of the taxes laid on during the former administration, it is easily accounted for. The repeal of those taxes was a sentence of condemnation on those who laid them on, and in the opposition they gave to that repeal, they are to be considered in the light of criminals standing on their defence, and the country has passed judgment upon them. THOMAS PAINE. City of Washington, Lovett’s Hotel, Nov.  19, 1802. Source: https://www.thomaspaine.org/works/major-works/to-the-citizens-of-the-united-states.html

TO THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES. LETTER THE FIRST . from The National Intelligencer , Washington, DC, November 15, 1802. AFTER an absence of almost fifteen years, I am again returned to the Country in whose dangers I bore my share, and to whose greatness I contributed my part. When I sailed for Europe in the spring of 1787 it was my intention to return to America the next year, and enjoy, in retirement, the esteem of my friends and the repose I was entitled to. I had stood out the storm of one revolution and had no wish to embark in another. But other scenes and other circumstances than those of contemplated ease were allotted to me. The French Revolution was beginning to germinate when I arrived in France. The principles of it were good, they were copied from America, and the men who conducted it were honest. But the fury of faction soon extinguished the one, and sent the other to the scaffold. Of those who began that revolution, I am almost the only survivor, and that through a thousand dangers. I owe this, not to the prayers of priests, nor to the piety of hypocrites, but to the continued protection of Providence. But while I beheld with pleasure the dawn of liberty rising in Europe, I saw, with regret the lustre of it fading in America. In less than two years from the time of my departure some distant symptoms painfully suggested the idea that the principles of the revolution were expiring on the soil that produced them. I received, at that time, a letter from a female literary correspondent, and in my answer to her, I expressed my fears on that head in the following pensive soliloquy. “You touch me on a very tender point when you say, that my friends on your side the water cannot be reconciled to the idea of my abandoning America even for my native England. They are right. I had rather see my horse Button eating the grass of Bordentown or Morisania than to see all the pomp and show of Europe. “A thousand years hence, for I must indulge a few thoughts, perhaps in less, America may be what you are now in this. The innocence of her character, that won the hearts of all nations in her favour, may sound like a romance, and her inimitable virtue as if it had never been. the ruins of that liberty from which thousands blade may just furnish materials for a village tale, or extort I from rustic sensibility; whilst the fashionable of the day, enveloped in dissipation, shall derive the principal and deny the fact. “when we contemplate the fault of Empires, and the extinction of the nations of the ancient world, we see a little more to excite our regretthen the moldering ruins of pompous palaces, magnificent monuments, lofty pyramids, and walls and towers of the most costly workmanship: when the Empire of America shall fall, the subject for contemplative sorrow will be infinitely greater crumbling rest for Marmol can inspire. it will not then be said to her stood a temple of vast antiquity, here rose a babel of invisible height, were there palace of sumptuous extravagance; but, here! ah painful thought! the noblest work of human wisdom, the grandest scene of human glory, the fair cause of freedom ROSE and FELL. Read this, and then ask if I forget America.” I now know, from the information I obtain upon the spot, that the impressions that then distressed me, for I was proud of America, were but too well founded. She was turning her back on her own glory, and making hasty strides in the retrograde path of oblivion. But a spark from the altar of SEVENTY SIX, unextinguished and unextinguishable through that long night of error, is again lighting up, in every part of the union, the genuine flame of rational liberty. As the French revolution advanced it fixed the attention of the world, and drew from the pensioned pen of Edmund Burke a furious attack. This brought me once more on the public theater of Politics, and occasioned the pamphlet RIGHTS OF MAN. It had the greatest run of any work ever published in the English language. The number of copies circulated in England, Scotland and Ireland, besides translations into foreign languages, was between four and five hundred thousand. The principles of that work were the same as those in Common Sense, and the effects would have been the same in England as it had been in America, could the vote of the nation been quietly taken, or had equal opportunities of consulting or acting existed. The only difference between the two works, was, that the one was adapted to the local circumstances of England, and the other to those of America. As to myself, I acted in both cases alike; I relinquished to the people of England, as I had done to those of America, all profits from the work. My reward existed in the ambition to do good, and the independent happiness of my own mind. But a faction, acting in disguise, was rising in America they had lost sight of first principles. They were beginning to contemplate government as a profitable monopoly, and the people as hereditary property. It is, therefore, no wonder that the Rights of Man   was attacked by that faction, and its author continually abused. But let them go on, give them rope enough, and they will put an end to their own insignificance. There is too much common sense and independence in America to be long the dupe of any faction, foreign or domestic. But, in the midst of the freedom we enjoy, the licentiousness of the papers called federal (and I know not why they are called so, for they are in their principles anti-federal and despotic), is a dishonour to the character of the country, and an injury to its reputation and importance abroad. They represent the whole people of America as destitute of public principle and private manners. As to any injury they can do at home to those whom they abuse, or service they can render to those who employ them, it is to be set down to the account of noisy nothingness. It is on themselves the disgrace recoils; for the reflection easily presents itself to every thinking mind, that those who abuse liberty when they possess it, would abuse power could they obtain it; and therefore they may as well take as a general motto for all such papers, WE, AND OUR PATRONS, ARE NOT FIT TO BE TRUSTED WITH POWER. There is in America, more than in any other Country, a large body of people who attend quietly to their farms, or follow their several occupations, who pay no regard to the clamours of anonymous scribblers, who think for themselves, and judge of Government, not by the fury of news-paper writers, but by the prudent frugality of its measures, and the encouragement it gives to the improvement and prosperity of the Country, and who, acting on their own judgment never come forward in an election but on some important occasion. When this body moves all the little barkings of scribbling and witless curs pass for nothing. To say to this independent description of men, you must turn out such of such persons at the next election, for they have taken off a great many taxes and lessened the expences of Government; they have dismissed my son, or my brother, or myself, from a lucrative office, in which there was nothing to do , is to shew the cloven foot of faction, and preach the language of ill-disguised mortification. In every part of the Union, this faction is in the agonies of death, and in proportion as its fate approaches it gnashes its teeth, and struggles. My arrival has struck it as with an hydrophobia, it is like the sight of water to canine madness. As this letter is intended to announce my arrival to my friends, and to my enemies, if I have any, for I ought to have none in America, and as introductory to others that will occasionally follow, I shall close it by detailing the line of conduct I shall pursue. I have no occasion to ask, and do not intend to accept, any place or office in the government. There is none it could give me that would be any ways equal to the profits I could make as an author, for I have an established fame in the literary world, could I reconcile it to my principles to make money by my politics or religion. I must be in every thing what I have ever been, a disinterested volunteer. My proper sphere of action is on the common floor of citizenship, and to honest men I give my hand and my heart freely. I have some manuscript works to publish, of which I shall give proper notice; and some Mechanical affairs to bring forward that will employ all my leisure time. I shall continue these letters as I see occasion, and as to the low party prints that chuse to abuse me, they are welcome. I shall not descend to answer them. I have been too much used to such common stuff to take any notice of it. The Government of England honoured me with a thousand martyrdoms by burning me in effigy in every town in that country, and their hirelings in America may do the same. THOMAS PAINE. City of Washington, Nov. 12, 1802. Source: https://www.thomaspaine.org/works/major-works/to-the-citizens-of-the-united-states.html

A challenge to the Federalists to declare their principles. from the American Citizen , October 17, 1806. The old names of Whig  and Tory  have given place to the later names of Republicans  and Federalists ; by contraction Feds . The word republican  contains some meaning though not very positive, except that it is the opposite of monarchy; but the word federalist contains none. It is merely a name without a meaning. It may apply to a gang of thieves federalized to commit robbery or to any other kind of association. When men form themselves into political parties, it is customary with them to make a declaration of their principles. — But the feds do not declare what their principles are; from which we may infer, that either they have no principles, and are mere snarlers , or that their principles are too bad to be told. Their object, however, is to get possession of power; and their caution is to conceal the use they will make of it. Such men ought not to be trusted. The republicans, on the contrary, are open and frank in declaring their principles, for they are of a nature that requires no concealment. The more they are published and understood the more they are approved. The principles of the republicans are to support the representative system of government and to leave it an inheritance to their children and to their children’s children — to cultivate peace and civil manners with all nations as the surest means of avoiding wars, and never to embroil themselves in the wars of other nations, nor in foreign coalitions — to adjust and settle all differences that might arise with foreign nations by explanation and negociation in preference to he sword, if it can be done — to have no more taxes than are necessary for the decent support of government — to pay every man for his service, and to have no more servants than are wanted. — The republicans hold, as a fixed uncontrovertible principle, that sovereignty resides in the great mass of the people, and that the persons they elect are the representatives of that sovereignty itself. They know of no such thing as hereditary government or of men born to govern them, for besides the injustice of it, it never can be known before they are born whether they will be wise men or fools. The republicans now challenge the federalists to declare their principles. But as the federalists have never yet done this, and most probably never will, we have a right to infer what their principles are from the conduct they have exhibited. The federalists opposed the suppression of the internal taxes laid on in the stupid, expensive, and unprincipled administration of John Adams; though it was at that time evident, and experience has since confirmed it for a fact, that those taxes answered no other purpose than to make offices for the maintenance of a number of their dependents at the expence of the public. From this conduct of theirs we infer, that could the federalists get again into power, they would again load the country with internal taxes. The federalists, while in power, proposed and voted for a standing army, and in order to induce the country to consent to a measure so unpopular in itself, they raised and circulated the fabricated falsehood that France was going to send an army to invade the United States; and to prevent being detected in this lie, and to keep the country in ignorance, they passed a law to prohibit all commerce and intercourse with France. As the pretence for which a standing was to be raised had no existence, not even in their own brain, for it was a wilful lie, we have a right to infer, that the object of the federal faction in raising that army, was to overthrow the representative system of government and to establish a government of war and taxes on the corrupt principles of the English government; and that, could they get again into power, they would again attempt the same thing. As to the inconsistencies, contradictions and falsehoods of the federal faction, they are too numerous to be counted. When Spain shut up the port of New-Orleans, so as to exclude from it the citizens of the United States, the federal faction in Congress bellowed out for war and the federal papers echoed the cry. The faction both in and out of Congress declared New Orleans to be of such vast importance that without it the Western States would be ruined. But mark the change! No sooner was the cession of New-Orleans and the territory of Louisiana obtained by peaceable negociation, and for many times less expence than a war, with all its uncertainties of success, would have cost, than this self-same faction gave itself the lie and represented the place as of no value. According to them it was worth fighting for at a great expence, but not worth having quietly at a comparatively small expence. It has been said of a thief that he had rather steal a purse than find one, and the conduct of the federalists on this occasion corresponds with that saying. But all these inconsistencies become understood, when we recollect that the leaders of the federal faction are an English faction, and that they follow, like a satellite, the variations of their principal. Their continual aim has been and still is, to involve the United States in a war with France and Spain. This is an English scheme, and the papers of the faction give every provocation that words can give, to provoke France to hostilities. The bugbear held up by them is that Bonaparte will attack Louisiana. This is an invention of the British emissary Cullen, alias Carpenter, and the association of the federalists, at least some of them, with this miserable emissary involves their own characters in suspicion. The republicans, as before said, are open, bold, and candid in declaring their principles. They are no skulkers. Let then the federalists, declare theirs. COMMON SENSE. Source: https://www.thomaspaine.org/works/essays/a-challenge-to-the-federalists.html

To The People Of America. IN  " Rivington's New York Gazette ," of December 6th, is a publication, under the appearance of a letter from London, dated September 30th; and is on a subject which demands the attention of the United States. The public will remember that a treaty of commerce between the United States and England was set on foot last spring, and that until the said treaty could be completed, a bill was brought into the British Parliament by the then chancellor of the exchequer, Mr. Pitt, to admit and legalize (as the case then required) the commerce of the United States into the British ports and dominions. But neither the one nor the other has been completed. The commercial treaty is either broken off, or remains as it began; and the bill in Parliament has been thrown aside. And in lieu thereof, a selfish system of English politics has started up, calculated to fetter the commerce of America, by engrossing to England the carrying trade of the American produce to the West India islands. Among the advocates for this last measure is Lord Sheffield, a member of the British Parliament, who has published a pamphlet entitled "Observations on the Commerce of the American States." The pamphlet has two objects; the one is to allure the Americans to purchase British manufactures; and the other to spirit up the British Parliament to prohibit the citizens of the United States from trading to the West India islands. Viewed in this light, the pamphlet, though in some parts dexterously written, is an absurdity. It offends, in the very act of endeavoring to ingratiate; and his lordship, as a politician, ought not to have suffered the two objects to have appeared together. The latter alluded to, contains extracts from the pamphlet, with high encomiums on Lord Sheffield, for laboriously endeavoring (as the letter styles it) "to show the mighty advantages of retaining the carrying trade." Since the publication of this pamphlet in England, the commerce of the United States to the West Indies, in American vessels, has been prohibited; and all intercourse, except in British bottoms, the property of and navigated by British subjects, cut off. That a country has a right to be as foolish as it pleases, has been proved by the practice of England for many years past: in her island situation, sequestered from the world, she forgets that her whispers are heard by other nations; and in her plans of politics and commerce she seems not to know, that other votes are necessary besides her own. America would be equally as foolish as Britain, were she to suffer so great a degradation on her flag, and such a stroke on the freedom of her commerce, to pass without a balance. We admit the right of any nation to prohibit the commerce of another into its own dominions, where there are no treaties to the contrary; but as this right belongs to one side as well as the other, there is always a way left to bring avarice and insolence to reason. But the ground of security which Lord Sheffield has chosen to erect his policy upon, is of a nature which ought, and I think must, awaken in every American a just and strong sense of national dignity. Lord Sheffield appears to be sensible, that in advising the British nation and Parliament to engross to themselves so great a part of the carrying trade of America, he is attempting a measure which cannot succeed, if the politics of the United States be properly directed to counteract the assumption. But, says he, in his pamphlet, "It will be a long time before the American states can be brought to act as a nation, neither are they to be feared as such by us." What is this more or less than to tell us, that while we have no national system of commerce, the British will govern our trade by their own laws and proclamations as they please. The quotation discloses a truth too serious to be overlooked, and too mischievous not to be remedied. Among other circumstances which led them to this discovery none could operate so effectually as the injudicious, uncandid and indecent opposition made by sundry persons in a certain state, to the recommendations of Congress last winter, for an import duty of five per cent. It could not but explain to the British a weakness in the national power of America, and encourage them to attempt restrictions on her trade, which otherwise they would not have dared to hazard. Neither is there any state in the union, whose policy was more misdirected to its interest than the state I allude to, because her principal support is the carrying trade, which Britain, induced by the want of a well-centred power in the United States to protect and secure, is now attempting to take away. It fortunately happened (and to no state in the union more than the state in question) that the terms of peace were agreed on before the opposition appeared, otherwise, there cannot be a doubt, that if the same idea of the diminished authority of America had occurred to them at that time as has occurred to them since, but they would have made the same grasp at the fisheries, as they have done at the carrying trade. It is surprising that an authority which can be supported with so much ease, and so little expense, and capable of such extensive advantages to the country, should be cavilled at by those whose duty it is to watch over it, and whose existence as a people depends upon it. But this, perhaps, will ever be the case, till some misfortune awakens us into reason, and the instance now before us is but a gentle beginning of what America must expect, unless she guards her union with nicer care and stricter honor. United, she is formidable, and that with the least possible charge a nation can be so; separated, she is a medley of individual nothings, subject to the sport of foreign nations. It is very probable that the ingenuity of commerce may have found out a method to evade and supersede the intentions of the British, in interdicting the trade with the West India islands. The language of both being the same, and their customs well understood, the vessels of one country may, by deception, pass for those of another. But this would be a practice too debasing for a sovereign people to stoop to, and too profligate not to be discountenanced. An illicit trade, under any shape it can be placed, cannot be carried on without a violation of truth. America is now sovereign and independent, and ought to conduct her affairs in a regular style of character. She has the same right to say that no British vessel shall enter ports, or that no British manufactures shall be imported, but in American bottoms, the property of, and navigated by American subjects, as Britain has to say the same thing respecting the West Indies. Or she may lay a duty of ten, fifteen, or twenty shillings per ton (exclusive of other duties) on every British vessel coming from any port of the West Indies, where she is not admitted to trade, the said tonnage to continue as long on her side as the prohibition continues on the other. But it is only by acting in union, that the usurpations of foreign nations on the freedom of trade can be counteracted, and security extended to the commerce of America. And when we view a flag, which to the eye is beautiful, and to contemplate its rise and origin inspires a sensation of sublime delight, our national honor must unite with our interest to prevent injury to the one, or insult to the other. Common Sense . New York, December 9, 1783. Source: https://www.thomaspaine.org/works/major-works/american-crisis/a-supernumerary-crisis-ii.html

Thought On The Peace, And The Probable Advantages Thereof. " THE  times that tried men's souls," are over- and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished. But to pass from the extremes of danger to safety- from the tumult of war to the tranquillity of peace, though sweet in contemplation, requires a gradual composure of the senses to receive it. Even calmness has the power of stunning, when it opens too instantly upon us. The long and raging hurricane that should cease in a moment, would leave us in a state rather of wonder than enjoyment; and some moments of recollection must pass, before we could be capable of tasting the felicity of repose. There are but few instances, in which the mind is fitted for sudden transitions: it takes in its pleasures by reflection and comparison and those must have time to act, before the relish for new scenes is complete. In the present case- the mighty magnitude of the object- the various uncertainties of fate it has undergone- the numerous and complicated dangers we have suffered or escaped- the eminence we now stand on, and the vast prospect before us, must all conspire to impress us with contemplation. To see it in our power to make a world happy- to teach mankind the art of being so- to exhibit, on the theatre of the universe a character hitherto unknown- and to have, as it were, a new creation intrusted to our hands, are honors that command reflection, and can neither be too highly estimated, nor too gratefully received. In this pause then of recollection- while the storm is ceasing, and the long agitated mind vibrating to a rest, let us look back on the scenes we have passed, and learn from experience what is yet to be done. Never, I say, had a country so many openings to happiness as this. Her setting out in life, like the rising of a fair morning, was unclouded and promising. Her cause was good. Her principles just and liberal. Her temper serene and firm. Her conduct regulated by the nicest steps, and everything about her wore the mark of honor. It is not every country (perhaps there is not another in the world) that can boast so fair an origin. Even the first settlement of America corresponds with the character of the revolution. Rome, once the proud mistress of the universe, was originally a band of ruffians. Plunder and rapine made her rich, and her oppression of millions made her great. But America need never be ashamed to tell her birth, nor relate the stages by which she rose to empire. The remembrance, then, of what is past, if it operates rightly, must inspire her with the most laudable of all ambition, that of adding to the fair fame she began with. The world has seen her great in adversity; struggling, without a thought of yielding, beneath accumulated difficulties, bravely, nay proudly, encountering distress, and rising in resolution as the storm increased. All this is justly due to her, for her fortitude has merited the character. Let, then, the world see that she can bear prosperity: and that her honest virtue in time of peace, is equal to the bravest virtue in time of war. She is now descending to the scenes of quiet and domestic life. Not beneath the cypress shade of disappointment, but to enjoy in her own land, and under her own vine, the sweet of her labors, and the reward of her toil.- In this situation, may she never forget that a fair national reputation is of as much importance as independence. That it possesses a charm that wins upon the world, and makes even enemies civil. That it gives a dignity which is often superior to power, and commands reverence where pomp and splendor fail. It would be a circumstance ever to be lamented and never to be forgotten, were a single blot, from any cause whatever, suffered to fall on a revolution, which to the end of time must be an honor to the age that accomplished it: and which has contributed more to enlighten the world, and diffuse a spirit of freedom and liberality among mankind, than any human event (if this may be called one) that ever preceded it. It is not among the least of the calamities of a long continued war, that it unhinges the mind from those nice sensations which at other times appear so amiable. The continual spectacle of woe blunts the finer feelings, and the necessity of bearing with the sight, renders it familiar. In like manner, are many of the moral obligations of society weakened, till the custom of acting by necessity becomes an apology, where it is truly a crime. Yet let but a nation conceive rightly of its character, and it will be chastely just in protecting it. None ever began with a fairer than America and none can be under a greater obligation to preserve it. The debt which America has contracted, compared with the cause she has gained, and the advantages to flow from it, ought scarcely to be mentioned. She has it in her choice to do, and to live as happily as she pleases. The world is in her hands. She has no foreign power to monopolize her commerce, perplex her legislation, or control her prosperity. The struggle is over, which must one day have happened, and, perhaps, never could have happened at a better time.* And instead of a domineering master, she has gained an ally whose exemplary greatness, and universal liberality, have extorted a confession even from her enemies. * That the revolution began at the exact period of time best fitted to the purpose, is sufficiently proved by the event.- But the great hinge on which the whole machine turned, is the Union of the States: and this union was naturally produced by the inability of any one state to support itself against any foreign enemy without the assistance of the rest. Had the states severally been less able than they were when the war began, their united strength would not have been equal to the undertaking, and they must in all human probability have failed.- And, on the other hand, had they severally been more able, they might not have seen, or, what is more, might not have felt, the necessity of uniting: and, either by attempting to stand alone or in small confederacies, would have been separately conquered. Now, as we cannot see a time (and many years must pass away before it can arrive) when the strength of any one state, or several united, can be equal to the whole of the present United States, and as we have seen the extreme difficulty of collectively prosecuting the war to a successful issue, and preserving our national importance in the world, therefore, from the experience we have had, and the knowledge we have gained, we must, unless we make a waste of wisdom, be strongly impressed with the advantage, as well as the necessity of strengthening that happy union which had been our salvation, and without which we should have been a ruined people. While I was writing this note, I cast my eye on the pamphlet, Common Sense, from which I shall make an extract, as it exactly applies to the case. It is as follows: "I have never met with a man, either in England or America, who has not confessed it as his opinion that a separation between the countries would take place one time or other; and there is no instance in which we have shown less judgment, than in endeavoring to describe what we call the ripeness or fitness of the continent for independence. "As all men allow the measure, and differ only in their opinion of the time, let us, in order to remove mistakes, take a general survey of things, and endeavor, if possible, to find out the very time. But we need not to go far, the inquiry ceases at once, for, the time has found us. The general concurrence, the glorious union of all things prove the fact. "It is not in numbers, but in a union, that our great strength lies. The continent is just arrived at that pitch of strength, in which no single colony is able to support itself, and the whole, when united, can accomplish the matter; and either more or less than this, might be fatal in its effects." With the blessings of peace, independence, and an universal commerce, the states, individually and collectively, will have leisure and opportunity to regulate and establish their domestic concerns, and to put it beyond the power of calumny to throw the least reflection on their honor. Character is much easier kept than recovered, and that man, if any such there be, who, from sinister views, or littleness of soul, lends unseen his hand to injure it, contrives a wound it will never be in his power to heal. As we have established an inheritance for posterity, let that inheritance descend, with every mark of an honorable conveyance. The little it will cost, compared with the worth of the states, the greatness of the object, and the value of the national character, will be a profitable exchange. But that which must more forcibly strike a thoughtful, penetrating mind, and which includes and renders easy all inferior concerns, is the union of the states . On this our great national character depends. It is this which must give us importance abroad and security at home. It is through this only that we are, or can be, nationally known in the world; it is the flag of the United States which renders our ships and commerce safe on the seas, or in a foreign port. Our Mediterranean passes must be obtained under the same style. All our treaties, whether of alliance, peace, or commerce, are formed under the sovereignty of the United States, and Europe knows us by no other name or title. The division of the empire into states is for our own convenience, but abroad this distinction ceases. The affairs of each state are local. They can go no further than to itself. And were the whole worth of even the richest of them expended in revenue, it would not be sufficient to support sovereignty against a foreign attack. In short, we have no other national sovereignty than as United States. It would even be fatal for us if we had- too expensive to be maintained, and impossible to be supported. Individuals, or individual states, may call themselves what they please; but the world, and especially the world of enemies, is not to be held in awe by the whistling of a name. Sovereignty must have power to protect all the parts that compose and constitute it: and as United States  we are equal to the importance of the title, but otherwise we are not. Our union, well and wisely regulated and cemented, is the cheapest way of being great- the easiest way of being powerful, and the happiest invention in government which the circumstances of America can admit of.- Because it collects from each state, that which, by being inadequate, can be of no use to it, and forms an aggregate that serves for all. The states of Holland are an unfortunate instance of the effects of individual sovereignty. Their disjointed condition exposes them to numerous intrigues, losses, calamities, and enemies; and the almost impossibility of bringing their measures to a decision, and that decision into execution, is to them, and would be to us, a source of endless misfortune. It is with confederated states as with individuals in society; something must be yielded up to make the whole secure. In this view of things we gain by what we give, and draw an annual interest greater than the capital.- I ever feel myself hurt when I hear the union, that great palladium of our liberty and safety, the least irreverently spoken of. It is the most sacred thing in the constitution of America, and that which every man should be most proud and tender of. Our citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is Americans — our inferior one varies with the place. So far as my endeavors could go, they have all been directed to conciliate the affections, unite the interests, and draw and keep the mind of the country together; and the better to assist in this foundation work of the revolution, I have avoided all places of profit or office, either in the state I live in, or in the United States; kept myself at a distance from all parties and party connections, and even disregarded all private and inferior concerns: and when we take into view the great work which we have gone through, and feel, as we ought to feel, the just importance of it, we shall then see, that the little wranglings and indecent contentions of personal parley, are as dishonorable to our characters, as they are injurious to our repose. It was the cause of America that made me an author. The force with which it struck my mind and the dangerous condition the country appeared to me in, by courting an impossible and an unnatural reconciliation with those who were determined to reduce her, instead of striking out into the only line that could cement and save her, A Declaration Of Independence , made it impossible for me, feeling as I did, to be silent: and if, in the course of more than seven years, I have rendered her any service, I have likewise added something to the reputation of literature, by freely and disinterestedly employing it in the great cause of mankind, and showing that there may be genius without prostitution. Independence always appeared to me practicable and probable, provided the sentiment of the country could be formed and held to the object: and there is no instance in the world, where a people so extended, and wedded to former habits of thinking, and under such a variety of circumstances, were so instantly and effectually pervaded, by a turn in politics, as in the case of independence; and who supported their opinion, undiminished, through such a succession of good and ill fortune, till they crowned it with success. But as the scenes of war are closed, and every man preparing for home and happier times, I therefore take my leave of the subject. I have most sincerely followed it from beginning to end, and through all its turns and windings: and whatever country I may hereafter be in, I shall always feel an honest pride at the part I have taken and acted, and a gratitude to nature and providence for putting it in my power to be of some use to mankind. Common Sense . Philadelphia, April 19, 1783. Source: https://www.thomaspaine.org/works/major-works/american-crisis/the-crisis-xiii.html