Thomas Paine

Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretences for revenue and taxation.

It watches prosperity as its prey, and permits none to escape without a tribute.

If universal peace, civilisation, and commerce are ever to be the happy lot of man, it cannot be accomplished but by a revolution in the system of governments.

While such governments continue, peace has not the absolute security of a day.

What inducement has the farmer, while following the plough, to lay aside his peaceful pursuit, and go to war with the farmer of another country? or what inducement has the manufacturer?

Are not conquest and defeat each of the same price, and taxes the never-failing consequence?--Though this reasoning may be good to a nation, it is not so to a government.

The one encourages national prejudices; the other promotes universal society, as the means of universal commerce.

The one measures its prosperity, by the quantity of revenue it extorts; the other proves its excellence, by the small quantity of taxes it requires.

Government founded on a moral theory, on a system of universal peace, on the indefeasible hereditary Rights of Man, is now revolving from west to east by a stronger impulse than the government of the sword revolved from east to west.

It interests not particular individuals, but nations in its progress, and promises a new era to the human race.

It robs industry of its honours, by pedantically making itself the cause of its effects; and purloins from the general character of man, the merits that appertain to him as a social being.

The laws which are enacted by governments, control men only as individuals, but the nation, through its constitution, controls the whole government, and has a natural ability to do so.