Thomas Paine

There the poor are not oppressed, the rich are not privileged.

Industry is not mortified by the splendid extravagance of a court rioting at its expense.

All the revolutions till then had been worked within the atmosphere of a court, and never on the grand floor of a nation.

The parties were always of the class of courtiers; and whatever was their rage for reformation, they carefully preserved the fraud of the profession.

It is impossible that such governments as have hitherto existed in the world, could have commenced by any other means than a total violation of every principle sacred and moral.

The obscurity in which the origin of all the present old governments is buried, implies the iniquity and disgrace with which they began.

Because aristocracy has a tendency to deteriorate the human species.

The conqueror considered the conquered, not as his prisoner, but his property.

From such beginning of governments, what could be expected but a continued system of war and extortion?

There does not exist within such governments sufficient stamina whereon to engraft reformation; and the shortest and most effectual remedy is to begin anew on the ground of the nation.

Can we then be surprised at the abject state of the human mind in monarchical countries, when the government itself is formed on such an abject levelling system?--It has no fixed character.

The ragged relic and the antiquated precedent, the monk and the monarch, will moulder together.