Jan 1, 1791
What is called the Parliament is made up of two Houses, one of which is more hereditary, and more beyond the control of the Nation than what the Crown (as it is called) is supposed to be.
Thomas Paine
The Public Record
Thomas Paine was an English-born American Founding Father, inventor, political philosopher, and statesman. His pamphlets Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783) framed the Patriot argument for independence from Great Britain at the outset of the American Revolution. Paine advanced Enlightenment-era arguments for human rights that shaped revolutionary discourse on both sides of the Atlantic.
gutenberg.org
Jan 1, 1791
Never, in the course of my observation, was delusion more successfully acted, nor a nation more completely deceived.
Jan 1, 1791
Measures which at other times it would censure it now approves, and acts persuasion upon itself to suffocate its judgment.
Jan 1, 1791
Transitions of this kind exhibit a Nation under the government of temper, instead of a fixed and steady principle; and having once committed itself, however rashly, it feels itself urged along to justify by continuance its first proceeding.
Jan 1, 1791
The case was not, which they liked best, but which they hated most; and the least hated passed for love.
Jan 1, 1791
To account for this sudden transition, it is proper to observe that there are two distinct species of popularity; the one excited by merit, and the other by resentment.
Jan 1, 1791
The animosity of the English nation, it is very well remembered, ran high; and, had the true principles of Liberty been as well understood then as they now promise to be, it is probable the Nation would not have patiently submitted to so…
Jan 1, 1791
A German Elector is in his electorate a despot; how then could it be expected that he should be attached to principles of liberty in one country, while his interest in another was to be supported by despotism?
Jan 1, 1791
Besides the endless German intrigues that must follow from a German Elector being King of England, there is a natural impossibility of uniting in the same person the principles of Freedom and the principles of Despotism, or as it is…
Jan 1, 1791
Considering that all the internal government is executed by the people, the taxes of England ought to be the lightest of any nation in Europe; instead of which, they are the contrary.
Jan 1, 1791
Nothing of monarchy appears in any part of it, except in the name which William the Conqueror imposed upon the English, that of obliging them to call him "Their Sovereign Lord the King.
Jan 1, 1791
That civil government is necessary, all civilized nations will agree; but civil government is republican government.