Thomas Paine

If monarchy is a useless thing, why is it kept up anywhere? and if a necessary thing, how can it be dispensed with?

I see in America the generality of people living in a style of plenty unknown in monarchical countries; and I see that the principle of its government, which is that of the equal Rights of Man, is making a rapid progress in the world.

If I ask a man in America if he wants a King, he retorts, and asks me if I take him for an idiot?

I see in America, a government extending over a country ten times as large as England, and conducted with regularity, for a fortieth part of the expense which Government costs in England.

If a country does not understand its own affairs, how is a foreigner to understand them, who knows neither its laws, its manners, nor its language?

The wisdom of every country, when properly exerted, is sufficient for all its purposes; and there could exist no more real occasion in England to have sent for a Dutch Stadtholder, or a German Elector, than there was in America to have…

In America it is considered as an absurdity; and in France it has so far declined, that the goodness of the man, and the respect for his personal character, are the only things that preserve the appearance of its existence.

It appears to be something going much out of fashion, falling into ridicule, and rejected in some countries, both as unnecessary and expensive.

Does the virtue consist in the metaphor, or in the man?

Is it a thing, or is it a name, or is it a fraud?

But, after all, what is this metaphor called a crown, or rather what is monarchy?

From such principles, and such ignorance, good Lord deliver the world!