Those who were advocates for the British government over these colonies, were obliged to limit both their arguments and their ideas to the period of an European peace only; the moment Britain became plunged in war, every supposed convenience to us vanished, and all we could hope for was not to be ruined.
Paine criticizes loyalists for basing their arguments on a false premise of perpetual European peace, which quickly dissolved when Britain went to war.
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But from such opposition the French Revolution, instead of suffering, receives an homage.
The object is not so much the produce of the tax as the justice of the measure.
A knowledge of the practice was then joined to the theory; and all that was wanting to give it real existence was opportunity.
The American constitutions were to liberty what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax.