There is no despotism to which this iniquitous law did not extend; and though it might have been convenient in the execution of it, to have consulted manners and habits, the principle of the act made all tyranny legal.
Paine condemns the law as a source of widespread tyranny, emphasizing its legal implications.
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The meaning, then, good people, of all this, is: That government is governed by no principle whatever; that it can make evil good, or good evil, just as it pleases.
Whether robbery shall be banished from courts, and wretchedness from countries?
It was a sort of new form of government that insensibly served to put the old one out of sight and to unhinge it from the superstitious authority of antiquity.
They had a cause at stake, on which depended their freedom or their slavery.