Civil government alone, or the government of laws, is not productive of pretences for many taxes; it operates at home, directly under the eye of the country, and precludes the possibility of much imposition.
Paine contrasts civil government, which operates transparently and requires fewer taxes, with the more opaque and costly systems of international conflict.
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Man cannot, properly speaking, make circumstances for his purpose, but he always has it in his power to improve them when they occur, and this was the case in France.
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.
It was become evident, that no constitution, worthy of being called by that name, could be established on anything less than a national ground.