With how much more glory, and advantage to itself, does a nation act, when it exerts its powers to rescue the world from bondage, and to create itself friends, than when it employs those powers to increase ruin, desolation, and misery.
In "Rights of Man," Paine contrasts the honorable actions of a nation promoting freedom with the destructive path of conquest.
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In fine, society performs for itself almost everything which is ascribed to government.
The argument changes from hereditary rights to hereditary wisdom; and the question is, Who is the wisest man?
The Parliaments on their part insisted that they had not only a right to remonstrate, but to reject; and on this ground they were always supported by the nation.
The Aristocracy had hitherto opposed the despotism of the Court, and affected the language of patriotism; but it opposed it as its rival (as the English Barons opposed King John) and it now opposed the nation from the same motives.