Were you to garrison the places you might march over, in order to secure their subjection, (for remember you can do it by no other means,) your army would be like a stream of water running to nothing.
Paine uses a metaphor to explain that attempting to garrison every conquered place would dissipate the British army's strength to nothing.
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The object is not so much the produce of the tax as the justice of the measure.
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.
A knowledge of the practice was then joined to the theory; and all that was wanting to give it real existence was opportunity.
The aristocracy has screened itself too much, and this serves to restore a part of the lost equilibrium.