To see the bounties of heaven destroyed, the beautiful face of nature laid waste, and the choicest works of creation and art tumbled into ruin, would fetch a curse from the soul of piety itself.
Paine describes the profound moral outrage that even a pious person would feel at the devastation wrought by conflict.
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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.
It was become evident, that no constitution, worthy of being called by that name, could be established on anything less than a national ground.
I know the value of moral instruction, and I have seen the danger of the contrary.
The aristocracy has screened itself too much, and this serves to restore a part of the lost equilibrium.