Thomas Paine: “But think not, gentlemen, that our distance secures you, or our invention fails us.”

He writes neither in the character of a Frenchman nor an Englishman, but in the fawning character of that creature known in all countries, and a friend to none--a courtier.

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.

He must now show that every one in the line of hereditary succession was a Solomon, or his title is not good to be a king.

In fine, society performs for itself almost everything which is ascribed to government.