That a nation is to be ruined by peace and commerce, and fourteen or fifteen millions a-year less expenses than before, is a new doctrine in politics.
Thomas Paine: “That a nation is to be ruined by peace and commerce, and fourteen or fifteen millions a-year less expenses than before…”
Editor's note · Context
Paine challenges the idea that peace and reduced spending could ruin a nation, calling it a novel political doctrine.
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There ought, therefore, to be in every nation a method of occasionally ascertaining the state of public opinion with respect to government.
It would be better that nations should wi continue the pay of their soldiers during their lives, and give them their discharge and restore them to freedom and their friends, and cease recruiting, than retain such multitudes at the same…
When men unite in agreeing that a thing is good, could it be obtained, such for instance as relief from a burden of taxes and the extinction of corruption, the object is more than half accomplished.
I have no idea, considering the reforms which are now passing and spreading throughout Europe, that England will permit herself to be the last; and where the occasion and the opportunity quietly offer, it is better than to wait for a…