While despotism warred with despotism, man had no interest in the contest; but in a cause that unites the soldier with the citizen, and nation with nation, the despotism of courts, though it feels the danger and meditates revenge, is afraid to strike.
From "Rights of Man," Paine distinguishes between conflicts of despots and a new kind of cause that unites people against oppressive courts.
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The American constitutions were to liberty what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax.
Man cannot, properly speaking, make circumstances for his purpose, but he always has it in his power to improve them when they occur, and this was the case in France.
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.