Thomas Paine: “It was Government dethroning Government; and the old one, by attempting to make a new one, made a chasm.”

He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.

It was become evident, that no constitution, worthy of being called by that name, could be established on anything less than a national ground.

Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence.

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.