Taxation, as I mentioned before, could never be worth the charge of obtaining it by arms; and any kind of formal obedience which America could have made, would have weighed with the lightness of a laugh against such a load of expense.
Paine argues that the cost of militarily enforcing taxation on America far outweighed any potential revenue or symbolic obedience gained.
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It serves to keep up deceitful expectations which prevent people from looking into the defects and abuses of government.
As soldiers have hitherto been treated in most countries, they might be said to be without a friend.
The horrid scene that is now acting by the English government in the East-Indies, is fit only to be told of Goths and Vandals, who, destitute of principle, robbed and tortured the world they were incapable of enjoying.
With how much more glory, and advantage to itself, does a nation act, when it exerts its powers to rescue the world from bondage, and to create itself friends, than when it employs those powers to increase ruin, desolation, and misery.