Thomas Paine: “It has apparently burst forth like a creation from a chaos, but it is no more than the consequence of a mental…”

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.

But from such opposition the French Revolution, instead of suffering, receives an homage.

It was Government dethroning Government; and the old one, by attempting to make a new one, made a chasm.

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.