Considering that all the internal government is executed by the people, the taxes of England ought to be the lightest of any nation in Europe; instead of which, they are the contrary.
In "Rights of Man," Paine criticizes the heavy taxation in England, arguing it is disproportionate given the people's role in internal governance.
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He must now show that every one in the line of hereditary succession was a Solomon, or his title is not good to be a king.
The object is not so much the produce of the tax as the justice of the measure.
To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin.
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.