The policy of Europe, and the propensity there in every mind to curb insulting ambition, and bring cruelty to judgment, are unitedly against you; and where nature and interest reinforce with each other, the compact is too intimate to be dissolved.
Thomas Paine: “The policy of Europe, and the propensity there in every mind to curb insulting ambition, and bring cruelty to judgment…”
Editor's note · Context
From a series of pamphlets written during the American Revolution, this passage argues that European policy and human nature combine to oppose insulting ambition and cruelty.
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The poor, in all countries, are naturally both peaceable and grateful in all reforms in which their interest and happiness is included.
But in England there are no such occasional bodies; and as to those who are now called Representatives, a great part of them are mere machines of the court, placemen, and dependants.
The present age will hereafter merit to be called the Age of Reason, and the present generation will appear to the future as the Adam of a new world.
Long experience however has shown, that reforms of this kind are not those which old governments wish to promote, and therefore it is to nations, and not to such governments, that these matters present themselves.