Thomas Paine: “The most wanton destruction has been committed in our sight; the most insolent barbarity has been acted on our feelings.”

As soldiers have hitherto been treated in most countries, they might be said to be without a friend.

If, therefore, the good to be obtained be worthy of a passive, rational, and costless revolution, it would be bad policy to prefer waiting for a calamity that should force a violent one.

The object, in all such preliminary proceedings, is to find out what the general sense of a nation is, and to be governed by it.

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.