The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.
Paine asserts that legitimate governments originate from a compact among individuals, each exercising their sovereign right.
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They had a cause at stake, on which depended their freedom or their slavery.
The object is not so much the produce of the tax as the justice of the measure.
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.
To account for this sudden transition, it is proper to observe that there are two distinct species of popularity; the one excited by merit, and the other by resentment.