Surely there must be something strangely degenerating in the love of monarchy, that can so completely wear a man down to an ingrate, and make him proud to lick the dust that kings have trod upon.
Thomas Paine: “Surely there must be something strangely degenerating in the love of monarchy, that can so completely wear a man down to…”
Editor's note · Context
In "The American Crisis," Paine criticizes monarchy for its corrupting effect, leading individuals to servility and ingratitude.
Share
More from Thomas Paine
The oppressed soldier will become a freeman; and the tortured sailor, no longer dragged through the streets like a felon, will pursue his mercantile voyage in safety.
The poor, in all countries, are naturally both peaceable and grateful in all reforms in which their interest and happiness is included.
It would be better that nations should wi continue the pay of their soldiers during their lives, and give them their discharge and restore them to freedom and their friends, and cease recruiting, than retain such multitudes at the same…
There ought, therefore, to be in every nation a method of occasionally ascertaining the state of public opinion with respect to government.