Certainly they are not, and certain am I, that when the people of England come to reflect upon them they will, like France, annihilate those badges of ancient oppression, those traces of a conquered nation.
Paine expresses his conviction that the English people, upon reflection, will follow France's example in abolishing symbols of ancient oppression.
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When another nation shall join France, despotism and bad government will scarcely dare to appear.
The insulted German and the enslaved Spaniard, the Russ and the Pole, are beginning to think.
With how much more glory, and advantage to itself, does a nation act, when it exerts its powers to rescue the world from bondage, and to create itself friends, than when it employs those powers to increase ruin, desolation, and misery.
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.