But when their troubles shall become yours, and invasion be transferred upon the invaders, you will have neither their extended wilderness to fly to, their cause to comfort you, nor their hope to rest upon.
From a series of pamphlets written during the American Revolution, this passage warns the British invaders that they will lack the moral and physical resources that sustained the Americans when their fortunes turn.
Share
More from Thomas Paine
The aristocracy has screened itself too much, and this serves to restore a part of the lost equilibrium.
A knowledge of the practice was then joined to the theory; and all that was wanting to give it real existence was opportunity.
The meaning, then, good people, of all this, is: That government is governed by no principle whatever; that it can make evil good, or good evil, just as it pleases.
The argument changes from hereditary rights to hereditary wisdom; and the question is, Who is the wisest man?