Thomas Paine: “All the constitutions of America are declared to be established on the authority of the people.”

The American constitutions were to liberty what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax.

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.

The object is not so much the produce of the tax as the justice of the measure.

But from such opposition the French Revolution, instead of suffering, receives an homage.