When you have defeated all our armies, the cities will fall into your hands of themselves; but to creep into them in the manner you got into Princeton, Trenton, &c. is like robbing an orchard in the night before the fruit be ripe, and running away in the morning.
Paine argues that cities are secondary to armies in conquest, likening the British capture of towns to prematurely robbing an orchard.
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The man who is in the receipt of a million a year is the last person to promote a spirit of reform, lest, in the event, it should reach to himself.
The Aristocracy had hitherto opposed the despotism of the Court, and affected the language of patriotism; but it opposed it as its rival (as the English Barons opposed King John) and it now opposed the nation from the same motives.
The object is not so much the produce of the tax as the justice of the measure.