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.
In "Rights of Man," Paine contrasts the honorable actions of a nation promoting freedom with the destructive path of conquest.
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More from Thomas Paine
The argument changes from hereditary rights to hereditary wisdom; and the question is, Who is the wisest man?
To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin.
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.
Many of the facts were in themselves principles; such as the declaration of American Independence, and the treaty of alliance between France and America, which recognised the natural rights of man, and justified resistance to oppression.