Sovereignty must have power to protect all the parts that compose and constitute it: and as UNITED STATES we are equal to the importance of the title, but otherwise we are not.
Thomas Paine: “Sovereignty must have power to protect all the parts that compose and constitute it: and as UNITED STATES we are equal…”
Editor's note · Context
From "The American Crisis," Paine defines true sovereignty as the capacity to protect all its constituent parts, asserting that only as the United States can the nation fulfill this requirement.
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If, therefore, the good to be obtained be worthy of a passive, rational, and costless revolution, it would be bad policy to prefer waiting for a calamity that should force a violent one.
Reason and discussion, persuasion and conviction, become the weapons in the contest, and it is only when those are attempted to be suppressed that recourse is had to violence.
When men unite in agreeing that a thing is good, could it be obtained, such for instance as relief from a burden of taxes and the extinction of corruption, the object is more than half accomplished.
In those which proceed from the former cause, the temper becomes incensed and soured; and the redress, obtained by danger, is too often sullied by revenge.