A mixed Government is an imperfect everything, cementing and soldering the discordant parts together by corruption, to act as a whole.
Thomas Paine: “A mixed Government is an imperfect everything, cementing and soldering the discordant parts together by corruption, to…”
Editor's note · Context
In "Rights of Man," Paine defines a mixed government as an inherently flawed system held together by corruption.
Share
More from Thomas Paine
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.
Why may we not suppose, that the great Father of all is pleased with variety of devotion; and that the greatest offence we can act, is that by which we seek to torment and render each other miserable?
I do not believe that any two men, on what are called doctrinal points, think alike who think at all.