The effect of those cruel spectacles exhibited to the populace is to destroy tenderness or excite revenge; and by the base and false idea of governing men by terror, instead of reason, they become precedents.
In "Rights of Man," Paine analyzes how public displays of cruel punishment destroy empathy or incite revenge, establishing governance by terror as a dangerous precedent.
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He must now show that every one in the line of hereditary succession was a Solomon, or his title is not good to be a king.
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It was Government dethroning Government; and the old one, by attempting to make a new one, made a chasm.
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