If those who vote the supplies are the same persons who receive the supplies when voted, and are to account for the expenditure of those supplies to those who voted them, it is themselves accountable to themselves, and the Comedy of Errors concludes with the pantomime of Hush.
Paine criticizes the lack of accountability in government spending when the same individuals control both appropriation and expenditure.
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More from Thomas Paine
The American constitutions were to liberty what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax.
Burke's Book is easily accounted for.--When a man in a wrong cause attempts to steer his course by anything else than some polar truth or principle, he is sure to be lost.
In fine, society performs for itself almost everything which is ascribed to government.