But the expression, if true, is the greatest confession of disgrace that could be made, and furnishes America with the highest notions of sovereign independent importance.
Thomas Paine: “But the expression, if true, is the greatest confession of disgrace that could be made, and furnishes America with the…”
Editor's note · Context
Paine interprets a British statement about their decline without America as an admission of weakness and a testament to America's sovereign importance.
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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.
I do not believe that any two men, on what are called doctrinal points, think alike who think at all.
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.
But as religion is very improperly made a political machine, and the reality of it is thereby destroyed, I will conclude this work with stating in what light religion appears to me.