This famous book is marked by many of the vices of extreme opinions. Its reading of events in France, in some of which Paine had taken part, was far more accurate than that of Burke's treatise. Paine avoided the mistake of taking the Revolution to be a mere outbreak of capricious violence, and gave due weight to the intellectual revolution which had preceded it, and to the economic distress which aggravated it. But though he knew France better than Burke, he had not Burke's grasp of the idea of growth, of the necessity of development rather than of reconstruction in politics, and he could not understand that an institution, which {110} was now useless or detrimental, might, in an older system, have been necessary to the existence of society. Such phrases as Burke's "chain and continuity of the commonwealth" had no meaning for him. Everything was to be cut off and begun afresh. "Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it."[122] "When we survey the wretched condition of man, and the monarchical and hereditary systems of government, dragged from his home by one power, or driven by another, and impoverished by taxes more than by enemies, it becomes evident that those systems are bad, and that a general revolution in the principle and construction of governments is necessary."[123] Paine is here not unlike the surgeon in Mr. Shaw's play, for ever eager to plunge his knife into the vitals of the patient, without knowing either the history of the disease or the chances of its cure. How much wiser is Burke's "I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases. A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it, but a good patriot and a true politician always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman." Paine's prophecies were as extravagant as his reading of history was inaccurate. "I do not believe," he said, "that monarchy and aristocracy will continue seven years longer in any of the enlightened countries in Europe."[124] After one hundred and twenty years Portugal alone has attempted to follow the example of France, and it was eighty years before even France expelled its last despot.