"Had there been a house of farmers, there had been no game laws.... The French constitution says there shall be no game laws; that the farmer on whose lands wild game shall be found (for it is by the produce of those lands they are fed) shall have a right to what he can take. In England, game is made the property of those at whose expense it is fed."--R. of M. _Junius._ "As to the game laws, he [Junius] never scrupled to declare his opinion that they are a species of the forest laws: that they are oppressive to the subject; and that the spirit of them is incompatible with legal liberty: that the penalties imposed by these laws bear no proportion to the nature of the offense: that in particular, the late acts to prevent dog-stealing or killing game between sun and sun, are distinguished by their absurdity, extravagance, and pernicious tendency."--Let. 63. Both express themselves the same on _laws_ in general: _Paine._ "The government of a free country, properly speaking, is not in the persons, _but in the laws_."--R. of M. _Junius._ "The submission of a free people to the executive authority of government is no more than a compliance with the laws which they themselves have enacted."--Let. 1. I would have the reader mark the fact that the above sentiment of Junius is the first he proclaims in his book. This, it will readily be seen, contains in itself the whole system of politics which Junius and Paine labored to establish. From this sentiment arose the frequent expressions of Junius, "Original rights;" "First rights;" "Sacred original rights of the people;" "The meanest mechanic is equal to the noblest peer;" and which Paine embodied in the expression, "Mankind are originally equal in the order of creation." Herein also we find the foundation for that method of both in tracing the rights of man back to their origin, and the easy manner in distinguishing original right from usurpation. A parallel here will make this plain: _Paine._ "The example shows to the artificial world that man must go back to nature for information."--R. M., part ii. "Can we possibly suppose that if government had originated in a right principle and had not an interest in pursuing a wrong one, that the world could have been in the wretched and quarrelsome condition we have seen it? ... What was at first plunder, assumed the softer name of revenue, and the power originally _usurped_ they affected to inherit."--R. M., part ii., chap. ii. See, also, a fine specimen of this kind of argumentation in the first chapter of Common Sense. _Junius._