"As to my political works, beginning with the pamphlet 'Common Sense,' published the beginning of January 1776, which awakened America to a declaration of independence as the president and vice-president both know, as they were works done from principle I can not dishonor that principle by ever asking any reward for them. The country has been benefited by them, and I make myself happy in the knowledge of that benefit. It is, however, proper for me to add that the mere independence of America, were it to have been followed by a system of government modeled after the corrupt system of the English government, would not have interested me with the unabated ardor it did. It was to bring forward and establish a representative system of government. As the work itself will show, that was the leading principle with me in writing that work, and all my other works during the progress of the revolution, and I followed the same principle in writing in English the 'Rights of Man.' "After the failure of the 5 percent duty recommended by congress to pay the interest of the loan to be borrowed in Holland, I wrote to Chancellor Livingston, then minister for foreign affairs, and Robert Morris, minister of finance, and proposed a method for getting over the difficulty at once, which was by adding a continental legislature which should be empowered to make laws for the whole union instead of recommending them. So the method proposed met with their future probation. I held myself in reserve to take a step up whenever a direct occasion occurred. "In a conversation afterward with Gov. Clinton, of New York, now vice-president, it was judged that for the purpose of my going fully into the subject, and to prevent any misconstruction of my motive or object, it would be best that I received nothing from congress, but to leave it to the states individually to make the what acknowledgement they pleased. The State of New York presented me with a farm which since my return to America, I have found it necessary to sell, and the State of Pennsylvania voted me L500 of their currency, but none of the states to the east of New York, or the south of Pennsylvania, have made me the least acknowledgment. They had received benefits from me which they accepted, and there the matter ended. This story will not tell well in history. All the civilized world knows I have been of great service to the United States, and have generously given away that which would easily have made me a fortune. I much question if an instance is to be found in ancient or modern times of a man who had no personal interest in the case to take up that of the establishment of a representative government and who sought neither place nor office after it was established; that pursued the same undeviating principles that I had for more than thirty years, and that in spite of dangers, difficulties, and inconveniences of which I have had my share.--Thomas Paine"