The arguments of Tom Paine were totally inapplicable, not only to this, but to any existing society. The proposed experiment could not be tried but among savages; and among them equality could not long be preserved. The strong, the courageous, active, and enterprising, would have the means of subsistence, accommodation, and security, in a greater degree, than the feeble, the timid, the inert, and indolent. This absurdity easily escaped detection by the class of readers among whom the work was most studiously circulated. When John Cade proposed that the conduit should run with claret for the first year after his subversion of the existing government, John Holland and George Bevis were not struck with the impossibility of the proposal being put in execution, but delighted with the idea that they might now drink wine, and be as great as lords. “Be brave then,” says Cade, “for your captain is brave, and vows REFORMATION. There shall be, in England, seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny; the three-hoop’d pot shall have two hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small-beer! All the realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass. And when I am king, as king I will be--(_All._ God save your majesty!)--there shall be no money; ALL shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them ALL in one livery, that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.” Cade’s admirers were, no doubt, delighted at the thought of having meat, drink, and raiment, at free cost, and in their joy forgot to enquire how Cade was to have means of so extensive beneficence. As Paine, as well as Cade, _vowed reformation_, every one’s fancy framed reforms in what particularly concerned himself: the journeyman shoe-maker found that hitherto his wages were in proportion to his work; through Tom Paine he expected great wages with very small work. The amateurs of gin and whisky expected, that through Tom Paine the revenue would be abolished, and they would have their favourite beverage at less cost. The division of property, too, many of them expected would not only lessen their work, and increase their favourite enjoyments, but enable them to live and revel without working at all. In short, weakness, and ignorance of understanding, vanity, pride, love of idleness, and luxury, and the hope of plunder, concurred with the active and incessant endeavours of democratic underlings, in rendering so extravagant, impudent, absurd, and mischievous, a publication palatable among numbers of the lower ranks. Discontent, malignant hatred of a government in which they themselves were not promoted according to their fancied merits, made others encourage the writings and principles of Paine, however much they might have despised his illiterature and sophistry. But not the ignorant only, writers of respectable talents and erudition declared the ravings and vagaries of Paine to be the invincible energy of truth and sense, to combine history and philosophy.