The Life Of Thomas Paine, Vol. 1. (of 2): With A History of His Literary, Political and Religious Career in America France, and England; to which is added a Sketch of Paine by William CobbettConway, Moncure Daniel
Religion
The Life Of Thomas Paine, Vol. 1. (of 2): With A History of His Literary, Political and Religious Career in America France, and England; to which is added a Sketch of Paine by William Cobbett
Conway, Moncure Daniel
Paine, Thomas, 1737-1809
and frame a constitution which shall contain the means of peaceful
development in accordance with enlightenment and necessity.
In Part I. Paine stated his general principles with some reservations,
in view of the survival of royalty in the French constitution. In Part
II. his political philosophy is freely and fully developed, and may be
summarized as follows:
1. Government is the organization of the aggregate of those natural
rights which individuals are not competent to secure individually,
and therefore surrender to the control of society in exchange for the
protection of all rights.
2. Republican government is that in which the welfare of the whole
nation is the object.
3. Monarchy is government, more or less arbitrary, in which the
interests of an individual are paramount to those of the people
generally.
4. Aristocracy is government, partially arbitrary, in which the
interests of a class are paramount to those of the people generally.
5. Democracy is the whole people governing themselves without secondary
means.
6. Representative government is the control of a nation by persons
elected by the whole nation.
7. The Rights of Man mean the right of all to representation.
Democracy, simple enough in small and primitive societies, degenerates
into confusion by extension to large populations. Monarchy, which
originated amid such confusion, degenerates into incapacity by extension
to vast and complex interests requiring "an assemblage of practical
knowledges which no one individual can possess." "The aristocratical
form has the same vices and defects with the monarchical, except that
the chance of abilities is better from the proportion of numbers."
The representative republic advocated by Paine is different from merely
epitomized democracy. "Representation is the delegated monarchy of a
nation." In the early days of the American republic, when presidential
electors were independent of the constituents who elected them, the
filtration of democracy was a favorite principle among republicans.
Paine evidently regards the representative as different from a delegate,
or mere commissioner carrying out instructions. The representatives of
a people are clothed with their sovereignty; that, and not opinions or
orders, has been transferred to them by constituencies. Hence we find
Paine, after describing the English people as "fools" (p. 260), urging
representation as a sort of natural selection of wisdom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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