The Writings of Thomas Paine, Complete: With Index to Volumes I - IVPaine, Thomas
History
The Writings of Thomas Paine, Complete: With Index to Volumes I - IV
Paine, Thomas
Political science
Your king, in his speech to parliament last spring, declared, "That
he had no doubt but the great force they had enabled him to send to
America, would effectually reduce the rebellious colonies." It has not,
neither can it; but it has done just enough to lay the foundation of
its own next year's ruin. You are sensible that you left England in a
divided, distracted state of politics, and, by the command you had here,
you became a principal prop in the court party; their fortunes rest on
yours; by a single express you can fix their value with the public, and
the degree to which their spirits shall rise or fall; they are in your
hands as stock, and you have the secret of the alley with you. Thus
situated and connected, you become the unintentional mechanical
instrument of your own and their overthrow. The king and his ministers
put conquest out of doubt, and the credit of both depended on the proof.
To support them in the interim, it was necessary that you should make
the most of every thing, and we can tell by Hugh Gaine's New York
paper what the complexion of the London Gazette is. With such a list
of victories the nation cannot expect you will ask new supplies; and
to confess your want of them would give the lie to your triumphs, and
impeach the king and his ministers of treasonable deception. If you make
the necessary demand at home, your party sinks; if you make it not, you
sink yourself; to ask it now is too late, and to ask it before was too
soon, and unless it arrive quickly will be of no use. In short, the part
you have to act, cannot be acted; and I am fully persuaded that all you
have to trust to is, to do the best you can with what force you have
got, or little more. Though we have greatly exceeded you in point of
generalship and bravery of men, yet, as a people, we have not entered
into the full soul of enterprise; for I, who know England and the
disposition of the people well, am confident, that it is easier for us
to effect a revolution there, than you a conquest here; a few thousand
men landed in England with the declared design of deposing the present
king, bringing his ministers to trial, and setting up the Duke of
Gloucester in his stead, would assuredly carry their point, while you
are grovelling here, ignorant of the matter. As I send all my papers to
England, this, like Common Sense, will find its way there; and though
it may put one party on their guard, it will inform the other, and the
nation in general, of our design to help them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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