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
As the wondering audience, whom Mr. Burke supposes himself talking to,
may not understand all this learned jargon, I will undertake to be
its interpreter. The meaning, then, good people, of all this, is: That
government is governed by no principle whatever; that it can make evil
good, or good evil, just as it pleases. In short, that government is
arbitrary power.
But there are some things which Mr. Burke has forgotten. First, he has
not shown where the wisdom originally came from: and secondly, he has
not shown by what authority it first began to act. In the manner he
introduces the matter, it is either government stealing wisdom, or
wisdom stealing government. It is without an origin, and its powers
without authority. In short, it is usurpation.
Whether it be from a sense of shame, or from a consciousness of some
radical defect in a government necessary to be kept out of sight, or
from both, or from any other cause, I undertake not to determine, but
so it is, that a monarchical reasoner never traces government to its
source, or from its source. It is one of the shibboleths by which he
may be known. A thousand years hence, those who shall live in America or
France, will look back with contemplative pride on the origin of their
government, and say, This was the work of our glorious ancestors! But
what can a monarchical talker say? What has he to exult in? Alas he has
nothing. A certain something forbids him to look back to a beginning,
lest some robber, or some Robin Hood, should rise from the long
obscurity of time and say, I am the origin. Hard as Mr. Burke laboured
at the Regency Bill and Hereditary Succession two years ago, and much
as he dived for precedents, he still had not boldness enough to bring
up William of Normandy, and say, There is the head of the list! there
is the fountain of honour! the son of a prostitute, and the plunderer of
the English nation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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