The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Volume III.: 1791-1804Paine, Thomas
History
The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Volume III.: 1791-1804
Paine, Thomas
Political science
If the Government, or the Constitution, or by whatever name it be
called, be that miracle of perfection which the Proclamation and
the Addresses have trumpeted it forth to be, it ought to have defied
discussion and investigation, instead of dreading it. Whereas, every
attempt it makes, either by Proclamation, Prosecution, or Address, to
suppress investigation, is a confession that it feels itself unable to
bear it. It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from enquiry. All
the numerous pamphlets, and all the newspaper falsehood and abuse, that
have been published against the Rights of Man, have fallen before it
like pointless arrows; and, in like manner, would any work have fallen
before the Constitution, had the Constitution, as it is called, been
founded on as good political principles as those on which the Rights OF
Man is written.
It is a good Constitution for courtiers, placemen, pensioners,
borough-holders, and the leaders of Parties, and these are the men that
have been the active leaders of Addresses; but it is a bad Constitution
for at least ninety-nine parts of the nation out of an hundred, and this
truth is every day making its way.
It is bad, first, because it entails upon the nation the unnecessary
expence of supporting three forms and systems of Government at once,
namely, the monarchical, the aristocratical, and the democratical.
Secondly, because it is impossible to unite such a discordant
composition by any other means than perpetual corruption; and therefore
the corruption so loudly and so universally complained of, is no
other than the natural consequence of such an unnatural compound of
Governments; and in this consists that excellence which the numerous
herd of placemen and pensioners so loudly extol, and which at the same
time, occasions that enormous load of taxes under which the rest of the
nation groans.
Among the mass of national delusions calculated to amuse and impose upon
the multitude, the standing one has been that of flattering them into
taxes, by calling the Government (or as they please to express it,
the English Constitution) "_the envy and the admiration of the world_"
Scarcely an Address has been voted in which some of the speakers have
not uttered this hackneyed nonsensical falsehood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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