ociety is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happinesspositively by uniting our affections, the latter nega… - Thomas Paine

Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices.

The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth

Everything in the English government appears to me the reverse of what it ought to be, and of what it is said to be. The Parliament, imperfectly and capriciously elected as it is, is nevertheless supposed to hold the national purse in trust for the nation; but in the manner in which an English Parliament is constructed it is like a man being both mortgagor and mortgagee, and in the case of misapplication of trust it is the criminal sitting in judgment upon himself. If those who vote the supplies are the same persons who receive the supplies when voted, and are to account for the expenditure of those supplies to those who voted them, it is themselves accountable to themselves, and the comedy of errors concludes with the pantomime of Hush. Neither the ministerial party nor the opposition will touch upon this case. The national purse is the common hack which each mounts upon. It is like what the country people call “Ride and tie — you ride a little way, and then I.” [6] They order these things better in France.

Moral principle speaks universally for itself. [...] Instead therefore of admitting the recitals of miracles, as evidence of any system of religion being true, they ought to be considered as symptoms of its being fabulous. It is necessary to the full and upright character of truth that it rejects the crutch; and it is consistent with the character of fable, to seek the aid that truth rejects.