2004.11.25 : To Begin the World Over Again
Excerpts from Thomas Paine's Common Sense, 1776
Time makes more converts than reason.
The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.
Society is in every state a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one . . . Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence.
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
How a race of men [Kings] came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species, is worth inquiring into.
Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.
Volumes have been written on the subject of the struggle between England and America . . . the period of debate is closed. Arms, as the last resource, decide the contest.
'Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings now.
This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe.
Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law.
O ye that love mankind! ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is over-run with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her. – Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.
We have every opportunity and every encouragement before us, to form the noblest, purest constitution on the face of the earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
