"
Paine heartily concurred with him. Such a constitution as this, he
said, is needed in England. There is no hope of it from Parliament.
Indeed, Parliament, if it desired reforms, could not make them; it has
not the legal right. A national convention, fresh from the people, is
indispensable. Then, _reculant pour mieux sauter_, Paine goes back to
the origin of man,--a journey often undertaken by the political
philosophers of that day. He describes his natural rights,--defines
society as a compact,--declares that no generation has a right to bind
its successors, (a doctrine which Mr. Jefferson, and some foolish
people after him, thought a self-evident truth,)--hence, no family has
a right to take possession of a throne. An hereditary rule is as great
an absurdity as an hereditary professorship of mathematics,--a place
supposed by Dr. Franklin to exist in some German university. Paine grew
bolder as he advanced: "If monarchy is a useless thing, why is it kept
up anywhere? and if a necessary thing, how can it be dispensed with?"
This is a pretty good specimen of one of Paine's dialectical methods.
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