Essays, Thomas Paine [digital book reader .txt] 📗

in virtue of a law formally enacted, promulgated anterior to the offence, and legally applied.

Any law that should punish offences committed before its existence would be an arbitrary act. Retroactive effect given to the law is a crime.

The law should award only penalties strictly and evidently necessary to the general safety. Penalties should be proportioned to offences, and useful to society.

The right of property consists in every man’s being master in the disposal, at his will, of his goods, capital, income, and industry.

No kind of labor, commerce, or culture, can be prohibited to anyone: he may make, sell, and transport every species of production.

Every man may engage his services and his time; but he cannot sell himself; his person is not an alienable property.

No one can be deprived of the least portion of his property without his consent, unless evidently required by public necessity, legally determined, and under the condition of a just indemnity in advance.

No tax shall be imposed except for the general welfare, and to meet public needs. All citizens have the right to unite personally, or by their representatives, in the fixing of imposts.

Instruction is the need of all, and society owes it to all its members equally.

Public succours are a sacred debt of society; it is for the law to determine their extent and application.

The social guarantee of the rights of man rests on the national sovereignty.

This sovereignty is one, indivisible, imprescriptible, and inalienable.

It resides essentially in the whole people, and every citizen has an equal right to unite in its exercise.

No partial assemblage of citizens, and no individual, may attribute to themselves sovereignty, or exercise any authority, or discharge any public function, without formal delegation thereto by the law.

The social guarantee cannot exist if the limits of public administration are not clearly determined by law, and if the responsibility of all public functionaries is not assured.

All citizens are bound to unite in this guarantee, and in enforcing the law when summoned in its name.

Men united in society should have legal means of resisting oppression.

There is oppression when any law violates the natural rights, civil and political, which it should guarantee.

There is oppression when the law is violated by public officials in its application to individual cases.

There is oppression when arbitrary actions violate the rights of citizen against the express purpose (expression) of the law.

In a free government the mode of resisting these different acts of oppression should be regulated by the Constitution.

A people possesses always the right to reform and alter its Constitution. A generation has no right to subject a future generation to its laws; and all heredity in offices is absurd and tyrannical.

Dissertation on First Principles of Government13

There is no subject more interesting to every man than the subject of government. His security, be he rich or poor, and in a great measure his prosperity, are connected therewith; it is therefore his interest as well as his duty to make himself acquainted with its principles, and what the practice ought to be.

Every art and science, however imperfectly known at first, has been studied, improved, and brought to what we call perfection by the progressive labours of succeeding generations; but the science of government has stood still. No improvement has been made in the principle and scarcely any in the practice till the American revolution began. In all the countries of Europe (except in France) the same forms and systems that were erected in the remote ages of ignorance still continue, and their antiquity is put in the place of principle; it is forbidden to investigate their origin, or by what right they exist. If it be asked how has this happened, the answer is easy: they are established on a principle that is false, and they employ their power to prevent detection.

Notwithstanding the mystery with which the science of government has been enveloped, for the purpose of enslaving, plundering, and imposing upon mankind, it is of all things the least mysterious and the most easy to be understood. The meanest capacity cannot be at a loss, if it begins its enquiries at the right point. Every art and science has some point, or alphabet, at which the study of that art or science begins, and by the assistance of which the progress is facilitated. The same method ought to be observed with respect to the science of government.

Instead then of embarrassing the subject in the outset with the numerous subdivisions under which different forms of government have been classed, such as aristocracy, democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, etc. the better method will be to begin with what may be called primary divisions, or those under which all the several subdivisions will be comprehended.

The primary divisions are but two:

First, government by election and representation.

Secondly, government by hereditary succession.

All the several forms and systems of government, however numerous or diversified, class themselves under one or other of those primary divisions; for either they are on the system of representation, or on that of hereditary succession. As to that equivocal thing called mixed government, such as the late government of Holland, and the present government of England, it does not make an exception to the general rule, because the parts separately considered are either representative or hereditary.

Beginning then our enquiries at this point, we have first to examine into the nature of those two primary divisions.

If they are equally right in principle, it is mere matter of opinion which we prefer. If the one be demonstratively better than the other, that difference directs our choice; but if one of them should be so absolutely false as not to have a right to existence, the matter settles itself at once; because a negative proved on one thing, where two only are offered, and one must be accepted, amounts to an affirmative on the other.

The revolutions that are now spreading themselves in the world have their origin in this state of the case, and the present war is a conflict between the