PREFACE. I HERE present the public with a new performance. Some parts of it, are more particularly adapted to the state of Pennsylvania, on the present state of its affairs: but there are others which are on a larger scale. The time bestowed on this work has not been long, the whole of it being written and printed during the short recess of the assembly. As to parties, merely considered as such, I am attached to no particular one. There are such things as right and wrong in the world, and so far as these are parties against each other, the signature of Common Sense, is properly em ployed. Philadelphia, Feb. 18, 1786. THOMAS PAINE. DISSERTATIONS ON GOVERN MENT, &c. EVERY government, let its form be what it may, contains within itself a principle common to all, which is, that of a sovereign power, or a power over which there is a control, and which controls all others: and as it is impossible to construct a form of government in which this power does not exist, so there must of necessity be a place, if it may be so called, for it to exist in. In despotic monarchies this power is lodged in a single person, or sovereign. His will is law; which he declares, alters, or revokes as he pleases, without being accountable to any power for so doing. Therefore, the only modes of redress, in countries so governed, are by petition or insurrection. And this is the reason we so frequently hear of insurrections in despotic governments; for as there are but two modes of redress, this is one them. Perhaps it may be said that as the united resistance of the people is able, by force, to control the will of the sove reign, that, therefore, the controlling power lodges in them; but it must be understood that I am speaking of such powers only as are constituent parts of the government, not of those powers which are externally applied to resist and overturn it. In republics, such as those established in America, the sovereign power, or the power over which there is no control and which controls all others, remains where nature |