"Common Sense by Thomas Paine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Paine Thomas)

sort of Influence public or private, but the influence of reason and principle.

Philadelphia, February 14, 1776




OF THE ORIGIN AND DESIGN OF GOVERNMENT IN GENERAL.
WITH CONCISE REMARKS ON THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION



Some writers have so confounded society with government,
as to leave little or no distinction between them;
whereas they are not only different, but have different origins.
Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness;
the former promotes our POSITIVELY by uniting our affections,
the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one
encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions.
The first a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best
state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one;
for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT,
which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity
is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.
Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings
are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses
of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need
no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary
to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection
of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every
other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. WHEREFORE,
security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows,
that whatever FORM thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us,
with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.

In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end of
government, let us suppose a small number of persons settled in some
sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest, they will
then represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world.
In this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought.
A thousand motives will excite them thereto, the strength of one man
is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual
solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance and relief of
another, who in his turn requires the same. Four or five united would
be able to raise a tolerable dwelling in the midst of a wilderness,
but one man might labour out of the common period of life without
accomplishing any thing; when he had felled his timber he could not
remove it, nor erect it after it was removed; hunger in the mean time