Primary source · rhetoric

Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776) — excerpt

Public domain. Hosted on Life Academy. MLA: Paine, Thomas. Common Sense. 1776. Life Academy Source Library.

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…

Student job: name the claim, one analogy, and the intended audience (colonists in 1776, not a modern party). Cite (Paine).

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