Thomas Paine Quotes
It is easy to see that when republican virtue fails, slavery ensues.
This quotation is a great demonstration of how much wiser and the better politician of all the crowned heads of Europe that Queen Victoria was. There were stirrings of freedom and desire for parliamentary government throughout Europe. Queen Victoria, even though and perhaps because she was a young woman, had a great feel for fairness and reasonableness and had read a great deal of history. There were some radical red socialists calling for complete radical revolution scaring European Royalty profoundly. They reacted very conservatively and with reaction, reverting to more tyrannical practices of the past urged in that path by very conservative, right wing advisors. Victoria also had little respect for some of the monarchs who had little interest in their people and much with their personal power and wealth. In the end, it was England which was the only nation which never had a serious radical socialist / communist threat, and that had much to do with Victoria’s political acumen and wisdom.
Thomas Paine was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. He authored Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and helped inspire the patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era ideals of transnational human rights. Historian Saul K. Padover described him as "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination".
