urope. The insulted
German and the enslaved Spaniard, the Russ and the Pole, are beginning
to think. The present age will hereafter merit to be called the Age of
Reason, and the present generation will appear to the future as the Adam
of a new world.

When all the governments of Europe shall be established on the
representative system, nations will become acquainted, and the
animosities and prejudices fomented by the intrigue and artifice of
courts, will cease. The oppressed soldier will become a freeman; and
the tortured sailor, no longer dragged through the streets like a felon,
will pursue his mercantile voyage in safety. It would be better that
nations should wi continue the pay of their soldiers during their lives,
and give them their discharge and restore them to freedom and their
friends, and cease recruiting, than retain such multitudes at the
same expense, in a condition useless to society and to themselves. As
soldiers have hitherto been treated in most countries, they might be
said to be without a friend. Shunned by the citizen on an apprehension
of their being enemies to liberty, and too often insulted by those
who commanded them, their condition was a double oppression. But where
genuine principles of liberty pervade a people, every thing is restored
to order; and the soldier civilly treated, returns the civility.

In contemplating revolutions, it is easy to perceive that they may arise
from two distinct causes; the one, to avoid or get rid of some great
calamity; the other, to obtain some great and positive good; and the two
may be distinguished by the names of active and passive revolutions. In
those which proceed from the former cause, the temper becomes incensed
and soured; and the redress, obtained by danger, is too often sullied by
revenge. But in those which proceed from the latter, the heart, rather
animated than agitated, enters serenely upon the subject. Reason
and discussion, persuasion and conviction, become the weapons in the
contest, and it is only when those are attempted to be suppressed that
recourse is had to violence. When men unite in agreeing that a thing is
good, could it be obtained, such for instance as relief from a burden
of taxes and the extinction of corruption, the object is more than half
accomplished. What they approve as the end, they will promote in the
means.

Will any man say, in the present excess of taxation, falling so heavily
on the poor, that a remission of five po