tion than it is possible for me to describe, or for
you to indemnify. But with respect to the subject under consideration, I
could not refrain from declaring my sentiments.

In my opinion, if you subvert the basis of the revolution, if you
dispense with principles, and substitute expedients, you will extinguish
that enthusiasm and energy which have hitherto been the life and soul of
the revolution; and you will substitute in its place nothing but a
cold indifference and self-interest, which will again degenerate into
intrigue, cunning, and effeminacy.

But to discard all considerations of a personal and subordinate nature,
it is essential to the well-being of the republic that the practical or
organic part of the constitution should correspond with its principles;
and as this does not appear to be the case in the plan that has been
presented to you, it is absolutely necessary that it should be submitted
to the revision of a committee, who should be instructed to compare it
with the Declaration of Rights, in order to ascertain the difference
between the two, and to make such alterations as shall render them
perfectly consistent and compatible with each other.

XXVI. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ENGLISH SYSTEM OF FINANCE.(1)

"On the verge, nay even in the gulph of bankruptcy."

1 This pamphlet, as Paine predicts at its close (no doubt on
good grounds), was translated into all languages of Europe,
and probably hastened the gold suspension of the Bank of
England (1797), which it predicted. The British Government
entrusted its reply to Ralph Broome and George Chalmers, who
wrote pamphlets. There is in the French Archives an order
for 1000 copies, April 27, 1796, nineteen days after Paine's
pamphlet appeared. "Mr. Cobbett has made this little
pamphlet a text-book for most of his elaborate treatises on
our finances.... On the authority of a late Register of Mr.
Cobbett's I learn that the profits arising from the sale of
this pamphlet were devoted [by Paine] to the relief of the
prisoners confined in Newgate for debt."--"Life of Paine,"
by Richard Carlile, 1819.--_Editor._.

Debates in Parliament.

Nothing, they say, is more certain than death, and nothing more
uncertain than the time of dying; yet we can always fix a period beyond
which man cannot live, and within some moment of which he will die. We
are enabled to do this, not by any sp