h the same system
they now submit to.

In speaking on this subject (or on any other) _on the pure ground
of principle_, antiquity and precedent cease to be authority, and
hoary-headed error loses its effect. The reasonableness and propriety of
things must be examined abstractedly from custom and usage; and, in this
point of view, the right which grows into practice to-day is as much a
right, and as old in principle and theory, as if it had the customary
sanction of a thousand ages. Principles have no connection with time,
nor characters with names.

To say that the Government of this country is composed of King, Lords,
and Commons, is the mere phraseology of custom. It is composed of
men; and whoever the men be to whom the Government of any country is
intrusted, they ought to be the best and wisest that can be found, and
if they are not so, they are not fit for the station. A man derives
no more excellence from the change of a name, or calling him King, or
calling him Lord, than I should do by changing my name from Thomas to
George, or from Paine to Guelph. I should not be a whit more able to
write a book because my name was altered; neither would any man, now
called a King or a lord, have a whit the more sense than he now has,
were he to call himself Thomas Paine.

As to the word "Commons," applied as it is in England, it is a term
of degradation and reproach, and ought to be abolished. It is a term
unknown in free countries.

But to the point.--Let us suppose that Government was now to begin in
England, and that the plan of Government, offered to the nation for its
approbation or rejection, consisted of the following parts:

First--That some one individual should be taken from all the rest of the
nation, and to whom all the rest should swear obedience, and never be
permitted to sit down in his presence, and that they should give to him
one million sterling a year.--That the nation should never after have
power or authority to make laws but with his express consent; and that
his sons and his sons' sons, whether wise or foolish, good men or
bad, fit or unfit, should have the same power, and also the same money
annually paid to them for ever.

Secondly--That there should be two houses of Legislators to assist in
making laws, one of which should, in the first instance, be entirely
appointed by the aforesaid person, and that their sons and their sons'
sons, whether wise or foolish, good men or bad, fit or unfit, sho