men depart from an established principle
they are compelled to resort to trick and subterfuge, always shifting
their means to preserve the unity of their objects; and as it rarely
happens that the first expedient makes amends for the prostitution of
principle, they must call in aid a second, of a more flagrant nature,
to supply the deficiency of the former. In this manner legislators go
on accumulating error upon error, and artifice upon artifice, until
the mass becomes so bulky and incongruous, and their embarrassment so
desperate, that they are compelled, as their last expedient, to resort
to the very principle they had violated. The Committee were precisely
in this predicament when they framed this article; and to me, I confess,
their conduct appears specious rather than efficacious.(2)

1 This article eventually stood: "All Frenchmen who shall
have made one or more campaigns for the establishment of the
Republic, are citizens, without condition as to taxes."--
_Editor._

2 The head of the Committee (eleven) was the Abbe Sieves,
whose political treachery was well known to Paine before it
became known to the world by his services to Napoleon in
overthrowing the Republic.--_Editor._

It was not for himself alone, but for his family, that the French
citizen, at the dawn of the revolution, (for then indeed every man
was considered a citizen) marched soldier-like to the frontiers, and
repelled a foreign invasion. He had it not in his contemplation, that he
should enjoy liberty for the residue of his earthly career, and by his
own act preclude his offspring from that inestimable blessing. No! He
wished to leave it as an inheritance to his children, and that they
might hand it down to their latest posterity. If a Frenchman, who united
in his person the character of a Soldier and a Citizen, was now to
return from the army to his peaceful habitation, he must address his
small family in this manner: "Sorry I am, that I cannot leave to you
a small portion of what I have acquired by exposing my person to
the ferocity of our enemies and defeating their machinations. I have
established the republic, and, painful the reflection, all the laurels
which I have won in the field are blasted, and all the privileges to
which my exertions have entitled me extend not beyond the period of
my own existence!" Thus the measure that has been adopted by way of
subterfuge falls short of what the framers o