The Works of Thomas Paine - v. 3 Author:Thomas Paine Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: men will tell you just what you please. It is their interest to amuse, in order to lengthen out their protection. They study to keep you amongst them for that ve... more »ry purpose ; and in proportion as you disregard their advice, and grow callous to their complaints, they will stretch into improbability, and season their flattery the higher. Characters like these, are to be found in every country, and every country will despise them. COMMON SENSE. Philadelphia, Oct. 20, 1778. THE CRISIS. No. VII. TO THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND. There are stages in the business of serious life in which to amuse is cruel, but to deceive is to destroy; and it is of little consequence, in the conclusion, whether men deceive themselves, or submit, by a kind of mutual consent, to the impositions of each other. That England has long been under the influence of delusion or mistake, needs no other proof than the unexpected and wretched situation that she is now involved in: and so powerful has been the influence, that no provision was ever made or thought of against the misfortune, because the possibility of its happening was never conceived. The general and successful resistance of America, the conquest of Burgoyne, and a war in France, were treated in Parliament as the dreams of a discontented opposition, or a distempered imagination. They were beheld as objects un worthy of a serious thought, and the bare intimation of them afforded the ministry a triumph of laughter. Short triumph indeed! For everything which has been predicted has happened, and all that was promised has failed. A long series of politics so remarkably distinguished by a succession of misfortunes, without one alleviating turn, must certainly have something in it systematically wrong. It is sufficient to awaken the most credulous in...« less