They are become subjects of universal conversation, and may be considered as the Order of the day. If systems of government can be introduced less expensive and more productive of general happiness than those which have existed, all attempts to oppose their progress will in the end be fruitless. Reason, like time, will make its own way, and prejudice will fall in a combat with interest. If universal peace, civilisation, and commerce are ever to be the happy lot of man, it cannot be accomplished but by a revolution in the system of governments. All the monarchical governments are military.
War is their trade, plunder and revenue their objects.
While such governments continue, peace has not the absolute security of a day. Wearied with war, and tired with human butchery, they sat down to rest, and called it peace. The revolutions which formerly took place in the world had nothing in them that interested the bulk of mankind. They extended only to a change of persons and measures, but not of principles, and rose or fell among the common transactions of the moment. Conquest and tyranny, at some earlier period, dispossessed man of his rights, and he is now recovering them.