quote · Legacy record
There is an unnatural unfitness in an aristocracy to be legislators for a nation. Their ideas of distributive justice are corrupted at the very source. They begin life trampling on all their younger brothers and sisters, and relations of every kind, and are taught and educated so to do. With what ideas of justice or honor can that man enter a house of legislation, who absorbs in his own person the inheritance of a whole family of children, or metes out some pitiful portion with the insolence of a gift?
There is an unnatural unfitness in an aristocracy to be legislators for a nation. Their ideas of distributive justice are corrupted at the very source. They begin life trampling on all their younger brothers and sisters, and relations of every kind, and are taught and educated so to do. With what ideas of justice or honor can that man enter a house of legislation, who absorbs in his own person the inheritance of a whole family of children, or metes out some pitiful portion with the insolence of a gift?
Approximate author period: c. 1773 AD · early modern
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- Author or tradition
- Thomas Paine
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1773 AD · early modern
author lifetime midpoint (1737–1809)
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 261697; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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