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 the supreme happiness of mankind, as consisting in the possession and gratification of fine sensibility, who decried all restraint as irksome to the feelings; these figured away in plays and novels, and poems and fables and tales, abounded in prettinesses and pathos, and many other qualities, and merely wanted sense, virtue, and piety. Instances of these and many other kinds, will readily suggest themselves, and scarcely one of the literary quacks, but had knots of admirers, who regarded him or her as a shining light, and implicitly followed as a guide. In such a predisposition for the reception of nonsense, and especially innovating nonsense, Tom Paine's book was wonderfully adapted for circulation.

Many were dabblers in what they supposed metaphysics, for whom Paine provided his distinctions and definitions, in such a way as to give them a notion,