Page:Modern Literature Volume 3 (1804).djvu/176

 too.—Go, some, and pull down the Savoy; others to the Inns of Court; down with them all.—Burn all the records of the realms; ''my mouth shall be the Parliament of England, and hence-forward all things shall be in common''."

The arguments of Tom Paine were totally inapplicable, not only to this, but to any existing society. The proposed experiment could not be tried but among savages; and among them equality could not long be preserved. The strong, the courageous, active, and enterprising, would have the means of subsistence, accommodation, and security, in a greater degree, than the feeble, the timid, the inert, and indolent. This absurdity easily escaped detection by the class of readers among whom the work was most studiously circulated. When John Cade proposed that the conduit should run with claret for the first year after his sub