Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. …Common interest regulates their concerns, and forms their law; and the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than the laws of government. In fine, society performs for itself almost everything which is ascribed to government.
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791).
Richman quotes it at the end of a fine exposition of Paine's Common Sense.
There. Now I have links to all of Paine's published works on one page. Oh, come to think of it, The Crisis link is in a comment.
Wait a minute, I'm forgetting a fourth. What is it, LibertyBob? Oh, yeah! The Age of Reason! [I like that USHistory.org.] Which is a lot better explication of Deism than, say, Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [scroll down] or Ethan Allen's Reason: The Only Oracle of Man. Of course, I read Paine first and the other two were deadly boring rehashes of the same stuff after that. Paine inserts some fireworks into the discussion at least.
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