Question

How does Paine use the reference to "beasts of the field" to support his argument?
He likens such beasts to the brutal nature of overly centralized government, which is not responsive to the needs of the governed.
He says that kings treat men like animals that have no right to form government based on a set of collective and changing principles.
He compares the participants in Mr. Burke's "political church" to unthinking beasts that can be easily controlled by irresponsible leaders.
He asserts that men who are treated like beasts are likely to follow their leaders, even if the leaders are

Answer 1

by Thomas Paine (excerpt)

I am not contending for nor against any form of government, nor for nor against any party, here or elsewhere. That which a whole nation chooses to do it has a right to do. Mr. Burke says, No. Where, then, does the right exist? I am contending for the rights of the living, and against their being willed away and controlled and contracted for by the manuscript assumed authority of the dead, and Mr. Burke is contending for the authority of the dead over the rights and freedom of the living. There was a time when kings disposed of their crowns by will upon their death-beds, and consigned the people, like beasts of the field, to whatever successor they appointed. This is now so exploded as scarcely to be remembered, and so monstrous as hardly to be believed. But the Parliamentary clauses upon which Mr. Burke builds his political church are of the same nature.

The laws of every country must be analogous to some common principle. In England no parent or master, nor all the authority of Parliament, omnipotent as it has called itself, can bind or control the personal freedom even of an individual beyond the age of twenty-one years. On what ground of right, then, could the Parliament of 1688, or any other Parliament, bind all posterity for ever?

Those who have quitted the world, and those who have not yet arrived at it, are as remote from each other as the utmost stretch of mortal imagination can conceive. What possible obligation, then, can exist between them—what rule or principle can be laid down that of two nonentities, the one out of existence and the other not in, and who never can meet in this world, the one should control the other to the end of time?

Answer 2

@OtherWorldly

Answer 3

okay one second let me read this :)

Answer 4

the end of the last choice is not complete

Answer 5

Anyways....... i would think it is A because of what i understand from this part, "There was a time when kings disposed of their crowns by will upon their death-beds, and consigned the people, like beasts of the field, to whatever successor they appointed. "