Paine makes a strong case here against Edmund Burke’s claim that society is a contract between the living, the dead, and those not yet born. It is somewhat difficult to argue “that a certain body of men, who existed a hundred years ago made a law, and that there does not now exist … nor ever will, nor ever can, a power to alter it (Paine, 439).” The conditions under which that law was created may not be the same conditions which the generation this law has been imposed upon are living under. He believed that once man has died, and seizes to exist, his role in politics simultaneously seizes to exist. It seems logical to contend that the dead, who can not represent themselves should not play a role in politics. It also seems quite logical that
