The palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise

“The palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise” is a central metaphor in Thomas Paine’s account of government in Common Sense. It turns his distinction between society and government into an image of loss: society grows from human needs and mutual affection, while government restrains vice, and monarchy represents an especially imposing political structure built at the expense of an earlier, more harmonious condition.

Meaning and Argument

The expression appears within Paine’s argument that society and government have different origins and purposes. Society arises from people’s wants and draws them together; government arises from human wrongdoing and restrains conduct through authority and punishment. The palace and the bower give this contrast architectural form. The palace signifies concentrated political power; the bower evokes the fellowship and ease that political institutions displace.

The image belongs to a qualified argument, not a claim that every form of government can simply be abolished. Paine calls society a blessing and government, even at its best, a necessary evil. Because conscience does not reliably govern everyone’s actions, people surrender part of their property to protect the rest. Security, therefore, is government’s true purpose, and a form of government is preferable insofar as it provides that security with the least expense and greatest benefit. The metaphor makes the cost of political authority vivid while leaving room for limited government as a response to human failings.

From Natural Fellowship to Government

Paine develops the point through a thought experiment about a small group settling in an isolated part of the earth. In a condition of natural liberty, society would be their first concern: a person alone could not meet basic needs as effectively as several people working together. Four or five could build a tolerable dwelling where one person might labour for much of a lifetime without finishing the work. Shared necessities would thus bind the settlers before law or formal government became necessary.

That early harmony is conditional. While the settlers remain just toward one another, reciprocal assistance can make law and government unnecessary. But as they overcome the first difficulties of settlement and loosen their attachment to the common cause, moral failure creates a need for government. The palace metaphor gives this sequence a memorable endpoint: political order answers a real defect, but its grandeur is set against the more natural social bonds it is meant to regulate.

The Image in the Critique of Monarchy

The surrounding argument extends the contrast from government in general to monarchy. Paine maintains that people were originally equal and asks what natural or religious ground could justify setting kings above subjects. He also argues that early human communities had no kings, and invokes Holland’s comparative peace as an example in his case against the proposition that monarchy is essential to order.

His scriptural argument reinforces the image’s rejection of royal sanctity. Paine says that the early Israelites had no kings and describes their political arrangement as a kind of republic administered by a judge and tribal elders. He presents their later request for a king as a national delusion, and recounts that Gideon refused the offer to rule, insisting that the Lord should rule instead. In this framework, the palace is not merely a sign of administrative power: it marks a human institution that, in Paine’s reading, claims an elevation and reverence it cannot rightly possess.

Historical Cost and Rhetorical Force

Paine’s historical examples give the metaphor a political consequence. He argues that hereditary succession opens government to rulers who may be foolish, wicked, or unfit, and disputes the claim that it prevents civil conflict. He cites England’s record since the conquest: thirty kings and two minors had reigned, while the kingdom had experienced eight civil wars and nineteen rebellions. The long contest between the houses of York and Lancaster supplies a further example: twelve pitched battles, apart from skirmishes and sieges, accompanied a struggle that lasted from the reign of Henry the Sixth until the families were united under Henry the Seventh.

The expression’s force comes from joining this political history to the book’s account of social origins. The image does not treat royal magnificence as proof of legitimacy; it recasts the palace as evidence of what has been lost and of the disorder monarchy can bring. That reversal supports Paine’s larger demand that inherited political arrangements be judged by their actual consequences and by their capacity to provide security, rather than accepted as sacred merely because they are old.