Zhan Qintuo·Drago netti

Dragonetti is a political thinker cited in Common Sense as a guide to the ends of government. His compact test—how to secure the greatest sum of individual happiness with the least national expense—supports Thomas Paine’s argument that legitimate political arrangements should be judged by the freedom and welfare they produce, not by inherited titles or ceremony.

The Principle Attributed to Dragonetti

Thomas Paine introduces Dragonetti in the context of a proposed constitutional settlement for the colonies. He calls him a wise observer of governments and quotes his account of political science as the search for the true point of happiness and freedom. Dragonetti’s criterion joins individual well-being to the cost borne by the nation: a successful government must produce the greatest sum of the former with the least of the latter.

The passage presents this as a standard worthy of lasting gratitude. The measure is not the magnificence of rulers or the prestige of a political form, but the practical balance between people’s liberty and happiness and the resources consumed by government. The emphasis on individual happiness also gives the principle a civic dimension: government is valuable insofar as its arrangements serve those who live under them.

Use in the Constitutional Proposal

Paine invokes Dragonetti after outlining a proposed Continental Conference, assembled from members of Congress, colonial assemblies or conventions, and representatives chosen by the people. Its task would be to frame a Continental Charter defining how members of Congress and assemblies are selected, when they sit, and where their jurisdictions begin and end. The proposed charter would secure freedom and property and, above all, the free exercise of religion according to conscience.

Dragonetti’s maxim supplies an evaluative horizon for this institutional design. Paine does not present the proposed machinery as an end in itself: representation, jurisdiction, and protection of rights are measures toward a government capable of securing freedom and happiness without unnecessary national expense. The conference is to dissolve after producing the charter, leaving the bodies chosen under it to legislate and govern.

Relation to Paine’s Republican Argument

The citation accords with Paine’s contrast between representative government and monarchy. In his account of England, royal influence over appointments has weakened the House of Commons, the republican element of the constitution, while the king’s remaining business is chiefly to make war and distribute places. Paine links those functions to national impoverishment and political division, and sets the expense of the crown against the social worth of an honest person.

Against that model, Dragonetti’s standard directs attention to political consequences rather than names. Paine’s proposed assemblies would be annual and headed by a president, while a continental structure would unite the colonies under a charter. The proposal reflects the earlier principle that frequent elections help prevent the elected from forming interests separate from those of their electors. In this argument, a government’s legitimacy rests on service to the governed, not on the supposed dignity of a king.

Editorial Context and Significance

Dragonetti’s words appear as a direct quotation in the pamphlet’s constitutional argument, and Paine’s endnote identifies the citation as coming from Dragonetti on virtue and rewards. The reference lends an external formulation to Paine’s demand that the new political order be judged by measurable public purposes: freedom, individual happiness, and national economy.

The citation’s place in the argument is significant because it connects constitutional design with a standard of judgment. Paine moves from the practical question of how to constitute representative bodies to the broader question of what those bodies are for. Dragonetti’s formulation condenses that purpose into a single test: government should enlarge the happiness and freedom of individuals while imposing the least national expense.