Yes. Paine almost lost his head over it. He preached his "rights of man" BS in France but his real motivation was mercenary. He was a looter working with the revolutionaries trying to steal Spanish property. Jefferson, who wanted a second American revolution to break the Congregationalist/Federalist power structure in New England, used Paine (and even Baptists).
Corrupt aristocracy? I'll let you defend that one -- you and Alexander Hamilton, who threw a woman's honor and good name under the bus to protect his own reputation from charges of defalcation.
Of course it was corrupt. They were slave owners. Jefferson didn't free his slaves because he took out mortgages on them and couldn't. He liked the foreign wine and playing the country squire more than he wanted to uphold all those virtues he mouthed off about. They were so corrupt, they jury rigged congress to count their slaves as 3/5ths of a person to gain representation in Congress to which they were not entitled.
>They were so corrupt, they jury rigged congress to count their slaves as 3/5ths of a person to gain representation in Congress to which they were not entitled.
If they were that corrupt then they would have made the number 0; that it was less than 1 meant that the Union would HAVE to take up the issue at some point in the future. Remember that the primary author of the Constitution refused to sign it because they didn’t outright abolish slavery; that they didn’t outright abolish slavery was only because of politics. (Kind of like the reverse of Catholics and the health-care-reform bill; congress/Obama could garner a LOT more support [from the Catholics] if they were to drop abortion-funding wholly from the bill — in fact, it can be argued that the VERY reason this bill will fail is because it’s an “my or not at all” approach that is being pushed.)
Corrupt? A deal negotiated in a fishbowl and agreed to by all parties? How is that corrupt, South-hater?
"Not entitled?" Sez you. Don't like the deal? Don't do the deal. And when the States you hate anyway decide to split the sheets, just let them walk away -- if you don't like the deal, or have buyer's remorse.
So tell us how you're entitled to have things all ways, your way, washed down with buckets of blood, while bad-mouthing other people who were party to the original deal.