What was Thomas Paine suggesting about monarchies

By instituting a republic, the people would remove both their greatest tax burden and their greatest warmonger: the person of the monarch. Monarchs demand a huge and unmerited amount of money for themselves, and justify ever-rising taxes by constantly instigating wars with each other. By contrast, Paine produces a fully-costed budget for a republic, and demonstrates not only how much public money is lost to the ruling classes, but how this money could be used to bring about a welfare state; for example, the 'Duke of Richmond alone ... takes away as much for himself as would maintain two thousand poor and aged persons'. The inefficient nature of the monarchical system meant that while the money existed, it could not be spent on worthy causes. This demonstrates that the British monarchy, at least, did not exist for the betterment of the people, as Paine believed it should, but simply to further their own selfish ends. The minimal government spending Paine advocates would follow from instigating a republic would not only bring misuse of public funds to an end, but allow this money to be used for the betterment of society, for example by setting up public workhouses to feed the poor. Paine's theme throughout Rights of Man is the simple illogicality of the monarchy. As an enlightenment writer, he was trying to expose the superstition based on the monarchy in the hope of contributing to a new society based on reason.