Thomas Paine
man. His writing was accessible to the average individual, not just the elite. Because of his ability to explain his ideas to everyone, Paine was a man who had great influence on the founding of America as we know it today, yet at the time of his death it appeared that he had lost everything that was dear to him. Paine’s biographer Jack Fruchtman characterizes Paine’s legacy: “He wrote and said things that distinguished him as one of the great original thinkers, whose observations seem intensely relevant even today” (32). Paine, the man who was believed to suggest the United States of America as the name for the colonies, died without acknowledgment that was due him. In the 21st century there has been a resurgence of interest in the life of Paine, and maybe fi nally there will be some closure to the question of his remains and he will have the acknowledgment he deserved. Cardaic Henry
Common Sense (1776) Thomas Paine’s most famous pamphlet is fully titled Common Sense: Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, on the Following Interesting Subjects: I. Of the Origins and Design of the Government in General, with Concise Remarks on the English Constitution. II. On Monarchy and Hereditary Succession. III. Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs. IV. Of the Present Ability of America, with Some Miscellaneous Reflections. It fi rst appeared on January 9, 1776, and quickly went through 25 editions in that year alone, a publishing feat that speaks to the general interest Paine aroused in the Americans who were clamoring for independence from Great Britain. It was not as though other writers were not arguing for America to separate itself from Britain; rather, what made Paine’s argument so singular, aside from his deliberate use of plain style to reach the widest reading public possible, was its basis in reason rather than in the religious realm of the Bible. Prior to Paine’s pamphlet, Separatists and Puritans had made new homes for themselves in America precisely so they could
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exercise religious freedoms and escape mandatory membership in the Church of England. Paine’s very title, Common Sense, speaks to an audience on an entirely different ground, arguing for American independence from a secular perspective. This very basis for his argument would later become a point of public outrage against Paine, as he was considered both in Great Britain and in America as a threat to Christianity since his model for a harmonious society was not predicated on religious belief. In his introduction, Paine creates a parallel between America’s “cause as the cause of all mankind” and his anonymity as author of the pamphlet. Paine sees the crisis before America “not [as] local, but universal, and through which all the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected.” Similarly, he refuses to identify himself as the pamphlet’s author, arguing that “the Object for Attention is the Doctrine itself, not the Man.” This rhetorical strategy, staged in the introductory pages of the pamphlet, sets the reader’s expectations for the argument that will ensue and emphasizes the universal import of American independence. The concept of natural rights, for Paine, is larger than America and its struggles with Great Britain, just as it is larger than the writer himself, who remains anonymous in order to focus attention on the issue at hand rather than on its author. In his fi rst section, “Origin and Design of Governments in General,” Paine wishes to separate society (produced by our wants) from government (produced by our wickedness). He offers a hypothetical situation, “a small number of persons settled in some sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest,” to illustrate the natural evolution of society and to provide readers with a “clear and just idea of the design and end of government” (6). One man alone, Paine argues, will be unable to survive in this new environment unless he forms bonds of “reciprocal blessings” with other immigrants, whose combined labor allows for the construction of houses and mitigates against the vulnerability of the individual to disease or other misfortune.