The Pamphlet that Opened the American Mind

Thomas Paine (1737-1809): He was born with liberty in his lungs. Though impoverished and largely self-educated, he made his mark time and again in the annals of history. And though English-born, he was an American Founding Father. A journalist, political philosopher, and revolutionary activist, Paine paved the way for Thomas Jefferson and the principles Jefferson articulated in the Declaration of Independence. Paine’s pamphlets Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783) framed the patriot case for independence from Great Britain.

Quaker-reared, Paine was a maverick, the kind of man who refused to remain silent in the face of tyranny. With informed boldness, he turned his quill against monarchical rule as practiced by King George III and his ilk. As the late American historian Richard Beeman has observed:

• “Thomas Paine’s Common Sense may well be the most influential piece of polemical writing in all of American history. It helped change the course of history in the western world, giving Americans the intellectual rationale and the self-confidence to cast off the rule of what was, at the time, the most powerful nation on earth, Great Britain. And it gave Americans a vision of an independent future that marked a revolutionary break with past conceptions of government, of constitutions, and of the very nature of society itself.”

When Paine penned Common Sense, the conflict with Britain had dragged on for about 13 years. Those were years of strife and suffering. Time and again, the colonists’ protests were met with indifference or violence. Their quest for liberty was deemed criminally seditious – a hanging offense. Hence, in August 1775, King George issued a “Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition.” Challenges to his autocratic rule would not be tolerated; more British troops would be sent to crush this revolutionary movement. Time did not appear to be on the colonists’ side. Then came Paine’s pamphlet.

In Common Sense, Paine directed his fiercest attacks at the very idea of kingly rule; he dubbed King George “the royal brute of England.” He did so, in his words, by offering “nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense.” The colonists’ grievances were too numerous; their liberties were too often abridged; and the King’s demands were too numerous and oppressive. Reconciliation was impossible. The cause of liberty – true and full liberty – required a form of government more responsive to the will of the People.

Paine’s 47-page pamphlet laid the groundwork for Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence in at least three respects: (i) it provided a formidable and revealing critique of monarchical rule; (ii) it popularized the idea of republicanism; and (iii) it argued for the natural rights of men. It inspired a new ethos, the very kind Jefferson would tap into in his call for independence, grounded in the 27 grievances he proffered. Both in style and substance, a new age had arrived – the age of Paine and Jefferson.

In this, the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of our independence, We the People again find ourselves combating the wrongs of monarchical rule, this time of the kind dictated by President Donald Trump. Hence the call to return to our founding principles and practices as urged by Paine and articulated by Jefferson. To that end, heed Paine’s stirring words:

“The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. . . .

Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions. . .

[I]n America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other. . . .”