250th anniversary: Tom Paine’s ‘Common Sense’

He took chances while others took time. He voiced the improbable while articulating the only probable course of action. He awakened a passion for independence in the colonial mind. He was the quintessential dissenter. Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was his name. As fate had it, he lived in Lewes, England, from 1768 to 1774. As we start to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, let us pause to remember the man who was a firebrand for freedom.

Before Thomas Jefferson composed the Declaration, Paine, a Quaker-raised immigrant, crafted “Common Sense” – his original title was “Plain Truth,” but Benjamin Rush proposed “Common Sense.” Paine’s pamphlet was initially printed anonymously in Philadelphia Jan. 10, 1776, by Robert Bell. It stirred hope amid despair. With literary flair and revolutionary zeal, Paine urged deliberation, though with activist resolve. In his appendix to the third edition of “Common Sense,” Paine was blunt: “The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable of reflection.” 

“Common Sense,” scripted in rented rooms, is one of the great documents in the history of freedom. In a matter of months, 120,000 copies of the two-shilling pamphlet were feverishly snatched up. Its contents carried impassioned messages about rights and revolution, coupled with broadsides against government by kings. Reconciliation with England, Paine argued, was impossible; independence was vital; a republican form of government with broad public participation was crucial; and common sense must defeat the lies of loyalists.  

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” His words stirred soldiers and statesmen alike. His pamphlet worked “a powerful change ... in the minds of many men,” declared Gen. George Washington. Moved by Paine’s unanswerable reasoning, Washington ordered “Common Sense” be read to war-torn troops. Indeed, as Paine put it, “the birthday of a new world was at hand.” Such words stimulated a budding desire for independence. His reasoning redefined the relationship between the governed and their imperious government. “In America,” Paine stressed, “the law is king.”  

He derided the king and his loyalists, at home and abroad. Edmund Burke, the legendary conservative member of Parliament, viewed Paine as blind to the advantages of reconciliation: “English privileges have made [the colonies all that they are].” Crown-loyal colonists regarded Paine’s uncompromising thinking as dangerously radical, even seditious. His proposed new form of government was seen as wildly unrealistic. John Adams was of two minds. Paine’s pamphlet contained “a great deal of good sense,” he wrote in 1776. Years later, he tagged the pamphlet as “a poor, ignorant, malicious [and] short-sighted” work. Abigail disagreed: “I am charmed with the sentiments of ‘Common Sense.’” 

Penned in the bloody aftermath of the battles of Lexington and Concord, “Common Sense” fueled a discourse of dissent. Breaking from the tendencies of craven colonists, Paine’s plainspoken words relentlessly attacked the king. Later in 1776, he lauded the virtues of colonial bravery: Though “[t]hese are the times that try men’s souls” and “he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

The road to freedom was, nonetheless, paved with political minefields. It took acrimonious debates, robust town hall meetings and uninhibited tavern disputes to make Paine’s prophetic ideas real. “The sun,” he posited, “never shone on a cause of greater worth.” As for loyalists who disagreed, they had “the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant.” 

Paine closed “Common Sense” by asserting that “nothing can settle our affairs so expeditiously as an open and determined declaration for independence.” Jefferson shaped the Declaration of Independence in the contours of Paine’s hopes for a democratic republic. 

Take heed, and let us remember the man who inspired the birth of our nation – Thomas Paine, the devoted dissenter.