12: Common Sense

A book by Thomas Paine

This is how you punch up.

In his introduction to Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, American historian Richard Beeman calls it possibly “the most influential piece of polemical writing in all of American history.” First published in January 1776, Paine’s pamphlet advocated in clear and simple prose an idea that, for many even then, was unthinkable: that the Thirteen American Colonies should separate themselves from Great Britain, and quickly. For Paine, the prospect of the colonies reconciling with their rulers was “truly farcical”. Six months after Common Sense’s publication and remarkable success, the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia.

As Benjamin Franklin later wrote to the author: “You, Thomas Paine, are more responsible than any other living person on this continent for the creation of what are called the United States of America.” Even John Adams, who hated Paine, conceded: “Without the pen of [Paine], the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.”

But who on earth was he? Well, as far as I can work out, he was intermittently a bit of a mess (although aren’t we all?). Born in Thetford, England, in 1737, the son of a Quaker corset maker named Joseph Pain (Thomas later added the “e”), Paine left school aged 12 or 13, and by the age of 37, after two marriages and numerous failed professions, he was forced to sell all his household possessions in order to avoid debtors’ prison. In October 1774, with the backing of Franklin, he set sail for America. In late November he landed in Philadelphia but had to be carried ashore on a stretcher due to illness. Despite every setback, though, and in large part because of them, Paine was the one who lit the fire that led to America’s independence.

Unlike many modern-day “controversialists”, Paine wasn’t a rent-a-gob with a huge platform prattling against some imagined grievance for the sake of their own ego. Paine was a gifted wordsmith legitimately railing against the unfair and outdated relationship between the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain. As he put it: “There is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.”

Paine’s targets were gargantuan, and this is what I mean by punching up. He took on the much revered and beloved English constitution, he targeted his righteous ire at notions of monarchy and hereditary succession—and specifically George III—and he played a crucial part in developing a new American patriotism to unite the colonies and sever their allegiance to the “mother country”.

Reading almost 250 years on from its publication, much of Common Sense is still remarkably fresh. Occasionally there is the need to battle some dated language or allusion, but it remains a stirring read. The average inhabitant of the Thirteen American Colonies at the start of 1776 was not necessarily crying out for independence. Many were happy with the monarchy and liked being part of the British Empire. Paine, with his clarity, his logic, and his passion, gave them a reason to change their minds.

Take the idea that, because America had thrived under British rule, it should remain shackled to her. For Paine, this argument was “fallacious”. “We may as well assert,” he wrote, “that because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat, or that the first twenty years of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty.” He then doubled down on the “parent country”, writing: “Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make war upon their families.” You can almost hear the residents of the churches, coffee houses, and taverns in which Common Sense was read aloud muttering: “You know what, the man’s got a bloody point.”