The Writings of Thomas Paine, Vol. I (1774-1779) - Online Library of Liberty

The Writings of Thomas Paine, Vol. I (1774-1779) - Online Library of Liberty



About this Title:

Vol. 1 of a 4 vol. collection of the works of Thomas Paine. Vol. 1 contains letters and newspaper articles, Common Sense, and The American Crisis.
Copyright information:

The text is in the public domain.
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This material is put online to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. Unless otherwise stated in the Copyright Information section above, this material may be used freely for educational and academic purposes. It may not be used in any way for profit.
Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTION.
PREFATORY NOTE TO PAINE’S FIRST ESSAY.
I.: AFRICAN SLAVERY IN AMERICA.
II.: A DIALOGUE BETWEEN GENERAL WOLFE AND GENERAL GAGE IN A WOOD NEAR BOSTON.1
III.: THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA.1
IV.: USEFUL AND ENTERTAINING HINTS.1
V.: NEW ANECDOTES OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT.1
VI.: REFLECTIONS ON THE LIFE AND DEATH OF LORD CLIVE.1
VII.: CUPID AND HYMEN.1
VIII.: DUELLING.1
IX.: REFLECTIONS ON TITLES.1
X.: THE DREAM INTERPRETED.1
XI.: REFLECTIONS ON UNHAPPY MARRIAGES.1
XII.: THOUGHTS ON DEFENSIVE WAR.1
XIII.: AN OCCASIONAL LETTER ON THE FEMALE SEX.1
XIV.: A SERIOUS THOUGHT.1
XV.: COMMON SENSE.1
XVI.: EPISTLE TO QUAKERS.
XVII.: THE FORESTER’S LETTERS.1
XVIII.: A DIALOGUE1
XIX.: THE AMERICAN CRISIS.
I.
II.: TO LORD HOWE.2
III.
IV.
V.: TO GEN. SIR WILLIAM HOWE.1
VI.: TO THE EARL OF CARLISLE, GENERAL CLINTON, AND WILLIAM EDEN, ESQ., BRITISH COMMISSIONERS AT NEW YORK.1
VII.: TO THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
VIII.: ADDRESSED TO THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
IX.
X.: ON THE KING OF ENGLAND’S SPEECH.1
XI.: ON THE PRESENT STATE OF NEWS.
XII.: TO THE EARL OF SHELBURNE.1
XIII.: THOUGHTS ON THE PEACE, AND THE PROBABLE ADVANTAGES THEREOF.
XX.: RETREAT ACROSS THE DELAWARE.1
XXI.: LETTER TO FRANKLIN, IN PARIS.1
XXII.: THE AFFAIR OF SILAS DEANE.1 TO SILAS DEANE, ESQ’RE.
XXIII.: TO THE PUBLIC ON MR. DEANE’S AFFAIR.1
XXIV.: MESSRS. DEANE, JAY, AND GÉRARD.1

Thomas Paine: Quaker revolutionary? | The Friend

Thomas Paine: Quaker revolutionary? | The Friend

Thomas Paine: Quaker revolutionary?

11 Sep 2014 | by Anthony Boulton

Anthony Boulton writes about a remarkable radical

Left: Thomas Paine’s Common Sense title page. Right: Thomas Paine, copy by Auguste Millière, after an engraving by William Sharp, after George Romney. | Photo: Left: www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/history/common-sense-larger.html. Right: Via Wikimedia Commons.

Thomas Paine’s father was a Quaker and, as John Keane states in his acclaimed definitive biography, ‘Paine’s moral capacities ultimately had religious roots that were to have a lasting impact on his life and, eventually, the political shape of the modern world.’

In 1774 Paine left for America, where he played an instrumental part in the struggle for that country’s independence. He claimed liberty to be the ‘highest human good’. His pamphlet Common Sense electrified the entire United States and rescued George Washington’s flagging campaign.

Thomas Paine, Passionate Pamphleteer for Liberty - Foundation for Economic Education

Thomas Paine, Passionate Pamphleteer for Liberty - Foundation for Economic Education

Thomas Paine, Passionate Pamphleteer for Liberty

A Singleminded Private Individual Aroused Millions to Throw Off Their Oppressors
Monday, January 1, 1996



Jim Powell
Liberty Biographies








As nobody before, Thomas Paine stirred ordinary people to defend their liberty. He wrote the three top-selling literary works of the eighteenth century, which inspired the American Revolution, issued a historic battle cry for individual rights, and challenged the corrupt power of government churches. His radical vision and dramatic, plainspoken style connected with artisans, servants, soldiers, merchants, farmers, and laborers alike. Paine’s work breathes fire to this day.

His devastating attacks on tyranny compare with the epic thrusts of Voltaire and Jonathan Swift, but unlike these authors, there wasn’t a drop of cynicism in Paine. He was always earnest in the pursuit of liberty. He was confident that free people would fulfill their destiny.

He provoked explosive controversy. The English monarchy hounded him into exile and decreed the death penalty if he ever returned. Egalitarian leaders of the French Revolution ordered him into a Paris prison—he narrowly escaped death by guillotine. Because of his critical writings on religion, he was shunned and ridiculed during his last years in America.

But fellow Founders recognized Paine’s rare talent. Benjamin Franklin helped him get started in Philadelphia and considered him an “adopted political son.” Paine served as an aide to George Washington. He was a compatriot of Samuel Adams. James Madison was a booster. James Monroe helped spring him from prison in France. His most steadfast friend was Thomas Jefferson.

Paine was a prickly pear—vain, tactless, untidy—but he continued to charm people. Pioneering individualist feminist Mary Wollstonecraft wrote: “He kept everyone in astonishment and admiration for his memory, his keen observation of men and manners, his numberless anecdotes of the American Indians, of the American war, of Franklin, Washington, and even of his Majesty, of whom he told several curious facts of humour and benevolence.”

Despite his blazing intelligence, Paine had some half-baked ideas. To remedy injustices of the English monarchy, he proposed representative government which would enact “progressive” taxation, “universal” education, “temporary” poor relief, and old-age pensions. He naively assumed such policies would do what they were supposed to, and it didn’t occur to him that political power corrupts representative government like every other government.

Yet in the same work containing these proposals—Rights of Man, Part II—Paine affirmed his libertarian principles again and again. For example: “Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished.”

The “Muse of Fire”

Paine stood five feet, ten inches tall, with an athletic build. He dressed simply. He had a long nose and intense blue eyes. His friend Thomas Clio Rickman noted that “His eye, of which the painter could not convey the exquisite meaning, was full, brilliant, and singularly piercing. He had in it the `muse of fire.”’

Thomas Paine was born on January 29, 1737, in Thetford, England. His mother Francis Cocke came from a local Anglican family of some distinction. His father Joseph Paine was a Quaker farmer and shoemaker. Although Thomas Paine wasn’t a practicing Quaker, he endured some of the intolerance directed against Quakers.

Paine took a while to find his calling. He left school at age 12 and began apprenticeship as a Thetford corset-maker, but he didn’t like it. Twice he ran away from home. The second time, in April 1757, he joined the crew of the King of Prussia, a privateer that didn’t find much booty. He tried his hand as a corset-maker again, then as an English teacher and independent Methodist preacher. Public-speaking experience surely gave him insights about what it takes to stir large numbers of people.

Paine’s most puzzling decision was to become an excise tax collector. He got fired, landed another excise tax-collecting job, and got fired again after writing a pamphlet to promote pay raises. Paine witnessed the resourcefulness of smugglers, resentment against tax collectors, and the pervasiveness of government corruption.

Except for a couple of brief interludes, Paine was a loner. Believing that marriage should be based on love, not social status or fortune, he wed Mary Lambert, a household servant, in September 1759, but within a year she died during childbirth. In March 1771, he married again—Elizabeth Ollive, a 20-year-old teacher. While trying to earn a living as a grocer and tobacconist, he went bankrupt in early 1774. Most of his possessions were auctioned April 14th. Two months later, Paine and his wife went their separate ways.

Meanwhile, he thrived on discussions about philosophy and practical politics. In Lewes, Paine belonged to the Headstrong Club, a discussion group. It gathered weekly at the White Horse Tavern where Paine relished ale and oysters. One of the members was an ardent republican and defender of libertarian rebel John Wilkes. Paine’s radical libertarian views jelled.

Intellectually curious, Paine liked to browse in bookstores, attend lectures on scientific subjects, and meet thoughtful people. He befriended a London astronomer who introduced him to Benjamin Franklin, then working to expand business with England. Franklin seems to have convinced Paine that he could make a better life in America, and Franklin provided a letter of introduction to his son-in-law in Philadelphia.

Arrival in America

Paine arrived November 30, 1774. He rented a room at Market and Front streets, the southeast corner—from which he could see the Philadelphia Slave Market. He spent spare time in a bookstore operated by Robert Aiken. Paine must have impressed the bookseller as a lively and literate man, because he was offered the job of editing Aiken’s new publication, The Pennsylvania Magazine.

For Paine, this experience was a proving ground. He produced at least 17 articles, perhaps as many as 26, all signed with such pseudonyms as “Vox Populi,” “Justice, and Humanity.” He edged closer to the controversy of America’s future relationship with England. He vehemently attacked slavery and called for prompt emancipation.

Then came the Battle of Lexington, at dawn on April 19, 1775. British Major John Pitcairn ordered his troops to fire on American militiamen gathered in front of a meetinghouse, killing eight and wounding ten. The outraged Paine resolved to defend American liberty.

Common Sense

In early September, he began making notes for a pamphlet. He probably started writing around the first of November. He worked at a wobbly table, scratching out the words with a goose quill pen on rough buff paper. The manuscript proceeded slowly, because writing was always difficult for Paine. He discussed the evolving draft with Dr. Benjamin Rush whom he had met at Aiken’s bookstore. The draft was completed in early December. Paine got comments from astronomer David Rittenhouse, brewer Samuel Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. Paine thought of calling his pamphlet Plain Truth, but Dr. Rush recommended the more earthy Common Sense.

Dr. Rush arranged for the pamphlet to be published by Robert Bell, a Scotsman who had become a noted Philadelphia publisher, colorful auctioneer, and underground supporter of American independence. Priced at 2 shillings, the 47-page Common Sense— written anonymously “by an Englishman”—was published on January 10, 1776. Paine signed over royalties to the Continental Congress.

With simple, bold, and inspiring prose, Paine launched a furious attack on tyranny. He denounced kings as inevitably corrupted by political power. He broke with previous political thinkers when he distinguished between government compulsion and civil society where individuals pursue private productive lives. Paine envisioned a “Continental union” based on individual rights. He answered objections from those who feared a break with England. He called for a declaration to stir people into action.

Common Sense crackled with unforgettable lines. For example: “Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness. . . . The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. . . . Now is the seed-time of Continental union. . . . We have every opportunity and every encouragement before us to form the noblest, purest constitution on the face of the earth. . . . O! ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth!. . . . We have it in our power to begin the world over again. . . . The birthday of a new world is at hand.”

The first edition sold out quickly. Soon rival editions began appearing. Printers in Boston, Salem, Newburyport, Newport, Providence, Hartford, Norwich, Lancaster, Albany, and New York issued editions. Within three months, Paine estimated that over 120,000 copies had been printed. Dr. Rush recalled that “Its effects were sudden and extensive upon the American mind. It was read by public men, repeated in clubs, spouted in Schools, and in one instance, delivered from the pulpit instead of a sermon by a clergyman in Connecticut.” George Washington declared that Common Sense offered “sound doctrine and unanswerable reasoning.”

Paine’s incendiary ideas leaped across borders. An edition appeared in French-speaking Quebec. John Adams reported that “Common Sense was received in France and in all Europe with Rapture.” There were editions in London, Newcastle, and Edinburgh. Common Sense was translated into German and Danish, and copies got into Russia. Altogether, some 500,000 copies were sold.

Common Sense changed the political climate in America. Before its publication, most colonists still hoped things could be worked out with England. Then suddenly, this pamphlet triggered debates where increasing numbers of people spoke openly for independence. The Second Continental Congress asked Thomas Jefferson to serve on a five-person committee that would draft the declaration Paine had suggested in Common Sense.

“Thomas Paine’s Common Sense,” reflected Harvard University historian Bernard Bailyn, “is the most brilliant pamphlet written during the American Revolution, and one of the most brilliant pamphlets ever written in the English language. How it could have been produced by the bankrupt Quaker corset-maker, the sometime teacher, preacher, and grocer, and twice-dismissed excise officer who happened to catch Benjamin Franklin’s attention in England and who arrived in America only fourteen months before Common Sense was published is nothing one can explain without explaining genius itself.”

When Independence brought war, Paine enlisted as a military secretary for General Daniel Roberdeau, then for General Nathaniel Greene, and by year-end 1776 he was with General George Washington. The untrained, poorly paid Americans, typically serving for a year, were routed by well-trained British soldiers and ruthless Hessian mercenaries.

“The Harder the Conflict, the More Glorious the Triumph”

Paine wondered how he could boost morale. By evening campfire he began writing a new pamphlet. When he returned to Philadelphia, he took his manuscript to the Philadelphia Journal, which published it on December 19th as an eight-page essay, American Crisis. On Christmas Day 1776, George Washington read it to his soldiers. Paine’s immortal opening lines: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” Within hours, Washington’s fired-up soldiers launched a surprise attack on sleeping Hessians in Trenton, giving Americans a much-needed battle victory.

By the time the Revolutionary War ended, Paine had written a dozen more American Crisis essays. They dealt with military and diplomatic issues as Paine promoted better morale. In the second essay, published January 13, 1777, Paine coined the name “United States of America.”

After the British surrendered at Yorktown, Paine was broke, and he didn’t know how he would earn a living. He wanted a government stipend for what he had done to help achieve American Independence. New York State gave him a 300-acre farm in New Rochelle, about 30 miles from New York City, which had belonged to a British loyalist. Congress voted Paine $3,000 for war-related expenses he had paid out of pocket.

Then he came up with an idea for cashing in on the American bridge-building boom. He didn’t find American backers, so on Franklin’s recommendation, he sought support in France and England. While the project fizzled, it brought him into contact with leading classical liberals of the day. In France, he renewed his friendship with Marquis de Lafayette, who had served the American Revolution. Lafayette introduced Paine to the Marquis de Condorcet, a French mathematician and influential classical liberal. In England, Paine met Parliamentary radical Charles James Fox and Edmund Burke, a Parliamentary defender of the American Revolution and friend of radical John Wilkes.

The outbreak of the French Revolution, in July 1789, horrified Burke who began writing his counterrevolutionary manifesto, Reflections on the Revolution in France. It defended monarchy and aristocratic privilege. Burke’s book appeared November 1, 1790, and it reportedly sold almost 20,000 copies within a year. French, German, and Italian editions soon followed.

Rights of Man

Meanwhile, Paine, who had been working on a new book about general principles of liberty, learned the gist of Burke’s manifesto and decided to revise his book as a rebuttal. He moved into a room at the Angel Inn, Islington, where he could concentrate on the project. He started work November 4th. He worked steadily, often by candlelight, for some three months. He finished the first part of Rights of Man on January 29, 1791—his birthday. He was 54. He dedicated the work affectionately to George Washington, and it was published on Washington’s birthday, February 22nd.

While Burke had impressed many people with flowery prose, Paine replied with plain talk. He lashed out at tyranny. He denounced taxes. He specifically denied the moral legitimacy of the English monarchy and aristocracy. He declared that individuals have rights regardless what laws might say. For centuries, people had resigned themselves to tyranny and war, but Paine provided hope these evils could be curbed.

Paine defended the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens, which included a commitment to private property. “The right to property being inviolable and sacred, no one ought to be deprived of it, except in cases of evident public necessity, legally ascertained, and on condition of just indemnity.”

The first printing sold out in three days. The second printing, within hours. There was a third printing in March 1791, a fourth printing in April. Some 200,000 copies sold in England, Wales, and Scotland. Another 100,000 copies were sold in America.

Rights of Man convinced many people to support the French Revolution and dramatic reform in England, and the government reacted with repression. Pro-government newspapers denounced Paine as “Mad Tom.” Churchmen delivered sermons attacking Paine. People hanged effigies of Paine across England. On May 17, 1792, the government charged him with seditious libel, which could be punished by hanging. Excise tax collectors ransacked Paine’s room. He hastened to Dover and boarded a boat for Calais, France, in September 1792. An arrest warrant reached Dover about 20 minutes later.

An enthusiastic crowd welcomed him. He was offered honorary citizenship of France and elected as Calais representative to the National Convention which would develop reforms. He didn’t speak French, and he often failed to realize how fast the political situation was changing. But he knew he was an ideological ally of the so-called Girondins who favored a republican government with limited powers.

His adversaries were the ruthless, xenophobic Jacobins. Incredibly, Paine was considered suspect because he was born in England—even though he could be hanged if he returned there. In the middle of the night before Christmas 1793, Jacobin police hauled him away to Luxembourg Prison. Paine was held without trial in a tiny, solitary cell. On July 24, 1794, the public prosecutor added Paine’s name to the list of prisoners who would be beheaded, but he got lucky. Prison guards mistakenly passed by his cell when they gathered the night’s victims. Three days later, July 27, 1794, people had had enough of the Terror, and they beheaded Robespierre, the most fanatical promoter of Jacobin violence, and the worst was over.

Age of Reason

Before Paine was imprisoned, he started his most controversial major work, Age of Reason, and he continued writing behind bars. While he commended Christian ethics, believed Jesus was a virtuous man, and opposed the Jacobin campaign to suppress religion, he attacked the violence and contradictions of many Bible stories. He denounced the incestuous links between church and state. He insisted that authentic religious revelation came to individuals rather than established churches. He defended the deist view of one God and a religion based on reason. He urged a policy of religious toleration.

Age of Reason had a big impact, in part, because Paine wrote it with his trademark dramatic, plainspoken style which stirred strong emotions. The book became a hot seller in England, and government efforts to suppress it further spurred demand. The book was much sought after in Germany, Hungary, and Portugal. There were four American printings in 1794, seven in 1795, and two more in 1796. People formed societies aimed at promoting Paine’s religious principles.

U.S. minister to France James Monroe demanded that government officials bring Paine to trial or release him. Monroe was eloquent: “the citizens of the United States cannot look back to the era of their revolution, without remembering, with those of other distinguished patriots, the name of Thomas Paine. The services which he rendered them in their struggle for liberty have made an impression of gratitude which will never be erased, whilst they continue to merit the character of a just and generous people.”

By November 6th, gray-bearded and frail, Paine was free at last. In 1801, First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte invited Paine to dinner, hoping for insights about conquering Britain. Paine recommended a policy of peace, the last thing Napoleon wanted to hear, and they never met again.

Paine returned to America on September 1, 1802. He was 65. A Massachusetts newspaper correspondent observed: “Years have made more impression on his body than his mind. He bends a little forward, carries one hand in the other behind, when be walks. He dresses plain like a farmer, and appears cleanly and comfortably in his person. . . . His conversation is uncommonly interesting; he is gay, humorous, and full of anecdote—his memory preserves its full capacity, and his mind is irresistible.”

Paine was subjected to personal attacks from the Federalist press, but he spoke out on controversial issues. For example, after Napoleon gained control of Louisiana in 1800, and the Mississippi was closed to American shipping, Federalists called for war against France. Paine encouraged President Jefferson to propose purchasing the Louisiana territory. While Federalist Alexander Hamilton thought Napoleon would never go for the idea, Paine drew from his firsthand knowledge: “The French treasury is not only empty, but the Government has consumed by anticipation a great part of next year’s revenue. A monied proposal will, I believe, be attended to. . . .” In May 1803, Napoleon sold the Louisiana territory to the United States for $15 million.

Although Federalist critics savaged President Thomas Jefferson for defending Paine, he courageously invited his friend to the White House. When Jefferson’s daughters Mary and Martha made clear they would rather not associate with Paine, Jefferson replied that Paine “is too well entitled to the hospitality of every American, not to cheerfully receive mine.”

During Paine’s last years, he was desperate for cash as his health deteriorated, and he lived in pitiful squalor. He asked to be moved into the home of his friend Marguerite de Bonneville at 59 Grove Street, New York City, and there he died on the morning of June 8, 1809. Mme. de Bonneville arranged for burial at his New Rochelle farm because no cemetery would take him.

Paine didn’t rest in peace. A decade later, English journalist William Cobbett, a foe of Paine’s who became a disciple, secretly dug up the casket and shipped it to England. According to some accounts, he thought that by making it part of a shrine, he could inspire large numbers of people to push for reform of the government and the Church of England. But people weren’t much interested in Paine’s bones. When Cobbett died in 1835, they were dispersed with his personal effects and lost.

Paine remained a forgotten Founder for decades. Theodore Roosevelt summed up the prevailing view when he referred to Paine as a “filthy little atheist.” The first really comprehensive biography didn’t appear until 1892. There still isn’t an authoritative edition of Paine’s complete work.

The American bicentennial helped revive interest in Paine. Paperback collections of his major writings became widely available for the first time, and at least eight biographies have appeared since then—two within the past year.

Perhaps a new generation is rediscovering this marvel of a man. He didn’t have much money. He never had political power. Yet he showed how a singleminded private individual could, by making a moral case for natural rights, arouse millions to throw off their oppressors—and how it could happen again.


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Jim Powell



Jim Powell, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is an expert in the history of liberty. He has lectured in England, Germany, Japan, Argentina and Brazil as well as at Harvard, Stanford and other universities across the United States. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Esquire, Audacity/American Heritage and other publications, and is author of six books.

Philadelphia Reflections: Tom Paine: Rabble-Rousing Quaker?

Philadelphia Reflections: Tom Paine: Rabble-Rousing Quaker?



Tom Paine: Rabble-Rousing Quaker?

Thomas Paine


Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was born of Quaker parents, which makes him a "birthright" Quaker. Children born into Quaker families are accustomed to the subtleties of speech and behavior of that religious sect, ultimately growing up to be the main nucleus of tradition. Knowing what they are getting into, however, they are more likely to rebel against it than others who, coming to the religion by choice rather than by birthright, are commonly described as "Convinced Friends."

These stereotypes may or may not explain some of Tom Paine's paradoxes. He certainly was not a pacifist, a quietest, or a plain person. He was an important historical figure; Walter A. McDougall, the famous University of Pennsylvania historian, feels the American colonists might have sputtered and complained about Royal rule for decades, except for Paine. The American Revolution happened when it happened because Tom Paine stirred up a storm.

Common Sense


According to the traditional way of telling his story, Tom Paine was a ne'er do well failure in London. He ran into Benjamin Franklin, who advised him to emigrate to America in 1775, and within a year his pamphlet called ""Common Sense"" had sold 150,000 copies (some even claim 500,000), galvanizing the public and the Continental Congress into action on July 4, 1776. George Washington read Paine's writings to his troops on the eve of the Battle of Trenton. After that, Paine got mixed up with the French Revolution, and apparently became a severe alcoholic, proclaiming atheism all the way. Although Thomas Jefferson remained friendly to the end, Benjamin Franklin essentially told him to go leave him alone, and Washington would cross the street to avoid him. According to the usual line, Tom Paine was a big-mouthed rabble-rouser and a drunk, who traveled the world looking to stir up revolutions.

However, that cannot possibly be a fair recounting of the whole story. Thomas Alva Edison, whose opinion certainly counts for something, regarded Tom Paine as one of the greatest American inventors, creating the first steel bridge, the first hollow candle, and the principle of central drought in heating. Paine early became a close friend of the Hicks family, the central figures in modern Quakerism; it seems a little unclear how much Tom Paine was reflecting the views of Elias Hicks, and how much Hick site Quakerism can be said to have originated in the thinking of Thomas Paine. Paine was very far from being an atheist. In fact, both he and Hicks believed so fervently in the universality of God that both of them scorned the rituals, paraphernalia, and transparent superstitions of -- religion.

Furthermore, Paine was able to reach the rationalists of The Enlightenment with arguments which cut to the heart of Royalist loyalties. America was too big and too remote to be ruled by a king, particularly one who abused his privileges behind a claim of divine right. William the Conqueror, for example, never denied he was a usurper. One way or another, every king must earn his throne. So, as for feudalism and hereditary aristocracy, what was King George doing with all those German mercenaries? After two centuries of democracy, most Americans are too far from feudalism to appreciate the legitimacy of military meritocracy. Whatever King George was up to, he didn't stand for empowerment of the best and the brightest Englishmen, who in fact might well be opposed to him. If you wanted to get to Virginia aristocrats, Boston sea captains, and Kentucky backwoodsmen, that was exactly the line to take in Common Sense.

Unfortunately, Citizen Tom Paine was a freethinker and couldn't be quiet about it in his later books. He didn't like the way the Old Testament Hebrews hungered for a king. He didn't like the way the New Testament sprinkled miracles on top of unassailable moral principles, and he particularly didn't like the claim that God got an unmarried girl pregnant. He antagonized almost every established religion by proclaiming that no one should make a living from religion. He wrote a book called Age of Reason proclaiming all these freethinking ideas, which struck Ben Franklin as such a stupid thing to do that he would not discuss it, beyond saying that even if he should succeed in convincing people to abandon religion, just imagine how much worse they would probably behave without it. George Washington, who hadn't a trace of intellectualism about him, more accurately portrayed the typical American revulsion at anyone who was so unprincipled as to say such unorthodox things in public. Jefferson distanced himself for political reasons rather than intellectual ones. Franklin thought Paine was a fool. Washington and the rest of the country thought he was a viper.

It would have to be conceded -- by anyone -- that Tom Paine was self-destructive, even sassing Robespierre while in a French prison. How is it such a loose cannon could get the American public off dead center and make the Continental Congress grasp the nettle of revolution, in less than a year? Let's go back to how he came to America in the first place. Franklin sent him.

Then he promptly got a job as editor of the Pennsylvania Gazette, which Franklin had owned for thirty years. And then, in an era when the largest city in America had a population of twenty-five thousand, and the printing presses of the day were able to turn out three or four pages a minute, he sold 150,000 copies of the fifty-page "Common Sense." Who but Franklin, in private partnerships with sixty printers, could have possibly authorized, financed, and printed 150,000 copies of a colonial pamphlet? In order to find that much printing capacity in colonial America, a great deal of other printing had to lose its place in the queue.

Even today, a best-seller is defined as a book that sells 50,000 copies, and it generally takes three years to get it done. In the Eighteenth Century, for an unknown alcoholic to get off the boat and find a publisher for a best seller in a few weeks is hard even to imagine. Unless he had important help.
Hello, I do not know if this will find its way to right person. My family has found a copy of " Common Sense" By Thomas Paine. It is a combination of pamphlets written by him. Ive been searching to sell, but cannot find proper place to do so. Even checking museums, to find a good resting place for this book. Please if you have any ideas of possibilitys....Thank YOU! Book shows dates of 1700's

Posted by: Rebecca | Sep 2, 2014 6:36 PM

He had an amazing impact on the world and has been downgraded in history largely because his unorthodox religious ideas were confused with atheism by his religious contemporaries. I don't think he was self-destructive. I think he was brave. He was 'educated' but he wasn't 'schooled'. He had rough edges that irritated the more polished plantation-owners of the time, but he wrote with unparalleled and persuasive vigour. An interesting aspect of his legacy is that he is claimed by both left and right. I blog using his name from a classical liberal perspective I believe he broadly shared, but he also wrote about funding basic welfare programmes from a land tax. I belong to the Thomas Paine Society in England and smile that it is chaired by a left-wing politician, given that he could not possibly agree with my favourite quotation from Old Tom (from Common Sense, perhaps the most influential pamphlet in history); “Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.” The only time I regret using his name (out of a vain hope that my blogging might be a thousandth as influential as his pamphleteering) is when I have to waste time responding to angry leftists objecting to it.

An address to the people called Quakers. Paine, Thomas. 1776. Common Sense

An address to the people called Quakers. Paine, Thomas. 1776. Common Sense



Thomas Paine (1737–1809). Common Sense. 1776.


To the Representatives of the Religious Society of the People called Quakers, or to so many of them as were concerned in publishing a late piece, entitled "The ANCIENT TESTIMONY AND PRINCIPLES of the people called QUAKERS renewed, with Respect to the KING and GOVERNMENT, and touching the COMMOTIONS now prevailing in these and other parts of AMERICA, addressed to the PEOPLE IN GENERAL."
---------------------

THE Writer of this, is one of those few, who never dishonors religion either by ridiculing, or cavilling at any denomination whatsoever. To God, and not to man, are all men accountable on the score of religion. Wherefore, this epistle is not so properly addressed to you as a religious, but as a political body, dabbling in matters, which the professed Quietude of your Principles instruct you not to meddle with. 1
As you have, without a proper authority for so doing, put yourselves in the place of the whole body of the Quakers, so, the writer of this, in order to be on an equal rank with yourselves, is under the necessity, of putting himself in the place of all those, who, approve the very writings and principles, against which, your testimony is directed: And he hath chosen their singular situation, in order, that you might discover in him that presumption of character which you cannot see in yourselves. For neither he nor you can have any claim or title to Political Representation. 2
When men have departed from the right way, it is no wonder that they stumble and fall. And it is evident from the manner in which ye have managed your testimony, that politics, (as a religious body of men) is not your proper Walk; for however well adapted it might appear to you, it is, nevertheless, a jumble of good and bad put unwisely together, and the conclusion drawn therefrom, both unnatural and unjust. 3
The two first pages, (and the whole doth not make four) we give you credit for, and expect the same civility from you, because the love and desire for peace is not confined to Quakerism, it is the natural, as well as the religious wish of all denominations of men. And on this ground, as men laboring to establish an Independant Constitution of our own, do we exceed all others in our hope, end, and aim. Our plan is peace for ever. We are tired of contention with Britain, and can see no real end to it but in a final separation. We act consistently, because for the sake of introducing an endless and uninterrupted peace, do we bear the evils and burdens of the present day. We are endeavoring, and will steadily continue to endeavor, to separate and dissolve a connexion which hath already filled our land with blood; and which, while the name of it remains, will be the fatal cause of future mischiefs to both countries. 4
We fight neither for revenge nor conquest; neither from pride nor passion; we are not insulting the world with our fleets and armies, nor ravaging the globe for plunder. Beneath the shade of our own vines are we attacked; in our own houses, and on our own lands, is the violence committed against us. We view our enemies in the character of Highwaymen and Housebreakers, and having no defence for ourselves in the civil law, are obliged to punish them by the military one, and apply the sword, in the very case, where you have before now, applied the halter—Perhaps we feel for the ruined and insulted sufferers in all and every part of the continent, with a degree of tenderness which hath not yet made it's way into some of your bosoms. But be ye sure that ye mistake not the cause and ground of your Testimony. Call not coldness of soul, religion; nor put the Bigot in the place of the Christian. 5
O ye partial ministers of your own acknowledged principles. If the bearing arms be sinful, the first going to war must be more so, by all the difference between wilful attack and unavoidable defence. Wherefore, if ye really preach from conscience, and mean not to make a political hobby-horse of your religion, convince the world thereof, by proclaiming your doctrine to your enemies, for they likewise bear ARMS. Give us proof of your sincerity by publishing it at St. James's, to the commanders in chief at Boston, to the Admirals and Captains who are practically ravaging our coasts, and to all the murdering miscreants who are acting in authority under HIM whom ye profess to serve. Had ye the honest soul of 1 Barclay ye would preach repentance to your king; Ye would tell the Royal Wretch his sins, and warn him of eternal ruin. Ye would not spend your partial invectives against the injured and the insulted only, but, like faithful ministers, would cry aloud and spare none. Say not that ye are persecuted, neither endeavour to make us the authors of that reproach, which, ye are bringing upon yourselves; for we testify unto all men, that we do not complain against you because ye are Quakers, but because ye pretend to be and are NOT Quakers. 6
Alas! it seems by the particular tendency of some part of your testimony, and other parts of your conduct, as if, all sin was reduced to, and comprehended in, the act of bearing arms, and that by the people only. Ye appear to us, to have mistaken party for conscience; because, the general tenor of your actions wants uniformity: And it is exceedingly difficult to us to give credit to many of your pretended scruples; because, we see them made by the same men, who, in the very instant that they are exclaiming against the mammon of this world, are nevertheless, hunting after it with a step as steady as Time, and an appetite as keen as Death. 7
The quotation which ye have made from Proverbs, in the third page of your testimony, that, "when a man's ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him"; is very unwisely chosen on your part; because, it amounts to a proof, that the king's ways (whom ye are so desirous of supporting) do not please the Lord, otherwise, his reign would be in peace. 8
I now proceed to the latter part of your testimony, and that, for which all the foregoing seems only an introduction, viz. 9
"It hath ever been our judgment and principle, since we were called to profess the light of Christ Jesus, manifested in our consciences unto this day, that the setting up and putting down kings and governments, is God's peculiar prerogative; for causes best known to himself: And that it is not our business to have any hand or contrivance therein; nor to be busy bodies above our station, much less to plot and contrive the ruin, or overturn of any of them, but to pray for the king, and safety of our nation, and good of all men: That we may live a peaceable and quiet life, in all goodliness and honesty; under the government which God is pleased to set over us." —If these are really your principles why do ye not abide by them? Why do ye not leave that, which ye call God's Work, to be managed by himself? These very principles instruct you to wait with patience and humility, for the event of all public measures, and to receive that event as the divine will towards you. Wherefore, what occasion is there for your political testimony if you fully believe what it contains: And the very publishing it proves, that either, ye do not believe what ye profess, or have not virtue enough to practise what ye believe. 10
The principles of Quakerism have a direct tendency to make a man the quiet and inoffensive subject of any, and every government which is set over him. And if the setting up and putting down of kings and governments is God's peculiar prerogative, he most certainly will not be robbed thereof by us; wherefore, the principle itself leads you to approve of every thing, which ever happened, or may happen to kings as being his work. OLIVER CROMWELL thanks you. 

CHARLES, then, died not by the hands of man; and should the present Proud Imitator of him, come to the same untimely end, the writers and publishers of the Testimony, are bound, by the doctrine it contains, to applaud the fact. Kings are not taken away by miracles, neither are changes in governments brought about by any other means than such as are common and human; and such as we are now using. Even the dispersing of the Jews, though foretold by our Saviour, was effected by arms. Wherefore, as ye refuse to be the means on one side, ye ought not to be meddlers on the other; but to wait the issue in silence; and unless you can produce divine authority, to prove, that the Almighty who hath created and placed this new world, at the greatest distance it could possibly stand, east and west, from every part of the old, doth, nevertheless, disapprove of its being independent of the corrupt and abandoned court of Britain, unless I say, ye can shew this, how can ye on the ground of your principles, justify the exciting and stirring up the people "firmly to unite in the abhorrence of all such writings, and measures, as evidence of desire and design to break off the happy connexion we have hitherto enjoyed, with the kingdom of Great-Britain, and our just and necessary subordination to the king, and those who are lawfully placed in authority under him." What a slap of the face is here! the men, who in the very paragraph before, have quietly and passively resigned up the ordering, altering, and disposal of kings and governments, into the hands of God, are now, recalling their principles, and putting in for a share of the business. Is it possible, that the conclusion, which is here justly quoted, can any ways follow from the doctrine laid down? The inconsistency is too glaring not to be seen; the absurdity too great not to be laughed at; and such as could only have been made by those, whose understandings were darkened by the narrow and crabby spirit of a dispairing political party; for ye are not to be considered as the whole body of the Quakers but only as a factional and fractional part thereof. 11
Here ends the examination of your testimony; (which I call upon no man to abhor, as ye have done, but only to read and judge of fairly;) to which I subjoin the following remark; "That the setting up and putting down of kings," most certainly mean, the making him a king, who is yet not so, and the making him no king who is already one. And pray what hath this to do in the present case? We neither mean to set up nor to put down, neither to make nor to unmake, but to have nothing to do with them. Wherefore, your testimony in whatever light it is viewed serves only to dishonor your judgement, and for many other reasons had better been let alone than published. 12
First, Because it tends to the decrease and reproach of all religion whatever, and is of the utmost danger to society, to make it a party in political disputes. 13
Secondly, Because it exhibits a body of men, numbers of whom disavow the publishing political testimonies, as being concerned therein and approvers thereof. 14
Thirdly, Because it hath a tendency to undo that continental harmony and friendship which yourselves by your late liberal and charitable donations hath lent a hand to establish; and the preservation of which, is of the utmost consequence to us all. 15
And here without anger or resentment I bid you farewell. Sincerely wishing, that as men and christians, ye may always fully and uninterruptedly enjoy every civil and religious right; and be, in your turn, the means of securing it to others; but that the example which ye have unwisely set, of mingling religion with politics, may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of AMERICA. 16


Note 1 "Thou hast tasted of prosperity and adversity: thou knowest what it is to be banished thy native country, to be over-ruled as well as to rule, and set upon the throne; and being oppressed thou hast reason to know how hateful the oppressor is both to God and man: If after all these warnings and advertisements, thou dost not turn unto the Lord with all thy heart, but forget him who remembered thee in thy distress, and give up thyself to follow lust and vanity, surely great will be thy condemnation.—Against which snare, as well as the temptation of those who may or do feed thee, and prompt thee to evil, the most excellent and prevalent remedy will be, to apply thyself to that light of Christ which shineth in thy conscience, and which neither can, nor will flatter thee, nor suffer thee to be at ease in thy sins." Barclay's Address to Charles II. [back]

Explain Thomas Paine's criticism of the Quakers in Common Sense.

Explain Thomas Paine's criticism of the Quakers in Common Sense.

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Paine’s criticism of the Quakers comes in an appendix to Common Sense. It is perhaps more appropriate to say that Paine is criticizing the leaders of the Quakers. He is criticizing them for their lack of support for the Revolutionary War.

To understand this, let us first think about what Paine’s goal in Common Sensewas and about who the Quakers were. Paine’s goal in this pamphlet was to whip up support for the...

Agrarian Justice - Wikipedia

Agrarian Justice - Wikipedia



Agrarian Justice
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Thomas Paine, 1792.

Agrarian Justice is the title of a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine and published in 1797, which proposed that those who possess cultivated land owe the community a ground rent,[1] and that this justifies an estate tax to fund universal old-age and disability pensions, as well as a fixed sum to be paid to all citizens upon reaching maturity.

It was written in the winter of 1795–96, but remained unpublished for a year, Paine being undecided whether or not it would be best to wait until the end of the ongoing war with Francebefore publishing. However, having read a sermon by Richard Watson, the Bishop of Llandaff, which discussed the "Wisdom ... of God, in having made both Rich and Poor", he felt the need to publish, under the argument that "rich" and "poor" were arbitrary divisions, not divinely created ones.[2]


Contents
1Proposed system
2Philosophical background
3See also
4Notes
5References
6External links

Proposed system[edit]

In response to the private sale of royal (or common) lands, Paine proposed a detailed plan to tax land owners once per generation to pay for the needs of those who have no land. This can be considered a precursor of the modern idea of citizen's dividend or basic income. The money would be raised by taxing all direct inheritances at 10%, and "indirect" inheritances – those not going to close relations – at a somewhat higher rate; this would, he estimated, raise around £5,700,000 per year in England.[3]

Around two-thirds of the fund would be spent on pension payments of £10 per year to every person over the age of fifty, which Paine had taken as his average adult life expectancy.

Most of the remainder would be used to make fixed payments of £15 to every man and woman on reaching the age of twenty-one, legal majority.

The small remainder of the money raised still un-used would be used for paying pensions to "the lame and blind".[4]

For context, the average weekly wage of an agricultural labourer was around 9 shillings, which would mean an annual income of about £23 for an able-bodied man working throughout the year.[5]

Philosophical background[edit]

The work is based on the contention that in the state of nature, "the earth, in its natural uncultivated state... was the common property of the human race"; the concept of private ownership arose as a necessary result of the development of agriculture, since it was impossible to distinguish the possession of improvements to the land from the possession of the land itself. Thus, Paine viewed private property as necessary while at the same time asserting that the basic needs of all humanity must be provided for by those with property, who have originally taken it from the general public. This in some sense is their "payment" to non-property holders for the right to hold private property.
See also[edit]
Georgism
Geolibertarianism
Citizen's Dividend

Notes[edit]

1. ^ Agrarian Justice, Wikisource edition, paragraph 12
2. ^ Author's preface. Penguin edition, pp. 80–1.
3. ^ Penguin edition, pp. 92–3.
4. ^ Penguin edition, pp. 93–5.
5. ^ Figures are an annual average for 1795. Taken from tables in Bowley (1898), p. 706

References[edit]


This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (December 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Paine, Thomas. Agrarian Justice. Wikisource. (Paragraph 12).
Paine, Thomas (2004). Common sense [with] Agrarian justice. Penguin. ISBN 0-14-101890-9.
Bowley, A. L. (1898). "The Statistics of Wages in the United Kingdom During the Last Hundred Years. (Part I.) Agricultural Wages". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. 61 (4). JSTOR 2979856.
External links[edit]
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Agrarian Justice

"Thomas Paine's Agrarian Justicepamphlet". U.S. Social Security Administration. Archived from the original on 2016-03-03.
Agrarian Justice in Collected Writings of Thomas Paine, on Google Books.

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Thomas Paine - Wikipedia

Thomas Paine - Wikipedia



Thomas Paine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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For other people with the same name, see Thomas Paine (disambiguation).

Thomas Paine

Portrait by Laurent Dabos (c. 1792)
Born
Thomas Pain
February 9, 1737

Thetford, Norfolk, Great Britain
Died June 8, 1809 (aged 72)

New York City, United States
Spouse(s)
Mary Lambert (m. 1759),
Elizabeth Ollive
(m. 1771; separated 1774)

Era Age of Enlightenment
School Enlightenment, liberalism, republicanism, democracy

Main interests Politics, ethics, religion

Influences[show]

Influenced[show]
Signature



Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain[1]) (February 9, 1737 [O.S. January 29, 1736][Note 1] – June 8, 1809) was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, he authored the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution and inspired the patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain.[2] His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era ideals of transnational human rights.[3]Historian Saul K. Padover described him as "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination".[4] Born in Thetford in the English county of Norfolk, Paine migrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution. Virtually every rebel read (or listened to a reading of) his powerful pamphlet Common Sense (1776), proportionally the all-time best-selling[5][6]American title, which crystallized the rebellious demand for independence from Great Britain. His The American Crisis(1776–1783) was a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series. Common Sense was so influential that John Adams said: "Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain".[7] Paine lived in France for most of the 1790s, becoming deeply involved in the French Revolution. He wrote Rights of Man (1791), in part a defense of the French Revolution against its critics. His attacks on Irish conservative writer Edmund Burke led to a trial and conviction in absentia in England in 1792 for the crime of seditious libel.

The British government of William Pitt the Younger, worried by the possibility that the French Revolution might spread to England, had begun suppressing works that espoused radical philosophies. Paine's work, which advocated the right of the people to overthrow their government, was duly targeted, with a writ for his arrest issued in early 1792. Paine fled to France in September where, rather immediately and despite not being able to speak French, he was elected to the French National Convention. The Girondists regarded him as an ally. Consequently, the Montagnards, especially Maximilien Robespierre, regarded him as an enemy.

In December 1793, he was arrested and was taken to Luxembourg Prison in Paris. While in prison, he continued to work on The Age of Reason (1793–1794). Future President James Monroe used his diplomatic connections to get Paine released in November 1794. He became notorious because of his pamphlets. The Age of Reason, in which he advocated deism, promoted reason and free thought and argued against institutionalized religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular. He published the pamphlet Agrarian Justice (1797), discussing the origins of property and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income. In 1802, he returned to the U.S. where he died on June 8, 1809. Only six people attended his funeral as he had been ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity.[8]


Contents
1Early life and education
1.1Pennsylvania Magazine
2American Revolution
2.1Common Sense (1776)
2.2The American Crisis (1776)
2.3Foreign affairs
2.3.1The Silas Deane affair
2.4Funding the Revolution
3Rights of Man
4The Age of Reason
4.1Criticism of George Washington
5Later years
6Death
7Ideas
7.1Slavery
7.2Agrarian Justice
8Religious views
9Legacy
9.1Abraham Lincoln
9.2Thomas Edison
9.3South America
9.4Memorials
10In popular culture
11See also
12Notes
13References
13.1Citations
13.2Sources
14External links
Early life and education[edit]

Thomas Paine was born on January 29, 1736 (NS February 9, 1737),[Note 1] the son of Joseph Pain, a tenant farmer and stay-maker,[9] and Frances (née Cocke) Pain, in Thetford, Norfolk, England. Joseph was a Quaker and Frances an Anglican.[10] Despite claims that Thomas changed the spelling of his family name upon his emigration to America in 1774,[1] he was using "Paine" in 1769, while still in Lewes, Sussex.[11]

Old School at Thetford Grammar School, where Paine was educated

He attended Thetford Grammar School (1744–1749), at a time when there was no compulsory education.[12] At the age of 13, he was apprenticed to his father. Paine researchers contend his father's occupation has been widely misinterpreted to mean that he made the stays in ladies' corsets, which likely was an insult later invented by his political foes.[citation needed] The father and apprentice son actually made the thick rope stays (also called stay ropes) used on sailing ships.[13][better source needed][14] Brian McCartin, in Thomas Paine: Common Sense and Revolutionary Pamphleteering (2002), states: "Making stays for ships' masts had been the primary occupation of staymakers for centuries. Another type of staymaking during the eighteenth century was a form of corset making. Whether Joseph was the type of staymaker that made stays for ships or stays for corsets is still a matter of controversy."[15] Thetford historically had maintained a brisk trade with the downriver, then major, port town of King's Lynn.[16][failed verification]

A connection to shipping and the sea explains why, in late adolescence, Thomas enlisted and briefly served as a privateer,[17][18][better source needed] before returning to Britain in 1759. There, he became a master stay-maker, establishing a shop in Sandwich, Kent.[19]

On September 27, 1759, Thomas Paine married Mary Lambert. His business collapsed soon after. Mary became pregnant; and, after they moved to Margate, she went into early labor, in which she and their child died.[20]

In July 1761, Paine returned to Thetford to work as a supernumerary officer. In December 1762, he became an Excise Officer in Grantham, Lincolnshire; in August 1764, he was transferred to Alford, also in Lincolnshire, at a salary of £50 per annum. On August 27, 1765, he was dismissed as an Excise Officer for "claiming to have inspected goods he did not inspect". On July 31, 1766, he requested his reinstatement from the Board of Excise, which they granted the next day, upon vacancy. While awaiting that, he worked as a stay-maker. Again, he was making stay ropes for shipping, not stays for corsets.[21]

Thomas Paine's house in Lewes

In 1767, he was appointed to a position in Grampound, Cornwall. Later he asked to leave this post to await a vacancy, and he became a schoolteacher in London.[citation needed]

On February 19, 1768, he was appointed to Lewes in Sussex, a town with a tradition of opposition to the monarchy and pro-republican sentiments since the revolutionary decades of the 17th century.[22] Here he lived above the 15th-century Bull House, the tobacco shop of Samuel Ollive and Esther Ollive.[citation needed]

Paine first became involved in civic matters when he was based in Lewes. He appears in the Town Book as a member of the Court Leet, the governing body for the town. He was also a member of the parish vestry, an influential local church group whose responsibilities for parish business would include collecting taxes and tithes to distribute among the poor. On March 26, 1771, at age 34, he married Elizabeth Ollive, his landlord's daughter.[citation needed]

Plaque at the White Hart Hotel, Lewes, East Sussex, south east England

From 1772 to 1773, Paine joined excise officers asking Parliament for better pay and working conditions, publishing, in summer of 1772, The Case of the Officers of Excise, a 12-page article, and his first political work, spending the London winter distributing the 4,000 copies printed to the Parliament and others. In spring 1774, he was again dismissed from the excise service for being absent from his post without permission; his tobacco shop failed, too. On April 14, to avoid debtors' prison, he sold his household possessions to pay debts. On June 4, 1774, he formally separated from his wife Elizabeth and moved to London, where, in September, mathematician, Fellow of the Royal Society, and Commissioner of the Excise George Lewis Scott introduced him to Benjamin Franklin,[23] who suggested emigration to British colonial America, and gave him a letter of recommendation. In October, Paine emigrated to the American colonies, arriving in Philadelphia on November 30, 1774.[24]
Pennsylvania Magazine[edit]

Paine barely survived the transatlantic voyage. The ship's water supplies were bad and typhoid fever killed five passengers. On arriving at Philadelphia, he was too sick to disembark. Benjamin Franklin's physician, there to welcome Paine to America, had him carried off ship; Paine took six weeks to recover. He became a citizen of Pennsylvania "by taking the oath of allegiance at a very early period".[25] In March 1775, he became editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, a position he conducted with considerable ability.[26]

Before Paine's arrival in America, sixteen magazines had been founded in the colonies and ultimately failed, each featuring substantial content and reprints from England. In late 1774, Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken announced his plan to create what he called an "American Magazine" with content derived from the colonies.[26] Paine contributed two pieces to the magazine's inaugural issue in February 1775, and Aitken hired Paine as the Magazine's editor one month later. Under Paine's leadership, the magazine's readership rapidly expanded, achieving a greater circulation in the colonies than any American magazine up until that point.[26] While Aiken had conceived of the magazine as nonpolitical, Paine brought a strong political perspective to its content, writing in its first issue that "every heart and hand seem to be engaged in the interesting struggle for American Liberty."[26]

Paine wrote in the Pennsylvania Magazine that such a publication should become a "nursery of genius" to help America "outgrow the state of infancy," exercising and educating American minds, and shaping American morality.[26]

On March 8, 1775, the Pennsylvania Magazine published an unsigned abolitionist essay titled African Slavery in America.[27] The essay is often attributed to Paine on the basis of a letter by Benjamin Rush, recalling Paine's claim of authorship to the essay.[27] The essay attacked slavery as an "execrable commerce" and "outrage against Humanity and Justice."[27]

Consciously appealing to a broader and more working class audience, Paine also used the magazine to discuss worker rights to production. This shift in the conceptualization of politics has been described as a part of "the 'modernization' of political consciousness," and the mobilization of ever greater sections of society into political life.[26][28][Note 2]
American Revolution[edit]

Common Sense, published in 1776
Common Sense (1776)[edit]
Main article: Common Sense (pamphlet)

Paine has a claim to the title The Father of the American Revolution,[29][30] which rests on his pamphlets, especially Common Sense, which crystallized sentiment for independence in 1776. It was published in Philadelphia on January 10, 1776, and signed anonymously "by an Englishman". It became an immediate success, quickly spreading 100,000 copies in three months to the two million residents of the 13 colonies. During the course of the American Revolution, a total of about 500,000 copies were sold, including unauthorized editions.[5][31] Paine's original title for the pamphlet was Plain Truth, but Paine's friend, pro-independence advocate Benjamin Rush, suggested Common Sense instead.[32]

The pamphlet came into circulation in January 1776, after the Revolution had started. It was passed around and often read aloud in taverns, contributing significantly to spreading the idea of republicanism, bolstering enthusiasm for separation from Britain, and encouraging recruitment for the Continental Army. Paine provided a new and convincing argument for independence by advocating a complete break with history. Common Senseis oriented to the future in a way that compels the reader to make an immediate choice. It offers a solution for Americans disgusted with and alarmed at the threat of tyranny.[33]

Paine's attack on monarchy in Common Sense is essentially an attack on George III. Whereas colonial resentments were originally directed primarily against the king's ministers and Parliament, Paine laid the responsibility firmly at the king's door. Common Sense was the most widely read pamphlet of the American Revolution. It was a clarion call for unity against the corrupt British court, so as to realize America's providential role in providing an asylum for liberty. Written in a direct and lively style, it denounced the decaying despotisms of Europe and pilloried hereditary monarchy as an absurdity. At a time when many still hoped for reconciliation with Britain, Common Sense demonstrated to many the inevitability of separation.[34]

Paine was not on the whole expressing original ideas in Common Sense, but rather employing rhetoric as a means to arouse resentment of the Crown. To achieve these ends, he pioneered a style of political writing suited to the democratic society he envisioned, with Common Sense serving as a primary example. Part of Paine's work was to render complex ideas intelligible to average readers of the day, with clear, concise writing unlike the formal, learned style favored by many of Paine's contemporaries.[35] Scholars have put forward various explanations to account for its success, including the historic moment, Paine's easy-to-understand style, his democratic ethos, and his use of psychology and ideology.[36]

Common Sense was immensely popular in disseminating to a very wide audience ideas that were already in common use among the elite who comprised Congress and the leadership cadre of the emerging nation, who rarely cited Paine's arguments in their public calls for independence.[37] The pamphlet probably had little direct influence on the Continental Congress' decision to issue a Declaration of Independence, since that body was more concerned with how declaring independence would affect the war effort.[38] One distinctive idea in Common Sense is Paine's beliefs regarding the peaceful nature of republics; his views were an early and strong conception of what scholars would come to call the democratic peace theory.[39]

Loyalists vigorously attacked Common Sense; one attack, titled Plain Truth (1776), by Marylander James Chalmers, said Paine was a political quack[40] and warned that without monarchy, the government would "degenerate into democracy".[41] Even some American revolutionaries objected to Common Sense; late in life John Adams called it a "crapulous mass". Adams disagreed with the type of radical democracy promoted by Paine (that men who did not own property should still be allowed to vote and hold public office) and published Thoughts on Government in 1776 to advocate a more conservative approach to republicanism.[42]

Sophia Rosenfeld argues that Paine was highly innovative in his use of the commonplace notion of "common sense". He synthesized various philosophical and political uses of the term in a way that permanently impacted American political thought. He used two ideas from Scottish Common Sense Realism: that ordinary people can indeed make sound judgments on major political issues, and that there exists a body of popular wisdom that is readily apparent to anyone. Paine also used a notion of "common sense" favored by philosophes in the Continental Enlightenment. They held that common sense could refute the claims of traditional institutions. Thus, Paine used "common sense" as a weapon to delegitimize the monarchy and overturn prevailing conventional wisdom. Rosenfeld concludes that the phenomenal appeal of his pamphlet resulted from his synthesis of popular and elite elements in the independence movement.[43]

According to historian Robert Middlekauff, Common Sense became immensely popular mainly because Paine appealed to widespread convictions. Monarchy, he said, was preposterous and it had a heathenish origin. It was an institution of the devil. Paine pointed to the Old Testament, where almost all kings had seduced the Israelites to worship idols instead of God. Paine also denounced aristocracy, which together with monarchy were "two ancient tyrannies." They violated the laws of nature, human reason, and the "universal order of things," which began with God. That was, Middlekauff says, exactly what most Americans wanted to hear. He calls the Revolutionary generation "the children of the twice-born".[44] because in their childhood they had experienced the Great Awakening, which, for the first time, had tied Americans together, transcending denominational and ethnic boundaries and giving them a sense of patriotism.[45][46]
The American Crisis (1776)[edit]

In late 1776, Paine published The American Crisis pamphlet series to inspire the Americans in their battles against the British army. He juxtaposed the conflict between the good American devoted to civic virtue and the selfish provincial man.[47] To inspire his soldiers, General George Washington had The American Crisis, first Crisis pamphlet, read aloud to them.[48] It begins:


These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.
Foreign affairs[edit]

In 1777, Paine became secretary of the Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs. The following year, he alluded to secret negotiation underway with France in his pamphlets. His enemies denounced his indiscretions. There was scandal; together with Paine's conflict with Robert Morris and Silas Deane it led to Paine's expulsion from the Committee in 1779.[49]

However, in 1781, he accompanied John Laurens on his mission to France. Eventually, after much pleading from Paine, New York State recognized his political services by presenting him with an estate at New Rochelle, New York and Paine received money from Pennsylvania and from Congress at Washington's suggestion. During the Revolutionary War, Paine served as an aide-de-camp to the important general, Nathanael Greene.[50]
The Silas Deane affair[edit]

In what may have been an error, and perhaps even contributed to his resignation as the secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs, Paine was openly critical of Silas Deane, an American diplomat who had been appointed in March 1776 by the Congress to travel to France in secret. Deane's goal was to influence the French government to finance the colonists in their fight for independence. Paine largely saw Deane as a war profiteer who had little respect for principle, having been under the employ of Robert Morris, one of the primary financiers of the American Revolution and working with Pierre Beaumarchais, a French royal agent sent to the colonies by King Louis to investigate the Anglo-American conflict. Paine labelled Deane as unpatriotic, and demanded that there be a public investigation into Morris' financing of the Revolution, as he had contracted with his own company for around $500,000.[citation needed]

Unfortunately, Paine's criticisms turned against him. Amongst his criticisms, he had written in the Pennsylvania Packet that France had "prefaced [their] alliance by an early and generous friendship," referring to aid that had been provided to American colonies prior to the recognition of the Franco-American treaties. This was effectively an embarrassment to France, which potentially could have jeopardised the alliance. John Jay, the President of the Congress who had been a fervent supporter of Deane, immediately spoke out against Paine's comments. The controversy eventually became public, and Paine was then denounced as unpatriotic for criticising an American revolutionary. He was even physically assaulted twice in the street by Deane supporters. This much added stress took a large toll on Paine, who was generally of a sensitive character and he resigned as secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs in 1779.[51]
Funding the Revolution[edit]

Paine accompanied Col. John Laurens to France and is credited with initiating the mission.[52] It landed in France in March 1781 and returned to America in August with 2.5 million livres in silver, as part of a "present" of 6 million and a loan of 10 million. The meetings with the French king were most likely conducted in the company and under the influence of Benjamin Franklin. Upon returning to the United States with this highly welcomed cargo, Thomas Paine and probably Col. Laurens, "positively objected" that General Washington should propose that Congress remunerate him for his services, for fear of setting "a bad precedent and an improper mode". Paine made influential acquaintances in Paris and helped organize the Bank of North America to raise money to supply the army.[53] In 1785, he was given $3,000 by the U.S. Congress in recognition of his service to the nation.[54]

Henry Laurens (father of Col. John Laurens) had been the ambassador to the Netherlands, but he was captured by the British on his return trip there. When he was later exchanged for the prisoner Lord Cornwallis (in late 1781), Paine proceeded to the Netherlands to continue the loan negotiations. There remains some question as to the relationship of Henry Laurens and Thomas Paine to Robert Morris as the Superintendent of Finance and his business associate Thomas Willing who became the first president of the Bank of North America (in January 1782). They had accused Morris of profiteering in 1779 and Willing had voted against the Declaration of Independence. Although Morris did much to restore his reputation in 1780 and 1781, the credit for obtaining these critical loans to "organize" the Bank of North America for approval by Congress in December 1781 should go to Henry or John Laurens and Thomas Paine more than to Robert Morris.[55]

In Fashion before Ease; —or,— A good Constitution sacrificed for a Fantastick Form (1793), James Gillraycaricatured Paine tightening the corsetof Britannia and protruding from his coat pocket is a measuring tape inscribed "Rights of Man"

Paine bought his only house in 1783 on the corner of Farnsworth Avenue and Church Streets in Bordentown City, New Jersey and he lived in it periodically until his death in 1809. This is the only place in the world where Paine purchased real estate. [56]

In 1787, a bridge of Paine's design was built across the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia. At this time his work on single-arch iron bridges led him back to Paris, France.[57] Because Paine had few friends when arriving in France aside from Lafayette and Jefferson, he continued to correspond heavily with Benjamin Franklin, a long time friend and mentor. Franklin provided letters of introduction for Paine to use to gain associates and contacts in France.[58]

Later that year, Paine returned to London from Paris. He then released a pamphlet on August 20 called Prospects on the Rubicon: or, an investigation into the Causes and Consequences of the Politics to be Agitated at the Meeting of Parliament. Tensions between England and France were increasing, and this pamphlet urged the British Ministry to reconsider the consequences of war with France. Paine sought to turn the public opinion against the war to create better relations between the countries, avoid the taxes of war upon the citizens, and not engage in a war he believed would ruin both nations.[59]
Rights of Man[edit]

Thomas Paine Author of the Rights of Man from John Baxter's Impartial History of England, 1796.
Main article: Rights of Man
See also: Revolution Controversy and Trial of Thomas Paine

Back in London by 1787, Paine would become engrossed in the French Revolution after it began in 1789, and decided to travel to France in 1790. Meanwhile, conservative intellectual Edmund Burke launched a counterrevolutionary blast against the French Revolution, entitled Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), which strongly appealed to the landed class, and sold 30,000 copies. Paine set out to refute it in his Rights of Man (1791). He wrote it not as a quick pamphlet, but as a long, abstract political tract of 90,000 words which tore apart monarchies and traditional social institutions. On January 31, 1791, he gave the manuscript to publisher Joseph Johnson. A visit by government agents dissuaded Johnson, so Paine gave the book to publisher J.S. Jordan, then went to Paris, per William Blake's advice. He charged three good friends, William Godwin, Thomas Brand Hollis, and Thomas Holcroft, with handling publication details. The book appeared on March 13, 1791 and sold nearly a million copies. It was "eagerly read by reformers, Protestant dissenters, democrats, London craftsman, and the skilled factory-hands of the new industrial north".[60]

English satirist James Gillrayridicules Paine in Paris awaiting sentence of execution from three hanging judges.

Undeterred by the government campaign to discredit him, Paine issued his Rights of Man, Part the Second, Combining Principle and Practice in February 1792. It detailed a representative government with enumerated social programs to remedy the numbing poverty of commoners through progressive tax measures. Radically reduced in price to ensure unprecedented circulation, it was sensational in its impact and gave birth to reform societies. An indictment for seditious libel followed, for both publisher and author, while government agents followed Paine and instigated mobs, hate meetings, and burnings in effigy. A fierce pamphlet war also resulted, in which Paine was defended and assailed in dozens of works.[61] The authorities aimed, with ultimate success, to chase Paine out of Great Britain. He was then tried in absentia and found guilty, although never executed. The French translation of Rights of Man, Part II was published in April 1792. The translator, François Lanthenas, eliminated the dedication to Lafayette, as he believed Paine thought too highly of Lafayette, who was seen as a royalist sympathizer at the time.[62]

The Friends of the Peoplecaricatured by Isaac Cruikshank, November 15, 1792, Joseph Priestleyand Thomas Paine are surrounded by incendiary items

In summer of 1792, he answered the sedition and libel charges thus: "If, to expose the fraud and imposition of monarchy ... to promote universal peace, civilization, and commerce, and to break the chains of political superstition, and raise degraded man to his proper rank; if these things be libellous ... let the name of libeller be engraved on my tomb."[63]

Paine was an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution, and was granted honorary French citizenship alongside prominent contemporaries such as Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and others. Paine's honorary citizenship was in recognition of the publishing of his Rights of Man, Part II and the sensation it created within France.[64] Despite his inability to speak French, he was elected to the National Convention, representing the district of Pas-de-Calais.[65]

Several weeks after his election to the National Convention, Paine was selected as one of nine deputies to be part of the Convention's Constitutional Committee, who were charged to draft a suitable constitution for the French Republic.[66] He subsequentially participated in the Constitutional Committee in drafting the Girondin constitutional project. He voted for the French Republic, but argued against the execution of Louis XVI, saying the monarch should instead be exiled to the United States: firstly, because of the way royalist France had come to the aid of the American Revolution; and secondly, because of a moral objection to capital punishment in general and to revenge killings in particular. However, Paine's speech in defense of Louis XVI was interrupted by Jean-Paul Marat, who claimed that as a Quaker, Paine's religious beliefs ran counter to inflicting capital punishment and thus he should be ineligible to vote. Marat interrupted a second time, stating that the translator was deceiving the convention by distorting the meanings of Paine's words, prompting Paine to provide a copy of the speech as proof that he was being correctly translated.[67]

Regarded as an ally of the Girondins, he was seen with increasing disfavor by the Montagnards, who were now in power; and in particular by Maximilien Robespierre. A decree was passed at the end of 1793 excluding foreigners from their places in the Convention (Anacharsis Cloots was also deprived of his place). Paine was arrested and imprisoned in December 1793.[68]

Paine wrote the second part of Rights of Man on a desk in Thomas 'Clio' Rickman's house, with whom he was staying in 1792 before he fled to France. This desk is currently on display in the People's History Museum in Manchester.[69]
The Age of Reason[edit]
Main article: The Age of Reason

Title page from the first English edition of Part I

Oil painting by Laurent Dabos, circa 1791

Paine was arrested in France on December 28, 1793. Joel Barlow was unsuccessful in securing Paine's release by circulating a petition among American residents in Paris.[70] Sixteen American citizens were allowed to plead for Paine's release to the Convention, yet President Marc-Guillaume Alexis Vadier of the Committee of General Security refused to acknowledge Paine's American citizenship, stating he was an Englishman and a citizen of a country at war with France.[71]

Paine himself protested and claimed that he was a citizen of the U.S., which was an ally of Revolutionary France, rather than of Great Britain, which was by that time at war with France. However, Gouverneur Morris, the American minister to France, did not press his claim, and Paine later wrote that Morris had connived at his imprisonment. Paine narrowly escaped execution. A chalk mark was supposed to be left by the gaoler on the door of a cell to denote that the prisoner inside was due to be removed for execution. In Paine's case, the mark had accidentally been made on the inside of his door rather than the outside; this was due to the fact that the door of Paine's cell had been left open whilst the gaoler was making his rounds that day, since Paine had been receiving official visitors. But for this quirk of fate, Paine would have been executed the following morning. He kept his head and survived the few vital days needed to be spared by the fall of Robespierre on 9 Thermidor(July 27, 1794).[72]

Paine was released in November 1794 largely because of the work of the new American Minister to France, James Monroe,[73] who successfully argued the case for Paine's American citizenship.[74] In July 1795, he was re-admitted into the Convention, as were other surviving Girondins. Paine was one of only three députés to oppose the adoption of the new 1795 constitution because it eliminated universal suffrage, which had been proclaimed by the Montagnard Constitution of 1793.[75]

In 1796, a bridge he designed was erected over the mouth of the Wear River at Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England.[76] This bridge, the Sunderland arch, was after the same design as his Schuylkill River Bridge in Philadelphia and it became the prototype for many subsequent voussoir arches made in iron and steel.[77][78]

In addition to receiving a British patent for the single-span iron bridge, Paine developed a smokeless candle[79] and worked with inventor John Fitch in developing steam engines.

In 1797, Paine lived in Paris with Nicholas Bonneville and his wife. As well as Bonneville's other controversial guests, Paine aroused the suspicions of authorities. Bonneville hid the Royalist Antoine Joseph Barruel-Beauvert at his home. Beauvert had been outlawed following the coup of 18 Fructidor on September 4, 1797. Paine believed that the United States under President John Adams had betrayed revolutionary France.[80] Bonneville was then briefly jailed and his presses were confiscated, which meant financial ruin.[citation needed]

In 1800, still under police surveillance, Bonneville took refuge with his father in Evreux. Paine stayed on with him, helping Bonneville with the burden of translating the "Covenant Sea". The same year, Paine purportedly had a meeting with Napoleon. Napoleon claimed he slept with a copy of Rights of Man under his pillow and went so far as to say to Paine that "a statue of gold should be erected to you in every city in the universe".[81] Paine discussed with Napoleon how best to invade England. In December 1797, he wrote two essays, one of which was pointedly named Observations on the Construction and Operation of Navies with a Plan for an Invasion of England and the Final Overthrow of the English Government,[82] in which he promoted the idea to finance 1,000 gunboats to carry a French invading army across the English Channel. In 1804, Paine returned to the subject, writing To the People of England on the Invasion of England advocating the idea.[80] However, upon noting Napoleon's progress towards dictatorship, he condemned him as "the completest charlatan that ever existed".[83] Paine remained in France until 1802, returning to the United States only at President Jefferson's invitation.[citation needed]
Criticism of George Washington[edit]

Paine believed that U.S. President George Washington had conspired with Robespierre to imprison him. He had felt largely betrayed that Washington, who had been a lifelong friend, did nothing while Paine suffered in prison. While staying with Monroe, he planned to send Washington a letter of grievance on the former President's birthday. Monroe stopped the letter from being sent just in time and after Paine's criticism of the Jay Treaty Monroe suggested that Paine reside somewhere else.[84]

Still embittered by the perceived betrayal, Paine tried to ruin Washington's reputation by calling him a treacherous man who was unworthy of his fame as a military and political hero. He sent a stinging letter to Washington, in which he described him as an incompetent commander and a vain and ungrateful person. Paine never received a reply, so he contacted his lifelong publisher, the anti-Federalist Benjamin Bache to publish this Letter to George Washington in 1796. In this scathing publication, Paine wrote that "the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles or whether you ever had any".[85] He further wrote that without the aid of France, Washington could not have succeeded in the Revolution and had "but little share in the glory of the final event". He also commented on Washington's poor character, saying that Washington had no sympathetic feelings and was a hypocrite.[86]
Later years[edit]

In 1802 or 1803, Paine left France for the United States, also paying the passage for Bonneville's wife Marguerite Brazier and the couple's three sons, Benjamin, Louis and Thomas Bonneville, to whom Paine was godfather. Paine returned to the United States in the early stages of the Second Great Awakening and a time of great political partisanship. The Age of Reason gave ample excuse for the religiously devout to dislike him and the Federalists attacked him for his ideas of government stated in Common Sense, for his association with the French Revolution and for his friendship with President Jefferson. Also still fresh in the minds of the public was his Letter to Washington published six years before his return. This was compounded when his right to vote was denied in New Rochelle on the grounds that Gouverneur Morris did not recognize him as an American and Washington had not aided him.[87]

Brazier took care of Paine at the end of his life and buried him after his death on June 8, 1809. In his will, Paine left the bulk of his estate to Marguerite, including 100 acres (40.5 ha) of his farm so she could maintain and educate Benjamin and his brother Thomas. In 1814, the fall of Napoleon finally allowed Bonneville to rejoin his wife in the United States where he remained for four years before returning to Paris to open a bookshop.[citation needed]
Death[edit]

Paine's death mask, in the People's History Museum in Manchester

Isaac Cruikshank satire of William Cobbet "resurrecting" Paine bones; Napoleon is on St Helena and England has a revolution.

On the morning of June 8, 1809, Paine died, aged 72, at 59 Grove Street in Greenwich Village, New York City[88] Although the original building is no longer there, the present building has a plaque noting that Paine died at this location.[89]

After his death, Paine's body was brought to New Rochelle, but the Quakers would not allow it to be buried in their graveyard as per his last will, so his remains were buried under a walnut tree on his farm. In 1819, English agrarian radical journalist William Cobbett, who in 1793 had published a hostile continuation[90] of Francis Oldys (George Chalmer)'s The Life of Thomas Paine,[91] dug up his bones and transported them back to England with the intention to give Paine a heroic reburial on his native soil, but this never came to pass. The bones were still among Cobbett's effects when he died over fifteen years later, but were later lost. There is no confirmed story about what happened to them after that, although various people have claimed throughout the years to own parts of Paine's remains, such as his skull and right hand.[92][93][94]

At the time of his death, most American newspapers reprinted the obituary notice from the New York Evening Post that was in turn quoting from The American Citizen,[95] which read in part: "He had lived long, did some good, and much harm". Only six mourners came to his funeral, two of whom were black, most likely freedmen. Many years later the writer and orator Robert G. Ingersoll wrote:


Thomas Paine had passed the legendary limit of life. One by one most of his old friends and acquaintances had deserted him. Maligned on every side, execrated, shunned and abhorred – his virtues denounced as vices – his services forgotten – his character blackened, he preserved the poise and balance of his soul. He was a victim of the people, but his convictions remained unshaken. He was still a soldier in the army of freedom, and still tried to enlighten and civilize those who were impatiently waiting for his death. Even those who loved their enemies hated him, their friend – the friend of the whole world – with all their hearts. On the 8th of June 1809, death came – Death, almost his only friend. At his funeral no pomp, no pageantry, no civic procession, no military display. In a carriage, a woman and her son who had lived on the bounty of the dead – on horseback, a Quaker, the humanity of whose heart dominated the creed of his head – and, following on foot, two negroes filled with gratitude – constituted the funeral cortege of Thomas Paine.[96]
Ideas[edit]

Biographer Eric Foner identifies a utopian thread in Paine's thought, writing: "Through this new language he communicated a new vision—a utopian image of an egalitarian, republican society".[97]

Paine's utopianism combined civic republicanism, belief in the inevitability of scientific and social progress and commitment to free markets and liberty generally. The multiple sources of Paine's political theory all pointed to a society based on the common good and individualism. Paine expressed a redemptive futurism or political messianism.[98] Writing that his generation "would appear to the future as the Adam of a new world", Paine exemplified British utopianism.[99]

Later, his encounters with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas made a deep impression. The ability of the Iroquois to live in harmony with nature while achieving a democratic decision-making process helped him refine his thinking on how to organize society.[100]

Portrait of Thomas Paine by Matthew Pratt, 1785–1795
Slavery[edit]

On March 8, 1775, one month after Paine became the editor of The Pennsylvania Magazine, the magazine published an anonymous article titled "African Slavery in America", the first prominent piece in the colonies proposing the emancipation of African-American slaves and the abolition of slavery.[101]

Paine is often credited with writing the piece,[101]on the basis of later testimony by Benjamin Rush, cosigner of the Declaration of Independence.[27]Citing a lack of further evidence of Paine's authorship however, scholars Eric Foner and Alfred Owen Aldridge no longer consider this one of his works. By contrast, journalist John Nichols writes that Paine's "fervent objections to slavery" led to his exclusion from power during the early years of the Republic.[102]
Agrarian Justice[edit]

His last pamphlet, Agrarian Justice, published in the winter of 1795, opposed to agrarian law and to agrarian monopoly and further developed his ideas in the Rights of Man about how land ownership separated the majority of people from their rightful, natural inheritance and means of independent survival. The U.S. Social Security Administration recognizes Agrarian Justice as the first American proposal for an old-age pension and basic incomeor citizen's dividend. Per Agrarian Justice:


In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity ... [Government must] create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property. And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.

Note that £10 and £15 would be worth about £800 and £1,200 ($1,200 and $2,000) when adjusted for inflation (2011 British pounds sterling).[103]

Lamb argues that Paine's analysis of property rights marks a distinct contribution to political theory. His theory of property defends a libertarian concern with private ownership that shows an egalitarian commitment. Paine's new justification of property sets him apart from previous theorists such as Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf and John Locke. It demonstrates Paine's commitment to foundational liberal values of individual freedom and moral equality.[104]
Religious views[edit]

Before his arrest and imprisonment in France, knowing that he would probably be arrested and executed, following in the tradition of early eighteenth-century British deism Paine wrote the first part of The Age of Reason, an assault on organized "revealed" religion combining a compilation of the many inconsistencies he found in the Bible.[citation needed]

About his own religious beliefs, Paine wrote in The Age of Reason:


I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.


I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.


Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.[105]

Though there is no evidence Paine himself was a Freemason,[106] upon his return to America from France he also penned "An Essay on the Origin of Free-Masonry" (1803–1805) about Freemasonry being derived from the religion of the ancient Druids.[107] In the essay, he stated: "The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally paid to the sun". Marguerite de Bonneville published the essay in 1810 after Paine's death, but she chose to omit certain passages from it that were critical of Christianity, most of which were restored in an 1818 printing.[108]

While Paine never described himself as a deist,[108] he did write the following:


The opinions I have advanced ... are the effect of the most clear and long-established conviction that the Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world, that the fall of man, the account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation, by that strange means, are all fabulous inventions, dishonorable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty; that the only true religion is Deism, by which I then meant, and mean now, the belief of one God, and an imitation of his moral character, or the practice of what are called moral virtues – and that it was upon this only (so far as religion is concerned) that I rested all my hopes of happiness hereafter. So say I now – and so help me God.[55]
Legacy[edit]

Historian Jack P. Greene states:In a fundamental sense, we are today all Paine's children. It was not the British defeat at Yorktown, But Paine and the new American conception of political society he did so much to popularize in Europe that turned the world upside down.[109]

In 1969, a Prominent Americans series stamp honoring Paine was issued.

Harvey J. Kaye says that through his pamphlets and catchphrases such as "The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth," "We have it in our power to begin the world over again," and "These are the times that try men's souls", Paine not only moved Americans to declare their independence:he also imbued the nation they were founding with democratic impulse and aspiration and exceptional – indeed, world-historic – purpose and promise. For 230 years Americans have drawn ideas, inspiration, and encouragement from Paine and his work.[110]

John Stevenson argues that in the early 1790's, numerous radical political societies were formed throughout England and Wales in which Paine's writings provided "a boost to the self-confidence of those seeking to participate in politics for the first time."[111]In its immediate effects, Gary Kates argues, "Paine's vision unified Philadelphia merchants, British artisans, French peasants, Dutch reformers, and radical intellectuals from Boston to Berlin in one great movement."[112]

His writings in the long term inspired philosophic and working-class radicals in Britain and United States. Liberals, libertarians, left-libertarians, feminists, democratic socialists, social democrats, anarchists, free thinkers and progressives often claim him as an intellectual ancestor. Paine's critique of institutionalized religion and advocacy of rational thinking influenced many British free thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as William Cobbett, George Holyoake, Charles Bradlaugh, Christopher Hitchens and Bertrand Russell.[113]

The quote "Lead, follow, or get out of the way" is widely but incorrectly attributed to Paine. This can be found nowhere in his published works.[114]
Abraham Lincoln[edit]

In 1835, when Abraham Lincoln was 26 years old, he wrote a defense of Paine's deism.[115] A political associate, Samuel Hill, burned the manuscript to save Lincoln's political career.[116] Historian Roy Basler, the editor of Lincoln's papers, said Paine had a strong influence on Lincoln's style:


No other writer of the eighteenth century, with the exception of Jefferson, parallels more closely the temper or gist of Lincoln's later thought. In style, Paine above all others affords the variety of eloquence which, chastened and adapted to Lincoln's own mood, is revealed in Lincoln's formal writings.[117]
Thomas Edison[edit]

The inventor Thomas Edison said:


I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic ... It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine's works in my boyhood ... it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker's views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me, then, about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember, very vividly, the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine's writings, and I recall thinking, at that time, 'What a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!' My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days.[118]
South America[edit]

In 1811, Venezuelan translator Manuel Garcia de Sena published a book in Philadelphia which consisted mostly of Spanish translations of several of Paine's most important works.[119] The book also included translations of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Constitution and the constitutions of five U.S. states.[119]

It subsequently circulated widely in South America and through it Uruguayan national hero José Gervasio Artigas became familiar with and embraced Paine's ideas. In turn, many of Artigas's writings drew directly from Paine's, including the Instructions of 1813, which Uruguayans consider to be one of their country's most important constitutional documents. It was one of the earliest writings to articulate a principled basis for an identity independent of Buenos Aires.[119]
Memorials[edit]

The first and longest-standing memorial to Paine is the carved and inscribed 12 foot marble column in New Rochelle, New York organized and funded by publisher, educator and reformer Gilbert Vale (1791–1866) and raised in 1839 by the American sculptor and architect John Frazee – the Thomas Paine Monument (see image below).[120]

New Rochelle is also the original site of Thomas Paine's Cottage, which along with a 320-acre (130 ha) farm were presented to Paine in 1784 by act of the New York State Legislature for his services in the American Revolution.[121]

The same site is the home of the Thomas Paine Memorial Museum. Thomas Edison helped to turn the first shovel of earth for the museum which serves as a museum to display both Paine relics as well as others of local historical interest. A large collection of books, pamphlets and pictures is contained in the Paine library, including many first editions of Paine's works as well as several original manuscripts. These holdings, the subject of a sell-off controversy, were temporarily relocated to the New-York Historical Society and have since been more permanently archived in the Iona College library nearby.[122]

Paine was originally buried near the current location of his house and monument upon his death in 1809. The site is marked by a small headstone and burial plaque even though his remains were removed years later.[89]

In the 20th century, Joseph Lewis, longtime president of the Freethinkers of America and an ardent Paine admirer, was instrumental in having larger-than-life-sized statues of Paine erected in each of the three countries with which the revolutionary writer was associated. The first, created by Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum, was erected in Paris just before World War II began, but not formally dedicated until 1948. It depicts Paine standing before the French National Convention to plead for the life of King Louis XVI. The second, sculpted in 1950 by Georg J. Lober, was erected near Paine's one time home in Morristown, New Jersey. It shows a seated Paine using a drum-head as a makeshift table. The third, sculpted by Sir Charles Wheeler, President of the Royal Academy, was erected in 1964 in Paine's birthplace, Thetford, England. With quill pen in his right hand and an inverted copy of The Rights of Man in his left, it occupies a prominent spot on King Street. Thomas Paine was ranked No. 34 in the 100 Greatest Britons 2002 extensive Nationwide poll conducted by the BBC.[123]

A bronze plaque attached to the wall of Thetford's Thomas Paine hotel gives details of Paine's life.[124] It was placed there in 1943 by voluntary contributions from U.S. airmen from a nearby bomber base. Texas folklorist and freethinker J. Frank Dobie, then teaching at Cambridge University, participated in the dedication ceremonies.[125]

In New York City, the Thomas Paine Park is marked by a fountain called The Triumph of the Human Spirit. Located in downtown Manhattan, near City Hall, the 300-ton-plus monument was dedicated on October 12, 2000.[126]

Bronx Community College includes Paine in its Hall of Fame of Great Americans and there are statues of Paine in Morristown and Bordentown, New Jersey and in the Parc Montsouris, in Paris.[127][128]

In Paris, there is a plaque in the street where he lived from 1797 to 1802 that says: "Thomas PAINE / 1737–1809 / Englishman by birth / American by adoption / French by decree".

Yearly, between July 4 and 14, the Lewes Town Council in the United Kingdom celebrates the life and work of Paine.[129]

In the early 1990s, largely through the efforts of citizen activist David Henley of Virginia, legislation (S.Con.Res 110 and H.R. 1628) was introduced in the 102nd Congress by ideological opposites Sen. Steve Symms (R-ID) and Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY). With over 100 formal letters of endorsement by United States and foreign historians, philosophers and organizations, including the Thomas Paine National Historical Society, the legislation garnered 78 original co-sponsors in the Senate and 230 original co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, and was consequently passed by both houses' unanimous consent. In October 1992, the legislation was signed into law (PL102-407 and PL102-459) by President George H. W. Bush authorizing the construction by using private funds of a memorial to Thomas Paine in "Area 1" of the grounds of the U.S. Capitol. As of January 2011, the memorial has not yet been built.

The University of East Anglia's Norwich Business School is housed in the Thomas Paine Study Centre on its Norwich campus in Paine's home county of Norfolk.[130]

The Cookes House is reputed to have been his home during the Second Continental Congress at York, Pennsylvania.[131]



John Frazee's Thomas Paine Monument in New Rochelle



Statue in Bordentown, New Jersey



Plaque honoring Paine at 10 rue de l'Odéon, Paris



Statue in Thetford, Norfolk, England, Paine's birthplace



Plaque on Thomas Paine Hotel, Thetford



Commemorative plaque on the site of the former residence of Paine inGreenwich Village, New York City
In popular culture[edit]
The 1982 French-Italian film That Night in Varennes is about a fictional meeting of Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt (played by Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni), Nicolas Edmé Restif de la Bretonne, Countess Sophie de la Borde and Thomas Paine (played by American actor Harvey Keitel) as they ride in a carriage a few hours behind the carriage carrying the King and Queen of France, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, on their attempt to escape from revolutionary France in 1791.
Jack Shepherd's stage play In Lambeth dramatized a visit by Thomas Paine to the Lambeth home of William and Catherine Blake in 1789.
In 1995, English folk singer Graham Moore, from Dorset, wrote "Tom Paine's Bones" which he recorded on his album of the same name.[132][133] In 2001, the Scottish musician Dick Gaughan included the song on his album Outlaws and Dreamers.
In 2005, Trevor Griffiths published These are the Times: A Life of Thomas Paine, originally written as a screenplay for Richard Attenborough Productions. Although the film was not made, the play was broadcast as a two-part drama on BBC Radio 4 in 2008,[134] with a repeat in 2012.[135] In 2009, Griffiths adapted the screenplay for a production entitled A New World at Shakespeare's Globe theatre on London's South Bank.[citation needed]
Harry Turtledove's 2008 alternate history novel The United States of Atlantis features Paine as a character.
In 2009, Paine's life was dramatized in the play Thomas Paine Citizen of the World,[136] produced for the "Tom Paine 200 Celebrations" festival[137]
Paine's role in the foundation of the United States is depicted in a pseudo-biographical fashion in the educational animated series Liberty's Kids produced by DIC Entertainment.
Paine is a character in the Bob Dylan song "As I Went Out One Morning", featured on Dylan's 1968 album, John Wesley Harding.[138][citation needed]
A fictional version of Paine is featured in the Deborah Harkness book "Time's Convert".[139]
Paine is also referenced as one of the titular 'Renegades of Funk' in the 1983 song by Afrika Bambaataa later covered by funk rock group Rage Against the Machine.
See also[edit]

Asset-based egalitarianism
British philosophy
Contributions to liberal theory
Liberty
List of American philosophers
List of British philosophers
List of civil rights leaders
Society of the Friends of Truth
Notes[edit]

^ Jump up to:a b Conway, Moncure D. (1908). The Life of Thomas Paine. Volume 1. Cobbett, William, Illustrator. G. P. Putnam's Sons. p. 3. Retrieved October 2, 2013. – In the contemporary record as noted by Conway, Paine's birth date is given as January 29, 1736–37. Common practice was to use a dash or a slash to separate the old-style year from the new-style year. In the old calendar, the new year began on March 25, not January 1. Paine's birth date, therefore, would have been before New Year, 1737. In the new style, his birth date advances by eleven days and his year increases by one to February 9, 1737. The O.S. link gives more detail if needed.
^ From Jack P. Green (1978) "Paine, America, and the "Modernization" of Political Consciousness", cited in Edward Larkin (2005) "Thomas Paine and the Literature of Revolution."
References[edit]
Citations[edit]

^ Jump up to:a b Ayer, Alfred Jules (1990). Thomas Paine. University of Chicago Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-226-03339-6.
^ Henretta, James A.; et al. (2011). America's History, Volume 1: To 1877. Macmillan. p. 165. ISBN 9780312387914.
^ Jason D. Solinger. "Thomas Paine's Continental Mind." Early American Literature (2010) 45#3, Vol. 45 Issue 3, pp. 593–617
^ Saul K. Padover, Jefferson: A Great American's Life and Ideas, (1952), pg. 32.
^ Jump up to:a b Hitchens, Christopher (2008). Thomas Paine's Rights of Man. Grove Press. p. 37. ISBN 978-0-8021-4383-9.
^ Biographer Harvey Kaye writes, "Within just a few months 150,000 copies of one or another edition were distributed in America alone. The equivalent sales today would be fifteen million, making it, proportionally, the nation's greatest best-seller ever." in Kaye, Harvey J. (2005). Thomas Paine And The Promise of America. Hill & Wang. p. 43. ISBN 978-0-8090-9344-1.
^ The Sharpened Quill, The New Yorker; accessed November 6, 2010.
^ Conway, Moncure D. (1892). The Life of Thomas Paine. Vol. 2, pp. 417–18.
^ "Paine, Thomas (1737–1809), author and revolutionary". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001 (inactive June 25, 2019).
^ Crosby, Alan (1986). A History of Thetford (1st ed.). Chichester, Sussex: Phillimore & Co. pp. 44–84. ISBN 978-0-85033-604-7.
^ "National Archives". UK National ArchivesAcknowledgement dated March 2, 1769, document NU/1/3/3
^ School History Archived December 5, 2010, at the Wayback Machine Thetford Grammar School; accessed January 3, 2008,
^ "Word List: Definitions of Nautical Terms and Ship Parts". Phrontistery.info. Retrieved May 5, 2015.
^ "Did Thomas Paine Make Corsets For A Living?". Thomas Paine National Historical Association. Retrieved May 4, 2017.
^ Thomas Paine: Common Sense and Revolutionary Pamphleteering, Brian McCartin, Rosen Publishing Group, 2002, p. 27
^ "Thetford Tourist Infomation [sic] Centre". Visitnorfolk.co.uk. Retrieved May 5, 2015.
^ Rights of Man II, Chapter V.
^ Thomas had intended to serve under the ill-fated Captain William Death but was dissuaded by his father. Bring the Paine! Archived May 25, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
^ "Thomas Paine". Sandwich People & History. Open Sandwich. Retrieved April 2, 2010.
^ "Thomas Paine, 1737-1809". historyguide.org.
^ Conway, Moncure Daniel (1892). "The Life of Thomas Paine: With a History of Literary, Political, and Religious Career in America, France, and England". Thomas Paine National Historical Association. p. 20, vol. I. Archived from the original on April 18, 2009. Retrieved July 18, 2009.
^ Kaye, Harvey J. (2000). Thomas Paine: Firebrand of the Revolution. Oxford University Press. p. 36. ISBN 978-0195116274.
^ "Letter to the Honorable Henry Laurens" in Philip S. Foner's The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine (New York: Citadel Press, 1945), 2:1160–65.
^ "Thomas Paine | British-American author". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved September 15, 2017.
^ Conway, Moncure Daniel, 1892. The Life of Thomas Paine vol. 1, p. 209.
^ Jump up to:a b c d e f Larkin, Edward (2005). Thomas Paine and the Literature of Revolution. Cambridge University Press. pp. 31–40. ISBN 9781139445986. Retrieved December 1, 2018.
^ Jump up to:a b c d American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation. Library of America. 2012. ISBN 9781598532142. Retrieved December 1, 2018.
^ Green, Jack (1978). "Paine, America, and the "Modernization" of Political Consciousness". Political Science Quarterly. 93 (1): 73–92. doi:10.2307/2149051. JSTOR 2149051.
^ K. M. Kostyal. Funding Fathers: The Fight for Freedom and the Birth of American Liberty(2014) ch. 2
^ David Braff, "Forgotten Founding Father: The Impact of Thomas Paine," in Joyce Chumbley, ed., Thomas Paine: In Search of the Common Good (2009).
^ Oliphant, John. "Paine, Thomas". Encyclopedia of the American Revolution: Library of Military History. Retrieved April 10, 2007 – via Gale Virtual Library.
^ Scharf, T. History of Philadelphia. Рипол Классик. p. 310. ISBN 9785883517104.
^ Robert A. Ferguson (July 2000). "The Commonalities of Common Sense". William and Mary Quarterly. 57#3 (3): 465–504. JSTOR 2674263.
^ Philp, Mark (2013). Edward N. Zalta (ed.). "Thomas Paine". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013 Edition). Retrieved January 24, 2015.
^ Merrill Jensen, The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763–1776(New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 668.
^ David C. Hoffman, "Paine and Prejudice: Rhetorical Leadership through Perceptual Framing in Common Sense." Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Fall 2006, Vol. 9, Issue 3, pp. 373–410.
^ Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York: Knopf, 1997), 90–91.
^ Jack N. Rakove, The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress (New York: Knopf, 1979), 89.
^ Jack S. Levy, William R. Thompson, Causes of War (John Wiley & Sons, 2011).
^ New, M. Christopher. "James Chalmers and Plain Truth A Loyalist Answers Thomas Paine". Archiving Early America. Retrieved October 3, 2007.
^ Jensen, Founding of a Nation, 669.
^ "Adams Papers Digital Edition - Massachusetts Historical Society". www.masshist.org. Retrieved December 5, 2018.
^ Sophia Rosenfeld, "Tom Paine's Common Sense and Ours." William and Mary Quarterly(2008), 65#4, pp. 633–68 in JSTOR
^ Robert Middlekauff (2005), The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789, Revised and Expanded Edition, Oxford University Press, New York, NY; ISBN 978-0-19-531588-2, pp. 30–53.
^ Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause, pp. 4–5, 324–26.
^ Cf. Clifton E. Olmstead (1960), History of Religion in the United States, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, pg. 178.
^ Martin Roth, "Tom Paine and American Loneliness." Early American Literature, September 1987, Vol. 22, Issue 2, pp. 175–82.
^ "Thomas Paine. The American Crisis. Philadelphia, Styner and Cist, 1776–77". Indiana University. Retrieved November 15, 2007.
^ Nelson, Craig (2007). Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations. Penguin. pp. 174–75. ISBN 9781101201787.
^ Blakemore, Steve (1997). Crisis in representation: Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, Helen Maria Williams, and the rewriting of the French Revolution. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
^ Craig Nelson (2006). Thomas Paine. pp. 134–38. ISBN 978-0-670-03788-9.
^ Daniel Wheeler's Life and Writings of Thomas Paine Vol. 1 (1908) pp. 26–27.
^ Daniel Wheeler, Life and Writings of Thomas Paine Vol. 1 (1908), pg. 314.
^ Paine, Thomas (2005). Common Sense and Other Writings. Barnes & Noble Classics. p. xiii. ISBN 978-0-672-60004-3.
^ Jump up to:a b Thomas Paine (1824), The Theological Works of Thomas Paine, R. Carlile, p. 138
^ Chaplin, Philippa J. (August 1, 2004). "Revolution Echoes Yet in Bordentown: The Place Patriot Thomas Paine Once Called Home Still Honors Him". Philadelphia Inquirer – via ProQuest.
^ Aldridge, Alfred (1959). Man Of Reason: The Life Of Thomas Paine. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company. p. 109.
^ Ziesche, Philipp (2013). Paine and Jefferson in the Age of Revolutions. University of Virginia Press. p. 124.
^ Aldridge, Alfred (1959). Man Of Reason: The Life Of Thomas Paine. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company. pp. 120–21.
^ George Rudé, Revolutionary Europe: 1783–1815 (1964), pg. 183.
^ Many of these are reprinted in Political Writings of the 1790s, ed. G. Claeys (8 vols, London: Pickering and Chatto, 1995).
^ Ziesche, Phillipp (2010). Cosmopolitan Patriots: Americans in Paris in the Age of Revolution. University of Virginia Press. p. 63.
^ Thomas Paine, Letter Addressed To The Addressers On The Late Proclamation, in Michael Foot, Isaac Kramnick (ed.), The Thomas Paine Reader, pg. 374
^ Ziesche, Philipp (2010). Cosmopolitan Patriots: Americans in Paris in the Age of Revolution. University of Virginia Press. p. 62.
^ Fruchtman, Jack (2009). The Political Philosophy of Thomas Paine. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 192. ISBN 978-0-8018-9284-4.
^ Munck, Thomas (2013). Paine and Jefferson in the Age of Revolutions. University of Virginia Press. p. 165.
^ Hawke, David (1974). Paine. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers. pp. 275–76.
^ Vikki Vickers (May 5, 2008). My Pen and My Soul Have Ever Gone Together: Thomas Paine and the American Revolution. Routledge. pp. 2–. ISBN 978-1-135-92157-6.
^ Collection highlights, Tom Paine's Desk, People's History Museum
^ Ziesche, Philipp (2010). Cosmopolitan Patriots: Americans in Paris in the Age of Revolution. University of Virginia Press. p. 86.
^ Hawke, David (1974). Paine. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers. pp. 297–98.
^ Paine, Thomas; Rickman, Thomas Clio (1908). "The Life and Writings of Thomas Paine: Containing a Biography". Vincent Parke & Co.: 261–62. Retrieved February 21, 2008.
^ Foot, Michael, and Kramnick, Isaac. 1987. The Thomas Paine Reader, p. 16
^ Eric Foner, 1976. Tom Paine and Revolutionary America, pg. 244.
^ Aulard, Alphonse. 1901. Histoire politique de la Révolution française, pg. 555.
^ Yorkshire Stingo
^ History of Bridge Engineering, H.G. Tyrrell, Chicago, 1911.
^ A biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers in Great Britain and Ireland at 753–55, A. W. Skempton and M. Chrimes, ed., Thomas Telford, 2002; (ISBN 0-7277-2939-X, ISBN 978-0727729392)
^ See Thomas Paine Archived September 29, 2006, at the Wayback Machine, Independence Hall Association; accessed online November 4, 2006.
^ Jump up to:a b "Mark Philp, 'Paine, Thomas (1737–1809)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, May 2008, accessed July 26, 2008". 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/21133.
^ O'Neill, Brendan (June 8, 2009). "Who was Thomas Paine?". BBC. Retrieved June 10,2018.
^ Papers of James Monroe ... from the original manuscripts in the Library of Congress. Washington : Government Printing Office. 1904.
^ Craig Nelson (2006). Thomas Paine. p. 299. ISBN 978-0-670-03788-9.
^ Craig Nelson (2006). Thomas Paine. p. 291. ISBN 978-0-670-03788-9.
^ Paine, Thomas. "Letter to George Washington, July 30, 1796: "On Paine's Service to America"". Archived from the original on September 27, 2006. Retrieved November 4,2006.
^ Craig Nelson (2006). Thomas Paine. pp. 292–94. ISBN 978-0-670-03788-9.
^ Claeys, Gregory, 1989. Thomas Paine, Social and Political Thought.
^ "Thomas Paine". ushistory.org. Retrieved September 15, 2017.
^ Jump up to:a b Walsh, Kevin (May 1999). "A PAINE IN THE VILLAGE - Forgotten New York". Retrieved March 12, 2019.
^ William Cobbett, The Life of Thomas Paine, Interspersed with Remarks and Reflections(London: J. Wright, 1797)
^ "Francis Oldys" [George Chalmers], The Life of Thomas Paine. One Penny-Worth of Truth, from Thomas Bull to His Brother John (London: Stockdale, 1791)
^ "The Paine Monument at Last Finds a Home". The New York Times. October 15, 1905. Retrieved February 23, 2008.
^ Chen, David W. "Rehabilitating Thomas Paine, Bit by Bony Bit". The New York Times. Retrieved February 23, 2008.
^ Burrows, Edwin G. and Wallace, Mike. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pg. 510.
^ "Paine's Obituary (click the "1809" link; it is 1/3 way down the 4th column)". New York Evening Post. June 10, 1809. Retrieved November 22, 2013.
^ Robert G. Ingersoll (1892). Thomas Paine (1892). Thomas Paine National Historical Association. Retrieved December 3, 2017.
^ Eric Foner (2005). Tom Paine and Revolutionary America. Oxford University Press, 2nd edition. pp. xxxii, 16. ISBN 9780195174861.
^ Mark Jendrysik, "Tom Paine: Utopian?", Utopian Studies (2007) 18#2 pp. 139–57.
^ Gregory Claeys, ed. (2010). The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature. Cambridge University Press. pp. 11–12. ISBN 9781139828420.
^ Weatherford, Jack "Indian Givers How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World", 1988, p. 125.
^ Jump up to:a b Rodriguez, Junius P. (2007). Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. p. 279. ISBN 9781851095445.
^ Nichols, John (January 20, 2009). "Obama's Vindication of Thomas Paine". The Nation.
^ "Purchasing Power of British Pounds from 1264 to Present". Measuringworth.com. February 15, 1971. Retrieved December 26, 2011.
^ Lamb, Robert. "Liberty, Equality, and the Boundaries of Ownership: Thomas Paine's Theory of Property Rights." Review of Politics (2010), 72#3, pp. 483–511.
^ Thomas Paine; et al. (1824). The Theological Works of Thomas Paine. R. Carlile. p. 31.
^ Shai Afsai (Fall 2010). "Thomas Paine's Masonic Essay and the Question of His Membership in the Fraternity" (PDF). Philalethes 63 (4): 138–44. Retrieved March 5, 2011. As he was certainly not a Master Mason when he wrote the essay—and as there is no evidence he joined the fraternity after then—one may conclude, as have Mackey, Newton, and others, that Paine was not a Freemason. Still, though the 'pantheon of Masons' may not hold Thomas Paine, this influential and controversial man remains connected to Freemasonry, if only due to the close friendships he had with some in the fraternity, and to his having written an intriguing essay on its origins.
^ Shai Afsai, "Thomas Paine's Masonic Essay and the Question of His Membership in the Fraternity." Philalethes 63:4 (Fall 2010), pp. 140–41.
^ Jump up to:a b Afsai, Shai (2012). "Thomas Paine, Freemason or Deist?". Early America Review(Winter/Spring).
^ Jack P. Greene, "Paine, America, and the 'Modernization' Of Political Consciousness," Political Science Quarterly 93#1 (1978) pp 73-92, quoting page 92 Online.
^ Harvey J. Kaye (2007). Thomas Paine and the Promise of America: A History & Biography. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 258. ISBN 9780374707064.
^ John Stevenson, "'Paineites to a Man'? The English Popular Radical Societies in the 1790s," Bulletin -- Society for the Study of Labour History (1989) 54#1 pp 14-25.
^ Gary Kates. "From Liberalism to Radicalism " (1989) p 569.
^ Gary Kates, 'From liberalism to radicalism: Tom Paine's Rights of Man" Journal of the History of Ideas (1989) 50#4 pp 569-587.
^ Gray, Rosie (February 1, 2012). "Mitt Romney Misquoted Thomas Paine In Victory Speech". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
^ Robert Havlik, "Some Influences of Thomas Paine's Age of Reason Upon Abraham Lincoln," Lincoln Herald, 104 (Summer 2002): 61-70.
^ Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: a life (2008), vol. 2, p. 83.
^ Roy P. Basler (ed.), Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings (1946), p. 6.
^ Thomas Edison, Introduction to The Life and Works of Thomas Paine, New York: Citadel Press, 1945, Vol. I, pp. vii–ix. Reproduced online on thomaspaine.org, accessed November 4, 2006.
^ Jump up to:a b c John Street, Artigas and the Emancipation of Uruguay (London: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 178–86.
^ See Frederick S. Voss, John Frazee 1790–1852 Sculptor (Washington City and Boston: The National Portrait Gallery and The Boston Athenaeum, 1986), pp. 46–47.
^ See Alfred Owen Aldridge, Man of Reason (Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott Company, 1959), pg. 103.
^ "Academics: Libraries". Iona College. Archived from the original on May 29, 2013.
^ "BBC – 100 Great British Heroes". BBC News. August 21, 2002. Retrieved December 26, 2011.
^ "About the hotel".
^ J. Frank Dobie, A Texan in England. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1980, pp. 84–85.
^ "Thomas Paine Park Monuments - Triumph of the Human Spirit : NYC Parks".
^ "Photos of Tom Paine and Some of His Writings". Morristown.org. Archived from the original on September 28, 2007. Retrieved January 10, 2008.
^ "Parc Montsouris". Paris Walking Tours. Retrieved January 10, 2008.
^ The Tom Paine Project Archived October 9, 2006, at the Wayback Machine, Lewes Town Council; retrieved November 4, 2006.
^ "Thomas Paine Study Centre – University of East Anglia (UEA)". uea.ac.uk. Retrieved December 7, 2011.
^ "National Historic Landmarks & National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania"(Searchable database). CRGIS: Cultural Resources Geographic Information System. Note:This includes Register, Pennsylvania (March 1972). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form: Cookes House" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on March 14, 2012. Retrieved December 18, 2011.
^ Graham Moore. "Heart of Darkness". Archived from the original on February 2, 2016.
^ "Graham Moore blogspot".
^ "BBC Radio 4 – Saturday Drama – Episodes by". Bbc.co.uk. August 2008. Retrieved May 7, 2014.
^ "BBC Radio 4 – Saturday Drama – Episodes by". Bbc.co.uk. August 2012. Retrieved May 7, 2014.
^ "Thomas Paine – "Citizen Of The World"". Keystage-company.co.uk. Retrieved May 7,2014.
^ Tom Paine Legacy Archived January 17, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, Programme for bicentenary celebrations in Thetford, the town of his birth.
^ TonyAttwood. "As I went out one morning: Dylan paints an abstract revolution". Untold Dylan. Retrieved February 1, 2019.
^ Harkness, Deborah (2018). Times Convert. Viking. ISBN 9780399564512.
Sources[edit]

Aldridge, A. Owen (1959). Man of Reason: The Life of Thomas Paine. Lippincott.. Regarded by British authorities as the standard biography.
Aldridge, A. Owen (1984). Thomas Paine's American Ideology. University of Delaware Press. ISBN 9780874132601.
Ayer, A. J. (1988). Thomas Paine. University of Chicago Press.
Bailyn, Bernard (1990). Bailyn (ed.). Common Sense. Faces of Revolution: Personalities and Themes in the Struggle for American Independence. Alfred A. Knopf.
Bernstein, R. B. (1994). "Review Essay: Rediscovering Thomas Paine". New York Law School Law Review.. Valuable blend of historiographical essay and biographical/analytical treatment.
Butler, Marilyn (1984). Burke Paine and Godwin and the Revolution Controversy.
Claeys, Gregory (1989). Thomas Paine, Social and Political Thought. London: Unwin Hyman. ISBN 9780203193204.. Excellent analysis of Paine's thought.
Conway, Moncure Daniel (1892). The Life of Thomas Paine. G.P. Putnam's Sons.. Long hailed as the definitive biography, and still valuable.
Ferguson, Robert A. (July 2000). "The Commonalities of Common Sense". William and Mary Quarterly. 57#3 (3): 465–504. JSTOR 2674263.
Foner, Eric (1976). Tom Paine and Revolutionary America. Oxford University Press.. The standard monograph treating Paine's thought and work with regard to America.
Foner, Eric (2000). Thomas Paine. American National Biography Online.
Greene, Jack P. "Paine, America, and the 'Modernization' Of Political Consciousness," Political Science Quarterly 93#1 (1978) pp 73-92 Online.
Griffiths, Trevor (2005). These Are the Times: A Life of Thomas Paine. Spokesman Books.
Hawke, David Freeman (1974). Paine. Philadelphia. Regarded by many American authorities as the standard biography.
Hitchens, Christopher (2007). Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man": A Biography. London: Atlantic Books. ISBN 978-1843546283.
Kates, Gary (1989). "From Liberalism to Radicalism: Tom Paine's Rights of Man". Journal of the History of Ideas. 50 (4): 569–587. doi:10.2307/2709798. JSTOR 2709798.
Kaye, Harvey J. (2005). Thomas Paine and the Promise of America. Hill and Wang.
Keane, John (1995). Tom Paine: A Political Life. London: Bloomsbury.. One of the most valuable recent studies.
Lamb, Robert (2010). "Liberty, Equality, and the Boundaries of Ownership: Thomas Paine's Theory of Property Rights". Review of Politics. 72 (3).
Larkin, Edward (2005). Thomas Paine and the Literature of Revolution. Cambridge University Press.
Lessay, Jean (1987). L'américain de la Convention, Thomas Paine: Professeur de révolutions[The National Convention's American, Thomas Paine, professor of revolution] (in French). Paris: Éditions Perrin. p. 241.
Levin, Yuval (2013). The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465062980.. Their debate over the French Revolution.
Lewis, Joseph L. (1947). Thomas Paine: The Author of the Declaration of Independence. New York: Freethought Press Association.
Nelson, Craig (2006). Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations. Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-03788-9.
Phillips, Mark (May 2008). "Paine, Thomas (1737–1809)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/21133.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
Powell, David (1985). Tom Paine, The Greatest Exile. Hutchinson.
Russell, Bertrand (1934). "The Fate of Thomas Paine".
Solinger, Jason D. (November 2010). "Thomas Paine's Continental Mind". Early American Literature. 45 (3).
Vincent, Bernard (2005). The Transatlantic Republican: Thomas Paine and the age of revolutions. ISBN 978-9042016149.
Wilensky, Mark (2008). The Elementary Common Sense of Thomas Paine. An Interactive Adaptation for All Ages. Casemate. ISBN 978-1-932714-36-4.
Washburne, E. B. (May 1880). "Thomas Paine and the French Revolution". Scribner's Monthly. XX.Fiction
Fast, Howard (1946). Citizen Tom Paine. (historical novel, though sometimes mistaken as biography).Primary sources
Paine, Thomas (1896). Conway, Moncure Daniel (ed.). The Writings of Thomas Paine, Volume 4. New York: G. P. Putnam's sons. p. 521., E'book
Foot, Michael; Kramnick, Isaac (1987). The Thomas Paine Reader. Penguin Classics. ISBN 978-0-14-044496-4.
Paine, Thomas (1993). Foner, Eric (ed.). Writings. Philadelphia: Library of America.. Authoritative and scholarly edition containing Common Sense, the essays comprising the American Crisisseries, Rights of Man, The Age of Reason, Agrarian Justice, and selected briefer writings, with authoritative texts and careful annotation.
Paine, Thomas (1944). Foner, Philip S. (ed.). The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine. Citadel Press. A complete edition of Paine's writings, on the model of Eric Foner's edition for the Library of America, is badly needed. Until then Philip Foner's two-volume edition is a serviceable substitute. Volume I contains the major works, and volume II contains shorter writings, both published essays and a selection of letters, but confusingly organized; in addition, Foner's attributions of writings to Paine have come in for some criticism in that Foner may have included writings that Paine edited but did not write and omitted some writings that later scholars have attributed to Paine.
External links[edit]
Thomas Paineat Wikipedia's sister projects
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Thomas Paine Society (UK)
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"Archival material relating to Thomas Paine". UK National Archives.
Portraits of Thomas Paine at the National Portrait Gallery, London
Office location while in AlfordWorks by Thomas Paine
Works by Thomas Paine at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Thomas Paine at Internet Archive
Works by Thomas Paine at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
Deistic and Religious Works of Thomas Paine
The theological works of Thomas Paine
The theological works of Thomas Paine to which are appended the profession of faith of a savoyard vicar by J.J. Rousseau
Common Sense by Thomas Paine; HTML format, indexed by section
Rights of Man