WorkThomas Paine

Common Sense

The pamphlet that told Britain's American colonists, in plain words, that the king himself was the problem and independence the cure.

by Thomas Paine73 passages held

English, the original language, and your language

First published: 1776(aged 39)
Original language: English

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Overview

George III told Parliament on 26 October 1775 that the American colonies were in open rebellion and would be brought to order by force. His speech reached Philadelphia in the first days of January 1776, and on 10 January the printer Robert Bell put an anonymous pamphlet on sale there. Its author, Thomas Paine, had arrived from England only thirteen months earlier, and he argued that the time for petitions was over: the colonies should declare themselves independent now. Society, he wrote, grows out of people's needs and is a blessing; government is at best a necessary evil, to be kept close to the people it serves. A king adds nothing to it but cost and danger, and a hereditary one is worse, because a people that chooses a good ruler has no right to hand its grandchildren to his descendants. Then the practical case: an island three thousand miles away could not govern a continent, and America had the men, timber and trade to stand alone. Paine soon quarrelled with Bell over profits and took an enlarged edition, with an appendix answering the king's speech, to Bell's rivals William and Thomas Bradford. Replies followed, among them Plain Truth by James Chalmers, a Maryland loyalist, which defended the British constitution. George Washington praised the pamphlet's reasoning, while John Adams judged its plan of government far too democratic. How many copies were sold is still argued over: Paine later spoke of 120,000 in three months, while some historians put the realistic ceiling at around 75,000, in colonies of some two and a half million people.

Key concepts

Why does Common Sense call government a necessary evil?

Because it is needed only where society alone is not enough. Society, in Paine's account, grows out of people's needs and is a blessing; government is at best a necessary evil. Since the evil is necessary, the task is to keep it as small and as close to the governed as possible, and every institution is to be judged by whether it serves them or stands above them.

Why is a hereditary king worse than a chosen one?

Because inheritance binds people who never agreed. Even if a people freely chose its first king, that choice was theirs alone; they had no right to hand their grandchildren to his descendants. Hereditary succession takes a decision that belongs to each generation and settles it for all of them in advance, whoever the heir turns out to be, which is why Common Sense treats it as worse than monarchy itself.

What is the argument about an island governing a continent?

It is Paine's practical case that British rule over America could not work, whatever its claims. A government on a small island three thousand miles away could neither understand a continent's needs nor answer them in time. The argument moves the question from loyalty to competence: even a colonist still attached to Britain had to ask whether the arrangement could function, and Paine answers that it could not.

Why does Paine reject reconciliation with Britain?

Because the king had closed that road himself. George III had told Parliament the colonies were in open rebellion and would be brought to order by force, and Paine read that as the end of the case for petitioning. Reconciliation would return the colonies to a government that had chosen war against them and could not, at its distance, govern them well; the only settlement left was separation.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Society, Government and the Uselessness of Kings

What does a people actually need from government, and what does a king add to it? Nothing, Paine answers, but cost and danger, and a crown passed down by birth is worse.

Society grows out of people's needs and is a blessing; government is at best a necessary evil, and the less distance between it and the governed, the better. Measured that way, a king contributes nothing a people could not do for itself, and costs a great deal. Inheritance makes it worse even when the first king was good: a people that chooses a ruler may bind itself, but it has no right to hand its grandchildren to his descendants, whoever they turn out to be.

monarchy
hereditary succession
political legitimacy
political authority
popular sovereignty
political equality
divine sovereignty
religion and politics
freedom

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Why Independence Could Not Wait

Is reconciliation with Britain still worth waiting for, or is the time for petitions over? It is over, Paine answers, and the colonies already hold what standing alone requires.

The king had declared the colonies in open rebellion and promised to bring them to order by force; Paine took him at his word. Petitions presumed a parent who would listen, and that parent had chosen war. What remained was a practical question, and Paine answered it practically: an island three thousand miles away could not govern a continent, and America had the men, the timber and the trade to stand on its own. Independence was not a gamble on the future but the recognition of what already existed.

political independence
independence
reconciliation
self-government
republicanism
commerce
national defense
naval power
civil war
posterity
war
empire
political violence
political unity
national identity
political judgment
constitutionalism
constitutional design
political representation

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Within this work

passages held: 73
distinct concepts: 156
by passages held, corpus-wide: #574

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “monarchy” and “political legitimacy”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 15 pairings. 53 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
monarchy	political legitimacy	7
hereditary succession	monarchy	5
hereditary succession	political legitimacy	4
commerce	political independence	3
independence	self-government	3
political independence	political legitimacy	3
political independence	self-government	3
independence	political legitimacy	2
independence	reconciliation	2
political independence	reconciliation	2
reconciliation	self-government	2
commerce	independence	1
commerce	self-government	1
independence	monarchy	1
political legitimacy	self-government	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1776 Common Sense you are here EN
1776 The American Crisis
A serial rather than a book: papers issued one at a time between December 1776 and December 1783, whenever the war's news called for one, each under the title The Crisis.
EN
1782 Letter Addressed to the Abbé Raynal on the Affairs of North-America (Letter to the Abbe Raynal)
Ten months after the victory at Yorktown, with the war winding down, Paine set out to put the record of the Revolution straight for European readers.
EN
1791 Rights of Man
Paine's contribution to the pamphlet war that Burke's Reflections set off in Britain; the writer Mary Wollstonecraft had answered Burke first, in November 1790.
EN
1793 Reasons for Wishing to Preserve the Life of Louis Capet (Reasons for Preserving the Life of Louis Capet)
Second of the three speeches Paine gave in the Convention on the king's fate: the first, in November 1792, argued that Louis should be tried; the last pleaded for a reprieve.
EN
1794 The Age of Reason
Between the two stretches in which it was written, Paine spent ten months in a Paris prison; it is his one sustained book on religion, and the one that cost him most.
EN
1795 Dissertation on First Principles of Government
Here Paine's political principles are condensed into a few dozen pages, in his last attempt to shape a French constitution from inside the Convention.
EN
1797 Agrarian Justice
Published in answer to a bishop's sermon on rich and poor, it carries the welfare proposals of Rights of Man to a principle: that the landless are owed a share of the earth.
EN
1797 The Existence of God
Addressed to the Theophilanthropists, the Paris society whose creed matched Paine's own, it gives the positive side of the case that The Age of Reason made against revealed religion.
EN
1807 Examination of the Prophecies
A companion to The Age of Reason, giving the Gospels' use of prophecy the same close reading that its second part gave the authorship of the Bible.
EN

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