Thomas Paine (1737 - 1809) was an English-born political philosopher, pamphleteer and revolutionary who became one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. His pamphlets Common Sense and The American Crisis did more than any other writing to popularise the case for American independence, and his later works Rights of Man and The Age of Reason made him a central figure in transatlantic radical thought. [1]
Early life
Paine was born on 9 February 1737 in Thetford, Norfolk, the son of a Quaker corset-maker. He attended Thetford Grammar School until the age of about thirteen, then worked in his father's trade and in a succession of other occupations, including service at sea, schoolteaching and, for several years, work as an excise officer. [1]
His first political writing grew out of that employment: a 1772 pamphlet arguing for better pay for excise officers. Dismissed from the service and facing financial ruin, he met Benjamin Franklin in London, who supplied letters of introduction, and emigrated to Philadelphia in 1774. [2]
The American Revolution
In January 1776 Paine published Common Sense, an anonymous pamphlet attacking hereditary monarchy and arguing that the American colonies should seek outright independence rather than reconciliation with Britain. Written in deliberately plain language for a general audience, it sold in enormous numbers relative to the colonial population and reshaped public opinion in the months before the Declaration of Independence. [1]
During the war he produced The American Crisis, a series of papers whose first number opened with the line "These are the times that try men's souls," read to Continental Army troops at a low point of the campaign. He served as secretary to the Congressional Committee for Foreign Affairs and undertook a mission to France to secure supplies. [2]
France and Rights of Man
Returning to Europe in 1787, Paine responded to Edmund Burke's attack on the French Revolution with Rights of Man (1791-92), which defended the revolution and proposed measures including progressive taxation, pensions for the elderly and public support for the poor. The book was prosecuted for seditious libel in Britain and Paine was tried in absentia and outlawed. [3]
Elected to the French National Convention despite speaking little French, he argued against the execution of Louis XVI. During the Terror he was imprisoned by the Jacobin government and narrowly escaped execution, being released after the intervention of the American minister James Monroe. [1]
Later life and legacy
While imprisoned and afterwards he completed The Age of Reason, a deist critique of organised religion and of the literal authority of scripture. The work cost him much of his American reputation. He returned to the United States in 1802 and died in Greenwich Village, New York, on 8 June 1809; few mourners attended his funeral. [2]
Paine's standing recovered over the following century, and his arguments for republican government, welfare provision and religious liberty were taken up by reformers on both sides of the Atlantic. He was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame, and Common Sense remains a foundational document of American political literature. [4]
