Common Sense

As part of an ongoing feud between Britain and France, from 1754 to 1763 a series of battles took place along the frontier between the American colonies of both countries. This French and Indian War had two main results: Britain conquered much of the French territory in North America, and American colonists became toughened war veterans.

To pay for these wars, Britain increased greatly the taxes it imposed on the colonies. Americans, made newly confident by the recent military victories, resisted these imposts, especially because they had no representation in Parliament and therefore no say in the matter. Two incidents inflamed them. The first was the Boston Massacre in 1770, where British soldiers fired on colonists demonstrating against recent taxes and regulations. The second incident was the Boston Tea Party in 1773, during which rebels boarded a British ship and tossed heavily taxed imported tea into the bay, leading British authorities to impose harsh penalties. By April 1775, American militias were trading fire with British soldiers.

Only a third of the colonists favored independence; another third were “loyalists” faithful to England, and the final third were caught in the middle. Common Sense, published several months into this conflict, was a rallying cry meant to convince those not yet decided to join the rebellion, which became known as the American Revolutionary War.

In its four chapters, Common Sense makes four claims: (1) that people have a natural right to a government to which they consent and not one commanded by hereditary rulers; (2) that the English king has mistreated and oppressed the American colonies in ways well beyond forgiving; (3) that America must act quickly to set up a representative government that will manage the new country and the battles to come; and (4) that the time to act will never be better than at the present moment.

Copies of Common Sense were purchased by so many, and passed through so many hands among the 2.5 million colonists, that to this day it remains the publication with the highest per-capita readership ever achieved in America. The pamphlet successfully increased support among the colonists for a revolution; this support greatly encouraged the rebellion’s leaders, who issued a Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.

The Declaration echoes many of the sentiments expressed in Common Sense. Its writers shrewdly echoed the pamphlet’s phrasing. For example, Common Sense declares that governments are good only for protecting the people in “whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us” (4). This statement resonates with the Declaration’s assertion that the people should replace oppressive government with one “in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Chapter 1 introduces the idea that society only needs government to protect it from villainy, and that any other form, including the largely dictatorial one imposed by Britain on its colonies, is bad and should be changed out. Chapter 1 also critiques the three-part system of British government. This discussion was important to Americans because that government also controlled the colonies. The author’s purpose was to show that British governance was hopelessly corrupted, controlled by a willful king, and biased against Americans.

Paine isn’t against all forms of government, but he rails against any that are arbitrary. His preferred form is a republic, which basically is a government elected by the people. Paine assumes in Chapter 1 that governments are by their nature dangerous, but he doesn’t elaborate. Later thinkers, especially those involved in the creation of the American Constitution, would write that governments rely on force to achieve their ends and are thus inherently dangerous, especially if they are co-opted or corrupted by schemers and authoritarians.

Paine compares his ideal of government with the “constitution of England” (6), which isn’t a single document but a collection of acts and judicial rulings. The founding act is the Magna Carta, a 1215 agreement between king and nobles that established a Parliament, a system of courts, and a guarantee of certain freedoms. The Bill of Rights of 1689 set further limits on royal power and guaranteed more civil liberties. These rights and regulations weren’t perfect: The king still exercised significant power. The colonies were further removed, both physically and in legal terms, from protections enjoyed by their fellow citizens back home in England.

In Chapter 2, Paine shapes his writing somewhat in the form of a sermon: He includes Biblical descriptions of the beginnings of royal power in Israel. These aren’t the first such examples in world history; they’re simply the ones mentioned prominently in the Bible, where God warns the Hebrews against going down that path.

Today the British government is basically a republic, and the king or queen is essentially a figurehead. In 1775, however, Paine argued that it was the other way around, and that the Parliament was the puppet. The colonies, therefore, weren’t overseen by a duly elected body of their fellow citizens back in the mother country but by arbitrary hereditary rulers who used Parliament as a rubber stamp, and Americans were within their rights to overthrow it.

Chapter 3 proposes an outline for the shape of a new government. Paine begins by asserting that the time for debate has passed and that violence will decide the issue. He’s referring to the beginning of hostilities in April 1775, when rebels and British soldiers fired on each other in Massachusetts, at Lexington and Concord. Knowing that some readers will object that independence would open the floodgates of chaos, Paine suggests a form of government designed to keep the colonies in harmony, rotating the presidency among them and requiring a three-fifths majority in legislation, so that only the most urgently agreed-upon laws will be enforced.

His ideas echo in the Constitution, which gives every state equal representation in the Senate; the Senate’s rules, in turn, require a three-fifths majority simply to close debate on a law. He urged legislation that respects “freedom and property to all men, and above all things the free exercise of religion” (38); these are reflected in the US Bill of Rights. His call for a Continental Congress was heeded, and a central government emerged during the Revolution, its shape evolving over several years until a Constitutional Convention in 1787 replaced the revolutionary government with the one in effect today.

Chapter 4 focuses on practicalities; these include building an American navy, moving forward quickly, and ensuring that the new government offers adequate representation. Paine argues that naval vessels aren’t as expensive as many believe. He offers a chart of British naval-vessel costs: They add up to 3.5 million pounds sterling. In today’s money, this would be several billion dollars; by comparison, a Ford-class aircraft carrier today costs more than the entire British fleet of the late 1700s.

Instead of keeping an expensive regular navy, Paine suggests that merchant ships keep guns aboard and bring them to the defense of the nation during emergencies; they’d be paid for their trouble. America adopted the practice, paying private vessels, or privateers, to attack enemy shipping and keep any booty. This practice continued through the US Civil War. An 1856 international treaty banned privateering; America never signed on but later abided by the agreement.

In previous chapters, Paine mentions the need to form a union quickly, lest America grow too big to coordinate under one government. He repeats this argument in Chapter 4: “The vast variety of interests, occasioned by an increase of trade and population, would create confusion. Colony would be against colony” (49-50). He also reiterates the danger of letting delay give ruffians the chance to take over the country for their own purposes.

The Appendix, added to the second edition, comments on a speech by the king published in the colonies on the same day that Common Sense was released. Paine has a fine time condemning the king, His Highness’s writers, and anyone who tries to make excuses for the threats and insults contained in the speech. Paine knows the missive angered many colonists, and he brings it up in the new edition as a sort of icing on the cake of his previous arguments. A king this wicked, Paine implies, has no place in American hearts and doesn’t deserve their loyalty.

Paine’s political beliefs didn’t spring entirely from his own mind, brilliant though it was. Chief among his predecessors was English philosopher John Locke, whose belief in individual liberties, and the government’s duty to protect them, influenced the writers of the 1689 English Bill of Rights and, a century later, the framers of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Common Sense takes its place alongside the Declaration of Independence and The Federalist Papers as the most prominent American contributions to the new philosophy of liberalism, a belief system that supported freedom, individual human rights, and republican governments as ideas whose time had come. Those ideas spread across the Earth, and today freedom and democracy can be found in corners of the world that Paine once pointed to as places of oppression.