Common Sense (pamphlet)

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Common Sense
Pamphlet's original cover
Author Thomas Paine
Country United States
Language English
Published January 10, 1776
Pages 48




Publication history

Thomas Paine began writing Common Sense in late 1775 under the working title of Plain Truth. With Benjamin Rush, who helped him edit it, publish it, and suggested the final title, Paine developed his ideas into a forty-eight page pamphlet. He published Common Sense anonymously because of its treasonable content. Rush recommended the printer Robert Bell, promising Paine that, where other printers might say no because of the content of the pamphlet, Bell would not hesitate nor delay its printing. Paine and Bell had a falling out, but Bell still felt strongly about printing a second edition. Bell added the phrase "Written by an Englishman" to his second edition without Paine's permission.[7] Paine had stressed that it was "the Doctrine, not the man" that was important. Paine wanted to remain anonymous for as long as possible and felt that even such a general phrase as Bell's addition would take attention away from the ideas in his pamphlet.[7]

This did not seem to matter; printed by Bell, Common Sense sold almost 100,000 copies in 1776,[8] and according to Paine, 120,000 copies were sold in the first three months. One biographer estimates that 500,000 copies sold in the first year (in both America and Europe – predominantly France and Britain), and another writes that Paine's pamphlet went through twenty-five published editions in the first year alone.[6][9]

Aside from the printed pamphlet itself, there were many handwritten summaries and whole copies circulated. At least one newspaper, the Connecticutt Courant, printed the entire pamphlet in its February 19, 1776, issue and there may have been others that did the same.[10] While it is difficult to achieve a fixed figure for the number of circulated copies, what is certain is that Paine's words reached far and wide out to most of America's 2.5 million colonists. His pamphlet was read at countless town meetings and gatherings even to those who could not read.

Paine managed to carefully maintain his anonymity, even during potent newspaper polemics generated by Robert Bell, for nearly three months. His name did not become officially connected with the independence controversy until March 30, 1776.[11] He donated his royalties from Common Sense to George Washington's Continental Army, saying:


—Thomas Paine

As the controversy with Bell, which only served to fuel the pamphlet's sale and distribution, wore on, Paine publicly repudiated his copyright to give all colonial printers the legal right to issue their own edition.[12]


Four sections are noted on the title page, which quotes James Thomson's poem, "Liberty" (1735–36):

Man knows no master save creating Heaven,
Or those whom choice and common good ordain.

—James Thomson, "Liberty"




II. Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession



—Thomas Paine[13]


III. Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs

Constitution of the United States as proposed by Thomas Paine in Common Sense

In the third section Paine examines the hostilities between England and the American colonies and argues that the best course of action is independence. Paine proposes a Continental Charter (or Charter of the United Colonies) that would be an American Magna Carta. Paine writes that a Continental Charter "should come from some intermediate body between the Congress and the people" and outlines a Continental Conference that could draft a Continental Charter.[14] Each colony would hold elections for five representatives. These five would be accompanied by two members of the assembly of colonies, for a total of seven representatives from each colony in the Continental Conference. The Continental Conference would then meet and draft a Continental Charter that would secure “freedom and property to all men, and… the free exercise of religion.”[14] The Continental Charter would also outline a new national government, which Paine thought would take the form of a Congress.



The fourth section of the pamphlet includes Paine's optimistic view of America's military potential at the time of the revolution. For example, he spends pages describing how colonial shipyards, by using the large amounts of lumber available in the country, could quickly create a navy that could rival the Royal Navy.

Paine's arguments against British rule

  • It was absurd for an island to rule a continent.


There were at least two reasons why Paine's brief pamphlet is believed to be "the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era".[6] First, while the average colonist was more educated than their European counterpart, European and colonial elites agreed that common people had no place in government or political debates. Common Sense targeted a popular audience and was written in a straightforward and simple way, so Paine's political ideas were made tangible and available to a common audience. This brought average colonists into political debate, which created a whole new political language.[15] Those colonists who had not been taught how to read could hear the words of Common Sense at public gatherings, so even they were brought into this new political world. Paine's fresh style of political writing avoided use of complex Latin phrases and instead opted for a more direct, concise style that helped make the information accessible to everyone who read or heard its ideas. Thus, Paine's "incendiary" words were heard by all, even by those common folk who had never themselves learned how to read.

The second reason involves the way the vast majority of colonists felt about the idea of independence from British rule. Before Common Sense was published, except for a few radical thinkers, the people of the American colonies were "on the fence" about independence. Individuals were in conflict with themselves, and there were those who leaned toward reconciliation with the British crown. George Trevelyan in his History of the American Revolution had this to say about Paine's pamphlet:


There were those in high places who, while in agreement with Paine's sentiments, voiced criticism of his method. John Adams, who would succeed George Washington to become the new nation's second president, in his Thoughts on Government wrote that Paine's ideal sketched in Common Sense was "so democratical, without any restraint or even an attempt at any equilibrium or counter poise, that it must produce confusion and every evil work".[16] In spite of Adams' formidable influence most people praised Paine's brief booklet. The editors of The Thomas Paine Reader, Michael Foot and Isaac Kramnick, in their introduction to Common Sense wrote:

Published anonymously, Common Sense appeared on Philadelphia streets in January 1776. It was an instant success, and copies of the pamphlet were soon available in all the thirteen colonies. Paine's was an unequivocal call for independence, and many Americans wavering between reconciliation with and independence from Britain were won over to separation by Paine's powerful polemic against monarchy, in general, and the British [monarchy], in particular.[17]

The impact of Common Sense was to influence American colonists, both educated and uneducated, to come down from their fences, to feel they were part of a greater whole, and to embrace independence from the British monarchy.[8]

See also


  1. ^ Full title – Common Sense; Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, on the Following Interesting Subjects.
  2. ^ Conway (1893).
  3. ^ Harvey J. Kaye, Thomas Paine And The Promise of America, (New York: Hill and Wang 2005). ISBN 0-8090-9344-8, 43.
  4. ^ Wood (2002), pp. 55-56.
  5. ^ Anthony J. Di Lorenzo, "Dissenting Protestantism as a Language of Revolution in Thomas Paine's Common Sense" in Eighteenth-Century Thought, Vol. 4, 2009. ISSN 1545-0449.
  6. ^ a b c Wood (2002), p. 55.
  7. ^ a b Aldridge (1984), p. 42.
  8. ^ a b c Foot, Kramnick (1987). p 10.
  9. ^ Isaac Kramnick, "Introduction," in Thomas Paine, Common Sense (New York: Penguin, 1986), 8
  10. ^ Aldridge (1984), p. 45.
  11. ^ Aldridge (1984), p. 43.
  12. ^ a b Craig Nelson, Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations (New York: Penguin, 2007), 90.
  13. ^ Paine, Common Sense, excerpted from The Thomas Paine Reader, p. 79
  14. ^ a b c Paine, Common Sense, 96-97.
  15. ^ Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (1976)
  16. ^ Foot, Kramnick (1987). p 11.
  17. ^ Foot, Kramnick (1987). p 65.


External links