Common Sense
An inveterate pamphleteer, Thomas Paine broadcast the merits of reason, republicanism and radicalism in a series of writings perhaps more innovative in their popular tone and language than in their message. His origins were humble and his education limited. Born in Thetford in 1737, he was apprenticed to his father's trade of corset-making, but tried a number of other occupations (most notably serving as an exciseman in Lewes) before sailing for America in 1774, having recently separated from his second wife.
In America Paine made his name with a pamphlet, Common Sense (1776), which, in advocating complete independence for the American colonies, argued for republicanism as the sole rational means of government. Relishing the freedom of the new world (and its potential for commercial progress) Paine readily cast aside the restrictive and gentlemanly conventions of British politics, not least the exclusive tone of Whig 'republicanism'.
'...he sought an end to executive tyranny and what we would now call 'sleaze' through the 'virtue' and common good of representative democratic republican government.'
In the Whig paradigm of 'civic humanism', premised on glorified models of classical antiquity and selective memories of 17th-century constitutional struggles, political primacy was accorded to independent landowners. As guardians of the constitution, it was their duty to resist imbalance and corruption in the polity through civic virtue, by active participation in political affairs.
Paine, however, was altogether more democratic. Looking beyond the trivia of piecemeal constitutional renovation, he sought an end to executive tyranny and what we would now call 'sleaze' through the 'virtue' and common good of representative democratic republican government.
Published: 2002-05-01
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