LITMIR.BIZ

      {1776}

       Table of Contents

      Chapter VI. "Common Sense"

       Table of Contents

      In furrows ploughed deep by lawless despotism, watered with blood of patriots, the Thetford Quaker sowed his seed—true English seed. Even while he did so he was suspected of being a British spy, and might have been roughly handled in Philadelphia had it not been for Franklin. Possibly this suspicion may have arisen from his having, in the antislavery letter, asked the Americans "to consider with what consistency or decency they complain so loudly of attempts to enslave them, while they hold so many thousands in slavery." Perfectly indifferent to this, Paine devoted the autumn of 1775 to his pamphlet "Common Sense," which with the new year "burst from the press with an effect which has rarely been produced by types and paper in any age or country." So says Dr. Benjamin Rush, and his assertion, often quoted, has as often been confirmed.

Of the paramount influence of Paine's "Common Sense" there can indeed be no question.1 It reached Washington soon after tidings that Norfolk, Virginia, had been burned (Jan. 1st) by Lord Dunmore, as Falmouth (now Portland), Maine, had been, Oct 17, 1775, by ships under Admiral Graves.

The General wrote to Joseph Reed, from Cambridge, Jan. 31st: "A few more of such flaming arguments as were exhibited at Falmouth and Norfolk, added to the sound doctrine and unanswerable reasoning contained in the pamphlet 'Common Sense,' will not leave numbers at a loss to decide upon the propriety of separation."2

Henry Wisner, a New York delegate in Congress, sent the pamphlet to John McKesson, Secretary of the Provincial Congress sitting in New York City, with the following note: "Sir, I have only to ask the favour of you to read this pamphlet, consulting Mr. Scott and such of the Committee of Safety as you think proper, particularly Orange and Ulster, and let me know their and your opinion of the general spirit of it. I would have wrote a letter on the subject, but the bearer is waiting." In pursuance of this General Scott suggested a private meeting, and McKesson read the pamphlet aloud. New York, the last State to agree to separation, was alarmed by the pamphlet, and these leaders at first thought of answering it, but found themselves without the necessary arguments. Henry Wisner, however, required arguments rather than orders, and despite the instructions of his State gave New York the honor of having one name among those who, on July 4th, voted for independence.3 Joel Barlow, a student in Yale College at the beginning of the Revolution, has borne testimony to the great effect of Paine's pamphlet, as may be seen in his biography by Mr. Todd.

      An original copy of Paine's excise pamphlet (1792) in my possession contains a note in pencil, apparently contemporary, suggesting that the introduction was written by Barlow. In this introduction—probably by Barlow, certainly by a competent observer of events in America—it is said:

"On this celebrated publication ('Common Sense'), which has received the testimony of praise from the wise and learned of different nations, we need only remark (for the merit of every work should be judged by its effect) that it gave spirit and resolution to the Americans, who were then wavering and undetermined, to assert their rights, and inspired a decisive energy into their counsels: we may therefore venture to say, without fear of contradiction, that the great American cause owed as much to the pen of Paine as to the sword of Washington."4

Edmund Randolph, our first Attorney-General, who had been on Washington's staff in the beginning of the war, and conducted much of his correspondence, ascribed independence primarily to George III., but next to "Thomas Paine, an Englishman by birth, and possessing an imagination which happily combined political topics, poured forth in a style hitherto unknown on this side of the Atlantic, from the ease with which it insinuated itself into the hearts of the people who were unlearned, or of the learned."5 This is from a devout churchman, writing after Paine's death. Paine's malignant biographer, Cheetham (1809), is constrained to say of "Common Sense": "Speaking a language which the colonists had felt but not thought, its popularity, terrible in its consequences to the parent country, was unexampled in the history of the press."6

      Let it not be supposed that Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Randolph, and the rest, were carried away by a meteor. Deep answers only unto deep. Paine's ideas went far because they came far. He was the authentic commoner, representing English freedom in the new world. There was no dreg in the poverty of his people that he had not tasted, no humiliation in their dependence, no outlook of their hopelessness, he had not known, and with the addition of intellectual hungers which made his old-world despair conscious. The squalor and abjectness

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