Common Sense as written by Thomas Paine was initially published in 1776 during the time of the American Revolution. It was a pamphlet that provided the colonists in America with arguments to get independence from the rule and occupation of the British. It is well-known that Common Sense reached out to hundreds of thousands of people who were desperate to get independence and inspired them into a fight for their liberty.
At a time when a lot of uncertainty prevailed after the war, Paine won over the American people with his simple words which served as motive power for people to get confident about what they wanted. He made them realize that rulers were in fact the representatives of the people and that the Monarchy of the British government had no basis to rule over them. The pamphlet was aimed at convincing people that they should not be ruled by a King who was born to rule rather than has been chosen by people to govern for them, in other words, the fact that the British Monarch had inherited his right to be a king, did not mean that he could govern for the people of America.
Common Sense did not simply try to convince people that they had to fight for their independence. Its aim was to demonstrate the incompetence of the government. Paine himself kept to the point that government might be a necessary evil, but it had to work in the best interests of people taking care of their welfare and expectations. The pamphlet made people suddenly realize that they deserved proper representation. By his work, Paine inspired a vast majority of Americans, and not only men but women (for instance, Abigail Williams) whose most utmost desire was getting independence from their husbands. At the time when the pamphlet was released, independence was much desired and Paine reached out to a large number of people at an appropriate time defending independence from the British. Moreover, the pamphlet made people realize the importance of American independence, which marked the beginning of a radical movement.
Apart from working on Common Sense, Paine is known for having a number of occupations in Britain before his coming to America in 1774. Firstly, he worked as a supernumerary officer at Thetford from 1761 to 1762. After that, he got a position of an excise officer in 1762 in Lincolnshire, and in August 1765, he was fired from this position for committing alleged discrepancies. Until he was reinstated to the position of an excise officer, he worked for some time as a stay maker in Norfolk and then as a servant for some nobility. Paine was a minister of the Church of England until 1767 after which he got work as a school teacher in London. From February 1768, he worked with Lewis in East Sussex where he developed an interest in civic matters and was introduced to members of the elite intellectual society called Society of Twelve which indulged in discussions of town politics. Paine actively associated with the church group Vestry that made collections to be distributed amongst the poor. During the years 1772 and 1773, he was occupied in working with excise officers who demanded the parliament to improve their working conditions and increase their payments. This occupation inspired Paine to the creation of his first political work titled The Case of the Officers of Excise. Finally, in 1774 he was introduced to Benjamin Franklin by a friend who recommended his emigration to America and he arrived in Philadelphia on November 30th, 1774.
In sum, Thomas Paine had numerous occupations before arriving in America in 1774 where he published his Common Sense, a pamphlet, which has strongly influenced American people’s ideology and contributed greatly to their fight for independence.
Works Cited
Hitchens, Christopher. Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man: A Biography. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007.
Paine, Thomas. Essential Thomas Paine: Common Sense, The Rights of Man. Plume, 1984.
Roark, James L. American Promise, 4th Edition. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008.