50bookchallenge #33/50: Common Sense, Thomas Paine
This was another short one, but the eighteenth-century language was a little difficult to wade through. With overcomplicated compound sentences, I got a little of an idea of what a chore it must be to read my writing.
It was not as relevant a read as I expected. I guess I’d thought this would be a manifesto illuminating the rights of man, and part of Common Sense did in fact fill that bill. I thought, however, that this would be a timeless declaration of values, in much the same way that the Declaration of Independence is. What I didn’t realize was how Paine meant to inspire not confidence or unity but action. Common Sense is an urgent call to take a stand against the British and shake the yoke. What made it a fascinating read was not its moral sense, but the historical illumination it made of the conception of our nation.
Almost every plan and every prediction Paine makes has come true or close to it. One particularly chilling passage, though, is where he rebuts a Tory argument that the American colonies were too young for independence, and that rushing into an independent Union would lead to a bloody civil war down the road. Of course hindsight is 20/20, and I think that he was right to say that bowing to the rule of a sovereign an ocean away could no longer be withstood, but how true that no matter how wisely the Federalists and the Anti-federalists hammered out compromise the Union would eventually resolve that question with its own blood.
Also fascinating is Paine’s use of Biblical passages to renounce monarchy. I haven’t checked his references or their context, but he makes a case that Kings appeared in the Bible only against the expressed wish of the Almighty.
Oh! And how eloquently he put it: that in Great Britain the King is the Law, but in America the law should be king.
Again a reminder that I’ve forgotten more American history than I know.
The sad thing about Paine is
The sad thing about Paine is that, after being such a part of the American Revolution and then being on the Committee of Nine that drafted the French Constitution after their revolution, when he died he was buried in a pasture behind his house with only a few neighbors present. His housekeeper, cognizant of the irony, said to her son something to the effect that he represented America’s gratitude, and she France’s.
Dad
He played a part in bringing
He played a part in bringing it on himself, which I find just as sad. Nothing was good enough for himâeven a government modeled after his own writing he stormed was simply an imitation of Britain. He was a friend of the revolution, but a bitter foe to the forming of the Union. I’m not even certain that calling him an Anti-Federalist quite covers it; he seems to have been opposed to the Federalists and a greater foe of the Anti-Federalists. He called Washington (and many others as well) a traitor and then became indignant when public opinion painted him with the same brush he’d used on the men who carried out the revolution that he aroused.
Age of Reason purportedly has some strong words about Christianity, and it was John Adams’ vocal condemnation of this that really seems to have turned the tide against Paine.
As for France, well, I won’t complain of France in the late 18th Century being an overly rational place.
Paine did deserve more thanks, but he made it a point to turn away those who should have thanked him.