Common Sense, Part VIII: Facts and Figures

Having already addressed the deficiencies of the British constitution, the shortcomings of hereditary monarchy, and the viability and necessity of independence in previous sections, Thomas Paine turned in the fourth and last part of Common Sense, weighing in at a respectable thirty-two paragraphs, to what I’ll call the “nuts and bolts” of a successful campaign for separation. Whereas in section three Paine endeavoured to convince his readers, among other things, that independence of the Thirteen Colonies from Britain was both a possibility and an imperative, the paragraphs that followed (under the heading “Of the Present Ability of America, with some miscellaneous Reflections”) attempted to weigh the same prospect in terms of the resources required and some of its potentially beneficial effects. To that end Paine deployed arguments that touched upon economic stimulation, demographics, and diplomacy, and even made use of a remarkably thorough cost/benefit analysis of naval shipbuilding. Independence, Paine seemed keen to get across by whatever means, would be a boon to the colonies. It could not be achieved without following certain steps and incurring certain risks, he freely admitted, but the potential economic growth it could generate, and the looming political crises it could help avoid, seemed to him well worth the cost. Doubtless he hoped his analysis of the expenses and profits of separation would strike the average American colonist – thrifty, hard-working, and risk-averse – in much the same way.

After again declaring, as he had on more than one occasion in Common Sense, that the independence of the Thirteen Colonies from British authority was inevitable, Paine began section four by exhorting his fellow colonists to take account of some of their material circumstances and decide from themselves whether his common refrain was merited or not. “Let us,” he wrote in the second paragraph, “in order to remove mistakes, take a general survey of things, and endeavour, if possible, to find out the very time” at which the colonies might achieve the necessary degree of “ripeness” for independence. Paine believed the present (January, 1776) to be sufficiently ripe, and attempted to guide his readers to a similar conclusion. The first circumstance he seized upon as being in favour of separation had to do with population. While, he admitted in paragraph three, no single colony possessed either the raw manpower or the proportion of adequately trained and experienced men to repel a British offensive on its own the thirteen acting in chorus presented an all-but insurmountable barrier to any attempt at subjugation. Indeed, the balance as he depicted it between success in unity and failure in autonomy seemed so delicate – “the whole, when united, can accomplish the matter, and either more, or, less than this, might be fatal in its effects” – that the creation of a Continental Army could easily be viewed as nothing short of an act of providence. Alone the colonies possessed no hope of success against British bayonets, and combined they were unstoppable; true or not, this would surely have struck many colonists as a powerful endorsement of colonial unity and further confirmation that independence was eminently possible.

Paine furthered his claim for the serendipitous demographic situation of the Thirteen Colonies circa 1776 when addressing their potential as a naval power. Because said colonies were, in the late-18^th century, nominally part of the British Empire, and because the Royal Navy at that time was virtually unrivalled among contemporary maritime forces, there had never been much reason for Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia or Massachusetts to develop anything more than shipping fleets. Britain, as of what is commonly regarded as the outbreak of the American Revolution in April, 1775, could thus easily outmatch whatever naval force the colonies might have been able to scrape together on short notice. This, Paine argued in paragraph three, would continue to be the case should the colonies agree to a negotiated settlement and return to the British fold; Britain’s naval power would continue to grow and future prospects for a potential American challenge would continue to diminish. Indeed, the process would be accelerated and rendered nigh-irreversible so long as American timber continued to be harvested by the British shipbuilding industry. This did not, however, need always be the case. It was possible, Paine suggested, while America’s resources were still her own, to create a native naval establishment set to rival the Royal Navy.

Population was on the colonists’ side. So long as American trade was hamstrung by British blockades, and it most certainly was, the resulting economic stagnation made for an abundance of unemployed young men doubtless eager to be put to work. The creation of a Continental Navy would do just that, at the same time it catalysed any number of other industries from shipbuilding to rope-making to the manufacture of arms and ammunition. This, it seems, was Paine’s “unified theory” of war, economics and population; “the diminution of trade affords an army, and the necessities of an army create a new trade.” This was a characterization of war, or as Paine explained it naval war, as a kind of economic stimulus. The creation and supply of a navy would help grow the economy, he declared, and the expansion of the economy would help support and increase the navy. Neither side of this equation could function, however, without first separating Britain and the colonies so that the latter could be permitted to flourish by making use of its own resources in the pursuit of its own goals.

Surely this seemed a tantalizing prospect to the many Americans whose livelihoods depended on access to foreign markets, and who had already begun to suffer under the effects of British blockades. There was, however, still the matter of the cost of a naval establishment. Without markets in which to sell their raw materials it would likely have seemed impossible to a great many colonists for their various provisional governments to summon the resources necessary to pay for ships and crews at anywhere near the level of the Royal Navy. Paine, unsurprisingly, had an answer at the ready. The actual cost of the British navy, he declared in paragraph six of section four, was in actuality far less than many in America might have imagined. Taking account of calculations made available by certain volumes on British naval history, as well as those put forward in the papers of Josiah Burchett (Secretary of the Admiralty, 1694-1742), Paine proceeded to enumerate exactly what those costs were in a set of neatly organized tables. Rather than replicate said tables here, which I don’t believe would be of great benefit to anyone, I’ll suffice with a handful of key extracts.

The total cost of building a ship of each designated rate (a category based on crew compliment and armament) was based, Paine explained, on the sum of her, “masts, yards, sails and rigging, together with a portion of eight months boatswain’s and carpenter’s seas-stores.” Within this framework he reckoned that a first-rate (100 guns) would cost approximately £35,500, a third-rate (70 guns) would clock in at £17,800, and a sixth-rate (20 guns) would consume £3,700. Taking these price points, and the various rates between them, as a basis, Paine calculated that the total cost of the Royal Navy at its “greatest glory” in 1757 during the Seven Years’ War was something on the order of £3,500,000.

This was, in 1776, a far from insubstantial amount of money, the prospect of having to equal it made all the more daunting by the relative crudity of the American financial sector at the end of the 18th century. Fortunately for the citizens of the Thirteen Colonies, Paine argued, they would not have to in order to successfully challenge the British in naval affairs. For one, he asserted, America’s natural resources and existing industries were already particularly geared towards shipbuilding. “Tar, timber, iron, and cordage are her natural produce,” he wrote. “We need go abroad for nothing.” Naval powers of the highest esteem like Britain and the Netherlands were blessed with no such natural abundance; they were forced to import most of the raw materials required to construct and maintain the fleets upon which their empires depended. The colonies could thus avoid the additional costs associated with purchasing the necessary implements at the same time the construction of a fleet would serve to catalyse the slumping American economy and help reopen avenues for trade. “We ought to view the building of a fleet as an article of commerce,” he lectured in paragraph nine, “it being the natural manufactory of this country. It is the best money we can lay out. A navy when finished is worth more than it cost.” Supplied with the requisite facts and figures, this was doubtless a forceful argument. Not only did it take a frank account of the actual costs of naval construction and supply, making use of data gathered by experts in that field, but it also spoke to the contemporary economic situation in the Thirteen Colonies and the skills possessed by a large number of their inhabitants. “Men of war,” Paine recalled in paragraph ten, “of seventy and eighty guns were built forty years ago in New-England, and why not the same now? Ship-building is America’s greatest pride, and in which, she will in time excel the whole world.”

Were this not advantage enough, Paine also set about deconstructing the myth of British naval invincibility in paragraph thirteen of section four by once more deploying concise, logical argument in order to sweep away what he regarded as ill-founded preconceptions. On paper, he admitted, the Royal Navy was indeed a force without peer. Its list of vessels was “long and formidable.” Reality, however, did not bear out its fearsome image. Less than a tenth, Paine asserted, of the ships on the British Navy’s active list were fit for service at any given time. Of those, many were virtually non-existent and had simply yet to be decommissioned. Furthermore, of those active vessels which were in a good state of repair and presently in service, something less than a fifth were deployed to any given station. The size of the late-18th century British Empire being what it was, Pain reminded his audience in paragraph thirteen, the Royal Navy was forced to stretch itself across a wide expanse of territory from Asia to Africa to the Mediterranean to the West Indies and North America. At no point could the entirety of the British Navy be brought to bear on a single opponent, and so its reputation for invincibility was thus something of an illusion. Americans, Paine chided, “have talked as if we should have the whole of it to encounter at once, and for that reason, supposed, that we must have one as large.” In fact, he continued, an American navy only a twentieth the size of Britain’s would be more than adequate to challenge the latter’s vaunted superiority. Not only did the relatively small size of American territory ensure that a prospective naval force could avoid being scattered and thus rendered of limited use, but the proximity of the Thirteen Colonies to the British West Indies would allow a locally-stationed and supplied American navy to cut Britain off from its Caribbean territories and thus deny it access to valuable resources.

As in previous instances in Common Sense, this was not a very complicated argument. Britain’s navy was very large, but its size was proportionate to the size of the empire it needed to patrol. Regardless of how highly Parliament may have valued the goal of bringing the rebellious colonies back into the fold as of January, 1776, it would have been effectively impossible – or at least terribly inadvisable – for the Admiralty to pull every ship from every station and send them to reinforce the colonial blockade. British possessions in India, Australia, and notably the West Indies that represented far greater value to the empire required constant protection; only a small handful of vessels not required on station could thus be spared. Basic knowledge of the scope of Britain’s global possessions and a glance at a globe would doubtless have borne this logic out. Paine’s earlier assertion, however, that the theoretical size of the Royal Navy was augmented by including unfit or non-existent vessels, required more specialized knowledge to fully grasp.

Allow me.  

Naval logistics has long been a complicated endeavour. Vessels that reach the end of their service life, either through sustaining cost-prohibitive damage or becoming technologically obsolete, are put through a process by which they are first rendered inactive before being decommissioned. During their period of deactivation, while they are being stripped of useful materials and their crew is slowly reassigned, they still technically retain their commission and thus continue to appear in formal naval listings. Consequently, at any given time a list of the commissioned vessels in a nation’s navy may not represent the actual number of active, armed, and assigned ships. Due to bureaucratic inefficiencies, incompetence, or the slow pace of multi-part decision-making processes in an era of purely analog communications, the Royal Navy at the end of the 18th century doubtless hosted a sizeable number of what might be called “ghost ships” that had been mislaid, forgotten about, or whose decommissioning had been delayed. For whatever reason Paine did not see fit to provide this information to his readers, perhaps relaying on those with naval experience – not an insignificant proportion – to understand and explain to their peers. In any case, the point itself is a valid one; speaking once again to the realities of naval administration, Paine hoped to show the Royal Navy for what it really was, and not for what so many imagined it to be.         

                  

Their opponents’ strengths or weaknesses aside, Paine seemed eager to communicate that the American colonies were uniquely blessed as to their situation regarding the creation of a navy. Few nations, he declared, possessed the manpower, materials, and access to viable ports in equal enough measure to make the creation of a truly formidable naval force possible. America, however, had been fated to possess all three in such ideal proportion as to make the absence of a naval establishment an unpardonable waste. As to the monetary expense involved, the size of which Paine did not attempt to deny, the colonies were again well-suited to bear the burden. This was because, Paine claimed in what I cannot help but think of as a harbinger of Hamiltonian rhetoric, the colonies did not possess the onerous financial responsibilities carried by military powers like Britain and its various rivals. “Debts,” he explained in paragraph five, “We have none; and whatever we may contract on this account will serve as a glorious memento of our virtue.” As Paine conceived of it, this put the colonies at a distinct advantage over Britain. While Parliament was at least partially constrained in whatever actions it took by the need to continually service the debts that had been acquired in decades past, the colonies and the Continental Congress operated under no such burdens. Their revenues, and whatever they managed to borrow, could be wholly directed towards the various facets of the war effort.

While this was a slightly wobbly argument – Britain having no trouble borrowing money at favourable interest rates and the colonies possessing no credit history to speak of – the way Paine summed it up speaks once again to his mastery of concise rhetoric and penchant for combining utilitarian and moral arguments. Whatever debts the colonies acquired in their pursuit of independence, he declared, would be well worth the establishment of a stable form of government and a sound constitution. If separation was not the ultimate aim, however, would it be acceptable to incur similar costs in pursuit of a favourable return to the status quo? “To expend millions for the sake of getting a few vile acts repealed,” he lamented, “and routing the present ministry only, is unworthy the charge, and is using posterity with the utmost cruelty; because it is leaving them the great work to do, and a debt upon their backs, from which, they derive no advantage.”

Though by January, 1776 the colonies had yet to take on even a fraction of the debts they would accrete over the course of the Revolutionary War, Paine already furnished his fellow colonists with vivid depictions of the abundant possibilities afforded by America’s virgin financial status and the crushing moral weight of allowing said possibilities to go to waste. To a degree, it must be said, this was putting the cart before the horse. War between the colonies and the Crown had been ongoing for less than a year, and a formal declaration of independence was another six months distant. These facts, however, did not serve Paine’s purpose. To realize what he knew needed to be accomplished, to lay the groundwork for a successful defence of American liberties and the creation of a stable continental government, the colonial populations needed to be propelled to action. Neither a philosophical treatise on the nature the social contract, nor a dry recitation of the pros and cons of continued British rule, would do the trick. Paine knew this better than most of his fellow revolutionaries, and peppered Common Sense  with an appropriate, and effective, mix of plain reasoning, utilitarian analysis and a distinct sense of urgency.                             

Common Sense, Part VII: Realpolitik, contd.

Section three of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, overall an exhaustive and at-times vitriolic compendium of all that was wrong with the existing (circa 1776) relationship between the Thirteen Colonies and the British Crown, combined with a brutally frank assessment of the prospects for reconciliation, concluded with some of the author’s thoughts on the viability of independence and what form he believed it might take. Again (stone me if you must) I feel the need to point out how capably Paine managed to harness simple observations and how well he seemed to understand what the average American colonist took for granted. Lacking the grounding in philosophy and history, the familiarity with classical Latin or Greek literature, or the fluency in abstractions that many of the luminaries of the Founding Generation possessed, most Americans lived in a world defined by pounds and pence, weights and measures, miles and acres, and, often, life and death. They were certainly not, as a group, unintelligent. The sense of worth they attached to this or that idea or concept, however, tended to be shaped by considerations of practicality over principle, if for no other reason than they had far more to lose than a classically educated and independently wealthy lawyer or plantation owner. Thus while independence may have appealed to many colonists, particularly when coupled with denunciations of the legitimacy of monarchical rule and recollections of the harm the colonies had suffered at the hands of the Crown, few would have agreed to hazard their all in its pursuit without some kind of assurance as to what its long-term result might be.

Paine understood how important it was to provide his readers with some sense of that it was either possible or necessary for the colonies to govern themselves at all. The latter he attempted to impress in paragraph forty of section three. The colonies, he argued, had seen to their respective affairs quite handily in light of the disruption brought about by the burgeoning Revolutionary War. In fact they had, he wrote, “manifested such a spirit of good order and obedience to continental government, as is sufficient to make every reasonable person easy and happy on that head.” To his credit the colonies had indeed, via the Second Continental Congress, managed to coordinate efforts to make known their grievances to Britain, seen to the formation and provisioning of a Continental Army, commissioned officers to command the same, assigned ambassadors to postings in Europe, established new trade policies, and begun the process of borrowing and printing the funds necessary to continue the armed conflict in which they found themselves entangled. Things were perhaps not as harmonious as Paine made them out to be, between regular squabbles in Congress and the refusal of certain colonies to lend money to the war effort, but the wheels of government in colonial America certainly continued to turn. What he did not make clear, however, is that the Thirteen Colonies were perhaps particularly well-equipped for self-government, and that the nature of how the Continental Congress functioned likely exaggerated any sense of consensus colonists in early 1776 might have perceived.

As mentioned in weeks past, the way many of the colonies came into being, as corporations, proprietary land grants or private enterprises, coupled with the sheer physical distance between them and Britain, ensured that a significant degree of functional autonomy was always an integral part of their makeup. The Crown formally appointed all of the colonial governors, save those of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware, and said governors in turn appointed members of the respective colonial councils (legislative upper house) and courts. Most of the day to day administration and legislation, however, was carried out by the various elected colonial assemblies. This ensured that in matters of war, trade, and diplomacy the Crown, as represented by the governor, possessed the final say, while the colonists saw to their domestic affairs according to their own needs and based on their own timetable. Removing the governors, councils and courts from the equation certainly would have had a long-term effect, but in the interim it’s unlikely that the average colonist would have noticed the difference. Indeed, once a break with Britain began to look as though it was inevitable colonists critical of the Crown from Massachusetts to Georgia began to organize themselves into a variety of so-called “Provincial Congresses.” These ad-hoc bodies gradually came to displace the established colonial governments while still exercising most of the same powers traditionally held by the latter. This process of government formation doubtless succeeded, at least in part, because late-18^th century Americans were already accustomed to self-government. They were, many of them, experienced legislators, lawyers, merchants and financiers, and between them possessed the lion’s share of the knowledge required to successfully cast off British oversight. This, I think, Paine knew very well, and was right to point out to his fellow colonists in the spirit of reassurance and congratulations.

The foreign policy, trade, and diplomatic responsibilities formerly exercised by the Crown through various colonial offices meanwhile came to fall under the purview of the Continental Congress. While it was certainly not said body’s intended function, between 1774 and the early 1780s it gradually came to accumulate various duties in the name of overseeing the war effort and coordinating between the states. In this sense Congress became an effective stand-in for the Crown, as the theoretical highest-level legislative body whose decision-making power in certain policy areas all of the respective states (formerly colonies) recognized. Where Congress differed, however, was in its manifest inability to enforce really any of the measures it passed or collect on the requisitions it handed down to the states. Rather than a formal executive, or indeed a national legislature like the modern United States Congress, the Continental Congress was more akin to a high-level deliberative body. It functioned as a forum for debate among representatives of the colonies/states, was responsible for coordinating military and financial logistics, and helped present the image of a united front in terms of diplomacy and trade. None of the states, however, were really bound by its rulings. It was, for all intents and purposes, a voluntary body. This is not to say that the Congress was ineffectual, or that it failed to accomplish anything of note during its tenure (1775-1789). Rather, it’s simply important to understand that if Congress ever was effective it was because the states allowed it – nay, wished it – to be.

Thus, Paine’s praise of the harmonious condition of “continental government” in January, 1776 should perhaps be understood less as a tribute to the willingness of the states to cooperate, or the effectiveness of Congress, than as an acknowledgement of how lightly the authority of the nascent United States government was then felt. The Continental Congress served to provide a mechanism by which the various provisional revolutionary governments could discuss and form a consensus on this or that policy or strategy. There were few serious conflicts between Congress and the colonies/states because Congress had no mandate of its own to enforce. Paine’s attempt to praise the lack of disagreement between a purely voluntary body and its various members would thus seem to ring a little hollow. Or at least to me it does, gifted with hindsight as I am. What’s important to remember, though, is that in spite of how capable Americans in the 1770s already were of governing themselves in the everyday, administrative sense, and how little Congress demanded of the colonies/states, the belief that a break with Britain and the prospect of independence represented a metaphorical “leap in the dark” was almost certainly a common one. In attempting to convince his fellow colonists to take the plunge anyway, Paine no doubt felt it best to reassure them of how capable they were rather than how illusory their success might have been. While it no doubt would have come naturally to some of his revolutionary compatriots to attempt abstract reasoning or wander down some mazy avenue of Enlightenment philosophy in order to accomplish this, Paine instead attempted this act of reassurance simply by pointing to the state of government in the Thirteen Colonies as of early 1776. Taxes were being collected, ordinances were being passed, law and order had yet to totally collapse (away from the frontlines, anyway), and the war effort was being conducted with relative efficiency. What more effective advertisement for the viability of independence could there be? 

           

In asking Americans to potentially risk their lives and livelihoods, however, Paine knew that assurances of the viability of independence would not be enough. After all, simply because a thing is possible is no endorsement for it being necessary, or even desirable. No, if Common Sense was to move people to action it would need to make it plain that independence was not just an option, but the option. This Paine attempted in paragraphs thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine and fifty-one of section three. The arguments contained therein concerned the tenuous political and economic state that a settlement with Britain and a return to the status quo would leave the colonies in, the consequent likelihood of civil unrest occurring as a result of lingering discontent, and the chaos that might result from further rebellions of a less organized, less principled nature than that which Americans were presently engaged in.

What I’ll call the first and second of these linked concerns were addressed in paragraphs thirty-seven, thirty-eight, and thirty-nine. Even a negotiated peace, Paine asserted therein, arrived at on the best possible terms for the aggrieved colonists could never hope to be anything more than a temporary postponement of what he believed to be a fundamentally irreconcilable conflict between the ambition of the colonies and the authority of the British Crown. What was best for the colonies, essentially, was not what was best for the empire. Consequently, a settlement of the conflict begun in April, 1775 at Lexington and Concord that once more placed the colonies under the authority of the Crown could only result in the emergence a state of distinct tension observable both from within and without. Protests against British trade and tax policies, already the cause of demonstrations in the 1760s and 1770s, would inevitably continue, met as before with harsh discipline and resulting in further recrimination on either side. “Emigrants of property,” as Paine referred to them in paragraph thirty-seven, would be disinclined to make their home in colonies whose political status remained distinctly disturbed, and take their wealth and expertise elsewhere. Just so could those present inhabitants who felt threatened by the uncertainty of American affairs choose to depart, further draining away the few material and demographic resources the colonies possessed. In such a state of despair, economic stagnation, and political instability, Paine asked his readers, was not further revolt a distinct possibility? And if that was the case, if further civil conflict and all the destruction of life and property it entailed was unavoidable under continued British rule, what was the purpose of submission? If Britain could not guarantee peace in realms nominally under its control, what purpose did being a part of its empire serve? Independence, Paine declared, was the only real option. It may not have been the answer to every problem Americans were likely to face, but it was perhaps the only permanent solution to the seemingly-intractable conflict between the colonies and the Crown.

This thread was picked up again in paragraph fifty-one of section three. Suppose, Paine postulated, that a settlement was reached between Britain and the colonies that once more placed them under the authority of the Crown. As aforementioned it was his opinion that such an outcome would be ultimately disastrous, but there were doubtless a sizeable enough percentage of colonists who still at least tacitly supported Britain in January, 1776 for him to admit that it was a distinct possibility. Under the terms of such a settlement, Paine continued, the colonies would once more be bound by British authority. Though in the immediate certain grievances might be laid to rest with the repeal of this or that piece of legislation, he seemed to doubt that the underlying philosophical, moral or logical complaints which had animated many of the revolutionaries and their supporters would simply vanish. In such a condition, with American political and economic life rendered unto a state of misery, and with the continued presence of discontent and bitterness among not-insignificant portions of the population, how long would it take for, “some desperate adventurer to try his fortune; and in such a case, what relief can Britain give?” As he had discussed already in paragraphs thirty-eight and thirty-nine, Paine was doubtful of the ability of Britain to adequately secure the peace in the Thirteen Colonies in the event of a further revolt. Should a second revolution come and British aid be too late in arriving, he prophesied, “the fatal business might be done; and ourselves suffering like the wretched Britons under the oppression of the Conqueror.”

What worried Paine, as much as the instability that would reign in America if British authority was reinstated it seemed, was the potential for a far less principled rebellion to occur over which he and his compatriots could exert no guiding influence. Paine feared the emergence of a “backwoods Caesar” whose ability to foment popular discontent and harness it in aide of their desire for power would surely bring about a tyranny ten times worse than that suffered under the Crown. While the example Paine deployed in support of this assertion might now be considered somewhat obscure, that of 17^th-century Italian fisherman-revolutionary Masaniello, the scenario he imagined is well-rooted in ancient and modern history. From Julius Caesar to Napoleon Bonaparte, charismatic demagogues have often enjoyed stunning success when attempting to direct the anger of an embittered population in order to seize the reins of power for themselves. Such an agitator, he suggested,

May hereafter arise, who laying hold of popular disquietudes, may collect together the desperate and discontented, and by assuming to themselves the powers of government, may sweep away the liberties of the continent like a deluge. 

That he imagined something of that description could take place in America is far from irrational, particularly if under a negotiated settlement with Britain informal bodies like the Committees of Correspondence or the Continental Congress were disallowed. Without such entities to channel popular anger into structured debate and organized resistance it would seem possible, if not likely, that un-checked mob violence could very easily be manipulated by a canny individual or group whose intentions were far from noble. This, Paine declared, was why the present revolution needed to be seized upon; “it is infinitely wiser and safer,” he wrote, “to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and chance.” Though he would have preferred American independence to have developed gradually and with a minimum of bloodshed, the present conflict presented the colonists with an unparalleled opportunity. Their governments were being capably administered, Congress was overseeing the war effort with commendable efficiency, and the leadership of the Continental Army rested in the hands of men of proven character and ability. There could be, Paine endeavoured to impart to his audience, no better chance to achieve independence on terms favorable to American sensibilities.

            What is, again (again, again) worth taking note of about this particular argument is how Paine seemed not to address the prospect in independence in terms of its inherent moral or philosophical value. Jefferson, in his much-remembered Declaration of Independence of July, 1776, depicted separation from Great Britain as the answer to a series of infractions committed by the Crown that had gone unpunished, as well as a remedy to tyrannical government well-attested to by history and contemporary thought concerning natural law and natural rights. While certain of his more moderate contemporaries – John Dickenson of Pennsylvania, for example – might not have endorsed independence with as much gusto, they too tended to characterize the grievances between Britain and the colonies as chiefly involving concepts like justice, liberty, and the unspoken social contract. I have no doubt that Paine agreed with these men in large part, Jefferson in particular, but the claims he put forward in Common Sense in an attempt to gather the general colonial population into the pro-independence camp followed a very different line of reasoning.

Rather than endorse separation from Britain because he believed it to be a moral imperative, Paine spoke in terms of probabilities. If the Thirteen Colonies remained under British control, he declared, even a particularly favourable political settlement would do nothing to address the fundamental differences between them. That being the case, another rebellion was all but inevitable. Lacking strong, principled leadership such as that provided by the Continental Congress, what would prevent such a rebellion from becoming the plaything of the charismatic and unprincipled? This was doubtless seen as a compelling argument because of its immediacy; rather than declare to his fellow colonists, “We must seek independence because certain philosophical principles with which you are more than likely unfamiliar demand it,” Paine instead argued, “We must seek independence because if we don’t bad things will happen.” As effective in the hands of an 18^th-century pamphleteer as in those of a contemporary network-television polemicist, this kind of fear-mongering no doubt spoke to the average, business-minded, risk-averse American colonist in a very powerful way. The genius of Paine’s Common Sense, therefore, stems not just from the way it tapped into the desires or assumptions of its audience, but in how it tweaked their anxieties as well. 

Common Sense, Part VI: Realpolitik

Paragraphs thirty-one through fifty-four of the third section of Common Sense focus less on general complaints against the relationship between the Crown and the colonies, as had those preceding them, and more on a frank assessment of the costs the nascent Revolution had exacted and the unique opportunities it offered. These sections represent Paine at perhaps his most vitriolic. While in previous paragraphs he spared no bile in attacking the roots of monarchy on general principle and decrying its perpetuation as absurd, the second half of section three is rife with specific denunciations of George III, his ministers, and the actions British army. Finished, it would seem, with drawing the attention of his audience to logical absurdities and requesting they exercise their sense of objective reason, Paine instead appeared determined to rouse their anger, resentment, and even fear in order to compel them to action. To that end the aforementioned paragraphs contain, in addition to powerful, if un-nuanced, rhetoric, tentative plans for both a permanent continental government as well as a constitutional convention. Apparently unsatisfied with mere criticism – surprising given the clearly evident relish with which he proceeded – Paine tried his hand at construction as well, phrased in such a way as to invite popular scrutiny, discussion and (shudder) participation. Before putting forward his admittedly rudimentary plan of government, however, he first needed to make it clear why said government was absolutely necessary, and how the events of the Revolution presented the ideal opportunity.

By Paine’s estimate, judging from the arguments he put forward in paragraphs thirty-one and thirty-two of section three, there were essentially two potential outcomes to the Revolution. The first, which he strongly advocated for, was the separation of the Thirteen Colonies from any form of British administration and their complete and total political independence. This would have carried with it a raft of obstacles, not the least of which was the formation of a national government. That being said, Paine seemed well-assured that whatever difficulties Americans encountered following liberation from British rule would be preferable to the alternative. That being, or course, the second outcome; a negotiated settlement of the original political dispute between Britain and the colonies, no doubt requiring the repeal of offending legislation, and a resumption of the status quo. This, Paine sought to communicate in no uncertain terms, would have been completely unacceptable, “or in any way equal to the expense of blood and treasure we have already been put to.”

As mentioned at the outset of this little adventure, Common Sense was first published in Pennsylvania in January, 1776; the Battles of Lexington and Concord took place in April, 1775. Between those opening clashes, the campaign that followed in and around Boston and the invasion of British Canada in June, 1775, eight months had elapsed, approximately 1,000 Continental Army servicemen had lost their lives, and a further 1,500 had been captured. While many Americans remained outside the zone of conflict and would continue to do so until the British invasions of New York (July, 1776) and the South (December, 1778), enough states contributed forces to these early offensives to consider them truly national endeavours. Aside from the Massachusetts militiamen and later Continental regiments that featured prominently in the Boston campaign, the expeditions of Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold to Quebec were comprised of soldiers from New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the disputed territory later known as Vermont. Of these men not an insignificant number had perished; fathers, sons and brothers. Families from across the United States had been affected, and millions of dollars had been spent. It was Paine’s fervent hope, as he expressed in often incendiary terms in Common Sense, that the end result of these sacrifices would be more than the resumption of the status quo.

“The object, contended for,” he wrote to that effect in paragraph thirty-two, “ought always to bear some just proportion to the expense.” The repeal of the Tea Act, the restoration of the Massachusetts governing charter (revoked in punishment for the 1773 protest commonly known as the Boston Tea Party), and the re-opening of the port of Boston (closed in punishment for the same) were the initial aims of the First Continental Congress (September-October, 1774) and its delegates. By January, 1776, however, Paine no longer considered such an outcome acceptable. Too much had happened, he asserted, too many had died and were continuing to die for so paltry a reward. No doubt seeking to appeal to his readers’ sense of justice and moral outrage Paine invoked in the same paragraph recent events like the Battle of Bunker Hill (June, 1775), and asked his fellow colonists to consider whether the almost 500 Americans lives lost there were worth the revocation of policies widely known to have been illegitimate from the outset. He did not believe it so, though he was willing to grant that those long in favor of reconciliation where neither foolish nor naïve. “No man was a warmer wisher for reconciliation than myself,” he admitted, but the moment American blood was spilled during the “fatal nineteenth of April 1775” he found himself unable to stomach the thought of a political settlement.

This profession by Paine of his formerly conciliatory stance no doubt was aimed at those who continued to hold to the same principle. Rather than denounce them as cowards or appeasers, as some advocates for separation did and would do, Paine reached out and expressed him sympathy. “The independency of this continent,” he declared, must come sooner or later; better it be peaceful and gradual than swift and violent. Thus he portrayed himself, and those who supported the Revolution, as being justly critical of unthinking, unjustified violence. Doubtless this appealed to many who considered war against Britain to be a shocking breach of familial bonds. Blood had been shed, however, by Americans at the hands of their “brothers” from across the Atlantic. This being an indisputable fact, Paine questioned how those who had lost family and friends in the ensuing struggle could be expected to forgive their killers. Worse yet, he asked, how could the King, “with the pretended title of FATHER OF HIS PEOPLE […] unfeelingly hear of their slaughter, and composedly sleep with their blood upon his soul [?]” Characterized thusly, the Revolution was not a violent break with tradition and history, as certain of its critics declared, but rather a reaction to the brutality of faraway regime against a people who had only desired to defend their rights. No doubt Paine intended this image of a defensive revolution, and the moral quandary presented by reconciliation, to assure those who still held on to the possibility of a return to “business as usual” that no such outcome was anymore possible. He had come to that conclusion himself, and being of a similar temper he hoped they would as well.

To those who found themselves little swayed by his moral condemnation of a negotiated return to the status quo Paine offered a series of practical criticisms in paragraphs thirty-four through thirty-six of section three of Common Sense. Suppose, he began, that the reconciliationists had their way, and the colonies and the Crown arrived at a settlement that placed the former once again under the authority of the latter. Within such a scheme, as had been the case in times past, the Crown would possess a veto on all legislation proposed and accepted by the colonial legislatures. Prior to the Revolution, as aforementioned, it had become common practice for the King to make use of this veto in order to stymie laws he and his ministers found undesirable. In essence, Paine argued, “according to what is called the present constitution […] this continent can make no laws but what the king gives it leave to.” One hostilities were concluded and peace restored, he then asked, what seemed the more likely outcome; the cessation of this practice or its even greater abuse? By Paine’s estimation the breach between Britain and the colonies occurred because the latter had become more powerful than the Crown was willing to permit. “We are already greater than the king wishes us to be,” he wrote, “and will he not hereafter endeavour to make us less?” This would seem to have been another canny move on his part; at a stroke Paine set forth his opinion of the strength of the colonies, no doubt partially in an attempt to appeal to the pride of his readership, at the same time he offered a conception of King George III as a somewhat less than magnanimous ruler. Far from the benevolent, disinterested figure that monarchist political theory envisioned, he characterized the reigning British sovereign as petty, arbitrary, and incapable of forgiving slights against his authority. In addition to being rooted in an Enlightenment-derived distrust of unchecked authority, this portrayal was also a highly grounded one (the King as a man, and thus pray to all the weaknesses common to that species). No doubt Paine hoped it would resonate with the equally-grounded audience at which Common Sense was aimed.

There was, Paine admitted in paragraph thirty-five, a point to be made against his critique of the King’s veto, however. In addition to possessing the ability to refuse assent to laws originating in the Thirteen Colonies, the Crown reserved the same right with respect to those bills proposed and accepted by the British Parliament in London. Yet, Paine supposed his critics would say, Common Sense seemed to take no issue with the veto being exercised in Britain, though it had the same effect and functioned via the same logic as when it was exercised in the colonies. The root question this apparent contradiction would seem to give rise to is, why was the veto acceptable in one instance and unacceptable in the other? Paine’s reply was predictably forthright. England, he reminded his readers, was the home of the British monarchy, and America a distant satellite. While from time to time the King may have exercised his veto against legislation but forth by Parliament, he would scarcely do so as a means of disrupting the commerce, weakening the institutions, or disturbing the defences of the state over which he presided, and from which he derived his strength and authority. The Thirteen Colonies, Paine asserted, would never be so lucky precisely because of their distance, and because of the threat their potential strength posed to the sovereignty of the Crown. “He will scarcely refuse his consent,” he wrote of George III, “to a bill for putting England into as strong a state of defence as possible, and in America he would never suffer such a bill to be passed.” Again Paine seemed to appeal to the vanity of his audience – the King acted against the colonies because he considered them a threat – while couching his argument in very plain, adversarial, and concise language.

In his final argument against the dubious prospect of submitting once more to the authority of a king and his ministers who had proved themselves both deceitful and vicious, Paine argued in paragraph thirty-six of section three that a return to the status quo would in reality constitute little more than a fleeting illusion. Just as a peaceful resumption of the customary relationship between the colonies and the Crown would not erase the memory on either side of the bloodier aspects of the dispute, neither would the King forget the object he had hoped to attain in the first instance by attempting to abrogate the traditional rights of the colonists. One of the immediate causes of the Revolution, by Paine’s estimation, was the suppression by the Crown of the growth and prosperity of the Thirteen Colonies. This had been attempted via the imposition of onerous taxes, trade restrictions, and harsh punishments for perceived slights, all theoretically playing to the advantage of Britain because they helped maintain the colonies in a subordinate position. While it was possible, Paine allowed, that King might agree to repeal the reviled taxes and restrictions in an effort to foster reconciliation, there would still have been little to stop him or his successors from accomplishing, “BY CRAFT AND SUBTILITY, IN THE LONG RUN, WHAT HE CANNOT DO BY FORCE AND VIOLENCE IN THE SHORT ONE.” Having proved himself, in Paine’s eyes, willing to destroy those of his own subjects who stood firm and rejected what they knew to be illegitimate actions taken by the Crown, what reason would George III have for not continuing along the path he had set out upon? Force having proven futile, why would he not simply work in secret towards the same end? Again borrowing from the intellectual playbook of the Enlightenment, in this case its fascination with/tendency to connect power with notions of conspiracy, Paine endeavoured to speak to existing distrust among his readers of the King, his advisers, and authority in general. Rather than ask his fellow colonists to wrap their minds around a new and unusual philosophical concept he instead confirmed what many of them doubtless were already convinced of, that power is fundamentally untrustworthy.

I hope that I don’t come across as hopelessly tedious when I repeat myself like this (or perhaps you hadn't thought so until I just now mentioned it), but the great strength of Paine’s arguments in Common Sense stem from their simplicity, their rhetorical force, and how little they asked of the reader. The section just detailed, encompassing three paragraphs near the middle of section three, is no different. As was Paine’s modus operandi throughout his 1776 pamphlet, the arguments therein put forward were devoid of the philosophical complexities common to the works of fellow revolutionaries like Jefferson, Adams, James Madison or John Dickinson. The questions he asked his readers were simple, based in plain reasoning, and backed by recent rather than ancient history. Is a king who has long abused his veto on our laws fit to continue as our sovereign lord? Is it reasonable to expect him to forget that we raised our hand against him and help us to grow and prosper in the coming years? Can he be trusted not to attempt to undermine us in the future, after having proved himself willing to oversee the slaughter of our friends and neighbours? These were not complex questions but they possessed a powerful moral weight, and spoke to an understanding of the British monarch that was not difficult for the average American to grasp. They had at that point suffered under close to a decade of burdensome tax policies, centuries of obstructive trade regulations designed to enrich the empire of which they were presumably a part, and eight months of bloody slaughter at the hands of an army and navy once mobilised for their defence. Doubtless they were in a receptive temper towards arguments against the legitimacy of the Crown and the prospect of reconciliation.

Common Sense, Part V: Plain Reasoning, contd.

From nationality, Paine shifted in paragraphs fifteen through eighteen of section three of Common Sense to a discussion of some of the economic benefits to be derived from independence. Taking account of the resources at the disposal of colonies, and their geographic location relative to the great empires of the 18^th-century world, it was his opinion that commerce was the surest means by which America might secure to itself, “the peace and friendship of all of Europe.” Considering the number of European powers, including Britain, that possessed territory in the Americas and the potential market that the colonies’ population of 2.5 million represented, this would seem a reasonable claim. “It is the interest of all Europe to have America a free port,” Paine accordingly asserted in paragraph sixteen. “Her trade will always be a protection, and her barrenness of gold and silver secure her from invaders.” Unlike Mexico or Peru, he seemed to suggest, whose wealth was principally mineral in nature, the greatest resource the American colonies had to offer were their buying power; conflict would inevitably disrupt theoretically plentiful commerce, and peace and friendship secure it. Of course, Paine admonished, none of this would make any difference so long as the colonies remained lashed to Britain and its restrictive trade policies.

As was common among European empires in the 18^th-century, Britain engaged in an economic practice known as mercantilism. The crux of this theory was essentially that there was a finite amount of resources of various types existing in the world. Because they were finite it was thus to the advantage of every state to attempt to secure as much of them as possible, prioritizing things like gold and silver (which were held to have inherent value), and restricting imports as much as possible. As a result of this conception of the limited nature of wealth, armed conflicts during the mercantilist era were frequently the result of competition for resources or valuable markets. Within this scheme, colonies were essentially human-powered machines that extracted resources and consumed manufactured goods. Per the dictates of mercantilism, colonies like Virginia, New York, New Spain or Brazil were prohibited from trading with either nations other than their nominal colonial overlords or the colonies of those nations. While citizens of these colonies frequently engaged in smuggling as a means of circumventing restrictive mercantilist trade policies, the majority of colonial citizens were forced to pay a premium on manufactured goods and sell their own natural resources at relatively static rates because they were chained by law to only a single market.

The Thirteen Colonies were no different, and Paine defied, in paragraph seventeen, “the warmest advocate for reconciliation, to shew (sic), a single advantage that this continent can reap, by being connected with Great Britain.” Mercantilism, Paine was correct to point out, was devised in order to move wealth chiefly in one direction, toward the seat of empire. Though advocates of the imperial economic system in Britain would, and did, argue that by carefully regulating imports the overall health of the empire could be guaranteed and a high standard of living ensured, the fact remained that the value of the colonies lay in their productive and consumptive capacities. They and their citizens did not enjoy an equal role in the British economy, but were subordinates to it. However long this had been going on, however “customary” it was, Paine argued that it was fundamentally unnecessary. “Our corn,” he wrote in paragraph seventeen, speaking on behalf of the colonies, “will fetch its price in any market in Europe, and our imported goods must be paid for buy them where we will.” Herein, Paine seemed to be attempting to get across two basic points, one abstract and one specific.

In the abstract, Paine was attempting to appeal to the basic economic understanding of his readers, many of whom were engaged in commerce in some fashion or another. Whether as shopkeepers, shipbuilders, farmers, artisans, workers, fishermen or miners, the majority of Americans in the late-18^th century worked in fields that had to do either with the extraction or production of raw materials or contributed to their sale or transportation. This was for the most part a consequence of the basic material circumstances of Britain and colonial North America; England and Scotland possessed comparatively advanced manufacturing industries and limited natural resources (with the exception of coal), and the colonies possessed abundant natural resources but limited manufacturing. Americans’ understanding of the nature of the relationship between Britain and the Thirteen Colonies thus could not help but be closely tied to their individual livelihoods; Britain was the only nation said colonies were permitted to trade with, bought what they produced and sold what they needed. Having access to new markets in which to sell their raw materials, be they mineral, animal or vegetable, more partners with which to trade, and a greater variety of manufactured goods at competitive prices would thus have directly affected how a great many Americans lived their lives. Paine understood this well, having started in life manufacturing ropes used in shipbuilding, and doubtless sought to employ simple economics as a lever with which to pry his readers away from their accustomed attachment to Britain.

He was aided in this endeavour by the more specific point that Americans from across the Thirteen Colonies had already suffered at the hands of Parliament’s attempts to “regulate imperial trade.” The Navigation Acts (1651, 1660, 1663, 1673, and 1696) were intended to correct contemporary trade imbalances by effectively closing off British ports to foreign merchants and preventing overseas colonies from trading with anyone other than Britain itself. While British shipping, shipbuilding and the Royal Navy benefited greatly from the protection these acts offered, colonial Americans grew to resent the restrictions on their ability to freely sell their produce or purchase finished goods. Further acts of Parliament in the 1760s and 1770s, including the Stamp Act (1765), Townsend Acts (1767) and the Tea Act (1773) attempted to implement further “regulation” by levying taxes on manufactured goods like lead and glass, almost any form of stamped paper (court documents, contracts, playing cards, etc…) and luxury goods like East India Company tea. Because colonists were forbidden by law from seeking other sources for any of these goods, and would be severely fined in the event of a violation, they had little choice but to either pay the associated duties (thus validating the disputed right of Parliament to tax the colonies) or go without. Though Paine had not arrived in Pennsylvania until November, 1774, at which point the Stamp Act and Townsend Acts had been repealed, he knew well enough that the memory of Britain’s heavy-handed economic policies was still very fresh in the minds of his fellow colonists. Calling them to mind in Common Sense, he offered his readers the potential solution of independence; absent Parliamentary interference Americans could buy and sell as they pleased at whatever prices the market offered. Devoid of philosophy or talk of “natural rights” and “natural law,” this straightforward economic calculus doubtless appealed to the everyday experiences of the majority of late-18^th century colonial Americans. Few of them could have been relied on to possess knowledge of, for instance, Lockean social contract theory, but they understood when their economic choices were being limited and the loss of opportunity that was the inevitable result.

Continuing his seemingly-exhaustive inventory of the various faults inherent in the relationship between Britain and the Thirteen Colonies, Paine next turned to certain matters of administration and geography. In the twenty-eighth paragraph of the third section of Common Sense, Paine advanced the very simple argument that the physical distance between the seat of the British Empire in London and the colonies themselves made the straightforward, timely, and efficient management of colonial affairs virtually impossible. As I pointed out many moons ago, the fact of this distance resulted in the various colonial governments developing a great deal of autonomy in matters of day to day administration, taxes, and legislation, the violation of which by Britain helped set in motion the events of the Revolution. Even accepting this autonomy, however, and the theoretical deemphasizing of rapid back-and-forth communication, the colonies themselves had by the 1770s become too complex, and Britain too eager to micromanage, for the status quo to continue for long without significant friction, modification, or its eventual termination. As Paine put it, “To be always running three or four thousand miles with a tale or a petition, waiting four or five months for an answer, which when obtained requires five or six more to explain it in, will in a few years be looked upon as folly and childishness.” This represented, once again, an acknowledgement on Paine’s part of the reality of life in the colonies, and the burdens shouldered by countless Americans as a result of their distance from the seat of ultimate decision-making power. As if this natural delay wasn't bad enough, George III had by the 1770s adopted the practice of refusing royal assent (necessary for bills to become law) to legislation originating in the colonies. The lengthy interval created by the Atlantic transit aided him and his ministers in this scheme by further ensuring that certain measures approved by the colonial governments were indefinitely postponed. In this way much-needed laws, appropriations or regulations were prevented from taking effect via purposeful obstruction and the colonial governments were left in legislative limbo. To Paine this was both unacceptable and unnecessary; independence was the obvious solution.

So too would separation from Britain remedy the somewhat more elementary imbalance that Paine pointed out in paragraph twenty-nine. Britain, he pointed out, was a small island located in north-western Europe, while the Thirteen Colonies stretched along the east coast of North America, a vast continent over five thousand kilometres away. Putting aside the aforementioned administrative issues arising from this physical distance, Paine reckoned that the power relationship between the two regions seemed to flow in the wrong direction. “Small islands not capable of protecting themselves,” he wrote, “are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.” This would appear to be an overly simplistic argument, and one which I don’t suppose would hold up to scrutiny if put forward today, but Paine’s intended audience was not one defined by its nuanced thinking. To, I repeat yet again for lack of a better descriptor, the statistically average American in the 1770s this sort of self-evident reasoning doubtless had a strong appeal. Paine’s reasoning ignored the generally accepted status quo for the relationship between colonies and colonisers (established and upheld by Britain, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, etc…), finding its basis instead in the natural world. “In no instance,” he reasoned, “hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet.” The power relationship between Britain and the colonies may have had a strong historical basis and may have been entirely in keeping with contemporary trends among European empires, but as Paine asserted it was still unnatural. A shopkeeper from Massachusetts or a farmer from Pennsylvania may not have possessed the dense historical and political background necessary to fully grasp how and why the colonies and the Crown related to each other the way they did, but they, and their innumerable compatriots, no doubt all nurtured a basic understanding of what looked or felt right or wrong.

Common Sense, Part IV: Plain Reasoning, contd.

The third section of Common Sense, by far the longest at fifty-four paragraphs, comprises Paine’s survey of the, “present state of American Affairs.” It is, accordingly, the densest, and ranges far and wide in terms of subject matter and the types of arguments it deploys. Throughout, however, Paine maintained the plain, concise, yet forceful rhetorical style that had been introduced in the first section of his pamphlet and carried through in the second. Indeed, as if to hang a lampshade on the idea, he began the third section by stating,

In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves[.]

Whether this was true or not, and I would argue that it wasn’t entirely, it remains a strong statement of authorial intent. Paine desired to make it clear to his readership that Common Sense did not seek to appeal to knowledge they didn’t possess or concepts they didn’t understand. It required no companion pieces, no additional literature in order to decipher, but rather stood alone as an article of debate that could be digested and acted upon by just about anyone. Few, if any, of Paine’s contemporaries would have found such a claim to be to their advantage. That Paine did is one of the numerous reasons Common Sense remains especially noteworthy in the context of American Revolutionary political literature.  

            As aforementioned, the third section of Common Sense covers a wide swath of at-times contentious territory. The central intent behind most, in not all, of the arguments that Paine therein put forward seemed to be a desire to break down many of the illusions held by citizens of the Thirteen Colonies about the relationship between their respective governments and that of Great Britain. This he approached first in terms of defense and foreign relations.

            To the argument that Britain’s North American colonies had long enjoyed their mother country’s military protection from attack or conquest by other European powers, Paine asserted in the eighth, ninth, and tenth paragraphs in a style we might now refer to as realpolitik, that such protection was offered only because it was to Britain’s material advantage. While granting that the colonies had indeed received military assistance from Britain in the past, it was his belief that Parliament would have, “defended Turkey from the same motive, viz. the sake of trade and dominion.” The Thirteen Colonies were thus no better than a foreign government whose resources Britain desired, the obvious conclusion being that in the event the colonists ceased to offer some useful trade good or provided a market for products manufactured in Britain itself they would no longer warrant protection. To this sobering claim Paine added that the European empires most often thought of as directly threatening the colonies, France and Spain, in fact had little reason to be hostile to Pennsylvanians, Virginians or New Yorkers, save that the French and Spanish were enemies of Britain and those American peoples were subjects of the British Crown. “Let Britain wave her pretensions to the continent,” Paine wrote in the ninth paragraph of the third section, “or the continent throw off the dependence, and we should be at peace with France and Spain were they at war with Britain.” While this is something of an oversimplification, it does indeed point to the simple truth that Spanish and French hostility towards the colonies existed in the context of global empire. From the perspective of Spain or France, therefore, the status of the Carolinas or Massachusetts as subsidiaries of Britain offered that country some form of advantage over her competitors. Sever the ties between Britain and the colonies, Paine declared, and they shall no longer be seen as a threat to her enemies.

            From foreign relations Paine dovetailed in the eleventh through fourteenth paragraphs into a discussion of what would now be referred to as nationality. Specifically, he sought to address claims that described the relationship between Britain and the Thirteen Colonies as akin to that of a mother and her children. Britain, the argument supposedly went, was the natural parent of the colonies, alike in blood, heritage, culture, language, and manners. The implication of this assertion is presumably twofold: that making war on such a closely related people was somehow unnatural, or at the very least highly regrettable; and that for the colonies to seek independence from the nation that was the font of their history and culture would make little sense. In response Paine blended his accustomed plain reasoning with a degree of Enlightenment universalism, betraying for a moment his true philosophical leanings. For a child to make war on their parent, Paine conceded, was indeed an unfortunate turn of events, and an outcome to be avoided if possible. As it stood at the time Common Sense was published in early 1776, however, it was Britain that had instigated an armed conflict with Massachusetts early in the previous year. Britain thus bore responsibility for attacking its so-called children; self-defence against that kind of brutality was natural, Paine asserted, and for which the victim was hardly to be faulted. This was simple enough answer, and had the added benefit of being (mostly) true. While it still remains unclear which side fired the first shot during the Battles of Lexington and Concord, thus opening the armed portion of the American Revolution, it was the British attempt to seize a cache of supplies stockpiled by the colonial militia at Concord, Massachusetts that set the stage for the confrontation. In Paine’s view, as no doubt in many Americans’, this placed blame for the subsequent loss of life squarely on Britain’s shoulders. Thus, however unwelcome war between the colonists and their ancestral homeland might have been it was the consequence of a reasonable response on their part to the aggression of a nation that no longer warranted the name of parent.

            Where Paine tilted away from relying almost solely on plain logic, though not entirely, was in how he followed up his assertion that Britain had abrogated its role as mother to the colonies by arguing that its claim of parentage was dubious to begin with. Specifically he stated that, “Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America” because the status of the colonies as a refuge from religious and political persecution by various European governments meant that their respective populations contained more than solely British-descended individuals. “Hither have they fled,” he continued, “not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster.” The resulting polyglot nature of the colonies meant that they were not connected by cultural or linguistic ties to Britain alone. Perhaps by way of example he asserted that less than a third of the inhabitants of his home colony of Pennsylvania could be considered of English origin, yet they were no less Pennsylvanians for it. Though he was correct in pointing out the complex ethnic makeup of the colonies as of the 1770s, his data was understandably (given the lack of any kind of demographic survey) somewhat skewed. Pennsylvania’s population was perhaps closer to 60% British descent and 30% German, with the additional 10% composed of African slaves and members of neither major group. New Jersey and Delaware could be divided along similar lines, and New York was perhaps the most diverse. About 20% of its population was of Dutch extraction, with the rest composed of English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, African, and various other European nationalities. Overall, taking immigration statistics dating up to 1790 as a basis, there were more people of African descent in the colonies than of English, more of German than Scottish, and more of Dutch than Welsh.

            To Paine this fact, that America was peopled by more than just the English, made it clear that the colonies owed no particular cultural or sentimental loyalty to Britain. Doubtless he counted at least in part on the fact that significant portions of the people he hoped would read Common Sense were themselves descendants of German, Swedish, Dutch or French settlers. To them it surely would have seemed like a very straightforward argument. They were not British and nor were their ancestors; whatever attachment they felt to Britain and its culture was thus likely rather shallow. In this sense Paine’s claim was as self-evident as many he had already deployed. For those colonists who were of English descent, however, the case being made in this particular section of Common Sense was somewhat more theoretical. Undoubtedly many of them did feel some kind of attachment to Britain, in terms of language, art, culture, or family history, and found the idea of severing formal ties personally distressing. Rather than sooth them by recalling that their connection to Britain was an illusion, which it manifestly wasn't, Paine instead asked them to conceive of themselves as members of a community that was defined by common ideals and sympathies rather than a shared language or history. This sort of idea, that humanity was the strongest group identification a person ought to aspire to, was very much a product of the European Enlightenment.

Common to the philosophical rhetoric of thinkers from one end of the continent to the other was an assertion that the fundamental desires of all people were essentially the same – namely peace, security, and freedom – and that as a result dividing humanity into competing nationalities was counter to social progress. Though theoretically logical, concepts such as these have proven to be among the most troublesome of the legacies of the Enlightenment. By the 18^th century, though the emergence of true nationalism was yet a ways off, British culture and government at least had coalesced around a strong sense of Englishness, English history, and English liberties. Pausing a moment to reflect, it would seem that not much has changed. Just as it would be difficult to imagine most modern Americans casting aside their national identity and instead claiming membership in the broader human community, late 18^th-century Americans were little different, particularly those who identified very closely with their or their families’ English origins. For this reason Paine’s inclusion of such an abstract argument in his otherwise aptly-titled Common Sense is worth noting, and invites its share of speculation. Without delving into great detail here, a question like this being worth a study all its own, I would posit that perhaps Paine was intent on spoon feeding a little of the philosophy he himself had imbibed while making a series of otherwise straightforward, utilitarian arguments. Paine was, as I mentioned previously, a somewhat more nuanced thinker than the style of arguments deployed in Common Sense would otherwise indicate. It would not seem uncharacteristic for him to want to educate his readers on the basis of a philosophical principle he believed to be important at the same time he was attempting to convince them of the merits of a more specific proposition.

To this I would add that, just as this particular section of Common Sense began with a fairly straightforward metaphor of a mother and her children it ended with a similarly uncomplicated comparison put forward by Paine in order to further illustrate his point. In the fourteenth paragraph of section three, Paine suggested that even if 100% of the population of the colonies were of English descent it should make no difference in their calculation of the merits of independence. “The first king of England,” he wrote, “of the present line (William the Conqueror) was a Frenchman, and half the Peers of England are descendants from the same country; wherefore, by the same method of reasoning, England ought to be governed by France.” Though simply phrased, this is as skilful piece of rhetoric as Paine put to use in any section of Common Sense. Not only did it make use of a common cultural touchstone – William I of England being among the best known and most influential of that nation’s monarchs – but it also spoke to readers’ intuitive understanding of the world. A person, perhaps not all that well-educated, who understood that William had indeed been born and raised in France and invaded England in the 11^th century, doubtless also knew that in spite of William’s continental origins England and France were fundamentally separate entities. William’s “Frenchness” had not rendered him or his successors incapable of forging a separate cultural or political identity. Just so, Paine intimated, was the situation between Britain and the colonies. Though they had been founded and in many cases continued to be governed by people of English origin or descent, Massachusetts, New York, South Carolina or Maryland had at some point in their histories become distinct political and cultural entities. For that reason, along with somewhat hazier notions of universal brotherhood, Paine declared that the Thirteen Colonies owed allegiance to no one more than their own citizens.