A New Beginning
Shortly after these disasters had befallen upon him, Tom Pain paid a visit to 36 Craven Street, around the corner from Covent Garden, in search of a fresh start. One of the men whom he had met in his campaign for the excisemen, George Lewis Scott, had provided him with an introduction to the American colonial agent and, by that time, renowned experimental scientist Benjamin Franklin. Pain’s visit with Franklin would mark the beginning of a long and close friendship. Equally important, when he took his leave of Franklin that day, Pain carried with him a letter from the widely esteemed Philadelphian. The letter was specifically addressed to Franklin’s son-in-law, Richard Bache, but it was intended as a general introduction to the community of merchants and artisans of Philadelphia:
The bearer Mr Thomas Pain is very well recommended to me as an ingenious worthy young man. He goes to Pennsylvania with a view of settling there. If you can put him in a way of obtaining employment as clerk, or assistant tutor in a school, or assistant surveyor, of all of which I think him very capable, so that he may procure a substance at least, till he can make acquaintance and obtain a knowledge of the country, you will do well, and much oblige your affectionate father.8
We don’t know when Pain made the decision to leave England for Philadelphia. But it is clear that he would not have had the means to purchase a ship’s passage to that city had it not been for a settlement he received from his wife and her family upon their separation sometime in the late spring or early summer of 1774. In return for his agreeing not to lodge a claim for any part of their house and possessions in Lewes, Pain was given a sum of thirty-five pounds, enough to enable him to make a new—and, as things turned out, earthshaking—start in life.
The seven-week voyage to America across often-rough seas in the North Atlantic was never an easy one in those days, but for Pain it was a good deal worse. He spent most of the voyage below decks, suffering from a combination of seasickness and what may have been a case of typhus, which killed five other passengers on that voyage. When the ship finally docked at the port of Philadelphia on November 30, 1774, Pain had to be carried off on a stretcher.9
His note from Dr. Franklin would help him more quickly than he imagined, as it gained him access to a doctor who would treat him for the next six weeks. After regaining his strength, he paid his call, letter of introduction in hand, to Richard Bache, who arranged a few, short-term private tutoring jobs for him—enough to replenish at least some of his fast-dwindling supply of money.
On January 10, 1775, Pain made contact with a man who, perhaps more than anyone other than Franklin, helped him change his life. Visiting the print shop and bookstore next to his boardinghouse, he fell into conversation with Robert Aitken, a recent Scottish immigrant who was starting a new magazine, The Pennsylvania Magazine; or American Monthly Museum. It was, like many eighteenth-century journals, a compilation of miscellany, featuring snippets of information on topics ranging from natural science to mathematics to new practical inventions, as well as essays on politics, literature and culture. Whatever Pain’s failings as a staymaker or an exciseman, he unquestionably had a way with words, and he managed to talk Aitken into appointing him editor of the new magazine. And a wise decision it proved to be, for the magazine’s circulation soon increased from 600 subscribers to 1,500. Readers responded to Pain’s essays, which ranged remarkably widely, from lighthearted pieces on marriage and on “Cupid and Hymen” to serious topics such as the iniquity of the institution of slavery. His attack on slavery must have struck a nerve even in a city like Philadelphia, where antislavery sentiments were relatively common. Pain was at that time living across the street from a slave market, and he was appalled both by the “wickedness” of the trade in human commodities and by the brutality of the institution itself, which he described as “inhumane” and “barbarous.”10
Although he did not write any essays on the escalating conflict between Great Britain and American during his early days as editor of The Pennsylvania Magazine, it is clear that the newly arrived Englishman was following those events. In a brief piece entitled “Reflections on Titles,” Pain expressed his general disapproval of the bestowing of titles on mere mortals, but then made an exception:
Modesty forbids men, separately or collectively, to assume titles. But as all honours, even that of Kings, originated from the public, the public may justly be called the fountain of true honour. And it is with much pleasure I have heard the title of Honourable applied to a body of men, who nobly disregarding private ease and interest for public welfare, have justly merited the address of The Honourable Continental Congress.11
Reading Pain’s essays in The Pennsylvania Magazine even from the distance of nearly two and a half centuries, one can see the emergence of a marvelous mix of genuine literary and polemical talents. Although he had begun to find his voice when he wrote The Case of the Officers of Excise, in his position at The Pennsylvania Magazine he had found a platform from which to develop and broadcast that voice. Although all of his essays were written under a variety of pseudonyms, among those knowledgeable about the cultural and political life of Philadelphia, he would acquire—in less than a year’s time and after two decades of hardship, disappointment, frustration and anger—something of a reputation.
But sometime in the fall of 1775, Pain’s cantankerous, argumentative nature put him into bitter conflict with his employer. Robert Aitken was unhappy with the slow speed with which Pain was turning out essays, and perhaps also by the impression, as Aitken later recounted it, that Pain’s pen could only produce prose when well-lubricated by the decanter of brandy always at his side. Pain, for his part, was unhappy both with Aitken’s badgering of him and with his salary. Although friends of the two tried to intercede and broker some sort of rapprochement, the breach was irreconcilable, and Pain stopped writing for the Pennsylvania Magazine.12
Pain’s cantankerous nature almost certainly played a role in the termination of his relationship with Robert Aitken, and his temporary unemployment could not have been good for his already precarious financial situation. But he now had the time to begin the writings that would make him famous. Unencumbered by his editorial responsibilities, Pain began work on an extended essay on the conflict between the American colonies and Great Britain. Although we don’t know if the idea to undertake such a project was first proposed by the Pennsylvania physician and political activist Benjamin Rush or whether Rush merely encouraged Pain to go forward with a project that Pain had already conceived, we do know that Rush was an active collaborator. According to Rush’s later recollection, he had himself considered writing such an essay, but fearing that his reputation and medical practice might be damaged by the “popular odium to which such a pamphlet might expose him” among the conservative political elite in Philadelphia, he persuaded Pain, who at that point had few ties to Philadelphia, to undertake the task.
Pain would seize the opportunity enthusiastically, devoting himself to the writing of the pamphlet beginning sometime in late October, and continuing through December of 1775. According to Rush, Pain shared with him every chapter of his treatise as he was composing it. When Pain finished the pamphlet, Rush also suggested that he show it to Benjamin Franklin (who was now back in Philadelphia), the astronomer David Rittenhouse and Sam Adams, “all of whom I knew were decided friends of independence.” Pain had intended to call his treatise “Plain Truth,” but at Rush’s suggestion, he changed the title to “Common Sense.” Rush, possibly with some help from Franklin as well, helped arrange for Robert Bell, a Scottish-born bookseller in Philadelphia who was an avid advocate of independence, to publish it. When the pamphlet made its first appearance on the streets of Philadelphia on January 10, 1776, its author was described only as “an Englishman,” but it would not take long for Philadelphians, and soon after the rest of the world, to become aware of the identity of the real author, who, beginning with a second edition, which he himself arranged to be printed on February 14, revealed himself as Thomas Paine, wi
th an “e.”13
The Revolutionary Character of Common Sense
Common Sense would fundamentally change the nature of the debate over America’s relationship with England and with England’s vaunted constitution. By January of 1776 there were many in the Continental Congress—some openly and some privately—who were advocating independence. But the framework of all of the discussions in the Congress, both among those who were advocating independence and among those urging caution and further attempts at reconciliation, was shaped by a common devotion to and defense of the “true principles” of the English constitution. During the period from 1765 to late 1774, most of America’s political leaders found themselves in one of two camps. On the one hand, men like John Jay and James Duane, and possibly John Dickinson, agreed that Parliament had no right to levy taxes of any kind on the colonies but were prepared to concede some parliamentary authority over other issues that affected the welfare of the entire empire; the most commonly cited example of this was the regulation of trade “for the good of the empire,” by which was meant the right to levy taxes on trade for purposes other than raising a revenue. Increasingly though, Americans, including Dickinson, were beginning to see that the distinction between taxation and other forms of parliamentary legislation was a fuzzy, and perhaps an untenable, one. Beginning in the early 1770s, and especially with the publication in 1774 of both Thomas Jefferson’s Summary View of the Rights of British America and James Wilson’s Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament, most Americans had arrived at the position that Parliament had no legislative authority over the colonies whatsoever. In their view—a view endorsed by the First Continental Congress by the time it adjourned in late October of 1774—Parliament could not enact any law affecting the colonies without the consent of those colonies. In their view of the English constitution—a view that in the decades after the American Revolution would come to form the intellectual basis for the British Commonwealth—the king and the king alone was the sole entity having any authority over the constituent parts of the British empire.
By January of 1776 nearly everyone in the Congress had moved toward Jefferson’s and Wilson’s position. And, increasingly, many, especially those who were advocating independence, were framing their arguments not only with reference to the English constitution, but also to “the laws of nature”—those natural rights of mankind on which the true principles of that English constitution were founded. But those in the Congress advocating independence only invoked the laws of nature as a last resort—as the only alternative open to them given the failure of the king to recognize those “true principles” of the English constitution. That constitution remained not only at the core of their connection to Great Britain, but also at the core of the set of political values that defined their own polities.14
In January of 1776, the principle source of division in the Continental Congress was not so much an intellectual, as an emotional, one. Men like John and Sam Adams believed that the time had long passed when America’s political leaders could convince the king of the merits of their constitutional position. Their only alternative then was to appeal to a higher law—the laws of nature—to justify independence from that king and his empire, on the grounds that he had irretrievably strayed from the principles of the English constitution. But even for those advocating independence, the English constitution—or at least their idealized view of it—remained the standard for what was good and true. Men like Dickinson, who were fast finding themselves in a minority, continued to hope—increasingly against all evidence—that the king would somehow come to see the light. But for both sides, the English constitution embodied the very essence of a benevolent and just government.
The opening pages of Tom Paine’s Common Sense entirely and emphatically rejected that logic—and the reading of English history that formed the basis of that logic. “The so much boasted constitution of England,” Paine wrote, may have been “noble for the dark and slavish times in which it was erected. When the world was overrun with tyranny, the least remove therefrom was a glorious rescue. But that it is imperfect, subject to convulsions, and incapable of producing what it seems to promise, is easily demonstrated.”15
With that emphatic, even contemptuous, dismissal, Paine then embarked on a passionate attack, phrased in plain but riveting language, on the very institutions that lay at the heart of the English constitution. Although he devoted a few passages pointing to the injustice and, indeed, the ridiculousness, of a hereditary aristocracy, he reserved his greatest ire for the one institution to which most Americans, even in January of 1776, still felt their greatest affection—the monarchy:
There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of the monarchy; it first excludes a man from the means of information, yet empowers him in cases where the highest judgment is required. The state of the King shuts him from the world, yet the business of a King requires him to know it thoroughly; wherefore, the different parts, unnaturally opposing and destroying each other, move the whole character to be absurd and useless.16
He continued his assault on the monarchy with a discourse on equality that would have implications far beyond the question of America’s relations with George III. “Mankind being originally equal in the order of creation,” he wrote, “the equality could only be destroyed by subsequent circumstances.” Acknowledging with some regret the distinctions that existed, and perhaps might always exist, between rich and poor, Paine went on to condemn
another even greater distinction for which no truly natural or religious reason can be assigned, and that is the distinction of men into KINGS and SUBJECTS. Male and female are the distinctions of nature, good and bad the distinctions of heaven; but how a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species, is worth enquiring into, and whether they are the means of happiness or misery to mankind.17
Paine’s assault on the monarchy did not depend on that institution’s illogic alone. He next embarked on a contemptuous survey of its history; it was an institution
first introduced into the world by the Heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry. The Heathens paid divine honors to their deceased kings, and the Christian world hath improved on the plan by doing the same to their living ones. How impious is the title of sacred majesty applied to a worm, who in the midst of his splendor is crumbling into dust.
Paine then launched into a wrathful survey of the sins and “savage manners” that marked the behavior of kings throughout the ages, ending with his assessment of the operation of the monarchy in the country of his birth:
England, since the conquest, hath known some few good monarchs, but groaned beneath a much larger number of bad ones, yet no man in his senses can say that their claim under William the Conqueror is a very honorable one. A French bastard landing with an armed banditti, and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original. It certainly hath no divinity in it.18
George III, the “royal brute of England,” seemed to Paine the personification of the utter ridiculousness of the notion of hereditary monarchy, and at this point, he unleashed his anger with full force. “Even brutes,” he said, “do not devour their young, nor savages make war on their own families.” But “this wretch . . . with the pretended title of FATHER OF HIS PEOPLE can unfeelingly hear of [the American colonists’] slaughter, and composedly sleep with their blood upon his soul.”
Paine’s imagery was not unfamiliar to his American readers. Americans had routinely referred to the king, the sovereign leader of their mother country, as their father. Whatever the psychological wellsprings of Paine’s fury, his anger leaps off the page. By the dictates of the English constitution, Paine observed, “the King Is law, [but] in free countries, the law ought to be King.” If George III refused to reco
gnize this, Paine asserted, then “let the crown . . . be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.” There was no alternative, he concluded, but to acknowledge that “the King is dead; his power is the people. . . . Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the Crowned ruffians that ever lived.”19
The logic and compelling language of Paine’s assault on the king, and by implication, on the corrupted constitution that allowed the king to exercise his powers so tyrannically, are the most emotionally powerful parts of Common Sense. But there were two other equally important components to his argument. One of these—the “common sense” aspect of his pamphlet—was aimed at demonstrating the folly of the very structure of the British empire, a structure that required America to occupy a subordinate, colonial status in relation to a mother country. The second was a form of pep talk to Americans, aimed at convincing his readers that they had the virtue, the resources and the strength to achieve independence.
Paine was mindful that while many of his readers may have still felt an emotional attachment to the king, many also cherished their identity as subjects of the British empire. He acknowledged that America may have “flourished under the former connexion with Great Britain,” but he rejected the notion “that the same connexion is necessary toward her future happiness.” Nothing, he averred, “can be more fallacious than this kind of argument. We may as well assert that because a child has thrived on milk, that it is never to have meat, or that the first twenty years of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty.” And, anticipating the counterargument that the benefits of being ruled by their mother country far outweighed any of the burdens, Paine scoffed: “Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, 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.”20
Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor Page 38
