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"Sound doctrine and unanswerable reasoning," says General George Washington. "By private letters which I have lately received from Virginia, I find Common Sense is working a wonderful change there in the minds of men." General Charles Lee is equally enthusiastic: "A masterly, irresistible performance. I own myself convinced, by the arguments, of the necessity of a separation." These praises are not quite accurate. Sound reasoning is not the main strength of Common Sense, but its fierce rhetoric has helped to shatter the unreasoning assumptions that upheld loyalty to the British Crown.
Do Americans owe allegiance to George III? The author calls him "the royal brute of Great Britain" and a "hardened, sullen-tempered Pharoah." Do any monarchs have a hereditary right to rule their subjects? The author argues that dynasties are founded by "nothing better than the principal ruffian of some restless gang." Does America depend on Britain for safety or prosperity? Only in "the credulous weakness of our minds." Would it be better to delay? "Every thing that is right or reasonable pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, 'TIS TIME TO PART."
Who is the vehement author who modestly (or prudently) signed himself only "an Englishman"? TIME has learned that he is Thomas Paine, 39, a blunt, quick, florid immigrant, lately editor of the successful Pennsylvania Magazine. Just two years ago he resided in England and called himself "Pain." And pain has been his lot. He is a failed tax official, a failed tobacconist, a failed husband, and a frequent failure at the humble trade to which he was apprenticed—that of corsetmaker. His second wife paid him £ 35 as part of the agreement by which he left her house (she is reported to have said that they never consummated the marriage, but his only comment is, "It is nobody's business but my own"). Thus cheered on his way, he begged a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia, then in London, and boarded a packet for the New World.
Paine had never been a journalist, and he arrived in Philadelphia on Nov. 30, 1774, with no more formal schooling than one would expect of a corsetmaker. His ambition was to set up as master of an academy for young ladies. When his ship docked at Philadelphia, however, he was seriously ill with what doctors diagnosed as putrid fever, and he remained so for six weeks.
By chance, Paine (as he began to respell himself) encountered Robert Aitken, a printer then trying to start a magazine for genteel readers. Paine found it easy to fill the magazine with elevated essays on such topics as science, dueling and marriage. His patriotic poem on the death of General James Wolfe at Quebec helped build circulation to a record-breaking 1,500. As the god Mercury describes the scene:
With a darksome thick film I
encompass'd his eyes And bore him away in an urn...