Common Sense
by Thomas Paine
- Pages
- about 79
- Category
- History
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 87 min at 250 wpm
From the opening
Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet
sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit
of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of
being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of
custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than
reason.
As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means of
calling the right of it in question (and in Matters too which might
never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated
into the inquiry) and as the King of England hath undertaken in his
own Right, to support the Parliament in what he calls Theirs, and as
the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the
combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the
pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpation of either.
In the following sheets, the author hath studiously avoided every
thing which is personal among ourselves. Compliments as well as
censure to individuals make no part thereof. The wise, and the
worthy, need not the triumph of a pamphlet; and those whose
sentiments are injudicious, or unfriendly, will cease of themselves
unless too much pains are bestowed upon their conversion.
The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.
Many circumstances hath, and will arise, which are not local, but
universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind
are affected, and in the Event of which, their Affections are
interested. The laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword,
declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and
extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the
Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling;
of which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is the
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