Did you commemorate December 12 last month?  Most people didn't even know it was a date to memorialize.  Harry Browne, one of the few to recognize 12/12 as Bill of Rights day, correctly observed that the first ten amendments was "the one thing that set this country apart from all others," and that by "forsaking it, America has become no better than any other country in the world." [1]

It's no accident, of course, that government is virtually mute about this date in history.  Several years ago, when Liberty Middle School kids in Virginia tried to get Congress to print the complete Bill of Rights on the back of our fiat dollars [2], their representatives in D.C. told them an abbreviated copy of the whole Constitution would be better.  The reason behind the pols' suggestion is clear:  chopping up and reducing the Constitution to fine print gives the appearance of fulfilling the students' proposal while effectively burying it.  Imagine the potential for overthrow if people carried a full copy of the Bill of Rights with them--in legible text.

More recently, another date flew past us with even less fanfare--January 10.  On this date in 1776 a 47-page pamphlet that would radically alter our history rolled off a Philadelphia printing press.  But once again, it is not an event the state relishes acknowledging because the pamphlet, Common Sense, urged Americans to part company with an abusive ruler.

When Common Sense hit the streets, many colonists privately favored independence, including many members of the Second Continental Congress, but no one had had the nerve to boldly advocate it.  To break the dam and release the swelling tide of freedom, it took an Englishman who had recently arrived in the colonies and had refined his views in tavern debates: Thomas Paine.

Without Common Sense, we might have fought England for equal rights under British law, rather than for man's rights within an independent nation. Quite possibly the Declaration of Independence would never have been, and we might be honoring instead a less familiar document, one Jefferson wrote a year earlier called "A Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms." [3]

There was nothing timid about this 1775 "Declaration."  Jefferson unreservedly condemned Britain for "enslaving these colonies by violence."  He avowed that "the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves."  Yet, he concluded his piece with a hope that the "Judge and Ruler of the Universe" would "dispose our adversaries to reconciliation on reasonable terms, and thereby to relieve the empire from the calamities of civil war."  The colonies were not seeking independence, but rather a return to the good ol' days before George III's incursions on their liberties.

Common Sense rendered reconciliation unacceptable by laying bare the destructiveness of monarchy.  The "distinction of men into kings and subjects," Paine wrote, is something for which "no truly natural or religious reason can be found . . . ."  [4]  If "we could take off the dark covering of antiquity and trace [kings] to their first rise, we should find the first of them nothing better than the principal ruffian of some restless gang, whose savage manners of pre-eminence in subtility obtained him the title of chief among plunderers . . . ."

"In England a king hath little to do than to make war and give away places"--an observation which brings to mind leaders of welfare-warfare states.  "The nearer any government approaches to a republic, the less business there is for a king."  Likewise, as our government moves further away from a republic, our king-like leaders find themselves overloaded with responsibilities, since the people abdicated theirs in the voting booths.

"I challenge the warmest advocate for reconciliation to show a single advantage that this continent can reap by being connected with Great Britain."  Any "submission to, or dependence on, Great Britain tends directly to involve this continent in European wars and quarrels . . . . As Europe is our market for trade, we ought to form no partial connection with any part of it . . . ."  How wise his words sound today, in light of the countless foreign "interests" Washington is obliged to "protect."

If we look back to the summer of 1774, about 18 months before Common Sense, we find Paine living in Lewes, England, where the government had recently fired him.  Paine had taken an unauthorized leave to petition Parliament for raises for himself and his fellow excise officers.  His petition failed, and shortly after so did his second marriage.  At age 37, Paine decided to attend scientific lectures in London, where he met Pennsylvania's diplomat, Benjamin Franklin.  Unlike most people. Franklin saw Paine as "an ingenious worthy young man" and wrote letters of introduction for him to take to America. [5]

Paine barely survived the nine-week crossing, falling victim to a "putrid fever" that infected most of the 120 passengers aboard, killing five of them.  When he arrived in Philadelphia on November 30, 1774, he was too weak to walk.  A physician friend of Franklin's, Dr. John Kearsley, nephew of a more renowned doctor of the same name, had Paine carried to his home, where he convalesced for six weeks.

After Paine recovered, he took a job writing for and editing the Pennsylvania Magazine.  Within a few months, the magazine's circulation rose from 600 to 1500, making it the most successful periodical in America.  Paine wrote on diverse subjects: the injustice of slavery, cruelty to animals, the absurdity of titles, his opposition to dueling, unhappy marriages, the mistreatment of women, and why defensive wars are sometimes necessary. [6]

One biographer thought Paine was the first writer to display a civilized attitude toward women.  [7]  Though other writers had attacked slavery, he was the first to propose its abolition and helped found the country's first antislavery society on April 14, 1775.  To meet a deadline, Paine sometimes took shots of brandy, which delighted the magazine's Quaker owner, Robert Aitken, since Paine did his best writing this way. [8]

With the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia in 1775, Paine got to know many of the delegates during his rounds at the taverns.  Pennsylvania delegate Benjamin Rush, who was as blunt and opinionated as Paine and who had also written a piece denouncing slavery, encouraged Paine to write an essay advocating independence.  Franklin had already asked him to write a history of the conflict with Britain, and when Paine and Aitken--"two prickly characters"--parted ways over a pay dispute, Paine took up Rush's challenge.

He spent the fall of 1775 working on his pamphlet, trying to finish it by the first of the year.  He originally wanted it to appear as a series of newspaper articles, but the inflammatory nature of the tract scared the papers away.  He was at a loss to find a publisher until Rush suggested Robert Bell, an outspoken Scottish printer.  Bell agreed to print the pamphlet, but only if Paine paid for the first run in advance.  Paine complied, and Common Sense became the country's first bestseller, though he personally received no income from it.  He instructed Bell to give his share to American soldiers in Quebec.

The unwillingness of publishers to print Paine's essay, or of others to speak openly for independence, should be considered in the light of the king's penalty for treason.  Nothing was more treasonous than Common Sense, and a judge at the time, while sentencing Irish rebels, vividly described the punishment:

"You are to be drawn on hurdles to the place of execution, where you are to be hanged by the neck, but not until you are dead; for, while you are still living your bodies are to be taken down, your bowels torn out and burned before your faces, your heads then cut off, and your bodies divided each into four quarters, and your heads and quarters then to be at the King's disposal."  [9]

In his native village of Thetford, England, Paine grew up in the shadow of Gallows Hill, where he witnessed the king's justice firsthand.  He knew what risk his words carried.

The British paid dearly for firing Paine as an excise tax officer; the decision cost them their American colonies.  We pay a hefty price when we neglect Common Sense; it was the call that turned a rebellion into a revolution.


1.  Harry Browne, "A Day to Remember"

2.  Liberty Bill Act

3.  Thomas Jefferson, A Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms

4.  Thomas Paine, Common Sense

5.  Jack Fruchtman, Jr., Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom, Four Walls, Eight Windows, 1994, P. 38.

6.  Paine's articles

7.  W. E. Woodward, Thomas Paine: America's Godfather, 1737 - 1809, 1973.

8.  Jerome Wilson & William F. Ricketson, Thomas Paine (Twayne's United States Authors Series, No. 301), 1989.

9.  Richard M. Ketchum, The Winter Soldiers, Henry Holt and Company, 1973, P. 147.