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Common Sense, by Thomas Paine
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 defence of custom. But tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.
Common Sense TITLE PAGE 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 usurpations 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 is bestowed upon their conversion.
The cause of America is, in a great measure, the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, 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 AUTHOR.
Philadelphia, Feb. 14, 1776.
Thomas Paine, soon after he arrived in America from Britain, wrote and published one of the most influential political pamphlets in human history — certainly the most influential in America. This polemic, “Common Sense,” was first published anonymously on January 10, 1776, and quickly became the most widely read and distributed work in the American colonies, the Bible alone excepted. Paine’s name was first publicly associated with the document in March of that year. He later gave all his royalties from the 48-page publication to the Continental Army of the United States. The text, below, is based closely on the edition published in 1791 by W. and T. Bradford, Philadelphia.
Content of "COMMON SENSE"
http://thisiscommonsense.com/library/common-sense-by-tom-paine/