Common Sense

What It Is

A pamphlet, published anonymously in Philadelphia in January 1776. Thomas Paine had arrived from England fourteen months earlier carrying a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin, with two failed careers behind him and no political reputation at all.

It was written for men who would hear it read aloud in a tavern. Short sentences. Anglo-Saxon words. Biblical cadence, no Latin, no learned apparatus, no deference. Paine claimed 120,000 copies sold in three months; historians argue about the figure, and agree that nothing printed in America had ever moved like it.

Ninety minutes to read. It is the shortest book on this list and, per page, the one that did the most.

Why It Matters

It made independence thinkable. Until the winter of 1775 the colonial argument was a family quarrel: Americans claimed the rights of Englishmen and blamed Parliament, while keeping the king above the fray. Paine went after the king, hereditary monarchy as such, and the English constitution the colonists were still proud of. He recast a dispute about taxation as a question about what any people owes any crown, and he did it in language a farmer could repeat the next morning without dropping a word.

He also invented something. The deliberate refusal of learned style, the decision that the people arguing in the tavern are the proper audience for political philosophy, is a technique now used by everyone, for every cause, on every side. Paine got there first, and he remains its best practitioner.

And he made the war a cause rather than a grievance. The claim that America was arguing on behalf of the world, not merely of itself, entered American self-understanding with this pamphlet and has never left it. Washington, reading it in camp, wrote of its unanswerable reasoning. He then had it read to the troops.

Before You Read

Ninety minutes, easier than any other book here, and harder than it looks to read fairly.

Two things repay knowing. First, most colonists in 1775 were loyal to George III and expected to stay that way; Paine is not preaching to the converted, he is manufacturing them. Second, his central argument against kingship is not political but scriptural, taken from a text his readers knew by heart. He is beating a Bible-reading audience on its own ground, and if you miss that you will find the middle of the pamphlet baffling.

His section on shipping, timber and naval stores reads like a spreadsheet. That is the point: he is making revolution sound not merely right but practical. Skim it if you must, but notice what he is doing.

Which Edition to Read

• Penguin Classics, edited by Isaac Kramnick — recommended. Common Sense complete, with the appendix Paine added to the third edition, and an introduction that is the best short account of what Paine did to English political prose. It costs the price of a coffee and it is the version to read. The cost: annotation is minimal, and the volume gives you this pamphlet and little else. View on Amazon →
• Oxford World's Classics, Rights of Man, Common Sense and Other Political Writings, edited by Mark Philp. The best-annotated Paine for a general reader, and it lets you read Common Sense against the later, greater Rights of Man. The cost: Common Sense is a small part of a large book, and the notes assume you want the whole Paine.
• Library of America, Paine: Collected Writings, edited by Eric Foner (1995). Everything, on good paper, in one durable volume, chosen by the historian who wrote the standard book on Paine's radicalism. This is the one to own. The cost: almost no annotation, and it is a brick.

Take Penguin to read, Oxford to study, the Library of America to keep. Be wary of the anonymous print-on-demand reprints: Paine revised, and they rarely say which 1776 printing they follow.

Getting the Most From This Book

Read it aloud. It was built for the ear, and silent reading strips out half of what makes it work.

Count the Latin roots. Notice how the arguments arrive in short chains a man could carry home in his head. That is the craft, and it is invisible until you look for it.

The commonest mistake is to treat it as a historical document rather than a piece of persuasion still in working order. Read Burke's Reflections afterwards, and then Paine's reply to Burke. The three books are one argument, and it is not over.