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Thomas Paine was an
English-American political activist, author, political theorist and
revolutionary. As the author of two highly influential pamphlets at the
start of the American Revolution, he inspired the Patriots in 1776 to
declare independence from Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era
rhetoric of transnational human rights. He has been called "a corset maker
by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination".
Born in Thetford, England, in the county of Norfolk, Paine emigrated to the
British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin,
arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution. His
principal contributions were the powerful, widely read pamphlet Common Sense
(1776), the all-time best-selling American book that advocated colonial
America's independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and The American
Crisis (1776–83), a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series. Common Sense was so
influential that John Adams said, "Without the pen of the author of Common
Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain."
Paine lived in France for most of the 1790s, becoming deeply involved in the
French Revolution. He wrote the Rights of Man (1791), in part a defence of
the French Revolution against its critics. His attacks on British writer
Edmund Burke led to a trial and conviction in absentia in 1792 for the crime
of seditious libel. In 1792, despite not being able to speak French, he was
elected to the French National Convention. The Girondists regarded him as an
ally. Consequently, the Montagnards, especially Robespierre, regarded him as
an enemy.
In December 1793, he was arrested and imprisoned in Paris, then released in
1794. He became notorious because of his pamphlet The Age of Reason
(1793–94), in which he advocated deism, promoted reason and freethinking,
and argued against institutionalized religion in general and Christian
doctrine in particular. He also wrote the pamphlet Agrarian Justice (1795),
discussing the origins of property, and introduced the concept of a
guaranteed minimum income. In 1802, he returned to America where he died on
June 8, 1809. Only six people attended his funeral as he had been ostracized
for his ridicule of Christianity.
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The Selected Works of Tom Paine
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