Common Sense

Published anonymously in 1776, six months before the Declaration of Independance, Paine's Common Sense was a radical and impassionned call for America to free itself from British rule and to set up an independent republican government. Savagely attacking hereditary kingship and aristocratic institutions, Paine urged a new beginning for his adopted country in which personal freedom and social equality would be upheld, and economic and cultural progress encouraged. His pamphlet was the first to... Voir plus