Thomas Paine

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Paine’s life in England gave little indication of his later successes. Born in 1737 in Thetford, England as the son of a lower-middle class Quaker, he was not expected to become an important, extraordinary, or outstanding person. After a variety of unsuccessful jobs, he eventually became an excise officer, a person whose job it is to collect certain kinds of taxes and prevent smuggling. This job was also not prosperous. He was fired from this position twice, once for leading a strike for higher wages in 1772. While living in England, Paine married twice. The first of these wives was Mary Lambert, who, one year after they were married, died in childbirth along with their child. Eleven years later, in 1771, he remarried. Elizabeth Olive, his second wife, and he separated legally in 1774, and Paine moved to London. While living in London that year, Paine met Benjamin Franklin, who helped him secure a job as a journalist in Philadelphia.
In November 1774, Paine landed in America. He co-edited Philadelphia Magazine while living in that city. The next year, he published African Slavery in America, which attacked and severely criticized slavery as inhumane. During Paine’s time in the New World, tensions between the colonies and Great Britain continued to increase after the Boston Tea Party. Paine was of the opinion that the colonists had every right to demand change in a government that imposed taxes on its people without allowing them a voice in that government. Furthermore, he saw no reason for the colonies to stay part of, and dependent on, the British monarchy. These ideas about American independence formed the basis for his pamphlet, Common Sense, published January 10th, 1776. According to Paine, Common Sense was based solely on ...

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...le for each side to have its own, entirely reasonable, priorities and logic for its stance on the issue. Another lesson Paine demonstrated through his work is the power of the written word. Paine’s ideas, brilliant or not, would not have been well received or even widely acknowledged without his elegant phrases and clear writing abilities. By using this skill, he showed millions his ideas, provoking them into greater action than he could ever have accomplished alone. Not only did his words inspire action, they inspired new thoughts. These thought beginnings are what Paine, and other writers and artists, gave to us. The darker thing that Paine showed the world was the malleability of the general populace. Paine, as an agitator, proved forcefully that, with the right words, a group of people can easily be pushed to rebellion or swayed from reasonable lines of thought.

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