Thomas Paine |
Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain : January 29, 1737 – June 8, 1809) was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist and revolutionary. One of the Founding
His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era rhetoric of transnational human rights. Saul K. Padover described him as "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination".
Born in Thetford in the English county of Norfolk, Paine migrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution. Virtually every rebel read (or listened to a reading of) his powerful pamphlet "Common Sense" (1776), proportionally the all-time best-selling American title, which crystallized the rebellious demand for independence from Great Britain. His "The American Crisis" (1776–1783) was 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 "Rights of Man" (1791), in part a defense of the French Revolution against its critics. His attacks on Irish conservative writer Edmund Burke led to a trial and conviction in absentia in England in 1792 for the crime of seditious libel.
The British government of William Pitt the Younger, worried by the possibility that the French Revolution might spread to England, had begun suppressing works that espoused radical philosophies. Paine's work, which advocated the right of the people to overthrow their government, was duly targeted, with a writ for his arrest issued in early 1792. Paine fled to France in September where, rather immediately and 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 Maximilien Robespierre, regarded him as an enemy.
In December 1793, he was arrested and was taken to Luxembourg Prison in Paris. While in prison, he continued to work on "The Age of Reason" (1793–1794). Future President James Monroe used his diplomatic connections to get Paine released in November 1794. He became notorious because of his pamphlets "The Age of Reason", in which he advocated deism, promoted reason and free thought and argued against institutionalized religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular. He published the pamphlet "Agrarian Justice" (1797), discussing the origins of property and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income. In 1802, he returned to the U.S. where he died on June 8, 1809. Only six people attended his funeral as he had been ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity.
