Thomas Paine, Common Sense and a Plan for America

To the extent that historians give Thomas Paine credit for playing a significant role in the American Revolutionary Cause, it was his rousing call for independence in his widely read tract Common Sense, published January 9, 1776, that most agree was his chief contribution to America’s decision to separate from British rule. Paine turned up the heat of the debate, stirred the pot and brought to a boil the already simmering revolutionary thoughts taking hold in America by shouting out loud “TIS TIME TO PART.” Although most Americans did not know who the anonymous author of the pamphlet was at first, Paine yanked the arguments and whispers for independence loitering in the back alleys and flung them out onto the streets for all to read and hear.

“To the extent” because not all historians, or even some of Paine’s own contemporaries, acknowledged his pivotal role in spurring Americans toward independence. Pauline Maier in her book American Scripture, for example, downplayed Paine’s contributions, giving the credit to John Adams for pushing the independence movement forward.[1] And for his part, Adams, an early admirer (and jealous) of Paine’s writings and popular appeal, turned sour toward the man and his ideas over time (“a Star of Disaster”). Adams concluded there was nothing original in Paine’s pamphlet, that it only repeated “common place arguments for independence” that Paine picked up here and there as a newcomer to Philadelphia.[2]

There is some truth to Adams’s latter charge. Paine later admitted that until he arrived in America from England in December 1774 (carrying with him two letters of introduction by Benjamin Franklin whom he had met in London), he “had no thoughts of independence or of arms.”[3] That all changed with the breakout of hostilities the following April at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts. By then, he had been serving several months as editor of Robert Aitken’s Pennsylvania Magazine and soon after was thinking of composing a pamphlet on the rising conflict.

To this day, Paine is mostly remembered for his fiery rebellious writings during revolutionary times, here in America and later on during similar periods of political upheaval in England and France. A rebel with a cause.

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But to the author, independence was only part of the picture. The real question he posed in Common Sense was, he said, what happens next? A fear of the unknown, Paine believed, was tugging against any steps toward independence.

So, Common Sense offered what Paine called some “hints” to address that fear. It outlined a plan. And among the proposals were several that smack of originality. Having spent the first part of Common Sense offering a scathing criticism of the British monarchy, nobility and hereditary rule, Paine advanced a different idea, one built entirely around republican principles.

The pamphlet offered the following brief but packed recipe for American governance: “Let the assemblies be annual, with a President only. The representation more equal. Their business wholly domestic, and subject to the authority of a Continental Congress.”[4] Gone was the monarchy, any hint of hereditary privilege and the separation of powers and checks and balances. The latter omission disturbed Adams: Paine’s proposals, he said, were far too “democratical.”

Paine recommended that a “Continental Conference” be called for purposes of framing a “Continental Charter, or Charter of the United Colonies . . . fixing the number and manner of choosing members of Congress, members of the Assembly, with their date of sitting, and drawing the line of business and jurisdiction between them. (Always remembering, that our strength is continental.)” This charter should secure

freedom and property to all men and, above all things, the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience … Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS KING.[5]

At least one future scholar found in Paine’s “hints” some fundamental principles of a nascent American constitutionalism. Political scientist Edward S. Corwin wrote the following about Paine’s scheme in Common Sense: “In this singular mixture of sense and fantasy, so characteristic of its author, are adumbrated a national constitutional convention, the dual plan of our federal system, a national bill of rights, and ‘worship of the Constitution.’”[6]

There are several notable takeaways from Paine’s succinct suggestions. First, he called for a written constitution to replace Britain’s unwritten version. Second, he proposed a dual system of government, based on national supremacy. To achieve that, the constitution would distribute powers to both the national and subordinate governments. That fundamental principle undergirds American federalism. Third, in a republican form of government, the powers of government must rest ultimately on the authority of the people. That is the principle of popular sovereignty. As James Madison put it, “the difference between a system founded on the legislatures only, and one founded on the people, [is] the true difference between a league or treaty, and a Constitution.”[7]

For Paine, the venerable English constitution was no guarantee against absolutism: “though we [Englishmen] have been wise enough to shut and lock a door against absolute Monarchy, we at the same time have been foolish enough to put the crown in possession of the key.”[8] And he ridiculed the British model of separation of powers and checks and balances, by arguing that in practice, the back and forth checks among king, lords and commons on each other were farcical. An example:

as the same constitution which gives the Commons a power to check the king by withholding the supplies, gives afterwards the king a power to check the Commons, by empowering him to reject their other bills … it supposes that the king is wiser than those whom it has already supposed to be wiser than him. A mere absurdity![9]

So, Paine ignored the doctrine of separation of powers in his recommendations for America.

Who then should call for the Continental Charter? Here Paine offered details:

A committee of twenty-six members of Congress, viz. two for each colony. Two Members from each House of Assembly, or Provincial Convention; and five representatives of the people at large, to be chosen in the capital city or town of each province, for and in behalf of the whole province, by as many qualified voters as shall think proper to attend from all parts of the province for that purpose … In this conference, thus assembled, will be united, the two grand principles of business, knowledge and power. The members of Congress, Assemblies, or Conventions, by having had experience in national concerns, will be able and useful counsellors, and the whole, being impowered by the people, will have a truly legal authority.[10]

These ideas emerged later in the principles of the American Constitution of 1787 after being ignored in America’s first national constitution, the Articles of Confederation. That constitution was designed by government, the Second Continental Congress soon after Independence was declared. No independent “Continental Charter,” or constitutional convention for the purpose of framing a government, as Paine had recommended, occurred at that time.

At least his idea of a unicameral legislature was right in line with the Articles. It was comprised of a single national Congress (but with limited powers). It too created no independent executive or judiciary. But Paine did not subscribe to what became the fatal flaw of the Articles, the superiority of state powers.

From the beginning, his instincts were nationalist. He argued repeatedly in Common Sense and other early writings in early 1776 that the “continental belt was too loosely buckled,” that unless the America acted in unison in such times, not only would it not achieve independence, but it would also be likely to fail even if it did.

Paine’s Common Sense was more than mere rabble rousing. Not only did the famous pamphlet help the colonies’ break their dependence on Great Britain, but it also outlined constructive ideas for the creation of a republican government for the nation.

It did not take long for John Adams to respond to Paine’s recommendations for governance. He rushed into print his own Thoughts on Government in the spring of 1776 to provide a counterpoint, an antidote to Paine’s prescriptions in Common Sense.[11] Advocating for a system of separation of powers and checks and balances, he argued vigorously for measures to ensure limits on popular government. And with that, a long-lasting debate began: Just how democratic should the republic be?

[1] Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (Alfred A. Knopf, 1997, 91-96.

[2] John Adams autobiography, part 1, “John Adams,” through 1776, sheet 23 of 53 (electronic edition). Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society. www.masshist.org/digitaladams/.

[3] Phillip S. Foner, The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, 2 vols. (The Citadel Press, 1969), 1:143-44.

[4] Ibid., 1:28.

[5] Ibid., 1:29.

[6] Edward S. Corwin, “The Progress of Constitutional Theory between the Declaration of Independence and the Meeting of the Philadelphia Convention,” in Gordon S. Wood, ed., The Confederation and the Constitution: The Critical Issues (Brown University Press, 1973), 33.

[7] Foner, The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, 1:52.

[8] Ibid., 1:8.

[9] Ibid., 1:7.

[10] Ibid., 1:28-29.

[11] Jett B. Conner, John Adams vs Thomas Paine: Rival Plans for the Early Republic (Westholme, 2018), 29-47.