Thomas Paine: Rights Revolution and Reform

Thomas Paine, a historic intellectual and liberal philosopher, aided in the transformation of the western world by instating revolutionary principles of independence, absolute rights, and republicanism through the writing of his renowned literary works. However, Thomas Paine was not born a revolutionary man. Before 1776, Thomas Paine was a man of great failure. He obtained through his many setbacks, characteristics required of influential, political leaders, such as strength, bravery, drive, and perseverance that prepared his way to becoming a highly revered political activist. It was because of these qualities and the accompaniment of destiny that Thomas Paine was able to become one of the most acknowledged political thinkers and revolutionaries of all time.
Born in Thetford, England in 1737, Thomas Paine was a man of humble origins. As Eric Forner writes in Tom Paine and Revolutionary America, “It would be foolhardy indeed to predict that a child born in Thetford would become one of the leading figures of the eighteenth-century world” (Foner 1). Paine’s family, however, was not impecunious in the least. His father was a Quaker, stay-maker, and a small farmer, while his mother was the daughter of a local attorney. By forgoing many of their own desires, his parents were able to save enough money to send Thomas Paine to grammar school, a luxury that many young men did not dare to dream of in the early 1700s.
Paine attended grammar school for seven years. At the age of 13, he apprenticed as a stay-maker under his fathers close watch. Stay making is the art of manufacturing whalebone stays that are used in corsets. Paine felt that the trade was not for him. After twelve years in the trade, he left stay making to work aboard a ship. His dream of sailing the seas, however, failed and he returned to stay making under the guidance of Mr. Morris of London. In 1759, Thomas Paine, with the financial aid of Mr. Morris, erected his own stay making shop in Sandwich. It was in Sandwich where he met his first wife, Mary Lambert. Unfortunately, Mary passed away in 1760, only months after the wedding. Mary’s father encouraged Paine to relinquish stay making and become a part of the Excise Services.
Paine returned to his hometown of Thetford to study for the excise officers’ examination, which required a great deal of knowledge and skill in both mathematics and in writing. He was an officer for three years before being officially ousted by the Excise Board for a common mistake. He attempted to practice stay making once again, but moved to London shortly after. For a couple years, Thomas Paine taught at an academy, making half of his previous salary as an excise officer.
In 1768, after constructing a letter of apology to the Excise Board, Paine was permitted to continue his work as an excise officer in Lewes, Sussex. He remarried and ran a tobacconist shop while still collecting excise taxes at his post. However, Paine was dissatisfied with his lifestyle and career. He wanted more. Paine dreamt of a profession that incorporated all of his skills. To society and himself he seemed a failure, however, destiny had something great in store for Thomas Paine. He was born to be a revolutionary. Thomas Paine decided to try his luck in America in 1774, a decision that would literally make history.
Thomas Paine arrived in the American Colonies at the most opportune time. He wrote a pamphlet that would set fire to a revolution that would burn throughout the unsettled and dejected British-ruled colonies of North America. This pamphlet, he titled Common Sense. As Thomas Paine stated in The American Crisis, “When my country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir” (Paine 84). This was the inspiration of his writing. Through Common Sense, Thomas Paine was able to bring to attention the political issues that were problematic within the American colonies. He brought about revolutionary ideas and helped to ignite a war with Great Britain. Thomas Paine, from this point on, was no longer the failed excise officer he had previously been. On the contrary, he was a successful writer and had single-handedly created one of the most influential literary works in American history.
After the war in America, Paine returned to Europe to compose a second radical pamphlet, The Rights of Man. He finished writing on January 29th, 1791; however, he had trouble finding a brave publisher that would publish his controversial writing. His book was published and finalized on March 13th, 1791 by J.S. Jordan, three weeks after it’s original, projected publication due date. As suggested by William Blake, Paine then fled to Paris to ensure his safety.
Paine’s booklet, The Rights of Man, was a response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. In his literary work, Burke heavily supported the decisions of the royal family. Paine was disgusted by his approval of the royal family and his “indifference towards the victims of the old regime” (Foner 215). In The Rights of Man, Paine fully supported and justified the Revolution in France, as well as, described the basic philosophy behind a republican government. The notorious pamphlet sold rapidly throughout the countryside, however the British government was not nearly as approving. In 1792, Thomas Paine was put on trial for seditious libel. It was in court where Thomas Paine spoke his famous words:
If to expose the fraud and imposition of monarchy, and every species of hereditary government — to lessen the oppression of taxes — to propose plans for the education of helpless infancy, and the comfortable support of the aged and distressed — to endeavor to conciliate nations with each other — to extirpate the horrid practice of war to promote universal peace, civilization and commerce and to break the chains of political superstition, and raise degraded man to his proper rank — if these things be libelous, let me live the life of a Libeler, and let the name of Libeler be engraved on my tomb. (Paine)
In February of 1792, Paine published what is known as his “greatest and boldest work” (Foner 216), The Rights of Man, Part Second. He claimed that the second book united, “principle and practice.” He sought to make a distinction between society and government. He wrote that society was, “natural and benevolent,” while government, “at, least in the Old World, was nothing more than ‘a disgustful picture of human wretchedness” (Foner 216). Paine fervently targeted the monarchy with his sequel to The Rights of Man.
Over 200,000 copies of The Rights of Man were sold before 1774. As stated in Tom Paine and Revolutionary America, “The Rights of Man helped to inspire the creation of new radical organizations with a social base far broader than the groups previously involved in the movement for Parliamentary reform” (Foner 220). Thomas Paine’s influence of western civilization is truly remarkable. His books encouraged philosophical and working-class men and women to challenge governmental policies that they saw unfit and unjust. He proved that an individual, with or without hereditary status, could be destined to change the world. The writings of Thomas Paine have been widely read. Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Edison, as well as nearly every American in the United States has at least heard of and, in most cases, have read part, or all of Thomas Paine’s literary works. Thomas Edison once stated:
I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic… It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine’s works in my boyhood… it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker’s views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me then about many matters of which I had never before thought.” (Edison vii)
Thomas Paine was an inspiration to many and is, even today, an unparalleled resource on governmental responsibility, republicanism, and the possession of indisputable rights.

Fast, Howard. The Selected Work Of Tom Paine & Citizen Paine. New York: Random House, Inc, 1945.
Foner, Eric. Tom Paine and Revolutionary America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
Keane, John. Tom Paine: A Political Life. Toronto: Little, Brown, & Company, 1995.
Paine, Tomas. The American Crisis. Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing, 2004.
Thomas Edison. Introduction to The Life and Works of Thomas Paine. New York: Citadel Press, 1945.