The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

242 THE FREEMAN Apriltion. George Washington said thatit "worked a powerful change inthe minds of many men," and thetestimony of other contemporariesas well as historians confirms thisjudgment.That this little pamphlet shouldhave had such currency and impactmust surely be attributed to thefact that it encapsulated an ideawhose time had come rather thanto the character of its author. Fewwould have predicted before 1776that Thomas Paine would have theniche in history which he gained.He was born in Norfolk, England,the son of a staymaker. He hadnot done well as a governmentclerk, as a husband, or as managerof his own financial affairs. BenjaminFranklin encouraged him tocome to America in 1774, whichhe did, to be made editor of thePennsylvania Magazine. Somehowhe grasped the tendency of thecurrents in the new land and wasable to render them into languagewhich moved his lately acquiredfeIiow countrymen, the phrases ofwhich still ring with power aftertwo centuries.Paine took as his task in CommonSense the convincing of Americansthat the time had come forindependence. He sought to convincethem that the time wasright, that they could succeed, andthat their fears of the consequencesof independence should beseen in contrast with the certaintiesof ruin if they did not followthe indicated course.The body of the work begins ina peculiar way; it is theoreticaland apparently remote from hisobject. He iterates the distinctionbetween government and society,a distinction which, he says, peoplefrequently do not take care inmaking. Society, he points out, isnatural in origin; it arises out ofthe need of man for his fellows.Government, by contrast, is a construct,albeit a necessary one. Thepoint was quite germane, however.Paine was commending to a peoplethat they cast off the governmentover them. If government and societycan be distinguished onefrom the other, they can be separated.To rend society might beruinous, but to cast off a governmentwhich was not performingits allotted function would onlyprovide the opportunity for somethingmuch better.Attack on MonarchyMuch of Paine's rhetoric wasaimed at monarchy in general andin particular. The colonists, manyof them, had shifted in their thinkingto the point where they werewilling to acknowledge their allegianceonly to the king. This wasthe remaining cord to be severed.Of the institution of monarchy,Paine said: