Paper details:
QUESTION ONE: How did Thomas Paine’s Common Sense help give revolutionaries in the Middle Colonies the courage to declare independence? Focus specifically on the opinions Paine expressed in support of republicanism, equality, and popular sovereignty in his writing, transcribed below. Describe the impact that Common Sense made on the revolutionaries as they prepared to declare independence. You must refer specifically to the passage below in your answer. If you quote from it, use quotation marks. But it is always better to paraphrase other peoples’ ideas. (Do not do an internet search. That material will not count in your answer. Limit your answers to content from class materials and the textbook.) OF MONARCHY AND HEREDITARY SUCCESSION Excerpt from Thomas Paine Common Sense MANKIND being originally equals in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance; the distinctions of rich, and poor, may in a great measure be [explained]… But there is another and greater distinction for which no truly natural or religious reason can be assigned, and that is, the distinction of men into KINGS and SUBJECTS. Male and female are the distinctions of nature, good and bad the distinctions of heaven; but how a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species, is worth inquiring into, and whether they are the means of happiness or of misery to mankind. To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession…For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever, and though himself might deserve some decent degree of honors of his contemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them. One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion…and though they might say, “We choose you for our head,” they could not…say, “that your children and your children’s children shall reign over ours forever.”… [It] is more than probable, that could we take off the dark covering of antiquity, and trace them to their first rise, that we should find the first of them nothing better than the principal ruffian of some restless gang, whose savage manners…obtained him the title of chief among plunderers; Did [hereditary succession] ensure a race of good and wise men it would have the seal of divine authority, but as it opens a door to the foolish, the wicked; and the improper, it hath in it the nature of oppression… The nearer any government approaches to a republic, the less business there is for a king. It is somewhat difficult to find a proper name for the government of England. Sir William Meredith calls it a republic; but in its present state it is unworthy of the name, because the corrupt influence of the crown, by having all the places in its disposal, hath so effectually swallowed up the power, and eaten out the virtue of the house of commons (the republican part in the constitution) that the government of England is nearly as monarchical as that of France or Spain. … it is the republican and not the monarchical part of the constitution of England which Englishmen glory in, viz. the liberty of choosing a house of commons from out of their own body– and it is easy to see that when the republican virtue fails, slavery ensues…
