Opening of the book
COMMON SENSE;
addressed to the
INHABITANTS
of
AMERICA,
On the following interesting
SUBJECTS
I. Of the Origin and Design of Government in general, with concise Remarks on the English Constitution.
II. Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession
III. Thoughts on the present State of American Affairs
IV. Of the present Ability of America, with some
miscellaneous Reflections
A new edition, with several additions in the body of the work. To which is added an appendix; together with an address to the people called Quakers.
Man knows no Master save creating Heaven
Or those whom choice and common good ordain.
Thomson.
PHILADELPHIA
Printed and sold by W. & T. Bradford, February 14, 1776.
MDCCLXXVI
Common Sense
By Thomas Paine
INTRODUCTION.
Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.
As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means of calling the right of it in question (and in Matters too which might never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry) and as the
King of England hath undertaken in his own Right, to support the Parliament in what he calls Theirs, and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpation of either.
In the following sheets, the author hath studiously avoided every thing which is personal among ourselves. Compliments as well as censure to
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