Common Sense
Glossary
"
- "The Royal Brute of Britain"
- Paine's epithet for George III, delivered as the punchline of his mock-ceremony for crowning the Continental Charter: "where is the King of America? I'll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain." The phrase compresses Paine's larger argument that kingship itself, not just this king's policies, is a form of institutionalized violence against the governed.
- Related: The King's Speech, Hereditary Succession
B
- Barclay's Address to Charles II
- A passage Paine quotes from the Quaker theologian Robert Barclay's address to Charles II, warning the king that having tasted both prosperity and exile he has special reason to know how hateful oppression is, and urging him to heed "that light of Christ which shineth in thy conscience." Paine cites it to shame the Quaker authors of the 1776 testimony for not applying the same forthright rebuke to George III that Barclay once applied to Charles.
- Related: The Quakers' Testimony
- Boston
- The occupied, blockaded city Paine holds up as reconciliation's human cost: its inhabitants, "but a few months ago... in ease and affluence," now have "no other alternative than to stay and starve, or turn out to beg... Endangered by the fire of their friends if they continue within the city, and plundered by the soldiery if they leave it." Paine uses Boston's suffering to press readers who have not personally lost a home or family member to ask whether they are even qualified to judge those who have.
- Related: The Nineteenth of April, Reconciliation
C
- Continental Charter
- Paine's proposed founding document, explicitly compared to Magna Carta — to be drafted by a special "Continental Conference" of congressional, assembly, and popularly elected delegates, fixing how representatives are chosen and securing "freedom and property to all men, and above all things, the free exercise of religion." Paine's closing image has the charter crowned in a public ceremony and the crown then smashed and scattered, since "in America the law is king."
- Related: Continental Congress, Dragonetti
- Continental Congress
- Both the existing body Paine credits with having "preserved this continent from ruin" during the crisis, and the enlarged institution he proposes for an independent America — an annual assembly of at least 390 delegates, with a president rotated by lot among the colonies and no law passing without three-fifths approval. Paine's structural point is that continental government must rest on wide, equal representation rather than a small clique.
- Related: Continental Charter, Dragonetti
D
- Dragonetti
- The Italian political writer Paine quotes to close his constitutional proposal: "The science of the politician consists in fixing the true point of happiness and freedom. Those men would deserve the gratitude of ages, who should discover a mode of government that contained the greatest sum of individual happiness, with the least national expense." Paine offers the quotation as a guiding maxim for whatever body eventually drafts America's government.
- Related: Continental Charter
G
- Gideon's Refusal
- Paine's scriptural proof-text against monarchy: after Gideon's victory over the Midianites, the Israelites offer to make him and his descendants hereditary kings, and he answers, "I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you. The Lord shall rule over you." Paine reads this as Gideon denying not just his own claim but the Israelites' right to grant it, making the episode scripture's direct rebuke of hereditary rule.
- Related: Samuel and the Demand for a King, Hereditary Succession
H
- Hereditary Succession
- The evil Paine adds to monarchy itself: "as the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the second, claimed as a matter of right, is an insult and an imposition on posterity." He argues no generation can bind its descendants to obey a particular family forever, and that nature itself mocks the doctrine "by giving mankind an ass for a lion" — an unfit heir succeeding a capable founder.
- Related: William the Conqueror, Gideon's Refusal
M
- Massanello
- Thomas Anello, a Neapolitan fisherman who, per Paine's footnote, "after spiriting up his countrymen in the public market place, against the oppressions of the Spaniards... became king" within a day. Paine invokes him as a warning: if America delays forming its own government, some ambitious adventurer could seize power amid the resulting disorder, as Massanello did.
- Related: William the Conqueror, Continental Charter
N
- National Debt
- Paine's argument that war debt, far from being a reason to avoid independence, is a manageable and even honorable cost: "No nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a national bond." He proposes selling the continent's vast unoccupied western lands to retire whatever debt independence requires, rather than leaving posterity a debt with no corresponding gain.
- Related: The American Navy Proposal
R
- Reconciliation
- The position Paine spends Chapters 4 through 6 dismantling: the hope, still widely held in early 1776, that America and Britain could patch up their quarrel and resume the old relationship. Paine calls it "a fallacious dream," arguing that even the best reconciliation would be only "a temporary expedient" that leaves the underlying conflict — and eventually a worse rupture — for the next generation to fight.
- Related: The Nineteenth of April, Boston
S
- Samuel and the Demand for a King
- Paine's second and longer scriptural case: when the Israelites demand a king "like all other nations," God tells Samuel, "they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them," and instructs him to warn them what kings will do — take their sons for soldiers, their daughters for servants, their fields and tithes for tribute. Paine treats the ensuing catalogue of royal exaction as scripture's permanent character sketch of kingship, concluding "monarchy in every instance is the Popery of government."
- Related: Gideon's Refusal, Hereditary Succession
- Sir John Dalrymple
- The author of "The Address of the People of England to the Inhabitants of America," quoted by Paine as an unwitting confession of royalist idolatry: Dalrymple argues colonists owe thanks to the king even for a ministry's popular acts, since it acted only "by whose nod alone." Paine seizes on the line as proof of how deep monarchical deference runs, calling anyone who accepts it an "apostate from the order of manhood."
- Related: The King's Speech
- Society vs. Government
- Paine's opening distinction, on which the whole pamphlet's logic depends: "Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness... Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one." The distinction lets Paine attack the British government without appearing to attack the bonds that hold people together — he can argue government has failed America while insisting society itself remains sound.
- Related: The English Constitution, Hereditary Succession
T
- The American Navy Proposal
- Paine's detailed case, backed by cost tables for British warships, that America could build a formidable fleet cheaply from its own timber, iron, and cordage — "No country on the globe is so happily situated, or so internally capable of raising a fleet as America." He argues a navy a fraction of Britain's size would still dominate American waters, since British ships would have thousands of miles to sail before engaging and returning to refit.
- Related: National Debt
- The English Constitution
- Paine's target in Chapter 2, praised by others as a balance of king, lords, and commons but dismantled by Paine as "the base remains of two ancient tyrannies, compounded with some new republican materials" — monarchy, aristocracy, and a commons whose virtue alone secures England's freedom. He calls the idea of three powers "reciprocally checking each other" farcical, since the same document that lets commons check the king also lets the king check commons, presupposing each is wiser than the other.
- Related: Society vs. Government, William the Conqueror
- The King's Speech
- George III's address to Parliament, which reached Philadelphia the same day Common Sense was first published — a coincidence Paine calls providential. He calls it "nothing better than a wilful audacious libel against the truth, the common good, and the existence of mankind," and credits it with converting readers to independence faster than his own pamphlet could, since "men read by way of revenge."
- Related: Sir John Dalrymple, Reconciliation
- The Nineteenth of April
- The date of the battles of Lexington and Concord (1775), which Paine treats as the hinge of the whole argument: "All plans, proposals, &c. prior to the nineteenth of April... are like the almanacks of the last year." He states that he personally "rejected the hardened, sullen tempered Pharaoh of England for ever" the moment news of that day's bloodshed arrived, making it the moment reconciliation stopped being realistic.
- Related: Reconciliation, Boston
- The Quakers' Testimony
- "The Ancient Testimony and Principles of the People called Quakers renewed," a public statement urging loyalty to the king that Paine answers at length in an appendix. He argues the authors contradict their own professed pacifism and quietism: having declared "the setting up and putting down of kings" to be "God's peculiar prerogative," they turn around and urge readers to actively defend the king's authority — a position Paine calls a direct "slap of the face" against their own stated principles.
- Related: Barclay's Address to Charles II
W
- William the Conqueror
- Paine's proof that England's monarchy has no honorable origin: "A French bastard landing with an armed banditti, and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original." Paine returns to him repeatedly — as evidence hereditary right rests on usurpation, not merit, and in Chapter 5 as a warning that a vacant American government invites "some fortunate ruffian" to conquer it the same way.
- Related: Hereditary Succession, The English Constitution