Essay On Thomas Paine

Centered on rationality and open discussion, Enlightenment ideals focused on the ability to think and make arguments based logic and clarity of thought rather than traditional values. With this, religious and conventional concepts changed, making people look for evidence and not rely on what was told to them by those in positions of authority. One of the most influential of these pioneers was John Locke, whose subversive conclusions about the contract between the populace, their government, and natural rights changed the perception of the national state since. A British colony, the Americas quickly discovered the European ideas from across the ocean and adopted and integrated them into the intellectual culture. Profoundly influenced by the

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense had a profound effect on the populace of the American colonies and contributed to swaying the general opinion towards rebellion. The colonial revolutionary outlined and listed out prominent arguments reasons for revolution, going point by point, refuting counterclaims, and “[offering] nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense” in his widely distributed pamphlet arguing for the revolt against Britain (Paine 2). Based on John Locke, Paine emphasized the concepts of right of revolution and a contract between the government and people, easily convincing an already disgruntled populace of tyranny on England’s part and heightening emotions simmering under the surface. Stating that “not a single advantage is derived” from the colonial loyalty to Britain and all that is “right or natural pleads for separation” (Paine 4). Events such as the French and Indian War and the institution of new taxation in response to unrest in North America displeased the previously loyal

As Thomas Paine stated in his influential pamphlet, “it is something very absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island” and the colonists keenly felt the disparity in size (Paine 5). Thomas Jefferson succinctly said this when paraphrasing John Locke’s natural rights and changing property to “the pursuit of happiness”- the colonists did not just believe that the King denied them farmland, but ultimately that he denied the path to happiness for them (Jefferson 2). Later, these arguments on extension of settlement came to form the basis of Manifest Destiny and the romanticized west, rugged settlers against savage Indians and the wild. These settlers had a god-given right to the land they deemed the Native Americans did not use correctly in the quest for prosperity and success and if a monarch could not deter them, then neither should the native inhabitants of the