Common Sense by Thomas Paine:
annotations & paraphrase
Annotations
Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor[s1]; 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 defence of custom[s2]. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.[s3]
As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means of calling the right of it in question[s4] (and in matters too which might never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry[s5]) and as the King of England had undertaken in his own Right[s6], 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.
RHETORICAL ANALYSIS PARAPHRASE, PARAGRAPHS 1-2.
Pain says that his unpopular argument is only unpopular because it’s wise. To keep his audience happy he does not accuse the American people of deliberately taking the coward’s way out, but does say that people have NOT been calling what’s wrong “wrong,” at that this has caused many to think of what’s wrong as what’s right. He will then go on to seemingly improvise on the many meanings of what’s “right.” He adds that Time will convert non-believers to his point of view.
Taking that auditory cue at the mention of semi-religious language (convert), he will also assume that the oppression of the colonists has led to the British subjects’ assuming an innate rightness to Britain’s behavior, and will assert that the logic of freedom is also innate and gives the people “privilege” to revolt. He states that if revolution weren’t the “right” thing to do, then the idea wouldn’t have come up in the first place. Paine’s logic is both strangely clear while taking many twists and turns to arrive at his conclusions (notice that the second paragraph is ONE sentence, and even includes a parenthetical comment within that very long sentence). Part of this highly elevated rhetoric is undoubtedly dependent on the fact that this is writing rather than speech. By comparison, the first couple of paragraphs to Patrick Henry’s “Liberty or Death” speech might sound overly simple, even somewhat crude or simplistic.
[s1]This pamphlet contains unpopular opinions.
[s2]This APHORISM establishes the PREMISE to his logic: people will defend what they have neglected to think of as wrong (thus, by default, have come to think of as right)
[s3]Ironically, Paine begins his “common sense” argument by suggesting that most people do NOT have common sense at all…thus the urgency of his writing
[s4]Power logically leads to its own destruction by providing people with a reason to rebel
[s5]PARADOX is implied: Being oppressed has the positive outcome of inspiring those who suffer to go beyond a simple rebellion and to question further
[s6]PUN: Capitalizes “right” to pun both on the meaning of “in one’s own right,” as in on one’s own ability, and the popular idea of Divine Right of Kings begun just over a hundred years before by King James I. He also indicates in the next few words that the common people have an “undoubted privilege” (or, a “right” given to humanity by nature and god) to question those rights and to “reject the usurpation” of their natural rights through an act of usurpation itself (overthrowing the British government). This is a kind of “fight fire with fire” logical. It is a kind of ontological argument he is using, which essentially validates the existence of something by asserting that the ability to question an assumption proves the validity of the thing being questioned. This was a popular Rationalist formula used by theologists to prove the existence of innate morality and even to prove the existence of God.