Melvyn Bragg and Professors from Universities discuss about Thomas Paine and his Common Sense pamphlet. Paine argued that colonies should stop resolving their dispute with Britain and declare independence immediately. Some American were appalled and more were inspired. Paine wanted to attack monarchy.
Kathleen Burk, a professor of Modern and Contemporary History at University college London discusses about Paine. Thomas was a self-made man and he debated really well. When he moved to London, he became an excise man and had an excise mind. He started to write on the defense why they need more money. Thomas was sent to London to try the London parliament for two years. The Common Sense was actually not his first political …show more content…
of Oxford discusses about Quakerism. Thomas was Anti- religious. He famously said “my own my mind is my own church” and he wasn’t bound by the denominational aspects of Quakerism. Secular values, associated with Quakerism were important in his background. Quakers were radically egalitarian and it believed in the perfectibility of mankind. But these values informed Paine’s own democratic practice. Quakers were anti-authoritarian, but Thomas was. When they say “perfectibility of man”, it meant that people could improve. Politically, that’s very valuable to Paine. He argues that America can succeed and America has the right stuff to make a republic work. Paine found the whole colony of Philadelphia as a holy experiment. The experiment was, if you took the oppressed people of Europe from all different nationalities and religions, and gave minimal government, the result would not be bad, but a city of brotherly love. By 1774, it produced Benjamin Franklin. Paine saw that compared to England, the corruption, Philadelphia was well place. Benjamin gave him a letter that introduced him to start in journalism. Because he was a self-made man and anti-authoritarian, he had a lot of