10 January

Tom Paine’s pamphlet, ‘Common Sense’, first published on 10 January 1776, in the year that America declared its independence from Britain, sold 150,000 copies in its first edition and half a million eventually as the rebellious colony of 1.5 million people flocked to read his polemic against the legitimacy of kings and in favour of the rights of man.

In 1791, his pamphlet entitled ‘The Rights of Man’, supporting the French Revolution, led him to be charged with sedition in Britain. But it was his later publication, The Age of Reason, attacking Christian theology and the bible, that caused him to be widely ostracised in America – a far cry from the huge acclaim that greeted ‘Common Sense’.

‘Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

‘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 . . . ’