Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England, and emigrated to Philadelphia in 1774. His pamphlet Common Sense (1776) became a central text behind the call for independence, and his American Crisis essays supported the Revolutionary cause. Returning to Europe, he defended the French Revolution in Rights of Man (1791-1792), was outlawed in Britain and was elected to the French National Convention, where he opposed the execution of Louis XVI and was later imprisoned. He returned to the United States during the Peace of Amiens. He is associated here with the United States, where his most influential work was written.

Paine is credited with one of the most widely read pamphlets of the American Revolution and with popularizing arguments for universal rights, democratic republics and public social provision. Historians of the welfare state point to Agrarian Justice as an early proposal for a universal capital grant and old-age pensions, and advocates of basic income often cite it. Radicals and reformers in Britain read Rights of Man for decades after its publication. Critics in his own time saw him as a dangerous radical. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that on his return to America he was vilified for his radicalism, his deism and his bitter public critique of Washington. Conservatives such as Edmund Burke rejected his view that each generation may remake its government, and religious critics condemned The Age of Reason. Few people attended his funeral in 1809.