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“Resolved,” read his Resolutions of the Houseof Representatives of Massachusetts in 1765, “that there are certain essential rights of the British constitution of government which are founded in the law of God and nature and are the common rights of mankind.”
In his statement of the Rights of the Colonists (1772) we are assured that “among the natural rights of the colonists are these, First, a right to Life; secondly to Liberty; thirdly to Property. . . . All men have a Right to remain in a State of Nature as long as they please. . . When Men enter into Society, it is by voluntary consent.”
Jean-Jacques himself could not be more bland, nor at heart more fiercely demagogic.
“Tom” Paine would have been no match for “Sam” Adams in a town-meeting, but he was an even greater pamphleteer.
He had arrived from England in 1774, at the age of thirty-eight, having hitherto failed in most of his endeavors for a livelihood.
“Rebellious Staymaker; unkempt,” says Carlyle; but General Charles Lee noted that there was “genius in his eyes,” and he bore a letter of introduction from Franklin commending him as an “ingenious, worthy young man,” which obtained for him a position on the Pennsylvania magazine.
Before he had been a year on American soil, Paine
New Haven. Yale University. Press. 1921.
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