“No writer has exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of style, in perspicuity of expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple and unassuming language.”
Thomas Jefferson
“A pamphlet called ‘Commonsense’ makes a great noise. One of the vilest things that ever was published to the world. Full of false representations, lies, calumny, and treason, whose principles are to subvert all Kingly Governments and erect an Independent Republic.”
Nicholas Cresswell
“I dreaded the effect so popular a pamphlet might have among the people, and determined to do all in my Power to counteract the effect of it.”
John Adams
“Its effects were sudden and extensive upon the American mind. It was read by public men.”
Dr. Benjamin Rush
“Have you read the pamphlet Common Sense? I never saw such a masterful performance.… In short, I own myself convinced, by the arguments, of the necessity of separation.”
General Charles Lee
[Transcriber's Notes]
This production of the Bradford edition of Common Sense retains the original characteristics of the document—the author's use of capitalization (large and small), spelling, and italics.
The page numbers of this version of the book were my invention, for ease in reading the HTML document. The page numbers can more accurately be called paragraph numbers. They match the paragraph numbers in the edited text of ‘Common Sense’ from the National Humanities Center.
In one case, the text refers to page forty (see our [Page 130]). We provided a link to the appropriate part of our document but retained the page number specified by Paine. Our page numbers are not carried over to the Kindle, E-PUB, and text documents produced by Project Gutenberg.