not by any great intellectual advantage or political acuity, but because either they were born into a dynastic line by accident or birth they end up ruling millions of people. or because they are the upstart young man who has killed the previous dynasty of kings and said i think i can do better. which is how every new dynasty at least in the british royal family is often started. so payne appoints all these things out to american readers and labels them and frames them as absurdities. so problem is sizing the conventional wisdom, the status quo and saying we don't have to accept the way it is, we have it in our power to begin the world over again. which of course then takes us into the current state of affairs between america and the british government, which by january of 1776 -- these two

sides leads to open arms hostilities. we already had lexington and concord and bunker hill so the question pain is asking by section three of this short punchy pamphlet is are we going to keep taking more abuse, more perceived here any more tax policies, are we going to cope -- go cap in hand with a list of grievances that the king can reconcile for us? or are we going to break away and say enough is enough and seek independence? as an alternative and then in part for he makes the case that we can and that we will win. peter: let's hear from some of our viewers and let's begin with dan in bridgewater new jersey. good evening to you at your on c-span, please go ahead. caller: as a refugee coming to this country i read this thomas payne pamphlet many times and i have to say i don't see what's

the big deal. i don't think it's a major item of historical importance or political science importance or analytical importance. it seems to me it was more serving interests in the real american revolution to my mind came around the 1960's when the debate over the individual and his rights in his well-being were so predominant. but at that time, and if you look at what happened in this country afterwards it was not really democracy as freedom to rule but rather democracy as a political and economic interest for several classes. richard: peter: we're going to leave it there and get a response from our guest. richard: thank you for the comment there. it is certainly true that to seek independence leaves a lot of unanswered questions about the nature of the governmental

system. the republic that may follow it and who is going to be enfranchised to vote and who is not. and pain as someone who considered himself a friend of a broad participatory democracy was certainly disappointed and disillusioned to see that not as many people, not even every white man, got the vote in the american republic. that immediately followed the end of the war in 1783. we could debate of course for a long time whether common sense is the most important political pamphlet and i think people with different interests would reach different conclusions but people at the time certainly thought that it mounted an explosive challenge to the conventional wisdom about monarchies as an established institution.

but it did so in the form of putting forward an argument for separate nationhood and political independence that had not been quite so crystallized by anyone out loud before. and then it use the plain spoken language of a tavern keeper, of ordinary folks in the street, to drum up support for a political program. in those ways i think it was in arguably revolutionary. peter: and here is another example of thomas payne's writing and common sense. why is it that we hesitate from britain we can expect nothing but ruin. if she has admitted to the government of america again, this continent will not be worth living in from the errors of other nations. let us learn wisdom. well ian ruskin is an actor who impersonates thomas payne and here he is talking about thomas

payne's writing style. >> i wrote it in short simple sentences and i wrote it to appeal to my readers best in higher self. i also said the greatest military power on earth, we could win but in short simple sentences. 'tis not in -- but in unity that our great strength lies. yet our present numbers are sufficient to repel the force of all the world. the cause of america is in great measure the cause of all mankind, in america the law is king. society in every state is a blessing, the government even in its best state is a necessary evil. in its worst state and intolerable one. let me expand on this because it causes much misunderstanding. we are all society and in an

ideal situation we would all aid and support each other each contributing to the common good. a blessing. but since we have not yet reached such an enlightened state we must turn to the necessary evil of government to restrain our vices and to provide the support that we cannot provide ourselves for the common good of the people. peter: that was thomas payne impersonator ian ruskin talking about thomas payne's writing style. back to calls. robert in connecticut. good evening. caller: good evening thank you for c-span. you ought to mention there was a one and a half percent rate of tax, what was that assessed on? property. income. what was the tax rate 10 years earlier? and what was the tax rate of other jurisdictions of the british? thank you. peter: richard any answer for the echo richard: just a quick

one at the outset historians continue to debate and refine with the rates of taxation were for any colonial jurisdiction and how they changed over time. so i don't think there is actually an agreed-upon consensus rate that every historian would sign off on. at this point. what i can tell you is that taxation via the stamp act was on the commercial use of paper in the american and caribbean and canadian colonies. so think of all of the stuff we buy that is made of paper. folks back then used by a lot of the stuff made out of paper, newspapers, prices went up. we could be talking about a pack of playing cards. the price just one up. we could be talking about a liquor license, the price just went up, or a court document, the price just went up. the stamp act really outweighed a large cross-section of the american colonists not just folks in the colonies but also the caribbean colonies in the canadian provinces.

and then town should duties came next after appeal of the stamp act, they were handed down in 1767 and they did not only tax paper they also added a whole plethora group of other manufactured imported goods. cloth. fabric. tea and and painters -- all of the things you brought off of a ship cotton -- suddenly all of the things were more expensive. and tea actually lower the price of legally imported tea but the stamp act and the town should act certainly raise the price of the stuff we buy. so it is not being imposed on land or savings accounts or wealth or income it is being imposed to the point of sale is what we would call in the u.k. a value added tax. richard: peter: did the pamphlet mention

anything about violence or rebellion and/or revolution or was it just an elucidation of ideas for the people to read and consider? richard: great question. we should be clear here that pain here is advocating that the purpose of continuing military conflict should be the singular goal of political separation. he is not advocating starting a war because awards already started. lexington and concorde is widely considered to be the outbreak of the american revolutionary war and that was nine months old by the time this pamphlet dropped in january. i am not going to put causing a war on thomas payne's shoulders but he wants that war to mean something. he wanted to have a purpose. he wanted to achieve something tangible and meaningful that he hopes will last forever. peter: what was his relationship with the elite of the american colonies? the other founding fathers, we

have one quote we would like to share which is john adams called common sense a poor, ignorant, malicious, short sighted crop he was mass. thomas payne is said about john adams it has been the political career of this man to begin -- proceed with arrogance and finish with contempt. they do not have a close relationship obviously. but what was payne's relationship with the other? richard: difficult intense sometimes. the founding fathers we think of immediately, washington and adams. jefferson and madison, hamilton, franklin. folks like that. they're all on the same team if i can use a sports analogy. they all by the middle of 1776, around the time of the declaration would see themselves as in favor of independence which is exactly the political project that thomas payne is advocating for in common sense. but like the members of any team it does not mean they all got

along or that there was not any nuance in that particular individual agenda. thomas payne is a friend of working people in a way that few other founding fathers were intuitively. let's just say that. think about, we could go deep of course into the different biographies here but tom payne is the son of -- is the immigrant son of an english corset maker. a manual laborer. with the possible exception of ben franklin who was a printer i think he is the only founding father who ever worked with his hands and got them dirty. he was a member of the working class. so he has a bone deep sympathy for working people in a way that college graduate john adams, patricia land didn't like jefferson and washington, had to struggle to really connect.

that means their relations were often tense and difficult and i think adams in particular who always fancied himself as a voice of the people, often found he was being upstaged by someone with greater talents for speaking in the language of the working class than himself. peter: thomas payne did have a relationship with a lesser-known founding father dr. benjamin rush. in philadelphia, biographer stephen freed talked about their relationship and the importance of that relationship in getting common sense published. >> hi my name is stephen freed we are here at the american philosophical society in philadelphia in the center of the historic district in philly. in front of me is the autobiography of benjamin rush, handwritten by his kid in 1800. -- for his kid in 1800. one of the things he described is how he met thomas payne and how common sense came about.

when thomas payne moved to philadelphia to be a writer and hopefully a teacher, rush was a well-known intellectual and physician and was friends with the people who would come for the first continental congress with john adams and others. and he was interested in writing about independence himself but he was afraid. he had written about slavery and had lost many of his clients because he was against slavery. he knew that somebody needed to write an explanatory piece explaining to people why independence should not be scary to them and why it was important to understand that. he believed in explanatory writing. so he thought when he met thomas payne, payne was a really good writer. and if it all went bad for pain it would not be as bad as if it all went bad for him. and he actually wrote this to his kid. let me read a little from what he said. he said about the year 1774 certain thomas payne arrived in philadelphia from england with a letter of recommendation from dr. franklin. he was waiting for employment,

he started running for united states magazine. he did this with great ability and in one of my visits to the bookstore and met with mr. pain and was introduced to him. his conversation became most interesting i asked them to visit me which she did a few days after. our subject of conversation was political, i perceived that he realized the independence of the american colonies upon great britain and that he considered the measure as necessary to bring the war to a speedy and successful issue. before this interview i put some of my thoughts on paper about the subject and was preparing to address the inhabitants of the colonies upon it but i hesitated at the time and shuddered at the prospect of the consequences of it not being well received. mention the subject to mr. pain and asked him what he thought about writing a pamphlet and suggested to him if he had nothing to fear from the popular odium to which such a publication might expose him for he could live anywhere. basically rush saying i have to live here but you could leave town if you write this and that would be ok. so they made this deal that they would do this piece of writing together and pain began coming

to russia's house with pages during the fall of 1775 and by the end of the year they had finished a draft. rush instructed him to show it to him including dr. franklin and then got a printer. they change the name, pain had originally wanted to call it plain truth rush convinced them to call it common sense and in early january of 1776 it was published. no one ever could have predicted what an unbelievable publishing phenomenon it would have become overnight. peter: richard bell as we were watching that you started chuckling. why? richard: the title story is one that is lovely. we think of common sense this pamphlet by thomas payne, to be this manna from heaven. at the sky pops into the story of the coming of the american revolution, actually an english immigrant. he is aggrieved with great written for personal reasons and

righteous -- writes this anti-british diatribe and to put it mildly moves the needle. yet as we heard from steve friede who wrote this excellent book about regimen rush that it was slightly more collaborative than that. benjamin rush is one of the people suggesting that pain turned to the subject matter for a standalone pamphlet. he previously had been an editor of the literary magazine, the draft may have gone to benjamin franklin for review and edits although that is hard to cooperate. and then it was benjamin rush not thomas payne who even came up with the amazing title for this pamphlet. i do not know whether or not benjamin rush knew that tom payne had used to publish under the pseudonym common sense but i expected they became friendly and that was a little detail that came out in that conversation and that is why rush said how about your old nickname?

how about common sense? because the great genius of common sense is that it is not actually common sense. people don't know this stuff already, they have not put -- put two and two together but thomas payne's genius is to make them think it is the only way to think from now on. it becomes common sense but it is not common sense when they open the cover and get started. richard: peter: bev in ohio. caller: thank you for the series and taking my question. as someone who is currently teaching a class on the founders i wanted to ask the professor since he did already mention about the fact that basically the war had already started, lexington and concord and bunker hill or whatever, how much we compare the influence of thomas payne's pamphlet to the argument presented by robert parkinson in the common cause and 13 clocks that it was the fear that the

newspapers were presenting throughout all of the counties that the british were promoting slave insurrections and indigenous people going to rise up and they're going to support them and richard henry lee who actually made the proposal for the declaration, he actually said after dunmore proclamation about offering the freedom to slaves who abandoned their patriot masters, in the words of henry lee himself he said dunmore united, every man in the colony of virginia so was that -- it had to be unanimous. it was that fear -- how much of a role did that play in really convincing all of them to ultimately agree to independence as compared to how much influence payne's pamphlet had? peter: tell us a little about

your class. caller: it is called the founding fathers of america, the role and impact of compromise so discussing -- peter: where do you teach? caller: it is an adult organization called the institute of learning in retirement. here in the area and southwest -- suburbs of southwest cleveland. so that's what i'm currently teaching that in, i am including this because it's amazing. as i have already mentioned common sense, so thursday when i returned back to class this is going to be pretty exciting being able to mention to individuals that i did get my question on here. peter: good and two things were going to get an answer from richard but i want to point out our website again. c-span.org/books that shaped america, if you go to the top of that website you will see

teacher resources up there. it might be something else for you to check out. so, richard what would you like to say? richard: it is such a great comment from bev. the first thing i would say is i am here as part of the series to talk about a book that shaped america. the book we're talking about tonight is common sense which i think certainly shaped america in some of the ways peter and i have started to talk about back-and-forth and hear from other people in video segments. it does not diminish payne's achievement, common sense achievement in moving the needle towards independence to say that there are other factors moving that needle at the same time. bev referenced two excellent books by robert parkinson who teaches at binghamton university. one called 13 clocks in one called the common cause and they both make the argument that it's actually newspaper coverage of certain hot button cultural

issues over the previous 12 months or so before july of 1776. that would predate common sense, that moves those 13 clocks to strike it once and parkinson's argument is a controversial one. is that it is racialized fears and anxieties about enslaved people freeing themselves and staging revolts with the kings help. that so-called savage natives are battering down our doors and that the kings dispatched german mercenaries, the haitians, to torture and murder every american colonist. that those fears at the door are what pushed people to think about separate nationhood as an alternative to remaining under the kings purview. i think parkinson can be right and i think thomas payne can be read at the same time. and by the way one more thing,

tom payne does mention dunmore's proclamation, this royal governor in virginia who threatens -- who does encourage enslaved men to flee to the british army. so that is actually mentioned in tom paine's common sense as a crossover moment between what bev is talking about and what thomas payne is talking about. peter: michael from san francisco, did thomas and david hume and david human in the scottish enlightenment have an influence on thomas payne and his age of reason resembles book three of hobbs leviathan? richard: there is a lot we don't know about what thomas payne read. i think many sophisticated readers of his work have spotted shadows and influences of other political theorists and scientists. david hume being an obvious to chronological contemporary. also british in origin. i think hume was scottish.

we don't have tom paine's reading diary. we don't have his grade school teachers leaving a summer reading list so we do not know what he read in what order or what he made of it. it has been up to sophisticated scholars to try to parse those details but certainly he had a grammar school education back in england that equipped him with not just literacy skills but a voracious intellectual curiosity. peter: speaking of back in england at what point did you find yourself interested in the american society? [laughter] richard: i grew up in england not ever being taught anything about the american revolutionary war which is probably because england was the losing side in that conflict and i think every nation has a habit of reflexively telling its schoolchildren stories in which their home nation looks good. so i learned a lot about world war ii when of course britain

single-handedly fought the nazis without any help from any other country. that is the help -- the history i learned when i was small. so i came late to the subject of the american revolution. of course a founding moment for the country that i now call home as a naturalized citizen and the more time i spend with it the more complicated and fascinating and intricate i find it. i just want to learn more and more every day about this conflict which i was in grammar school in england. peter: how do you teach thomas payne at the university of maryland? richard: he is taught pretty widely in many departments i teach in history so in the context we are talking about tonight. but i would wager some of my colleagues in political science or in rhetoric and communications would talk about it as well. politics philosophy and economics. when i teach thomas payne i talk about how it works, how as a piece of writing payne is able to make arguments which if

anyone else made them would seem preposterous and prone to being dismissed but payne somehow gets away with it. i talk about his confidence on the page as a writer. i talk about his calculative simplicity as a stylist of words. and i share one passage in common sense, which i would encourage all of you watching to take a look at one of these days, in which thomas payne imagines what we in america would do once we declared independence and embraced a republic. he says that every year, he does not say every july 4 but it might as well be, we in america should get together for a ceremony reminding us of why we are different from the people we separated from who are still committed to constitutional monarchy. he said we should all gather in a central place, think about the national mall in washington dc which definitely did not exist at the time, and we should have a ceremony on a stage where somebody brings out the bible,

to show we are a nation of christian faith. someone else brings out the american charter, think about the constitution which had not been written when thomas payne wrote this. and you should put the constitution on top of the bible to show that the constitution as a system of law is divinely rooted in the judeo-christian tradition and then someone else should come out with a crown. may be a real crown that they have stolen from a king somewhere like george the third or maybe a burger king paper crown they got from the local fast food restaurant. they put the crown on top of the constitution which is on top of the bible and this symbolizes that in america the law is the king not the king making the law. it is a wonderfully symbolic ceremony he is imagining and at the end of that ceremony he imagines we do every year someone else will bring out a giant hammer and smash the crown into a thousand pieces and everyone gets a piece to show that they are the center of republican power. it is astonishing to me. peter: a little more writing

from common sense to me. of more worth is one honest man to society than in the sight of god than all the crown ruffians that ever lived, until dependence is declared the continent will feel itself ke a man who continues putting off some unpleasant business from day to day yet knows it must be done, hates to set about it, wishes it over and is continually haunted with the thoughts of his necessity. jerry, largo florida. good evening thank you for joining us. caller: thank you, hello gentlemen. i just have a brief comment and the question. earlier mr. bell mentioned charles the third. i think he misspoke and probably meant -- richard: thank you for the correction. caller: in our nation right now everybody agrees we are a divided nation. it might be time for it common

sense to --2 to be written from either side because the time might be right. we do have wild mom saluting our cities and contested elections and maybe the time to consider some type of separation has come. thank you sir. peter: anything you want to weigh in on there? richard: certainly powers of political persuasion are certainly always in high demand in times of national stress. peter: mark in bridgewater massachusetts. caller: good evening to you and good evening to your esteemed guests. professor bell, you must agree with me that thomas payne was probably one of the most provocative writers that ever existed ever and all of history. he must have had access to certain information from some of

the people that he connected with in england back in the day. when he came up with statements like king george was receiving 800,000 pound sterling annually and that he and the ministry were giving large tracts of land away to their cronies in the colonies. even before 76. my wife and i just visited baja this summer and i realized that one of those prizes went to governor hutchinson who is a master suit -- massachusetts governor back in the 60's. he had been awarded the entire peninsula which comprises baja -- could you possibly make a comment about where thomas payne was gaining access to some of this information? thank you very much. richard: thank you mark for the question.

certainly graft is a feature of any bureaucracy in the british empire is certainly an example of a bloated bureaucracy at the end of the 18th century. i think of british india at the time when humble english civil servants will go to india on a tour of duty, effectively in the embassy over there, but would come back astonishingly wealthy. where had the got all of that money? rtuns abound in organizations like an empire. some of that was public knowledge. the british newspapers, and thomas payne lived in england until 1774 remember, the british newspapers were not the governments pocket like some of them still today. they were often fierce critics of government for waste and abuse. it is entirely possible