Name: Remnant
Author: Fletcher Whitney

COMMON SENSE
Addressed to the Inhabitants of America
February 14, 1776
INTRODUCTION
PERHAPS the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not
YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a
long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial
appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable
outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides.
Time makes more converts than reason.
As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means
of calling the right of it in question (and in Matters too which
might never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been
aggravated into the inquiry) and as the King of England hath
undertaken in his OWN RIGHT, to support the Parliament in what
he calls THEIRS, and as the good people of this country are
grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted
privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally
to reject the usurpation of either.
In the following sheets, the author hath studiously avoided every
thing which is personal among ourselves. Compliments as well as
censure to individuals make no part thereof. The wise, and the
worthy, need not the triumph of a pamphlet; and those whose
sentiments are injudicious, or unfriendly, will cease of
themselves unless too much pains are bestowed upon their conversion.
The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all
mankind. Many circumstances hath, and will arise, which are
not local, but universal, and through which the principles of
all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which,
their Affections are interested. The laying a Country desolate
with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights
of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the
Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature
hath given the Power of feeling; of which Class, regardless
of Party Censure, is the AUTHOR.
THOUGHTS ON THE PRESENT STATE OF AMERICAN AFFAIRS
In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts,
plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other preliminaries
to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of
prejudice and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his
feelings to determine for themselves; that he will put ON, or
rather that he will not put OFF, the true character of a man,
and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day.
Volumes have been written on the subject of the struggle between
England and America. Men of all ranks have embarked in the
controversy, from different motives, and with various designs;
but all have been ineffectual, and the period of debate is closed.
Arms, as the last resource, decide this contest; the appeal
was the choice of the king, and the continent hath accepted the challenge.
The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. ‘Tis not the
affair of a city, a county, a province, or a kingdom, but of a
continent—of at least one eighth part of the habitable globe.
‘Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are
virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less
affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings now. Now
is the seed time of continental union, faith and honor. The
least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point
of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound will
enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters.
By referring the matter from argument to arms, a new area for
politics is struck; a new method of thinking hath arisen. All
plans, proposals, &c. prior to the nineteenth of April, i. e.
to the commencement of hostilities, are like the almanacs of
the last year; which, though proper then, are superseded and
useless now. Whatever was advanced by the advocates on either
side of the question then, terminated in one and the same point,
viz. a union with Great Britain: the only difference between
the parties was the method of effecting it; the one proposing
force, the other friendship; but it hath so far happened that
the first hath failed, and the second hath withdrawn her influence.
As much hath been said of the advantages of reconciliation,
which, like an agreeable dream, hath passed away and left us
as we were, it is but right, that we should examine the contrary
side of the argument, and inquire into some of the many material
injuries which these colonies sustain, and always will sustain,
by being connected with, and dependent on, Great Britain: To
examine that connection and dependence, on the principles of
nature and common sense, to see what we have to trust to, if
separated, and what we are to expect, if dependant.
I have heard it asserted by some, that as America hath flourished
under her former connection with Great Britain that the same
connection is necessary towards her future happiness, and will
always have the same effect. Nothing can be more fallacious than
this kind of argument. We may as well assert that because a child
has thrived upon milk that it is never to have meat, or that the
first twenty years of our lives is to become a precedent for the
next twenty. But even this is admitting more than is true, for
I answer roundly, that America would have flourished as much,
and probably much more, had no European power had any thing to
do with her. The commerce, by which she hath enriched herself,
are the necessaries of life, and will always have a market while
eating is the custom of Europe.
But she has protected us, say some. That she has engrossed us
is true, and defended the continent at our expense as well as
her own is admitted, and she would have defended Turkey from the
same motive, viz. the sake of trade and dominion.
Alas, we have been long led away by ancient prejudices, and
made large sacrifices to superstition. We have boasted the
protection of Great Britain, without considering, that her motive
was INTEREST not ATTACHMENT; that she did not protect us from
OUR ENEMIES on OUR ACCOUNT, but from HER ENEMIES on HER OWN
ACCOUNT, from those who had no quarrel with us on any OTHER
ACCOUNT, and who will always be our enemies on the SAME ACCOUNT.
Let Britain wave her pretensions to the continent, or the continent
throw off the dependence, and we should be at peace with France
and Spain were they at war with Britain. The miseries of Hanover
last war ought to warn us against connections.
It has lately been asserted in parliament, that the colonies
have no relation to each other but through the parent country,
i. e. that Pennsylvania and the Jerseys, and so on for the rest,
are sister colonies by the way of England; this is certainly a
very round-about way of proving relationship, but it is the
nearest and only true way of proving enemyship, if I may so
call it. France and Spain never were, nor perhaps ever will be
our enemies as AMERICANS, but as our being the SUBJECTS OF
GREAT BRITAIN.
But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more shame
upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young, nor
savages make war upon their families; wherefore the assertion,
if true, turns to her reproach; but it happens not to be true,
or only partly so and the phrase PARENT or MOTHER COUNTRY hath
been jesuitically adopted by the king and his parasites, with
a low papistical design of gaining an unfair bias on the
credulous weakness of our minds. Europe, and not England, is
the parent country of America. This new world hath been the
asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty
from EVERY PART of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the
tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the
monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny
which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their
descendants still.
I challenge the warmest advocate for reconciliation, to show a
single advantage that this continent can reap, by being connected
with Great Britain. I repeat the challenge, not a single advantage
is derived. Our corn will fetch its price in any market in Europe,
and our imported goods must be paid for buy them where we will.
But the injuries and disadvantages which we sustain by that
connection, are without number; and our duty to mankind at large,
as well as to ourselves, instruct us to renounce the alliance:
Because, any submission to, or dependence on Great Britain,
tends directly to involve this continent in European wars and
quarrels; and sets us at variance with nations, who would
otherwise seek our friendship, and against whom, we have neither
anger nor complaint. As Europe is our market for trade, we ought
to form no political connection with any part of it. It is the
true interest of America to steer clear of European contentions,
which she never can do, while, by her dependence on Britain,
she is made the make-weight in the scale of British politics.
Europe is too thickly planted with kingdoms to be long at peace,
and whenever a war breaks out between England and any foreign
power, the trade of America goes to ruin, BECAUSE OF HER
CONNECTION WITH BRITAIN. The next war may not turn out like the
last, and should it not, the advocates for reconciliation now
will be wishing for separation then, because, neutrality in
that case, would be a safer convoy than a man of war. Every
thing that is right or natural pleads for separation. The blood
of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, ‘TIS TIME TO
PART. Even the distance at which the Almighty hath placed
England and America, is a strong and natural proof, that the
authority of the one, over the other, was never the design of Heaven.
Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, are the
proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there
is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be
perpetually governed by an island. In no instance hath nature
made the satellite larger than its primary planet, and as
England and America, with respect to each other, reverses the
common order of nature, it is evident they belong to different
systems: England to Europe, America to itself.
O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the
tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old
world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round
the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her. Europe
regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning
to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an
asylum for mankind.
THOMAS PAINE