Michael Hattem

government ceases to protect these natural rights and these natural laws.

John Locke argued then the people have a right to replace that government.

And of course, that happened in England shortly after his lifetime in 1688 when James II is deposed, right?

So there's relatively recent precedent for

you know, for this way of thinking, but it's sort of out there in the ether of the Age of Enlightenment is this, you know, reconsidering of the meaning and purpose of government.

Yeah, absolutely.

One of the things that's most striking about Paine's pamphlet

is his attacks on monarchy itself right if we think about the declaration of independence it attacks george iii right specifically it doesn't attack monarchy itself and in all of the patriot literature and writings from this whole crisis in the decade before there are no anti-monarchy arguments right that's not what they're that's not what they're doing it's not what they're thinking but pain the thing that sets pain apart in some ways

is his anti-monarchical perspective and this argument that he makes about the sort of ridiculousness of hereditary monarchy.

And he really, really puts it in stark relief in a way that resonated with

As per its title, you know, resonated for many people as very much just an expression of common sense that hereditary government, whether it's a monarch or whether it's an aristocracy, makes absolutely no sense in the context of this new enlightened age.

I mean, if we're talking about, like, so Paine's Common Sense is published in January of 1776, and...

It's often been portrayed by historians as sort of being, you know, one of the main factors in convincing colonists to support independence.

But in the last 20 years or so, historians have...

have come to understand that there's a groundswell for independence that's already, you know, that's already sort of bubbling up in late 1775.

And then pain sort of adds more fuel to that fire.

And then what we see is that between January and October,

you know, the spring of 1776, we start to see towns and counties passing, you know, local resolutions calling on the Congress to move for independence.

And of course, the Congress was slow to move for independence because there's a strong moderate faction in the Congress that wants to exhaust all opportunities for reconnecting with Britain.

And so in some sense, it is