Paine Letter a Letter in

Paine Letter A Letter in Defense of Common Sense My Dearest Cousin Eldridge: I write this letter to you on the eve of what could be the greatest era in history, or the dawn of one of the most tragic displays of misplaced loyalty since Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ brought Judas Iscariot into his confidence. I write to you as a member of my family, as a dear friend, and as a representative to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

I hope you will take my comments here to heart, and trust that you as I have only the interests of our countrymen here in this New World in your mind and spirit as you convene this Continental Congress once again. I have recently become aware, as I am sure have you, of a pamphlet written by a man named Thomas Paine and entitled, rather glibly, Common Sense. As glib as his title may be, however, it is difficult to find a reasonable argument to his claims in the pamphlet.

he makes his point quite succinctly in the very first page of the pamphlet, discerning that the oppression of us and our neighbors here by the claimed and combined rights of the King of England and his Parliament, we "have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpations of either." Surely this is the only reasonable recourse when a government ceases to serve the people it governs, and selfishly turns to using its powers for its own ends.

Paine is unfortunately correct in his insistence that moral virtue will never rule the world. He is also thus correct that government is, even at the best of times, merely a necessary evil; if moral virtue truly reigned in each man's heart, government would not be necessary.

As this is not the case, how right it is to bristle when governments subject us to the same evils we would experience without government, but with the power they derived from our consent! It does indeed appear to be Common Sense, in such circumstances, for an oppressed people to throw off the shackles of their oppressors and establish a new government. The issue then becomes one of determining whether or not the inhabitants of this new world are indeed oppressed by the monarch sitting an ocean away.

This distance would seem to remove the government sufficiently from the governed so as to render any attempted tyranny impotent. The tax imposed by the Tea Act in 1773 is an example of how this tyranny can reign from afar, as our merchandise is taxed by men who do not represent us, and the money used in ways that do not serve our interests. The so-called Boston Tea Party was a resounding rejection of such illegal, immoral, and entirely oppressive acts that have been practice upon our colonies.

I understand that the taxes generated by the colonies are used for the betterment of the British Empire as a whole, and I appreciate the necessity of certain taxes for the maintenance of defense and basic public services.

The standard explanation for the Tea Act and other similar taxes, that the goods arrive at these colonies solely at the expense of the Empire, is simply invalid -- without the trade restrictions imposed by the British government, these colonies would thrive in commerce with the other free and independent sovereign nations of the world.

The Sons of Liberty, a clandestine network of individuals dedicated to the freedom of enterprise and the fairness of government that the British Crown once stood as the protector of, have caused enough damage with their secretive acts to both the Crown and the forces here that oppose it.

Would it not be better to move their actions from the shadows they have been forced into do to the label of sedition they have been branded with, and allow for the airing of the legitimate grievances and concerns of the people inhabiting these several colonies? Would not the Sons of Liberty, and indeed all Sons of Man, be better served by an open declaration of our independence from the Crown rather than continued unnecessary belligerence? It has been well argued by the loyalists here that to denounce the King and his Crown as authority figures here would be a matter of great and grave dishonor, even tantamount to heresy.

But is it not the greater dishonor -- the greater heresy, even -- to allow for the unjust and un-Godly rule of a man so far removed from his people, both geographically and insofar as our divided interests? I understand that oaths of allegiance have been sworn to the King, and that to break these is a serious matter indeed. The King, however, has sworn to serve his people, and this King has failed to live up to his oaths.

It is only right that he be deposed, if only within the borders of these far flung colonies.