Seth Kaller, Inc.

Before its publication, only a third of American colonists favored separation from Britain. Over the next six months, this pamphlet swayed as many as another third. Before dealing with the issue of independence, Paine first took on the nature and purpose of government using arguments that are still compelling.

THOMAS PAINE. Common Sense; Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, On the following interesting Subjects…, 2d ed. Philadelphia: Printed, and Sold, by R. Bell, 1776. 84 pp. Mixed edition in a sammelband, bound with two other rare 1776 pamphlets in contemporary quarter-brown calf, with red morocco spine label stamped in gilt. Bound with: [THOMAS PAINE, et al.] Large Additions to Common Sense; Addressed to the inhabitants of America, On the following Interesting Subjects.... Philadelphia: Printed, and Sold, by R. Bell, 1776. 70 pp. First edition, with first issue sheets but with second issue title page. Bell’s pirated edition of Paine’s expanded work. Bound with: [JAMES CHALMERS.] “Candidus,” Plain Truth; Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, Containing, Remarks on a Late Pamphlet, entitled Common Sense. Philadelphia: Printed, and Sold, by R. Bell, 1776. 94 pp. This work was the principal Loyalist response to Common Sense.

Inventory #27742       Price: $38,000

Excerpts
Common Sense:
“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.” (piii)

“The Cause of America is in a great Measure the Cause of all Mankind. Many Circumstances have, 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.” (piv)

“Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness Positively by uniting our affections, the latter Negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.” (p1)

“Society in every state is a blessing, but Government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one:...” (p1)

“Government like dress is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest;...” (p2)

“O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.” (p60)

“When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.” (p76)

Historical Background
Only in America, Thomas Paine believed, could humans fully escape from the restraints of tradition and ignorance to become enlightened citizens active in their own self-government. A transplanted Englishman, Paine understood the frustrations of Americans forced to live under a British political system based on inherited privilege. He argued that the idea of monarchy was antiquated and that mankind was approaching an Age of Reason.

The first edition of 1,000 copies of Common Sense sold out within days. After a dispute with his publisher, Paine found another publisher and made significant additions to the text, including the phrase, “the Free and Independent States of America.”

Thomas Paine’s iconic revolutionary pamphlet, Common Sense, is clearly one of America’s most influential books, in which “Paine succeeded in providing the popular political reasoning and philosophy for the American Revolution.”[1]

Paine drafted Common Sense through the summer and fall of 1775. At the suggestion of his friend Benjamin Rush, Philadelphia printer Robert Bell agreed to publish it. The first edition was released on January 9, 1776, in an edition of 1,000 copies. Within days a second edition was needed to satisfy the public demand. With each copy selling at a pricey 2 shillings, Bell and Paine had agreed to split the profits evenly, with Paine on the hook in the event of losses. When Paine sought his share, which he had pledged to donate to the Patriot cause, then reeling from the disastrous failed attempt to invade Canada, Bell incredibly informed him that there was none. Acting through an intermediary to protect his identity, an infuriated Paine broke ties with Bell and hired rival Philadelphia printers, William Bradford and Thomas Bradford, to publish a new and enlarged edition. However, without permission, Bell republished Common Sense on his own. Over the next month, a public squabble took place in the pages of the Pennsylvania Evening Post between Bell and the Bradfords over their now competing editions of America’s first bestseller.

Bell advertised his (unauthorized) second edition as having been published on January 27 and hinted at the identity of the anonymous author by printing “Written By an Englishman” on the title page. The authorized Bradford edition, with Paine’s textual additions, was published two weeks later, on February 14. Bell then pirated sections of Paine’s added material, and added four essays from other writers, published on February 20, as Large Additions to Common Sense. Of the six tracts in the pamphlet, only two were by Paine—the “Appendix” and the “Address to the Quakers.” Bell sold Large Additions as a separate pamphlet to accompany the earliest editions of Common Sense and a few weeks later printed a combined edition.

The competing editions satiated a wild demand in Philadelphia, and when Paine gave authority to other printers across the colonies to publish it, it “swept the country like a prairie fire.”[2] By the end of the year, more than 150,000 copies had sold, and the pamphlet went through nineteen editions in the colonies and seven in Great Britain. It was published in French in 1776 and in German in 1777. If Common Sense “isolated the fears and angers of the average colonist and focused them into a strategy for the future, its impact was tenfold for the men who would face charges of treason as the American founding fathers. Common Sense would lead directly to the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, and among the United Colonies’ elite now in favor of separation from Britain Paine was both a celebrity and a sage.”[3]

For many American colonists, independence was a foolish idea that held the possibility of destroying their way of life. On March 13, 1776, only a few weeks after the quarrel between Bell and the Bradfords, Bell published the principal Loyalist reply to Common Sense that echoed those sentiments, an anonymous pamphlet entitled Plain Truth. Bibliographer Thomas R. Adams notes that at various times the work has been attributed to William Smith, George Chalmers, Charles Inglis, Richard Wells, Joseph Galloway, and Alexander Hamilton, but concludes that it was likely by wealthy Maryland planter James Chalmers. It offered a point-by-point rebuttal of Paine’s text and argued that independence was a fantasy that would harm the colonies, especially in relation to trade, while leaving them open to invasion from France and Spain. As Adams explains, “In undertaking the publication of the pamphlet, Robert Bell must have anticipated trouble. He had just finished a dispute with Paine and the printers William and Thomas Bradford over the second edition of Common Sense, and he seems to have been ready for further attacks. On the first page of all editions of Plain Truth appears his essay, ‘The Printer to the Public on the Freedom of the Press.’ Bell was an enterprising businessman, and he pleaded for the right to present both sides of the question,” but by publishing a pamphlet such as Plain Truth, he “would evoke the wrath of a very vocal part of the population.”[4]

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was an English-born intellectual, inventor, and radical pamphleteer who influenced both the American and French Revolutions. He lived and worked in England until 1774, when he migrated to Philadelphia, joining the radical artisan community there. His powerful pamphlet, Common Sense (1776), was the best-selling original work published in eighteenth-century America and had a pronounced impact on the Revolution by making the case for complete independence from Great Britain. He also published a pamphlet series, The American Crisis (thirteen in 1776-1777; three more to 1783), which helped inspire American revolutionaries. General Washington even ordered the first number to be read aloud to his men. Paine later moved to France, published the liberal Enlightenment treatise Rights of Man (1791), and won election to the French National Assembly in 1792. A Girondin, he was arrested in 1793 and narrowly escaped the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. While in prison, he continued to work on The Age of Reason (1794-1807). Paine believed that the American ambassador to France, Federalist Gouverneur Morris, somehow engineered his arrest. Diplomat James Monroe arranged for Paine’s release in November 1794, and Paine turned against George Washington and wrote a scathing public letter to Washington in 1796. Paine remained in France until 1802 when, at President Jefferson’s invitation, he returned to New York.

Condition
Paine’s Common Sense: Two additional near-contemporary ownership signatures on front free endpaper. Front board starting, headcap expertly repaired, extremities, boards, and corners rubbed and worn; all edges trimmed; title page and pp. 31/32 expertly supplied in facsimile. Dampstaining to prelims; small chipping along edge of title page; light dampstaining in bottom corner and fore-edge of most leaves; rear free endpaper excised, contemporary rear blank supplied, possibly from an old repair.

Paine’s Large Additions: Spotting to title-page, small chip in top corner of same; light dampstaining in bottom corner of several leaves; scattered, mostly marginal light foxing to text.

Chalmers’ Plain Truth: Scattered, mostly light, foxing to text.