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Independence Ponder AMERICAN Independence From Common Sense to the Declaration BEN PONDER Appendix The Text of Common Sense ncluded here is an edited and complete transcription of the text of I Common Sense as it appeared in Philadelphia beginning on February 14, 1776. Because there are many reprint editions of Common Sense now available in bookstores and libraries, it is important that I explain my rationale for producing my own version. First, I must note that I am by no means dismissing all other editions of Common Sense as deficient or incorrect; they simply do not fit the analytical parameters of this study. In the case of this book, my goal is not modernized clarity or grammatical correctness; it is to make accessible to my readers the text as it appeared in Philadelphia during the spring of 1776. The overarching objective of this study is to facilitate a deeper understanding of the American colonial experience of Common Sense and of the political mentality driving the decision for independence. Therefore, my argument requires that twenty-first century readers engage with essentially the same text as did eighteenth-century colonists. I have not concerned myself in this study with what Common Sense meant to audiences in 1792, 1809, or 2007; I want simply to elucidate what the text meant to American colonists in early 1776. Although my primary historical focus is highly specific, my methodological focus lends itself toward more generalization. I have intended in this book to exemplify a method of rhetorical historiography that can be applied to other texts and contexts, and this appendix is part of that metacritical strategy. In basic terms, my reasons for appending a complete text of Common Sense to this book are threefold: convenience, integrity, and precision. Convenience. The expository and dialogic nature of my argument requires that readers have ready access to the nuanced pamphlet text. I include it here as a tool for readers to quickly cross- reference my arguments and footnotes with the source material itself. Original copies of Common Sense are the least convenient option for readers, since most extant 1776 editions are cloistered in research libraries. Microfilmed or digitized images of the pamphlet are more widely available, but they too often lack optimal navigability or legibility. Most Paine scholars still prefer to fish for an increasingly rare 1945 hardcopy of Philip Foner’s Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, but even if a reader obtains an edition of this venerable work, Foner’s editorial practice is too loose for a close textual analysis of Common Sense (though I do cite several other Paine texts from this edition, when textual exactitude is less of a necessity). AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 555 Integrity. By appending an edited version of Common Sense to this book, I am also, in the spirit of academic research, “publishing my data.” Humanistic inquiry does not typically strive for replicable “results” with the verve of scientific inquiry, but even humanists can benefit from keeping the object of study consistent across multiple investigations. Page citations from a smattering of versions—especially in the case of a proliferated text like Common Sense—can too easily become empty conventionalities of scholarly discourse. To analyze a complex text like Common Sense, authors and readers alike need to verify that we are all talking about the same thing. In order to focus the critical vision of my readers on the inner workings of Common Sense, I have formally partitioned the text into sections and paragraphs. This citation technique should prove helpful to readers of this book, and it will also enable scholars of Common Sense to discuss the text— regardless of the edition used—with a specificity traditionally reserved only for versified poetry, drama, and scripture. A textual taxonomy of Common Sense—as part of a broader critical methodology—will be of great service in furthering the conversation about this core text of the American Revolution. Precision. Instead of attempting to “merge” dozens of different editions of Common Sense from 1776, I decided to focus upon a single imprint that best represents the copies of the pamphlet circulating in America during the spring of 1776. The original edition used for this transcription was printed by Benjamin Towne and published by William and Thomas Bradford in Philadelphia in February 1776. The extant copy I used as my source is held in the Charles Deering Library at Northwestern University. Following Richard Gimbel’s citation guide in Thomas Paine: A Bibliographical Check List of Common Sense, this edition is CS-12. I have omitted only page numbers, printer’s footers, and a half-title page (directly preceding the full-title page) that reads, “COMMON SENSE.” This individual imprint is virtually identical to other imprints of Common Sense produced in 1776 by Towne, although the printer did make one minor edit in this impression: the correction of a misspelled word (he missed a few others). I use the Bradford/Towne edition here for two primary reasons. First, I chose this edition because it contains all of Paine’s additions to Common Sense, including the British naval figures, the “Appendix,” and the “Epistle to the Quakers.” These “large additions” were added with the advent of the Bradford edition and subsequently pirated by Robert Bell and most other American printers. The second reason for using this impression in particular is its location—both geographical and social—at the very heart of the independence movement. Calling this the “Bradford edition” is somewhat misleading; William Bradford was semi-retired and preoccupied with drilling the Pennsylvania militia, while his son, Thomas, then the main proprietor 556 The Text of Common Sense of the London Coffee House and the Pennsylvania Journal, is best regarded as the “authorized retailer” of the expanded edition. It was Thomas Paine himself who spearheaded this round of republication as author, editor, advertiser, print broker, financial agent, and circulation director. Paine worked closely with the two print shops producing his new edition, Benjamin Towne and the German-American printers, Melchior Steiner and Carl Cist. Paine was by mid-February 1776 no longer anonymous in Philadelphia, so he certainly dropped in on the printers periodically to inspect their work. Towne’s Pennsylvania Evening Post was a significant flashpoint of the independence movement during the late winter and early spring, and so it is fitting that the text printed here comes from his press. A word about editing and style: the text of Common Sense is here reproduced exactly as it appears in the extant pamphlet from which it is derived. Spelling, misspelling, and idiosyncratic spelling have been fully preserved and replicated. Punctuation, capitalization, and italicization are likewise identical to the source. In a couple of instances, I have inserted a missing letter in brackets, but only when a lacuna threatened to confuse the meaning. My editorial policy in this text of Common Sense has been to avoid textual intervention and to preserve the original typography (the exception to this being the modernized internal “s” rather than “ſ”). In the rest of this study, I have taken some editorial license to smooth punctuation or to make minor spelling modifications with the same intent: to minimize the glaring, pedantic “[sic]” that would litter the verbatim republication of any early modern text. In the late eighteenth century, spelling and punctuation were yet far from standardized, and printers and typesetters were often as responsible for “mistakes” as authors. Inasmuch as standard spellings did exist during the eighteenth century, I have sought to preserve in the body of this book most Anglicised (e.g., rather than “Anglicized”) spellings as a subtle reminder that American English did not yet exist in 1776. The citations used herein conform to the following basic system: the capital letter or numeral representing the section, a separating period, and then the paragraph number within that section. The section heading citations are: F. The “Foreword” (Introduction) to Common Sense. 1. Section 1 on the origin and design of government. 2. Section 2 on monarchy and hereditary succession. 3. Section 3 on the present state of American affairs. 4. Section 4 on the present ability of America. A. The “Appendix” to Common Sense added by Paine to the Bradford edition. E. The “Epistle to the Quakers” added to the Bradford edition. AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 557 COMMON SENSE; ADDRESSED TO THE INHABITANTS of AMERICA, On the following interesting SUBJECTS. I. Of the Origin and Design of Government in general, with concise Remarks on the English Constitution. II. Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession. III. Thoughts on the present State of American Affairs. IV. Of the present Ability of America, with some miscellaneous Reflections. A NEW EDITION, with several Additions in the Body of the Work. To which is added an APPENDIX; together with an Address to the People called QUAKERS. N. B. The New Addition here given increases the Work upwards of one Third. Man knows no Master save creating HEAVEN, Or those whom Choice and common Good ordain. THOMSON. PHILADELPHIA printed. And sold by W. and T. BRADFORD. 558 The Text of Common Sense INTRODUCTION. F.1 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 defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. F.2 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 usurpations of either.
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