ABSTRACT
Governments, Thomas Paine believed, were meant to serve subordinate, corrective ends within society; but they had grown oppressive and corrupting. They impaired the natural coherence of society by creating divisions where otherwise unity would have prevailed. Paine rejected not only Edmund Burke's arguments but also the audience that Burke addressed. Paine's literary style emphasizes the point that he was trying to make: that politics was a matter for the common people. It was capable of being discussed in their language and on the basis of their experience. Paine wanted to break the monopoly of power which the governing class exercised through its possession of knowledge and education. To explain and illustrate the concept of equal rights, Paine had recourse to the popular conception of the state of nature. If his appeal had been purely rational, it would have served him just as well to say simply that men had these rights directly in civil society.
