ABSTRACT
Thomas Paine's phenomenal literary success, his ability "usefully and successfully [to] attract the public attention", fascinated contemporaries and has never ceased to intrigue scholars. The corpus of Paine's political works constitutes a massive attack upon all the primary institutions and beliefs that had traditionally sustained the old European political and social order. Like so many immigrants before and after, Paine found in America his true vocation. It was as an author, as "a farmer of thoughts", that he would satisfy a boundless passion for fame. Liberty, Paine thought, should always take precedence over "the defence of property", but there was no real danger to property from an equality of rights and a broad franchise. Inspired by the openness, the basic modernity, of American society and impressed by the liberating and energizing character of its Revolution, Paine helped to give Americans an appreciation of their own social virtues, inner worth, and what he thought was their superiority over the old world.
