ABSTRACT
History helped to document the development of men and nations, but Thomas Paine did not believe that the solutions reached by earlier statesmen could be of much value to his contemporaries. The dead had no rights, nor could one generation bind another. There is one significant exception to any statement that Paine read no books, save for those providing information. The works of James Burgh praised in Common Sense must have been read as the strictures on that tract on the English constitution were prepared. Political philosophers may have been dismissed as speculative, but evidence of reliance on deistical and unorthodox authorities on scriptural exegesis and critical examination of the truth of the Christian story abounds. Study of the new science of the last two centuries undoubtedly influenced Paine along with many others of the century. The only trace religion was deism, declared Paine.
