ABSTRACT
According to Bernard Bailyn, Common Sense carried its case for independence "to the point where the whole received paradigm within which the Anglo-American controversy had until then preceded came into question". Thomas Paine's success with Common Sense is not easily accounted for. In trying, commentators have repeatedly been drawn to the pamphlet's lack of scholarly citations designed to impress the educated elite and its substitution of the everyday language of the common man for the Latin-studded prose typically employed by colonial pamphleteers. Dispassionate reason can unmask the historical monarch as a thief, thereby undermining his legitimacy, but unaided it provides no motive to revolution. Paine's prophetic voice emphasizes the providential discovery of America after the Reformation, "as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither the friendship nor safety".
