Thomas Paine

Historian Saul K. Padover described Thomas Paine as “a corset-maker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination,” which quite adequately sums up the life and work of a man deeply ensconced in political activism and the Enlightenment-era ideals of transnational human rights.

Biography of Thomas Paine

Born in Thetford England in 1736, Thomas Paine migrated to the American colonies at the age of 38 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to fuel the fires of the American Revolution. Almost every Colonialist rebel read or listened to his powerful dissertation entitled Common Sense, which was by far the best-selling pamphlet in all of the colonies.

Common Sense was so influential to the American Revolution, that John Adams said of the work, “Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.”

Paine’s next successful work was a series of pamphlets known collectively as The American Crisis, which further enflamed pro-revolutionary sentiment in the colonies. After successfully assisting independence in America, Paine moved to France for most of the 1790s, where he became a leading proponent in the French Revolution.

American and French Revolutionary Thomas Paine

After penning the Rights of Man in 1791, in defense of the French Revolution against its critics, his attacks on Anglo-Irish conservative writer Edmund Burke led to a trial and conviction in absentia in England for the crime of seditious libel.

Worried by the possibility that the French Revolution might well spread into England, the British government of William Pitt the Younger attempted to suppress Paine’s philosophies, which advocated the right of citizens to overthrow their governments.

In 1792, England issued a writ for his arrest, which forced Paine to flee to France in September of that same year. Despite his inability to speak the French language, he was quickly elected to the French National Convention.

Deemed an enemy of France by the ruling authorities in the country, the Montagnards led by Maximilien Robespierre, in December of 1793, Paine was arrested and taken to Luxembourg Prison in Paris, where he continued to write The Age of Reason, which challenged institutionalized Christian dogma and the legitimacy of the Bible.

Paine First To Propose Universal Basic Income

After future U.S. President James Monroe used his diplomatic connections to secure Paine’s release from prison, Paine published Agrarian Justice in 1797, which challenged the origins and legitimacy of property rights and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income through a one-time inheritance tax on landowners. He returned to the U.S. in 1802, and upon his death seven years later, only six people attended his funeral, due to his staunch ridicule of of the Christian faith.