![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Paine had only the barest acquaintance with American affairs when, with Rush’s encouragement, he turned an invitation by Franklin to write a history of the Anglo-American controversy into the occasion for composing a passionate tract for American independence. It was written by an Englishman, not an American. It “burst from the press,” Benjamin Rush wrote, “with an effect which has rarely been produced by types and papers in any age or country.” Its effect, Franklin said, was “prodigious.” It touched some extraordinarily sensitive nerve in American political awareness in the confusing period in which it appeared. For it is a work of genius-slapdash as it is, rambling as it is, crude as it is. ![]() How it could have been produced by the bankrupt Quaker corsetmaker, the sometime teacher, preacher, and grocer, and twicedismissed excise officer who happened to catch Benjamin Franklin’s attention in England and who arrived in America only 14 months before Common Sense was published is nothing one can explain without explaining genius itself. Common Sense is the most brilliant pamphlet written during the American Revolution, and one of the most brilliant pamphlets ever written in the English language. ![]()
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