Pamphlet · A 1776 town · 1776
Common Sense
91Sit with it.Not an average of critics. Eight questions, one house.
Plain words, written to be read aloud. The name stayed off the first printing because the charge was treason.
The glance
Industry is the thin one.
This phone
Set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.
After the credits
Does anyone here do a real job, and does that job matter?
Paine wrote it so a kitchen could hear it. That is the measure. A king, he says, is not a parent, and a continent does not need one across an ocean.
How many copies were printed is not known. The score is not a circulation number. It is the eight questions. Read it aloud once, the way a tavern did, and then ask who in the room is allowed to answer.
Folio
Keep Common Sense in the record.
The date, your number, and one sentence.
No house has filed a sentence for this yet.
Where to watch
Finding the page.
The eight
Industry
9/10
A short argument, built to be used, not admired on a shelf.
Household
9/10
The king's claim to be a father is the thing he takes apart.
Piety
9/10
He appeals to reason and to nature. A creed is not the engine.
Courage
9/10
He says the unsayable, and he does not sign it, because signing could hang him.
Republic
10/10
The whole pamphlet is the question of who a people may answer to.
Temperance
9/10
The anger is aimed. It is not a binge.
Truth
9/10
He writes so a crowd can follow him. Some of the heat is hotter than the proof.
Stewardship
9/10
It was made to be passed from hand to hand and read to people who could not buy it.
Live historicallyRead the opening pages out loud to someone in the house. Stop when they can say, in their own words, what he thinks a king is.