Andrew Hendrickson

Voices of Freedom
From Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776), and From Jonathan Boucher, a View of the
Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution (1775)
Thomas Paine was an English emigrant, philosopher, political activist and a
revolutionary. Common Sense was an influential pamphlet written in January of 1776 to the
American Colonists during the American Revolution outlining reasons to divorce the American
Colonies from Great Britain. Common Sense was first read aloud and distributed to the masses at
social gatherings, as an anonymous pamphlet, due to its controversy towards Great Britains rule.
According to Wikipedia, until 2006, it remained the best-selling book in American history and is
still in print today (Thomas Paine and the Promise of America p.43).
The style in which Paine writes in his pamphlet is an emotional appeal and cry to rally
the Colonists for the cause of American independence. He was preparing this new continent for
war, calling on those that love mankind and opposes tyranny and the tyrant, prefacing the
continent as an asylum for mankind (Common Sense). He was also readying the people for the
fact that they were about to become fugitives in the eyes of the Crown. Thomas Paine
recognized the negative consequences of fealty to the British Crown. He argued that any
dependence on Great Britain would drag the people of the American continent into the wars of
European Nations. As well as setting the colonies at odds with other nations who would only
have cause to seek the friendship of the thirteen colonies.
The impassioned prose used by Paine is extraordinary in that to this day it invokes the
emotions of the reader. With its cries of freedom and independence from the systems of

Andrew Hendrickson

monarchy and the fertile soil of the American Continent waiting to be cultivated with the seeds
freedom.
Jonathan Boucher was born in England and served as a minister of the Episcopal Church
who preached the Gospel of Christianity and loyalty to England in Virginia from 1759 to 1775.
The work produced by Jonathan Boucher was antithetical to the ideas in Paines pamphlet. So
controversial were his ideas that he even returned to England in 1775 after receiving numerous
death threats. While Thomas Paine wanted independence, Boucher advocated submission to the
Crown. Bouchers View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution was first
delivered to the people of the Thirteen Colonies as sermons. He would later publish these series
of sermons in London in 1797, explaining his opposition to the movement of independence.
Boucher appealed to the religious biases of the Colonists, stating that Obedience to government
is every mans duty (View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution) and
that disobedience to the governing authorities meant a betrayal to God.
Boucher also tried to taint and differentiate from Thomas Paines concept of liberty. Paine
taught that nature disproved the hereditary rights of kings and that personal liberty was
essentially divine. Boucher, on the other hand, taught that liberty was the product of a just
authority. He makes a valid point when he writes that a people enjoy more civil liberty when they
act in accordance with the law. The difference between Paines and Bouchers definition of law,
however, was the amount of oppression inherent in the laws the people were subjected to.
Boucher even goes on to say that the American version of liberty was corrupt and labeled those
that promised her, the servants of corruption.