"Common Sense" - читать интересную книгу автора (Paine Thomas)

[pg/etext94/comsn10.txt]

July, 1994 Common Sense, by Thomas Paine [comsn10x.xxx] [#147]

Common Sense, by Thomas Paine
July 4th, 1994 [Etext #147]

This text is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN.



Entered by John Campbell CAMPBJW@WKUVX1.BITNET


ETEXT OF _COMMON SENSE_ BY THOMAS PAINE
Mr. Paine's footnotes are contained within brackets [ ] within the text.

As this is my first attempt at Etext transcription, I welcome
all comments and suggestions - I trust there shall be many!
I had an especially difficult time keeping margins even as
the word processor I started with could not handle such a large
file and the program I changed to was one I had not used before
so there were some quirks I had not expected. Most of the text
in all caps was in italics in the version of the book I used.




INTRODUCTION



Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages,
are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour;
a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial
appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry
in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides.
Time makes more converts than reason.

As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means
of calling the right of it in question (and in Matters too which
might never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated
into the inquiry) and as the King of England hath undertaken
in his OWN RIGHT, to support the Parliament in what he calls THEIRS,
and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed
by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into
the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpation of either.

In the following sheets, the author hath studiously avoided every
thing which is personal among ourselves. Compliments as well as