Thomas Paine - Research Proposal Example

In July 1761, he returned to his native town of Thetford to work as a supernumerary officer for a bit more than one year. After that Paine moved to Lincolnshire and became an exciseman. His service continued until August 1765, when he was fired for "claiming to have inspected goods he did not inspect" (Conway, 1892). In 1767 Paine became a schoolteacher in London, but that occupation was also rather short: the next year he again took the position of exciseman Lewes, East Sussex. His service lasted for the next six years during which Paine serviced as exciseman and simultaneously managed a small tobacco shop.

In 1771 he married Elizabeth Ollive and for the first time involved in the political issues: he joined the Society of Twelve, a local group of thinkers that periodically met to politics of the local authorities. In the beginning of 1774, Paine was again fired from his service and his tobacco shop collapsed so that he had to sell his household possessions to rid himself of debts. The second marriage was also childless and not happy. In 1774 he legally divorced Elizabeth Ollive and moved to London where he got acquainted with Benjamin Franklin, and in October same year upon receiving the letter of recommendation from Franklin who administered emigration to colonial America at that time, Thomas Paine traveled to Philadelphia (Ayer, 1990).

The travel was very difficult and Paine barely survived it: it took him 6 weeks to fully recover. After recovery, he settled in Philadelphia, changed his birth name to 'Paine', and began to work as a journalist for the Pennsylvania Magazine (Conway, 1892). Strong eloquent style of Paine's articles and pamphlets immediately earned him a reputation of radical uncompromising fighter for the natural rights of man and freedom. On January 10, 1776, one Paine's most famous pamphlets known Common Sense was published.

Some historians believe that the pamphlet became arguably the most essential piece of writing that had strong social and political influence on those day's developments that eventually led up to independence (Larkin, 2005). In particularly, Paine stated that: "Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a Government, which we might expect in a country without Government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise" (Paine, 1776). Such very sharp and radical stance was the distinct feature of Paine's writing. Thus, he dismissed the King as a fool (labeled King George III as "the Royal Brute of Great Britain" (Jensen, 1968, p. 668) claiming that heredity is not always and not necessarily related with natural ability, that Britain used the colonies solely for obtaining profits treating the colonists in unacceptable fashion.

Paine also urged the colonies to unite as quickly as possible to effectively protect their rights and believed that the only possible way to do so was to become fully independent: "Until an independence is declared, the continent will feel itself like a man who continues