CHECKING THE PEOPLE

-REVIEW: of Thomas Paine, 'Common Sense,' and the Turning Point to Independence by Scott Liell (Ronald K.L. Collins, LA Times)

Common Sense, first published on Jan. 10, 1776, in Philadelphia, is one of the great documents in the history of freedom. An astonishing 150,000 copies of the 2-shilling pamphlet, carrying zealous messages about rights and revolution coupled with broadsides against monarchical rule, were snatched up in its first few months. The story of that amazing pamphlet is vividly and economically recounted in Scott Liell's stimulating book, 46 Pages: Thomas Paine, 'Common Sense,' and the Turning Point to Independence.

Liell, a Connecticut writer and member of the Thomas Paine National Historical Assn., outlines the origins of Common Sense and how it was that this work of fierce, wild and indignant prose came to settle in the colonial mind. "Paine's aim," as Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn put it, "was to tear the world apart--the world as it was known and as it was constituted."

Liell notes that Paine's heretical mission was to attack not the individual tenets of those who favored reconciliation with the king "but the ideological infrastructure upon which those tenets rested." Of course, such an undertaking was all the more challenging given that many of the colonists felt more of a bond to monarchical than to republican government.

Common Sense greatly stimulated the discourse of dissent that ultimately led to the American Revolution. But things did not start out that way; Paine's uncompromising ideas were seditious to some, senseless to others and stirring to those few bent on revolution. It took countless debates, elections, town-hall meetings, tavern disputes and a few constitutional conventions before Paine's prophetic message became reality.

[T]roubling is the scant and unduly dismissive account Liell offers of John Adams' critique of Common Sense as set out in his Thoughts on Government (1776). There, Adams, supportive of Paine's call for independence, took perceptive exception to Paine's almost blind trust in a unicameral assembly tempered by no meaningful checks and balances. Even those who rightfully admire Paine must concede that he was more a political firebrand than a political philosopher. He took chances while others took time; and in the process he awakened the American mind to the glory of freedom.

At a time when love of country and love of liberty are sometimes treated as clashing values, Paine's Common Sense serves as salutary reminder that they need not be so, that the patriot and dissenter can indeed speak with the same voice.

Here's Adams:

A representation of the people in one assembly being obtained, a question arises, whether all the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judicial, shall be left in this body? I think a people cannot be long free, nor ever happy, whose government is in one assembly. My reasons for this opinion are as follow:--

1. A single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual; subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities, or prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments. And all these errors ought to be corrected and defects supplied by some controlling power.

3. A single assembly is apt to grow ambitious, and after a time will not hesitate to vote itself perpetual. This was one fault of the Long Parliament; but more remarkably of Holland, whose assembly first voted themselves from annual to septennial, then for life, and after a course of years, that all vacancies happening by death or otherwise, should be filled by themselves, without any application to constituents at all.

4. A representative assembly, although extremely well qualified, and absolutely necessary, as a branch of the legislative, is unfit to exercise the executive power, for want of two essential properties, secrecy and despatch.

5. A representative assembly is still less qualified for the judicial power, because it is too numerous, too slow, and too little skilled in the laws.

6. Because a single assembly, possessed of all the powers of government, would make arbitrary laws for their own interest, execute all laws arbitrarily for their own interest, and adjudge all controversies in their own favor.

But shall the whole power of legislation rest in one assembly? Most of the foregoing reasons apply equally to prove that the legislative power ought to be more complex; to which we may add, that if the legislative power is wholly in one assembly, and the executive in another, or in a single person, these two powers will oppose and encroach upon each other, until the contest shall end in war, and the whole power, legislative and executive, be usurped by the strongest.

The judicial power, in such case, could not mediate, or hold the balance between the two contending powers, because the legislative would undermine it. And this shows the necessity, too, of giving the executive power a negative upon the legislative, otherwise this will be continually encroaching upon that.

To avoid these dangers, let a distinct assembly be constituted, as a mediator between the two extreme branches of the legislature, that which represents the people, and that which is vested with the executive power.

Let the representative assembly then elect by ballot, from among themselves or their constituents, or both, a distinct assembly, which, for the sake of perspicuity, we will call a council. It may consist of any number you please, say twenty or thirty, and should have a free and independent exercise of its judgment, and consequently a negative voice in the legislature.

These two bodies, thus constituted, and made integral parts of the legislature, let them unite, and by joint ballot choose a governor, who, after being stripped of most of those badges of domination, called prerogatives, should have a free and independent exercise of his judgment, and be made also an integral part of the legislature. This, I know, is liable to objections; and, if you please, you may make him only president of the council, as in Connecticut. But as the governor is to be invested with the executive power, with consent of council, I think he ought to have a negative upon the legislative. If he is annually elective, as he ought to be, he will always have so much reverence and affection for the people, their representatives and counsellors, that, although you give him an independent exercise of his judgment, he will seldom use it in opposition to the two houses, except in cases the public utility of which would be conspicuous; and some such cases would happen.

Never mind the superiority of his vision to Paine's, that's surprisingly close to the eventual structure of the Constitution. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 12, 2003 10:49 PM