Tories

Tories are political opponents whom Common Sense depicts as a danger to continental unity and as potential beneficiaries of a stable constitutional order they resist helping to establish. They are associated with discouraging preparations for self-defense, dividing the colonies, and opposing independence; yet the pamphlet’s culminating appeal argues that a well-founded government would also secure their safety. The term therefore marks both an active political division and one the writer ultimately wants to make obsolete.

Political Position and the Continental Crisis

The pamphlet places Tory opposition within a crisis created by the shift from argument to armed conflict. Before hostilities began, advocates on opposing sides differed over how to achieve union with Great Britain: one approach relied on force, the other on friendship. The outbreak of fighting made those earlier proposals obsolete, the writer argues, and reconciliation came to seem like a dream that had ended without changing the colonies’ condition. In this changed political landscape, resistance to independence is not presented as a private preference alone: it risks weakening a continent whose future depends on acting together.

The danger is expressed through the image of a Continental Belt buckled too loosely. The writer warns that the king and his adherents are pursuing their old strategy of dividing the continent, and says that printers are helping circulate plausible falsehoods. An artful letter published in two New York papers and two others is cited as evidence that some people lack either judgment or honesty. The passage does not identify its authors as Tories, but it situates political deception and division within the same struggle that makes Tory resistance to independence consequential.

The pamphlet also ties dependence on Britain to risks beyond the immediate conflict. So long as the colonies remain dependent, they may be drawn into European wars and quarrels, alienating nations that might otherwise seek their friendship. The writer argues that the continent’s trade gives it reason to avoid partial attachment to European powers, but that British dependence makes America a weight in British politics. This geopolitical case frames independence as a way to recover the freedom to pursue commerce and peace without inheriting Britain’s conflicts.

Resistance to Independence and Its Costs

Tory influence is associated most explicitly with resistance to beginning a naval defense. The writer challenges the assumption that America would need to match the entire British fleet, calling that belief a false impression encouraged by prejudice and inattention. He says that disguised Tories have used the supposed impossibility of immediately building an equally large navy to discourage any start at all. The argument answers that America has no foreign dominions to defend and could concentrate its force on its own coast, while British ships would have to sail thousands of miles to attack and return to refit.

The pamphlet’s alternative is practical rather than simply aspirational. It proposes that merchants might receive premiums to build and use armed ships, with the payments proportionate to the loss of cargo capacity; fifty or sixty such vessels, supplemented by a few guardships on permanent duty, might maintain a sufficient naval force without leaving a peacetime fleet to rot in dock. Against the Tory-associated discouragement, the writer joins commercial strength to defense: a maritime system that lets the two reinforce one another could reduce dependence on an outside protector and make the continent less vulnerable.

The broader political risk, the writer insists, is that delay may close off both possible outcomes. If divisions are not checked in time, the colonies may reach a condition in which neither reconciliation nor independence remains practicable. Continued argument about reunion is dangerous because it overlooks the people whose losses are already severe, including sufferers who have lost everything and soldiers who have left everything to defend their country. The warning makes the stakes of Tory resistance not merely ideological: division can prolong the war and leave the continent without a workable political settlement.

Independence and the Need for Lawful Government

The pamphlet’s defense of independence is joined to a proposal for government, rather than to a claim that separation alone will secure liberty. It describes the current condition as lacking law and settled authority, held together by an exceptional concurrence of sentiment that secret enemies may dissolve. In this unbraced system, property is insecure and people have no clear legal boundary governing their actions. A formal political order is therefore necessary both to consolidate independence and to prevent uncertainty from becoming a source of further conflict.

The institutional proposals distinguish continental and local responsibilities. Assemblies would meet annually under a president, with their representation made more equal; their business would be domestic and subordinate to a Continental Congress. Each colony would be divided into six, eight, or ten districts, each sending delegates, with at least thirty from each colony. Congress would contain at least 390 members, and its president would be chosen by ballot from delegates of a colony selected by lot, with the choice rotating so that each of the thirteen colonies could take its turn. At least three-fifths of Congress would be required for a majority, a safeguard intended to keep laws from passing without a satisfactorily just level of support.

A Continental Conference would provide a route for joining political knowledge to popular authorization. Its proposed membership includes two members of Congress for each colony, two members from each assembly or provincial convention, and five representatives of the people at large from each province. The conference would frame a Continental Charter defining how members of Congress and assemblies are chosen, when they sit, and how their jurisdictions are divided. It would also secure freedom and property, and, above all, the free exercise of religion according to conscience. Once the charter was framed, the conference would dissolve and the institutions chosen under it would govern.

This constitutional argument directly answers the prospect of Tory exclusion. The writer says that even Tories should desire independence, since committees had initially protected them from popular anger and a wise, well-established government would be the surest means of continuing that security. Those who cannot bring themselves to support the independence cause, the pamphlet argues, ought at least to have the prudence to wish for independence on grounds of personal safety. The reasoning makes lawful government a protection against retaliation as well as a framework for collective self-rule.

From Faction to Civic Allegiance

The closing appeal imagines independence as the bond capable of keeping the continent together. It would give the people a clear common object and allow them to negotiate with Britain as American states, rather than as subjects whom Britain calls rebellious. The writer also argues that independence would make it possible to address foreign courts directly: while the colonies call themselves British subjects, other powers cannot readily mediate between them and Britain, and they cannot expect foreign assistance for a project meant only to repair the imperial relationship.

The final political gesture is an appeal to abolish factional labels. The writer asks readers to offer one another the hand of friendship and draw a line that would bury former dissensions like an act of oblivion. Whig and Tory are to give way to a shared standard: good citizenship, open and resolute friendship, and support for the rights of mankind and of the free and independent states of America. Tories thus remain opponents within the pamphlet’s argument, but its desired ending is not their permanent exclusion. It is a political community in which their former factional name no longer defines the terms of belonging.