Announce the independence of America

Declaring American independence is the decisive political act Thomas Paine urges in Common Sense: a break with Great Britain that would give the colonies a coherent purpose in war, a standing from which to engage other nations, and the opportunity to create their own government. His case moves from the failure of reconciliation and the costs of dependence to the consequences of remaining in an unsettled legal and political condition. Independence is presented not as a remote ideal, but as the necessary step that could make resistance defensible, continental union durable, and peace attainable.

From reconciliation to separation

Before hostilities began, Paine says, advocates of force and friendship alike pursued the same end: union with Great Britain. The difference lay in their proposed means. With the outbreak of conflict, that political framework had been overtaken by events; earlier plans, he argues, were as obsolete as last year’s almanacs. Independence follows in his account from the failure of both strategies, not from a sudden preference for rupture.

Paine contends that dependence also compromises the colonies’ ability to avoid European wars. Their trade could find markets across Europe, he argues, but their connection to Britain makes them a makeweight in British politics and exposes their commerce to wars between Britain and other powers. A declaration would therefore serve a practical purpose: it could allow America to pursue trade without a partial political attachment to a European power.

He rejects the claim that past prosperity under British connection proves that the same arrangement is necessary for future well-being. In his view, the colonies’ commerce rests on the demand for necessities, not on British authority. He challenges advocates of reconciliation to identify an advantage the continent gains from the connection, while presenting its continuing costs as substantial and its benefits as unproven.

The political and moral case

Paine grounds separation in the consequences of delay. The present winter, he warns, could be decisive: used well, it might advance the common cause; lost through hesitation, it could bring misfortune to the whole continent. His appeal to posterity gives urgency a longer measure. The struggle concerns more than a city, province, or generation, and a fracture in continental unity, he suggests, would deepen over time rather than disappear.

He insists that the argument is not an invitation to revenge. Paine says he invokes the affections and duties that make social life possible in order to awaken the colonies from what he calls political slumber and direct them toward a settled purpose. The danger, as he frames it, is that Britain need not conquer America if the colonies defeat themselves through delay and timidity. Independence would answer that danger by turning resistance toward a definite political end.

Paine also describes petitioning as an exhausted method. The colonies’ prayers, he says, have been rejected, and repeated appeals have done nothing to secure redress. He argues that a renewed promise to restore an earlier arrangement would not provide reliable protection, since a later Parliament could undo it and there would be no ordinary legal remedy between nations. In this reasoning, the failure of peaceful appeals changes the political question: the colonies must decide whether to remain dependent after the means of resolving their grievances through petition have failed.

The outbreak of hostilities supplies Paine with a threshold for that change. He argues that arms are justified not by a dispute over a financial law alone, but by violence against people and property and by the invasion of the country. Once defensive force became necessary, he says, subjection to Britain ought to have ended; he therefore treats the first British musket fired against America as the point from which American independence should be understood to date. The claim ties political separation to a chain of events the colonies, in his telling, did not initiate.

A new political standing

Paine’s argument makes independence a means of changing how the conflict can be understood abroad. While America calls itself a British subject, another power cannot readily mediate a war between Britain and the colonies: the colonial side remains, in that description, part of the state with which it is fighting. Paine argues that a declaration would remove this obstacle and make the colonies legible as a party to negotiations rather than as subjects seeking accommodation.

The same ambiguity, he says, obstructs foreign assistance. France or Spain would have little reason to help the colonies merely to restore and strengthen Britain’s connection with them. And while the colonists profess allegiance to Britain as they take up arms, other nations may see them as rebels, a condition Paine describes as difficult for outside observers to reconcile. Independence would align their declared political status with their actual resistance.

He proposes that the colonies send a manifesto to foreign courts setting out their grievances and their unsuccessful peaceful efforts to obtain redress. It should explain that they can no longer live safely or happily under the British court, state that they have been driven to break their connections with it, and assure other courts of their peaceful intentions and wish to trade. Paine argues that such a memorial could do more for the continent than another shipload of petitions to Britain.

Under the existing designation of British subjects, he says, the colonies can neither be received nor heard abroad. Independence would allow them to take their place among other nations and approach foreign courts on that footing. The diplomatic effect is thus bound to the declaration itself: it would not simply describe a change but, in Paine’s account, establish the standing needed to seek mediation, assistance, and commercial relations.

Continental unity and political design

Paine does not present separation as sufficient without a stable political order. He warns that America’s present condition combines resistance with dependence, and that the colonies remain without a settled constitutional framework. In such circumstances, he argues, the property of individuals is insecure, authority rests on a fragile concurrence of sentiment, and divisions may make both reconciliation and independence unattainable. A declaration would need to be accompanied by institutions capable of holding the continent together.

His proposed framework includes a Continental Congress and annual assemblies with a president, with the assemblies’ domestic business subject to Congress. Each colony would be divided into districts that sent delegates, and each colony would send at least thirty representatives, producing a Congress of at least 390 members. The presidency would rotate: a colony would be selected by lot, and Congress would choose its president by ballot from that colony’s delegates; the previously selected colony would be excluded from the next drawing until all thirteen had taken a turn. Paine proposes that a measure require at least three fifths of Congress to count as a majority.

He acknowledges that the first Congress had been formed by appointing members from colonial assemblies because urgent circumstances required a ready consultation. That expedient had helped preserve the continent from ruin, but, as Congress seemed likely to continue, he argues that the method of choosing its members deserved consideration. Representation and election, he asks, should not necessarily remain in the hands of the same body. The concern reaches beyond immediate wartime administration: planning for posterity requires recognizing that virtue is not hereditary.

Paine presents independence as the bond that could give the colonies a common object and make them less vulnerable to schemes of division. With a defined political purpose, they could negotiate with Britain as American states seeking terms of peace, rather than as subjects asking for accommodation. He argues that delay encourages Britain to hope for conquest and prolongs the war; if an offer to reopen trade were refused, other courts could be approached. Independence, in this way, is both a claim to self-government and a proposed instrument for ending the conflict.

The decision and its possible outcomes

Paine warns that independence could eventually be achieved in one of three ways: by the legal voice of the people in Congress, by military power, or by a mob. He argues that the first offers the best opportunity to form a constitution on a secure and honorable basis. If the colonies fail to act through Congress, the outcome may come through less considered means, and the consequences would be their responsibility. The declaration is therefore urgent not only because separation is necessary in his view, but because the means by which it happens will shape the political order that follows.

He also argues that independence need not foreclose peace with Britain. Rather, it would place negotiations on a clearer footing, and a court’s pride, he suggests, might be less injured by treating with American states than by negotiating with people it calls rebellious subjects. He proposes ending dependence, redressing grievances independently, and then offering to reopen trade. If Britain rejected that offer, other courts remained possible interlocutors.

The pamphlet closes this political appeal by urging former opponents to unite. Paine calls for the names of Whig and Tory to give way to shared civic identities: good citizens, resolute friends, and supporters of the rights of mankind and of the free and independent states of America. The declaration matters in this conclusion because it is meant to replace divided colonial loyalties with a common political membership. It is at once a break with Britain, a basis for foreign relations, and an opening for a continental future.