Common Sense — Thomas Paine

Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure thempages them general favor a long habit of not thinking a thing Wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT and raisesgives raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom But theat the tumult soon subsides Time makes more converts than reason As a long and violent abuse of power is generally the MeansAs Means of calling the right of it in question and in Matters too whichof which might never have been thought of had not the Sufferers beenmight been aggravated into the inquiry and as the King of England hathaggravated hath undertaken in his OWN RIGHT to support the Parliament inundertaken in what he calls THEIRS and as the good people of this countrywhat country are grievously oppressed by the combination they have anare an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both and equally to reject the usurpations of either

Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure thempages them general favor a long habit of not thinking a thing Wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT and raisesgives raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom But theat the tumult soon subsides Time makes more converts than reason As a long and violent abuse of power is generally the MeansAs Means of calling the right of it in question and in Matters too whichof which might never have been thought of had not the Sufferers beenmight been aggravated into the inquiry and as the King of England hathaggravated hath undertaken in his OWN RIGHT to support the Parliament inundertaken in what he calls THEIRS and as the good people of this countrywhat country are grievously oppressed by the combination they have anare an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both and equally to reject the usurpations of either