Common Sense Vs. Plain Truth By Thomas Paine And James Chalmers

Common Sense vs. Plain Truth

The battle for independence in America during 1776 was indeed a complex issue requiring the involvement of intellectuals to air their own views regarding the best move that British colonies could make toward gaining independence. At the time, two famous individuals, Thomas Paine and James Chalmers, appeared disagreeing to matters concerning the giant step of gaining independence from the central government in Britain. While Thomas Paine was a patriot who wrote Common Sense with the intention of enlightening Americans the greater benefit they would gain by separating from British rule, James Chalmers who wrote Plain Truth was a loyalist to the British rule and saw it as a wrong move and a beginning for a lot of problems.

He begins his argument by distinguishing how a well-functioning society should look. He emphasizes that for a society to be well balanced; it should be able to develop its own rules. He even goes further and disagrees with the rule of Britain over America and openly discredits the system used by the British. He describes it as a complex marred by too many inconsistencies that are being done by the King and his men such as the unfair representation. (108) According to Paine, “Even though people of the colonies were paying taxes and were pushed into wars caused by British, they were unfairly not represented in the British Parliament”. (109) Since Paine’s main goal is to target the common man of the society; he directs his argument by using the Bible and emotions to back up his own discussion. Paine indicates that all people are born equally and there is no one given the power to rule over other human beings. Then he uses Bible quotes to explicitly disagree with the presence of Monarchy rule used by the Great Britain. (110) Furthermore, he moves ahead to support the revolution in the colonies and says that Americans have been steady to the point that they no longer need support from Britain. Additionally, he uses some kind of phrases that move people’s emotions. According to Paine, “How possible that a small island, means Britain, thousand miles away takes control over a

In his discussion, Paine argues out that apart from gaining international respect, America would advance its own security and commerce by being able to trade with other partners in Europe and the globe. He mentions that all Europe should benefit from America’s goods not only Britain. He explains that by saying British are not the only people who settled the continent but different parts of Europe, so British should not be the only European country to benefit from the colonies. As a result of all the reasons above, the colonies needed no reason to continue submitting to Britain authority and should gain their