Paine Thomas (1737–1809), American political philosopher, revolutionary defender of democracy and human rights, and champion of popular radicalism in three countries. Born in Thetford, England, he emigrated to the American colonies in 1774; he later moved to France, where he was made a French citizen in 1792. In 1802 he returned to the United States, where he was rebuffed by the public because of his support for the French Revolution. Paine was the bestknown polemicist for the American Revolution. In many incendiary pamphlets, he called for a new, more democratic republicanism. His direct style and uncompromising egalitarianism had wide popular appeal. In Common Sense (1776) Paine asserted that commoners were the equal of the landed aristocracy, thus helping to spur colonial resentments sufficiently to support independence from Britain. The sole basis of political legitimacy is universal, active consent; taxation without representation is unjust; and people have the right to resist when the contract between governor and governed is broken. He defended the French Revolution in The Rights of Man (1791–92), arguing against concentrating power in any one individual and against a property qualification for suffrage. Since natural law and right reason as conformity to nature are accessible to all rational persons, sovereignty resides in human beings and is not bestowed by membership in class or nation. Opposed to the extremist Jacobins, he helped write, with Condorcet, a constitution to secure the Revolution. The Age of Reason (1794), Paine’s most misunderstood work, sought to secure the social cohesion necessary to a well-ordered society by grounding it in belief in a divinity. But in supporting deism and attacking established religion as a tool of enslavement, he alienated the very laboring classes he sought to enlighten. A lifelong adversary of slavery and supporter of universal male suffrage, Paine argued for redistributing property in Agrarian Justice (1797). See also DEISM, POLITICAL PHILOSOPH. C.H.S.