Thomas Paine: Breaking Away From England

In “Common Sense” Thomas Paine makes several convincing arguments for why the American colonies should break away from England. The first is just because they have been happy with great Britain's rule it does not mean that they will always be happy with their rule. He uses the example “ We may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat, or that the first twenty year of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty” to prove his point and show in other instances that his argument is right. Then he proceeds with the next argument, which is that Great Britain protected us. Again, he argues against this and says that Great Britain only protected us because they were protecting themselves at …show more content…
shame upon her conduct… This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe.” In this he is using religion as a way of persuading people to believe that breaking away from Britain is a good idea. Paine is trying to show that Britain should not be considered the mother country because it forced many of its citizens out because they wanted to believe in something different. The first group of colonists who came to the Americas left Britain so that they would be able to have religious freedom and believe and worship anything that they wanted. Paine says that Britain should be ashamed with how they dealt with the situation. I believe that he took this approach because he knew that it would be a very sensitive topic with the colonists who he was trying to convince to break away from Great Britain. He knew that many of them had come to the colonies for the very reason that he was bringing up and he knew that if anything would convince them to break away from Britain it would be that. Paine said “ … government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.” He felt that governments were bad and not necessary unless the lives of people would be made better with a