Thomas Paine

(English-born political philosopher, 1737–1809). Paine was a revolutionary defender of democracy and human rights, and champion of popular radicalism. He pamphleteered for the cause of American independence and became its best known polemicist. In the major work of this period, Common Sense, Paine asserts that commoners are the equals of the landed aristocracy. Later in France he wrote a defence of the French Revolution, The Rights of Man, which argues the case that sovereignty resides in human beings and is not bestowed by membership to a class or nation. Paine returned to the United States in 1802, and died in New York City on June 8, 1809.