토마스 페인의 상식.Common Sense by Thomas Paine
INTRODUCTION.
PERHAPS the sentiments contained in the following
pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them
general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong,
gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises
at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the
tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than
reason.
2 As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally
the Means of calling the right of it in question (and in
Matters too which might never have been thought of, had
not the Sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry) and as
the King of England hath undertaken in his own Right, to
support the Parliament in what he calls Theirs, and as the
good people of this country are grievously oppressed by
the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to
inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject
the usurpation of either.
3 In the following sheets, the author hath studiously
avoided every thing which is personal among ourselves.
Compliments as well as censure to individuals make no
part thereof. The wise, and the worthy, need not the
triumph of a pamphlet; and those whose sentiments are
injudicious, or unfriendly, will cease of themselves unless
too much pains are bestowed upon their conversion.
4 The cause of America is in a great measure the cause
of all mankind. Many circumstances hath, and will arise,
which are not local, but universal, and through which the
principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in
the Event of which, their Affections are interested. The
laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring
War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and
extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the
Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath
given the Power of feeling; of which Class, regardless of
Party Censure, is the
AUTHOR
Philadelphia, February 14, 1776