Thomas Paine's Response To American Independence

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Right after the revolutionary war broke out, Thomas Paine published Common Sense to support independence. On the opposition, the loyalist, James Chalmers, published Plain Truth to argue the benefit of remaining as British colonies. Thomas Paine first used the example of Mr. Pelham saying “They may last my time” to illustrate the point that people should pursuit profit in a longer term. In his opinion, the relationship with England, though made the colonies thrive, will not work in the future. It is just like as the baby growing up, it needs to eat meat, instead of still drinking milk. In fact, Paine thought the British colonies “would have flourished as much, and probably much more, had no European power taken any notice of her.” As a patriot, Thomas Paine thought although England took care of them indifferent wars with neighbor …show more content…

In addition, Spain and France may assist England for they don’t want their colonies to take similar actions and get independent. To say the least, if they won, they would soon be able to conquer other places, which would make American the public enemy for many European countries. Compared to the Great Britain, as Chalmers claimed, America is just vulnerable and any reasonable person won’t want to be the enemy of England. About the idea of Paine that America would be a free port of Europe, Chalmers thought that is not rational too for European countries would want to populate their own colonies other than America. Instead, America would only lose their only commerce attention, Great Britain. From another perspective, Chalmers thought England doesn’t want America to leave them for they may fell quickly after the independent. Therefore, they may keep a better relationship with America. Therefore, they should actually give another, the last, petition to the

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