An Immigrant Told Americans the Law Should Be King
In January 1776 Thomas Paine argued that no man should be born to rule, and that Americans should write a constitution while they still could.
heathercoxrichardson.substack.com · July 2, 2026In January 1776, as American colonists were still faulting the king's advisers for the break with Britain, a newly arrived immigrant in Philadelphia published a 47-page pamphlet that told them they were blaming the wrong men.
Thomas Paine, who had landed in America barely more than a year earlier, called his pamphlet Common Sense. "In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense," he wrote.
His argument was not to replace bad advisers with better ones. Paine dismissed the claim that birth could entitle anyone to govern others, and he mocked the notion that a small island across the ocean could command a vast continent.
Then he put his alternative in a single line. "Where... is the King of America?" Paine asked. "I'll tell you Friend... so far as we approve of monarchy... in America THE LAW IS KING."
Paine made the contrast explicit when he wrote: "For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other."
That belief led him to a practical warning. He called "A government of our own" Americans' "natural right," and wrote it was "infinitely wiser and safer" to form a constitution deliberately while they still could than to "trust such an interesting event to time and chance."
Delay was dangerous, Paine warned. If Americans put independence off, some future strongman might exploit public unrest, rally unhappy followers, take over the government, and, in Paine's words, "sweep away the liberties of the continent like a deluge."
The pamphlet traveled fast, persuading more colonists that a break with Britain was necessary. Paine closed that invitation with a larger promise. "We have it in our power," he wrote, "to begin the world over again."
Questions people ask
Who was Thomas Paine before he came to America?
Paine was born in England in 1737 and worked as a corset maker, sailor, and tax officer before meeting Benjamin Franklin in London. Franklin helped him emigrate to Philadelphia in late 1774, where he quickly became editor of a local magazine and then wrote Common Sense.
How widely was Common Sense actually read?
Common Sense sold extraordinarily well for its time, with historians estimating more than 100,000 copies circulated in a few months among a colonial population of about 2.5 million. It was read aloud in taverns and meetinghouses, which spread its argument far beyond those who bought it.
Did Americans take Paine's advice to write a constitution?
The states wrote their own constitutions starting in 1776, and the national Constitution followed in 1787. That later document created no king at all, but a president checked by Congress and the courts, with the Constitution itself as the supreme law.