Founding Brothers Preface

In Common Sense, Paine declares that “Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither they have fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still.” Thus, as you see, Paine felt England's claim and rule of the colonies from afar was tyrannical, and his pamphlets fully supported the necessity of independence.