Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine lived an unpredictable lifestyle, moving from England, to America, back to England, to France, and back to America.  He also had a variety of professions, such as an apprentice corset-maker, a seaman, a schoolteacher, a shopkeeper and an inventor.

Paine was born in Norfolk, England in 1737.  He attended school for a short while, until his family could no longer afford it.  He was married twice, but had no children and was unhappy in marriage.  He tried a variety of different jobs that either failed financially or he became uninterested in.  The only one he continued was his job as an excise officer, and it was doing this that he met Benjamin Franklin, who helped him move to America in 1774.

In Philadelphia, he became a journalist, and published articles in the Philadelphia Magazine.  Perhaps it was his unhappy and unsteady life in England that caused his resentment towards Brittan, as he quickly started to oppose Brittan and became committed to fighting for America’s independence.  He had an enormous amount of faith in America as an independent nation, and believed that for no reason should America need to stay under British rule, since they were clearly the stronger nation.  However, almost immediately after America had won independence, Paine returned to Europe, trying to gain the funds to invent an iron bridge (after his attempt to create a smokeless candle had failed) He then wrote his book The Rights of Man, a radical statement arguing against the resistance to the French Revolution.  The book got him kicked out of Brittan, and so he moved to France.

Paine became a French citizen, stayed there for about ten years, managing various political affairs, and finally, returned to America in 1802.  He died in 1807 due to poor health, poverty and alcoholism.