The Sudden Emergence of Tom Paine

Unlike most of the other eminent leaders of his day, there was nothing in the least aristocratic in the background of Tom Paine. The son of a poor English corset maker, he was forced to educate himself for lack of schooling. After serving a checkered career as corset maker, sailor, and petty bureaucrat, he finally rose to the status of a minor English tax collector. He was soon characteristically in trouble with the authorities. Chosen by his fellow excise collectors in 1772 to petition Parliament for higher wages, he was curtly dismissed from the service by the authorities. Unemployed, bankrupt, the unhappy Paine began his life again at the age of thirty-seven by emigrating to America, armed only with a letter of introduction he had managed to obtain from Benjamin Franklin in London.

Thomas Paine stirred the yearning for independence by proclaiming the British invaders as tyrants. I'm sure the king wished Paine would "sit down and shut up", just as our present tyrant wishes we would.