Common Sense and The Failure of Mercantilism
Thomas Paine Argues for Political and Economic Independence.
Long before Thomas Paine set sail to America in late 1774, the colonists had grown accustomed to doing things their way and their way worked. Especially when it came to doing business.
England was a mercantilist nation. Mercantilism held that wealth was a zero sum game: In order for one entity to gain wealth another must lose an equal amount. To carry the idea a little further, if the state wished to gain wealth, its citizens must sacrifice their own.
By law, colonists weren't allowed to manufacture goods on their own. They were required to ship raw materials to England, where the goods were manufactured then shipped back to the colonies to be purchased. That's how it was supposed to work. The British monarchs hadn't counted on capitalism.
Paine stated that, economically, the colonies were greater than George III wanted them to be. "To bring the matter to one point. Is the power who is jealous of our prosperity, a proper power to govern us?"
Capitalism in the American Colonies
Americans were by that time bred to be independent. Great Britain's distance from the American colonies and her interests in India, Nova Scotia and the Caribbean, as well as continuing scuffles with France and Spain made it impossible to enforce mercantilism on the colonists. They manufactured their own goods, owned their own land, grew their own food, traded freely with one another and with other countries, and prospered tremendously. (The Wealth of a Nation to Be, Alice Hanson Jones; Colombia University Press, 1980)
Capitalism was creating wealth in the colonies, a situation that mercantilist Britain could not allow.
A series of laws intended to gain control of the colonies, and their prosperity, including the infamous Stamp Act of 1765, managed to do little more than turn an already independent-minded people into a thorn in King George III's side.
Unavoidable Rebellion
Using the death of 93 colonial militia at Lexington and Concord as a fulcrum, Paine levered his argument toward rebellion. "No man was a warmer wisher for reconciliation than myself, before the fatal nineteenth of April, 1775..."
Convinced that reconciliation was no longer possible, Paine laments British interest in its own good before that of its colonial holdings. Whether that is a valid argument may be of some debate, but the point is that once men have tasted independence, the softest oppression irritates the soul as much as iron chains irritate the skin. For Paine, there was no turning back. To reconcile would mean the destruction of a way of life that the world hadn't known to that point. "Reconciliation and ruin are nearly related."
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