/lit/ - Literature

>So that's why America should revolt for independence from Britain. But you don't have to take my word for it. Everything I said should just be... Common Sense.
How did he get away with it?

>Rights of Man

>2019
>not Paine-pilled
why

So we all know Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" was written with the common man in mind. But reading it today, it feels more advanced than that. Consider this passage

>Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.

Not the most difficult thing in a world, but in modern times this comes across as quite literary in my opinion. Were people back then just better at reading that this was considered "common language"?