Paine and Prejudice: Rhetorical Leadership through Perceptual Framing in Common Sense

This essay reviews the established case for the pivotal role played by Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense in the American Revolution as well as the various explanations that have been proffered to account for its success: the time and place of its publication, Paine's style, Paine's ethos, and his use of psychology and ideology. To these accounts it adds the suggestion that Paine used the term "prejudice" to frame his readers' positive perception of monarchy and the British constitution, and negative perceptions of American independence, as distortions imposed by "habit and custom." In the process of making this case it explores the genealogy of the term "prejudice."