SOURCE: "The 'Reasonable' Style of Tom Paine," in Queen's Quarterly, Vol. 79, No. 2, Summer, 1972, pp. 231-41.

In the essay that follows, Hinz argues against the assumption that, because Paine declared his faith in reason alone, his works sought to convince via the laws of reason; Hinz contends quite the converse—that Paine employed many alogical strategies in his efforts to persuade readers.

"In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense ... " wrote Thomas Paine in the first of the trio of works—Common Sense, The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason—which has established his fame as the great American spokesman for democratic principles in thought, politics, and religion.¹ Political historians inform us that actually Paine's importance lay less in his ideas, which were common to the times, than in his role as a popularizer, in his "mastery of the...