
Understanding the Patriot attitude toward the British monarchy is helpful in understanding the Founders’ reluctance to have a strong executive under the Articles of Confederation as well as their desire to build in checks of executive power under the Constitution.

This lesson looks at Thomas Paine and at some of the ideas presented in his pamphlet Common Sense, such as national unity, natural rights, the illegitimacy of the monarchy and of hereditary aristocracy, and the necessity for independence and the revolutionary struggle.