Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the specificity of Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, Dissertation on First Principles of Government (1795), practically ignored by historians, in the context of the relations between liberalism and democracy in the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. The objective is to explain how Paine - as an English revolutionary and an actor, witness, and interpreter of the Age of Revolutions - developed a liberal and democratic vision during the period of the Convention initiated on 9 Thermidor (1794-1795) that distanced him from both Jacobin formulations and practices, and from legislations and speeches by Thermidorian deputies. To this end, we will also investigate other texts and letters by the author, and demonstrate his profound changes in relation to previous texts, such as Common Sense and Rights of Man. With this in mind, this article intends to open new perspectives regarding Paine’s work and its place in the history of political thought.
Keywords:
Thomas Paine; Liberalism; Democracy; French Revolution; Intellectual History