15 May 1767, but asked leave to wait for another vacancy, and on 19 Feb. 1768 was appointed to Lewes in Sussex. He lodged with a quaker tobacconist named Samuel Ollive; here he became the friend of Thomas ‘Clio’ Rickman [q. v.], afterwards his biographer. Rickman describes him as a strong whig, and a member of a club which met at the White Hart. Paine was an eager and obstinate debater, and wrote humorous and political poems; one upon the death of Wolfe became popular, and was published by him in his magazine at Philadelphia. On 26 March 1771 he married Elizabeth, daughter of his landlord, Ollive, who had died in 1769. Mrs. Paine and her mother, who had carried on the tobacco business, opened a grocer's shop with Paine's help. In 1772 the excisemen were agitating for a rise in their salaries; they collected money, and employed Paine to draw up a statement of their grievances, and to agitate in London. Four thousand copies of Paine's tract were printed. He distributed them to members of parliament and others, and sent one, with a letter asking for a personal interview, to Goldsmith. The agitation failed, and soon afterwards (8 April 1774) he was dismissed from the excise. Oldys says that he had dealt in smuggled tobacco, but the official document (given in Conway, i. 29) states simply that he had left his business without leave, and gone off on account of debts. His share in the agitation would not tend to recommend him to the board, although, according to Oldys, one of the commissioners, G. L. Scott, had been pleased by his manners, and tried to protect him. His debts were discharged by the sale of his goods, but a petition for replacement in his office was disregarded.
On 4 June 1774 a deed of separation was signed by Paine and his wife. Paine declined to explain the cause of this trouble when Rickman spoke to him, and it remains unknown. Rickman declares, however, that Paine always spoke tenderly of his wife, and sent her money without letting her know whence it came. A letter published by Oldys from his mother to his wife, and dated 27 July 1774, speaks bitterly of his ‘undutiful’ behaviour to his parents, and of his ‘secreting 30l. entrusted to him’ by the excisemen. The letter was produced with a view to injuring Paine by Oldys, and is not beyond suspicion. It was published, however, when Paine might have challenged it. Oldys says that the mother was eccentric and of ‘sour temper,’ and Paine, though speaking affectionately of his father, never refers to her. Paine's wife, from whom the letter must have come, survived till 1808; and it is stated in a deed of 1800 that she did not know whether her husband was alive or dead (Conway, i. 33).
Paine went to London. G. L. Scott, according to Oldys, introduced him to Franklin, to whom he might also have become known through his scientific friends. Franklin gave him a letter, dated 30 Sept. 1774, to Bache (Franklin's son-in-law), describing him as an ‘ingenious, worthy young man,’ and suggesting that he might be helped to employment as clerk, surveyor, or usher. Paine reached America on 30 Nov. 1774, and obtained many friends at Philadelphia through Franklin's introduction. He became connected with Robert Aitkin, a bookseller in Philadelphia, who was anxious to start a magazine. The first number of this, the ‘Pennsylvania Magazine or American Museum,’ appeared at the end of January 1775. Paine contributed from the first, and soon afterwards became editor, with a salary of 50l. a year. He wrote articles attacking slavery and complaining of the inferior position of women, and others showing his republican tendencies. He made acquaintance with Dr. Rush (see Rush's letter in Cheetham, p. 21), who had already written against slavery. Rush claims to have suggested Paine's next performance. The first blood of the American war was shed in the skirmish at Lexington (19 April 1775), and Paine resolved to express the sentiment, which had long been growing up, though hitherto not avowed, in favour of independence of the colonies. Paine had already spoken out in a letter to the ‘Pennsylvania Journal,’ signed ‘Humanus’ (18 Oct. 1775). In the same month Franklin had suggested that he should prepare a history of the transactions which had led to the war. Paine was already at work upon a pamphlet, which he showed to Rush and a few friends. Bell, a Scottish bookseller, ventured to print it, other publishers having declined; and it appeared as ‘Common Sense’ on 10 Jan. 1776. Friends and enemies agree in ascribing to it an unexampled effect. In a letter dated 8 April following, Paine says that 120,000 copies have been sold. He fixed the price so low that he was finally in debt to the publisher. The pamphlet was anonymous, and was at first attributed to Franklin, John Adams, and others, though the authorship was soon known. A controversy followed in the ‘Pennsylvania Journal,’ in which Paine, under the signature ‘Forester,’ defended himself against ‘Cato,’ the Rev. William Smith, tory president of the university of Philadelphia.
Paine thus became famous. He was known
