Leighton Library, Dunblane

Scotland's oldest purpose-built independent library founded in 1687

The Leighton Library has 1791 edition of Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" and 1792 edition of his "Rights of Man"

Added at 07:36 on 08 June 2024

It's #ThomasPaineDay today as #OnThisDay 8 June 1809 English-born American Founding Father, French Revolutionary, political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary Thomas Paine died.

Dunblane's historic Leighton Library has a 1791 edition of his "Common Sense - addressed to the inhabitants of America" - a 47-page pamphlet advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies of North America. It was sold and distributed widely and read aloud at taverns and meeting places. In proportion to the population of the colonies at that time, it had the largest sale and circulation of any book published in American history. It remains the all-time best-selling American title and is still in print today. It provided a persuasive and impassioned case for independence, which had not at that time been given serious intellectual consideration in either Britain or the American colonies. It was described as "the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era"

The Leighton Library has a 1792 edition of his "The Rights of Man" which saw him tried, in his absence, in England for seditious libel (for which he was convicted, and would have been executed by hanging if he'd returned to England) as, in his book, he had argued that revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard the natural rights of its people. He supported the French Revolution and called for the abolition of the British Monarchy