本书收录了托马斯•潘恩的《常识》《美国危机》《致杰斐逊的一封信》《人的权利》等论政治的精彩篇章，是政治思想史典著作。由牛津大学奥里尔学院政治学研究员、导师Mark Philp导读并撰写注释。
1，版本
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全书有丰富的注释、词汇解析和完备的背景知识介绍，非常适合自主阅读，提升阅读能力
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Oxford World’s Classics系牛津大学出版社百年积淀的精品书系。此番由译林出版社原版引进。除牛津品牌保证的*威原著版本之外，每册书附含名家导读、作家简介及年表、词汇解析、文本注释、背景知识拓展、同步阅读导引、版本信息等，特别适合作为大学生和学有余力的中学生英语学习的读材料。导读者包括牛津和剑桥大学的资深教授和知名学者。整套书选目精良，便携易读，实为亲近界名著的典读本。

本书收录了潘恩的《常识》和《人的权利》等论政治的精彩篇章，是政治思想史著作。《常识》以先知般的洞察力和政治远见，为北美人民分析了争取独立，在新的原则基础上构建政*的*要性和可行性。潘恩高扬共和与民主的旗帜，批判封建等级制和君主政体，以无私热情和务实思想为民众提出了革命纲领，其影响经久不衰，有很强的可读性。

CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Note on the Texts
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Thomas Paine
COMMON SENSE
AMERICAN CRISIS I
AMERICAN CRISIS XIII
LETTER TO JEFFERSON
RIGHTS OF MAN
RIGHTS OF MAN Part the Second
LETTER ADDRESSED TO THE ADDRESSERS ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION
DISSERTATION ON THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT
AGRARIAN JUSTICE
Explanatory Notes
Index

托马斯·潘恩，托马斯•潘恩（Thomas Paine，1737—1809）
英裔美国思想家、作家、政治活动家、激进民主主义者。美国独立战争期间，他撰写了铿锵有力并广为流传的小册子《常识》，大地鼓舞了北美民众的独立情绪。他也被视为美国开国元勋之一。

COMMON SENSE
Of the Origin and Design of Government in General, with concise Remarks on the English Constitution.
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expence and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.
In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end of government, let us suppose a small number of persons settled in some sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest, they will then represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world. In this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought. A thousand motives will excite them thereto, the strength of one man is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance and relief of another, who in his turn requires the same. Four or five united would be able to raise a tolerable dwelling in the midst of a wilderness, but one man might labour out the common period of life without accomplishing any thing; when he had felled his timber he could not remove it, nor erect it after it was removed; hunger in the mean time would urge him from his work, and every different want call him a different way. Disease, nay even misfortune would be death, for though neither might be mortal, yet either would disable him from living, and reduce him to a state in which he might rather be said to perish than to die.
Thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessings of which, would supercede, and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen, that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other; and this remissness, will point out the necessity, of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue.
Some convenient tree will afford them a State——House, under the branches of which, the whole colony may assemble to deliberate on public matters. It is more than probable that their first laws will have the title only of REGULATIONS, and be enforced by no other penalty than public disesteem. In this first parliament every man, by natural right will have a feat.
But as the colony increases, the public concerns will increase likewise, and the distance at which the members may be separated, will render it too inconvenient for all of them to meet on every occasion as a first, when their number was small, their habitations near, and the public concerns few and trifling. This will point out the convenience of their consenting to leave the legislative part to be managed by a select number chosen from the whole body, who are supposed to have the same concerns at stake which those have who appointed them, and who will act in the same manner as the whole body would act were they present. If the colony continue increasing, it will become necessary to augment the number of the representatives, and that the interest of every part of the colony may be attended to, it will be found best to divide the whole into convenient parts, each part sending its proper number, and that the elected might never form to themselves an interest separate from the electors, prudence will point out the propriety of having elections often; because as the elected might by that means return and mix again with the general body of the electors in a few months, their fidelity to the public will be secured by the prudent reflexion of not making a rod for themselves. And as this frequent interchange will establish a common interest with every part of the community, they will mutually and naturally support each other, and on this (not on the unmeaning name of king) depends the strength of government, and the happiness of the governed.
Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. freedom and security. And however our eyes may be dazzled with show, or our ears deceived by sound; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and of reason will say, it is right.
I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature, which no art can overturn, viz.