`No Respecter Of Persons’: Thomas Paine And The Quakers: The Influence Of 17th Century Quaker Persecution History On Paine’s Radicalism
How dared Thomas Paine, a man whose formal education had ended at thirteen, who had failed as a skilled craftsman, as a teacher, as a shopkeeper, as a street preacher, as a petty customs official in the Excise, dismissed and a debtor and bankrupt, even dare to think about government?