Britain doesn’t need reinventing

What is the most hubristic line ever written? Against some very stiff competition I would say it is that famous line of Thomas Paine, from the February 1776 appendix to his pamphlet Common Sense: ‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again.’

One of the problems of the line is that even just typing it or reading it brings goose bumps. Not just because it is perfectly phrased, but because it appeals to such a basic emotion. It is an emotion similar to the one which always makes me well up at the end of Peter Grimes: ‘Turn the skies back, and begin again.’ It’s moving, in that case, because it is impossible.

Yet for some reason the idea that human beings as a collective can begin again always brings a shiver of hope. When you read Paine you cannot help experiencing the most fleeting feeling of: is it possible? Can it be done? Even more so when he continues: ‘A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand.’ Again, who cannot for a second wonder: can it be possible?

The problem is made more complex by the fact that America, from its founding, really did create something new. At the time Paine was writing there were two serious attempts at forming republics – one in France, the other in America. The one in France went south as fast as any monarchist might have hoped. But America avoided the pitfalls of revolutionary France. Its revolution was not followed by the Terror in part because it had nobler and wiser leaders. Americans were fortunate to have Washington instead of Danton, Jefferson rather than Robespierre.