Is there any evidence that Thomas Paine was inspired by or even aware of the Levellers from the English Civil War?

by Friendlynortherner

Thomas Paine is one of my favorite historical figures, and i am interested in how groups like the Levellers were centuries ahead of their times. Thomas Paine of course was an Englishman and lived most of his young life in England. Is there any evidence that he was inspired by the Levellers or was at least aware of them and their ideology?

Bodark43

Sure: in Rights of Man: "It is, properly, from the elevated mind of France, that the folly of titles has been abolished. It has outgrown the babyclothes of count and duke, and breeched itself in manhood. France has not levelled, it has exalted. It has put down the dwarf to set up the man. "

The word was in pretty common use, and if Paine's defense of Jacobins in France seems a bit forced ( you couldn't get much more levelling than the Jacobins...) it is because by the 18th c. "Leveller" was pejorative. He would be as likely to favorably use the word "Leveller" in one of his pamphlets as someone protesting income inequality would favorably use the word "communist" today. Most people would think of them as extreme, think that Levellers wanted to get rid of all distinctions, ranks. Samuel Johnson ( a Tory very much in favor of rank and nobility) would remark to Boswell, "Levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.” Paine was speaking to that idea that Levellers were just people without stature who wanted it, not people with stature who wanted to distribute it...the same sort of claim has since been regularly applied to a whole host of things, from a progressive income tax to Socialism.

However, though the word first got applied to the radical part of the New Model Army after the Putney Debates ( and, if you like Paine, you really should check out the Putney Debates) , the idea behind the Levellers goes back much further, possibly even to the Peasant Revolt of 1381 and John Ball's " when Adam delved and Eve span who wa then the gentleman?". In asking why by right of birth some man could have the right to rule a land thousands of miles away that he'd never even seen, and could communicate with only under great difficulty, Paine was just fortunate to finally have a country where the idea of hereditary monarchy could be very easily reduced to the absurd.

Paine, Thomas. (1945) The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine. The Citadel Press. p. 349

The Putney Debates