" To his credit, Paine held nothing back in poking holes in the dogma of hereditary monarchy. But with his broad swipes at royalty, he obscured other forms of injustice. He too loosely clothed the language of class in the garb of continental races and commercial impulses. Indians and slaves are marginalized in his grand vision of a new world order. Neither did he allow the ignoble waste people to make any appearance in Common Sense; the vast numbers of convict laborers, servants, apprentices, working poor, and families living in miserable wilderness cabins are all absent from his prose. "

― Nancy Isenberg , White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America