Paine's life in England gave little indication of his later successes. Born in 1737 in Thetford, England, the son of a lower-middle-class Quaker, he was not expected to become an important, extraordinary, or exceptional person. After a series of unsuccessful jobs, he eventually became an excise officer, a person whose job is to collect certain types of taxes and prevent smuggling. This work was also not prosperous. He was fired from this position twice, first for leading a strike for higher wages in 1772. While living in England, Paine married twice. The first of these wives was Mary Lambert, who, a year after their marriage, died in childbirth along with their child. Eleven years later, in 1771, he married again. Elizabeth Olive, his second wife, and he legally separated in 1774 and Paine moved to London. While living in London that year, Paine met Benjamin Franklin, who helped him find a job as a journalist in Philadelphia. In November 1774, Paine landed in America. He co-edited Philadelphia Magazine while living in that city. The following year he published African Slavery in America, which severely attacked and criticized slavery as inhumane. During Paine's time in the New World, tensions between the colonies and Great Britain continued to rise following the Boston Tea Party. Paine was of the opinion that the colonists had every right to demand a change in a government that imposed taxes on its people without allowing them to have a voice in that government. Furthermore, he saw no reason why the colonies should remain part of and dependent on the British monarchy. These ideas about American independence formed the basis for his pamphlet, Common Sense, published on January 10, 1776. According to Paine, Common Sense was based solely on…half of the paper…le on each side. have his own, entirely reasonable, priorities and rationale for his position on the issue. Another lesson Paine demonstrated through his work is the power of the written word. Paine's ideas, brilliant or not, would not have been well received or even widely recognized without his elegant sentences and clear writing skills. Using this skill, he exposed his ideas to millions of people, inspiring them to take more action than he ever could have accomplished on his own. His words not only inspired action, but also inspired new thoughts. These beginnings of thought are what Paine and other writers and artists have given us. The darkest thing Paine showed the world was the malleability of the population at large. Paine, as an agitator, powerfully demonstrated that, with the right words, a group of people can easily be pushed into rebellion or diverted from reasonable lines of thought..