Reading Thomas Paine 's "Common Sense," published in 1776, I now see the textual source of President Thomas Jefferson 's jesuitical construct and use of the term "white" to describe Europeans in contrast with "black" to distinguish them from the African slaves, juridically, in his NOTES OF VIRGINIA : QUERY XIV, which was first published in 1785, 9 years after Thomas Paine .
In February 1776, Paine wrote:
"It is pleasant to observe by what regular gradations we surmount the force of local prejudice, as we enlarge our acquaintance with the world. A man born in any town in England divided into parishes, will naturally associate most with his fellow parishioners (because their interests in many cases will be common) and distinguish him by 'neighbor;' if he meet him but a few miles from home, he drops the narrow idea of a street and salutes him by the name of 'townsmen:' if he travel out of the country, and meet him in any other, he forgets the minor divisions of street or town, and calls him 'countryman' I.e., 'county-man;' but If in their foreign excursions they should associate in France or any other part of 'Europe,' their local remembrance would be enlarged into that of 'Englishmen.' And by a just parity of reasoning, all Europeans meeting in America, or any other quarter of the globe, are 'countrymen;' for England, Holland, Germany, or Sweden, when compared with the whole, stand in the same places on the larger scale, which the divisions of street, town, and county do on the smaller ones; distinctions too limited for continental minds ."
P. 23 PAINE: WRITINGS (1955, 1984)
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
JEFFERSON COPIED FROM THOMAS PAINE
Reading Thomas Paine 's "Common Sense," published in 1776, I now see the textual source of President Thomas Jefferson 's jesuitical construct and use of the term "white" to describe Europeans in contrast with "black" to distinguish them from the African slaves, juridically, in his NOTES OF VIRGINIA : QUERY XIV, which was first published in 1785, 9 years after Thomas Paine .
In February 1776, Paine wrote:
"It is pleasant to observe by what regular gradations we surmount the force of local prejudice, as we enlarge our acquaintance with the world. A man born in any town in England divided into parishes, will naturally associate most with his fellow parishioners (because their interests in many cases will be common) and distinguish him by 'neighbor;' if he meet him but a few miles from home, he drops the narrow idea of a street and salutes him by the name of 'townsmen:' if he travel out of the country, and meet him in any other, he forgets the minor divisions of street or town, and calls him 'countryman' I.e., 'county-man;' but If in their foreign excursions they should associate in France or any other part of 'Europe,' their local remembrance would be enlarged into that of 'Englishmen.' And by a just parity of reasoning, all Europeans meeting in America, or any other quarter of the globe, are 'countrymen;' for England, Holland, Germany, or Sweden, when compared with the whole, stand in the same places on the larger scale, which the divisions of street, town, and county do on the smaller ones; distinctions too limited for continental minds ."
P. 23 PAINE: WRITINGS (1955, 1984)