Rothbard sharpens the history of the man who wrote “Common Sense”…
The relevant bit:
… In a 1786 pamphlet, Paine not only defended bank inflation and advanced the flimsy “property right” argument, he had the presumption to urge that the state privilege the bank by making it a kind of central bank to the commonwealth, with the state borrowing from the bank instead of issuing state paper to meet its expenses. Understandably denounced by his old radical comrades as a mercenary renegade, Paine not only mendaciously denied any vested interest in defending the bank, but he also lashed out at the opposition as an unholy alliance of irresponsible frontiersmen and urban capitalists and usurers…
As Paine wrote in “The Age of Reason”, in between blathering about how Deism is quite enough for morality and attacking the “avarice of the [Jewish*] priests” — condemning himself: “I had no disposition for what was called politics. It presented to my mind no other idea than is contained in the word jockeyship.”
*I never know whether to be offended when reading authors who accept a Christological reading of the bible denigrating biblical “Jews”…