Adams denounced paines plan as so democratical

single-chamber representative bodies where the people could be represented. Adams
denounced Paine's plan as "so democratical, without any restraint or even an attempt at any
equilibrium or counter-poise, that it must produce confusion and every evil work." Popular
assemblies needed to be checked, Adams thought, because they were "productive of hasty
results and absurd judgments."
Paine himself came out of "the lower orders" of England-a stay-maker, tax official, teacher,
poor emigrant to America. He arrived in Philadelphia in 1774, when agitation against
England was already strong in the colonies. The artisan mechanics of Philadelphia, along
with journeymen, apprentices, and ordinary laborers, were forming into a politically
conscious militia, "in general damn'd riff-raff-dirty, mutinous, and disaffected," as local
aristocrats described them. By speaking plainly and strongly, he could represent those
politically conscious lower-class people (he opposed property qualifications for voting in
Pennsylvania). But his great concern seems to have been to speak for a middle group. "There
is an extent of riches, as well as an extreme of poverty, which, by harrowing the circles of a
man's acquaintance, lessens his opportunities of general knowledge."
Once the Revolution was under way, Paine more and more made it clear that he was not for
the crowd action of lower-class people-like those militia who in 1779 attacked the house of
James Wilson. Wilson was a Revolutionary leader who opposed price controls and wanted a
more conservative government than was given by the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776.
Paine became an associate of one of the wealthiest men in Pennsylvania, Robert Morris, and
a supporter of Morris's creation, the Bank of North America.
Later, during the controversy over adopting the Constitution, Paine would once again
represent urban artisans, who favored a strong central government. He seemed to believe
that such a government could represent some great common interest, hi this sense, he lent
himself perfectly to the myth of the Revolution-that it was on behalf of a united people.
The Declaration of Independence brought that myth to its peak of eloquence. Each harsher
measure of British control-the Proclamation of 1763 not allowing colonists to settle beyond
the Appalachians, the Stamp Tax, the Townshend taxes, including the one on tea, the
stationing of troops and the Boston Massacre, the closing of the port of Boston and the
dissolution of the Massachusetts legislature-escalated colonial rebellion to the point of
revolution. The colonists had responded with the Stamp Act Congress, the Sons of Liberty,
the Committees of Correspondence, the Boston Tea Party, and finally, in 1774, the setting up
of a Continental Congress-an illegal body, forerunner of a future independent government. It
was after the military clash at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, between colonial
Minutemen and British troops, that the Continental Congress decided on separation. They