Editing Common Sense (section)

===III. Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs===
[[File:Constitution-usa-thomas-paine.png|thumbnail|300px|Constitution of the United States as proposed by Thomas Paine in ''Common Sense'']]

In the third section, Paine examines the hostilities between Britain and the [[Thirteen Colonies|American colonies]] and argues that the best course of action is independence. Paine proposes a ''Continental Charter'' (or ''Charter of the United Colonies'') that would be an American ''[[Magna Carta]]''. Paine writes that a Continental Charter "should come from some intermediate body between the Congress and the people" and outlines a Continental Conference that could draft a Continental Charter.<ref name="Paine, Common Sense, 96-97">Paine, ''Common Sense'', pp. 96–97.</ref> Each colony would hold elections for five representatives at large, who would be accompanied by two members of the house of  assembly of each colony and two members of Congress from each colony, for a total of nine representatives from each colony in the Continental Conference. The Conference would then meet and draft a Continental Charter that would secure "freedom and property to all men, and… the free exercise of religion".<ref name="Paine, Common Sense, 96-97"/> The Continental Charter would also outline a new national government, which Paine thought would take the form of a Congress.

During the [[American Revolutionary War]], the British implemented several policies which allowed [[Fugitive slaves in the United States|fugitive slaves]] fleeing from American enslavers to find refuge within British lines. Writing in response to these policies, Paine wrote in the third section that Britain "hath stirred up the Indians and the Negroes to destroy us".<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lRBkDwAAQBAJ&dq=Thousands,+and+tens+of+thousands,+who+would+think+it+glorious+to+expel+from+the+continent+that+barbarous+hellish+power&pg=PT23 | title=Common Sense & the Rights of Man: Words of a Visionary That Sparked the Revolution and Remained the Core of American Democratic Principles | isbn=9788027241521 | last1=Paine | first1=Thomas | date=21 March 2018 }}</ref>

Paine suggested that a congress may be created in the following way: each colony should be divided in districts, and each district would "send a proper number of delegates to Congress."<ref name="Paine, Common Sense, 96-97"/> Paine thought that each colony should send at least 30 delegates to Congress and that the total number of delegates in Congress should be at least 390. The Congress would meet annually and elect a president. Each colony would be put into a lottery; the president would be elected, by the whole congress, from the delegation of the colony that was selected in the lottery. After a colony was selected, it would be removed from subsequent lotteries until all of the colonies had been selected, at which point the lottery would start anew. Electing a president or passing a law would require three-fifths of the congress.