 Paine’s institutional suggestions in Common Sense are hardly fully fledged proposals. Indeed, one of the most surprising aspects of Paine’s writing is how little institutional discussion there is—he is not a man for the detailed discussions of constitutions and legislative and executive arrangements. Even his piece in the summer of 1791 Answer to Four Questions on the Legislative and Executive Power is not especially illuminating. Most modern commentators tend not to notice this. Paine is clearly a democrat, he advocates democratic institutions, and he rejects those of monarchy and aristocracy. But such judgments are often deeply anachronistic. If we examine what Paine actually says, we see that his own perspective was one which evolved and remained inclusive in many areas. It seems clear that Paine was a republican—but in a changing and always very specific sense. In Dissertations on Government (1786) he specifies it as government directed towards ‘the public good, or the good of the whole’ (II, 372). In Rights of Man (1791) he understands it as government by election and representation (I, 338)—a definition of republic that matches closely that advocated by Madison in the Federalist Papers. In Rights of Man (1792) he switches back to the earlier formulation: