Regina F. Graham For Dailymail.com
Historian Jonathan Clark suggests that Thomas Paine committed plagiarism by not writing the 6,000 word passage
Clark asserts the account of the French Revolution was 'different in tone' from the rest of the work
Instead, Clark believes that his friend, Marquis de Lafayette, wrote it
Clark is a professor of history at the University of Kansas
historian is claiming that one of the founding fathers of the United States committed plagiarism.
Thomas Paine has been described as an activist, a journalist, a propagandist, and even a corset-maker.
A new essay written by Jonathan Clark, a professor of history at the University of Kansas, suggests that Paine did not write the momentous 6,000 word passage from his legendary 'Rights of Man.'
Clark asserts that Paine's account of the French Revolution was 'different in tone' from the rest of the work.
He believes that it was most likely the result of extensive conversations with a not credited second writer named Marquis de Lafayette.
'This 6,000-word narrative is eloquent, idealistic and visionary,' Clark wrote in his essay, 'Moments to Liberty,' that was published in the Times Literary Supplement.
'There is, indeed, only one difficulty: Paine cannot have written it.
'He wrote it out; some of it he put into his own words; but he cannot have been the primary author.' he writes in his essay, published in the Times Literary Supplement.
Clark argues that over the centuries, the English activist's version of the French Revolution has been regarded as the definitive account of the event.
'Paine was undoubtedly the author of the remainder of Rights of Man, and its readers have naturally looked to that work for an explanation of the French Revolution,' Clarke wrote in his essay.
'But the adulation or blame heaped on Paine's book by its supporters or opponents has occluded the strangeness of this 6,000-word passage.'
Clark claims that the prose of that section is different to that used by Paine throughout the rest of the book.
He explained that examined more closely, 'seems not to be that of an Englishman at all; it reads like the English prose of a native French speaker' and that it's often 'couched in uplifting generalizations.'
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3237807/Historian-claims-founding-father-Thomas-Paine-plagiarist-didn-t-actually-write-crucial-passage-legendary-Rights-Man.html#ixzz3m0qk1GLN 
