In the opening days of 1776, Tom Paine's influential tract Common Sense rolled off the presses and rushed straight into the swirling firestorm that increasingly consumed the imperial dispute. The newly arrived English immigrant appeared on the scene as though sent from central casting as one of Jefferson's emigré revolutionaries in the Summary View, and promptly set his distinctive stamp on the events and philosophical debate in the six months or so prior to the formal declaration of American independence. By the time Paine's pamphlet reached his American audience, much had changed in even a few years, and what little goodwill that remained in Anglo–American relations after years of strain had largely disappeared. American blood had been shed by British troops, and a hastily recruited Continental Army lay siege to the British garrison in Boston. Quite in keeping with the turbulent passions of the time, Paine's incendiary rhetoric advanced the colonial position in a way hitherto unseen in the more than decade-long dispute between the colonists and the British government. Common Sense marked a departure from previous statements of the colonial position in several ways. First, Paine expressly and unambiguously made the case for American independence from the British Empire. He showed no desire to quibble over legitimate spheres of imperial jurisdiction or to engage in extended discussions of the colonists' legal and constitutional links with the mother country. For Paine, Britain ruled the empire, and the Americans should and must leave it.