throughout colonial history there were those in leadership, jefferson and franklin prominently, who viewed religion negatively. not just anglicanism or catholocism but the claim of any religion to a position of moral or temporal power. religion was associated with oppression obviously, but also with illogical mysticism that was counter to the tenets of the enlightenment.

however private they might keep their views, the religious-based arguments against paine that man was inherently "bad" and therefore the masses were unfit to govern was viewed dismissively. they were not egalitarians but they were empiricists and they saw that the common man was doing exceptionally well by contemporary standards in america. the idea that the aristocracy MUST consume and not work, and the common man MUST work and not consume,and that this was the natural and only way that society could be ordered flew in the face of their experiences in america. as did the idea of a materially "disinterested" aristocracy, much less the need for one. increasingly, and by the time of the constitutional convention, predominantly, it was interests, many of them, that seemed in need of balancing, not the three anachronistic post-medieval estates.

paine's "common sense" did not carry the day but it did survive to live another day that was soon coming. in the meantime a constitution was drafted and ratified and the meager nod to the need of an aristocracy was an appointive upper legislative chamber. society was not divided three ways, but power was, to make sure that power of the new, emerging and clamoring interests of different groups in society did not capture the whole of government.

despite all of this history however modern republicanism, elitism, aristocracy was not dead. the federalist party led by alexander hamilton worked for the establishment of an american aristocracy all over again in post-independence america. they made the same old arguments and this time they were opposed by jefferson and the republicans (the ancestor of today's democratic party).