In a Gallup poll conducted in September of
2011, 50% of respondents answered “yes” when asked, “Do you think the federal
government poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary
citizens?” This could be an illustration of the tiresome and nebulous complaint
against “big government.” It could be an example of the famously paranoid style
of American politics. But it could also be evidence that the American people
are wiser than is sometimes believed.
The Founders
left the American people with the advice that, when it is believed that the
government has gone off course, it is time to return to “fundamental
principles.” These are conveyed, in
abbreviated form, in the phrase, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Of course, there
is no proof that Americans still revere the ideals. This is an age, after all, when
noble-sounding ideals are seen as unsophisticated. For some, talk of life,
liberty, and happiness is a relic of antiquated Enlightenment thinking. Liberal
intellectuals who follow Richard Rorty will dismiss Enlightenment philosophy as
essentialist: that is, dogmatic and proselytizing.
Multiculturalists may believe that the Founders were too uniformly white and male
to be taken seriously today. The critics of the Founders are less damaging to
their memory, though, than the praise of that peculiar breed of modern American
who is notable for his beer belly, tricorn hat, and an unhealthy obsession with
the Second Amendment.
But before it
is even possible to consider whether the ideals of “life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness” are still meaningful to Americans, it is necessary to consider
whether the words are widely understood. After all, language has changed since
the 1770’s. The press of day-to-day life gives little cause or opportunity to
reflect on these merely historical, academic notions.
It’s doubtful
that Americans still learn this antique vocabulary. The American Pageant[1] for
example is a widely adopted high school textbook and may give an indication of
what young people are being taught. The book does not explain what the Founders
meant by “liberty,” “property,” “equality,” “natural law,” “anarchy” or
“tyranny.” John Locke, who was probably the single most important influence on
the political thinking of the Founders, is only mentioned once – and then it is
to credit his contribution to 19th century transcendentalist
philosophy. Nothing is said about Cato’s
Letters, a collection of writings that helped articulate the fears of the
American colonists, rally them around fundamental principles, and spark the War
of Independence.[2]
There are
also plenty of misconceptions. People are mistaken about the word “liberty.” The
libertarian may believe, with Ayn Rand, that “liberty” means, “Man’s right to
individual action, individual choice, individual initiative, and individual
property.”[3] But the
Founders were never drawn to radical individualism; in their eyes, what Rand
describes is not liberty but anarchy. John Adams defined anarchy as a state in
which, “Every Man will do what is right in his own Eyes.” Where there is
anarchy, Adams warned, self-serving justifications will be offered for every
sort of offense against another human being, and “no Man’s life or Property or
Reputation or Liberty will be secure.”[4] Anarchy
leads, ultimately, to the explosion of buildings and public property.
 | ||||
| Faces of Anarchy. As noted here, "fringe" elements have traditionally been employed as "bogey-men" to frighten a naive populace into submission, either when they are protesting injustices, or asked to accept further usurpations of their freedoms. (Update to post, May 2nd, 2012) |
 |
| Wall Street, bombed by anarchists in the year 1919. The ensuing "Red Scare" provides an historical example of how extremists and their extreme acts are used by government to impugn the motives of peaceful dissenters. |
“Liberty,” as the Founders knew it, refers to the “happiness to live under laws of our own making.”[5] It comprises a set of rules that the people create and agree upon and that allows them to live together amicably. Locke said that liberty, like the law, must be “equal and impartial.”[6] Liberty, in other words, only exists in the sense that unanimity exists, when it applies to everyone.
 | |||
| The coiled snake defending liberty (symbolized as a tree). |
The Founders
were certainly not Puritans, although historian Forrest McDonald is justified
in characterizing the government they created as a “puritanical republic.”[9] McDonald
was referring specifically to the Puritans’ pessimistic – or merely
unsentimental – view of human nature. Jefferson, sounding a bit like Cotton
Mather, wrote, “in every government on earth is some trace of human weakness,
some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and
wickedness insensibly open, cultivate, and improve.” Puritans and Whigs both understood
that insatiable greed and self-interest are the norm rather than exception; they
are the inevitable consequence of exposure to wealth and influence. To resist
the encroaching nature of these vices, people rely on one another for mutual
encouragement and watchfulness.
Tyranny grows
by stages. Like a cancer, it is dangerous before symptoms are detected. It
starts as petty corruption. The longer this corruption is allowed to continue
unimpeded, the more ravenous and destructive it becomes. Yet, it is only after
the corruption has reached an advanced stage do the signs become unmistakable;
then, it will resist any efforts on the part of the people to eliminate it.
Thus, it is possible for tyranny to exist and the only indication one has is
the feeling that, no matter who wins an election, the promised and most
urgently needed changes will not occur. And it is only after many small
compromises that cruelty and oppression, in the form of unlawful imprisonment,
unreasonable searches of law-abiding people, suppression of freedom of speech,
and punishing the innocent, manifests.
Today, for a
lot of people, “equality” means the absence of discrimination. To the 18th
century mind, equality meant the absence of privilege.
In monarchies, privileged citizens swayed elections and had their own separate
more lenient and accommodating system of justice. The poor could literally be
hanged for stealing a loaf of bread, but the privileged could evade punishment
for far more destructive crimes – such as taking public money for private gain,
or causing banks to fail.
Today, the
word “property” means “something that is owned.” It is often considered to be
synonymous with “private property.” When it was used in the Founders’ era, especially
in a legal context, the word meant “a claim to possession.” People did not say
“I have property,” but instead, “I have a property in it.”[10] Justice
John Vaughan, in the 1673 case of Thomas
v. Sorrell, ruled that “every man … has a property and right … in life, liberty, and estate … which the
law allows him to defend, and if it be violated, [the law] gives an action to
redress the wrong, and to punish the wrongdoer.” And, “To violate men’s
properties is never lawful.”[11] These
ideas were later championed by John Locke in his claim that property consists
of “lives, liberties and estates.”[12]
Then, as now,
“property” meant different things to different people. For Tories – many of
whom were landholders – the word “property” meant property in land. Anything other than land was chattels. For Whigs,
who represented the commercial and professional classes, the word “property” meant
property in rights, among which, the right
to possess the products of one’s own labor without fear of confiscation by the
government or by landlords.
The
distinction between property in land and property in rights is essential to
understanding the origins of the fundamental principles revered by the Founders.
To appreciate this, some historical background is necessary. During the 17th
and 18th centuries, the king exerted political and
economic influence by conferring land grants, offices, and honors. Some saw
this as a vestige of seigniorial monarchy.
This refers to a Feudal Era theory of government in which property in land is the origin of political authority and a kingdom
remains in the possession of the king and his heirs in perpetuity. Through a
system of tenure certain individuals
–usually wealthy and privileged aristocrats
– were allowed to hold a piece of land as though it were theirs for a period of
time. This arrangement consigned the remainder of the population to the status
of renters; their lives and livelihoods depended on the forbearance of the aristocrats.
When Cato’s Letters was written, remnants of this
feudal vision still animated political thinking. Therefore, they were
expressing bold and fairly new ideas when they said, “every Man has a Property
in his own Person. This no Body had any Right to but himself. The Labour of his
Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his.” And Locke, in
his explication of natural rights, said that mankind is God’s handiwork, and is
made to last “during his, not one another's pleasure: and being furnished with
like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be
supposed any such subordination among us … as if we were made for one another's uses.”
In the
context of Great Britain’s legacy of feudalism and the hardship that it imposed
on so many people, Jefferson felt he could replace the word “property” with “the
pursuit of happiness” without causing too great a change in meaning. On the
subject of happiness, as it pertains to the body politic, Benjamin Franklin
wrote, “the true principles of the happiness of nations” will be achieved when “The
causes, which tend continually to accumulate and concentrate landed property
and wealth in a few hands, may be diminished” and “the remains of the feudal
system may be abolished.”[13]
Even though
property qualifications prevented many of them from voting, and still fewer
from sitting in Parliament, many Britons believed that they lived in a royal monarchy. The king, by this view, acts
as a protector, rather than owner, of the kingdom. So he does not regard the
county casually as something he rents out over the holidays or loans to a
friend. Thomas Paine noted the British disdain for seigniorial monarchy in a
letter: “When it was reported in the English Newspapers … that the empress of Russia had given to one of her minions a large tract of
country and several thousands of peasants as property, it very justly
provoked indignation and abhorrence.” Yet, Paine added, the situation was not so
different in Great Britain. Even the poorest citizens had to pay taxes, and a large
portion of the public revenue became gifts, grants, pensions and bail-outs that the king and his
ministers exchanged for the purpose of personal profit, political loyalty, or extracting
favors.[14]
John Adams
saw history in a similar light. Writing about Queen Elizabeth, he noted that, “her
private interest and the importunity of her avaricious favourites, betrayed her
into the measure of granting monopolies, and of creating exclusive companies
with exclusive privileges, fatal to the interest of her most industrious
subjects.”[15]
The Evolution of the Idea of Property, in Relation to the American Revolution
The Evolution of the Idea of Property, in Relation to the American Revolution
Royal
prerogative at the time extended to foreign trade. King Charles II, for
example, granted a corporation by the name of The Royal African Company exclusive trading rights for portions of
modern-day Libya. And, the company was given authority to confiscate the ships
of unauthorized traders.
Commander Bridges’
ship was confiscated by this company. He believed he had a right to carry out
trade, and took the matter to court. His lawyer, a man named Bartholomew Shower,
questioned whether the king had the power to bestow properties on a private company.
Citing Thomas v. Sorrell as precedent,
Shower argued that property encompasses “life, liberty, and estate.” Property is
not the king’s to give. Instead, it belongs to every law-abiding British
subject. Hence, decisions regarding the alteration or transfer of properties require
parliamentary approval.[16]
Shower’s winning
the case did not prevent parliament from granting exclusive trading rights. The
East India Company continued to
exercise its trading rights in India and elsewhere, on the condition that its
stock consistently paid a dividend of 12%. The government received a yearly fixed
return of £ 400,000 but earned considerably more by stimulating
4 million in trade per year; the company became “the great money-engine of
state.”[17]
Many citizens were unconcerned by or resigned to the fact that the king and
members of parliament owned stock in the company.
The
government sent thousands of soldiers to India, both to collect revenues on
behalf of the company and to suppress rebellion. Muslim provincial rulers, the nawabs, were given fiefdoms and an
ambitious revenue target each year. The targets were met by means of rack-rents
and revenue agents. Revenue agents entered cities and villages to collect exactions: meaning, the payments required
of Indian people to cover the expenses of British soldiers as well as a growing
army of British civil servants, many of whom were political appointees. If the
nawabs fell short of the target, they had to borrow the money to pay. The
British exploited the opportunity to become lenders and charge high interest
rates. In time, new bonds were issued to pay for earlier bonds, and revenue mortgages (borrowing against
future revenue) were signed. If they met the revenue target, the target would
be raised. This left the nawabs with little time to spare for the “exertions of
honest industry” (as one observer put it), as they were forced to focus their attention
on speculative financial schemes.[18]
The East
India Company was also involved in engrossing
domestic products – meaning, they purchased goods in such supply that they
could control prices, so as the Indians were asked to pay more, they were also
forced to sell for less. According to Macaulay’s historical account, “Enormous
fortunes were thus rapidly accumulated at Calcutta, while thirty millions of
human beings were reduced to the extremity of wretchedness."[19] And not
only were the Indians earning less money, hard currency was steadily being
taken out of their economy and sent abroad. Edmund Burke observed, at the time,
“Every rupee of profit made by an Englishman is lost forever to India.”[20] Domestic
investment in manufacturing and infrastructure fell into steady decline, and
credit became increasingly hard to come by.
In Bengal, after a drought had led to a poor crop,
company administrators made up the lost revenue by charging a rate of 60% on
tax and tariffs. The Bengalese farmers were left with no other alternative than
to stop growing food and start to growing opium poppies, a far more lucrative
crop, thus inaugurating the modern pattern in which the creation of fiefdoms creates
the violent trade in drugs. When the farmers abandoned the production of food
crops, it created a famine, and several million Bengalese people died of
disease and starvation.[21] Over
time, the effect of the company’s policies on farming and manufacturing led to
lost production. This caused the company to struggle financially, even as
directors and managers enjoyed great wealth.
Having read about the events in India, Britons were appalled
by the newly and ostentatiously wealthy East India Company employees who
returned to England. Still, many managed to buy their way into parliament – by
1780, there were 27 of these so-called “nabobs” in office.[22]
It is likely that 18th century Americans were avid readers
of Cato’s Letters because this
collection of writings provided insight into current affairs. Copies were
distributed in every colony, some coming directly from Benjamin Franklin’s
presses. The authors of Cato’s Letters
posed the question, “What has [the East India Company] done for the benefit of
trade, which they were established … to promote? They have suffered numbers of
our manufactures to rot … hindered private traders from carrying on an
advantageous commerce … and, it is said, by their wise conduct, have lost a
million or two of the Company's principal.” As the fortunes of the East India
Company foundered through their “extravagance and folly,” the directors of the
company conspired to inflate (or “job”) the price of their company stock. When
they “wound up the cheat to the highest pitch that it can go,” they will, “like
rats, leave a falling house,” and allow “multitudes of people to be crushed by
it.”
And once they have earned their latest windfall by manipulating the
price of stock, they will finally “bring themselves into the legislature with
their peddling and jobbing talents about them, and so become brokers in politics
as well as stock, wanting every qualification which ought to give them a place
there.” Through forestalling, buying, and selling votes, they will, “fill their
private purses with many thousands [in profit] … load the people with many
millions [in debt].”
The economist Adam Smith also wrote about the effects of these
mercantilist policies. He used the term “monopoly” more broadly than it is used
today, to refer any situation in which supply is artificially restricted to a
small number of producers. He saw government-sponsored franchises or “exclusive
companies” as examples of this practice. Monopolies increase the amount of profit enjoyed by a privileged few, he
believed, by denying profit to the
large numbers of people who are shut out of the market. Adam Smith’s thinking
is reflected in the modern economic concept of rent-seeking. The term is an allusion to feudalism: when landholding
aristocrats charged their peasants rent, wealth was taken out of the hands of
the numerous, industrious poor and placed in the hands of the wealthy, idle few.
 |
| Against the East India Company's importation of tea, 1773. Note the reference to "private interests." |
When the United States
Constitution was being drafted, Jefferson sought to include in the Bill of Rights, along with freedom of
speech and freedom of the press, a “freedom of commerce against monopolies.”[26] But he
was to discover that there were, even among the delegates assembled to ratify
the Constitution, some who would
oppose this idea. The changing meaning of the expression “free trade” is,
regrettably, too large a subject to be considered here.
[1] Eleventh
Edition. Thomas A. Bailey, David Kennedy, & Lizabeth Cohen. Houghton
Mifflin.
[2] Bernard
Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the
American Revolution.
[3] Ayn Rand, http://fare.tunes.org/liberty/library/toptt.html
[4] An Essay on Man’s Lust for Power, 1763 /
1807.
[5] Benjamin
Church, Cited in Gordon Wood, The
Creation of the American Republic, 1776 – 1787.
[6] A Letter Concerning Toleration, 1689
[7] Second Treatise on Government, 1689.
[8] Miriam-Webster Dictionary
[9] Novus Ordo Seclorum
[10] See
David Seipp, ‘The Concept of Property in the Early Common Law’
[11] Cited
in Seipp, ibid
[12] Second Treatise on Government.
[13] ‘Reflection
on the Augmentation of Wages.’ 1788.
[14] Second Letter to Lord Onslow, 1792
[15] A New History of Great Britain, 1802.
[16] Report of Cases Adjudged in the Court of
King's Bench During the Reigns of Charles II, James II, & William III,
Volume 2, 1794.
[17]
George Dempster. 1773. Proceedings and
Debates in Parliament.
[18]
Phillips, ‘A Successor to the Moguls: The Nawab of the Carnatic and the East
India Company, 1763-1785.’ 1985.
[19] Essay On Clive, published 1907.
[20] Speech on Mr. Fox’s East India Bill.
1780.
[21] Marshall, Problems of Empire
[22] Lawson & Philips, ‘Perception of
Nabobs in Mid-Eighteenth Century Britain’
[23]
Benjamin Faneuil, cited in Francis Drake, Tea Leaves. 1970.
[24] Ministry Embarrassed with the Affairs of the
India Company -- Distress among the Manufacturers. 1773
[25] A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law,
1765
[26] Letter to A. Donald. 1788.
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