Common Sense, Part V: Plain Reasoning, contd.

From nationality, Paine shifted in paragraphs fifteen through eighteen of section three of Common Sense to a discussion of some of the economic benefits to be derived from independence. Taking account of the resources at the disposal of colonies, and their geographic location relative to the great empires of the 18^th-century world, it was his opinion that commerce was the surest means by which America might secure to itself, “the peace and friendship of all of Europe.” Considering the number of European powers, including Britain, that possessed territory in the Americas and the potential market that the colonies’ population of 2.5 million represented, this would seem a reasonable claim. “It is the interest of all Europe to have America a free port,” Paine accordingly asserted in paragraph sixteen. “Her trade will always be a protection, and her barrenness of gold and silver secure her from invaders.” Unlike Mexico or Peru, he seemed to suggest, whose wealth was principally mineral in nature, the greatest resource the American colonies had to offer were their buying power; conflict would inevitably disrupt theoretically plentiful commerce, and peace and friendship secure it. Of course, Paine admonished, none of this would make any difference so long as the colonies remained lashed to Britain and its restrictive trade policies.

As was common among European empires in the 18^th-century, Britain engaged in an economic practice known as mercantilism. The crux of this theory was essentially that there was a finite amount of resources of various types existing in the world. Because they were finite it was thus to the advantage of every state to attempt to secure as much of them as possible, prioritizing things like gold and silver (which were held to have inherent value), and restricting imports as much as possible. As a result of this conception of the limited nature of wealth, armed conflicts during the mercantilist era were frequently the result of competition for resources or valuable markets. Within this scheme, colonies were essentially human-powered machines that extracted resources and consumed manufactured goods. Per the dictates of mercantilism, colonies like Virginia, New York, New Spain or Brazil were prohibited from trading with either nations other than their nominal colonial overlords or the colonies of those nations. While citizens of these colonies frequently engaged in smuggling as a means of circumventing restrictive mercantilist trade policies, the majority of colonial citizens were forced to pay a premium on manufactured goods and sell their own natural resources at relatively static rates because they were chained by law to only a single market.

The Thirteen Colonies were no different, and Paine defied, in paragraph seventeen, “the warmest advocate for reconciliation, to shew (sic), a single advantage that this continent can reap, by being connected with Great Britain.” Mercantilism, Paine was correct to point out, was devised in order to move wealth chiefly in one direction, toward the seat of empire. Though advocates of the imperial economic system in Britain would, and did, argue that by carefully regulating imports the overall health of the empire could be guaranteed and a high standard of living ensured, the fact remained that the value of the colonies lay in their productive and consumptive capacities. They and their citizens did not enjoy an equal role in the British economy, but were subordinates to it. However long this had been going on, however “customary” it was, Paine argued that it was fundamentally unnecessary. “Our corn,” he wrote in paragraph seventeen, speaking on behalf of the colonies, “will fetch its price in any market in Europe, and our imported goods must be paid for buy them where we will.” Herein, Paine seemed to be attempting to get across two basic points, one abstract and one specific.

In the abstract, Paine was attempting to appeal to the basic economic understanding of his readers, many of whom were engaged in commerce in some fashion or another. Whether as shopkeepers, shipbuilders, farmers, artisans, workers, fishermen or miners, the majority of Americans in the late-18^th century worked in fields that had to do either with the extraction or production of raw materials or contributed to their sale or transportation. This was for the most part a consequence of the basic material circumstances of Britain and colonial North America; England and Scotland possessed comparatively advanced manufacturing industries and limited natural resources (with the exception of coal), and the colonies possessed abundant natural resources but limited manufacturing. Americans’ understanding of the nature of the relationship between Britain and the Thirteen Colonies thus could not help but be closely tied to their individual livelihoods; Britain was the only nation said colonies were permitted to trade with, bought what they produced and sold what they needed. Having access to new markets in which to sell their raw materials, be they mineral, animal or vegetable, more partners with which to trade, and a greater variety of manufactured goods at competitive prices would thus have directly affected how a great many Americans lived their lives. Paine understood this well, having started in life manufacturing ropes used in shipbuilding, and doubtless sought to employ simple economics as a lever with which to pry his readers away from their accustomed attachment to Britain.

He was aided in this endeavour by the more specific point that Americans from across the Thirteen Colonies had already suffered at the hands of Parliament’s attempts to “regulate imperial trade.” The Navigation Acts (1651, 1660, 1663, 1673, and 1696) were intended to correct contemporary trade imbalances by effectively closing off British ports to foreign merchants and preventing overseas colonies from trading with anyone other than Britain itself. While British shipping, shipbuilding and the Royal Navy benefited greatly from the protection these acts offered, colonial Americans grew to resent the restrictions on their ability to freely sell their produce or purchase finished goods. Further acts of Parliament in the 1760s and 1770s, including the Stamp Act (1765), Townsend Acts (1767) and the Tea Act (1773) attempted to implement further “regulation” by levying taxes on manufactured goods like lead and glass, almost any form of stamped paper (court documents, contracts, playing cards, etc…) and luxury goods like East India Company tea. Because colonists were forbidden by law from seeking other sources for any of these goods, and would be severely fined in the event of a violation, they had little choice but to either pay the associated duties (thus validating the disputed right of Parliament to tax the colonies) or go without. Though Paine had not arrived in Pennsylvania until November, 1774, at which point the Stamp Act and Townsend Acts had been repealed, he knew well enough that the memory of Britain’s heavy-handed economic policies was still very fresh in the minds of his fellow colonists. Calling them to mind in Common Sense, he offered his readers the potential solution of independence; absent Parliamentary interference Americans could buy and sell as they pleased at whatever prices the market offered. Devoid of philosophy or talk of “natural rights” and “natural law,” this straightforward economic calculus doubtless appealed to the everyday experiences of the majority of late-18^th century colonial Americans. Few of them could have been relied on to possess knowledge of, for instance, Lockean social contract theory, but they understood when their economic choices were being limited and the loss of opportunity that was the inevitable result.

Continuing his seemingly-exhaustive inventory of the various faults inherent in the relationship between Britain and the Thirteen Colonies, Paine next turned to certain matters of administration and geography. In the twenty-eighth paragraph of the third section of Common Sense, Paine advanced the very simple argument that the physical distance between the seat of the British Empire in London and the colonies themselves made the straightforward, timely, and efficient management of colonial affairs virtually impossible. As I pointed out many moons ago, the fact of this distance resulted in the various colonial governments developing a great deal of autonomy in matters of day to day administration, taxes, and legislation, the violation of which by Britain helped set in motion the events of the Revolution. Even accepting this autonomy, however, and the theoretical deemphasizing of rapid back-and-forth communication, the colonies themselves had by the 1770s become too complex, and Britain too eager to micromanage, for the status quo to continue for long without significant friction, modification, or its eventual termination. As Paine put it, “To be always running three or four thousand miles with a tale or a petition, waiting four or five months for an answer, which when obtained requires five or six more to explain it in, will in a few years be looked upon as folly and childishness.” This represented, once again, an acknowledgement on Paine’s part of the reality of life in the colonies, and the burdens shouldered by countless Americans as a result of their distance from the seat of ultimate decision-making power. As if this natural delay wasn't bad enough, George III had by the 1770s adopted the practice of refusing royal assent (necessary for bills to become law) to legislation originating in the colonies. The lengthy interval created by the Atlantic transit aided him and his ministers in this scheme by further ensuring that certain measures approved by the colonial governments were indefinitely postponed. In this way much-needed laws, appropriations or regulations were prevented from taking effect via purposeful obstruction and the colonial governments were left in legislative limbo. To Paine this was both unacceptable and unnecessary; independence was the obvious solution.

So too would separation from Britain remedy the somewhat more elementary imbalance that Paine pointed out in paragraph twenty-nine. Britain, he pointed out, was a small island located in north-western Europe, while the Thirteen Colonies stretched along the east coast of North America, a vast continent over five thousand kilometres away. Putting aside the aforementioned administrative issues arising from this physical distance, Paine reckoned that the power relationship between the two regions seemed to flow in the wrong direction. “Small islands not capable of protecting themselves,” he wrote, “are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.” This would appear to be an overly simplistic argument, and one which I don’t suppose would hold up to scrutiny if put forward today, but Paine’s intended audience was not one defined by its nuanced thinking. To, I repeat yet again for lack of a better descriptor, the statistically average American in the 1770s this sort of self-evident reasoning doubtless had a strong appeal. Paine’s reasoning ignored the generally accepted status quo for the relationship between colonies and colonisers (established and upheld by Britain, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, etc…), finding its basis instead in the natural world. “In no instance,” he reasoned, “hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet.” The power relationship between Britain and the colonies may have had a strong historical basis and may have been entirely in keeping with contemporary trends among European empires, but as Paine asserted it was still unnatural. A shopkeeper from Massachusetts or a farmer from Pennsylvania may not have possessed the dense historical and political background necessary to fully grasp how and why the colonies and the Crown related to each other the way they did, but they, and their innumerable compatriots, no doubt all nurtured a basic understanding of what looked or felt right or wrong.