Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, Part IV: That Old Whig Harangue, contd.

Based on the various convictions and statements cited thus far, a definite image emerges from the text of Observations of Richard Price as being distinctly disconnected from many of the socio-political norms of his time and place. His desire for constituency reform was certainly novel, unusual, and even progressive for the era. It would not be until 1832 that even the beginnings of parliamentary redistricting would start to take place. But his distrust of one of the centerpieces of the British Empire’s exceedingly successful 18^th century was rather the opposite of forward thinking. Well-intentioned though his criticism of its influence undoubtedly were, it would have been difficult in 1776 to convince anyone who wasn’t convinced already that the military and economic expansion resulting from the incorporation of the Bank of England represented a net loss for the integrity of the British state. And even if it had been possible to shift public and elite opinion alike against the Bank – to the point of either revoking its charter or refusing its renewal – who could say what the economic consequences would ultimately be? Britain had changed drastically between 1694 and 1776. Not only had the population grown by over a million people, but the first stirrings of what would become the Industrial Revolution had begun to radically transform such fields as mining, smelting, textiles, and chemical engineering. Access to raw materials like cotton, iron, and coal were as valuable to this process as the availability of viable export markets, both of which were made possible by bank loans, government sponsorship, and joint-stock subscriptions in colonial trading companies. Putting aside the dominant position that Britain would soon enough come to enjoy within an increasingly integrated global economy, British firms – and, in turn, the Treasury – had already substantially benefited from rising revenues and an expanding customer base. The sudden credit crunch that would inevitably result from the disappearance of the Bank of England would almost certainly have occasioned a massive economic recession from which the British state would struggle mightily to recover. And in the end, even if recovery was not only possible but accomplished, pre-1694 England would not magically reappear. The die was cast, whether Price liked it or not.

This is not to say, of course, that there was no longer any purpose to surveying the continued evolution of British society and politics with a critical– and at times even caustic – eye. Doubtless Price understood this – divorced from the realities of the contemporary British state though his convictions may have been – and sought to offer his particularly idealistic take on the ideal character of representative government as a counterbalance to what he knew to be the worst aspects of contemporary public affairs. Consider, to that end, a passage from around the middle of Part I, Section II. In seeking to describe what he considered to be a reasonable frame of government that offset liberty with stability, Price wrote that,

In order to form the most perfect constitution of government, there may be reasons for joining so such a body of representatives, an Hereditary Council, consisting of men of the first rank in the state, with a Supreme executive Magistrate at the head of all. This will form useful checks in a legislature; and contribute to give it vigour, union, and dispatch, without infringing liberty; for, as long as that part of a government which represents the people is a fair representation; and also has a negative on all public measures, together with the sole power of imposing taxes and originating supplies; the essentials of liberty will be preserved.     

                                         

Note here both Price’s evident appreciation for balance in government and his emphasis on “fair representation.” What he ultimately desired for his homeland, it seemed, was simply that it adhere – perhaps somewhat more faithfully than appeared to be the case – to the form of government time and tradition had blessed it with. Unpopular though the notion might have been, constituency reform was thus likely intended by Price to strengthen this existing administrative framework – to make it “fair” in a way that it perhaps had been originally but was no longer. Time could not be turned back on the state of British politics, but the core purpose of government might be rejuvenated by a somewhat more conscientious approach. That these were Price’s aspirations rather than his observations is made clear by the coda he appended to the above citation. “We make it out boast in this country,” he affirmed, “That this is our own constitution. I will not say with how much reason.”

            Mixing somewhat caustic weariness with more spirited rhetoric was more or less standard procedure for Price throughout the text of his Observations. At the same time he endeavored to arouse his readers’ pride or anger he seemed as keen to sting their egos or wound their dignity. This was particularly the case when he was endeavoring to articulate some aspect or other of the aforementioned Country Party creed. Opposition to centralized authority, he thus affirmed at the end of Part I, Section II, was not only sensible, but formed a fundamental part of contemporary Britain’s history and identity. Having first quoted the aforementioned Montesquieu – “Sleep in a state […] is always followed by slavery” – Price went on to declare that,

The people of this kingdom were once warmed by sentiments such as those. Many a sycophant of power have they sacrificed. Often have they fought and bled in the cause of Liberty. But that time seems to be going. The fair inheritance of Liberty left us by our ancestors many of us are not unwilling to resign.   

Consider, here, Price’s appeal to his countrymen’s shared sense of self-respect. Putting aside his impulse to quote a Frenchman – ever a questionable choice when addressing an English audience – the reason he sought to recollect Britain’s libertarian past is quite obvious. Simply telling his readers that unchecked executive authority was dangerous, and expecting them to take his word for it, could only achieve so much. Reminding them, conversely, that the nation they knew, loved, and profited by was born upon a foundation of aggressively rejecting arbitrary authority would have been that much harder to ignore.

The original 17^th century “country men” had been given to adopting the same tack because history had so recently furnished them – between the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the overthrow of James II in 1688 – with examples of the unwillingness of the British people to suffer the whims of unrepresentative power. Price was perhaps not so lucky, though both of these events loomed large in the formation of the contemporary British state. In consequence, while those that were still reverent of the generation of their forebears who took it upon themselves to rid their islands of a brace of grasping monarchs would doubtless had felt themselves stirred by Price’s commemoration, the remainder would be made to suffer a slur or two against their comparative indolence. “The fair inheritance of Liberty left us by our ancestors,” Price thus affirmed, “Many of us are not unwilling to resign.” This was perhaps not the harshest rebuke the author of Observations might have offered, but it almost certainly appealed to his own ideological priorities. He and his countrymen had been left something infinitely precious by their predecessors – i.e. a love of Liberty and the means to defend it – and were squandering it with every right their collectively refused to assert. There could be no greater crime.

The depth of Price’s feeling on the matter was made yet clearer by his assessment of contemporary Britain’s sense of “public virtue.” Continuing on from the passage cited above, he proceeded to lament that,

Should any events ever arise that should render the opposition necessary that took place in the times of King Charles the First, and James the Second, I am afraid all that is valuable to us would be lost. The terror of the standing army, the danger of the public funds, and the all-corrupting influence of the treasury, would deaden all zeal, and produce general acquiescence and servility.

Here was Price willing not only to call the specific attention of his audience to the events that had served to inspire the Country Party of antiquity, but he also named two of that same faction’s perennial bogeymen – the standing army and the financial elite – as yet still standing in opposition to the free and unfettered enjoyment of the liberty that was their birthright. In so doing, the author of Observations effectively accomplished two objectives at once. First, he offered a somewhat more cutting appraisal of the state of contemporary British political consciousness than had theretofore been the case. More than being merely lackadaisical in defending their inheritance, Price accused some unspoken portion of his countrymen of cowardice, servility, and corruption. Second, he made it clear to his audience – in the 21^st century as well as the 18^th – that his assessment of the gravest threats facing the contemporary British state was substantially the same as that of the Country Party. Some eighty years after its incorporation, the Bank of England and its coterie of financiers yet loomed in Price’s mind as an enemy of the values he regarded as underpinning British liberty. Just so, over a century past its formation, the peacetime British army still seemed to him to be antithetical to the essential character of British citizenship and political identity.

            Not all of Price’s Country Party tendencies spoke quite so fundamentally to the very foundations of contemporary British statehood, of course. Some, while nonetheless appearing to confirm his strong personal affinity for that 17^th century political movement, seemed comparatively to entail social rather than ideological preferences. Moral reform, for example, though very much topic of concern for the original 17^th-century country men, did not necessarily involve the same kind of rejection of institutional innovation that arguably defined so much of the Country Party program. Just so, while Price’s emphasis on personal discipline as a guarantor of liberty very much paralleled his predecessors’ ardent moralizing, it, too, seemed to embody an ancillary rather than fundamental concern. Price’s interest, after all, had to do with the nature of civil liberty, as the title of his treatise made perfectly clear. What he referred to as “moral liberty” was certainly a matter of consequence to him – or else he would not have mentioned it at all – but not to the degree that he seemed inclined to discuss it at length. That being said, the observations he did offer are worth exploring all the same.

            Consider, for example, Price’s characterization of passion as being a kind of despotism from which the individual must struggle to escape if they wish to be truly free. Having already explained to his readers at the beginning of Part I, Section I that the fundamental concept of liberty embodied individual freedom from being acted upon by a force or forces that said individual cannot control, Price proceeded to affirm that, “He whose perceptions of moral obligation are controuled by his passions has lost his Moral Liberty; and the most common language applied to him is, that he wants Self-government.” While this might strike the modern reader as something of a non-sequitur in the context of a discussion about the nature of liberty in a political society – individual autonomy being most often threatened in such cases by an outside force – the rationale underlying Price’s association of moral freedom with civil freedom is not so difficult to discern. Liberty, as defined in the text of Observations, was as much a means as an end, with its moral dimension acting as strongly upon the state of human civilization as its physical, civil, or religious aspects. Free, in short, was better than unfree, and it was worth nurturing the former regardless of the nature of the forces that stood to restrain it.

            In approaching the topic of liberty, the author of Observations accordingly concerned himself at the outset with defining how and why a society might take specific steps to protect the autonomy of its members against all manner of restraint. “Without Physical Liberty,” he declared, “Man would be a machine acted upon by mechanical springs, having no principle of motion in himself or command over events; and, therefore incapable of all merit and demerit.” The implication of this passage seem to be that reducing humankind to a race of such thoughtless, artless, mindless beasts would  have been to the detriment of the species as a whole. Just so, Price’s assertion that, “Without Religious and Civil Liberty he is a poor and abject animal […] bending his neck to the yoke, and crouching to the will of every silly creature who has the insolence to pretend to authority over him [,]” drew a clear connection between the functional autonomy of the individual and their willingness to subject themselves to the will of another. Reduced to a state of spiritual servitude, communities who might otherwise have flourished and innovated would be effectively enslaved to those for whom power alone was the only end worth pursuing. Moral liberty, while embodying an internal rather than external struggle, contemplated the same fundamental object. Those who are free of their baser impulses – a force which, though we can learn to ignore, we cannot control – are capable of expressing their autonomy in a way that simply isn’t possible were they wholly sunk in their passions. While this maxim might seem to describe a conflict of personal significance only, it takes on a larger, public importance when one considers the impact of human failings like temptation, greed, and arrogance upon the public affairs of a state.