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

Richard Price, for his part, was much like his Country Party predecessors in his evident apprehensiveness as to the relationship between the moral deficiencies possessed by every human being and the manner in which certain governments so often seemed to sacrifice the interests of their constituents in favor of those of their officers and patrons. For the Country Party, the appropriate measures in response to such morally lax behavior tended towards specific programs or initiatives. They favored temperance, for example, doubtless in response to the dramatic rise in the popularity and consumption of gin that began in the 1680s, and Sabbatarianism as a means of combatting the increasing secularization of the Sunday observance. The success of these kinds of measures may not have exerted very much impact directly upon the public affairs of the British state, but their popularity among the partisans of the Country Party speaks to that faction’s particular understanding of the problems its members believed they were facing.

For one thing, it’s worth noting that these kinds of moral reform campaigns often originated from within Britain’s Non-Conformist communities. Whereas mainstream Anglicans appeared to be comparatively unconcerned with the sanctity of the Sabbath or the drinking habits of the lower classes, Quakers, Methodists, and Puritans (among others) viewed the moral behavior of their fellow citizens – and, in turn, of society in general – as being very much their business. Though effectively cordoned off by law from participating in a number of social and political activities, Britain’s Non-Conformist population nonetheless demonstrated a keen interest in shaping the character of the nation as a whole. The membership of the Country Party occupied a far from dissimilar space politically – being by definition outside of the Court Party and thus unable to grasp the reins of power – and at the same time nurtured a seemingly parallel attentiveness to the disposition of the larger social fabric. This apparent connection is far from coincidental. The Country Party drew much of its strength from the aforementioned Non-Conformist communities – there being a strong connection between the former’s desire to protect civil liberties and the latter’s desire to exercise them – and was substantially influenced by its moralizing tendencies in terms of the social problems it identified and the measures it supported to combat them. The objective sought by such initiatives – whether in the context of social advocacy or political opposition – was, essentially, purification.

Whether Britain’s Baptist or Methodists were permitted to sit in Parliament, or the partisans of the Country Party had effectively been exiled from the halls of power, they remained subject to the decisions of those in whom authority remained vested. Unable to affect change from without, therefore, they opted to do so from within by attempting to reform the character of their fellow citizens. Fewer Sabbath-breakers, they no doubt reasoned, and fewer drunkards – and generally fewer people willing to give in to their impulses – meant fewer people willing to behave selfishly or thoughtlessly, or willing to tolerate those in government who would. Richard Price’s similarly moralistic admonitions appeared to contemplate this same cause-and-effect relationship. Whereas the Country Party had sought to address specific social ills, however, Observations seemed instead to offer only a blanket exhortation in favor of greater individual self-discipline. Seeking to identify in every case the force which he believed stood opposed, “To the agent’s own will; and which, as far as it operates, produces Servitude [,]” Price thus declared that the power opposing moral liberty was, “The influence of passion getting the better of reason; or the brute overpowering and conquering the will of the man.” Failure to counter this influence, he later asserted, would inevitably transform a person otherwise capable of reason, honesty, and compassion into, “A wicked and detestable being, subject to the tyranny of base lusts, and the sport of every vile appetite.”

Price’s use of the word “tyranny” to describe the less noble impulses which act upon individual judgement would seem to very much embody his understanding of the moral dimension of liberty. Selfish impulses, to his thinking, were as much in need of correction as legal restraints upon speech, movement, faith, or political participation. Anything that restricted people from behaving as they consciously wished was a threat to both the well-being of the individual and the well-being of society and needed to be dealt with on that basis. The Country Party approach to this issue tended to be fairly structured. While lower taxes, frequent elections, and a decrease in the standing army all stood to reduce the ability of public institutions to exert pressure upon the lives and choices of Britain’s citizen population, moral reforms like temperance and Sabbatarianism stood to accomplish the same goal by (hopefully) reducing the ability of humanity’s fundamental attraction to vice to transform otherwise virtuous individuals into either corrupt pseudo-tyrants or ignoble and abject slaves. The text of Richard Price’s Observations strongly indicates that he was no less dedicated to this basic program than his Country Party – or Old Whig, or Patriot – predecessors, though his focus was admittedly narrower. Again, though the moral liberty of his fellow citizens most certainly concerned him, it was not his primary focus. Self-disciple was undoubtedly a virtue he sought to encourage in a general sense – particularly among those in whom significant authority was vested – but there were certain socio-political ills that a sense of personal restraint simply could not alleviate. A government, for example, whose members believed it was in both their own rational self-interest and that of the nation they administered to curtail the civil liberties of certain of their constituents could not necessarily be said to suffer from a lack of self-control. Price’s awareness of this state of affairs doubtless shaped his approach within the text of Observations, leading to a focus on civil liberties and only a passing – though no less telling – reference to the socio-political dangers of excessive moral turpitude.        

   

            Intent though he plainly was on the practical, physical, and legal impediments to individual liberty over the rather murkier notion of moral tyranny, it nonetheless bears noting that even the more pragmatic elements of the Country Party program that Price appeared to echo in the text of Observations represented a somewhat fantastical proposition. As discussed above, the version of Britain that the original country men appointed themselves to defend in the late 17^th century had been seriously eroded by the turn of the 18^th century, and had more or less disappeared by the time their influence began to wane in the 1740s. By that time, the institutions against which they most often arrayed themselves – the Bank of England and the Royal Army – had more than proved their value by facilitating the physical expansion of the British Empire, the growth of its trade, the modernization of its economy, and the enhancement of its global reputation. By the 1750s and 1760s, wars with France and Spain having led to even greater gains in the colonial battlegrounds of India and America, there could be no denying that the institutional innovations that took place in the wake of the Glorious Revolution had almost completely shifted the fortunes of the British people in a manner theretofore likely unfathomable. That this transformation – and the successes that it wrought – was ultimately embraced even by those who had spoken against it in an earlier era is especially telling. The aforementioned William Pitt, whose leadership of the Patriot Whigs and accompanying calls for greater transparency in government had famously made him a thorn in the side of the Walpole Ministry in the 1730s, had no qualms about using the same fiscal-military apparatus he had earlier cited as a tool of personal enrichment to prosecute an exceedingly successful war against Britain’s colonial rivals as co-leader of a government with the Duke of Newcastle (1693-1768) in the 1750s. Sincere though Pitt and his fellow Patriots may have been in their accusations of corruption and malfeasance, their issue was evidently no longer with the Bank itself, or the Army itself. Rather, when they found fault, it was with the manner in which these institutions were used.

            Though he was politically almost certainly a Pittite himself, Richard Price gave every indication in the text of his Observations that he was far less sanguine as to the value of these selfsame institutions than Pitt himself seemed to be. Whereas the so-called “Great Commoner” had used the financial resources of the Bank of England and the firmness and stability of the Royal Army to great effect in a war with against Britain’s perennial continental enemies, Price actively characterized, “The terror of the standing army, the danger of the public funds, and the all-corrupting influence of the treasury,” as standing in opposition to the sense of virtue he believed his fellow citizens ought to display when faced with “a sycophant of power” of the kind they had twice disposed of in the previous century. Not only does this appear to separate Price from most of his fellow Whigs – who had every reason, by the 1770s, to see the fiscal-military apparatus of the contemporary British Empire as a source of strength rather than danger – but it would seem to have separated him from the mainstream of Britain’s political culture as a whole. While it was doubtless common in certain corners of contemporary public discourse to maintain a degree of skepticism as to the powers at the disposal of the executive branch of the government – to wonder, for example, whether it was strictly necessary to vest quite so much authority in quite so few hands – few people who were particularly engaged with the political events of the 1770s in Britain would called into question the very nature of the 18^th century empire.

Yet Price appeared to do just that. Perhaps this made him naïve, though the degree of his naivety would seem to depend on how sincerely he believed the Britain of the Glorious Revolution could realistically be restored. It almost certainly made him stubborn, adamant as he was about the corrosive nature of socio-political institutions whose usefulness to the British state had been proven over the course of decades. It very likely made him an idealist, believing as he seemingly did that his fellow citizens could and would reject ease, luxury, and power if often enough reminded that theirs was a culture built upon liberty. If nothing else, however, it most certainly made him vigilant. Unable to take for granted that Britain’s growth from kingdom to empire was in all respects beneficial to its citizens, Price appeared to instead embrace an ardent and thorough skepticism of the core elements of that growth. The program previously advocated by the Country Party – and later adopted and modified by their successors – provided a useful framework for this suspicion of established authority, particularly as it focused upon the shortcomings of the Bank of England and the Royal Army. The moment had passed, of course, during which it might have reasonably been expected that these institutions could be reined in or even eliminated, but that was perhaps not as significant as it might now appear. As the text of his Observations made quite clear, Price did not necessarily need to believe that late 17^th century Britain could be resurrected in the late 18^th century to make very cogent observations as to the state of British political culture. Corruption remained an impediment to good policy. The shareholders of the Bank of England held an inordinate amount of public influence for an unelected body. The Army was ripe for abuse. Parliament was unrepresentative. However likely it was that any of these issues would be addressed simply for the asking – and however grounded may or may not have been the ideology that necessitated calling them to the public’s attention – they were most definitely worth being aware of all the same.