Having gone to significant lengths
in the text of Part I of his Observations
to lay out precisely what it was he understood of liberty in practice – with
pervasive reference to the program of the 17th century Country Party
– Richard Price thereafter proceeded to examine the facts of contemporary
British government policy in the empire’s restive American dependencies. At the
time that he was writing, it would do well to recall, the Thirteen Colonies
were effectively in a state of war with their nominal European overlord as
though they were a nation unto themselves. The colonies, in addition to
maintaining their traditional legislatures and governors, were at least
partially under the authority of a series of revolutionary congresses, none of
which recognized the authority of the sitting British government. These
“provincial congresses,” in turn, sent delegates to a Continental Congress in
Philadelphia whose leadership sought alternately to direct an ongoing military
conflict with Britain and pursue a peaceful settlement with the same. Battles
had been waged – principally in Massachusetts – the British occupation of
Boston had largely been stymied, and an American invasion of Quebec had been
launched and defeated, all by the end of 1775. It had been, in short, an
eventful year.
As the sun rose on
1776, however, the colonies had yet to take the step of declaring their independence
from Great Britain. In spite of everything that had occurred thus far – the
blood that was shed, the vitriol spewed forth – Congress and the North Ministry
were united in their common desire for a settlement of the dispute and a return
– more or less – to the status quo. The Thirteen Colonies, it seemed, for all
the grievances their citizens nurtured against successive British governments,
in large part maintained that continued union with Great Britain was in their
collective best interest. Just so, notwithstanding the degree to which certain
colonists and their governments had defied the authority of Parliament and the
Crown, the government of Lord North (1732-1792) was no less convinced that
Britain stood to benefit economically, strategically, and diplomatically from
America’s continued inclusion within the larger British Empire. Bearing this
shared conviction in mind, however, and exploring all the ways in which the
North Ministry and certain of its predecessor sought to pursue it, Price was
forced to note a rather curious state of affairs. Long though successive
British governments had claimed to value America, it resources, and its people,
and adamant though the contemporary administration of Lord North was as to the
need to defend the principles of the British Constitution in the face of a
sustained and systematic challenge, almost nothing that Britain had done or
continued to do in the name of preserving its rule in America seemed at all
capable of producing that result. On the contrary, Price asserted, it looked as
though, beginning in the 1760s, one ministry after another had done everything
in its power to alienate people of America, drive the colonists away from any
further connection with the British Empire, and violate nearly every constitutional
principle that Parliament traditionally claimed to uphold. Whether the result
of misapprehension, thoughtlessness, or insincerity, these errors were the
reason Price believed the Anglo-American relationship could never be repaired,
and also why he seemed increasingly convinced that it was likely preferable
this should be the case.
In seeking to
advance this argument, Price first set about establishing a few more basic
principles on the order of liberty in theory and practice. Namely, he set out
to explore – in Part I, Section III of Observations
– a subject of particular significance within the context of the Anglo-American
relationship, being the validity of one country claiming authority over
another. Having already discussed the degree to which he believed liberty was
contingent of the possibility for independent action, it very much stood to
reason that Price would apply the same logic to the relationship between master
and subordinate nations and arrive at the same conclusion. Just as there was – to
his thinking – no way to deny a people the ability to reasonably act out their
desires without in some way infringing on their liberty, he affirmed that,
It is an
immediate and necessary inference that no one community can have any power over
the property or legislation of another community, that is not incorporated with
it by a just and adequate representation.– Then only, it has been shewn, is a
State free, when it is governed by
its own will. A country that is subject to the legislature of another country,
in which it has no voice, and over which it has no countroul, cannot be said to
be governed by its own will. Such a country therefore, is in a state of
slavery.
Declining at this
stage to name any specific countries, Price’s intention would nonetheless have
been hard to mistake. Though they were colonies in point of law, the various
governments that then existed in British America were by and large the
functional equivalent of independent states. Granting that their various chief
executives were most often appointed by the Crown on the advice of the Privy
Council, each possessed a legislature and a judiciary that were functionally
independent of either Parliament or the various British courts. That these
selfsame colonial assemblies undertook to levy taxes upon the communities that
elected their members was thus entirely in keeping with the basic principles of
the British Constitution and represented precisely the kind of functional
autonomy that Price had earlier associated with liberty.
In the event, however, that
Parliament attempted to levy taxes upon these American communities – as they
did in 1764, 1765, 1766, and 1773 – the continued existence of liberty became
at once doubtful. America did not elect members to sit in the Parliament of
Great Britain – i.e. America was not, “Incorporated with [Britain] by a just
and adequate representation.” The taxes allocated by that body thus represented
something other than the will of the citizens to which they were meant to be
applied. By Price’s definition, the various colonies could thus be fairly
characterized as countries, “Subject to the legislature of another country, in
which [they have] no voice, and over which [they have] no countroul [.]” It
followed that America thus “governed” by Britain, “Cannot be said to be
governed by its own will [,]” and was in effect existing in a state of slavery.
Bearing in mind that slavery was yet still legal in the British Empire, Price’s
invocation of the practice was most definitely intended as a critique upon the
British Parliament’s treatment of its nominal American constituents. However
Price may have felt personally about the practice – and there would seem to be
evidence enough to suppose that he was not in favor of it – slavery was not a
state to which most contemporary European Christians believed other European
Christians deserved to be subjected. Notwithstanding the history of slavery
being in large part colorblind, the institution had by the 18th
century become highly ethnocentric, with those to whom it continued to apply –
i.e. non-European and non-Christian peoples, principally from Africa and Asia –
considered spiritually, intellectually, and morally inferior to their civilized
overlords. To be a slave, therefore, by the terms of Price’s likely audience, was
to be unintelligent, brutish, and unprincipled, and essentially fit for no
other life than perpetual servitude.
This only entailed the contemporary
view on individual enslavement, of course. It was Price’s belief that the
enslavement of entire nations presented a worse prospect by far because the
nature of the resulting master/supplicant dynamic was bound to be even more
impersonal. Humiliating though it undoubtedly was, he affirmed accordingly, the
enslavement of one individual to another at least presented the opportunity for
intimate personal contact, and thus contained the possibility for the
development of, “That fellow-feeling that takes place between persons in
private life.” The country that found itself enslaved to another was
comparatively at a loss to nurture this same potential for sympathy. “Being
detached bodies that never see one another,” Price explained, “And residing
perhaps in different quarters of the globe, the state that governs cannot be a
witness to the sufferings occasioned by its oppressions; or a competent judge
of the circumstances and abilities of the people who are governed.” This
unfortunate state of affairs was likely to be made more troubling still, Price
asserted, by the thoughtlessness inevitably resulting from such an arms-length
relationship. Having doubtless taken on the administration of this distant
province for the purpose of achieving some benefit for itself, the governing
nation would have every reason to strain the resources of the subject nation
beyond the point of comfort and possessed no convenient means by which to be
made aware of – or pressing need to alleviate – the suffering that would likely
result. “The more the one is loaded,” the author of Observations accordingly observed, “The more the other may be eased.”
Again, though yet preferring to speak in general rather than specific terms,
Price’s aim is not difficult to discern. The effect of the contemporary policy
of Parliament to lay taxes upon a people that it did not represent – and for
the purpose of paying off a debt to which they did not direct contribute – was
to essentially strip them of their liberty without even the benefit of having
their suffering accordingly observed.
Price’s assertions became somewhat
more pointed as this train of argument continued. Having put forward an
ostensibly hypothetical scenario in which an otherwise free and sovereign state
was made subject to the legislative authority of another, distant nation – the
result being an inevitable conflict over which body could claim final and
legitimate authority – he went on to describe a series of consequences that
would have surely appeared strikingly familiar to a contemporary resident of
British America. “In order to remedy this evil,” Price proposed,
And to give
efficiency to its government, the supreme state will naturally be led to
withdraw the Governor, the Council, and the Judges from the controul of the Province, by making them entirely
dependent on itself for their pay and
continuance in office, as well as for
their appointment.
The author of Observations also proposed that this
same hypothetical “supreme state” might further assert its control over the
comparatively subordinate “Province” by attempting, “Under the pretence of the
impossibility of gaining an impartial trial where government is resisted […]
ordain, that offenders shall be removed from the Province to be tried within
its own territories [,]” and may even go so far as, “Forbidding all meetings
and associations of the people, except at such times, and for such particular
purposes, as shall be permitted them.” In addition to representing a deplorable
state of affairs on the part of the theoretical subject nation – their being
left without recourse to justice or the means by which to publicly express
their discontent – this series of punitive measures rather closely paralleled
the actual policies visited upon British America between 1770 and 1776.
Though the British sentries arrested
and tried for their role in the events of the Boston Massacre (March 5th,
1770) were ultimately acquitted in November of that year – thanks in large part
to the defensive counsel of one John Adams (1735-1826) – contemporary British
authorities remained skeptical that such an outcome might easily be repeated. The notion of colonial courts trying British officials
at a time when the Anglo-American relationship was experiencing a period of
sustained tension evidently gave pause to certain members of the
newly-installed government of Lord North (1732-1792). It was thus shortly
thereafter proposed – ostensibly in response to complaints on the part of
colonial jurists that their salaries were prohibitively low – that the yearly
wage of American justices might be increased by transferring the responsibility
for payment from the colonial legislatures to the His Majesty’s Treasury.
Seeing in this offer an attack upon the independence of the colonial judiciary,
all of the justices of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature – with
the exception of Chief Justice Peter Oliver (1713-1791) – refused to take part.
Shortly thereafter, in response to the so-called Boston Tea Party (December 5th,
1773), the North Ministry attempted again to “protect” British magistrates and
officers from the vagaries of American justice as part of a series of punitive measures.
The resulting Administration of Justice Act (1774) declared, among other
things, that,
If it shall
also appear, to the satisfaction of the said governor, or lieutenant-governor
respectively, that an indifferent trial cannot be had within the said province,
in that case, it shall and may be lawful for the governor, or
lieutenant-governor, to direct, with the advice and consent of the council,
that the inquisition, indictment, or appeal, shall be tried in some other of
his Majesty's colonies, or in Great Britain [.]
Decried by members
of the increasingly animated Massachusetts opposition as the “Murder Act” for
the license they believed it would confer upon British officials to commit
heinous crimes without fear of being tried by those they had injured, this
piece of legislation served only to further threaten the integrity of the
Anglo-American relationship. Unable to simply purchase legal impunity, it
seemed the North Ministry had instead resolved to establish it by law.
Evidently conscious of the
resentment that such policies would inevitably engender, the government of Lord
North also sought and received the passage of the Massachusetts Government Act
during the same session of Parliament in the spring of 1774. This additional
piece of legislation, like the aforementioned Administration of Justice Act,
aimed to both punish the people of Massachusetts for the disrespect they had
shown to the authority of Parliament and the Crown as well as prevent any
future expression of discontent or disobedience. The act accordingly suspended
the charter under which Massachusetts had been governed since 1691, erecting in
its place a far more centralized administration wherein the Crown and its
chosen Governor exercised unparalleled authority. The elected Executive Council
– unique in British America – was replaced by a body to be appointed directly
by the Crown, while a number of civil offices also customarily chosen by a
college of voters were to be filled on the sole authority of the aforesaid
Governor. Where this not draconian enough – serving effectively to isolate the
popular, democratic element of the colonial government in the lower house of
the legislature – the Massachusetts Government Act also prohibited the calling
of town meetings without the consent of the colony’s chief executive.
Representing a
form of local government unique to New England and a legislative platform among
the most democratic in the contemporary British Empire, the town meeting had
been a foundational element of socio-political organization in colonial
American since the early 17th century. Not only did the practice
allow qualified citizens to freely express their opinions, concerns, or
proposals in a space protected by law and tradition from censorship or
interference, but it also served to commemorate and reaffirm the Puritan
heritage of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the attendant social values of
autonomy, community, and self-discipline. Notwithstanding the accordingly
intense social and political significance of the town meeting, the text of the
Massachusetts Government Act declared,
Whereas a
great abuse has been made of the power of calling such meetings, and the
inhabitants have, contrary to the design of their institution, been misled to
treat upon matters of the most general concern, and to pass many dangerous and
unwarrantable resolves: for remedy whereof, be it enacted, That from and after
the said first day of August, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-four, no
meeting shall be called by the select men, or at the request of any number of
freeholders of any township, district, or precinct, without the leave of the
governor, or, in his absence, of the lieutenant-governor, in writing,
expressing the special business of the said meeting [.]
To a great extent,
the ability of town residents in colonial Massachusetts to attend to the
administration of their communities – provided they met certain basic
qualifications – symbolized precisely the kind of liberty Price described in Observations as finding its source and
sustenance in the potential for autonomous action. The Massachusetts Government
Act effectively foreclosed on this potential by placing an external barrier
between the townsperson and their most basic, accessible, and efficacious
public institution.
Beholden though
town meeting attendees most certainly were to the laws of the colony and the
authority of its Governor, they nevertheless maintained the right and the
ability to both regulate the government likely to exert the most profound
influence upon their daily lives and to speak freely within that same forum
without fear of repression or punishment. Robbing these same citizens of the
right to elect members of the Massachusetts Legislative Council – among other
offices – undeniably represented a drastic reduction of their ability to direct
the affairs of the colony in which they resided. But the reduction of the town
meeting from a right to a privilege because certain attendees thereof had
dared, “To treat upon matters of the most general concern” arguably symbolized
a much crueler act of political and civil repression. Forbidden from freely
governing the towns and villages from which Massachusetts itself was born – and
from exercising control over the only branch of government many of them would
ever encounter in the course of their lives – the affected colonists were left
almost completely at the mercy of a legislature, a cabinet, and a monarch over
which they could exercise no influence beyond which these same authorities
deigned to admit. Such an utter and total loss of the liberty they had grown
accustomed to thinking of as their birthright was indeed as close to slavery as
any contemporary European subject of the British Crown was liable to
experience.
And yet this, as
Price asserted in his Observations,
was not a punishment reserved only for those populations whose crimes against
the state were too unspeakable to name. Nor did it have anything to do with the
particular social, religious, of ethno-political characteristics of the
affected communities. Rather, it was simply a consequence of one state claiming
authority over another. Any nation, comprised of any assortment of peoples,
located in any corner of the globe would be forced to contend with the same
indignities and injustices were it the subject of another. Attempting to drive
this point home – and to seemingly tease out the sense of Euro-centrism that
was doubtless common among his prospective audience – Price went so far as to
affirm that exactly this state of affairs would manifest itself were his own homeland
for once in the role of subject rather than master. “Thus will such a Province
be exactly in the same state that Britain
would be in,” he accordingly declared,
Were our
first executive Magistrate, our House of Lords, and our Judges, nothing but the
instruments of a foreign democratical power; were our Juries nominated by that
power; or were we liable to be transported to a distant country to be tried for
offences committed here; and restrained from calling any meetings, consulting
about any grievances, or associating for any purpose, except when leave should
be given us by a Lord Lieutenant or Viceroy.
The purpose of this
scenario was almost certainly to shake British readers out of their sense of
complacency by asking them to imagine what was effectively the unimaginable.
So accustomed had the
average British subject more than likely become to thinking of America as some
distant appendage of the Empire by rights wholly dependent on and subservient
to the sitting government in Westminster, they could easily have digested the
events of the Anglo-America crisis up through 1776 without ever once thinking
about the practical effects of the policies being implemented on their behalf.
Price sought to push through this habitual antipathy by rhetorically transposing
the American plight onto Britain proper. Imagine, he asked his countrymen, if
Parliament was forced to obey the dictates of another legislature some three
thousand miles distant. Imagine Britain’s justices being appointed by a foreign
monarch, its Prime Minister subject to dismissal by a council of foreign
magistrates. Most galling yet, imagine the British people being unable to meet
in any capacity – nationally or regionally, officially or informally – without
first consulting the foreign administrator tasked with overseeing their
domestic affairs. Could there be any gloss applied to such an arrangement to
make it seem fair and just? Could any affirmation of the continued value of
liberty and justice excuse the injuries done to the same? Would it make any
difference at all to the benighted citizens of Great Britain to know that their
overlords were themselves a fair, kind, and freedom-loving people whose own
government was grounded upon the protection of certain basic civil rights?
Though Price did
not answer on behalf of his fellow Britons, their response would seem easy
enough to intuit. Surely, with nary an exception, they would have recoiled at
even the idea that British citizens would ever acknowledge any authority save
that of Parliament, the ministry, and the Crown. Their liberties were too dear
to them, had been bought at too dear a price, and they would doubtless have
died before suffering to have them compromised at the behest of some alien
authority whose knowledge of affairs in Britain – owing mainly to physical
distance – could not be much more than academic at the best of times. In spite
of the likelihood of this visceral reaction being elicited, however, British
citizens had been complicit in having exactly these measures takes against
their countrymen in America since almost the beginning of the colonial project
in the early 17th century. Though they prided themselves as a
culture on the personal and political freedoms that historical sacrifice had
secured for their enjoyment, the average native-born resident of Great Britain
more than likely thought nothing at all of depriving people of their own blood,
heritage, and tradition of the same fundamental liberties simply because they
did not live in Britain proper. It was precisely this quality of hypocrisy that
Price hoped to bring to the attention of his readers, particularly by drawing
to their attention the degree to which their own sentiments would have been
aroused were the circumstances differently applied. “It is certain,” he accordingly
asserted, “That this is a state of oppression which no country could endure,
and to which it would be vain to expect that any people should submit an hour
without an armed force to compel them.” As true as this was in Britain, Price
endeavored to demonstrate to his audience that it was just as true in America.
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