Friday, October 26, 2018

Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, Part X: Illogical, Unthinking, Hypocritical Britain, contd.

            The rationale that Richard Price next sought to examine and deconstruct in the text of his Observations for the continued submission of the American colonies to the British government was somewhat more figurative than those he had theretofore addressed. Whereas the claims he had investigated up to that point sought to invoke – albeit somewhat vaguely – the facts and figures that set America and Britain apart, this next assertion attempted to substitute allegory for even the appearance of logic. “But we are the PARENT STATE,” Price quoted certain of his countrymen as having declared, as if that phrase obliterated all doubt as to proper roles to be assayed by Britain and America, respectively. The author of Observations would have none of this, of course, and proceeded to dismantle the “parent state” argument in both its literal and figurative sense.
By claiming for Great Britain the title of parent to America’s presumed role as child, the advocates of British supremacy that Price was evidently citing were doubtless attempting to imply that the American colonies owed their origin to Britain, that they had enjoyed British guidance and support in the formative years of their existence, and that they consequently owed the British government some degree of deference and fealty. It would be difficult to say to what extent this hypothetical obligation extended, though the context would seem to imply an indefinite degree of submission over an indefinite period of time. Understandably – given his aforementioned understanding of the nature and significance of sovereignty – this was not a state of affairs to which Price could comfortably resign himself. For one thing, it seemed to him that the implications of the doctrine – if taken to their logical conclusion – extended beyond just the relationship between Britain and America. “The English came from Germany [,]” Price thus pointedly observed. “Does this give the German states a right to tax us?”

            In point of fact, England had indeed been settled between approximately the 5th and 7th centuries by an assortment of Germanic tribes – among them, most famously, the Angles and the Saxons. These various continental peoples migrated into what was then post-Roman Britannia, either as invaders or by the invitation of its native Celtic inhabitants, and proceeded to completely transform the cultural and political makeup of the region by about the end of the 9th century. This would not be the last time England would be invaded and settled on a large scale by an otherwise foreign people – the Norman conquest of 1066 having further redefined both the nature of English culture and its relationship to continental Europe – but it arguably represented the single most significant event by which a former province of the Roman Empire became a distinct socio-political entity.

            The purpose of Price’s question, therefore, was to draw a comparison between the settlement of America by various communities of English/British migrants over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries and the settlement of Britain by the Angles and Saxons over a millennium previous. Specifically, it was the implication of the “parent state” claim – i.e. that being the nominal originators of the American colonies gave Britain a claim to their continued obedience – that was being called to examination. If, Price was essentially asking, America ought continually to defer to Britain, submit to the authority of its government, and pay whatever taxes the legislature thereof assessed simply because the colonists and their ancestors originally came from Britain, did it not then follow that Britain should similarly submit itself to the governments then administering the lands from which their own ancestors migrated? This was, of course, a fairly ridiculous proposition. Not only were there far too many sovereign or semi-sovereign states then in existence in what is now Germany for it to be at all clear which one Britain owed its fealty, but a number of them were in fact its rivals for influence in the ongoing contest for regional dominance. Therein, however, lay the rhetorical strength of Price’s approach. Just as Benjamin Franklin had earlier satirized the “parent state” concept by writing a declaration ostensibly on behalf of the King of Prussia claiming his right to mastery over Britain – An Edict by the King of Prussia, publish September 22nd, 1773 – Price was using the plainly evident illogic of one situation to expose the same quality in another.

            Britain naturally had no reason to surrender its sovereignty to the Prussian government, or indeed to any government of any German state, and was under no legal obligation to do so. Granted, the ancestors of the contemporary English people had originally migrated from lands now falling within one or more of these states, but a great deal – on the order of one thousand years of history – had transpired since then. To expect Parliament to give way to some foreign sovereign simply because that sovereign ruled over the ancestral homeland of Parliament’s ancient forefathers was therefore plainly absurd. And while it perhaps also warrants acknowledgement that far less time had passed between the settlement of British America between the 1610s and 1730s and the emergence of the Anglo-American crisis in the 1760s and 1770s, the principle which Price was evidently endeavoring to expose still applied. At some point between the time that Germanic peoples set foot in England in the 400s and the establishment of the first Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the 500s, some threshold had been crossed whereby the relevant migrant peoples and their descendants were no longer bound by whatever tribal authority they had recognized in their native Germany. Impossible though it may be to pinpoint when and how this occurred, clearly it did occur. In consequence, it may fairly be inferred that the same shift was bound to take place within the Anglo-American relationship.

            At some point, for some reason, the American colonies would reach a stage in their development after which they would no longer be required to acknowledge the authority of their British forebears. Either that, or Britain was in fact still bound to obey the dictates of the German authorities that the ancestors of its citizens had long since left behind. Doubtless neither of these eventualities would have seemed particularly desirable to those among Price’s countrymen who continued to insist that American owed its allegiance to Britain, but that was most certainly the point. Either nations were the prime source of sovereignty, or people were. Either a person could define their own citizenship, or they – and their children, and their children’s children – were bound for all time to the authority under which they were born. British history certainly seemed to bear out the truth of the former. When the ancient Angles and Saxons migrated to sub-Roman Britannia, they did not thereby extend the authority of the Germanic chieftains whose authority they had previously been given to acknowledge. Rather, they formed a series of unique polities – Kent, Mercia, Northumbria, etc. – wholly outside the sovereignty of their homelands and possessed of governments of their own derivation and authority.

            Just so, Price seemed to indicate, the original settlers of the Thirteen Colonies had left the authority of Parliament behind when they departed from British ports and set sail for America. Granted, most of the relevant colonial ventures were conducted under the auspices of royal charters. And it also bears acknowledging that the resulting colonial governments did tend to acknowledge the authority of Parliament in certain matters of policy. These were, however, often described by the colonists themselves as essentially voluntary measures. Rather than pay homage to the reigning British monarch out of obligation – which their forefathers had been made to do while still residing in Britain proper – they did so out of a sense of tradition and fellow-feeling. Rather than bow to the authority of Parliament in recognition of the domestic supremacy thereof, they gave way to the dictates of the British legislature only as pragmatism and courtesy deemed necessary. Far from being dispatched by their government with express instructions to establish the authority thereof in North America, these migrants – among them religious dissenters, debtors, criminals, and utopians – had left of their own accord, in large part at their own expense, and proceeded to build communities for themselves that suited their needs and conformed to their respective visions of socio-political harmony. The reigning British government in 1776 could accordingly no better claim them than indeed the Elector of Saxony could realistically demand that the descendants of his ancient subjects in Britain render unto him the homage he was due. The settlements of Britain and America were neither of them wholly state-directed affairs, and the resulting communities were accordingly responsible for determining to whom – if anyone – their fealty was owed and to what end – if any – their sovereign efforts were directed.

            Even, however, if one were to indulge the notion of Britain as the “parent state” of the American colonies – with the former explicitly guiding and supporting the efforts and development of the latter – Price maintained that the colonists were yet still in the right to find fault with the manner in which they had theretofore been treated. “Children,” he thus affirmed in Part II, Section I of Observations, “Having no property, and being incapable of guiding themselves, the author of nature has committed the care of them to their parents, and subjected them to their absolute authority.” Nothing could be more natural or more obvious. At the same time, Price continued, “There is [also] a period when, having acquired property, and a capacity of judging for themselves, [children] become independent agents; and when, for this reason, the authority of theirs parents ceases, and becomes nothing but the respect and influence due to benefactors.” This, too, was an eminently logical outcome of the parent/child dynamic. At some point, every child who survives infancy becomes an adult, takes full responsibility for themselves and their actions, and enters the world on equal standing with that enjoyed by their parents. Affection (ideally) still remains between parents and child, along with, as Price acknowledged, some degree of respect and trust built upon years of successful and loving guidance. But the adult offspring ought not to feel bound by the dictates of their parent as they did when still a child. Having come into their own, they alone must determine in all things the proper course of action. Just so, the loving parent should openly welcome this day, as they themselves were guided to it by their own progenitors, and encourage their children to embrace the independence for which they have been prepared.

            Applying this same logic to the relationship between the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain, however – in light of the aforementioned characterizations of Britain as the “parent state” of the colonies – produced a somewhat less rosy outcome. Whereas, Price explained, successive British governments should accordingly have been lessening the extent to which Parliament exerted its authority over the colonies in anticipation of the day when they became wholly independent states, quite the opposite had been allowed to transpire. “Like mad parents,” Price asserted, “At the very time when out authority should have been most relaxed, we have carried it to the greatest extent, and exercised it with the greatest rigour.” Not only did this course of action – i.e. taxing residents of the colonies without their consent, garrisoning troops among them, restricting their commerce, abrogating their governments, etc. – represent an injustice in itself for the flagrant manner in which it violated the civil rights of the effected colonist, but it directly contradicted the notion that Britain ought to have been regarded as though it was the parent of the Thirteen Colonies. Having established themselves upon a firm basis of government, affirmed the rule of law within their borders, and taken to sustaining themselves via a robust commercial intercourse with Britain proper, the colonies of British America were clearly no longer in need of the kind of guidance and discipline that a child requires. It should therefore have followed that the colonies could not be considered children any longer, and that the government of Great Britain was obligated to release its accustomed hold upon American affairs and allow the inhabitant thereof to chart whatever course they desired. If this was not the case, of course – that is to say, if Britain refused to acknowledge that the time had passed when its authority was any longer required in America – then perhaps the colonies were not children, Britain was not their parent, and the entirely argument was well and truly moot.

            Such blatant inconsistencies between rhetoric and action were very much at the core of Price’s subsequent complaints. Proceeding in Part II, Section I of his Observations to interrogate the various explanations he had encountered in favor of Britain’s continued mastery over the American colonies, he thus hit upon – and wholly eviscerated – the question of financial investment. “But we have, it is said, protected them,” Price wrote, “And run deeply in debt on their account.” Vague though this claim may be, the thrust of it would seem obvious enough. From the beginning of the English colonial project in the late 16th century to what was then the present day of the late 1770s, successive British governments had indeed spent a cumulatively impressive sum protecting and helping to expand the various settlements of British America. The British Navy had protected colonial shipping and ensured that American harbors were safe from foreign depredations, the British Army had lent invaluable assistance to local militias in holding back both indigenous threats and the aggressive ventures of rival European powers, and British negotiators had signed treaty after treaty with neighboring native peoples, thus greatly expanding the available territory into which it was possible to migrate. The benefits of these measures to the inhabitants of British America were exceedingly substantial, not at all unlike the cost of the same to the contemporary British Treasury. The Seven Years War (1754-1763), while bringing about the final elimination of France from the North American colonial contest, proved to be a particularly expensive endeavor, having exploded the British national debt from £75,000,000 before the war to £130,000,000 by the beginning of 1764. Bearing this all in mind, it would thus seem quite fair to grant that Great Britain had indeed invested a great deal in the continued prosperity of its American dependencies, to the point of taking on theretofore unimaginable financial obligations.

            Richard Price did not claim otherwise. The degree to which successive British governments confirmed their interest in the American colonial project via repeated financial commitments was doubtless as plain to him as to any modern observer. He did, however, question the rationale behind these repeated investments. “Will anyone say,” he thereby asked of his countrymen, “That all we have done for them has not been more on our own account, than on theirs?” It would seem a rather obvious line of inquiry – that is to say, it might fairly be taken as a given that Britain did not act as it did out of pure altruism. To those among his countrymen who were so capable of deluding themselves as to imagine that Britain’s interest in the American colonial project was wholly selfless and compassionate in nature, however, Price was endeavoring to illustrate the various benefits America provided to its supposed European benefactor. “Have they not helped us to pay our taxes,” he asked,

To support our poor, and to bear the burden of our debts, by taking from us, at our own price, all the commodities with which we can supply them?–Have they not, for our advantage, submitted to many restraints in acquiring property? […] Has not their exclusive trade with us been for many years one of the chief sources of our national wealth and power? […] In the last war particularly, it is well know, that they ran themselves deeply in debt; and that the parliament thought is necessary to grant them considerable sums annually as compensations for going beyond their abilities in assisting us. And in this course would they have continued for many future years; perhaps for ever.–In short, were an accurate account stated, it is by no means certain which side would appear to be most indebted.

These were significant claims on Price’s part, to be certain. Indeed, it would have been difficult to conclusively confirm or deny them without fairly intimate access to any number of public and private accounts. That being said, the conclusion which followed was almost certainly an apt one. At its heart – and despite appearances to the contrary – the Anglo-American relationship was essentially a reciprocal one.

            This should not be taken to mean that it was also an entirely equitable association, of course. The core principle of mercantilism – then the guiding economic philosophy of most every major European power – was that there was a finite amount of wealth in the world, and that it was the purpose of trade, and taxation, and war, and just about every other power possessed by government to ensure that the largest sum of resources possible was collected and concentrated in the coffers of the nation. It would therefore not have made sense philosophically for Britain to engage in anything like a fair and unstructured commercial intercourse with its various American dependencies. Indeed, from the perspective of Britain itself the colonies existed almost entirely for the purpose of harvesting, processing, and exporting the natural resources of the American continent and turning its own output of manufactured goods into valuable hard currency. Price had rightly pointed out as much in the passage cited above, and it would have been difficult indeed for any but the most obtuse of his countrymen to deny that the advantages they and their government had thereby accrued were sizeable indeed. And while the inhabitants of the colonies were not blessed in return with economic opportunities equal to those enjoyed by their British counterparts – their trade, manufacturing, financial policy, and even physical movement were all subject to restriction by British law – they at least received the benefit of the aforementioned military and diplomatic assistance.

            The point that Price was attempting to make in the quoted section of his Observations would thus seem to stand very much as he intended it. Within the context of the Anglo-American relationship, Britain and the relevant colonies were certainly not equals in terms of the privileges they enjoyed and the benefits they derived. But nor could it be honestly stated that either rendered up an advantage to the other without receiving something very valuable in return. Britain, in exchange for admittedly extensive military and financial aid, gained in America an exclusive source of raw materials like timber and produce, as well as sole access to an expanding market for its yearly increasing output of manufactured goods. At the same time, by allowing certain aspects of its economy to be restricted via taxes and regulations in whose formulation it had no part, America enjoyed the largely unquestioning protection of one of the most powerful nations on the planet and access to a voracious market for its own output of natural resources. Certainly it wasn’t a perfect arrangement. Doubtless the British government would have preferred to spend far less money defending colonial interests while also avoiding having to so frequently wrangle with willful colonial governments. Just so, the American colonists would surely rather have enjoyed access to British markets and manufactures without having to submit to the accompanying economic regulations. At the very least, however, it was a functional relationship, and one in which most costs were clearly accompanied by corresponding benefits. While it might narrowly have been conceivable to craft something better in its stead, it would have been all too easy to replace it with something worse.

            The notion that Britain’s financial investment in the American project should entitle the government thereof to unquestioned superiority over the administration of the Thirteen Colonies would therefore seem to ignore the essential nature of the Anglo-American relationship. For over a century as of 1776, Britain had protected America in exchange (essentially) for access to its markets. At the same time, America had surrendered market access in exchange for military protection. Terms and definitions had been debated, reforms had been proposed, implemented, sustained, or discarded, and force of arms had been resorted to more than once. But the essence of the thing – the fundamental give-and-take – had persisted throughout, perhaps because there was little confusion on either side of the Atlantic as to what, precisely, the relevant parties were attempting to achieve. For the hypothetical British resident to ask, as Price posits them asking, why Britain’s various expenditures on behalf of America did not equate to ownership over the same thus effectively embodies a kind of willful misunderstanding. There should have been no confusion on the part of the average late 18th century Briton that their government’s protection of America entitled them to nothing more or less than a monopoly on American trade. Not a partial-monopoly, or preferential treatment, but complete and utter dominance in buying from and selling to the markets supported by the various American colonies. Likewise, it should have been absolutely clear that Britain had benefited tremendously from this privilege. America natural resources had fed a burgeoning British manufacturing sector, which in turn extracted even greater wealth from American consumers who had no choice – save resorting to smuggling and the black market – than to buy British products. That a given British government – as well as its various domestic supporters – should have expected more than this from the Anglo-American relationship should accordingly have been hard to fathom. Americans had made ample compensation for the protection they had received, Price accordingly affirmed. To ask any more of them would have been the essence of greed and a mockery of justice.

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