Centinel I, Part I: Context

            I must admit, the previous series went on far longer than I initially anticipated. And though I might at first feel some reflexive need to apologize for droning on and on so, a second thought causes me to hold my tongue. If, God bless you, you are among what I imagine to be the minuscule number of people who will happily read whatever I post week after week, you doubtless felt no reason to complain about such an extensive interrogation of Richard Price and his Observations. And if, God keep you all the same, you are among those who could take or leave what I have to offer – a category which necessarily includes the overwhelming majority of the species – you doubtless walked away somewhere around part IV or V when it became clear that things weren’t going to be wrapping up anytime soon. It being next to impossible for me to imagine anybody falling in between these categories – that is to say, someone who takes more than twelve thousand words to decide whether or not they’re at all invested in what they’re reading – I am accordingly given to claim that no harm has been done, and no foul recorded. Thus, we move right along. Granted, the series that begins here will most certainly be shorter than the last. But this should not be taken as any form of amends on my part, notwithstanding that which I owe to myself. Twenty-two weeks is a very long time to talk about any one document, engrossing though it may well have been. What follows, then, is something completely different, for my own sake as well as anybody’s.

            On that note, I ask my audience – of whatever stripe, stamp, or kidney – to cast their minds back to the period and the events of the late 1780s in the United States of America. The Revolutionary War has been over for several years, the Continental Congress continues to very loosely govern the various states under the auspices of the Articles of Confederation, and the American economy has experienced a rather slow, painful, and uneven recovery. In an attempt to rectify this stubborn state of financial malaise – in which hard currency is scarce, debts are rarely repaid, trade has stagnated, and the paper currency issued on the authority of Congress holds almost none of its value – a group of notables from each of the thirteen states agrees to meet in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 for the ostensible purpose of modifying the governing charter of the union of states. The aim of these assembled statesmen being the creation of a government better equipped to respond to the aforementioned economic tribulations, they fairly quickly determine that only a strong, centralized government will serve the purpose they have set out to fulfill. Accordingly abandoning the Articles of Confederation altogether, the delegates then set about framing an entirely new government for the United States of America, which they proceed to send to Congress for ratification in September. Though understandably surprised by the scope and scale of the document they have been asked to consider – the proceedings of the Philadelphia Convention having been conducted in secret – the members of Congress nonetheless agree to submit the proposed federal constitution to the various states in accordance with the accompanying instructions. State conventions are called, delegates chosen, and a vigorous public debate ensues.

            Enter the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers – both of which, of course, have been discussed here before, but neither of which ceases to offer ample reward for investigation. Specifically, enter Centinel, that pseudonymous – and seemingly spelling-averse –  author of some eighteen essays published between October of 1787 and May of 1788 whose stated aim was to dissuade his fellow Americans from too rashly adopting an entirely novel frame of government before giving due consideration to the flaws, deficiencies, and implications thereof. Though no more noteworthy in the substance and presentation of his views than such previously-discussed Anti-Federalists as Brutus (Robert Yates), A Plebian (Melancton Smith), and Mercy Otis Warren, Centinel nonetheless makes for an intriguing read, arguably for the very reason that the general thrust of his argument feels exceptionally familiar. Indeed, when one reads the first of his eighteen compositions – published initially in the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer on October 5^th, 1787 – the sense of déjà vu is almost overpowering. Though arguing against the creation of a powerful central government at a time when he and his countrymen had fought a war against exactly that less than a decade previous, the basic contours of Centinel’s philosophy and perspective align extraordinarily closely to the tried-and-true playbook of the modern, states-rights advocating American conservative. Indeed, one gets the distinct feeling from reading Centinel I that the last two hundred years have not done very much at all to alter the basic character of political discourse in the United States.

Whether this should be a source of comfort or dismay, I shall leave it for each of us to decide on our own. There is, however, much to say on the subject of where such a persistent perspective originated and how it came to be a staple of the ideological dialogue of American republicanism. Whether one agrees with the small government hypothesis or not, its influence on the course and development of American history and culture is impossible to deny. It would therefore seem far from an idle pursuit to investigate – if not its origins – an early and very coherent manifestation thereof. How, for example, did the notion that government should be small and simple become a part of the discussion surrounding the ratification of the United States Constitution? From where did the critics of that document derive their belief that political authority should be highly decentralized? And what caused commentators like Centinel to conclude that the people could form a much surer check against corruption than any institutional safeguard? Surely these ideas developed out of some antecedent, or else originated in response to a particular set of circumstances. Centinel I, though fairly brief, speaks precisely to these kinds of inquiries, and in so doing arguably helps lay bare the means by which values that have become absolutely foundational to the political culture of the United States first entered the public discourse thereof.

Addressing and interrogating the significance of Centinel I will, of course, first require some knowledge of its author, their life, and the circumstances that led them to put pen to paper in the first place. This, unfortunately, is where the resources available to the modern investigator come up rather short. Beyond the widely-held conviction that the author of the Centinel essays was most likely a Pennsylvanian named Samuel Bryan (1759-1821), and the verifiable fact that they were initially published between October 5th, 1787 and April 9th, 1788 in the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer and the Philadelphia Freeman's Journal, there would seem to be very little else to say. Bryan, for whatever reason, evidently left no more substantial imprint upon the history of the United States than to have a set of political treatises – important, yes, but not earth-shaking – connected to his name. The years of his birth and his death are known, as well as the fact that he corresponded with Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) for a period in the early 19^th century. Much more than that regrettably remains mysterious. This should not be taken to mean, however, that the customary examination of the applicable context for the forthcoming series will herewith cease and desist. If there is any maxim to which America, On Paper can be said to adhere unfailingly, it is to never say a little when one can instead say a lot. To that end, let us proceed to set the stage for a discussion of Samuel Bryan’s Centinel I by approaching the topic at hand in what we’ll call a lateral fashion. If we cannot talk directly about the author of the document in question, let us instead talk about the world in which he lived.

Thankfully, though Samuel Bryan yet remains something of a cipher, his father was by comparison both famous and well-attributed. George Bryan (1731-1791), born in Dublin in the 1730s and settled in Philadelphia in the 1750s, was, among other things, a merchant retailer and trader, a vocal opponent of the Stamp Act (1765), the first Vice-President and the second President of independent Pennsylvania, a justice of the state supreme court, trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, a long-serving state legislator, and an early advocate for the abolition of slavery. Noted by and among his peers as something of a radical, the elder Bryan was an avowed opponent of both colonial Pennsylvania’s proprietary governors as well as those who hoped to transform the colony into a direct possession of the Crown. By way of a refresher, the colonial Province of Pennsylvania was, from the time of its founding in 1681 until it became the independent Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1776, the private property of Quaker luminary William Penn (1644-1718) and his male heirs. Though the elder Penn was generally well-liked and well-regarded by the inhabitants of the colony he had founded as a refuge for those suffering religious persecution in Anglican Britain, his successors as proprietor frequently found themselves at the center of some controversy or other over issues ranging from freedom of conscience, to relations with local native peoples, to the taxation of properties traditionally owned by the Penn family. Bearing in mind that fellow Pennsylvanian Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was likewise labeled a radical for his attempts to strip the hereditary proprietors of their office and turn the province into a Crown Colony, George Bryan’s apparent opposition to even this latter course would seem to have set him quite far indeed outside the mainstream of contemporary Pennsylvania politics. 

     

In addition to apparently taking all comers in terms of colonial Pennsylvania’s political status, the elder Bryan was also an early supporter of American independence – compared, say, to fellow Pennsylvanian John Dickinson (1732-1808), who was an extremely late supporter of reconciliation – and an ardent devotee of the style of government subsequently practiced in the Keystone State. Again, by way of a reminder, the state constitution which Bryan so favored and under which he served was among the most unusual then in force in the nascent United States. Drafted by a committee composed of Robert Whitehill (1738-1813), Timothy Matlack (1730-1826), Dr. Thomas Young (1731-1777), James Cannon (1740-1782), the aforementioned Franklin, and Bryan himself, the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 was both exceedingly democratic by the standards of the time and exceptionally decentralized. Having grappled with the authority of a very conservative, obstructionist governor during the height of the Anglo-American crisis – in the form of William Penn’s grandson John Penn (1729-1795) – the elements of Pennsylvania’s political culture already opposed to proprietary government became increasingly convinced that any kind of unitary executive at all invited more abuse, corruption, and strife than it necessarily solved any significant administrative problems. The governing charter subsequently drafted under the authority of the revolutionary Council of Safety accordingly did away with the office of Governor, established a unicameral legislature, and recognized the right of all tax-paying adult men – regardless of whether or not they owned property – to vote in and stand for elections.

In the absence of a unitary chief executive, Pennsylvania’s 1776 constitution erected in its place a kind of committee known as the Supreme Executive Council. The members of this body – twelve in number – were to be chosen to serve a term of three years by voters residing in the city of Philadelphia and in each of the eleven counties into which the state was then divided. Coinciding with the yearly election of delegates to the state assembly, a joint ballot of the Council and this very same assembly was to be held for the purpose of electing a President and Vice-President of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from among the Counselors previously chosen. Perhaps the only responsibilities to be exercised by the President without the input of the Council were those connected to the role of Commander-in-Chief. All other executive powers – appointing judges, attorneys general, and military officers, filling vacant offices due to death or resignation, standing in judgement over cases of impeachment, granting pardons or reprieves, or laying commercial embargoes – were expressly the remit of either “the president and council” or “the president in council.”

In addition to the House of Representatives, the Supreme Executive Council, and the state supreme court – each of which respectively performed the necessary legislative, executive, and judicial functions – the constitution of 1776 also described a fourth body whose function and authority appeared to form a kind of hybrid of these otherwise separate spheres of responsibility. The Council of Censors, comprised of two delegates elected every seven years from each county and city in Pennsylvania, was intended essentially to monitor the activities of the other branches of government and offer correctives as its members felt necessary. To that end, the assembled Censors could censure government actions and demand the repeal of legislation they deemed to be unconstitutional, order the impeachment of such officials as appeared to have behaved improperly or abused their authority, and call for a convention to amend the constitution. No other state government erected during the 1770s or 1780s included within its constitutional framework a body of men anything like Pennsylvania’s Council of Censors, and it should perhaps come as no surprise that it was one of many innovations put in place in 1776 that was abandoned upon the drafting of the Keystone State’s second – and far more orthodox – constitution in 1790.

Granted, there were other state constitutions drafted during this era which envisioned a strong legislature and a weak chief executive. The Maryland Constitution of 1776, for example, declared that the Governor of that state was to be elected by a joint ballot of the bicameral General Assembly, and that said office was to be accompanied in its decision-making by a five-person Executive Council chosen by the same means. While this framework would seem necessarily to bind the office of Governor quite closely to the will of the relevant legislative body, the chief executive of the State of Maryland – alike with the governors or presidents of nearly every other state – nevertheless possessed a number of powers and responsibilities whose exercise did not require the consent or notification of either the Council or the General Assembly. Given that the framers of the various state constitutions had – with few exceptions – lived their entire lives under the auspices of colonial governments whose structure prejudiced singular executive authority – either in the form of a governor or of the Crown itself – this is perhaps not particularly surprising. Ardent though the supporters of Congress were in their opposition to the arbitrary exercise of executive power, their only involvement with government on a first-hand basis was along strictly monarchical lines. When it thus came time for these same statesmen to undertake the task of creating republican state governments, their imaginations were understandably somewhat limited by what they were familiar with and what they knew from experience would work. The results, for the most part, were either a chief executive whose powers were more or less the same as those exercised by their pre-independence colonial equivalents – as in New York – or whose authority was limited by, and tied to the will of, the relevant legislative assembly – an in nearly every other state. The fact that Pennsylvania did not follow this pattern should accordingly be taken as a strong indication that the men from whose pens the first constitution of that state flowed were of a deliberately unconventional frame of mind.

One of these men, of course, was the aforementioned George Bryan. A demonstrated radical in his opposition to both the proprietary form of colonial government and the alternative centered on the direct authority of the Crown, Bryan was seemingly able to at last give form to his abiding frustration with the status quo by helping to craft a new model of civil administration unlike anything Pennsylvania – or America at large – had yet seen. The vision of government he and his colleagues gave rise to was decentralized, subject to frequent elections, and premised on an unusually wide application of the electoral franchise. What this meant in practice was that decision-making at even the highest levels had to be made on a collegial basis, almost all power ultimately devolved upon the most representative branch of government, and only the destitute – i.e. those who paid no form of property tax – were formally excluded from the most basic from of civic engagement. Such a government would theoretically have been more resistant than its traditionally-structured counterparts to demagoguery, corruption, and elitism, more responsive to popular opinion, and less inclined towards deference to authority. Legislators were subject to the constant threat of replacement, the President of the state was little more than the titular leader of a twelve-member committee, and the power of censure, legislative invalidation, and impeachment were in the hands of a body of men kept structurally separate from any other branch of government. While it would be difficult to say exactly what the effect of these circumstances might have been on the political culture of Pennsylvania in those early years of its independence  – as far as levels of civic engagement are concerned, or respect for political authority, or satisfaction with political outcomes – it would nevertheless seem reasonably safe to assume that those who came of age in that state during the 1770s and 1780s would have had a very different experience with politics and public affairs than their counterparts in most other states during this same period. 

Bearing this in mind, we return once more to the subject of Samuel Bryan, son of George Bryan and author of the Centinel essays. Samuel, recall, was born in Pennsylvania in 1759. This would have made him only seventeen years old when the constitution his father helped draft was put into effect in 1776. Without making any assumptions about how impressionable he was as a youth, this would seem rather too young to have developed very many concrete biases as to the nature of political power, the purpose of government, or the proper relationship between a community of people and their nominal governors. It would accordingly seem entirely sensible to presume that the younger Bryan’s political opinions were almost entirely formed during, and shaped by, the eleven years which elapsed between the adoption of Pennsylvania’s first constitution in 1776 and the beginning of the process by which the proposed national constitution was ratified in 1787. At this latter point, Bryan would have been twenty-eight years old, and lived the entirety of his adult life under a system of government which had essentially no equivalent among Pennsylvania’s sister states. The closest in form during the whole of the Revolutionary era had been that of New Hampshire, whose 1776 constitution provided for a similar structure comprising a unicameral legislature and an executive council. After less than ten years, however, the people of the Granite State determined to replace this admittedly radical form of administration with something far more typical of what was becoming a standard model – with a governor, a supreme court, and a bicameral legislature – among the various American states.

Between 1784 – at which point New Hampshire abandoned its original constitution – and 1790 – at which point the Keystone State did the same – Pennsylvania thus constituted a major outlier in terms of the way its inhabitants were given to interact with and think about public institutions. Not only was this fact bound to have shaped the perspective and ideology of the aforementioned Samuel Bryan, but the prominent role that his own father had played in creating said environment must also have impacted on the ways in which he came to understand government and politics. This is not to say, necessarily, that the younger Bryan was in any way obliged to share – or even likely to share – the opinions and biases of his influential pater familias. While evidence certainly exists among the Founders of ideological alignment crossing generations within a single family – John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), for example, was often said in later life to resemble his father John Adams (1735-1826) in appearance, temperament, and opinion almost exactly – cases can also readily be cited of precisely the opposite state of affairs. William Franklin (1730-1813), eldest son of the aforementioned Benjamin Franklin, stands as a stark example of just that. Though William was a frequent traveling companion of his father during the latter’s various European sojourns, and though he benefited greatly from both his father’s partnership in business and patronage in politics – to the point of gaining appointment to the office of Governor of New Jersey in 1763 due in large part to the elder Franklin’s persistent lobbying of the government of Lord Bute (1713-1792) – he ultimately rejected Benjamin’s radical politics and became a prominent Loyalist leader during the American Revolution.

What this is all by way of saying, in effect, is that close familial connection was no more guarantee of political alignment during the Revolutionary era than it is today. Samuel Bryan, it therefore bears reiterating, should not be thought of as possessing particularly radical, democratic, or populist political views simply because he was the son of a man whose public career was premised almost entirely on the promotion of these very same convictions. Rather, the affinity which the younger Bryan arguably demonstrated in the text of the Centinel essays towards this particular ideological bearing should be attributed to the environment in which he first developed a sense of political awareness. To an extent, his father must have played some part in shaping this environment, either through implicit socialization or explicit education. But the mere fact of living and working in Pennsylvania was almost certainly enough on its own. From the time when he first gained adulthood in the mid-1770s to the moment he put pen to paper in 1787, Samuel Bryan was subject to, and given frequently to interact with, a government that was wholly unlike any other that then existed in America. Pennsylvania during those years was more democratic than any other state, more decentralized, and possessed of a system of public administration more amenable to both institutional and popular scrutiny. It would seem rather unlikely – if not impossible – for a person to spend over a decade living in an environment thus defined without being significantly influenced by the same. Granted, it was certainly possible for Samuel Bryan to have come out the other side of his early adulthood with a very low opinion of his home state’s government. The fact that a more orthodox constitution was adopted in 1790 would indeed seem to indicate that the majority of people in Pennsylvania were ultimately unimpressed by what they experienced in the 1770s and 1780s. The content of tone of Centinel I, however, stands as equally compelling evidence that Samuel Bryan was not among them. 

Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, Part XXII: American Savior, contd.

Having previously spoken of the rupture of the Anglo-American relationship as something which pleased him in a personal or abstract philosophical sense – in that it seemed preferable to him that traditional British liberties should live on somewhere, even if that somewhere could no longer be strictly considered British – Richard Price was evidently prepared to claim at the close of Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty that in fact humanity as a whole stood to benefit from the American rejection of British authority. Free from Britain’s supposedly stifling influence – compounded of equal parts arbitrary power and seductive wealth – the former Thirteen Colonies would at last be free to become both the laboratory and the refuge of the liberal world. No question would be incapable of being asked, no idea too radical to be given over to frank and open discussion. Blessed with abundant resources and unencumbered by the idle distractions of luxury and social pretension, at long last nothing would obstruct the free play of reason and innovation in the intellectual circles of America. All would be welcome to partake, and every new concept dreamed up would add to the storehouse of human knowledge and enrich the daily experience of human civilization.

If this sounds a rather optimistic forecast, it most definitely was. Nevertheless, scenarios predicated on almost exactly this same theme were far from uncommon among the perpetrators and leaders of the American Revolution. Not only did people like the aforementioned Thomas Jefferson believe at the outset that the creation of an autonomous union of American states represented the culmination of human history and the realization of the best hopes of the European Enlightenment, but they further asserted that it accordingly fell to the United States to preserve and promote the liberty its citizens had won until such time as the whole of mankind could boast of living in a similar state. It was precisely for this reason that Jefferson and his Republican supporters were so strongly inclined to support the French Revolution during even the height of its bloody excesses in the early 1790s. The conflagration in France, to their thinking, was but an outgrowth of their own violent rebirth, and thus demanded to be nurtured. It was also the reason that subsequent generations of Americans over the course of the 19^th century reacted with such ardent enthusiasm whenever a stagnant European monarchy was toppled by a liberal revolution. For better or worse, the success of American independence had to some extent rendered dogma the notion that Divine Providence was with the cause of liberty, that the United States was its favored implement, and that it fell to the citizens thereof to make use of the blessings they accordingly enjoyed by enriching the lives of their fellow men the world over.

Firm though Price may have been in believing exactly that, he seemed comparatively somewhat uncertain as to how the potential he perceived to be animating the American spirit should best have been deployed. On one hand, as detailed above, he was of the opinion that the American colonies were very likely better off having separated themselves from the British Empire, and that their continued existence as a bastion of civil liberty, social virtue, and economic simplicity constituted benefit enough for the comparatively trivial losses to Britain that would inevitably result. Better, in essence, that freedom lives on in some quarter of the globe – however distant – than be either exterminated in war or corrupted in peace. Consistent though this kind of thinking may have been, however, with Price’s habitual pessimism as to the state of his own country’s moral character, the text of Observations ultimately betrayed an even stronger tendency on his part to hope for something that even he believed to a large extent was hopeless. Consider, to that end, a passage from Part II, Section III in which Price appeared to countermand his far more common impulse to forsake the salvation of Britain in favor of preserving the purity and virtue he perceived in America. Having asserted, with characteristic aplomb, that Britain in fact stood far more to gain by pursuing a peaceful resolution of the Anglo-American crisis than by seeking an acknowledgment of its authority at the tip of a bayonet, Price went on to declare that,

The Liberty of America might have preserved our Liberty; and, under the direction of a patriot king or wise minister, proved the means of restoring to us our almost lost constitution. Perhaps, in time, we might also have been brought to see the necessity of carefully watching and restricting paper-credit. And thus might have regained safety; and, in union with our Colonies, have been more than a match for every enemy, and risen to a situation of honor and dignity never before known amongst mankind.

In light of the extent to which he had previously bemoaned– and would subsequently bemoan – the intractability of his homeland’s moral degradation, Price’s simultaneous promotion of such a scenario would seem to represent a dramatic contradiction indeed.

            Granted, there would seem to be a common thread between these dueling conceptions of America’s moral and ideological purpose. One would see the Thirteen Colonies separate from doomed, deplorable Britain so that the virtue and simplicity of the former might be allowed to flourish unthreatened by the corrupting influences of the latter. The other claimed that America’s love of liberty could conceivably have saved Britain from itself by providing both material resources and moral example. But both would appear to be predicated on the notion that the American colonies possessed a kind of regenerative quality that was at once impossible to replicate and incapable of being restrained. It was almost messianic, in fact, the way Price wrote about the ability of American society to both embody and promote certain fundamental values and liberties. In light of how corrupt and decayed he often described Britain as having become, it would indeed seem nothing short of miraculous that anything could possibly have succeeded in pulling it back from the brink of utter collapse. Recall, to that end, Price’s entreaty in Part II, Section I, in which he asked his fellow countrymen, “Ought we not rather to wish earnestly, that there may at least be ONE FREE COUNTRY left upon earth, to which we may fly, when venality, luxury, and vice have completed the ruin of liberty here?” Note he did not claim that “venality, luxury, and vice” would eventually accomplish the “ruin of liberty” in Britain, but that they would at some point complete it. The implication therein, of course, was that the process of ruin had already begun and was proceeding apace. Consider, by the same token, a passage previously cited from Part II, Section V in which Price described Britain as, “An old state, great indeed, but inflated and irreligious; enervated by luxury; encumbered with debts; and hanging by a thread.” Whatever one might take to mean by the use of the words “inflated,” “luxury,” or “encumbered,” the phrase “hanging by a thread” would seem almost by definition to entail a categorically terminal diagnosis. Combined with Price’s various exhortations to the effect that America was likely better off separating from Britain than inevitably falling victim to the same vices that had almost completely sapped that nation of its virtue, it would seem as though Price nurtured little hope indeed for the spiritual salvation of his homeland.

            Bearing this in mind, he must also have believed that America possessed an almost supernatural redemptive quality if it could possibly have succeeded in facilitating, by association, the rejuvenation of the British state. Recall, accordingly, his declaration that “the liberty of America” might have, “Proved the means of restoring to us our almost lost constitution.” Consider, likewise, his stated conviction that, through the continuation of the Anglo-American relationship, America might have taught Britain, “To see the necessity of carefully watching and restricting paper-credit [,]” and that, in time, a British Empire so regenerated might have risen, “To a situation of honor and dignity never before known amongst mankind.” One is naturally made to wonder, given the evidently miraculous powers possessed by the American colonies, how it was that Britain was able to sink so far into corruption and degeneracy despite having been connected with the same since the early 17^th century. How was it, in short, that America could save Britain from itself when it had been unable to do so thus far? This is not a question that bears answering, of course, for it offers nothing in the way of insight into the relevant thought process of one Richard Price. However it was he had come upon the notion that the American colonies represented the potential salvation of the British state, it was clearly something he believed very deeply. And while the passage cited above offers little in the way of explanation as to how a continued association between Britain and America was supposed to save the former – other than vague intimations of certain examples being followed – this was thankfully not always the case within the text of Observations.    

            Having, at length, made known his considered opinion as to the many and various ways in which the North Ministry and its predecessors had badly damaged the Anglo-American relationship and made uncertain the prospects of its ever being mended, by behaving in a manner wholly at odds with logic, good sense, and their own expressed desires, Price finally, in the conclusion of his Observations of the Nature of Civil Liberty, put forward something resembling a comprehensive solution. He had asserted, up to that point, that civil liberty was inviolable, that one nation could not legitimately claim sovereignty over another, that the North Ministry’s attempt to quell the American rebellion by force defied the basic tenets of reason, and that the British could no longer think of themselves as the freest people in the world if they continued to behave in a manner consistent with the worst qualities of the Spanish Hapsburgs and the decadent French. But it was only now, after decrying such behaviors as he found morally abhorrent or logically inconsistent, that he finally determined to offer his idea of a resolution. Notwithstanding the rather highflying description he had previously offered of the redemptive quality possessed by the American colonies – by which a nation “hanging by a thread” could be mystically transformed into one possessed, “Of honor and dignity never before known amongst mankind” – this concluding prescription was actually quite reasonably expressed.

            If the North Ministry would only agree, Price explained, to exempt the Thirteen Colonies from parliamentary taxation while at the same time affirming the fundamental inviolability of the various colonial charters,   

       

It is probable, that the Colonies would have consented to grant an annual supply, which, increased by a saving of the money now spent in maintaining troops among them, and by contributions which might have been gained from other parts of the Empire, would have formed a fund considerable enough, if unalienably applied, to redeem the greatest part of the public debt; in consequence of which, agreeable to Lord Shelburne’s ideas, some of our worst taxes might be taken off, and the Colonies would receive our manufactures cheaper; our paper-currency might be restrained; our whole force would be free to meet at any time foreign danger; the influence of the Crown would be reduced; our Parliament would become more independent; and the kingdom might, perhaps, be restored to a situation of permanent safety and prosperity.

What is particularly intriguing about this evident solution to the Anglo-American crisis is the manner in which it seems to combine a number of Price’s priorities and convictions. An ardent civil libertarian, he unsurprisingly advocated for the removal of British troops from the American colonies and the lessening of taxes. A critic of excessive debt and the institutional corruption it appeared to engender, he also argued for the shrinking of Britain’s public obligations and the restraint of its issue of inflation-prone paper currency. As a liberal reformer, he naturally sought to increase the independence of Parliament from the influence of either the financial elite – bankers, stockholders, etc. – or the attendant bureaucratic establishment. And as a political realist, he understood that the promise of safety, prosperity, more profitable trade, and less government spending would surely have met with the approval of even the most ardent Tory in government or among its supporters. That his plan by which the Anglo-American crisis might have been finally laid to rest appeared to accomplish all of these things would doubtless have made it an especially enticing proposal, even to those whose conception of the British Empire would not easily have admitted the existence of even a semi-autonomous community therein.

It was, of course, the semi-autonomy of this community that Price believed to be absolutely central to the success of the plan as a whole. Britain, he indicated in language both florid and practical, could not survive without America, morally or materially. Summing up his position in the final paragraph of the final section of Observations, he in fact said almost exactly that. “An important revolution in affairs of this kingdom seems to be approaching,” he wrote. “At that period, an opportunity (never perhaps to be recovered, if lost) will offer itself for serving essentially this country, as well as America [.]” Driven to express himself to his fellow countrymen in particularly self-serving terms, Price accordingly characterized the salvation of Britain as stemming directly from the salvation of the American colonies. Acknowledge their rights, he advised, forgive them whatever slights we perceive they have committed, and cease to treat with them as though they were a subordinate people. In return, the Thirteen Colonies will provide all the resources Britain could possibly need in order to extricate itself from the morass of corruption and luxury in which it presently wallows. Doubtless this would have seemed a humbling – even humiliating – prescription to those among Price’s fellow Britons who had most ardently supported the North Ministry and its predecessors in their insistence upon the supremacy of Parliament over the various colonial legislatures. As Observations would have it, however, there could be no alternative. As much as Britain appeared to need America if it was ever going to recover from the socio-political degradation Price insisted that it was terminally afflicted with, America did not seem to need Britain at all.

The Thirteen Colonies, Price more than once avowed, were blessed with any number of moral and material advantages, accounting for both their particular spiritual advantage over Britain – no banks, little corruption, less obsessed with wealth and luxury, etc. – as well as their almost certain ability to weather Britain’s ongoing campaign to forcefully assert its authority. Indeed, he went so far as to add, the colonies would almost certainly be better off if the Anglo-American relationship was allowed to wither away entirely. Suffer though they might in the short term at the hands of overzealous British officers keen on avenging the insults they felt their nation had suffered, America’s growing population, fertile soil, abundant forests, and productive mines would almost certainly guarantee the long term prosperity of the inhabitants thereof. The colonists, accordingly, had no reason to compromise their position, beg forgiveness for their insolence, or otherwise acknowledge that they had done anything wrong. Strategically speaking, the ball was in their court. They might forgive the North Ministry – upon an admission of wrongdoing and a promise to refrain from such behavior in the future – and thereafter aid in rescuing Britain from itself, or they could leave Britain to rot and save the world by and by through the mere fact of their existence. Doubtless it would have pleased many of those living in the colonies to undertake the former, owing to the various commercial, familial and cultural ties yet binding the American and British peoples. But surely not even the most virtuous and self-sacrificing among them would have been willing to forfeit their liberty, their dignity, or their property to do so. Americans, Price ardently affirmed in the text of Observations, were too conscious of the value of such things to trade them so cheaply. The fundamental calculus of the Anglo-American crisis thus fell to the British people and their government to assess.

This boiling down of a trans-Atlantic conflagration involving divergent perspective on political philosophy, law, and the nature of empire into a fairly straightforward moral equation – i.e. stand on pride and doom oneself or exercise humility and claim salvation – arguably remains the most compelling element of Richard Price’s Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty. Granted, there was a great deal more he had to say that yet remains worth considering, about the nature of sovereignty, the purpose of government, the moral application of history, and the social value of humility, discipline, and restraint. But such things were not uncommonly the subject of inquiry among scholars, theorists, and reformers on both sides of the Atlantic, before, during, and after the events of the American Revolution. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, it bears repeating, had much to say concerning the instructive value of studying the past, and Price’s patron Lord Shelburne often suffered politically for his vocal advocacy of free trade, freedom of conscience, and legislative over executive power. Price’s conclusion, however, was something different. Particularly coming from someone who had lived their entire life within the confines of the British Isles, and who had often expressed their desire to save the British system of government from its own worst aspects, his conviction that the American colonies represented some kind of political, moral, and economic ideal whose connection to or separation from Great Britain meant the difference between salvation and self-destruction was more than a little unusual. Indeed, it seemed to place him much closer, philosophically, to people like Jefferson and Madison than to any of his fellow Britons who likewise offered their public support to the Thirteen Colonies.

Consider, by way of comparison, Thomas Paine. Perhaps the most famous British advocate for the American revolutionary cause, Paine’s Common Sense was in many ways just as concerned as Price’s Observations with the nature of authority, the moral dimension of government, and the illegitimacy of power when unconnected from the will of those it acts upon. Paine also seemed to share with Price the conviction that the American colonies were in a decidedly advantageous position when compared to their British adversaries in terms of the resources they could conceivably call upon over the course of a sustained military conflict. America, they both explained at length, was simply blessed in this regard, and any war between them and Britain was bound to end in the former’s favor. Where they disagreed – or at least where they differed in their focus – was in the significance they each separately attributed to the crisis at hand and the solution that they were inclined to offer. For Paine, the ardent republican, Britain’s failure was America’s gain. The North Ministry had poisoned the Anglo-American relationship by grasping too aggressively at revenues which would have been theirs by and by, thus creating the opportunity for a people who already existed at arm’s length from their hereditary sovereign to throw off the yoke of monarchy altogether. His arguments were thus directed towards the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies, and his aim to encourage a rejection of continued union with Britain and the creation of a sovereign American republic.

For Price, the radical Whig reformer, rather the opposite appeared to be true. Or perhaps it wasn’t the opposite, exactly. Paine and Price were both most definitely supportive of the position advocated by the Continental Congress that the North Ministry had knowingly and unrepentantly infringed upon the civil rights of the American people. But whereas Paine addressed himself to the rebellious colonists, exhorting them to save themselves by forsaking any further connection with Britain, Price attempted to convince his fellow Britons that the only way their shared homeland could avoid imminent catastrophe was by embracing America both politically and spiritually. Not only does this embody a difference of approach, but it also arguably reveals a significant difference of philosophy. Sincere though Paine most definitely was in his appeal to the inhabitants of colonial America that they cast off the fetters of monarchy and embrace a distinctly republican future, it would not be hard to imagine the author of Common Sense making exactly the same argument to any subjects of the British Empire not represented in Parliament. The degree to which he lavished praise in Common Sense upon some unique quality of the American colonies arguably paled in comparison to the vehemence of his attack upon the very concept of hereditary succession. It therefore likely wasn’t some peculiar aspect of moral purity that sent him to America, but rather what appeared to be a favorable alignment of material and social circumstances. Bearing this in mind, if it had appeared probable to Paine that Ireland was ripe for revolt in the early 1770s, it seems eminently plausible that he would have travelled there instead of to Pennsylvania while making essentially the same case to the people of that similarly beleaguered island.

Though Richard Price was also undeniably interested in the material circumstances which seemed to impel Thomas Paine to make his case for American independence, the perspective he put forward in Observations as to the significance of the Anglo-American crisis appeared to be somewhat less mercenary that Paine’s approach in Common Sense. Price, for example, did not seem to be particularly concerned about forms of government. Whether people lived under a monarchy or a republic evidently mattered less to him than that they enjoyed the exercise of the fundamental civil rights to which they were entitled. The fact that the socio-political character of the various American colonies seemed ideally suited to this kind of outcome is accordingly what garnered for them his sympathy and support. Lacking the wealth, social disparity, political complexity, and military power of Britain proper – mainly because it was composed of younger, more rural, and less dense communities – America evidently embodied the kind of civilizational ideal which Price lamented could no longer exist in the country of his birth. He was therefore quite understandably keen to see this ideal community preserved. Threatened by the North Ministry, first with the imposition of a species of political subservience which would have severely hampered the exercise of their basic liberties, and then by the threat of military annihilation, Price accordingly did not hesitate to throw his support behind the cause of American resistance.

This, again, is where Price substantially differed from Paine. The author of Common Sense, vehement critic of monarchy as he was, endeavored to convince his newfound American neighbors that they had best make a break from Great Britain while the conditions still favored it. Price, by contrast, set himself to the task of winning over his fellow Britons to the idea that they had best apologize and make amends to the American colonists while it was still possible to do so. The war could not be fought indefinitely, he affirmed, for fhe numbers favored the American cause. Continuing to fight could therefore only have served to hasten the moment when the colonists decided that they would gladly be rid of Britain altogether in order to avoid a recurrence of this reprehensible species of civil conflict. The Anglo-American relationship thus wholly severed, the two principles would not fare at all alike. America, Price avowed, was bound to flourish. Its abundant resources, healthy political culture, and newfound freedom from Britain’s alternately domineering and corrupting influence would surely guarantee just that. Britain, however, was bound to languish. No longer able to draw upon America’s substantial revenue potential as a means of paying off the national debt, Price believed that Britain would consequently continue down a path of excessive borrowing and corruption as the chosen representatives of the British people persistently ceded influence and authority to unelected financiers and their chosen bureaucratic placemen.

Granting that this was an outcome which would at least have ensured the continued existence of the liberties Price and his contemporaries took pride in thinking of as a cornerstone of British culture, it was most definitely not the result he would have preferred. As the conclusion he offered in the final paragraphs of Observations thus affirmed, he would sooner have had the government of Lord North cease its military campaign, abandon any claim to administrative superiority over the American colonies, and agree to respect their charters and the sovereignty of their governments. The Anglo-American relationship thus regenerated, commerce might be permitted to flow once more, Britain’s national debt might soon enough be paid off, and the influence of bankers and bureaucrats might substantially be lessened. The American colonies would certainly have benefited from this outcome – if for no other reason than it would result in British soldiers no longer having cause to fire upon colonists individually or en masse – but this formed only a part of Price’s design. What seemed to concern him equally – and which doubtless concerned most of his audience exclusively – was that Britain would emerge much healthier than it had been.

In light of his status as a radical Whig reformer who showed deep concern throughout the course of his career for the moral condition of British politics and culture, this perhaps does not constitute much of a revelation. Price wanted to leave Britain better than he found it, regardless of how poorly he had personally been treated by the culture and institutions of the same. It does, however, set him apart from most other British supporters of the American Revolution. The question which Price seemed keen to address, after all, was not so much whether the British government or the Thirteen Colonies were right or wrong within the context of an increasingly violent philosophical disagreement. Numerous pro-American Britons had made cases to that effect, through public discourse as well as within the context of the political institutions to which many of them belonged. What Price did, via the text of Observations, was rather attempt to investigate and present to his countrymen the contours and consequences of a choice he believed they collectively faced as a nation. Namely, should Britain insist on its absolute superiority over America and thus doom them both, or should the former seek a common salvation through forgiving and embracing the latter? By posing this question – and by offering what he believed to be the most sensible solution – Richard Price thus arguably claimed for himself the unique position of being a British supporter of the American Revolution whose primary objective was to save Britain from itself. However much the arguments he put forward in the text of Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty may have influenced or aided those colonists who accomplished the independence of the United States – and they most certainly did – the fact that Price was accordingly in favor of reconciliation ought therefore to be distinctly understood.   

Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, Part XXI: American Savior

By way of discussing some of the conclusions that Richard Price offered in the final sections of his forty-page anti-establishment pamphlet, Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, it would seem prudent – if perhaps outwardly counter-intuitive – to first take several steps back in order to establish exactly how it was that this radical, Non-Conformist preacher settled upon the outlook which his various arguments and assertions ultimately served to endorse. The reason such an examination is necessary is that, while the parts and sections of Observations cited herein do successfully build towards the conclusion with which that document closes, perhaps the most crucial idea said conclusion offers does not figure explicitly into the overall structure of the piece. That is to say, though discussions of “the Principles of the Constitution” and “the Honor of the Nation” do serve the case which Price eventually determined to make, perhaps the most striking element thereof represented the culmination of a train of thought that can be found threaded throughout the relevant text rather than featured expansively. Indeed, one gets the impression that, rather than put pen to paper wholly secure in the knowledge of what point exactly he wanted to make, Price instead set out with certain ideas in mind about what it was he wanted to discuss and then let the actual process of writing lead him wherever it would. This lack of predetermination seems most evident in the way that, between the beginning and end of Observations, the basic concept upon which Price eventually settled his examination of the Anglo-American crisis appeared to be a source of inconsistency and contradiction.

The question which Price seemed most keen to answer – and which he accordingly appeared to grapple with across the length of Observations – was, essentially, whether it was preferable for the American colonies to maintain their traditional connection with Great Britain, or whether breaking away entirely was the better course of action. Doubtless this was a subject upon which many contemporary observers were given to ruminate, be they British or American, and which was almost certainly cause for intense philosophical debate among those who were given to consider the Anglo-American crisis as something more than a mere question of law and loyalty. Did it make sense for the American colonies to remain an integral component of the British Empire when the administrators thereof clearly held no reservations about abrogating the civil rights of the American people? Would the British people ultimately suffer by being deprived of their accustomed connection to America? Was it possible that the Anglo-American relationship had simply run its course? Provided that a person was not otherwise blinded by an overriding sense of pride or propriety – as a member of the North Ministry might be forgiven for being – inquiries such as this were fairly bound to occur.

Noteworthy in his day for being a radical and a reformer, it is perhaps unsurprising that Richard Price was one of the few among his fellow Britons to give public voice to such considerations, and to explore the implications of both positive and negative responses. Despite seeming particularly fitted to the role, however – and having a pretty definite bias in favor of the increasingly independence-minded American cause – the actual course of his engagement with these kinds of questions over the course of penning Observations betrays a decided uncertainty as to what, ultimately, the proper course amounted to. Consider, to that end, one dimension of Price’s thinking, offered in Part II, Section III. While discussing the degree to which the insistence of successive British governments upon their absolute authority in America had served to call too much attention to a legal and political relationship that could not easily be justified, Price asserted that, had Britain only left well enough alone,   

 

Luxury, and, together with it, their dependence upon us, and our influence in their assemblies, would have increased, till in time perhaps they would become as corrupt as ourselves; and we might have succeeded to our wishes in establishing authority over them.—But, happily for them, we have chosen a different course. By extensions of authority which have alarmed them, they have been put upon examining into the grounds of all our claims, and forced to give up their luxuries, and to seek all their resources within themselves [.]

Though ostensibly discussing the manner by which the North Ministry could have secured the loyalty of the American colonies rather than push them towards a course of rebellion, the manner in which he chose to express himself strongly indicates that Price’s mind was on another topic altogether.

Far from lamenting the loss of an opportunity by which Britain and American might have been bound more closely together, he instead exhibits an unambiguous sense of relief at the colonies being spared such a fate. Having previously made clear his unadulterated disdain for the luxury and corruption he believed was presently suffocating whatever virtue yet remained in British social and political life, Price accordingly declared it a happy accident that the heavy-handedness of the North Ministry had saved America from the same ignoble destiny by causing them to reject all things having to do with their colonial masters, “Give up their luxuries, and […] seek all their resources within themselves [.]” Thus described, the rupture of the Anglo-American relationship which developed over the course of the 1760s and 1770s appears a manifestly good thing for the colonists, having effectively cut off the possibility of any descent on their part to the kind of corruption and dissipation which certain segments of the British political and intellectual elite had been decrying for decades. Particularly noteworthy in this sentiment is a kind of implied self-abnegation not often given play within the generally hardnosed realm of politics. Though well aware of the many advantages the government in which he was represented and the society to which he belonged derived from continued British access to American resources and American markets, Price nonetheless seems to identify the ongoing preservation of American virtue – accomplished by the disruption of the Anglo-American relationship – as being of greater importance. Britain, he seemed inclined to conclude, was already too far gone in 1776 to avert the fate to which its love of wealth and luxury had doomed it. But America might have been saved, and so it most definitely should have been saved.

Price went on to express much the same sense of relief at America’s separation from Great Britain in Part II, Section V of Observations. In the midst of discussing what he considered to be the likelihood of British military force successfully quelling the incipient American rebellion, he notably remarked that,

As to their trade; having all the necessaries and the chief conveniences of life within themselves, they have no dependence upon it; and the loss of it will do them unspeakable good, by preserving them from the evils of luxury and the temptations of wealth; and keeping them in that state of virtuous simplicity which is the greatest happiness.

Again, Price seemed unable to stop himself from expressing his abiding disdain for the corruption to which he believed Great Britain had long-since succumbed. His country, he was more or less convinced, had become subsumed in a morass of wealth and ostentation, and was unwilling to defend its founding principles because it could no longer conceive of their formerly unquestioned value. That America would (unintentionally) be spared this moral disintegration was thus understandably a source of some relief. An unspoken but no less significant aspect of this conviction, of course, is that America could be spared because it had yet to become quite as preoccupied as British society with the lure of prosperity and ease. Evidently, Richard Price understood the various American colonies as collectively embodying something like a time capsule of pre-1690s Britain, unsullied by the overwhelming influence of central banking, stock-trading, placemen, and standing armies. Having thus far avoided the worst excesses of the modern British state, it doubtless pleased Price greatly to imagine that America should continue in this state indefinitely.

            This was, it must be said, a somewhat rosy portrait of things. Certainly, late 18^th century America was devoid of many of the institutions and mechanisms of state with which Price most took issue in his native Britain. Prior to the 1780s – at which point, in 1782, the Bank of North America began its ill-fated attempt to establish a stable base of credit – there was no national bank with jurisdiction over the whole of the United States. Just so, there were no stock exchanges in America prior to the early 1790s, and the existence of a standing army under the command of the national government remained more or less anathema as late as 1796. And while there may well have been “placemen” serving within the various colonial governments – the legislative councils of New York and Virginia, for example, were both filled via appointment by the Crown, thus allowing for local favorites and loyalists to be given political influence in exchange for social or financial support – the limited size of the institutions in question compared to the vast bureaucracy that existed in contemporary Britain severely limited the extent to which a given American administration could become the plaything of the wealthy and influential. America, in short, as it existed within the larger British Empire, did not particularly resemble the seat of that empire in its basic political, economic, and institutional dynamics. This is not to say, however, that such things were not subject to change, or indeed were not bound to change in the event that the colonies in question found themselves suddenly in need of resources and institutions that they had not formerly required. War was an expensive proposition, financial stability a necessary ingredient of independence, and bureaucratic and military consolidation perhaps an inevitable consequence of a truly national administration being summoned into existence.

            The American colonies arguably could not have collectively assumed the powers and responsibilities formerly exercised by the British government without to some extent also becoming susceptible to the dangers therein. In order to finance such national projects as would be deemed necessary and prudent by the nascent government of the United States, money would need to be borrowed from somewhere, a line of credit would need to be established, and opportunities would accordingly arise for profiteering, personal enrichment, and the development of a general dependence on fast and easy wealth. Likewise, while the vastness of America’s likely frontier, combined with the existence of hostile native communities and European empires in close proximity, would seem to have rendered the creation of some manner of permanent military establishment a fait accompli, such an outcome was bound to carry with it the potential for any number of unintended consequences – from the creation of an aristocratic military class within American society to the emergence of a tyrannical central government with permanent military backing. Granting, as they say, that hindsight is 20/20, Price perhaps ought to be forgiven for failing to account for just how many of these outcomes would indeed shortly befall the nascent American union. He was, after all, a noted advocate for social and political reform, and thus – almost by necessity – given to imagine that things which to most people appeared wholly intractable were in fact entirely capable of being radically altered. In consequence, while most contemporary observers would likely have predicted that an independent America would, in due time and in large measure, eventually come to resemble the empire which it seemed otherwise bent on rejecting, Price was meanwhile intellectually inclined to imagine that it was possible for a free, stable, and prosperous government to be erected without necessarily resorting to the same methods which the ruling classes in his own country took entirely for granted.     

Be that as it may, however, it would be difficult – even when taking a decidedly liberal view of the subject – to imagine the post-Revolutionary history of the United States playing out in a manner other than it did in fact. Even in the event that the union of states entirely disintegrated – arguably the likeliest outcome that did not actually take place – the individual states would almost assuredly have been forced to adopt most of the trappings of nationhood which Price found to be the source of contemporary Britain’s particular woes. Though smaller by far than its national counterpart, a Massachusetts Army would certainly have posed the same threat to the people of that jurisdiction as a United States Army to the American people at large. Just so, while a Bank of New York or a Bank of Pennsylvania would inevitably have dealt in smaller amounts than a Bank of the United States, opportunities for corruption, embezzlement, and financial manipulation would have abounded all the same. There would almost certainly have been attempts at innovation, particularly in terms of structure, terms of office, and the availability of the franchise. Pennsylvania’s unorthodox 1776 constitution, which vested power in a twelve-member council rather than a singular chief executive, would seem to affirm the likelihood thereof. But in such matters as would involve interfacing with the wider world – the establishment of international credit, for example, or national defense – it seems rather difficult to imagine how even the most dedicated American Whigs could have avoided all of the sins which were arguably endemic to late 18^th century European-style statehood.

 

            The purpose of this series, of course – nay, this entire project – is not to call into question the judgment of the featured authors, but to strive to understand them and their words more completely and more complexly. In consequence, while Price was almost certainly guilty within the passages cited above of taking a somewhat naïve view of the “purity” and “virtue” he perceived in contemporary American society and culture, what matters in the present context is that he truly believed the words which he ultimately put to paper. In consequence, regardless of whether he was ultimately proven to be right or wrong, the assertions which Price endeavored to advance within the text of Observations should generally be interpreted as having been wholly sincere. Consider, to that end, a further passage from Part II, Section V. Having once more given vent to his spleen over the supposedly degenerated state of contemporary Britain, Price rallied by way of observing that,

In America we see a number of rising states in the vigour of youth, inspired by the noblest of all passions, the passion for being; free; and animated by piety.—Here we see an old state, great indeed, but inflated and irreligious; enervated by luxury; encumbered with debts; and hanging by a thread.—Can any one look without pain to the issue?

Once again, he seemed unable to resist making known his evident belief that the separation of the American colonies from the British Empire was likely for the best given the much corroded state of British virtue. America, to his thinking, was possessed of youthful vigor, nobility, piety, and passion, all of which he seemed to feel were virtues in and of themselves. Britain, by comparison, was “enervated by luxury; encumbered with debts; and hanging by a thread.” Whatever one’s national attachments, Price’s characterization of these qualities fairly clearly implied, it was thus the better part of wisdom to sympathize with the nascent United States. Britain had arguably gone past the point where it was any longer possible to shrug off the vices that had since the 1690s so completely transformed its political culture, and there could be no purpose in hoping that a reversal would take place. America, therefore, represented the next great bastion of civil liberty in the classical Whig tradition, and the best chance for such fundamental freedoms as ostensibly guaranteed by the British Constitution to survive into the 19^th century.

Bearing all of this in mind, it is rather unfortunate that Price’s hopes would at length be dashed. Banking – on the local, state, and national level – would soon enough become a central pillar of the American economy, stock trading and land speculation would become a favored pastime of the wealthy elite, and a bureaucracy the likes of which the individual colonies could never have supported would very shortly take shape. The United States, for better or worse, would become a nation like many others, powerful in some ways and flawed in others, but in no sense immune to the worst aspects of power, politics, and money. Though Price did not live to see this transformation – having passed away in 1791 – Thomas Jefferson did. A radical reformer of much the same opinion as Price on a number of subjects, it would accordingly seem a safe assumption that the reaction of the Sage of Monticello to the evolution of the American republic from virginal stronghold of piety and virtue to bustling fiscal-military state might be taken as a reasonable gauge of how the author of Observations would himself have measured the socio-economic progress of the American communities in which he held such a keen and passionate interest. Consider, to that end, a passage from a letter written by Jefferson in May of 1816 to fellow Virginian John Taylor (1753-1824). At seventy-three years old, and having just watched the nation he helped build struggle mightily to fund a second sustained military conflict against Great Britain, the author of the Declaration of Independence declared that banking – in which the outcome of said war had prompted a renewed interest – was,

A blot left in all our constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens.

President James Madison, it bears noting – friend, ally, and protégé of Jefferson – had gone against longstanding Republic Party dogma by agreeing to charter a second national bank in April of 1816. Jefferson’s lament to John Taylor the following month was thus likely motivated in equal parts by personal as well as philosophical frustration. That being said, considering the degree to which Price seemed to align with the Sage of Monticello in their common ideological and moral aversion to high finance, it would seem far from a stretch to imagine the author of Observations reacting in much the same way. Notwithstanding the hope he manifested in the 1770s, America would at length have disappointed him if he had but lived long enough to see it.     

            He did not, of course, and that was very possibly for the best. In spite of the cynicism with which he appeared to regard the culture and politics of his homeland, Richard Price was, in the general tenor of his philosophical outlook, an idealist at heart. Britain, he time and again affirmed, may well have become corrupted beyond redemption, but the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies yet had a great deal for which to be thankful and hopeful. Having separated themselves from the corrupting influences inherent to the structure and function of the contemporary British state, they were accordingly secure in the preservation of that quality of liberty and virtue to which the people of Britain proper could no longer lay claim. Not only did this bode well for the American colonists – now safe from the degeneracy which had terminally infected Britain – but the world at large stood to benefit from the result. Speaking to this rather lofty claim in the aforementioned Part II, Section V, Price asserted that,     

  

It may be permitted on purpose to favor them, and in them the rest of mankind; by making way for the establishment, in an extensive country possessed of every advantage, a plan of government, and a growing power that shall astonish the world, and under which every subject of human inquiry shall be open to free discussion, and the friends to Liberty, in every quarter of the globe, find a safe retreat from civil and spiritual tyranny.

Here, it seemed, the author of Observations was willing to allow his overriding disdain for the worst aspects of contemporary British politics and culture – and his abiding admiration for America’s apparent rejection thereof – to transform what was formerly a good in itself into something of manifest value to mankind at large.

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

Consistent though Richard Price may have been in his general lack of regard for the ancient republics of Rome or Greece – sources of admiration for the classically-educated elite of Britain and America alike – the ways in which he seemed determined to elide, simplify, or misconstrue the circumstances of certain specific moments in history made for a comparatively uneven series of arguments as presented in Part II, Section IV of his Observations. Granting that there may yet have been some utility in drawing upon the memory of the Corsican Crisis while attempting to convince his countrymen that Britain’s behavior in contemporary American really was deplorable, the basic facts of the Dutch Revolt, the Sicilian Expedition, and the Social War rendered them comparatively ill-suited for a like attempt at conjuring the shame of Price’s fellow Britons. These three latter episodes – as discussed at length in the present series – embraced causes, motivations, personalities, and outcomes almost wholly unlike those present in the Anglo-American conflict.

The Dutch, for example, were fighting for the recognition of feudal privileges against a monarch whose authority was comparatively unchallenged by any codified legal prohibitions. The people of Syracuse were not colonists of Athens, were in fact considered tyrants in their own right by certain neighboring cities in Sicily, and ultimately visited upon their “oppressors” a particularly cruel and ruinous defeat. And the Italian socii turned their arms against Rome essentially to secure the privilege of turning them once more upon the world at large on terms more favorable to themselves. The same – or anything remotely close – could most certainly not be said of the American colonists within the context of their conflict with the government of Lord North. Indeed, the only substantial parallel between the proffered examples and the Anglo-American conflict – excepting the case of the Syracusans – is that the inhabitants of the communities being attacked were all deprived of any formal means of influencing the paramount authority to which they were otherwise bound to submit. Seizing upon this commonality, Price then appeared to twist, mold, excise, or reframe the various unique aspects of the relevant episodes so as to deemphasize their differences from, and accentuate their application to, the moral dimension of the Anglo-American conflict. In so doing, Price doubtless hoped that the disdain with which his countrymen viewed certain bygone examples of tyranny and oppression – on the part of Hapsburg Spain, ancient Athens, and republican Rome, respectively – could be harnessed and redirected towards their own government and its leaders on behalf of the suffering people of the Thirteen Colonies.

Despite the evident manipulation of fact inherent in such an approach, one need not impute dishonesty to the motivations or actions of Richard Price. Willful though his shifting of facts may have been, the sincerity which he otherwise demonstrated within the text of Observations on behalf of the beleaguered American colonists argues strongly in favor of an honest conviction supported by arguments that were more enthusiastic than accurate. Taking the collective implication of Price’s various assertions at face value – flawed though they may have been – once arguably comes away with the strong impression that his personal understanding of the Anglo-American crisis formed part of a much larger historical continuity stretching back several thousand years. Specifically, Price seemed to think that the Anglo-American crisis represented only the latest iteration of a trend which been recurring since at least the Peloponnesian War which famously roiled classical Greece. The powerful, he seemed keen to point out, always prayed on the weak, always abused their power, always attacked those nearest to them, and always committed the most heinous acts while attempting to preserve their power. Sometimes they succeeded – in the case of the French in Corsica and the Romans in Italy – and sometimes they failed – in the case of the Spanish in the Netherlands and the Athenians in Sicily – but justice always argued against their efforts. The Anglo-American crisis, for all its unique characteristics, embodied this same basic dynamic, and cast its major players in the same basic roles. Britain, under the auspices of the North Ministry, was the oppressor. Whether for reasons of political expediency, strategy, pride, or economic imperative, they had determined to direct their power against a comparatively weaker opponent. No matter if they should succeed or fail, their actions were fundamentally unjustifiable. The American colonies, meanwhile, were the oppressed. Seeking only to exercise the liberties to which they believed they were entitled, they suffered to have their freedom denied and their blood shed by a comparatively overpowering opponent whose interests lay only in exploitation and self-preservation. Whether they endured defeat at the hands of their persecutors or triumphed against their foes, their actions were fundamentally laudable.

Any historian worth their salt would of course be given to question such a broad characterization. Granting that, in general, the North Ministry’s actions in America had more in common with the 16^th century Spanish campaign against the rebellious provinces of the Netherlands than with, say, the Bonfire of the Vanities or the Greco-Persian Wars, the differences between them were still quite substantial. Said historian would thus likely cringe at the expressed conviction that the British government’s behavior in the American colonies during the 1760s and 1770s was essentially comparable to that which was exhibited by Hapsburg authorities during the Dutch Revolt. Simply put, the respectively rebellious Dutch and Americans had different priorities, drew upon different cultural influences, were faced with different circumstances, and nurtured different objectives. Just so, the Spanish and British operated from within fundamentally different assumptions as to the nature and extent of their power and the ends which they believed they were working to achieve. Bearing all of this in mind, the aforementioned conscientious historian would almost certainly conclude – and with ample reason – that the attendant arguments offered by Richard Price in Part II, Section IV of Observations were based on a series of false equivalencies, which a more thorough examination of the relevant facts would have shown.

Evaluating these same arguments from a slightly different angle, however, a similarly diligent student of history might simultaneously point out that the accuracy of Price’s assertions is somewhat less important to determining their significance than the mere fact of them alone. Whether the author of Observations was right or wrong in what he attempted to argue, the fact of the matter is – taking him at his word – that he believed what he said to be true. And Richard Price believed, by all indications, that the Anglo-American crisis was not a unique occurrence in human history. Indeed, notwithstanding certain circumstantial differences, it represented the latest repetition of a longstanding pattern. Whether he was right or wrong to make this assertion is fairly a matter for debate. What is much clearer, however, is that Price was not alone. Particularly among the American supporters of resistance to British authority, there were many prominent voices who seemed similarly inclined to think of the conflict in which they were engaged as bearing no small relation to prior episodes from within the course of human history. Consider, to that end, a passage from the text of the Declaration of Independence, published in the same year as Price’s Observations and drafted principally by Thomas Jefferson. Reflecting upon the necessity of rebellion against Great Britain, said document explained that, “All Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed.” In seeking moral justification for the radical act that he and his countrymen were about to initiate, Jefferson was evidently given to consider that while historical precedent was on the side of maintaining even particularly obnoxious forms of government, the actions of the North Ministry had made necessary an otherwise unprecedented outcome. Where this sentiment aligned with that earlier expressed by Price was in their shared characterization of history as continuity. The past, in effect, formed the prologue of what both the Declaration of Independence and Observations were attempting to articulate, thus placing the Anglo-American crisis at the culmination of a series of events stretching back to the dawn of human history.

That this perspective indeed formed a significant aspect of Jefferson’s personal ideology is well-attested by certain observations he offered over the course of his life and career. In the text of his celebrated Notes on the State of Virginia (1781), for example – a kind of textbook exploring the ways in which he believed Virginia represented the ideal physical and moral society – the Sage of Monticello expressed the belief that a thorough knowledge of past events was instrumental to the character of a free and virtuous people. “History,” he thus declared,

By appraising them of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, defeat its views.

Like Price, it seemed, Jefferson was of the opinion that historical events could and did contain some kind of intrinsic moral or practical significance, and that their relation to the present was so near as to make knowledge of them essential to avoiding errors and charting a successful course through the world. Indeed, the cited arguments offered in Part II, Section IV of Observations would seem to serve – or seek to serve – exactly this purpose. Eager to put a stop to actions being taken by his government which he knew to be in error, Price sought evidence and justification in historical example. By thus taking the opportunity to, “Avail [themselves] of the experiences of other times and other nations,” his fellow Britons might accordingly avoid committing the same crimes of which previous generations had been guilty.  

            Jefferson also seemed to align with Price in their shared belief in repetition as a common factor in human history. The arguments cited above from the text of Part II, Section IV of Observations certainly speak to this aspect of the latter’s perspective. Faced with the disagreeable circumstance of his own government making war upon the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies – a people who, in Price’s eyes, had done nothing more than defend the rights to which they were entitled – he was given to reflect that much this same dynamic had played itself out time and again across the length of human history. The purpose of this observation was ostensibly to point out the degree to which the British government in question was effectively ignoring centuries of negative precedent in the evident belief that its own actions were virtuous and permissible. The North Ministry, in short, failed to perceive any faults in its own behavior because its members did not or could not locate their own actions within the larger context of human history. Far from being exceptional, they were in fact only the latest victims of the same tragic tendencies that had been plaguing humankind for millennia.

For his part, Thomas Jefferson expressed what amounted to the same sentiment in a passage from his autobiography, drafted a scant five years before his death in 1826. “There are,” the former President wrote, “Three epochs in history signalized by the total extinction of national morality. The first was of the successors of Alexander, not omitting himself. The next was of the successors of the first Caesar, the third of our own age.” Evidently somewhat embittered by having witnessed the French Revolution – to which he was ardently and famously sympathetic – give way to the autocratic empire of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), the Sage of Monticello now seemed prepared to admit that, far from embodying the death knell of arbitrary authority, the fall of the French monarchy in the early 1790s was but another in a long sequence of instances in which old, staid power structures were replaced by more dynamic – if no less virtuous – ones. In an interesting wrinkle, the party guilty of having ignored the significance of this repeated pattern to the events he was then witnessing was in this case Jefferson himself. In spite of being an avid student of history, and precisely the kind of person who would decry the rise of populist tyranny in public life by making reference to Julius Caesar, he had allowed himself to be blinded to the possibility that the French Revolution represented a historical continuity rather than a historical exception. Had he – and those like him – been more clear-eyed, perhaps the excesses of the Napoleonic era could have been mitigated, the recurrence of the same tired pattern been avoided, and a new era well and truly forged. This was not to be, of course, and so Jefferson was left only to lament – as a man of seventy-eight whose political career was years behind him – that the era in which he lived was not as precedent-shattering as he might have hoped, and in fact represented little more than a somewhat novel variation on a well-trod theme.

A yet more substantial example of this kind of historically-minded thinking within the Revolutionary American tradition can be found in the text of the venerable Federalist Papers, drafted in the aftermath of the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 for the purpose of promoting the ratification of the United States Constitution. No. 16 though No. 20 of this series, written by Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804) and James Madison (1751-1836) for the purpose of highlighting the weaknesses they believed to be inherent in the confederation of states that then existed in America. The authority of Congress under the Articles of Confederation, Hamilton began by asserting, was limited in its effectiveness by being unable to make laws that could bind the states which were nominally under its authority. He thereafter went on to explain that the impossibility of working around this basic fault without totally altering the nature of the union in question, “Is equally attested by the events which have befallen all other Governments of the confederate kind, of which we have any account, in exact proportion to its prevalence in those systems. The confirmations of this fact will be worthy of a distinct and particular examination.” A premise thus established, Hamilton and Madison proceeded to cite reams upon reams of evidence in an attempt to prove the validity thereof.

Without delving too extensively into what proved to be a fairly lengthy and rigorous historical study, certain citations thereof are most certainly worth making. Consider, for example, the following. “Among the Confederacies of antiquity,” Madison declared at the opening of No. 18, “The most considerable was that of the Grecian Republics, associated under the Amphictyonic council. From the best accounts transmitted of this celebrated institution, it bore a very instructive analogy to the present Confederation of the American States.” Had it not yet been made obvious the purpose to which the authors of the Federalist were presently applying themselves, this statement would surely have accomplished as much at a stroke. History – specifically that of confederate governments – was to be applied to the needs of the present by way of positive and negative example in order to divine the best way forward. Bearing this purpose in mind, Madison proceeded to observe, among other things, the degree to which the aforementioned “Amphictyonic council” was weaker than the “Confederation of American States,” the degree to which it was stronger, the stresses that the former faced as compared to those suffered by the latter, and the extent to which errors committed by these ancient confederates might give notice of the miscalculations which the United States would do well to avoid. On this last count, Madison notably observed, quoting a “judicious observer,” that, “Had Greece […] been united by a stricter Confederation, and persevered in her Union, she would never have worn the chains of Macedon; and might have proved a barrier to the vast projects of Rome.” Few commentaries upon a matter of historical import would surely have seemed more relevant than this to the wellbeing of a collection of newly-independent states surrounded on all sides by the territory of powerful foreign empires.

Federalist No. 19, also by Madison, attempted to turn the histories of the Holy Roman Empire and the Swiss Confederacy to a similar purpose as that explored in No. 18. In both instances, the fundamental weakness to which the author attempted to draw the attention of his readers was the tendency of weak confederal government to nurture civil discord, reward narrow ambition, and encourage foreign interference. The Holy Roman Empire, Madison accordingly explained, though it nominally vested paramount executive authority in the office of an emperor elected from among the nobility by a college of his peers, in actual fact consisted for the better part of its history of a fractious collection of kingdoms, duchies, counties, and religious estates whose respective sovereignty was for the most part unchallenged by anything like a national administration. The reason for this was simple enough. “The fundamental principle on which it rests,” Madison avowed,

That the empire is a community of sovereigns; that the Diet is a representation of sovereigns; and that the laws are addressed to sovereigns; renders the empire a nerveless body, incapable of regulating its own members, insecure against external dangers, and agitated with unceasing fermentations in its own bowels.

The issue, as here indicated, was essentially one of power. While the Empire as a whole indeed constituted a formidable collection of princes, dukes, counts, and bishops, there existed within its bounds no authority that could compel all of these sovereigns to act in concert. The Emperor was only as strong as the lands he could claim by hereditary right made him, and his empire was only as powerful as the princes sitting in the Imperial Diet would allow.

If, in consequence, a particular member-state of the Empire – the Duchy of Bavaria, for example – determined to assert a claimed right of sovereignty over another, weaker member-state – the County of Neuchatel, let’s say – the only thing that could have stopped the annexation of the latter by the former was the will of a sufficient number of their fellow imperial subjects as would militarily preclude Bavaria from acting. This coalition might include the Emperor, or it might not; it might stubbornly refuse to give way to Bavaria’s demands, or it might fold very quickly when pressed. Lacking any mechanism by which to appeal for aid, restrain the rapacity of its neighbors, or dispute the validity of a claim against its independence, Neuchatel – or any state like it – would in consequence be forced to vest any and all hope for its continued existence in the whims of potential aggressors and the strategic decision-making of potential supporters. The result of such a tenuous power dynamic, Madison accordingly affirmed, was that,

The history of Germany is a history of wars between the Emperor and the Princes and States; of wars among the Princes and States themselves; of the licentiousness of the strong, and the oppression of the weak; of foreign intrusions, and foreign intrigues; of requisitions of men and money disregarded, or partially complied with; of attempts to enforce them, altogether abortive, or attended with slaughter and desolation, involving the innocent with the guilty; of general imbecility, confusion, and misery.

While the fear and anxiety likely to be occasioned by the prospect of any of these eventualities befalling the United States of America surely justified Madison’s invocation thereof, the notion of “foreign intrusions, and foreign intrigues” doubtless hit particularly close to home. Having just recently secured their independence from Great Britain after a long and costly war, and in the meantime surrounded on all sides by powerful European empires, the inhabitants of the various American states had ample reason to fear being preyed upon, manipulated, or even turned against each other by the great powers of the late 18^th century world. Without a strong central government that might prevent such an outcome – or, indeed, any of the outcomes cited above – by preventing states from pursuing their individual priorities at the behest of the needs of the greater American union, the fate which befell the Holy Roman Empire may yet have transpired within the bounds of the United States.

            The Swiss Confederacy, while inarguably more stable and less given to internal division and bloodshed than the Holy Roman Empire, nonetheless provided no better example to the nascent United States of America of how a confederacy might reasonably be organized. The reason for this, Madison accordingly avowed, was that the historical success of the Swiss was principally a consequence of the multitude of common interests and characteristics which existed among them. Rather than a strong, stable, or robust national administration, their union was sustained by,

The peculiarity of their topographical position; by their individual weakness and insignificancy; by the fear of powerful neighbors, to one of which they were formerly subject; by the few sources of contention among a People of such simple and homogeneous manners; by their joint interest in their dependent possessions; by the mutual aid they stand in need of, for suppressing insurrections and rebellions, an aid expressly stipulated, and often required and afforded; and by the necessity of some regular and permanent provision for accommodating disputes among the Cantons.

Though the contemporary American states might have been said to possess some of these same aspects and priorities in common, the degree to which they were otherwise at odds did not portend favorably for the creation of a confederacy on the Swiss model. Certain of them were indeed quite small – and, by extension, lacking in manpower or natural resources – though others, like Virginia, Massachusetts, or New York, were decidedly not. For that matter, there were plenty of sources of contention among them – from the propriety of slavery to various outstanding land claims – and few dependent possessions to speak of. Bearing this in mind, Madison doubtless hoped it would be plainly evident that the union of American states would require a more robust form of political association than had so far bound the various Swiss cantons if it were to survive the coming 19^th century without devolving into a series of hostile camps or witnessing the annexation of its weaker members by the stronger.

Though differing in their specific focus, all of the citations offered above – from the pens of Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison – show in common with the arguments put forward by Richard Price in Part II, Section IV of Observations a decided interest in applying the examples furnished by the past to the practical needs of the present. History, it seemed, for these American statesmen and this British radical preacher alike, functioned as both prologue and proscription for all that followed. Granted, Jefferson’s endorsement of historical education was offered in only a very general sense – both in terms of mechanism and application – while the authors of Federalist No. 15-20 and Observations, respectively, were alternately seeking to justify the adoption of a new form of government and discourage the continuation of a particular course of action. But they were all of them united in a shared belief that the period in which they lived formed part of a larger continuity of events to which they were ultimately beholden. The sense of universalism inherent in this perspective is not only worth remarking upon, it arguably represents the whole of what set this kind of thinking apart within the context of the late 18^th century Anglo-American world. Whereas Lord North and his predecessors seemed given to characterize the issues they daily confronted strictly in terms of the practices and prejudices of the present moment – which is to say, the laws and precedents they were obliged to obey and the desires of those they were indebted to for support – Price and his American compatriots appeared instead to apply to a given problem the whole sum of human experience and knowledge, and to cut across moral, legal, and philosophical dimensions in search of solutions.

Consider, by way of example, the Anglo-American crisis itself. Having determined that the outcome of the Seven Years War required the raising of a substantial revenue from the American colonies, the ministries of George Grenville, the Marquess of Rockingham, William Pitt, the Duke of Grafton, and Lord North thereafter attempted the extraction of the relevant funds in accordance with what they knew to be legal and proper within the context of late 18^th century Britain. In consequence, each of these governments adopted such measures as their members knew to be in compliance with the British Constitution, the statutes then on the books, and such precedents which existed within the Anglo-American relationship. Granted that in certain respects they arguably failed to live up to even this standard, their general approach was a relatively consistent one. Successive British governments, faced with an objective they were determined to achieve, charted the path which appeared most likely to produce success in keeping with the laws and practices extant in Great Britain in the 1760s and 1770s. While no doubt the likes of Price, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison would have agreed that this was a reasonable place to start, the citations offered above would seem to indicate that these four – and other of like mind – would have delved much deeper and wider in search of both inspiration and guidance.

What mattered to Price and to the relevant members of the Revolutionary elite, it seemed, was more than just the laws then in force and the precedents nearest at hand. Such things were important, of course, but a blind devotion to them alone could very easily and unintentionally lead to tragically myopic outcomes. There were the statutes approved by Parliament, yes, and the rights and protection enshrined in the British Constitution, both of which deserved due consideration. But there was also the whole history of human society and government to consider, from Ancient Greece, to Republican Rome, to the Holy Roman Empire, the Swiss Confederacy, the Dutch Republic, and contemporary Corsica. Each epoch, incident, or episode carried with it a potential lesson, warning, or insight, and each was no less applicable to the issues which collectively comprised the Anglo-American crisis than were the laws and history of Britain alone. The difference, in essence, was a matter of perception. Lord North and his predecessors, for whatever reason, did not seem to perceive the larger scope of human history as having particular application to the challenges they were made to confront. Given though they may have been, privately, to condemn the actions of the Spanish Hapsburgs in the 16^th century Netherlands, or shake their heads at the haughtiness of Roman statesmen who refused to offer citizenship to those Italians whose blood they freely shed in seeking to expand their burgeoning empire, they appeared not to think that that these cases – or the moral dimensions thereof – should have had anything to do with the decisions they were daily called to make. So what, they seemed to say, if Britain’s treatment of its American subjects appeared to mimic Spanish behavior in the Netherlands? 18^th century Britain was nothing like 16^th century Spain, and the Americans nothing like the Dutch. Whatever similarities one might draw between them, therefore, could not but be wholly circumstantial.

As their cited assertions would strongly indicate, of course, Richard Price, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison would all have had cause to vehemently disagree. To their thinking, the events and implications of the Dutch Revolt did apply to the Anglo-American crisis, as much as the faults inherent in the Holy Roman Empire had some lesson to offer the inhabitants of the nascent American union, or a general knowledge of the past could help to guide a curious citizenry towards the creation of a more just and virtuous society in the present. Rather than see the laws and traditions of a given society – that of Britain, say, or America, or Virginia, – as the only forces capable of shaping political action therein, they argued – implicitly if not explicitly – that the rightness of wrongness of any decision was bound to be measured against the whole of human experience. Not only was this wise, they doubtless would have asserted – bringing to bear a great deal more knowledge and experience than would otherwise be the case – but it was plainly also just and proper. The millions, Hamilton and Madison would surely had affirmed, who perished amidst the chaos and bloodshed engendered by the weakness of the Holy Roman Empire should not be allowed to have died in vain. The equal number, Jefferson would doubtless have agreed, who lost their lives as a result of the warmongering wrought in the ages of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar should not have been made to render this ultimate sacrifice without humanity deriving some useful lesson from it for when such events inevitably reoccur. Any given moment in history, it naturally follows from this kind of thinking, is effectively the culmination of all that has come before it. All the errors committed and warnings derived bear upon the choices made therein. That Richard Price was likewise of this opinion – though not a member of the American Revolutionary elite, where such thinking appears to have been particular common in the 18^th century – should be plain enough from the substance of his arguments as offered in Part II, Section IV of Observations. British though he may have been, in upbringing and education, he appeared in this aspect of his personal philosophy to be as unlike the majority of his countrymen as were the American insurgents with which he freely sympathized.