Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania III, Part III: Motherland

            Following his attachment to the moral sensibilities of 18^th-century Quakerism and the philosophical values most commonly associated with the European Enlightenment, the aspect of John Dickinson’s personality that seems most strongly imprinted on the text of Letter III (and in turn on his entire public career) is his abiding affection for Great Britain, its culture, and its role as mother country to the Thirteen Colonies. In this veneration of the colonial motherland he was far from alone among his fellow revolutionaries. No less illustrious a figure than John Adams, second President of the United States, was a noted Anglophile whose association of stability, tradition, and good government with the British example became a source of ridicule in his later career. Alexander Hamilton too, the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury, found much to admire in the British system of government, and in many ways modelled his plan for the 1^st Bank of the United States on that of the Bank of England. Indeed, some degree of fondness for British law, history, culture, or art was hardly uncommon in the American colonies in the years leading up to their fateful break with king and country. The great majority of the colonial population on the eve of revolution were of British descent, the rights and liberties many of them venerated were of British origins, and the literature, theatre, and music they consumed were almost all products of British writers, playwrights and composers. Britain was the font of their civilization, law, and culture, and though many among them found fault with how British authorities had taken to administering the colonies, comparatively few had no use for Britain at all.

            That being said, that fact that John Dickinson actually travelled to Britain as a young man did set him apart from the great majority of his fellow colonists. To them the motherland was a source of history, culture, and legal precedent, and perhaps also a distant familial origin point. To Dickinson, however, it was something much more tangible. In his aforementioned letters home during his youthful sojourn in the 1750s he regularly described with wonder the sheer variety of people who walked the streets of London, the quality of the buildings, palaces, and cathedrals, the beauty of the carefully manicured gardens, and the consummate skill on display during theatrical performances. For him, Britain was much more than an idea to be venerated or a culture to be emulated; it was a living, breathing, bustling place full of people of intelligence, ability and wit who were day by day working to expand the borders of the greatest empire the world had ever known. While his stay in Britain inspired its share of diffidence as well, particularly where it touched upon the topic of social advancement, Dickinson could not have but come away from his time in distant Albion with a very vivid sense of what Britain had to offer the colonies and what they stood to learn.

            Evidence of Dickinson’s particular affinity for Britain can be found peppered throughout the text of the third of his venerable Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania. To his credit, the sum of said references do not paint the author of Letter III as naïve, thoughtlessly loyal, or particularly unrealistic in his assessment of the crisis then unfolding between the colonies and the British government. Some display a certain amount of respectful deference, another a slightly more practical, if familiar, tone, while others still verify Dickinson’s affinity for and knowledge of British law and history. At no point does Dickinson exhibit the excessive credulity or filial loyalty frequently associated by later revolutionary critics with those who openly professed pro-British sentiments. The scion of Poplar Hall seemed not to ground his affection for the mother country in catechistic tradition. Rather his loyalty appeared to stem from a fairly pragmatic, engaged consideration of British virtues, the lessons contained in British history, and the usefulness of continuing a harmonious association between Britain and the Thirteen Colonies.  

In the fifteenth paragraph of Letter III, for instance, Dickinson stated very plainly that,

The prosperity of these provinces is founded in their dependence on Great Britain; and when she returns to her “old good humour, and her old good nature,” as Lord Clarendon expresses it, I hope they will always think it their duty and interest, as it most certainly will be, to promote her welfare by all the means in their power.

Rather than couch an argument against any sudden break between Britain and the colonies in terms of intangibles like loyalty, duty, or honor, Dickinson resorted in Letter III to economics and a close knowledge of British intentions. The Thirteen Colonies, he argued, owed whatever financial success they enjoyed in 1767 to their relationship with Great Britain; severing that bond, however it might address certain philosophical disputes in the short run, would adversely affect the lives and livelihoods of countless colonists in the long run. At the same time that this assertion ran decidedly counter to that later put forth in Thomas Jefferson’s 1774 publication A Summary View of the Rights of British America, in which the Sage of Monticello claimed that the colonies principally owed their existence, stability, and economic viability to the hard work and sacrifice of the citizens, Dickinson’s argument was also at least partially true. 

As mentioned in weeks past, Britain’s colonial empire was administered on broadly mercantilist principles. This meant, in general, that raw materials from the colonies were directed toward the mother country, manufactured goods were exported and sold in the colonies, and strict regulations were put in place that prevented said colonies from trading with other European powers or their imperial possessions. Consequently the economies of the Thirteen Colonies at the end of the 18^th century were mainly agrarian, placed little emphasis on manufacturing, and relied exclusively on British markets for various necessities, luxury goods, and customers for their produce, iron, fish, timber, and furs. This relationship mainly benefited British manufacturers, though the colonies were able to make up some of the trade imbalance by establishing a major presence in the shipping and shipbuilding industries (the latter accounting for 5-20% of employment overall). The profits that these sectors generated, combined with the surplus of land, lack of large, crowded urban areas, and high agricultural output, ensured that the average standard of living (for people of European descent) in the colonies in the late-18^th century was actually higher than in Britain itself.  Were Britain to suddenly cease to be the Thirteen Colonies’ sole trading partner, however, particularly as a result of a punitive blockade or embargo, the colonial economy would have greatly suffered for its lack of diversity, scarcity of credit, and industrial immaturity. In this sense the colonies were generally quite prosperous, and that prosperity was indeed based mainly in their dependence on Britain. Dickinson’s accompanying plea for the colonies to, “promote [Britain’s] welfare by all the means in their power” could thus be interpreted as an exhortation for his fellow colonists to place their own economic well-being before any sense of emotional or moral outrage recent events may have prompted.

Obviously the colonial American economy turned out to be far less dependent on Great Britain than Dickinson indicated in Letter III. Thanks to a combination of material and monetary support from European allies like France and the Netherlands, as well as the sale of bonds and the creation of financial institutions like the Bank of North America, the United States was able to weather the sudden lack of reliable export markets and sources of manufactured goods that colonial independence brought about in 1776. Dickinson, of course, had no way of knowing this, and so his admonition in favor of maintaining the established relationship between Britain and the colonies ought to be taken at face value as one motivated by legitimate concern. Capable as I am sure my own audience is of giving Dickinson a fair hearing, it was likely made more difficult for certain of his own readers to do the same because of his paraphrasing Lord Clarendon’s words in support of said argument.

Edward Hyde, 1^st Earl of Clarendon, was a royalist politician who served as a close advisor to Charles I and Charles II during the English Civil War (1642-1651), the exile of the House of Stuart, and their subsequent Restoration in 1660. In addition to serving as Lord Chancellor and Chancellor of the Exchequer, two of the Great Offices of State, Clarendon was later father-in-law to future king James II (1685-1688) and grandfather to Queens Mary II (1688-1694) and Anne (1702-1714). The passage that Dickinson chose to rephrase as “the old good humour, and the old good nature” was delivered by Clarendon during a speech before Parliament in September, 1660 in which he attempted to encourage his fellow countrymen to accept the legitimacy of the newly-restored Charles II in exchange for a general amnesty upon those who had fought for or otherwise supported the Parliamentarians. The King, Clarendon assured his audience, wished only, “That you will join him in restoring the whole Nation to its primitive Temper and Integrity, to its old good Manners, its old good Humour, and its old good Nature.”

Dickinson’s willingness to put forward the words of someone like Lord Clarendon as a model for the proper relationship between the colonies and the British government was doubtless made somewhat problematic by the fact that the House of Stuart and its supporters were generally not looked upon with favor by the citizens of British America. Indeed, he intimated as much himself in the fourteenth paragraph of Letter III. “Great Britain,” he wrote, “under the illustrious house of Brunswick, a house which seems to flourish for the happiness of mankind, has found a felicity unknown in the reigns of the Stuarts.” Though this was something of an exaggeration – the monarchs of the House of Brunswick, which as of 1767 included George I, George II and George III, were not particularly well-loved in the colonies at the time of Dickinson’s writing – the combined reign of the Brunswick monarchs tended to compare quite favorably among the citizens of British America to that of the prior House of Stuart.

Charles II (1660-1685), for instance, oversaw the resurgence of the Anglican Establishment in England, demonstrated strong Catholic sympathies, sided with the Tories during the Exclusion Crisis (thereby asserting his Catholic brother’s right to succeed him), and dissolved Parliament in 1681 so that he could rule on his own. In British America, wherein freedom of religion was widely held as a paramount right, Catholics were generally disliked or distrusted, and the Whigs (rather than the Tories) were heralded as the true guardians of English liberty, such actions and proclivities did not endear the restored House of Stuart to the general population. James II (1685-1689) did little to improve upon his dynasty’s reputation. An avowed Catholic, he oversaw the amalgamation of the New England colonies with New York and New Jersey to form the Boston-governed Dominion of New England in 1686, enlarged and strengthened England’s standing army in response to rebellions against his authority, and (like his brother and predecessor) dismissed Parliament in 1685 in order to circumvent their repeated objections. These were, once again, not actions that met with a kind reception among the citizens of British America. In keeping with their aforementioned reverence for the values enshrined in the Bill of Rights of 1689, and as evidenced by their frequent objections to the various iterations of the Quartering Act, they were particularly sensitive to the threat posed by a strong standing army and highly protective of what they perceived as their traditional right to political representation. Consequently, the reign of James II did great harm to the reputation of the Stuart dynasty in America, if not to the monarchy in general. The deposition of James in 1688-89 during the Glorious Revolution thus met with few objections in the Thirteen Colonies, and the accession of the sober, Protestant George I to the throne in 1714 was even viewed as cause for celebration.

Considering how poorly the Stuart dynasty was regraded in the American colonies after their deposition in 1688, and how closely many of his contemporaries identified with the Whigs who had opposed the often-arbitrary leadership of Charles II and James II, Dickinson’s choice of reference in Letter III does indeed seem rather odd. Lord Clarendon was, as aforementioned, a close personal advisor to Charles I and Charles II. He supported the latter’s re-establishment of Anglican supremacy and showed a very public distaste for the House of Commons during his times as Lord Chancellor after 1660, advising the younger Charles on more than one occasion to dissolve said body when it proved particularly uncooperative. If Dickinson truly hoped in 1767 to convince a colonial audience full of Whig-sympathizers, religious dissenters, and pseudo-republicans that although the colonies had been wronged by British ministers the greatest wisdom laid in continued loyalty combined with peaceful resistance, Lord Clarendon would seem among the least useful sources of rhetorical support.
 

As to why Dickinson then chose to draw inspiration from the royalist Lord Chancellor, it may simply have been the case that the author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania was among that educated portion of the pre-revolutionary American population who in fact did not identify very strongly with the Whigs, the Country Party, Lord Bolingbroke, or any of the purveyors of social contract theory like Thomas Hobbes or John Locke. This is not to say, however, that he was dyed-in-the-wool Tory. As previously discussed, Dickinson was a student of the Enlightenment and a person with strong moral convictions shaped by a Quaker-influenced upbringing, neither of which would have been particularly amenable to the conservative Anglicanism of the Tory elite. Rather it may have been the case that Dickinson cultivated a royalist sympathy that was distinctly moderate and non-partisan. Though he might have agreed that Lord Clarendon was perhaps not an exemplar of particularly worthwhile values as of 1767, it’s entirely possible Dickinson also believed that the words Clarendon used to describe the ideal relationship between the English Crown and its subjects a century earlier were not thereby worthless. This would seem to have been a risk on Dickinson’s part, considering once again the general composition of his audience. Then again it may have been the case that at such an early period in the prelude to the American Revolution it was not yet clear where the fault lines of the coming ideological conflict were to be drawn. In 1767 it may have been possible for a person to quote Lord Clarendon or similar English statesmen and not be pilloried as a Loyalist, in a way that simply wasn't conceivable a decade later.

To be entirely fair to Dickinson he was not immovably opposed to any and all forms of resistance to British intransigence; only it was the means by which resistance accomplished that troubled him. In the seventeenth paragraph he tellingly asserted that, “The Constitutional modes of obtaining relief are those which I wish to see pursued on the present occasion; that is, by petitions of our assemblies, or where they are not permitted to meet, of the people, to the powers than can afford us relief.” This statement is of particular interest for several reasons. The first concerns Dickinson’s use of the term “Constitutional.” Because of the frequency with which the word, or related terminology, is thrown around in the contemporary new media, a modern reader of Letter III could be forgiven for misunderstanding its intended meaning in the above-quoted passage. Rather than refer to the United States Constitution, which of course didn't exist in 1767, Dickinson intended to put his readers in mind of the unwritten British Constitution, or more generally to the legal and cultural principles that support its existence and operation. Whereas American constitutionalism is based on codification, wherein the paramount law of the land takes the form of a single written text, British constitutionalism encompasses the interpretation of multiple documents, statutes, edicts, common law rulings, and political conventions, potentially from across the entirety of British history. Because the British Constitution is not a single document but rather a centuries-spanning accretion of legal concepts, tradition and precedent play a large role in determining what is and is not constitutional in any given situation. When Dickinson thus claimed to support, “The Constitutional modes of obtaining relief” in Letter III, he was effectively asserting the primacy of established methods over untested innovations. That this was in keeping with the British political and cultural traditions in which Dickinson and his contemporaries had been raised and educated, at the same time that it happened to discourage a quick resort to violence, was perhaps why he felt comfortable attempting to combine a respect for precedent with a general call for his fellow colonists to remain vigilant of their rights.    

            The second reason the above-quoted passage is worth considering is because it gives evidence of Dickinson’s apparent endorsement of some form of extra-legal assembly of “the people” as a means to circumvent the manipulation or dismissal of the colonial assemblies. Though the formation of such an assembly would have constituted an act of rebellion against the political establishment, it was on its face still a peaceful course of action. And while it may have constituted disobedience aimed at the authority of the Crown in the colonies, the fact that it recognized the innate sovereignty of the people themselves as possessing greater legitimacy (in keeping with Enlightenment ideals of natural law) perhaps made it seem acceptable to Dickinson. Furthermore, it likely appealed to him on a personal note because of his prior participation in an “assembly of the people” in the form of the 1765 Stamp Act Congress. This august body he mentioned in the fifth paragraph of Letter III as a symbol of the success that could be achieved via non-violent resistance. “If the behavior of the colonies was prudent and glorious then,” he wrote, “and successful too; it will be equally prudent and glorious to act in the same manner now, if our rights are equally invaded, and may be as successful.” Thus, the loyalty to and affection for Britain Dickinson put forward in Letter III were offered a subtle complication. While in one section he asserted the need to maintain the Anglo-American relationship in economic terms, and paraphrased the proto-Tory Lord Clarendon in support of the same, he seemed willing in another to endorse the colonists taking matters into their own hands when met with continued British obstinacy. Granted, the method by which Dickinson advised said colonists to assert their sovereignty was quite civil and restrained by the standards of the bloody conflict that was to follow. The principle of disobedience, however, remains inherent in the assertion; Dickinson may have nurtured a personal regard for Britain, its politics, and its culture, but his sense of political loyalty was evidently conditional. Provided violations of said loyalty were justified by the treatment received, and that actions taken in response were fundamentally peaceful, there was evidently a limit beyond which the scion of Poplar Hall could conceive of rebellion against his beloved mother country.