A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress, Part III: Human Nature

            Recent events in the world of musical theatre notwithstanding, it would be difficult to deny that Alexander Hamilton is among the least memorialized of the major Founders. Granted, his stern visage has graced the ten dollar bill since the late 1920s, and there are a number of statues in his likeness standing before, among others, his alma mater of Columbia University and the United States Treasury Building. That being said, there is no “Hamilton Monument” in Washington D.C. or New York City. His words are not carved in marble somewhere, proudly displayed for the inspiration and edification of future generations, and his face adorns no mountainsides. There are many potential reasons for this, likely having to do with his somewhat ignominious end, the self-consciously partisan character he often adopted, or the squalor and pathos of his origins. The most convincing explanation, however, is by far the simplest. Hamilton is not remembered in the same way as Washington, Jefferson, of Franklin – to name the great triumvirate of American Revolutionary myth-making – because he was neither a leader nor a philosopher. He did not write treatises about the nature of human liberty or the primacy of natural rights. He did not set the tone for generations of American politicians by his prudence, restraint, and integrity, and he was never a prolific promoter of a distinctly American cultural identity at home or abroad. What Hamilton cared about was policy, and structures, and building, and organizing. In his life he was a soldier, a lawyer, and a bureaucrat, and in all of these roles he embodied values that many Americans continue to venerate; ambition, dedication, confidence, and ingenuity. But he didn't write the Declaration of Independence, or lead the country through the Revolutionary War. He didn't try to inspire men with his words or his deeds. Instead, he made things; among them, institutions that have supported the growth and prosperity of the American people and allowed them to realize their full potential.

Keeping this in mind – this propensity for the practical rather than the theoretical – it becomes much easier to understand why Hamilton wrote the way he did. Compared to Jefferson’s aforementioned Declaration, with its commanding phrases and soaring idealism, Hamilton’s Report on Public Credit or his Federalist No. 1 appear pedantic, at-times snarky, and generally rather dry. Taken on their own terms, however, one cannot help but take notice of how organized, disciplined, and rational Hamilton’s discourse tends to be, and in turn develop an appreciation for the diligence of the mind that conceived them. A Full Vindication, though written by a callow youth with more ambition than his situation warranted, is no different than any of Hamilton’s later texts in its dependence on sound logic over philosophical or metaphysical abstraction. The first section in particular, spanning paragraphs one through seventy-six, relies almost exclusively on appeals to pragmatic considerations like hunger and profit, and practically groans under the weight of statistics, facts, and figures relating to crop yields, the resource needs of British manufacturers, and the military potential of the American colonies. In this bloody-minded realism there is evidence of a terribly exacting mind at work, worldly beyond its years, and unwilling to suffer the idealistic or the ignorant. A particularly striking example of his hard-headed approach to discourse, and one which seems to connect Hamilton’s sordid upbringing in the Caribbean with his later life as America’s first “accountant-in-chief,” are his frequent attempts to alert his opponent and their shared audience to the true nature of the British Empire.

Counter to the assertions he attributed to men like Samuel Seabury (in the guise of A.W. Farmer), that the best means of mending the rift between Britain and the American colonies was by “remonstrance and petition,” Hamilton declared that such pacific measures were doomed to inevitable and repeated failure. In 1765, the Stamp Act Congress sent such an appeal to the king begging for relief from burdensome taxation, “in the most loyal and respectful manner [.]” The result was “contempt and neglect,” and the same again when the First Continental Congress sent a similar petition in 1774. As Hamilton explained in the previously-quoted fourteenth paragraph, “The total repeal of the stamp act, and the partial repeal of the revenue acts, took place not because the complaints of America were deemed just and reasonable, but because these acts were found to militate against the commercial interests of Great Britain.” Parliament and the Crown, Hamilton knew all too well, regarded their colonial dependencies more as branches of a large and complicated business enterprise than as members of a close and cherished family. Profit and efficiency guided British decision-making vis-à-vis its colonies to a far greater extent than any species of familial or sentimental attachment. In all instances but the most severe crises, Hamilton argued, a British government would invariably pursue the most advantageous policy possible. To do any less, to change course in the face of mere public agitation, would have meant losing face and sacrificing opportunity. Hamilton ascribed this exact type of thinking to the reigning Prime Minister, Lord North (1732-1792), and his behavior towards the colonies when he declared in paragraph eighteen that, “Nothing but necessity will induce him to abandon his aims.” North had set himself on a course of action, justified it to the fullest extent of his considerable power, and, “Advanced too far too recede with safety.”

For his part, Hamilton considered the logic behind this kind of unsympathetic self-interest far from mysterious. British governments and British ministers preferred to alienate and potentially impoverish their American cousins rather than lose respect at home or sacrifice potential profit simply because they chose to obey the basic dictates of self-preservation. The American colonies may have been members of the same linguistic and cultural family as their nominal British overlords, “Being allied to us,” Hamilton admitted, “by ties of blood, interest, and mutual protection [,]” but this did not necessarily entitle the colonists to the same level of consideration as if they were residents of Britain proper. “Humanity does not require us to sacrifice our own security and welfare to the convenience or advantage of others,” he cautioned in paragraph twenty-two,

Self-preservation is the first principle of our nature. When our lives and properties are at stake, it would be foolish and unnatural to refrain from such measures as might preserve them because they would be detrimental to others.

Residents of the colonies or their ancestors had removed themselves from Britain to America by choice. In so doing, Hamilton evidently believed, they had placed themselves beyond the sphere of Britain’s practical concern. Within this sphere, a person could rest easy in the knowledge that their priorities were consequential to the government of the day and that their interests would therefore be attended to; beyond the sphere, physical distance and the associated costs made the desires and aspirations of the average person of limited interest to the powers-that-be. As callous as this manner of administration might have seemed, Hamilton avowed to his readers that it was entirely consistent with human nature and human instinct. To expect the ministry of Lord North, or indeed any British government, to behave in a contrary manner, as A.W. Farmer believed they would, was therefore both unrealistic and naïve.

            This realization, coupled with the nature of the ongoing dispute between the colonies and the British government, placed the people of British America in an unenviable position. Were they to submit, as Hamilton believed his opponent A.W. Farmer intended, by refusing to dispute that Parliament indeed possessed the right to tax the colonies “in all cases whatsoever,” it would be useless for the colonists to hope for a return to peace and prosperity in the years to follow. Guided as ever by avarice and emboldened by America’s consent, Britain would inevitably proceed on a course towards enriching itself by draining the wealth and vitality from its American dependencies. “A vast majority of mankind is entirely biased by motives of self-interest,” Hamilton accordingly reminded his readers in paragraph thirty-seven;

Most men are glad to remove any burthens off themselves, and place them upon the necks of their neighbors. We cannot, therefore, doubt but that the British Parliament, with a view to the ease and advantage of itself and its constituents, would oppress and grind the Americans as much as possible.

This kind of matter-of-fact, cynical evaluation of human behavior and human motivation speaks to Hamilton’s disinterest in philosophical abstraction. Whereas someone like Thomas Jefferson was inclined to characterize an active American response to British intransigence as a consequence of Britain having broken an unspoken “social contract” – thereby invoking a philosophical concept native to the 17^th century – the future Treasury Secretary advocated a far simpler line of reasoning. The American colonies, he argued, could not hope to thrive so long as they were viewed by Britain as the source of that distant island’s mounting prosperity. The self-interest of the one would inevitably conflict with the self-interest of the other, and some manner of breach would be the unavoidable result.

            In spite of the evident bleakness of this prognosis, particularly in light of the manifest ways powerful empires had of enforcing their will in the world, Hamilton was quick to point out in A Full Vindication that Britain’s high regard for profit and expediency presented the colonists with a significant potential advantage. Though the members of Parliament may have been largely immune to entreaties from the benighted colonies that sought to stimulate their tenderness, the British love of commerce made their empire vulnerable to economic disruption. “There is an immense trade between [Britain] and the colonies [,]” Hamilton accordingly pointed out in paragraph thirty-eight;

The revenues arising from thence are prodigious. The consumption of [British] manufactures in these colonies supplies the means of subsistence to a vast number of her most useful inhabitants. The experiment we have made heretofore shows us of how much importance our commercial connection is to [Britain], and gives us the highest assurance of obtaining immediate address by suspending it.

A similar statement appeared in paragraph fifty. “Every man,” Hamilton therein declared,

The least acquainted with the state and extent of our trade, must be convinced it is the source of immense revenues to the parent state, and gives employment and bread to a vast number of his Majesty’s subjects. It is impossible but that a suspension of it, for any time, must introduce beggary and wretchedness, in an eminent degree, both in England and in Ireland.

America, Hamilton was keen to point out, enjoyed a far stronger position vis-à-vis its mother country than many in the colonies had theretofore been given to believe. Ties of dependence ran in both directions, and it remained only for the colonists to come to a realization of their power for it to be fully at their disposal.  

In making this argument to his fellow colonists, Hamilton demonstrated an acute awareness – particularly for one so young – of the economic disposition of the British Empire and the manner in which economic considerations could, and did, affect policy-making. Not only did Britain depend on raw materials from its colonies, but it counted on the same distant populations to consume the various manufactures goods its industry produced. Threatening to cut off a source of both supply and demand therefore represented a significant incentive to British cooperation with colonial demands. Hamilton was likely more attuned to this kind of matter-of-fact economic reasoning than many of his contemporaries because of his experiences as a merchant clerk in the West Indies. This he seemed to hint at in paragraph fifty, which concluded with an assertion of the absolute dependence of Britain’s Caribbean possessions on American resources. “I am the more confident of this,” Hamilton added, “Because I have a pretty general acquaintance with their circumstances and dependencies.” This strain of argument – Britain being vulnerable to economic disruption – therefore brought together Hamilton’s own personal experiences, sound, straightforward logic, and an understanding of the human instinct of self-preservation. To this was also added a note of precedent. “The experiment we have made heretofore” doubtless referred to the non-importation agreement the colonies had adopted in 1765 in response to the passage of the Stamp Act. Said boycott, proposed by a congress very much like that which met in 1774, proved highly successful in getting the offending legislation repealed. It was therefore eminently reasonable, in Hamilton’s estimation, to expect that a similar policy would achieve a similar effect.