Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, Part II: That Old Whig Harangue

If forced to cite but one element as being particularly characteristic of Richard Price’s Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, that which most powerfully suggests itself is the degree to which it’s author appeared to couch a great deal of his criticism of contemporary British government policy within the contours of the “Old Whig” or “Country Party” ideology. This quality is significant for a number of reasons. For one thing, it communicates a great deal about the manner in which Price understood the purpose of government, the recent history of Great Britain, and the principles by which he believed society ought to function. Unlike, say, Benjamin Franklin, whose most pointed criticisms of contemporary government policy were prompted and shaped by a vaguely-defined – though no less sincere – set of “Revolution principles,” or the aforementioned Thomas Paine, whose ardent republicanism seemed to stem as much from a sense of personal animus as political conviction, Price appeared to draw very directly and very consistently from an established set of values and priorities whose authors numbered among some of the most influential figures in the Anglo-America political discourse. In consequence, despite his otherwise radical convictions, it becomes that much easier to place the author of Observations on an existing ideological continuum. Price identified with the Country Party, in short, and so he belongs here. As to what that meant in practice, the following will endeavor to show.

            Observations, it bears noting, is both a dense and highly structured example of the late 18^th century Anglo-American political treatise. First printed in London early in the year 1776, it represented an effort on the part of Price to call into question the measures that had so far been taken by the government of Lord North to quell the armed rebellion that had broken out in British America in the spring of 1775. To that end, he set about first establishing a set of general principles as to the nature of authority, sovereignty, and liberty. This began with “Section I. Of the Nature of Liberty in General [,]” was followed by “Section II. Of Civil Liberty and the Principles of Government” and concluded with “Section III. Of the Authority of one Country over another.” Combined, these three segments comprised Part I of Observations. Part II then shifted the focus of the piece towards a specific accounting of the behavior of the sitting British government towards the Thirteen Colonies, with a particular focus on the manner in which the former had taken to waging war upon the latter. Thus did Price denote “Section I. Of the Justice of the War with America [,]” “SECT. II. Whether the War with America is justified by the Principles of the Constitution [,]” “SECT. III. Of the Policy of the War with America [,]” “SECT. IV. Of the Honor of the Nation, as affected by the War with America [,]” and “SECT. V. Of the Probability of Succeeding in the War with America.” Having thus examined in detail the extent to which Britain’s actions with regards to its American dependencies were, to his thinking, justifiable, constitutionally sound, or probable of producing success, Price then proceeded to offer, by way of a conclusion, his preferred solution to the Anglo-American crisis, along with an explanation as to why he felt that the reconciliation of the Thirteen Colonies to the larger British Empire was essential to the wellbeing of the latter.

            Without engaging in an in-depth dissection of each of the sections named above – more on that to come – it will suffice here to repeat that just about every aspect of Price’s argument was suffused with, couched in, or generally supported by his apparent belief in the veracity and validity of the Country Party platform. At best a loose agglomeration of Tories and disaffected Whigs, the Country Party – which was, in fact, never a “party” in the modern, formal sense – coalesced in the 1680s in opposition to the notional “Court Party” from which contemporary governments drew their power. Symbolizing a kind of modern, upwardly-mobile, and ambitious elite, this latter clique supposedly included the bankers, merchants, and bureaucrats through which English/British governments in the 1690s, 1700s, and 1710s managed to refashion an aspiring but limited European kingdom into a fantastically wealthy and powerful global empire. Whereas the Court Party was said to embody the interests of the moneyed and the connected, the Country Party stood for the whole of nation, and in particular for the traditional landed aristocracy whose influence had waned significantly with the advent of state banking and standing armies. So-called “country men” accordingly supported low taxes, fiscal restraint, protection for civil liberties, and greater emphasis on the use of militias over a professional military establishment. If the text of Observations is any indication, Richard Price was a “country man” though and through, given, as he seemingly was, to express support for any and all of these major positions amidst his castigation of the government of Prime Minister – and pseudo-Tory – Lord North. Consider, to that end, his ardently expressed belief in the supremacy of Parliament.

Within the traditional Country Party/Court Party dichotomy, the former favored the legislature as the most influential branch of government while the latter tended to believe that a strong executive was necessary to counter popular excess. And while the events of the Glorious Revolution had, to a large extent, affirmed the supremacy of Parliament over the Crown – and effectively paved the way for a further weakening of the royal prerogative – the question of precisely what manner of balance to strike remained an unanswered one even as late as the 1770s. When Price affirmed at several points across the length of his Observations that the popular – i.e. elected – branch of the British government was that which ought to predominate, he was thus engaging in a debate that was both long-standing and eminently vital. Staking out a position early on, he accordingly declared in Part I, Section II that, “All civil government, as far as it can be denominated free, is the creature of the people. It originates with then. It is conducted under their direction; and has in view nothing but their happiness.” A further expansion upon this idea followed, by which Price affirmed that,

In every free state every man is his own legislator.–All taxes are free gifts for public services.–All laws are particular provisions or regulations established by COMMON CONSENT for gaining protection and safety.–And all Magistrates and Trustees of Deputies for carrying these regulations into execution.

Here, without ever been so clumsily explicit as to say so, Price leveled his first attack upon that traditional Country Party foe, executive authority. Any government that would claim for itself the appellation of “free,” he pointedly asserted, must originate from and work for the people at large. It must protect them, serve them, spend their money only with their benefit in mind, and seek their consent as often as possible.

That the country men tended to accuse their foes in government of doing precisely the opposite was surely no coincidence. If free governments were those that served the people, the government that serves itself must by default be especially unfree. Thus the Court Party was often characterized. Rather than attend to the needs of the whole of the English/British nation, it served only to enrich its own partisans. Merchants supported the banks, bankers supported the government, government supported them both, and they all supported the army, all in the name of consolidating and enhancing the power and authority they each of them respectively and collectively wielded. Granting that this image of corruption and cabalism represents something of a conjecture on the part of the country men themselves – the Court Party, after all, had no formal membership, and constituted an accusatory slur more than it was ever a real faction or interest – Price’s apparent need to define free government as being the antithesis of the supposed Court Party hegemony is telling all the same. Before even addressing any of the specific ills committed by the government of the day, he first took the time to define for his audience the manner in which he believed government ought to behave. A rhetorical dichotomy was thus established, notably without Price even having to describe both sides in full. Good, just, fair, free governments behave in this way, he asserted, while those that did not meet the standard described – whatever form they took – were their moral opposite.

Subsequent passages of Part I, Section I served to further define the characteristics that Price believed a truly free government must possess, along with occasional commentary upon the degree to which he thought contemporary Britain actually qualified. For example, after having first acknowledged that, “Civil Liberty, in its most perfect degree, can be enjoyed only in small states” – a clear reference to the arguments put forward by the French philosopher Montesquieu (1689-1755) in his The Spirit of the Laws (1748) – he went on to describe the means by which he believed, “Such near approaches may be made to perfect Liberty as shall answer all the purposes of government [.]” The first such measure named was also perhaps the most obvious, being the designation of representatives by which the consent of large numbers of individual citizens might be given via a process of delegation and debate. Speaking of the people at large, Price thus declared that,

They may entrust the powers of legislation, subject to such restrictions as they shall think necessary, with any number of Delegates; and whatever can be done by such delegates, within the limits of their trust, may be considered as done by the united voice and counsel of the community.

While, again, this might seem a rather redundant statement on Price’s part, it in fact contained an assertion that was anything but. The power of legislation, he asserted, was to be entrusted to the people’s elected representatives, “Subject to such restrictions as they shall think necessary [.]” Not only did Price think it important enough to note specifically that the people should want to restrict the authority of their chosen delegates – offering a degree of nuance to the blanket principle of Parliamentary supremacy – but he explicitly defined said restrictions as being those which the people themselves deemed necessary. In addition to affirming the very direct nature of the relationship he believed ought to exist between the citizens of a free state and their representatives, this specific phrasing would seem to once more reiterate Price’s essential belief that the purpose of government was to serve the needs of the general population.

Several other passages from Part I of Observations speak precisely to Price’s relatively liberal conception of political institutions and their relationship to the individual citizen. Attempting to answer supposed complaints that permitting the people to alter their government at will represented an excess of liberty, for example, Price declared with admirable clarity that,

Government is an institution for the benefit of the people governed, which they have power to model as they please; and to say, that they can have too much of this power is to say, that there ought to be a power in the state superior to that which gives it being, and from which all jurisdiction in it is derived.

In addition to displaying a conception of government that hewed very close to that provided by English political theorist John Locke (1632-1704) – whose articulation of the “social contract” explicitly declared that public institutions exist solely to serve the needs of a given community – this passage provides further insight into Price’s particular perspective on the various instruments of public administration. “Government,” he stated, “Is an institution for the benefit of the people governed [.]” Having thus created it, out of a desire to ease some burden of provide some service, the people may likewise change it, redirect it, or abolish it as they please. It would therefore seem appropriate to describe government, within the rhetorical context here established by Price, as essentially a tool – or series of tools, more like – designed with the intention of serving the public good.

            Bearing this characterization in mind, the caveat that Price subsequently offered near the end of Part I, Section II of Observations would seem a rather incisive criticism of the kind of government he fundamentally abhorred. Having admitted that it was possible for government to be abused – “It may be employed to defeat the very ends for which it was instituted [,]” he wrote – Price elaborated upon the means by which such an outcome might occur and the significance of it for the people at large. “A PARLIAMENT,” he offered,

Consisting of a body of representatives chosen for a limited period, to make laws and to grant money for public services, would forfeit its authority by making itself perpetual, or even prolonging its own duration; by nominating its own members; by accepting bribes; or subjecting itself to any kind of foreign influence. This would convert a Parliament into a conclave or junto of self-created tools; and a state that has lost its regard to its own rights, so far as to submit to such a breach of trust in its rulers, is enslaved.

Take note here of the phrase “self-created tools.” A hammer, like the ideal government as described by Price, is an instrument designed by humans to serve their needs. It makes their lives easier by allowing them to accomplish something that would be either impossible or especially difficult in its absence, thus establishing its essential usefulness. A hammer without someone to swing it, however, is useless, and a hammer that swings itself – that somehow decides when and where to apply the force at its disposal – is a dangerous thing indeed. Thus Price arguably conceived of a self-created government. Having lost its connection to the people it was designed to serve – through, among other things, corruption, self-interest, and nepotism – it directs it energies towards whatever outcomes it desires regardless of whether they offer aid to the general population or do them particular harm. This was, of course, very much the characterization that was laid at the feet of the supposed Court Party. Rather than serve the needs of the British people as a whole, their Country Party adversaries claimed, they had directed the resources of government towards preserving their own power and enriching their supporters. Though speaking at times rather obliquely, Price seemed to offer much this same description of the government in power of the time of his writing.

Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, Part I: Context

In an effort to continuously expand upon the narrative of the American Revolution as it is commonly understood, this series has thus far ventured in a number of relatively unorthodox directions. The contributions of women to the substance and character of the Founding Generation – or, to be fair, one woman in particular – have been discussed on more than one occasion, along with the efforts of political radicals, the middle classes, recent immigrants, and popular satirists. The lately-concluded series concerning the September 30^th, 1750 sermon of one Jonathan Mayhew (1720-1766) was pursued with precisely this spirit in mind, seeking, as it did, to present a contemporary expression of American socio-political thought from the perspective – in the context of mid-18^th century Massachusetts – of a mainstream religious authority. Thus far, however, all of the documents herein examined were either written by Americans or originally published in America. While this may seem like something of a given, it becomes less so when one recalls that the American Revolution was a trans-continental event as much as it was a provincial one. Yes, its primary instigators and leaders were American by birth or – as a result of having migrated to the colonies and then acknowledged the authority of Congress – by affirmation. And yes, the tendency of Parliament and the relevant British governments was indeed to treat the agitations of British America as though they constituted an isolated outbreak of spontaneous disloyalty. But the fact that British political mainstream was relatively uniform in its rejection of the American position – and that claims of violated sovereignty tended only to appeal to those who actively resided in the affected colonies – did not stop certain British nationals from loudly and effectively voicing their support for the American struggle.

Richard Price (1723-1791) was but one of these individuals, though his eloquence and his passion render him a particularly prominent example of the same. A contemporary of fellow Briton Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Price likewise showed himself to be an ardent supporter of the American cause in the 1770s and 1780s during which time he penned a number of treatises – Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America (1776) being the subject of this series – expressing both his fundamental rejection of British policy in America and his belief that the separation of the former colonies from the British Empire stood to render significant benefit to the world at large. Unlike Paine, however, whose celebrated pamphlet Common Sense (1776) was written and published in Philadelphia, after its author had immigrated to colonial Pennsylvania in 1774, Price delivered his various literary broadsides while still residing in Britain proper. In consequence, while Paine faced little – if any – institutional scrutiny during the period of his most enthusiastic support for the American cause, Price was left at the mercy contemporary Britain’s distressingly thin protections against accusations of sedition or libel. While this might conceivably suggest something about the degree of risk these two men were respectively willing to face, it would seem more likely that their willingness or unwillingness to depart from the land of their birth while writing and publishing material that was bound to prove widely unpopular therein stemmed from the degree to which each of them identified with the socio-political forces that the Anglo-American crisis had effectively unleashed.

Price and Paine were most certainly both radicals by the standards of the era in which they lived. And both likewise owed their radicalization to certain trends and influences then at work in mid-18^th century British culture. But the manner in which this radicalism was expressed, and the degree to which they were each willing to pursue it, differed significantly between them. Paine – as discussed at length in the series on his celebrated pro-independence pamphlet – was a staunch opponent of monarchy. The British people, he thunderously asserted, were ill-used by their continued dependence on such an antiquated and arbitrary system of government, and it was consequently in the best interest of the American people to separate themselves from the former as quickly and as completely as possible. In Britain proper, this would have placed Paine on the very fringes of mainstream political discourse. In the Thirteen Colonies, however, particularly in the volatile years between 1773 and 1776, he received a far more sympathetic hearing, and simultaneously found himself surrounded by those who, if they were perhaps not yet willing to question the very concept of monarchy, were at least open to the suggestion that the Crown no longer functioned to serve their interests or protect their rights.

Price, by comparison, spoke vociferously in favor of the British Constitution and the ideal balance of power he believed it embodied. Certainly there were a number of things he expressed his support for which would have placed him outside the mainstream of contemporary political discourse. Parliamentary reform, for example, whereby the various irregularities and imbalances that over a course of centuries had led to an increasingly unequal representation in the House of Commons were to be finally and firmly addressed, was not a priority of either the Whig or Tory factions of Britain’s extant political culture. Nevertheless, Price’s support for a radical reallocation of seats in Parliament did not represent a rejection on his part of the core values of the contemporary British state. On the contrary, his support for reform arguably spoke to his wholehearted desire to salvage what he believed at bottom to be a viable system of government. Price was thus perhaps more sanguine than Paine as to the ability of the British Constitution and prospective British governments to protect and promote the rights and liberties of every subject living under the auspices of the same. The various arguments he put forward in the aforementioned Observations would seem to confirm this hypothesis. It was not the institutions of the British state that were to blame for the Anglo-American crisis, he therein affirmed, but rather the manner in which successive governments abused them and Parliament and the general population consented to the same. Thus expressed, Price’s support for the American cause in 1776 effectively linked contemporary provincial complaints over taxation to an existing tradition of political opposition that had been shaping public discourse in Britain since the turn of the previous century.

But, as ever, we seem to be moving just a little too fast. For the moment, let us turn our attention to the author himself. Price, though English by reputation, was actually Welsh by birth, having come into the world at Llangeinor in the county of Glamorgan, the son of Rhys Price, a dissenting – i.e. non-Anglican Protestant – minister and Catherine Richards, his father’s second wife. At the time of his birth – February 23^rd, 1723 – Wales was still largely agrarian, its population was either illiterate or poorly educated, and the predominant religious faith remained mainstream Anglicanism. This began to change, however, during the early years of Price’s childhood. Beginning in 1731, Church of England minister Griffith Jones (1684-1761) set about establishing a system of “circulating schools” beginning in Carmarthenshire that would provide Welsh language education – a novelty at a time when all formal instruction was in English – using the Bible and the Anglican catechisms as primary texts. By remaining in place for a period or three months before moving on – or circulating – to a new location, these semi-permanent institutions were able to dramatically increase literacy rates over a relatively short period of time. That this came about through the medium of scripture was especially significant. When an otherwise undistinguished carpenter’s son named Howell Harris (1714-1773) experienced a religious epiphany during an Anglican service at Talgarth in 1735, converted to Methodism, and began a life of itinerant evangelization, his efforts were met by a population who could not only read the Bible themselves but knew its verses intimately. The ensuing religious revival – in large part coinciding with a larger “awakening” then occurring in Great Britain and its American dependencies – inaugurated a number of non-Anglican Protestant denominations at the same time that it revitalized and reawakened interest in existing sects that had previously split from the Church of England. The result, by the middle of the 19^th century, was that Wales had become a predominantly Non-Conformist community.

Having been born and raised in this increasingly literate and religiously conscious environment – and having furthermore been the son of a Non-Conformist minister – Price was very much a product of this shift in Welsh society and a devotee of its accompanying cultural and moral values. After first being privately tutored, he attended school at Neath, Pen-Twyn, and Howell Harris’s hometown of Talgarth. Throughout this experience it doubtless became clear to Price the degree to which Non-Anglicans were either neglected, ostracized, or persecuted by the various institutions of the contemporary British state. English remained the language both of government and the Church of England, neither of which offered much in the way accommodation for those who could not or would not speak it. That this – perhaps inadvertently – led to an entrenchment in illiteracy which was only alleviated by private action much likewise have seemed a damning symbol of institutional neglect. The further persecution by the Anglican hierarchy of figures like Howell Harris for preaching out of doors, promoting Methodist or Calvinist theology, and generally encouraging a sense of Welsh religious identity and the cultivation of an individual relationship between the self and the divine surely combined to form a distinct understanding on the part of young men like Price. Centralized authority, they had every reason to believe, always tended towards self-preservation, and justice was more often than not the product of individuals who chose to act in the spirit of selflessness and compassion. These lessons were if anything reinforced during the next stage of Price’s life.

After leaving Wales sometime around the year 1740, Price next settled in the area known as the Moorfields, a small and largely undeveloped portion of London near the so-called “Moorgate” in the city’s still-extant border wall. In spite of its use as a relief area following the Great Fire of London in 1666, the area did not see substantial permanent settlement until the 1770s and 1780s, and was best known in the middle of the 18^th century as a haven for the poor, a favored haunt of highwaymen, and the home of a number of brothels. Despite – or perhaps because of – its reputation for being an area of the city in which the fashionable dared not tread, however, it also became home in the 1690s to one of staunchly Anglican England’s many “dissenting academies.” These schools, established in reaction to such discriminatory policies as the Five Mile Act (1665) – whereby Non-Conformist ministers were prohibited from coming within five miles of any parish from which they had been previously expelled – and the Act of Uniformity (1662) – which proscribed the “acceptable” rites of public worship and mandated their recognition by all civil and religious officials – were funded by a mix of tuition fees and private donations, staffed by dissenting ministers, and open to students who sought an education in divinity but would have otherwise been prevented from attending Oxford or Cambridge. While not specifically prohibited by law, the dissenting academies were nonetheless forced to operate in a kind of legal gray area in which members of their faculty remained subject to periodic persecution in the ecclesiastical courts and physical isolation remained the surest guarantee of their continued existence.

Price left the school in Moorfields – rather generically known as the Fund Academy – in 1744, having studied under theologian and noted natural scientist John Eames (1686-1744). He next travelled to Stoke Newington – now a neighborhood of London, then a village in its own right – became a lecturer at the Presbyterian meeting-house at Old Jewry, married a woman named Sarah Blundell, and finally settled in Newington Green in 1758. Price’s subsequent posting as minister of the Newington Green Unitarian Church provided him with the platform from which he would proceed to establish a reputation for himself as a political and theological radical, an ardent reformer, and a pioneering theorist in the fields of finance and statistics. The allies and friends he consequently attracted form a veritable cavalcade of contemporary Britain’s most famous and influential liberal and anti-establishment thinkers. The 2^nd Earl of Shelburne (1737-1805) became a particularly noteworthy patron, through which Price met fellow reformer Elizabeth Montagu (1718-1800) – co-founder of the Blue Stockings Society – and by which he was able to secure employment for fellow dissenting intellectuals like Thomas Jervis (1748-1833) and Joseph Priestly (1733-1804). Price further expanded this circle of notables when he joined what then-colonial agent Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) referred to as “The Club of Honest Whigs,” and by hosting such varied guests in his home as Franklin himself, the aforementioned Thomas Paine, and William Pitt the Elder (1708-1778). By the time that Observations was published in 1776, its author was thus arguably both well-known and well-connected in the liberal intellectual circles of contemporary British culture and had extensive experience with various forms of organized political, religious, and social dissent.

As to the state of British politics at large at that time, it will here suffice to reiterate a few points that have doubtless been discussed in this program at some point in the past. The Prime Minister at that time, it is most certainly worth noting, was one Frederick North, Earl of Guilford (1732-1792). While North considered himself a Whig – as did nearly every public official during the period of Whig dominance between 1715 and 1783 – he has since been identified as perhaps the first particularly successful Tory head of government in British history. The reason for his identification with what was then the somewhat shriveled opposition faction in British politics was that, quite simply, he was friendly with George III (1738-1820) in a way that most Whigs were not. While this amiability towards the reigning monarch had arguably doomed the ministry of the Earl of Bute (1713-1792) – a member of the Scottish gentry and George’s former tutor – North was comparatively cannier and blessed with much better luck. Bute had been forced to contend with the often harsh realities associated with negotiating an end to a sustained military conflict – in this case the Seven Years War (1754-1763) – and also suffered for his government’s efforts to impeach radical Whig MP John Wilkes (1727-1797) for the incendiary criticisms he offered of the Prime Minister and cabinet alike. North, by comparison, came into office at a moment of national triumph following the expansion of the British Empire to its largest extent at the hands of its long-standing continental rivals. The North Ministry’s successful handling of the Falkland Crisis (1770) – during which Spain, still smarting from its recent defeat, attempted to seize the Falkland Islands from its small British garrison – managed to build upon this celebratory mood by further asserting British preeminence while also driving a wedge between Spain and its traditional ally, France.

The government of Lord North was accordingly very popular at the beginning of the 1770s, notwithstanding its leader’s willingness to indulge the reigning sovereign’s unaccountable tendency to involve himself in matters of domestic politics. Doubtless this was a cause for concern among people like Price and his liberal Whig compatriots. Whereas the contemporary British constitutional order had been built upon a foundation of strict separation between the powers and prerogatives of the Crown and Parliament – as particularly embodied by the events and implications of the Glorious Revolution (1688) – men like Bute and North appeared to threaten this settlement by being too closely aligned to the wishes and sensibilities of the reigning monarch. Granting that this distinction was in reality little more than a matter of style and perception – Bute and North, unlike the Tories of the late 17^th century, appeared to take little issue with the balance of power in government being decisively tilted towards Parliament – it was not one which contemporary Britain’s more ardent reformers and radicals were likely able to ignore. Whether or not the North Ministry was liable to actively reaffirm the significance of the royal prerogative, liberal Whig belief in the possibility of the same was almost certain to fuel suspicion, close scrutiny, public criticism, and ideological retrenchment. As traditional Toryism was also associated with the supremacy of the Anglican Church, dissenters like Price had particular cause to feel antipathy towards Lord North and his cabinet. North’s friendliness with the notably devout George might fairly embody this perceived alliance of interest and sentiment, just as the disdain successive monarchs reportedly felt for one of the defining Whig statesmen of the era, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1708-1788), arguably personified that faction’s relationship with the monarchy.

Price, in short, had some reason to feel as though his government was tilting in a direction that he found to be disagreeable. While it was admittedly the Whig ministries of George Grenville (1712-1770), the Marquess of Rockingham (1730-1782), and the aforementioned Pitt that had initiated the Anglo-American crisis by attempting to extract a revenue from Britain’s American dependencies, it was the supposed-Tory North who had sought to punish the resulting grassroots dissent by promoting the passage of the Intolerable Acts (1774) and by placing the government of Massachusetts under military control  via the appointment as Governor of Gen. Thomas Gage (1718-1787). Price, whose support for Parliamentary reform surely caused him to identify very closely with colonial complaints surrounding their lack of representation in the House of Commons, no doubt saw in these actions a kind of confirmation of his fears. North was evidently not interested in reaching a negotiated settlement, in considering the substance of American objections, or even in reflecting upon the implications of his policies for the liberties and livelihoods of his fellow subjects in America. On the contrary, he seemed to believe that the prerogatives – if not, indeed, the dignity – of the British state had been slighted, and that the best means to secure the loyalty of the American colonies was by an exercise of the authority which he understood to be properly vested in Parliament. Price, for a number of reasons, was given to disagree with this position, and responded in what had become his customary manner. The Britain that he loved – the Britain built by and upon the principles of Whiggism – stood to suffer under the leadership of men like North, and it was simply not in his makeup to stand idly by.

Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission, Part V: the Future

            Scripture, I will freely admit, is not something I’m terribly familiar with. I would say likewise of sermons. The language of the pulpit has never been a part of my day-to-day life as it had been for others, and so at times it feels a little strange to me to write at length and sincerely about things like sin, salvation, grace, and the soul. To be certain, I find – have long found, will continue to find – religion a fascinating topic of study. The intricacies of doctrine and dogma, the significance of denominational distinctions, and the relationship between faith and policy have often proven exceedingly fruitful avenues of investigation over the course of my experience as a student of history. But the fact remains that writing about these things with what passes for authority almost never ceases to give me pause. I have written about them before, of course, where and when I felt the situation called for it. But this latest series in particular, which sought to analyze a sermon in which the Bible was quoted often and at length, represented a degree of immersion in all things theological to which I am not normally accustomed. To that end, let me say that if my academic treatment of something certain of my readers consider to be very personal was ever cause for offense, rest assured that was not my intention. I write about things that interest me, and Jonathan Mayhew’s Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission interests me very much. That being said, there are of course things he communicated in that sermon – remarks in favor of or against certain doctrines or denominations – which might still easily be considered rude, condescending, or insensitive to members of certain faiths or creeds. By repeating them or exploring them I certainly didn’t intend to give them credence, though I’m sure at times it appeared as though I did. Again, if this at any point became cause for discomfort, I do sincerely apologize.

            Obviously, in spite of my relative lack of comfort with writing about matters of faith, and the potential for unease among my audience that certain quotations thereof might have served to elicit, I did choose to explore Mayhew’s Discourse all the same. The reason for this, as I said, is because it interests me. Though delivered before the first shot was fired at Lexington and Concord in 1775, before the Stamps Act Crisis in 1765, and before even the Seven Years War – arguably the single event to which the American Revolution most owes its occurrence – the sermon heard in Boston’s Old West Church on the morning of January 30^th, 1750 engaged in almost exactly the same kind of philosophical enquiry that deeply colored these later events. This circumstance is rendered yet more amazing by the fact that the topic of Mayhew’s homily had almost nothing to do with the questions and queries that would so powerfully animate the Patriot opposition during the 1760s and 1770s. Discourse is not concerned with taxation, the relative power of Parliament and the colonial assemblies, or the nature and extent of the contemporary British Empire. Mayhew’s interest was seemingly much narrower, confined as it was to the continued observance of the Anglican feast day of King Charles the Martyr. In attempting to discredit the commemoration of a monarch whose overthrow he believed was justified, however, Mayhew ultimately formulated a doctrine of civil authority whose basic contours closely resembled both the social contract theory of John Locke and the rationale later put forward by the Continental Congress in its formal declaration of America’s independence from Great Britain. Without being able to say that Discourse thus unequivocally acted as a bridge between these two moments in history – between 1689 and 1776 – the possibility remains both entirely plausible and undeniably intriguing.      

  

Granted, there’s no reason to believe that the collective membership of the Founding Generation were in particular need of a refresher on the topic of social contract theory and the right of revolution. The likes of John Adams (1735-1826) and Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), John Dickinson (1732-1808), James Madison (1751-1836), and Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) were all highly educated individuals even by the standards of the 21^st century. They attended some of the finest schools in contemporary British America – and in the case of Dickinson and fellow Pennsylvanian Benjamin Rush (1746-1813), some of the finest schools in the whole of the British Empire – read widely and voraciously, and quite often invoked the memory of the Glorious Revolution (1688) and the passage of the Bill of Rights (1689) – events to which Locke responded directly – amidst their own written ruminations as to the nature of the dispute then unfolding between America and Great Britain. Mayhew’s rearticulation of the ideas put forward by Locke – who was himself rearticulating a theory first expounded by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) – would thus likely have impacted these men but little. It also bears noting, under the circumstances, that many of the individuals whose responsibility it became in the summer of 1776 to draft a document announcing and justifying Congress’s vote in favor of independence – namely Adams, Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) – tended not to identify themselves personally with any particular religious denomination. In consequence, while there is no reason to think that these men would not have been receptive to the theory of political power that Mayhew attempted to propose in his Discourse, the fusion of said theory with scriptural analysis, interdenominational criticism, and Calvinist piety was likely not intended to attract their specific attention.

The most likely anticipated audience, of course, was Mayhew’s own congregation. While this hardly qualifies as any kind of revelation – Discourse was delivered as a Sunday sermon before it ever saw print as a socio-political treatise – it nonetheless bears recalling. The average congregant at Boston’s Old West Church was unlikely to possess the same grasp of 17^th century English political philosophy as an Adams, a Jefferson, or a Dickinson. They were apt to be literate, owing to the uniquely robust system of public education that existed in contemporary New England, and exceptionally familiar with the text of the Bible – a consequence of their probable Puritan heritage. But a refined knowledge of English history, law, and political theory was almost certainly not a part of their intellectual makeup. None of this is to say, of course, that the typical mid-18^th century Bostonian would have been wholly ignorant of the events of the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution, or else broadly unaware of the libertarian contours of contemporary English political culture. The British, by the standards of the era, were among the most politically conscious people in Europe, the most aware of their rights under the law, and the keenest to see them preserved. Americans were subjects of the same empire and inheritors of the same traditions, notwithstanding the political norms and material circumstances that otherwise set them apart, and thus possessed of a similar – if not the same – sense of pride, political awareness, and patriotism. That being said, it is an open question as to whether or not even the literate and educated New Englander could be depended on to be aware of specific theorists and their work even as it touched upon something very near and dear to their cultural sensibilities.   

Mayhew would consequently seem to have been faced with a relatively narrow context in which to work towards his particular aim. He wanted to talk about the veneration of Charles I as a martyr, what he perceived to be the misuse of Romans 13 as a justification for arbitrary civil authority, and, finally, his understanding of the nature of power and the obligations of rulers and subjects. Locke presented the most obvious influence from which to draw – having explored the nature of the social contract at length in his Two Treatises on Government (1689) – but therein lay the trouble. Locke’s presentation of the social contract and the right of revolution – both of which bore directly on the reign and overthrow of Charles I – tended towards a kind of secular humanism in which the divine factored very little. Within Locke’s articulation of the origin of civil government, for example, human beings acted out of self-interest rather than according to the dictates of a higher power. Communitarianism and government were accordingly born out of more wide-ranging forms self-interested thought – i.e. sacrificing some autonomy in the short term for greater security in the long term – regardless of what God may have wanted for his children or required of his servants. While there was surely no reason for Mayhew to think that the members of his congregation would have rejected this characterization out of hand, it would almost certainly have presented a more personally compelling case if restructured to emphasize the presence and role of the Almighty in

This is not to say, of course, that Mayhew’s thought process in composing Discourse was wholly calculating. There is no reason to think that he didn’t believe every word of what he wrote, or that he wasn’t also of the opinion that Locke’s relevant explanations were overly secular. That being said, Jonathan Mayhew was himself a highly educated man. Having attended some of the finest schools in America and in Britain, he almost certainly possessed an awareness of history and philosophy that eclipsed that of most of the people he ministered to. In consequence, there were bound to be ideas, concepts, and points of reference, which, if he chose to introduce them to his congregation, would have to be deconstructed or repackaged so as not to engender confusion or distraction. On that topic, it also bears remembering that Mayhew was raised and educated in a socio-religious environment that placed particular emphasis on the ability of individual preachers to make very personal, emotional appeals to large and varied audiences. There was, he was no doubt consequently aware, a rhythm to truly effective preaching, and a logic of structure and vocabulary that made it possible to translate what were often complex theological concepts into straightforward exhortations that even a moderately-educated audience could follow. Fusing the social contract theory of John Locke with a close analysis of scripture, criticisms of religious intolerance, and denunciations of ecclesiastical hierarchy was thus very likely in keeping with the way Mayhew normally approached the pulpit.

Where Discourse stands out from among the other sermons Mayhew delivered during his ministry at Boston’s Old West Church, of course, is in the manner in which its central thesis seemed to anticipate the forthcoming crisis within the Anglo-American relationship. Mayhew naturally had no way of knowing this would be the case. The Seven Years War was several years away in 1750, and the Stamp Act Crisis that it would unleash was yet further afield. The last major rupture between colonial and central authority had meanwhile occurred in the late 1680s – namely the Boston Revolt (1689) and Leisler’s Rebellion (1689-1691), both of which helped being about the collapse of the Dominion of New England – and the half-century that followed, aside from the imposition of an unpopular tax in molasses in 1733 and the rather costly American campaign of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748), was generally quite calm. Mayhew’s argument for the conditional nature of civil authority and the obligation of abused subjects to replace their governors was thus connected to no incident in particular within recent Anglo-American history. Taking his own claims at face value, he simply felt moved by the occasion of the feast day of Charles I to hold forth upon certain subjects which he believed were in need of discussion. In consequence, there would seemingly have been little reason at all for members of Mayhew’s congregation – or anyone who read the transcripts that were subsequently published – to give much thought to the nature and validity of civil rule before January 30^th, 1750, and every reason for these same people to give the topic deep consideration afterwards. This is very significant.

On one hand, it would appear to say a great deal about the kinds of ideas that were circulating within the intellectual discourse of liberal British America. By all indications, Jonathan Mayhew was a Whig-leaning New Englander very much of a kind with the likes of John and Samuel Adams (1722-1803) and James Otis Jr. (1725-1783). He attached particular importance to the Glorious Revolution and the Bill of Rights, favored religious toleration, and tended to reject political centralization as antithetical to the liberty of the individual. The text of Discourse speaks to these preferences in ways both subtle and explicit. In attempting to explain why it was he felt the need to address the topic of King Charles the Martyr’s continued veneration, for example, Mayhew admitted to his congregation that,

This is a point which I should not have concerned myself about, were it not that some men continue to speak of it, even to this day, with a great deal of warmth and zeal; and in such a manner as to undermine all the principles of LIBERTY, whether civil or religious, and to introduce the most abject slavery both in church and state: so that it is become a matter of universal concern.

Later, voicing his rejection of the notion that the overthrow of Charles I was some kind of unjust and unjustifiable rebellion, Mayhew affirmed that, “It was not; but a most righteous and glorious stand, made in defence of the natural and legal rights of the people, against the unnatural and illegal encroachments of arbitrary power.” This defense of the prerogatives of the people – an absolute standard in terms of contemporary Whig ideology – was shortly joined by Mayhew’s assertion of the traditional role of Parliament in expressing and protecting the same. “Resistance was absolutely necessary,” he thus declared,

In order to preserve the nation from slavery, misery and ruin. And who so proper to make this resistance as the lords and commons;–the whole representative body of the people;–guardians of the public welfare; and each of which was, in point of legislation, vested with an equal, co-ordinate power, with that of the crown?

Thus clearly ensconced within what was then the mainstream of 18^th century British Whiggism – as particularly embodied by a dedication to the supremacy of Parliament, a preference for the toleration of Non-Conformist Protestants, and a general embrace of the outcome of the Glorious Revolution – Mayhew’s evidently spontaneous advocacy for a Lockean right of revolt would appear to indicate that conditional rejection of civil authority was to some degree already latent within the basic contours of contemporary Anglo-American political discourse.

            This is all to say, in short, that Discourse may be taken as proof that the intellectual currents which would shortly drive a dispute over political prerogatives towards a course of revolution were already circulating in British America years before any particular crisis took hold. Furthermore, the fact that Mayhew came to Locke’s right of revolt in his January 30^th sermon entirely as a response to events within English history and practices from within contemporary English culture would seem to make clear that one of the principle theoretical concepts at the root of the American Revolution – i.e. that subjects had a right to replace their rulers in the event that their sovereign rights began to suffer unrelenting abuse – was almost wholly unrelated to the American context. Granting that Mayhew was himself the product of a particular moment in the history of Massachusetts – and thus shaped by certain specific cultural, educational, and religious currents – the case he attempted to make in Discourse was almost entirely concerned with the practices of policies of the English state church in a general rather than specific sense. What concerned him was not that the veneration of Charles I did particular harm to the liberties of his fellow British Americans, but rather that it represented bad policy in any context. He might have lived in Shropshire, Kent, or Anglesey and come to the same conclusion and delivered the same sermon about the commemoration of January 30^th. This isn’t to say that the fact of Mayhew’s Americanness shouldn’t influence how Discourse is read and understood. On the contrary, it absolutely should. At the same time, however, it bears acknowledging that the content of the sermon itself is more British than American, and might fairly have originated in of any number of communities within the contemporary British Empire.

             If this is indeed an accurate assessment, the implication of Mayhew’s Discourse for anything like a nuanced understanding of the American Revolution and its origins would seem once again to be that no small portion of the ideology at the heart of that event was simply an outgrowth or rearticulation of existing British socio-intellectual currents. Mayhew’s sermon was a response to an aspect of contemporary British religious practice which he found to be distasteful. It took British history as its context, adapted British philosophy in formulating a rebuttal, and was substantially motivated and shaped by a particular British understanding of government, religion, and authority. That much the same argument against “unlimited submission” as articulated by Mayhew in 1750 was later adopted by a subset of his fellow colonists in arguing against certain Parliamentary policies thus says nothing about the origins of the argument itself. Everything that Mayhew said – and that his countrymen would subsequently repeat – about the nature of power, the obligations of civil rulers, and the purpose of government was extant in British Whiggism, Lockean social contract theory, and Calvinist theology. The Founding Generation therefore cannot be said to have originated any of these concepts, theories, or principles in the 1760s and 1770s any more than Mayhew himself did in the early 1750s. Mayhew and the Founders alike were thus to a large degree interpreters rather than creators, translators rather than architects. Their particular skill lay not necessarily in formulating new ideas or principles to meet the needs of a given situation – though certainly this was an ability that many of them were forced to develop – but in mobilizing existing theories in service of an outcome they desired. 

            Bearing all of this in mind, it is certainly possible for the relevant members of the Founding generation to have mobilized Lockean theory in opposition to Parliament and the Crown in the 1770s without having been substantially influenced by Mayhew’s 1750 sermon. The orthodoxy of contemporary Whiggism contained all the necessary elements for the partisans in question to arrive at the same basic conclusion about the nature of power and the limits of civil authority. Mayhew’s role as potentially intermediary was not strictly necessary, in short. For that matter, when one compares his wholly understandable tendency to place God at the center of his conclusions to the Founders’ penchant for speaking and writing in somewhat more abstract terms about nature, rights, and men, the difference in tone would in itself seem to indicate a distinct divergence of approach. A number of the men whose resistance to British policy in America led them to support the latter’s independence were almost certainly familiar with Discourse, particularly if they came from New England. John Adam’s subsequent recollection that a transcription of the sermon was, “Read by everyone” speaks to this anecdotally if not conclusively. All the same, there simply isn’t much evidence – if any – to indicate that the authors of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1767-1768), A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), or the Declaration of Independence (1776) were inspired by Mayhew specifically to defend with their quills the primacy of the Lockean social contract.

Where Mayhew was likelier to have had an impact was with the average, moderately-educated, New England Non-Conformist. As offered previously, this was almost certainly the demographic that the minister of Boston’s Old West Church intended to reach with his September 30^th sermon. Though doubtless to some degree familiar with the basic contours of English libertarianism, the significance of the Glorious Revolution, and the values embodies by the Bill of Rights, the membership of this middling and literate – if also somewhat unworldly – cohort would have known the Bible better than any other book then in print and found greater comfort in their faith than in the convictions espoused by long-dead philosophers. By thus mixing political theory with scripture, and by peppering the resulting oration with denunciations of religious practices widely considered by Non-Conformists to be corrupt and decadent, Mayhew seemed to have targeted them directly. Reject the commemoration of the execution of Charles I, he told them, and listen not to those who would use the word of God to bind their fellow man in obedience to those who do not warrant it. While the former perhaps need not have been said – Mayhew’s audience being Congregationalists who had already every reason to reject nearly every practice supported by the Anglican Church – the latter was of undeniable consequence. Remember the ills that were committed in the name of God but a century hence, he seemed to say, and remember what you know to be God’s intention for his children. Was the overthrow of Charles I justified, or was it not? May any ruler lay his hands upon the power granted him by God if he fails to heed the responsibilities that come with it? What is government if not an instrument for the realization of God’s will on Earth?

These were exceedingly important questions, and Mayhew deserves all the credit it is possible to give for planting them in the minds of an entire generation of his middle-class co-religionists. He may not have succeeded in so influencing the people who would shortly lead the colonies of British America down the path of revolution, but history would seem to bear out that he did not have to. They, like Mayhew himself, were already possessed of the theoretical tools needed to chart a course through the looming crisis between Britain and its American dependencies that culminated in civil rebellion. But the average colonial American was not so well equipped. Lacking the kind of philosophical grounding that would have led them to support resistance to arbitrary authority on principle alone, they were forced instead to wrangle with the ideas being daily presented in newspapers and broadsides by whatever means their modest education furnished. The convictions espoused – and the questions begged – by Mayhew’s Discourse likely served this end exactly. Having spent the better part of a decade reflecting on the case he put forward, remembering and re-reading his denunciation of arbitrary authority and his robust and scripturally-inspired justification for the overthrow of governments that failed to take account of the liberties of their subjects, these church-going, God-fearing, middling professionals, farmers, and artisans would almost certainly have been well-primed to receive the arguments put forward by their better-educated countrymen that the only acceptable response to the capricious demands of an unrepresentative power was steadfast and principled resistance.

None of this is to say that Mayhew’s Discourse was single-handedly responsible for priming the non-elite population of British America to accept the notion of resistance and revolution when it was presented to them in the 1760s and 1770s. Mayhew, as discussed at length, was a Congregationalist minister whose message and rhetorical style were particularly attuned to the social, theological, and political orthodoxy of that particular religious community. His September 30^th sermon, while speaking directly to a Congregationalist audience, would thus likely also have enjoyed significant impact among Non-Conformist populations whose basic principles more or less aligned with his own – i.e. Presbyterians and Baptists. Those who practiced forms of church organization for which Mayhew expressed explicit disdain, however – Methodists, for instance, who retained episcopacy after splitting from the Church of England – or were themselves Anglicans – about which Mayhew had almost nothing good to say – or belonged to a sect that didn’t necessarily figure into the dichotomy he presented within the text of Discourse would have almost certainly been far less inclined to absorb his message in the spirit it was intended.

In consequence, while not impossible, it would seem more than slightly improbable for Discourse to have had much impact among the majority Anglicans of the southern colonies, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, or the Catholics of Maryland. All the same – and not for a second discounting the importance of these colonies to the overall success of the American Revolution – Mayhew’s inability to shape the thought-process of a significant portion of the contemporary colonial population should not be taken to discredit the significance that Discourse almost certainly possessed. Even if the minister of the Old West Church was only able to reach the general population of New England, this nonetheless represents a tremendous influence upon the outcome of the Anglo-American crisis. New England was the site of several pivotal moments along the road to revolution, home to some of the most hardline opponents to Britain’s evolving legislative policy in America, and heralded the beginning of the War of Independence by playing host its first battle – at Lexington and Concord, April 19^th, 1775 – and giving rise to the first incarnation of the Continental Army. Again, without attributing to him the singlehanded responsibility of teaching his fellow countrymen and coreligionists the need to resist authority that acts for its own sake, it would seem fair to characterize Jonathan Mayhew’s Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission as having very recently and very powerfully brought the subject to their collective attention.

But that is, of course, only my opinion. Go form your own, by all means.