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

Pursuant to his intention of deconstructing and refuting the logic of the contemporary British government’s ongoing campaign to quell the incipient American Revolution, Richard Price laid out a map of his planned critique in the introduction to Part II Observations. That segment of his treatise, he explained, would be divided into five sections, each dealing with a different dimension of the North Ministry’s approach to the aforesaid colonial revolt.

Section I, entitled “On the Justice of the War with America,” would seek to determine to what degree taking up arms against the restive colonies comported with contemporary Anglo-American notions of what was just, equitable, and reasonable within the context of the relationship between a people and their nominal government. Section II, called “Whether the War with America is justified by the Principles of the Constitution,” would endeavor to examine this same subject from the perspective of the principles, history, and traditions of the British Constitution. Section III, labelled “Of the Policy of the War with America,” would tend towards a somewhat more practical subject than the previous two, seeking to explore the degree to which the policy of successive British governments truly aligned with their stated objective to preserve law and order in America and promote closer ties between that realm and Britain proper. Section IV, entitled “Of the Honor of the Nation, as affected by the War with America,” would attempt to examine the way in which the dignity of the British government and people had supposedly become entwined with their ability to maintain the accustomed relationship between Britain and America. And Section V, named “Of the Probability of Succeeding in the War with America,” would seek to determine whether or not it was even possible for the policies then being advocated by the North Ministry to achieve anything like a status quo ante bellum within the context of the Anglo-American relationship. Under each heading, Price sought principally to counter common arguments made in favor of both America’s continued loyalty towards the British Empire and the war then being waged ostensibly to preserve the same. His tone, throughout, was decidedly skeptical; his aim, unmistakably, to debunk and disabuse.

In aid of this objective, Price also deployed a kind of admonition in the opening paragraphs of Part II which he believed his readers would have done well to consider. Endeavoring to push his audience away from either measuring the present dilemma against, “The practice of former times” or from considering the liberties claimed by the American colonies strictly within the context of their respective governing charters, Price explained that the reality of the present relationship between Britain and America was almost entirely without precedent in the history of human affairs. “The case of a free country branching itself out in the manner Britain has done,” he declared,

And sending to a distant world colonies which have there, from small beginnings, and under free legislatures of their own, increased, and formed a body of powerful states, likely soon to become superior to the parent state […] is a case which is new in the history of mankind; and it is extremely improper to judge of it by the rules of any narrow and partial policy; or to consider it on any other ground than the general one of reason and justice.

There was a fair bit of wisdom in this assertion. While the nucleus of the contemporary British state – i.e. England – had undergone a reasonably steady process of expansion and consolidation since at least the High Middles Ages, the stage of that progression which commenced with the beginnings of the English colonial project at the end of the 16^th century was practically and fundamentally different than those which preceded it.

Wales, for example, had been conquered by English armies in the 1280s and granted representation in Parliament via the Law in Wales Acts of 1535 and 1542. Scotland entered into a de facto partnership with England upon the ascension to the English throne of James I (1566-1625) in 1603 and was fully amalgamated with the same by the terms of the Act of Union in 1707. Ireland, meanwhile, was invaded by the Normans in the 1170s and by the 1290s was possessed of a Parliament of its own whose membership and jurisdiction was separate from that which sat in Westminster. In spite of periodic attempts to govern to the contrary, therefore, all of these regions could accordingly be said to have enjoyed a long history of political representation by the time of Price’s writing in the late 1770s. Granted, the Irish Parliament was inarguably subservient to its counterpart in Great Britain, and the period between the annexation of Wales to England and the recognition of Welsh political rights under English law did last for the better part of three centuries. All the same, by 1776 it could not be argued that any of these territories lacked legislative representation of some sort, or that their relationship to the government of Great Britain was little better than that of master and subject. The establishment of the Roanoke Colony in what is now Virginia in 1585 – while not itself a successful venture – represented the beginning of an enterprise whose nature and dynamics were, by comparison, less concerned with constitutional scruples and accordingly more prone to lingering questions about sovereignty, authority, and law.

Putting aside Scotland – which was peacefully merged with England to form the Kingdom of Great Britain – Wales and Ireland were both conquered by English armies and subject to occupation and annexation. In consequence, both of these territories represented prizes as much as constituent regions of an expanding English state. They and their inhabitants were thus not infrequently treated like property under the terms of English law. Distressing though this surely was, contemporary practice did not militate against it. By the standards of the era, the relevant English governments were under no formal obligation to recognize the civil liberties of either the Welsh or Irish peoples. When this recognition eventually came, however – via the incorporation of one into England proper and the establishment in the other of a parallel government – it was accomplished in a manner at least nominally consistent with contemporary constitutional norms. Rather than attempt to continue governing Wales and/or Ireland without seeing that their populations were represented on the same basis as that of England – an outcome which, it bears repeating, contemporary English law would not have scoffed at – the relevant governments took measures to ensure that English law applied consistently to all subjects of the Crown. The proximity of the regions in question to England doubtless made this easy enough, and the recurrence of civil unrest in the same surely made it a needful outcome as well. Thus was Wales incorporated into England proper – allowing its inhabitants access to the same legal protections and guarantees as their English counterparts – and a separate Parliament established for Ireland – which recognized the same rights and adhered to the same basic practices as its English equivalent. Conquest, it may therefore fairly be said, in due time gave way to the Constitution.  

England’s – and later Great Britain’s – colonization of America conversely involved a process of peaceful settlement whereby the inhabitants of the territories in question lived at a great distance from the center of power in London, were the descendants of English/British subjects or were subjects themselves, and were at no point the subjects of a campaign of invasion and conquest. The original inhabitants of colonial Jamestown, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Pennsylvania, or the Plymouth Colony thus differed materially from their Irish and Welsh predecessors in that their relationship to the government and laws of England/Britain was not thrust upon them at the tip of a sword. They departed their homeland as subjects of the Crown in good standing – or near enough, depending on the faith they professed – erected new structures of government under the nominal auspices of this same central authority – via the issuance of colonial charters – and freely acknowledged the authority of the associated legislature – i.e. Parliament – within the realms of trade and defense. Far from foreigners who were brought into the imperial fold by force, they might thereby best be described as migrant-adventurers who aimed – among other things – to expand the reach of English/British culture into a region of the globe previously unknown to the same. This same migration, however, also removed them from even the possibility of representation in Parliament, thus creating a situation – as Price aptly observed – theretofore unseen in the history of the English/British Empire.

Neither a conquered people nor slaves, and yet also incapable of enjoying the same rights afforded to their British-resident counterparts, the inhabitants of British America existed in a legal and philosophical space that Britain proper did not recognize because it never had to previously. Non-citizen subject populations had always become citizens eventually, or else came to enjoy protection from authorities they could not acknowledge as their own. America was not fit for the one, while the other – i.e. a strict separation of the powers of Parliament and the Crown from those of the individual colonial governments – would function only to the extent that British authorities would allow. Such an ad-hoc arrangement certainly benefited the central government in question, permitting it the flexibility to interpret its relationship with the various colonial governments on the basis of what, at any given moment, it needed said relationship to be. There were customs, of course, and norms to which Parliament and the Crown commonly adhered in their dealings with Britain’s various American dependencies, but none of it was truly binding, or based on much more than what was momentarily expedient. Price thus rightly entreated his readers not to consider the conflict just then unfolding between Britain and the Thirteen Colonies, “On any other ground than the general one of reason and justice.” The few precedents that did exist within the history of the English/British Empire for the expansion of the same concerned situations too unlike Britain’s colonization of America to be of any relevance in 1776. And the decisions that had been made during the establishment and growth of Britain’s American dependencies vis-à-vis their relationship with Parliament and the Crown could hardly be considered precedents at all. What mattered, on the contrary, was whether or not Britain’s actions towards the Thirteen Colonies, in the lead up to hostilities and during their commencement, were consistent with the most basic measures of justice, integrity, humanity, and reason.

Price’s resulting attempt to systematically explore these same concepts as they related to the North Ministry’s efforts to quell the ongoing rebellion in America began simply enough. At the outset of the aforementioned Part II, Section I, he set the direction of what would follow by seeking to determine, as plainly as possible, what it was the British government was fighting to maintain. To that end, he hit upon a statement issued by said government which seemed to sum up the thrust of its position while leaving vague any supporting evidence. Quoting from the text of the American Colonies Act (1766) – perhaps more commonly known as the Declaratory Act – Price thus relayed that it was the evident conviction of the North Ministry, “That this kingdom has power, and of right ought to have power to make laws and statutes to bind the Colonies, and people of America, in all cases whatever.” After first admitting that most of his countrymen, “Will be for using milder language; and for saying no more than, that the united legislatures of England and Scotland have of right power to tax the Colonies, and a supremacy of legislation over America [,]” Price proceeded to marvel at the implications of such a doctrine of authority. “If it means any thing,” he thus affirmed,

It means, that the property, and the legislations of the Colonies, are subject to the absolute discretion of Great Britain, and ought of right to be so. The nature of the thing admits no limitation. The Colonies can never be admitted to be judges, how far the authority over them in these cases shall extend. This would be to destroy it entirely,–If any part of their property is subject to our discretion, the whole must be so […] It is self-evident, that this leaves them nothing they can call their own.

Forgoing any declaration on his part as to the justice of this arrangement – his readers might now have fairly guessed where it was he came down on the matter – Price proceeded to ask perhaps the most cogent question his government could conceivably have faced. “What is it that can give to any people such a supremacy over another people?” he inquired. Many answers had been offered, it seemed, and from many different quarters. Price thereafter proceeded to address them each in turn.

            Unity, Price avowed, embodied one such justification. The continued supremacy of Great Britain over the Thirteen Colonies was necessary, “In order to preserve the UNITY of the British Empire.” By Price’s reckoning, any claims of this sort were so ridiculous as to be almost wholly contradictory. Such pleas, he declared,

In all ages, [have] been used to justify tyranny.–They have in RELIGION given rise to numberless oppressive claims, and slavish Hierarchies. And in the Romish Communion particularly, it is well known, that the POPE claims the titles and powers of supreme head on earth of the Christian church, in order to preserve its UNITY.–With respect to the British Empire, nothing can be more preposterous than to endeavor to maintain its unity by setting up such a method of establishing unity, which, like the similar method in religion, can produce nothing but mischief.

It likely bears noting here that Price’s use of the hierarchical nature of the Roman Catholic Church as an example of unity run amok was almost certainly due more to his status as a Non-Conformist Protestant than any particular deficiency on the part of the so-called “Romish Communion.” Granting that the centralizing tendencies of the Roman Church did play a role in the doctrinal disagreements at the heart of the Protestant Reformation – and that this may indeed be what Price was referring to – the various incidents of disunity historically experienced by that confession had more complex and varied origins than could be accounted for by the claimed authority of the Pope alone. For that matter, while the existence of a singular religious “executive” may not be its cause, the Roman Catholic Church has historically been among the most unified congregations among contemporary Christian denominations, and likewise the most resistant to permanent schism.

Whether this was true or not matters but little, however, so long as Price believed it to be the case. To his thinking – regardless of how he got there – excessive centralization, whether in matters of faith or administration, inevitably led to a kind of countervailing disunity. People were not sheep, after all, and could not heed even a well-intentioned shepherd’s directions indefinitely without at some point happening upon a cause for disagreement. The organizational framework that could not peacefully channel the resulting tensions – by fostering constructive debate or allowing for variations in local practice – was accordingly doomed to failure. Price’s ideal conception of unity within the British Empire, therefore, took the form of, “A common relation to one supreme executive head; an exchange of kind offices; types of interest and affection, and compacts [.]” Thus bound to one another by ties of sentiment and economic interest rather than sovereignty or statute, America and Britain might each pursue the policies that best suited their needs without either coming to resent the overbearing influence of the other. Disputes could thereby be adjudicated rather than allowed to devolve into violent confrontation, each side being secure in the notion that, come what may, they did not stand to lose their liberties depending on the position they chose to support. The alternative, of course, was what America and Britain had thus far witnessed: rigidity, confrontation, escalation, and war. If this was the price to be paid for unity, Price avowed – “If, in order to preserve it Unity, one half of [the empire] must be enslaved to the other half, let it, in the name of God, want Unity.”