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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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