Centinel I, Part IV: So Great a Country

            The degree to which Samuel Bryan believed that simplicity was an absolutely essentially element of any government intended to remain apart from despotism, tyranny, and corruption – and the extent to which he was convinced that this need for simplicity was grounded upon a very practical course of reasoning – was made exceptionally clear in paragraphs seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen of Centinel I, all of which sought to address the evident inadequacy of the “extended republic” which the advocates of a more centralized national government tacitly endorsed. The issue at hand was essentially one of size. In addition to taking issue with certain aspects of the structure of government proposed by the United States Constitution, it seemed, Bryan was also highly suspicious of the scale of the undertaking and its effect upon the end result. How could any government, he seemed inclined to ask, intended to exert its authority over the United States of America in such granular areas as taxation, commerce, monetary policy, and criminal justice possibly do so in a manner that didn’t prejudice the needs of certain communities over those of others? Notwithstanding the immense diversity of interests which the various states collectively represented – from plantation agriculture, to mining, to industry, shipping, shipbuilding, and banking – the tremendous physical distances between America’s major population centers, state capitals, and the national capital – at that point, in October of 1787, New York City – presented a host of seemingly insurmountable logistical challenges which Bryan appeared unconvinced that the proposed constitution had adequately addressed. How, in attempting to make law for – and, perhaps more pressingly, lay taxes upon – an otherwise fairly loose agglomeration of communities whose daily lived experiences and practical concerns were not particularly alike, could any government forced to operate at often very significant distances from its constituents possibly create and implement policies that adequately served their needs?

            In attempting to answer this question, Bryan delved for perhaps the only time across the length of Centinel I into the realm of political theory. As it happened, the ability of a large swath of territory to be successfully governed as a republic had been discussed to significant effect by no less august a personage in the realm of Western philosophy than that estimable architect of the theory of separation of powers in government, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755). In his highly influential tract, The Spirit of the Laws (1748) – discussed here previously on more than one occasion – Montesquieu made specific mention, within the context of a larger discussion about the unique qualities of various kinds of governments, of what he believed to be the ideal relationship between the republican form of administration and the physical dimensions of the region to be administered. A stable republic on a large scale was essentially impossible, the great philosophe affirmed, because the mechanism upon which the republican model depends in order to function – i.e. the distillation and implementation of public opinion – worked best in conditions that favored a clear consensus of thought and action. “In a large republic,” he thereby asserted,

The public good is sacrificed to a thousand views; it is subordinate to exceptions; and depends on accidents. In a small one, the interest of the public is easier perceived, better understood, and more within the reach of every citizen; abuses have a less extent, and of course are less protected.

The phenomenon which Montesquieu had evidently observed was that it tends to be harder to form an actionable consensus as the number and diversity of opinions involved increases. A group of five people, for example, can almost certainly decide where they’re going to have lunch much more quickly and easily than a group of fifty, or five hundred, or five thousand. As this tendency applied to the business of republican government, it had evidently struck the author of The Spirit of the Laws that the greater the number of people directly involved in seeking out and pursuing the public good, the less likely it became that the public good would ever actually be served. Though Montesquieu did not provide a detailed explanation as to how and why this would be the case, a moment’s thought would seem to affirm the essential logic of his contention.

            Consider, to that end, the topic of trade. In a small republic whose economy is completely and uniformly dominated by agriculture, policy discussions would almost certainly be ruled by the underlying consensus that securing access to viable export markets for the produce of the nation must be among the first priorities of government. Doubtless there would be some objection to this among whatever urban artisans or manufacturers reside within the republic in question. Those seeking to establish a local market for their goods must needs oppose the freedom of trade – and the accompanying lack of economic protections – sought by their agriculturalist neighbors. But the overriding lack of economic diversity essentially guaranteed by the small size of the relevant polity would more or less ensure that such complaints never rise to the level of threatening the aforementioned political consensus. If that same republic were to grow, however, by steadily encompassing territories whose climate, natural resources, or geo-physical situation inclined them towards different kinds of industries than were theretofore possible under the flag of their newfound government, the result must inevitably be the splintering of public opinion and the breakdown of the accustomed consensus. Now possessed of a substantial mining sector, say, as well as an even larger manufacturing sector, it could no longer be taken as a given that the various individuals chosen to sit in the national assembly of the republic could and would arrive at a speedy and effective definition of the public good. With agriculture now possessing a much decreased economic significance, and mining and manufacturing competing for the position of rising industrial concern, compromise becomes essential for any progress to be made at all. While this is not in itself a crippling condition, the end result would almost certainly be as Montesquieu described it. The public good, once quite narrowly defined and easily implemented, becomes “subordinate to exceptions,” takes on a vaguer and more generic character, and no longer serves to benefit quite as deeply as it once did.  

            Samuel Bryan’s description of essentially this same phenomenon in the aforementioned passages of Centinel I are what arguably attest to his familiarity with its terms. Indeed, he affirmed explicitly in paragraph seventeen that,

It is the opinion of the greatest writers, that a very extensive country cannot be governed on democratical principles, on any other plan, than a confederation of a number of smaller republics, possessing all the powers of internal government, but united in the management of their foreign and general affairs.

While this is not Montesquieu exactly, the influence of that earlier writer’s ideas upon the general contours of Bryan’s expressed opinion would seem clear enough. This becomes yet more obvious when one considers his further comment in paragraph nineteen of Centinel I that,

If one general government could be instituted and maintained on principles of freedom, it would not be so competent to attend to the various local concerns and wants, of every particular district, as well as the peculiar governments, who are nearer the scene, and possessed of superior means of information [.]

Granted, Bryan and Montesquieu did appear to come at the same issue from slightly different angles. Montesquieu believed that the inability of republican government to function adequately on a large scale stemmed from the difficulty that must ever arise from distilling many and diverse opinions into useful policy. The greater the number of views that must be taken into account, he asserted, the harder it becomes to locate and act on the public good. Bryan, by comparison, seemed to be concerned more with the physical ungainliness of a large republic than its tendency to govern in terms of poorly-defined generalities.

            Speaking specifically of the United States of America as it existed in 1787 – a union of thirteen states stretching some fifteen hundred miles north to south – Samuel Bryan avowed that whatever government could possibly administer the whole of its extensive territory without succumbing to despotism would inevitably struggle to do so in a particularly effective manner. “The various local concerns and wants, of every particular district” would surely be beyond the abilities of a general government to acknowledge, let alone attend to, rendering whatever directives said government ultimately attempted to pursue of limited use to the general population. Indeed, limited knowledge of the specific practices of diverse and distant regions might even produce policies which benefit the bare majority of the American people while harming a still sizable minority of the same. Local governments, Bryan asserted, “who are nearer the scene, and possessed of superior means of information” are preferable for exactly this reason. Capable of comprehending the needs and concerns of the communities under their auspices far more accurately than an authority located some distance away and burdened with a much wider scope of responsibility, such small, limited governments were likewise bound to be more attentive to the needs of their constituents and more adept at responding in an effective and timely manner.

            Notwithstanding this evident difference in focus, Bryan most definitely agreed with Montesquieu’s basic contention that the larger a republic grew physically, the less competent it became at serving the needs of its citizens. Granted, this was a broadly theoretical contention. As the examples put forward in the relevant passage of The Spirit of the Laws attest, there weren’t many historical examples of republican government on any scale to draw upon whilst arguing for or against the supposed benefits and flaws of that selfsame model. Montesquieu made explicit mention of one of them – that of the ancient Greek city-state republics – by way of affirming that the limited republic was uniquely possessed of political stability. “It was the spirit of the Greek republics [,]” he accordingly declared, “To be as contented with their territories, as with their laws […] All was lost upon the starting up of monarchy, a government whose spirit is more turned to increase and advancement.” Ambition, it seemed, was the great corrupting vice of republicanism, for it must ever have led to conquest, expansion, diffusion, and weakness. A small republic was strong, Montesquieu was keen to point out, because its government possessed the confidence of the greatest number of its inhabitants. And a large republic was weak because the confidence of its people became so difficult to define as to render government either ineffective or – more worryingly – a thing apart.

            The other primary example of historical republicanism which Montesquieu and Bryan alike could have drawn upon – but which neither The Spirit of the Laws or Centinel I did with much effect – would seem to speak to exactly this latter tendency. The Roman Republic, though for many Enlightenment thinkers a beacon of virtuous and balanced self-government, also rather paradoxically stands as one of the foremost examples of how susceptible republicanism can be to political corruption and institutional atrophy. Notwithstanding the exceptionally rigorous limitations placed upon the various political officials who served Rome – term limits, frequent elections, age qualifications, etc. – the profusion of assemblies responsible for various aspects of public administration, and the checks and balances put in place amongst the multifarious organs of government, the Roman Republic still eventually succumbed to its own worst aspects. Lust for territory led to expansion, which in turn brought about a diffusion of political authority, the empowerment of ambitious military figures, the erosion of political norms, and the triumph of demagoguery, populism, and tyranny. From a city-state interested in little more than protecting its own sovereignty and seeing to the needs of its inhabitants, Rome was transformed over the course of four centuries and innumerable wars into an extensive empire whose population, military, and government either tended to work at cross purposes or possessed very different priorities.

The application of this regrettable outcome to the circumstances of late 18^th century America would seem obvious enough. If one of the only reasonably successful republics ever to exist was eventually transformed into a despotic empire as a direct result of its tendency towards territorial expansion, perhaps it was wise to think very carefully about any project which seemed to have the same object in mind. The United States Constitution, of course, did not describe a polity which much resembled ancient Rome, institutionally or structurally. But the republic it did frame embraced a scale and centralization of authority that was to some extent imperial in nature, and this in itself entailed certain fundamental risks. While the United States of America certainly enjoyed the benefit of strong sub-national governments – in the form of the states – which could stand in opposition to the federal government if or when it appeared to exceed its stated mandate, the power possessed by the latter was still substantial, and the distance between the seat of national power and the “provinces” was at times quite large. Bearing this in mind, what was there to prevent the United States government from acting against the interests of a state – or states – located at the far edge of its nominal authority? Being responsible for such a vast and diverse swath of territory, why should this same government not simply ignore all but the most basic needs of the communities under its auspices? Montesquieu had predicted an answer in the negative – i.e. “The public good is sacrificed to a thousand views” – and even a cursory glance at the extant history of republican government would arguably have affirmed the wisdom of his case.    

But most of this was, again, theoretical, and perhaps too theoretical for the liking of Samuel Bryan. As the text of Centinel I seems otherwise to demonstrate, the son of George Bryan was possessed of an eminently pragmatic turn of mind. Whereas, for example, certain of his contemporaries claimed that smaller governments were preferable to larger ones because the former did not threaten so much as the latter to encroach upon the liberties of the individual, Bryan – without necessarily disagreeing with this contention – avowed that simple governments were preferable because people were more likely to adequately scrutinize something they could actually understand. Just so, the aforementioned argument which Bryan offered in Centinel I against the creation of a centralized national government in the United States of America was accompanied by a decidedly practical rationale. “Do we not already see,” he thus avowed,

That the inhabitants in a number of larger states, who are remote from the seat of government, are loudly complaining of the inconveniences and disadvantages they are subjected to on this account, and that, to enjoy the comforts of local government, they are separating into smaller divisions.

In addition to pointing to the lived experience of some portion of his fellow Americans for validation rather than to the sometimes abstract ruminations of European philosophy, this assertion on the part of Bryan also had the advantage of being quite easy to verify.

Centinel I, Part III: Perplexed and Divided, contd.

Given that Bryan spent the prime years of his early adulthood in Pennsylvania, it should come as little surprise that the vision of government which he described in Centinel I as being perfectly suited to, “Best secure the rights of the people” almost perfectly aligned with the framework described in his home state’s constitution. Not only did he believe a unicameral legislature to be the best means by which a given state might accomplish the creation and maintenance of law, but he also affirmed that frequent elections and strict limits upon repeated terms of public service constituted necessary safeguards against permanency in office and its associated sins. With the government of Pennsylvania as it existed in 1787 accordingly serving as a model, Bryan’s rationale would seem clear enough in practice. Having determined to seek redress for a grievance which they believe to have originated in the State House in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania petitioner might well have taken comfort in there being only four institutions with which to contend. If the issue at hand was indeed a matter for that state government rather than any county or municipal authority, the cause thereof  - or some form of remedy – could reasonably expect to be found in the General Assembly, the Executive Council, the Supreme Court, or the Council of Censors.

Notwithstanding the fact that the justices of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court were then appointed to seven year terms by the President and the Executive Council, each of these bodies existed wholly independent of the others in terms of their selection and responsibilities. Assemblymen, Councilors, and Censors were all popularly elected, and none of the powers which these officers possessed substantially overlapped with those of their colleagues in the other branches of government. Assemblymen, for instance, were never forced to contend with the Executive Council countermanding their efforts to make law for the people of Pennsylvania. Nor were the members of the Executive Council expected to submit the various appointments it was their duty to make to the scrutiny of the Assembly or the Censors. Even the justices of the Supreme Court, whose nominal independence was somewhat lessened by their being beholden for their offices to another branch of government, were kept from weighing in on political questions which would in other states have fallen under their purview. A case like Trevett v. Weeden (1786), in which the Supreme Court of Rhode Island invalidated an act of the legislature which it found to be in violation of the state constitution, would not have been possible in contemporary Pennsylvania, such responsibility having been explicitly allocated to the aforementioned Council of Censors.

Granted, this species of distinct administrative separation could not be expected to constitute a perpetual guarantee of integrity and justice on the part of the magistrates and institutions it acted upon. Ensuring that every citizen living under the auspices of a government could consistently identify the source of a given policy would surely have proven a rather hollow guarantee if the actors deemed responsible for the relevant error or oversight were not also faced with the prospect of replacement at the hands of those they had injured. Fortunately, the framers of Pennsylvania’s 1776 constitution had foreseen the potential for such an egregious gap in the public accountability of the magistrates whose powers they had set themselves to describing. Their answer, accordingly, was a mixture of frequent elections and terms limits, the value of which Samuel Bryan later espoused in the cited text of Centinel I. A unicameral legislature forming the basis of his preferred form of republican government, he further explained that the members of this selfsame body should be, “Necessarily excluded by rotation from permanency [.]” By the terms of the aforementioned constitution of Pennsylvania, this kind of “rotation” had included Assemblymen, who were subject to yearly election and limited to serving no more than four years in every seven, members of the Executive Council, who were constrained to three year terms with a period of four years required to elapse before a possible reelection, and Censors, who were to be chosen at intervals of seven years.

The purpose of such measures, as Bryan affirmed, was to prevent any office holder from obtaining a permanent position – and gaining permanent access to power – within the relevant government. Corruption, naturally, was the principle enemy of this kind of initiative, patronage and its attendant vices – cronyism, fraud, inefficiency, etc. – ever gaining strength from the continued exercise of power by a single individual or party. There was also something to be said for the change in perspective that a frequent rotation of public officials was bound to produce. Elected continuously to the same position for a decade or more, any member of a given legislature might very easily – and unknowingly – begin to lose touch with the needs, desires, and concerns of their nominal constituents. Having lived for the better part of those ten years at some distance from the district they were chosen to represent, their life would in due time mold itself to the rhythms of the legislative cycle, with sessions, committee hearings, and votes gradually assuming a far greater importance than the country fetes and town meetings from which their public support was first drawn. While this kind of acute familiarity with the mechanics of legislation would doubtless render the official in question better able to navigate the often treacherous currents of popular government than someone possessed of less experience, it would likely also render them less capable of accurately speaking to and advocating for the specific interests of their district.

This would seem a particularly relevant consideration in the context of a region which suddenly finds itself undergoing rapid and/or drastic demographic or economic change. The magistrate in question might once have accurately represented the general character of the constituency from which they were elected. But the rapid acceleration of a given trend towards or away from this or that industry, resulting in a shift in the commercial status quo, an influx of economic migrants, or an inverse depopulation, could very easily lead to a significant alteration in the concerns of the relevant community and its residents. Having nevertheless managed to secure repeated reelections due to some combination of personal popularity, patronage, and institutional inertia, the incumbent legislator would very likely go on representing that selfsame community in spite of the fact that their knowledge of its needs was in the process of steadily fading to a state of uselessness. Mandatory term limits, though necessarily constraining the public from exercising absolute freedom of choice, would seem a very simple and very effective means of preventing this outcome from every taking place. Forced, by law, to cast aside their sitting representative after a set number of years in office, the residents of the various districts in question would be effectively prevented – and protected – from becoming locked into a choice which might in time prove a great detriment. Having chosen, once, a lawyer as their advocate, they would be made to substitute a merchant in their place, followed by a farmer, a retired military officer, a banker, or an artisan. Each of these individuals would bring a fresh perspective to bear on the legislative processes by which their community was bound, speak on behalf of some new and different profession, and generally ensure that no single party or interest was permitted to enjoy a monopoly on political power.

As presented to the various states in 1787, however, the United States Constitution was not designed to promote what would seem to be such an outwardly desirable outcome. Though said document did set any number of limitations upon how long a given officer of state would be able to serve before facing reelection, none of these same officials were made to simultaneously face permanent removal from office following the completion of a set interval of service. Senators enjoyed the most generous terms, facing election only once every six years, while the President was required to return to the people every four years, and Representatives every other year. Granting that this would seem to compare favorably enough to the cited conditions of the constitution of Pennsylvania – which mandated, after all, that Censors would stand for election once every seven years, Counselors every three year, and Assemblymen every single year – the aforementioned lack of accompanying terms limits would seem to severely lessen the effectiveness of these otherwise highly prudent regulations. Having lived under that selfsame state constitution for a decade – during which time he doubtless became accustomed to the notion that few, if any, public officials should be permitted to submit their names for reelection ad infinitum – Samuel Bryan would assuredly have viewed this particular quality of the proposed national constitution with abiding concern. If the residents of a given district, he would doubtless have been given to ask, were under no obligation to exchange their beloved, or influential, or well-connected representative for another, why should they not simply adopt the most straightforward – and potentially rewarding – path and elect the same person every time? If a President should manage, over the course of his initial years in office, to construct a coalition of parties and interests whose support could guarantee his perpetual reelection, what could possibly stop exactly that from taking place? His fellow citizens, Bryan had previously implied, being somewhat less attentive to matters of public administration than was perhaps strictly desirable, such outcomes undoubtedly appeared to him as being far from unlikely.

This seemed essentially to form one of the principal complaints with which Samuel Bryan sought to attack the United States Constitution in the text of Centinel I. People, he either implied or outright stated, could not necessarily be trusted to act in their own best interests within the context of popular government. They were, of course, possessed of certain unalienable rights which it was the duty of government to recognize and protect. But in addition to being sovereign in their persons, they were also possessed of necessarily limited faculties. Sometimes they were not as vigilant as they should have been in regards to the public institutions which most affected their lives. And often they made very significant political choices based on misapprehensions or on short-term thinking. No doubt Bryan would have encouraged his fellow citizens to correct these failings, engage more critically with the various forms of government they encountered in their daily lives, and cultivate the quality of individual virtue which a republic arguably required to function. But, in the meantime, there was no sense in punishing humans for being human, or pretending as though they were collectively more attentive than was actually the case. The cited critiques of the United States Constitution which Bryan put forward in the text of Centinel I, in addition to showing the effects of his upbringing in 1780s Pennsylvania, seemed to speak to this conviction quite strongly.

Among its various other qualities which he believed were less than ideal, Bryan appeared substantially convinced that the proposed national charter was both impractically complex and hopelessly optimistic. People being naturally prone to lose interest in that which is not immediately and easily explicable, he avowed that any government whose structure and purpose was not discernible at a glance was unlikely to operate under the degree of public scrutiny necessary to keep it from becoming dangerous. Just so, Bryan also observed that, unless explicitly prevented from doing so, the residents of a given constituency would very likely continue to elect the same magistrate time and again. Not only would this threaten to make corruption an accepted part of public life, but it would also serve to steadily reduce the quality of the relevant community’s representation. The answer, in regard to these challenges as in so many others he determined to tackle in the text of Centinel I, was simplicity itself. Make government as straightforward as possible, Bryan affirmed, and keep the rate of turnover high. In this way, not only would fewer people be given to shrug at the actions of their administrators for want of a clearer understanding of what they were doing and why, thus arguably preventing those same administrators from surreptitiously acting in their own interests rather than those of the general public. They would also be far more likely to enjoy the benefit of multiple and shifting perspectives in government, greater transparency, and perhaps even the chance to serve their communities themselves in the absence of an entrenched, patronage-dispensing political class. The proposed constitution could not do these things, was not structurally equipped to do them, and it was evidently for that reason – among others – that Samuel Bryan tended to oppose it.

Centinel I, Part II: Perplexed and Divided

            It likely cannot be said beyond a shadow of a doubt precisely what motivated Samuel Bryan in 1787 to set out his views upon the proposed federal constitution in a series of essays made available to the public. Why did he feel the need to put his words into print? To whom did he believe he was addressing himself? How did he rate his odds of success? For better or worse, these are not questions to which the historical record provides an answer. As to the nature of his concern, however – the quality possessed by the document in question which he believed represented a potential danger to American liberty – Bryan was good enough to provide a fairly forthright answer in the first paragraph of the first entry in what would become a series of publications under the penname of Centinel. With the intention of putting his fellow Pennsylvanians in mind of, “Certain liberties and privileges secured to you by the constitution of this commonwealth,” he accordingly affirmed that,

As yet you have the right to freedom of speech, and of publishing your sentiments. How long those rights will appertain to you, you yourselves are called upon to say, whether your houses shall continue to be your castles; whether your papers, your persons and your property, are to be held sacred and free from general warrants, you are now to determine.

Bryan, it seemed, was mortally concerned that the people of the Keystone State, in spite of successfully claiming and asserting their rights via the adoption of a republican constitution only eleven years prior in 1776, might already have begun to take those same rights for granted. Recognize what you are being asked to give up, he implored them, and do not act with undue haste. That he felt the citizens of Pennsylvania were being asked to give up anything at all naturally forms the crux of his perspective upon both the proposed constitution and political power more generally.

            Had Bryan restricted the treatise which followed to an exploration of the many dangers posed by a powerful, activist government – such as that described by the proposed constitution –  which lacked an accompanying declaration of rights, Centinel I might fairly have been described as making a very sensible – if rather uninteresting – case. Nearly every state constitution then in force contained an explicit enumeration of the various fundamental liberties possessed by the inhabitants of the same. Doubtless this was largely in recognition of the supreme legal and cultural importance attached to the Bill of Rights (1689) within the British libertarian tradition from which the supporters of the American Revolution derived so much. In light of the degree to which that same conflict – only recently settled – had arisen as a result of disagreements over the nature and validity of tradition, precedent, and “common sense,” explicitly codified rights were bound to become an exceptionally important aspect of whatever governments the victorious revolutionaries chose to erect. That the proposed federal constitution made no mention at all of what, if any, civil liberties the resulting government would be inclined to recognize was accordingly the cause of much alarm among a significant portion of the contemporary American public.

Combined with the proposed constitution’s paramount legal status, implied by the text of Article VI – “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof […] shall be the supreme Law of the Land” – it doubtless seemed as though there would be nothing to prevent the proposed national government from wholly disregarding both the natural rights presumed to be possessed by every citizen of the United States – life, liberty, property, etc. – as well as those explicitly guaranteed by the various state constitutions – freedom from unnecessary search and seizure, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly, to name but a few. In light of the alarming vulnerability to which the ratification of the proposed constitution seemed prepared to expose the American people, many of the critics of that selfsame document accordingly took it upon themselves either to advocate for its defeat or to convince their fellow citizens to trade their affirmative vote only for the addition of a federal bill of rights. Many of the Anti-Federalist essays subsequently published during the ratification debate (September 28, 1787 – July 26, 1788) made exactly this case. The evident result was that demands for a federal enumeration of rights became the single-most significant hurdle pro-constitution forces were obliged to overcome at a number of the ratifying conventions held in the various states.

Though Samuel Bryan was most certainly also of the opinion that the absence of a declaration of rights within the proposed federal constitution represented a tremendous threat to the fundamental liberties of the American people, this did not form the core of his argument against ratification in Centinel I. Whereas the promise of a federal bill of rights did ultimately allay the concerns of enough delegates at key state conventions to secure the successful ratification of the proposed constitution, the nature of Bryan’s misgivings more or less ensured that they could not have been so easily dispelled. The issue which he took with the theoretical government in question – and which he expressed in the pages of Centinel I – was that it could not possibly have functioned as effectively as its supporters declared it would without eventually succumbing to corruption and despotism. It was not a matter of its simply lacking a few explicit guarantees. On the contrary, it was a question of structure and size, accessibility and oversight. As described in the text of the proposed constitution, Bryan asserted that the national government of the United States of America would be too large, too distant, too powerful, and too complex to perform the basic functions its framers had assigned to it while also respecting the rights and liberties of the people it was intended to serve.

Much of the rationale Bryan deployed to this end in the text of Centinel I could more or less be summed up by the axiom that the best form of government is that which is the easiest for the governed to understand. By Bryan’s reckoning, to “understand” a government would seem to have included both comprehending its function and being able to monitor the same. Speaking to the former, the ninth paragraph Centinel I avowed that,

The great body of the people never steadily attend to the operations of government, and for want of due information are liable to be imposed on-If you complicate the plan by various orders, the people will be perplexed and divided in their sentiments about the sources of abuses or misconduct, some will impute it to the senate, others to the house of representatives, and so on, that the interposition of the people may be rendered imperfect or perhaps wholly abortive.

While the outcome which Bryan appeared to seek certainly aligns with what we’ve since come to think of as small-government conservatism – i.e. public institutions that are rendered more efficient and transparent by being limited in size and power – his stated rationale was arguably much more cynical than that of the average latter-day conservative partisan. The modern advocates of de-regulation, fiscal responsibility, and low taxes tend to couch their priorities within an expressed belief in the ability of the individual to substantially govern themselves – in terms, say, of how they spend their money, make use of their property, or behave towards their neighbors. People, they thereby affirm, are perfectly capable of making sound decisions and living good, productive lives without government constraining their choices or re-distributing whatever wealth they possess. Notwithstanding the somewhat more proscriptive dogmas of social conservatism, this kind of thinking would seem to embody a fairly optimistic view of human nature, wherein it is held that the best qualities of every person should be given the proper space for expression by limiting government interference in their lives.

            Whatever else Samuel Bryan felt about his fellow Americans in terms of their moral or spiritual character, the passage cited above at the very least indicates that he harbored a somewhat less than charitable opinion of their collective intellectual acuity. Either that, or he thought them so prone to laziness that they would inevitably and consistently fail to make the necessary effort to understand how their government functioned if that government was overly complex. Unflattering as this might seem, the aforementioned text appears to be fairly unequivocal. “If you complicate the plan by various orders,” he avowed, “The people will be perplexed and divided in their sentiments about the source of abuses and misconduct [.]” To use an analogy, Bryan might as well have said that if you make a machine which you think is useful and which every person would benefit from possessing too difficult to understand, people will inevitably fail to learn how it works due to some combination of confusion and apathy and thus fail to benefit from whatever boons it has to offer. Upon reflection, this would seem to be almost exactly the kind of advice a veteran designer of appliances, public spaces, or automobiles would surely be given to impart to an up-and-coming apprentice. If there is a chance that people will become confused by something you have built, they might well say, you should count on that chance cropping up nine times out of ten. The solution is to make the things that people are going to interact with on a daily basis as simple and as intuitive as possible. Someone should know how something works just by looking at it, and should never be left scratching their head if that something happens to go wrong.

            It would be difficult to deny that this constitutes very sound advice. It most certainly does. It just isn’t the kind of counsel one tends to hear within the public realm of democratic government. Doubtless, as long as public opinion has been a factor in how a given state is administered there have been discussions in backrooms and smoky parlors about the credulity and the idleness of the common man, his inability to comprehend the great matters of state, and the need for sound guidance and decisive leadership in the highest echelons of power. But rarely do those who, in order to succeed, must sway the public to their point of view speak of such things in a open forum. That Samuel Bryan appeared to do so – in the form of the cited passage of Centinel I – would therefore seem a curious thing indeed. Granted, there were other principles which he felt inclined to uphold, and against which he seemed to think that the proposed constitution stood to act. Recall, to that end, the exhortation he rendered unto his countrymen in Pennsylvania that their continued ability to exercise freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the sovereignty of their persons and property had been placed entirely in their hands by the possibility of their agreeing to ratify the proposed federal charter. Clearly, he feared for this loss of fundamental liberties. It would, in consequence, seem reasonable to conclude that he did not oppose the adoption of the United States Constitution solely because he thought that the national government created as a result would be too complicated for most people to wrap their heads around. That being said, it was the latter justification he spend the better part of a paragraph explaining, and upon which seemed to hang the general thesis of Centinel I.

            The thrust of that thesis appeared to be, in essence, that the framework of government described by the proposed constitution simply wasn’t practical. There were certainly ideological roots to this conviction, not the least of which was Bryan’s avowed belief that what was at stake in America as 1787 turned to 1788 was nothing less than, “All the blessings of liberty and the dearest privileges of freemen [.]” But the general mode of expression in Centinel I – the means by which Bryan sought to justify his various criticisms of the United States Constitution – were of an almost uniformly pragmatic character. Consider, on that head, the description he offered of what an ideal government ought to look like. “Vest all the legislative power in one body of men,” he avowed,

Elected for a short period, and necessarily excluded by rotation from permanency, and guarded from precipitancy and surprise by delays imposed on its proceedings, you will create the most perfect responsibility for then, whenever the people feel a grievance they cannot mistake the authors, and will apply the remedy with certainty and effect, discarding them at the next election.

To his belief that people needed to freely comprehend the government under which their lived, Bryan thus joined the principle of day-to-day transparency and accountability. This would seem to constitute the other dimension of political understanding which he appeared so keen to promote. A government whose function is obvious, after all, and whose various mechanisms remain open to scrutiny not only promotes public trust and engagement. It also ensures that those responsible for error – or worse – cannot simply disappear into a byzantine network of bureaucrats, committees, and departments so as to avoid taking responsibility for their

The organizational framework described by the proposed constitution doubtless appeared specifically constructed to project just this kind of administrative smokescreen. Between a House of Representatives, a Senate, an independent executive branch, and all such offices as it would devolve upon any one of these bodies to fill by appointment, what hope might the average person have harbored of tracing the cause of a particularly injurious policy to its source, let alone of exercising the requisite oversight? A petitioner might make their case to a Representative, who might in turn point to a Senator, who then claims that responsibility lies with the executive branch, which might indicate, when prompted, that the blame should in truth be leveled at a given semi-independent department. And what was then to stop the head of that selfsame department, upon being questioned, from pointing to the legislative committee whose members authorized and funded the offending policy to begin with? Within a system of such manifest complexity, the various branches of which were purposefully intertwined as a means of creating a nominally stable balance of power, mere comprehension would seem to convey only a partial advantage. In order for the governed to truly be secure in the enjoyment of their liberties, they must be able to identify the author of a given measure with ease, entertain a reasonable expectation of that author taking receipt of their responsibility, and possess the means of replacing those who fail to take heed when their performance is thus called into question. 

Centinel I, Part I: Context

            I must admit, the previous series went on far longer than I initially anticipated. And though I might at first feel some reflexive need to apologize for droning on and on so, a second thought causes me to hold my tongue. If, God bless you, you are among what I imagine to be the minuscule number of people who will happily read whatever I post week after week, you doubtless felt no reason to complain about such an extensive interrogation of Richard Price and his Observations. And if, God keep you all the same, you are among those who could take or leave what I have to offer – a category which necessarily includes the overwhelming majority of the species – you doubtless walked away somewhere around part IV or V when it became clear that things weren’t going to be wrapping up anytime soon. It being next to impossible for me to imagine anybody falling in between these categories – that is to say, someone who takes more than twelve thousand words to decide whether or not they’re at all invested in what they’re reading – I am accordingly given to claim that no harm has been done, and no foul recorded. Thus, we move right along. Granted, the series that begins here will most certainly be shorter than the last. But this should not be taken as any form of amends on my part, notwithstanding that which I owe to myself. Twenty-two weeks is a very long time to talk about any one document, engrossing though it may well have been. What follows, then, is something completely different, for my own sake as well as anybody’s.

            On that note, I ask my audience – of whatever stripe, stamp, or kidney – to cast their minds back to the period and the events of the late 1780s in the United States of America. The Revolutionary War has been over for several years, the Continental Congress continues to very loosely govern the various states under the auspices of the Articles of Confederation, and the American economy has experienced a rather slow, painful, and uneven recovery. In an attempt to rectify this stubborn state of financial malaise – in which hard currency is scarce, debts are rarely repaid, trade has stagnated, and the paper currency issued on the authority of Congress holds almost none of its value – a group of notables from each of the thirteen states agrees to meet in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 for the ostensible purpose of modifying the governing charter of the union of states. The aim of these assembled statesmen being the creation of a government better equipped to respond to the aforementioned economic tribulations, they fairly quickly determine that only a strong, centralized government will serve the purpose they have set out to fulfill. Accordingly abandoning the Articles of Confederation altogether, the delegates then set about framing an entirely new government for the United States of America, which they proceed to send to Congress for ratification in September. Though understandably surprised by the scope and scale of the document they have been asked to consider – the proceedings of the Philadelphia Convention having been conducted in secret – the members of Congress nonetheless agree to submit the proposed federal constitution to the various states in accordance with the accompanying instructions. State conventions are called, delegates chosen, and a vigorous public debate ensues.

            Enter the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers – both of which, of course, have been discussed here before, but neither of which ceases to offer ample reward for investigation. Specifically, enter Centinel, that pseudonymous – and seemingly spelling-averse –  author of some eighteen essays published between October of 1787 and May of 1788 whose stated aim was to dissuade his fellow Americans from too rashly adopting an entirely novel frame of government before giving due consideration to the flaws, deficiencies, and implications thereof. Though no more noteworthy in the substance and presentation of his views than such previously-discussed Anti-Federalists as Brutus (Robert Yates), A Plebian (Melancton Smith), and Mercy Otis Warren, Centinel nonetheless makes for an intriguing read, arguably for the very reason that the general thrust of his argument feels exceptionally familiar. Indeed, when one reads the first of his eighteen compositions – published initially in the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer on October 5^th, 1787 – the sense of déjà vu is almost overpowering. Though arguing against the creation of a powerful central government at a time when he and his countrymen had fought a war against exactly that less than a decade previous, the basic contours of Centinel’s philosophy and perspective align extraordinarily closely to the tried-and-true playbook of the modern, states-rights advocating American conservative. Indeed, one gets the distinct feeling from reading Centinel I that the last two hundred years have not done very much at all to alter the basic character of political discourse in the United States.

Whether this should be a source of comfort or dismay, I shall leave it for each of us to decide on our own. There is, however, much to say on the subject of where such a persistent perspective originated and how it came to be a staple of the ideological dialogue of American republicanism. Whether one agrees with the small government hypothesis or not, its influence on the course and development of American history and culture is impossible to deny. It would therefore seem far from an idle pursuit to investigate – if not its origins – an early and very coherent manifestation thereof. How, for example, did the notion that government should be small and simple become a part of the discussion surrounding the ratification of the United States Constitution? From where did the critics of that document derive their belief that political authority should be highly decentralized? And what caused commentators like Centinel to conclude that the people could form a much surer check against corruption than any institutional safeguard? Surely these ideas developed out of some antecedent, or else originated in response to a particular set of circumstances. Centinel I, though fairly brief, speaks precisely to these kinds of inquiries, and in so doing arguably helps lay bare the means by which values that have become absolutely foundational to the political culture of the United States first entered the public discourse thereof.

Addressing and interrogating the significance of Centinel I will, of course, first require some knowledge of its author, their life, and the circumstances that led them to put pen to paper in the first place. This, unfortunately, is where the resources available to the modern investigator come up rather short. Beyond the widely-held conviction that the author of the Centinel essays was most likely a Pennsylvanian named Samuel Bryan (1759-1821), and the verifiable fact that they were initially published between October 5th, 1787 and April 9th, 1788 in the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer and the Philadelphia Freeman's Journal, there would seem to be very little else to say. Bryan, for whatever reason, evidently left no more substantial imprint upon the history of the United States than to have a set of political treatises – important, yes, but not earth-shaking – connected to his name. The years of his birth and his death are known, as well as the fact that he corresponded with Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) for a period in the early 19^th century. Much more than that regrettably remains mysterious. This should not be taken to mean, however, that the customary examination of the applicable context for the forthcoming series will herewith cease and desist. If there is any maxim to which America, On Paper can be said to adhere unfailingly, it is to never say a little when one can instead say a lot. To that end, let us proceed to set the stage for a discussion of Samuel Bryan’s Centinel I by approaching the topic at hand in what we’ll call a lateral fashion. If we cannot talk directly about the author of the document in question, let us instead talk about the world in which he lived.

Thankfully, though Samuel Bryan yet remains something of a cipher, his father was by comparison both famous and well-attributed. George Bryan (1731-1791), born in Dublin in the 1730s and settled in Philadelphia in the 1750s, was, among other things, a merchant retailer and trader, a vocal opponent of the Stamp Act (1765), the first Vice-President and the second President of independent Pennsylvania, a justice of the state supreme court, trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, a long-serving state legislator, and an early advocate for the abolition of slavery. Noted by and among his peers as something of a radical, the elder Bryan was an avowed opponent of both colonial Pennsylvania’s proprietary governors as well as those who hoped to transform the colony into a direct possession of the Crown. By way of a refresher, the colonial Province of Pennsylvania was, from the time of its founding in 1681 until it became the independent Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1776, the private property of Quaker luminary William Penn (1644-1718) and his male heirs. Though the elder Penn was generally well-liked and well-regarded by the inhabitants of the colony he had founded as a refuge for those suffering religious persecution in Anglican Britain, his successors as proprietor frequently found themselves at the center of some controversy or other over issues ranging from freedom of conscience, to relations with local native peoples, to the taxation of properties traditionally owned by the Penn family. Bearing in mind that fellow Pennsylvanian Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was likewise labeled a radical for his attempts to strip the hereditary proprietors of their office and turn the province into a Crown Colony, George Bryan’s apparent opposition to even this latter course would seem to have set him quite far indeed outside the mainstream of contemporary Pennsylvania politics. 

     

In addition to apparently taking all comers in terms of colonial Pennsylvania’s political status, the elder Bryan was also an early supporter of American independence – compared, say, to fellow Pennsylvanian John Dickinson (1732-1808), who was an extremely late supporter of reconciliation – and an ardent devotee of the style of government subsequently practiced in the Keystone State. Again, by way of a reminder, the state constitution which Bryan so favored and under which he served was among the most unusual then in force in the nascent United States. Drafted by a committee composed of Robert Whitehill (1738-1813), Timothy Matlack (1730-1826), Dr. Thomas Young (1731-1777), James Cannon (1740-1782), the aforementioned Franklin, and Bryan himself, the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 was both exceedingly democratic by the standards of the time and exceptionally decentralized. Having grappled with the authority of a very conservative, obstructionist governor during the height of the Anglo-American crisis – in the form of William Penn’s grandson John Penn (1729-1795) – the elements of Pennsylvania’s political culture already opposed to proprietary government became increasingly convinced that any kind of unitary executive at all invited more abuse, corruption, and strife than it necessarily solved any significant administrative problems. The governing charter subsequently drafted under the authority of the revolutionary Council of Safety accordingly did away with the office of Governor, established a unicameral legislature, and recognized the right of all tax-paying adult men – regardless of whether or not they owned property – to vote in and stand for elections.

In the absence of a unitary chief executive, Pennsylvania’s 1776 constitution erected in its place a kind of committee known as the Supreme Executive Council. The members of this body – twelve in number – were to be chosen to serve a term of three years by voters residing in the city of Philadelphia and in each of the eleven counties into which the state was then divided. Coinciding with the yearly election of delegates to the state assembly, a joint ballot of the Council and this very same assembly was to be held for the purpose of electing a President and Vice-President of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from among the Counselors previously chosen. Perhaps the only responsibilities to be exercised by the President without the input of the Council were those connected to the role of Commander-in-Chief. All other executive powers – appointing judges, attorneys general, and military officers, filling vacant offices due to death or resignation, standing in judgement over cases of impeachment, granting pardons or reprieves, or laying commercial embargoes – were expressly the remit of either “the president and council” or “the president in council.”

In addition to the House of Representatives, the Supreme Executive Council, and the state supreme court – each of which respectively performed the necessary legislative, executive, and judicial functions – the constitution of 1776 also described a fourth body whose function and authority appeared to form a kind of hybrid of these otherwise separate spheres of responsibility. The Council of Censors, comprised of two delegates elected every seven years from each county and city in Pennsylvania, was intended essentially to monitor the activities of the other branches of government and offer correctives as its members felt necessary. To that end, the assembled Censors could censure government actions and demand the repeal of legislation they deemed to be unconstitutional, order the impeachment of such officials as appeared to have behaved improperly or abused their authority, and call for a convention to amend the constitution. No other state government erected during the 1770s or 1780s included within its constitutional framework a body of men anything like Pennsylvania’s Council of Censors, and it should perhaps come as no surprise that it was one of many innovations put in place in 1776 that was abandoned upon the drafting of the Keystone State’s second – and far more orthodox – constitution in 1790.

Granted, there were other state constitutions drafted during this era which envisioned a strong legislature and a weak chief executive. The Maryland Constitution of 1776, for example, declared that the Governor of that state was to be elected by a joint ballot of the bicameral General Assembly, and that said office was to be accompanied in its decision-making by a five-person Executive Council chosen by the same means. While this framework would seem necessarily to bind the office of Governor quite closely to the will of the relevant legislative body, the chief executive of the State of Maryland – alike with the governors or presidents of nearly every other state – nevertheless possessed a number of powers and responsibilities whose exercise did not require the consent or notification of either the Council or the General Assembly. Given that the framers of the various state constitutions had – with few exceptions – lived their entire lives under the auspices of colonial governments whose structure prejudiced singular executive authority – either in the form of a governor or of the Crown itself – this is perhaps not particularly surprising. Ardent though the supporters of Congress were in their opposition to the arbitrary exercise of executive power, their only involvement with government on a first-hand basis was along strictly monarchical lines. When it thus came time for these same statesmen to undertake the task of creating republican state governments, their imaginations were understandably somewhat limited by what they were familiar with and what they knew from experience would work. The results, for the most part, were either a chief executive whose powers were more or less the same as those exercised by their pre-independence colonial equivalents – as in New York – or whose authority was limited by, and tied to the will of, the relevant legislative assembly – an in nearly every other state. The fact that Pennsylvania did not follow this pattern should accordingly be taken as a strong indication that the men from whose pens the first constitution of that state flowed were of a deliberately unconventional frame of mind.

One of these men, of course, was the aforementioned George Bryan. A demonstrated radical in his opposition to both the proprietary form of colonial government and the alternative centered on the direct authority of the Crown, Bryan was seemingly able to at last give form to his abiding frustration with the status quo by helping to craft a new model of civil administration unlike anything Pennsylvania – or America at large – had yet seen. The vision of government he and his colleagues gave rise to was decentralized, subject to frequent elections, and premised on an unusually wide application of the electoral franchise. What this meant in practice was that decision-making at even the highest levels had to be made on a collegial basis, almost all power ultimately devolved upon the most representative branch of government, and only the destitute – i.e. those who paid no form of property tax – were formally excluded from the most basic from of civic engagement. Such a government would theoretically have been more resistant than its traditionally-structured counterparts to demagoguery, corruption, and elitism, more responsive to popular opinion, and less inclined towards deference to authority. Legislators were subject to the constant threat of replacement, the President of the state was little more than the titular leader of a twelve-member committee, and the power of censure, legislative invalidation, and impeachment were in the hands of a body of men kept structurally separate from any other branch of government. While it would be difficult to say exactly what the effect of these circumstances might have been on the political culture of Pennsylvania in those early years of its independence  – as far as levels of civic engagement are concerned, or respect for political authority, or satisfaction with political outcomes – it would nevertheless seem reasonably safe to assume that those who came of age in that state during the 1770s and 1780s would have had a very different experience with politics and public affairs than their counterparts in most other states during this same period. 

Bearing this in mind, we return once more to the subject of Samuel Bryan, son of George Bryan and author of the Centinel essays. Samuel, recall, was born in Pennsylvania in 1759. This would have made him only seventeen years old when the constitution his father helped draft was put into effect in 1776. Without making any assumptions about how impressionable he was as a youth, this would seem rather too young to have developed very many concrete biases as to the nature of political power, the purpose of government, or the proper relationship between a community of people and their nominal governors. It would accordingly seem entirely sensible to presume that the younger Bryan’s political opinions were almost entirely formed during, and shaped by, the eleven years which elapsed between the adoption of Pennsylvania’s first constitution in 1776 and the beginning of the process by which the proposed national constitution was ratified in 1787. At this latter point, Bryan would have been twenty-eight years old, and lived the entirety of his adult life under a system of government which had essentially no equivalent among Pennsylvania’s sister states. The closest in form during the whole of the Revolutionary era had been that of New Hampshire, whose 1776 constitution provided for a similar structure comprising a unicameral legislature and an executive council. After less than ten years, however, the people of the Granite State determined to replace this admittedly radical form of administration with something far more typical of what was becoming a standard model – with a governor, a supreme court, and a bicameral legislature – among the various American states.

Between 1784 – at which point New Hampshire abandoned its original constitution – and 1790 – at which point the Keystone State did the same – Pennsylvania thus constituted a major outlier in terms of the way its inhabitants were given to interact with and think about public institutions. Not only was this fact bound to have shaped the perspective and ideology of the aforementioned Samuel Bryan, but the prominent role that his own father had played in creating said environment must also have impacted on the ways in which he came to understand government and politics. This is not to say, necessarily, that the younger Bryan was in any way obliged to share – or even likely to share – the opinions and biases of his influential pater familias. While evidence certainly exists among the Founders of ideological alignment crossing generations within a single family – John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), for example, was often said in later life to resemble his father John Adams (1735-1826) in appearance, temperament, and opinion almost exactly – cases can also readily be cited of precisely the opposite state of affairs. William Franklin (1730-1813), eldest son of the aforementioned Benjamin Franklin, stands as a stark example of just that. Though William was a frequent traveling companion of his father during the latter’s various European sojourns, and though he benefited greatly from both his father’s partnership in business and patronage in politics – to the point of gaining appointment to the office of Governor of New Jersey in 1763 due in large part to the elder Franklin’s persistent lobbying of the government of Lord Bute (1713-1792) – he ultimately rejected Benjamin’s radical politics and became a prominent Loyalist leader during the American Revolution.

What this is all by way of saying, in effect, is that close familial connection was no more guarantee of political alignment during the Revolutionary era than it is today. Samuel Bryan, it therefore bears reiterating, should not be thought of as possessing particularly radical, democratic, or populist political views simply because he was the son of a man whose public career was premised almost entirely on the promotion of these very same convictions. Rather, the affinity which the younger Bryan arguably demonstrated in the text of the Centinel essays towards this particular ideological bearing should be attributed to the environment in which he first developed a sense of political awareness. To an extent, his father must have played some part in shaping this environment, either through implicit socialization or explicit education. But the mere fact of living and working in Pennsylvania was almost certainly enough on its own. From the time when he first gained adulthood in the mid-1770s to the moment he put pen to paper in 1787, Samuel Bryan was subject to, and given frequently to interact with, a government that was wholly unlike any other that then existed in America. Pennsylvania during those years was more democratic than any other state, more decentralized, and possessed of a system of public administration more amenable to both institutional and popular scrutiny. It would seem rather unlikely – if not impossible – for a person to spend over a decade living in an environment thus defined without being significantly influenced by the same. Granted, it was certainly possible for Samuel Bryan to have come out the other side of his early adulthood with a very low opinion of his home state’s government. The fact that a more orthodox constitution was adopted in 1790 would indeed seem to indicate that the majority of people in Pennsylvania were ultimately unimpressed by what they experienced in the 1770s and 1780s. The content of tone of Centinel I, however, stands as equally compelling evidence that Samuel Bryan was not among them. 

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.