capitalism

Pursuit of Happiness 409
to this view, was meant to encompass all the preconditions
that make the pursuit of happiness possible. Rather than
merely negative rights, the phrase supposedly imposes on
government the political obligation to ensure all of the conditions
essential to the happiness of each member of society
be met. As understood in this way, the “pursuit of
happiness” requires that government accommodate the
modern desire for increased social welfare and environmental
and cultural regulation. Garry Wills, Scott Gerber,
and Richard K. Matthews are among the leading exponents
of this interpretation.
Both the traditional and modern interpretations fall short
of conveying the richness of the idea of happiness as it was
used in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Because government
is expected to do so much today, the distinction
between government and nonpolitical social institutions
has been blurred, and what is “social” and “public” is typically
associated with government. Thus, the traditional
Lockean interpretation is liable to be misunderstood as
devoid of social concern and narrowly economic. The modern
interpretation, in contrast, while providing a sense of
the social dimension suggested by the term, makes an
assumption about the primacy of government that was no
part of the original understanding.
The distinction between government and society was
fundamental to English and American Whigs, who argued
against monarchical absolutism and an intrusive government.
For these libertarian forebears, happiness had a specific
meaning tied closely to freedom of association. It
referred to a flourishing of society in which voluntary organizations
formed and throve for all manner of purposes.
Such a society was thought to entail a limited government
based on consent, with strong protections for the right to
own property as a precondition for liberty. Only then could
individuals follow their natural inclinations and their rational
faculties to pursue the widest range of personal objectives:
commercial, philanthropic, religious, and social.
Thus, the premier Whig essayists of the Atlantic world,
John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, could write that “True
and impartial liberty is ...the right of every man to pursue
the natural, reasonable, and religious dictates of his own
mind.” Observing that such “liberty is the divine source of
all human happiness,” they contended that “countries are
generally peopled in proportion as they are free, and are
certainly happy in that proportion.” Free association, for all
sorts of reasons, was the basis for happiness in civil society.
This notion was commonplace among Americans of the
18th century.
In 1766, Richard Bland of Williamsburg wrote that
Virginians were not obliged to remain in submission to “the
publick Authority of the State...longer than they find it will
conduce to their Happiness, which they have a natural Right
to promote.” Daniel Shute of Boston remarked in 1768 that
“Civil government among mankind is not a resignation of
their natural privileges, but that method of securing them to
which they are morally obliged as conducive to their happiness.”
George Mason noted in his draft of the Declaration of
Rights for Virginia in June of 1776 that
all men are by nature equally free and independent, and
have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into
a state of society, they cannot by any compact deprive or
divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and
liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property,
and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
Many have viewed Jefferson’s composition as a more
effective revision of this earlier text. There are other possible
influences.
A number of scholars have pointed to the important
place of the Scottish moralists in Jefferson’s thought. These
Scottish thinkers, each in their own way, postulated an
inborn moral sense or sentiment beyond mere self-interest
that gave to individuals an immediate experience of the
good. Individuals could be trusted to govern themselves
because human motivation embraced a capacity for
empathizing with the plight of others and associating for
reasons other than just material gratification. Acts of faith
and philanthropy had their own rewards. Perhaps the most
significant source for this view comes from a work highly
recommended by Jefferson and one that he read with care
long before he composed the Declaration: Henry Home,
Lord Kames’s Essays on Morality and Natural Religion. In
writing of the Creator and his work, Kames notes:
What various and complicated machinery is here! and regulated
with what exquisite art! While man pursues happiness
as his chief aim, thou bendest self-love into the social
direction. Thou infusest the generous principle, which
makes him feel for sorrows not his own . . . and by sympathy
linked man to man; that nothing might be solitary in
thy world, but all tend to mutual association.
This idea was endorsed by Jefferson, who remarked that
a “moral sense was as much a part of man as his leg or
arm.” The moral sense formed an important reason for
Jefferson’s confidence in the ability of individuals to exercise
personal self-government. The pursuit of happiness
was thus broader than the right to own property, but it was
in no way opposed to it. From the ultimate right of selfownership,
individuals possessed the capacity to pursue
their aspirations in association with others who might hold
similar convictions. Thus, the pursuit of happiness was
social and public, but not primarily or even essentially
political. Politics entered the picture only to the extent that
a limited government maintained the peace and enforced
the rules of just conduct. The result, Jefferson doubtless
thought, would be a flourishing associational life.
HLE