fieldston american reader volume i – fall 2007 - Ethical Culture ...

not that this glorious threesome needs support from anyone.I accept with practically no reservations the notion that theAmerican Revolution was wholly different in character andpurpose from the French, Russian, and almost all otherrevolutions, and I ascribe this difference largely to the plaintruth that the Americans had no need and thus no intentionto “make the world over.” By 1765 their world had already beenmade over as thoroughly as most sensible men—most sensiblewhite men, to be sure—could imagine or expect. Americanshad never known or had long since begun to abandon feudaltenures, a privilege‐ridden economy, centralized and despoticgovernment, religious intolerance, and hereditary stratification.Americans had achieved and were prepared to defend with theirblood a society more open, an economy more fluid, a religionmore tolerant, and a government more popular than anythingEuropeans would know for decades to come. The goal of therebellious colonists was largely to consolidate, then expand bycautious stages, the large measure of liberty and prosperity thatwas already ‐part of their way of life.This, then, is an account of the American way of life in 1765 anda reckoning of the historical forces that had helped to createa people devoted to liberty and qualified for independence.I wish to make clear that I hold no unusual ideas about theinfluence of environment on either the institutions or ethicsof human freedom. Certainly I would not attempt to weigheach of the many physical and human‐directed forces thatshaped the destiny of the American colonies, or to establisha precise cause‐and‐effect relationship between any one forceor set of forces and any one value or set of values. What Iplan to do is simply to describe the total environment as oneoverwhelmingly favorable to the rise of liberty and to singleout those forces which seemed most influential in creating thisenvironment. Before I proceed to examine these forces and thenew world they were shaping, I think it necessary to point tofour all‐pervading features of the colonial experience that werehastening the day of liberty, independence, and democracy.Over only one of these massive forces did the colonists orEnglish authorities have the slightest degree of control, andthe political wisdom that was needed to keep it in tight reinsimply did not exist in empires of that time.IThe first ingredient of American liberty was the heritage fromEngland. Burke acknowledged this “capital source” in wordsthat his countrymen could understand but apparently not actupon.The people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen.England, Sir, is a nation which still I hope respects, andformerly adored, her freedom. The colonists emigrated fromyou when this part of your character was most predominant;and they took this bias and direction the moment they partedfrom your hands. They are therefore not only devoted to liberty,but to liberty according to English ideas, and on Englishprinciples.“Wee humbly pray,” wrote the General Assembly of RhodeIsland to the Board of Trade in ‘73, “that their Lordships willbelieve wee have a Tincture of the ancient British Blood in ourveines.” The colonists had considerably more than a tincture:at least seven in ten were English in blood, and virtually alltheir institutions, traditions, ideas, and laws were English inorigin and inspiration. The first colonists had brought overboth the good and evil of seventeenth century England. Thegood had been toughened and in several instances improved;much of the bad had been jettisoned under frontier conditions.As a result of this interaction of heredity and environment, theeighteenth‐century American was simply a special brand ofEnglishman. When it pleased him he could be more Englishthan the English, and when it pleased him most was anyoccurrence in which questions of liberty and self‐governmentwere at issue. In a squabble over the question of a fixed salarybetween Governor Joseph Dudlev and the MassachusettsAssembly, the latter could state without any sense of pretension:It hath been the Priviledge from Henry the third & confirmedby Edward the first, & in all Reigns unto this Day, granted,& is now allowed to be the just & unquestionable Right ofthe Subject, to raise when & dispose of how they see Cause,any Sums of money by Consent of Parliament, the whichPriviledge We her Majesty’s Loyal and Dutiful Subjects havelived in the Enjoymt of, & do hope always to enjoy the same,under Our most gracious Queen Ann & Successors, & shallever endeavour to discharge the Duty incumbent on us; Buthumbly conceive the Stating of perpetual Salaries not agreableto her Majesty’s Interests in this Province, but prejudicial toher Majesty’s good Subjects.Southerners were, if anything, more insistent. In 1767 theSouth Carolina legislature resolved:That His Majesty’s subjects in this province are entitled to allthe liberties and privileges of Englishmen . . . [and] that theCommons House of Assembly in South Carolina, by the lawsof England and South Carolina, and ancient usage and custom,have all the rights and privileges pertaining to Money billsthat are enjoyed by the British House of Commons.And the men of the frontier, who were having the same troublewith assemblies that assemblies were having with governors,made the echo ring.1st. We apprehend, as Free‐Men and English Subjects, we havean indisputable Title to the same Privileges and Immunities115