WEBVTT NOTE 33. The Growth of Libertarian Thought 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 Volume 2, Chapter 33, The Growth of Libertarian Thought 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:18.000 We have touched several times, especially in dealing with religious doctrines and institutions, upon the growth of libertarian views in 18th century America. 3 00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:28.000 This extremely significant development was not a full-blown giant suddenly burst upon the European and American scenes. 4 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:35.520 J. H. Hexter, in his brilliant Reappraisals in History, warns us of the dangerous temptation 5 00:00:35.520 --> 00:00:44.760 toward a linear view of history, a view adopted in different ways by Whig and Marxist alike. 6 00:00:44.760 --> 00:00:52.240 The linear view assumes a steady march from past to present. Hexter cites the concept 7 00:00:52.240 --> 00:00:59.720 of the Rising Middle Classes. Historians, he points out, noted that the English middle 8 00:00:59.720 --> 00:01:07.200 classes were dominant in the 19th century and virtually non-existent in the Middle Ages. 9 00:01:07.200 --> 00:01:15.400 Hence, the linear assumption of a steady march upward by the middle classes century by century, 10 00:01:15.400 --> 00:01:22.120 a picture which Hexter indicates is far from the truth. But the important point here is 11 00:01:22.120 --> 00:01:30.160 is that history often moves not in a smoothly linear trend, but in varying patterns of rises 12 00:01:30.160 --> 00:01:36.280 and falls of trends shattered by contrary trends. 13 00:01:36.280 --> 00:01:43.900 The growth of libertarian thought in 18th century America was, to be sure, heavily influenced 14 00:01:43.900 --> 00:01:50.680 by preceding growth in England, the main source of cultural influence on its colonies. 15 00:01:50.680 --> 00:01:56.880 But the pattern was not so simple, for it must be remembered that parts of America itself 16 00:01:56.880 --> 00:02:04.080 had experienced entirely libertarian institutions in the seventeenth century. 17 00:02:04.080 --> 00:02:09.880 For example, Rhode Island, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. 18 00:02:09.880 --> 00:02:16.580 To a large extent, this libertarianism had been unarticulated. 19 00:02:16.580 --> 00:02:28.580 In short, the abundance of fertile virgin land in a vast territory enabled individualism to come to full flower in many areas. 20 00:02:28.580 --> 00:02:37.580 But only in such cases, important to be sure, as those of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, 21 00:02:37.580 --> 00:02:44.580 did practicing libertarianism receive theoretical articulation and groundwork. 22 00:02:44.580 --> 00:02:49.580 This does not mean that no theoretical rationale existed. 23 00:02:49.580 --> 00:02:55.580 Indeed, it exploded in a mighty surge during the height of the Puritan Revolution. 24 00:02:55.580 --> 00:03:04.580 Roger Williams and his friends among the libertarian wing of that revolution helped each other develop these doctrines. 25 00:03:04.580 --> 00:03:12.580 But the significant fact of the mid-17th century was the defeat of the Revolution 26 00:03:12.580 --> 00:03:15.580 and the Victory of the Counter-Revolution. 27 00:03:15.580 --> 00:03:22.580 In England, this victory can be pinpointed in Oliver Cromwell's shift rightward 28 00:03:22.580 --> 00:03:30.580 and his suppression of the levelers, perhaps the finest libertarian movement up to that time. 29 00:03:30.580 --> 00:03:36.580 The steady retreat of Roger Williams from libertarian principles and enthusiasm 30 00:03:36.580 --> 00:04:01.580 A similar counterrevolution against liberalism occurred in other parts of Europe. In France, with the defeat of the Holy League in the late 16th century, and of the popular Frandour movements in the 17th century. 31 00:04:01.580 --> 00:04:08.640 In Holland, with the victory of the Orange Party over the Republicans, civil war and 32 00:04:08.640 --> 00:04:14.100 foreign wars prevented England from turning its attention to its American colonies until 33 00:04:14.100 --> 00:04:20.480 the end of the seventeenth century. When it finally did so, it used its power to crush 34 00:04:20.480 --> 00:04:28.480 libertarian reality where it existed in America. Thus, England imposed a counterrevolution 35 00:04:28.480 --> 00:04:35.480 Rebellion on Virtually Libertarian Conditions in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and reversed 36 00:04:35.480 --> 00:04:42.600 the liberal-tending Lislerian Revolution, which it had to force its way against what 37 00:04:42.600 --> 00:04:49.120 was in many ways the most reactionary colony of all, New York. 38 00:04:49.120 --> 00:04:54.920 Liberal-tending rebellions in the South, for example Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia, were 39 00:04:54.920 --> 00:05:02.880 were crushed, and reactionary policies entrenched or deepened. After the vigorous turmoil and 40 00:05:02.880 --> 00:05:08.680 turbulence of the late seventeenth century, when so many parts of America struggled in 41 00:05:08.680 --> 00:05:15.720 various ways toward freedom, a rather bleak uniformity was imposed on the colonies by 42 00:05:15.720 --> 00:05:23.480 England. The first half of the eighteenth century saw an increasing political stalemate 43 00:05:23.480 --> 00:05:31.380 between the contending forces, now generally consisting of crown and privileged oligarchy, 44 00:05:31.380 --> 00:05:34.840 as against the rest of the population. 45 00:05:34.840 --> 00:05:40.600 This period of quiescence was matched in the mother country, in institutions as well 46 00:05:40.600 --> 00:05:43.160 as in thought and opinion. 47 00:05:43.160 --> 00:05:50.320 In the first half of the 18th century, England settled down into a centrist Whig settlement. 48 00:05:50.320 --> 00:05:57.160 Radical liberal thought was more or less underground, expressed in thin trickles by lone independent 49 00:05:57.160 --> 00:06:04.360 thinkers. These liberals kept alive the torch of seventeenth-century Republican liberalism. 50 00:06:04.360 --> 00:06:09.440 When the radical liberal movement burst forth once again as a political force in England 51 00:06:09.440 --> 00:06:16.680 in the later eighteenth century, it came not as a completely new phenomenon, but as a renaissance 52 00:06:16.680 --> 00:06:23.680 of 17th Century Radical Models. In the first half of the 18th Century, America 53 00:06:23.680 --> 00:06:30.600 was more eager to learn from British liberalism past and contemporary than were the English 54 00:06:30.600 --> 00:06:37.600 themselves. England was, for one thing, the major cultural and ideological influence in 55 00:06:37.600 --> 00:06:44.520 the colonies, and Americans were eager to learn. For another, America had the heritage 56 00:06:44.520 --> 00:07:14.520 of the 17th Century. 57 00:07:14.520 --> 00:07:22.040 A Drive for Proprietary Profit and an American Refusal to Pay Quit Rents, an Established 58 00:07:22.040 --> 00:07:31.520 Church Hierarchy, a Large Central State Apparatus, and a Thoroughly Oligarchic Polity. 59 00:07:31.520 --> 00:07:36.520 Americans suffered from these ailments to some degree, differing from one colony to 60 00:07:36.520 --> 00:07:44.120 the next, and such institutions as slavery, especially in the plantation south, and quasi 61 00:07:44.120 --> 00:07:51.120 by Feudal Land Holdings in the Hudson Valley, presented great problems, but not nearly to 62 00:07:51.280 --> 00:07:58.280 the extent experienced by Great Britain. Above all, the rapid breakdown of attempts at imposing 63 00:07:59.240 --> 00:08:06.240 a feudal land system through open land and areas of American life to a mobility and opportunity 64 00:08:06.240 --> 00:08:11.920 and Opportunity that Europe could not yet experience. 65 00:08:11.920 --> 00:08:19.360 The far greater democracy in the bulk of the American colonies than in England was a reflection 66 00:08:19.360 --> 00:08:21.600 of this breakdown. 67 00:08:21.600 --> 00:08:28.360 If liberty was to be achieved in the Western world, it was clear by the 18th century that 68 00:08:28.360 --> 00:08:35.560 America would have to take the lead to achieve in practice the fruits of a theory generated 69 00:08:35.560 --> 00:08:38.340 in England. 70 00:08:38.340 --> 00:08:45.180 One basic influence on colonial American thought was the fact that two contrasting traditions 71 00:08:45.180 --> 00:08:50.060 emerged from its Protestant and Puritan heritage. 72 00:08:50.060 --> 00:08:57.980 One was the fanatical, theocratic, persecuting tradition, which reached its apogee in Massachusetts 73 00:08:57.980 --> 00:09:01.880 Bay and in the Dutch Orange Party. 74 00:09:01.880 --> 00:09:10.600 The other was optimistic, individualist, libertarian, and even deistic, and was reflected in the 75 00:09:10.600 --> 00:09:18.360 levelers, and in such escapees from Massachusetts as Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams, and 76 00:09:18.360 --> 00:09:22.760 later in Charles Chauncey and Jonathan Mayhew. 77 00:09:22.760 --> 00:09:29.480 Apart from ancient writers, three sources were the most frequently cited and quoted 78 00:09:29.480 --> 00:09:36.280 in 18th Century America, especially in the first half of the century, Algernon Sidney, 79 00:09:36.280 --> 00:09:44.240 John Locke, and Trenchard and Gordon of Cato's Letters. Each made a profound contribution 80 00:09:44.240 --> 00:09:51.040 to the growth and development of libertarian thought in America. Algernon Sidney was one 81 00:09:51.040 --> 00:09:57.440 of the leading theorists of the Republican movement in 17th Century England. In particular, 82 00:09:57.440 --> 00:10:04.320 The doctrines expounded in his posthumously published Discourses Concerning Government 83 00:10:04.320 --> 00:10:11.120 were stamped on men's minds by the circumstances of his martyrdom. 84 00:10:11.120 --> 00:10:20.160 Arrested in the early 1680s, Sidney was killed in late 1683 by the Crown and thus dramatized 85 00:10:20.160 --> 00:10:23.760 the Republican and Libertarian cause. 86 00:10:23.760 --> 00:10:32.680 Sydney's basic importance was his stress on the right of revolution. To Sydney, revolution 87 00:10:32.680 --> 00:10:39.200 and freedom were closely linked. Whenever people's liberties were threatened or invaded, 88 00:10:39.200 --> 00:10:49.000 they had the right, nay, the duty, to rebel. Everyone might legitimately slay a tyrant, 89 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:56.760 And there is much justification for defending the rights of individuals against tyranny. 90 00:10:56.760 --> 00:11:03.640 Revolution to Sydney was not an evil, but the people's great weapon for the overthrow 91 00:11:03.640 --> 00:11:09.520 of tyranny and for exercising their rights to popular government. 92 00:11:09.520 --> 00:11:15.720 There was nothing sacred about governments, which, on the contrary, should be changed 93 00:11:15.720 --> 00:11:17.840 as required. 94 00:11:17.840 --> 00:11:24.840 The types of law necessary in a country were to be discerned by man's reason investigating 95 00:11:25.360 --> 00:11:32.360 the fundamental laws of man's nature. Against the arbitrary whim of the ruler, Sidney championed 96 00:11:33.560 --> 00:11:40.560 law as written reason and as defense of life, liberty and property. 97 00:11:40.560 --> 00:11:48.600 If there be no other law in a kingdom than the will of a prince, there is no such thing 98 00:11:48.600 --> 00:11:50.880 as liberty. 99 00:11:50.880 --> 00:11:57.920 Property also is an appendage to liberty, and tis as impossible for a man to have a 100 00:11:57.920 --> 00:12:06.080 right to lands or goods if he has no liberty and enjoys his life only at the pleasure of 101 00:12:06.080 --> 00:12:14.040 of another, as it is to enjoy either when he is deprived of them. 102 00:12:14.040 --> 00:12:20.680 Although Sidney urged popular government as against monarchy, he was no believer in the 103 00:12:20.680 --> 00:12:28.640 unlimited rights of Parliament. On the contrary, it was to be subordinated to the individual 104 00:12:28.640 --> 00:12:37.280 and the Rights of the People. Power, he warned, inevitably corrupts, and every institutional 105 00:12:37.280 --> 00:12:45.940 power must be guarded against. To Sydney, government rested on a contract between government 106 00:12:45.940 --> 00:12:53.680 and governed. When government fails to perform its role in the service of the people, it 107 00:12:53.680 --> 00:13:23.680 The Theory of Money and Credit The Theory of Money and Credit 108 00:13:23.680 --> 00:13:39.540 A liberal Republican and friend of Sir Henry Vane, the Massachusetts champion of Anne 109 00:13:39.540 --> 00:13:46.640 Hutchinson, Sidney had been unhappy with Cromwell's turn to tyranny and had spent 110 00:13:46.640 --> 00:13:52.360 the Republican years in retirement. He was then forced to spend the bulk of the restoration 111 00:13:52.360 --> 00:14:04.600 Sydney's great classical model was Brutus and his stirring motto, Manus Hec Inimica 112 00:14:04.600 --> 00:14:12.860 Tyrannus, this hand to tyrants ever sworn the foe, in the translation of John Quincy 113 00:14:12.860 --> 00:14:13.860 Adams. 114 00:14:13.860 --> 00:14:21.860 Algernon Sydney's widening impact on America during the 18th century influenced the great 115 00:14:21.860 --> 00:14:30.260 Liberal Massachusetts Congregational Ministers Andrew Eliot and Jonathan Mayhew. Eliot testified 116 00:14:30.260 --> 00:14:38.740 that this martyr to civil liberty first taught him just principles of government. Indeed, 117 00:14:38.740 --> 00:14:44.220 the defense of revolution by the martyred Sidney was far more inspiring to Americans 118 00:14:44.220 --> 00:14:50.540 than the defense by the timorous John Locke. Sidney's historical honor roll consisted of 119 00:14:50.540 --> 00:14:57.720 of those who had helped their countrymen get rid of tyrants. Injustice, to Sidney, made 120 00:14:57.720 --> 00:15:04.560 a government illegal. Swords were given to men that none be slaves, but such as knew 121 00:15:04.560 --> 00:15:13.060 not how to use them, and the law that forbids injuries were of no use if no penalty might 122 00:15:13.060 --> 00:15:19.500 be inflicted on those who will not obey it. Concluded Sidney, let the danger be never 123 00:15:19.500 --> 00:15:26.700 are so great, there is a possibility of safety whilst men have life, hands, arms and courage 124 00:15:26.700 --> 00:15:33.100 to use them, but the people must certainly perish who tamely suffer themselves to be 125 00:15:33.100 --> 00:15:40.220 oppressed by the injustice, cruelty and malice of an ill magistrate. 126 00:15:40.220 --> 00:15:46.500 The dying words of another contemporaneous martyr of the stewards, the Cromwellian Colonel 127 00:15:46.500 --> 00:15:54.500 Richard Rumbold also served as inspiration to such revolutionary Americans as Thomas Jefferson. 128 00:15:54.500 --> 00:16:02.760 I am sure there was no man born with a saddle on his back, neither any booted and spurred 129 00:16:02.760 --> 00:16:05.740 to ride him. 130 00:16:05.740 --> 00:16:12.380 If Liberty found its martyr in Algernon, Sydney, it found its elaborated systematic 131 00:16:12.380 --> 00:16:22.300 Defense in the Essay Concerning Civil Government of the noted philosopher John Locke. The essay, 132 00:16:22.300 --> 00:16:31.580 we now know, was written in the early 1680s at about the same time as Sidney's discourses. 133 00:16:31.580 --> 00:16:37.500 It was, therefore, written when Locke, too, was a revolutionary plotter against Stuart 134 00:16:37.500 --> 00:16:47.220 Rule and not, as had been assumed, as a conservative ex post facto rationale for the Glorious Revolution 135 00:16:47.220 --> 00:16:50.700 of 1688. 136 00:16:50.700 --> 00:16:58.680 There were two strains in Locke's essay, the individualist and libertarian and the conservative 137 00:16:58.680 --> 00:17:06.700 and majoritarian, and examples of caution and inconsistency are easy to find, but the 138 00:17:06.700 --> 00:17:13.320 The individualist view is the core of the philosophic argument, while the majoritarian 139 00:17:13.320 --> 00:17:20.460 and statist strain appears more in the later applied portions of the theory. 140 00:17:20.460 --> 00:17:27.460 We know, furthermore, that Locke was an extraordinarily secretive and timorous writer on political 141 00:17:27.460 --> 00:17:35.260 affairs, even for an age when criticism could and did lead to exile and death. 142 00:17:35.260 --> 00:17:42.260 Hence it is not unreasonable to assume that the conservative strain in Locke was a camouflage 143 00:17:42.260 --> 00:17:48.500 for the radically libertarian core of his position. Certainly it was not difficult to 144 00:17:48.500 --> 00:17:56.500 concentrate on that core and make it the groundwork of a libertarian creed. And Locke's essay 145 00:17:56.500 --> 00:18:02.820 was particularly worthwhile in that it soared above the usual narrowly parochial concern 146 00:18:02.820 --> 00:18:10.740 of the Day for Time and Place, from English liberty, ancient privileges and the common 147 00:18:10.740 --> 00:18:20.620 law to a universal abstract political philosophy grounded on the nature of man. 148 00:18:20.620 --> 00:18:27.540 Locke began his analysis with the state of nature, not as a historical hypothesis but 149 00:18:27.540 --> 00:18:32.980 as a logical construct, a world without government. 150 00:18:32.980 --> 00:18:40.460 To penetrate to the proper foundation of the state, in the state of nature, each man as 151 00:18:40.460 --> 00:18:51.460 a natural fact has complete ownership or property over his own person. 152 00:18:51.460 --> 00:18:59.420 These persons confront unused natural resources, or land, and they are able to maintain and 153 00:18:59.420 --> 00:19:05.780 advance themselves by mixing their labor with the land. 154 00:19:05.780 --> 00:19:15.100 Through this mixing, the hitherto unowned and unused natural resources become the property 155 00:19:15.100 --> 00:19:18.260 of the individual mixer. 156 00:19:18.260 --> 00:19:25.560 The individual thereby acquires a property right not only in his own person but also 157 00:19:25.560 --> 00:19:33.920 in the land that he has brought into use and transformed by his labor. 158 00:19:33.920 --> 00:19:41.040 Locke adopted the curious, theologically oriented view that the original unused land was given 159 00:19:41.040 --> 00:19:49.040 was given to mankind in common and was then taken out of this common stock by individual labor. 160 00:19:50.040 --> 00:20:02.040 Actually, in fact, original land, being unused, was therefore unowned by anyone, individual or communal. 161 00:20:02.040 --> 00:20:09.520 It should be mentioned that, contrary to some historians, Locke's labor theory of property 162 00:20:09.520 --> 00:20:18.360 has no relation to the labor theory of value of Karl Marx and other socialist authors. 163 00:20:18.360 --> 00:20:25.760 The individual, then, may keep this property, exchange it for the property of others, or 164 00:20:25.760 --> 00:20:29.480 bequeath it to his heirs. 165 00:20:29.480 --> 00:20:35.640 MacPherson has shown that Locke's state of nature includes a free market for exchange 166 00:20:35.640 --> 00:20:45.000 of property, including monetary exchanges, all of which is logically anterior to government. 167 00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:52.360 He has the natural right to the property and to defend it against invasion by others. 168 00:20:52.360 --> 00:20:59.360 The moral justification for government to Locke was to defend these rights of property. 169 00:20:59.360 --> 00:21:06.360 The government failed to serve this function, and itself become destructive of property rights. 170 00:21:06.360 --> 00:21:17.360 The people then have the right to revolt against such government and to replace it with one that will defend their rights. 171 00:21:17.360 --> 00:21:27.360 It is a misconception to accuse Locke of setting property rights above human rights, for the two were conjoined. 172 00:21:27.360 --> 00:21:34.200 And property rights included the right of the individual's property in his own person. 173 00:21:34.200 --> 00:21:42.720 Thus Locke, by the use of reason in investigating the laws of man's nature, adumbrated the 174 00:21:42.720 --> 00:21:51.600 doctrine of the natural rights of the individual to person and property, rights that are anterior 175 00:21:51.600 --> 00:22:00.280 to Government and that Government is duty-bound to defend on pain of a justified overthrow. 176 00:22:00.280 --> 00:22:06.940 Lock is clear that aggression and invasion of another's right can establish no just 177 00:22:06.940 --> 00:22:13.700 title to property or rule, and that this holds for great heads of states as well as for petty 178 00:22:13.700 --> 00:22:15.700 criminals. 179 00:22:15.700 --> 00:22:21.100 The injury in the crime is equal, whether committed by the wearer of a crown or some 180 00:22:21.100 --> 00:22:30.100 The title of the offender and the number of his followers make no difference unless it be to aggravate it. 181 00:22:30.100 --> 00:22:36.100 The only difference is great robbers punish little ones to keep them in their obedience. 182 00:22:36.100 --> 00:22:46.100 But the great ones are rewarded with laurels and triumphs because they are too big for the weak hands of justice in this world 183 00:22:46.100 --> 00:22:52.100 and have the power in their own possession which should punish offenders. 184 00:22:52.100 --> 00:23:01.100 As to the legislature, the reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property. 185 00:23:01.100 --> 00:23:09.100 In the end, why they choose and authorize a legislature is that there may be laws made and rules set 186 00:23:09.100 --> 00:23:15.100 as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society. 187 00:23:15.100 --> 00:23:39.100 Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence. 188 00:23:39.100 --> 00:23:45.820 Lock's reply to the critics of his theory of revolution was trenchant. Those who oppose 189 00:23:45.820 --> 00:23:52.260 the right to revolution as turbulent and destructive may as well say upon the same ground that 190 00:23:52.260 --> 00:23:59.860 honest men may not oppose robbers or pirates, because this may occasion disorder or bloodshed. 191 00:23:59.860 --> 00:24:05.220 If any mischief come in such cases, it is not to be charged upon him who defends his 192 00:24:05.220 --> 00:24:12.220 To the objection that his theory allowed for frequent revolution, Locke countered that 193 00:24:16.060 --> 00:24:22.940 such revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public affairs. Great mistakes 194 00:24:22.940 --> 00:24:29.940 in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human frailty will 195 00:24:29.940 --> 00:24:38.500 will be borne by the people without mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of abuses, 196 00:24:38.500 --> 00:24:46.300 prevarications, and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the 197 00:24:46.300 --> 00:24:54.940 people, it is not to be wondered that they should then rouse themselves. 198 00:24:54.940 --> 00:25:01.260 The third great influence on America and perhaps the most widely cited source in the colonies 199 00:25:01.260 --> 00:25:09.620 was the works of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, especially their Cato's letters. 200 00:25:09.620 --> 00:25:14.240 We have already noted the influence of the letters on the freedom of the press as well 201 00:25:14.240 --> 00:25:21.940 as the strong influence of Trenchard and Gordon's contemporaneous independent Whig series, both 202 00:25:21.940 --> 00:25:28.260 both written in the early 1720s. Trenchard and Gordon were part of a small group of Englishmen 203 00:25:28.260 --> 00:25:35.540 who during the 18th century kept alive the torch of liberal Republican principles. This 204 00:25:35.540 --> 00:25:44.140 group was variously called commonwealthmen, real Whigs, or true Whigs. The great significance 205 00:25:44.140 --> 00:25:51.560 of Cato's letters is that in them the wealthy John Trenchard and his young protege Thomas 206 00:25:51.560 --> 00:25:59.160 Hans-Gordon greatly radicalized the impact of Locke's libertarian creed. They did so 207 00:25:59.160 --> 00:26:06.240 by applying Lockean principles to the concrete nature and problems of government in a series 208 00:26:06.240 --> 00:26:13.480 of powerfully argued and hard-hitting essays that were often cited and reprinted and widely 209 00:26:13.480 --> 00:26:20.200 read throughout the American colonies. Cato's letters did more than merely restate Lockean 210 00:26:20.200 --> 00:26:26.120 Doctrine, from the position that the people have the right to revolt against a government 211 00:26:26.120 --> 00:26:33.920 destructive of liberty, Cato proceeded to argue with great force that government is 212 00:26:33.920 --> 00:26:42.960 always and everywhere the potential or actual aggressor against the rights and liberties 213 00:26:42.960 --> 00:26:44.440 of the people. 214 00:26:44.440 --> 00:26:51.740 Liberty, the source of all the fruits of civilization and human happiness, is ever liable to suffer 215 00:26:51.740 --> 00:26:58.740 the aggressions and encroachments of government, of power, the source from which war, tyranny 216 00:26:58.740 --> 00:27:02.540 and impoverishment ever flow. 217 00:27:02.540 --> 00:27:08.820 Power always stands ready to conspire against liberty, and the only salvation is for the 218 00:27:08.820 --> 00:27:23.820 and to be ever watchful, vigilant and hostile to the inevitable tendencies of government power to encroach upon liberty. 219 00:27:23.820 --> 00:27:29.820 Expounding Lockean doctrine, Cato puts it thus, 220 00:27:29.820 --> 00:27:33.580 All men are born free. 221 00:27:33.580 --> 00:27:39.780 Liberty is a gift which they receive from God himself, nor can they alienate the same 222 00:27:39.780 --> 00:27:45.220 by consent, though possibly they may forfeit it by crimes. 223 00:27:45.220 --> 00:27:52.900 The right of the magistrate arises only from the right of private men to defend themselves, 224 00:27:52.900 --> 00:27:57.420 to repel injuries, and to punish those who commit them. 225 00:27:57.420 --> 00:28:03.200 That right being conveyed by the society to their public representative, he can execute 226 00:28:03.200 --> 00:28:11.040 the same no further than the benefit and security of that society requires he should. When he 227 00:28:11.040 --> 00:28:19.200 exceeds his commission, his acts are as extrajudicial as are those of any private officer usurping 228 00:28:19.200 --> 00:28:26.820 an unlawful authority. That is, they are void. And every man is answerable for the wrong 229 00:28:26.820 --> 00:28:43.820 Liberty, Cato defined as the power which every man has over his own actions and his right 230 00:28:43.820 --> 00:28:51.220 to enjoy the fruit of his labor, art, and industry. As far as by it he hurts not the 231 00:28:51.220 --> 00:29:09.180 The fruits of a man's honest industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained to him 232 00:29:09.180 --> 00:29:16.740 by natural and eternal equity, as is his title to use them in the manner which he thinks 233 00:29:16.740 --> 00:29:25.460 And thus, with the above limitations, every man is sole lord and arbiter of his own private 234 00:29:25.460 --> 00:29:29.580 actions and property. 235 00:29:29.580 --> 00:29:33.540 From Liberty all other blessings flow. 236 00:29:33.540 --> 00:29:40.180 Indeed, liberty is the divine source of all human happiness. 237 00:29:40.180 --> 00:29:47.020 To possess in security the effects of our industry is the most powerful and reasonable 238 00:29:47.020 --> 00:29:51.340 incitement to be industrious. 239 00:29:51.340 --> 00:29:56.680 And to be able to provide for our children and to leave them all that we have is the 240 00:29:56.680 --> 00:29:59.580 best motive to beget them. 241 00:29:59.580 --> 00:30:04.900 But where property is precarious, labor will languish. 242 00:30:04.900 --> 00:30:10.380 The privileges of thinking, saying and doing what we please and of growing as rich as we 243 00:30:10.380 --> 00:30:17.540 can without any other restriction than that by all this we hurt not the public nor one 244 00:30:17.540 --> 00:30:26.260 another are the glorious privileges of liberty and its effects to live in freedom, plenty 245 00:30:26.260 --> 00:30:28.060 and safety. 246 00:30:28.060 --> 00:30:37.100 Moreover, Cato made clear that the rights and liberties he was enunciating were individual, 247 00:30:37.100 --> 00:30:43.860 and not those of the majority. The despotism of the majority can be as bad as the tyranny 248 00:30:43.860 --> 00:30:51.560 of one or a few. It is a mistaken notion in government that the interest of the majority 249 00:30:51.560 --> 00:31:00.480 is only to be consulted, since in society every man has a right to every man's assistance 250 00:31:00.480 --> 00:31:06.980 in the enjoyment and defense of his private property. Otherwise, the greater number may 251 00:31:06.980 --> 00:31:14.840 sell the lesser and divide their estates amongst themselves, and so, instead of a society where 252 00:31:14.840 --> 00:31:22.740 Where all peaceable men are protected, become a conspiracy of the many against a minority. 253 00:31:22.740 --> 00:31:28.960 With as much equity may one man wantonly dispose of all, and violence may be sanctified by 254 00:31:28.960 --> 00:31:31.960 mere power. 255 00:31:31.960 --> 00:31:38.020 But in this idol of liberty there is always and ever the threat of the encroachments and 256 00:31:38.020 --> 00:31:42.260 aggressions of power, of government. 257 00:31:42.260 --> 00:31:49.620 Only the checks put upon magistrates make nations free, and only the want of such checks 258 00:31:49.620 --> 00:31:52.180 makes them slaves. 259 00:31:52.180 --> 00:31:58.460 They are free where their magistrates are confined within certain bounds set them by 260 00:31:58.460 --> 00:32:05.500 the people, and they are slaves where the magistrates choose their own rules and follow 261 00:32:05.500 --> 00:32:08.420 their lust and humours. 262 00:32:08.420 --> 00:32:15.120 In which a more dreadful curse can befall no people, and therefore most nations in the 263 00:32:15.120 --> 00:32:24.700 world are undone, and those nations only who bridle their governors do not wear chains. 264 00:32:24.700 --> 00:32:31.680 Once acquiring power, rulers will try their best to keep and extend it. 265 00:32:31.680 --> 00:32:38.500 We know by infinite examples and experience that men possessed of power rather than part 266 00:32:38.500 --> 00:32:47.500 with it will do anything, even the worst and the blackest, to keep it. And scarce ever 267 00:32:47.500 --> 00:32:55.200 any man upon earth went out of it as long as he could carry everything his own way in 268 00:32:55.200 --> 00:33:08.200 This seems certain that the good of the world or of their people was not one of their motives either for continuing in power or for quitting it. 269 00:33:08.200 --> 00:33:17.200 It is the nature of power to be ever encroaching and converting every extraordinary power 270 00:33:17.200 --> 00:33:46.020 If liberty, for Cato, is the source of human happiness, the tyranny of power is the source 271 00:33:46.020 --> 00:33:56.500 of Vast Human Misery. Tyrants reduce mankind to the condition of fruits and make that reason, 272 00:33:56.500 --> 00:34:03.740 which God gave them, useless to them. They deprive them even of the blessings of nature, 273 00:34:03.740 --> 00:34:11.020 starve them in the midst of plenty, and frustrate the natural bounty of the earth to men, so 274 00:34:11.020 --> 00:34:17.660 So that nature smiles in vain where tyranny frowns. The very hands of man given them 275 00:34:17.660 --> 00:34:24.820 by nature for their support are turned by tyrants into the instruments of their misery 276 00:34:24.820 --> 00:34:34.700 by being employed in vile drudgeries or destructive wars to gratify the lust and vanity of their 277 00:34:34.700 --> 00:34:45.040 Excrucible Lords, Tyrants are supported by general ruin, they live by the destruction 278 00:34:45.040 --> 00:34:52.340 of mankind, and as fraud and villainy and every species of violence and cruelty are 279 00:34:52.340 --> 00:35:00.520 the props of their throne, so they measure their own happiness and security and strength 280 00:35:00.520 --> 00:35:08.280 by the misery and weakness of their people. That wealth, which dispersed amongst their 281 00:35:08.280 --> 00:35:14.160 subjects and circulated in trade and commerce, would employ, increase and enrich them, is 282 00:35:14.160 --> 00:35:23.680 barbarously robbed from the people and engrossed by these, their oppressors. Alas, power encroaches 283 00:35:23.680 --> 00:35:30.500 daily upon liberty with a success too evident, and the balance between them is almost lost 284 00:35:30.500 --> 00:36:00.060 The corruption and lust for power in human nature are the cause of the aggressive nature 285 00:36:00.060 --> 00:36:30.060 There has been always such a constant and certain fund of corruption and malignity in human nature that it has been rare to find that man whose views and happiness did not center in the gratification of his appetites, and worst appetites 286 00:36:30.060 --> 00:36:37.060 The Theory of Money and Credit 287 00:37:00.060 --> 00:37:04.220 and, afterwards, at its expense. 288 00:37:04.220 --> 00:37:10.100 And if they had been content to have been moderate traitors, mankind would have been 289 00:37:10.100 --> 00:37:13.300 still moderately happy. 290 00:37:13.300 --> 00:37:19.180 But their ambition and treason observing no degrees, there was no degree of vileness and 291 00:37:19.180 --> 00:37:24.260 misery which the poor people did not feel. 292 00:37:24.260 --> 00:37:31.660 The appetites, therefore, of men, especially of great men, are carefully to be observed 293 00:37:31.660 --> 00:37:36.660 and stayed, or else they will never stay themselves. 294 00:37:36.660 --> 00:37:44.160 The experience of every age convinces us that we must not judge of men by what they ought 295 00:37:44.160 --> 00:37:48.920 to do, but by what they will do. 296 00:37:48.920 --> 00:37:55.920 Cato assured his readers that there was no danger that the public might exercise its right of revolution against tyrannical government too frequently, or imprudently, due to settled habits as well as the propaganda and power of the government. 297 00:38:18.920 --> 00:38:48.920 It is foolish to say that this doctrine can be mischievous to society, at least in any proportion to the wild ruin and fatal calamities which must befall and do befall the world when the contrary doctrine is maintained, for all bodies of men subsisting upon their own substance or upon the profits of their trade in industry 298 00:38:48.920 --> 00:39:01.920 find their account so much in ease and peace, and have justly such terrible apprehensions of civil disorders, which destroy everything that they enjoy, 299 00:39:01.920 --> 00:39:12.920 that they always bear a thousand injuries before they return one, and stand under the burdens as long as they can bear them. 300 00:39:12.920 --> 00:39:20.520 What with the force of education and the reverence which people are taught and have been always 301 00:39:20.520 --> 00:39:23.800 used to pay to princes? 302 00:39:23.800 --> 00:39:31.480 What with the perpetual harangues of flatterers, the gaudy pageantry and outside of power, 303 00:39:31.480 --> 00:39:36.320 and its gilded ensigns always glittering in their eyes? 304 00:39:36.320 --> 00:39:41.700 What with the execution of the laws in the sole power of the prince? 305 00:39:41.700 --> 00:39:48.400 But with all the regular magistrates, pompous guards and standing troops, with the fortified 306 00:39:48.400 --> 00:39:56.660 towns, the artillery and all the magazines of war at his disposal, besides large revenues 307 00:39:56.660 --> 00:40:04.100 and multitudes of followers and dependents to support and abet all that he does, obedience 308 00:40:04.100 --> 00:40:11.340 to authority is so well secured that it is wild to imagine that any number of men formidable 309 00:40:11.340 --> 00:40:41.340 are so universal enough to disturb a settled state can unite together and hope to overturn it till the public grievances are so enormous, the oppression so great, and the disaffection so universal that there can be no question remaining whether they're calamities to be real or imaginary and whether the magistrate has protected or endeavored to destroy. 310 00:40:41.340 --> 00:40:50.940 The American colonist eagerly imbibed from Trenchard and Gordon not only the Lockean 311 00:40:50.940 --> 00:40:57.140 doctrine of individual liberty and of the right of revolution against government, in 312 00:40:57.140 --> 00:41:04.940 what Professor Bernard Balin has justly called a superbly readable form, but also, and even 313 00:41:04.940 --> 00:41:12.260 and, more important, the dichotomy between liberty and power, and the ever-constant threat 314 00:41:12.260 --> 00:41:19.340 to the crucial liberties of the people by the eternal incursions and encroachment of 315 00:41:19.340 --> 00:41:25.500 governmental tyranny. Even more concretely, Trenchard and Gordon were not afraid to point 316 00:41:25.500 --> 00:41:32.060 to the corruption and the increasing power of government and its bureaucracy in the relatively 317 00:41:32.060 --> 00:41:40.360 Free England of their day. It was a warning that the American columnists were eagerly 318 00:41:40.360 --> 00:41:43.960 to take to heart. 319 00:41:43.960 --> 00:41:49.560 Libertarian English views were also brought to America with a dramatic burst by the great 320 00:41:49.560 --> 00:41:57.060 liberal Massachusetts minister, Jonathan Mayhew. We have seen how this deist and unitarian 321 00:41:57.060 --> 00:42:04.620 Men studied Locke at Harvard and was later to laud the influence upon him of Locke and 322 00:42:04.620 --> 00:42:14.200 Algernon Sidney. In early 1750, Mayhew delivered his most celebrated political sermon, significantly 323 00:42:14.200 --> 00:42:22.300 as a centennial celebration of the execution of Charles I, a discourse concerning unlimited 324 00:42:22.300 --> 00:42:31.800 Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers. This sermon, which has been called 325 00:42:31.800 --> 00:42:40.420 the warning gun of the American Revolution, was the first expression in 18th century America 326 00:42:40.420 --> 00:42:46.640 of the sacred right of resistance to tyrannical government. 327 00:42:46.640 --> 00:42:57.320 Reason, said Mayhew, dictates the usefulness of obedience to government for social protection. 328 00:42:57.320 --> 00:43:07.760 But when government becomes oppressive, when it robs and ruins the public, then they immediately 329 00:43:07.760 --> 00:43:15.280 cease to be the ordinance and ministers of God, and no more deserve that glorious character 330 00:43:15.280 --> 00:43:45.280 The Theory of Money and Credit 331 00:43:45.280 --> 00:43:54.160 themselves, and posterity from inglorious servitude and ruin. Following Locke and Cato, 332 00:43:54.160 --> 00:44:01.320 Mayhew pointed out that there was little danger of revolution for trivial causes for mankind 333 00:44:01.320 --> 00:44:11.400 in general have a disposition to be submissive and passive and tame under government. Mayhew 334 00:44:11.400 --> 00:44:17.160 You also stressed every man's right and duty of private judgment, basing this in turn on 335 00:44:17.160 --> 00:44:23.320 the nature of man, his capacity for reason and freedom of will, to choose his course 336 00:44:23.320 --> 00:44:30.120 of action, and as criteria for choice, the individual had available to him knowledge 337 00:44:30.120 --> 00:44:36.640 of truth and rightness rooted eternally in the nature of things. 338 00:44:36.640 --> 00:44:44.080 The 1744 pamphlet of the Reverend Elisha Williams of Massachusetts, The Essential Rights and 339 00:44:44.080 --> 00:44:54.620 Liberties, was also frankly locked in throughout, writes Williams, As reason tells us, all are 340 00:44:54.620 --> 00:45:02.660 born thus naturally equal, that is, with an equal right to their persons, so also with 341 00:45:02.660 --> 00:45:09.180 with an equal right to their preservation. And every man having a property in his own 342 00:45:09.180 --> 00:45:17.500 person, the labor of his body and the work of his hands are properly his own, to which 343 00:45:17.500 --> 00:45:26.180 no one has right but himself. It will therefore follow that when he removes anything out of 344 00:45:26.180 --> 00:45:33.940 The State that Nature has provided and left it in, he has his labor with it and joined 345 00:45:33.940 --> 00:45:40.960 something to it that is his own and thereby makes it his property, thus every man having 346 00:45:40.960 --> 00:45:49.260 a natural right to or being proprietor of his own person and his own actions and labor 347 00:45:49.260 --> 00:45:52.100 which we call property. 348 00:45:52.100 --> 00:45:58.340 It certainly follows that no man can have a right to the person or property of another, 349 00:45:58.340 --> 00:46:04.500 and if every man has a right to his person and property, he has also a right to defend 350 00:46:04.500 --> 00:46:13.500 them, and so has a right of punishing all insults upon his person and property. Consequently, 351 00:46:13.500 --> 00:46:24.060 A law violating natural and constitutional rights is no true law and requires no obedience. 352 00:46:24.060 --> 00:46:29.300 The natural right of private judgment was also upheld by the Reverend William Rand of 353 00:46:29.300 --> 00:46:38.140 Massachusetts in 1757 and by the Reverend Joseph Fish of Connecticut three years later. 354 00:46:38.140 --> 00:46:43.380 During this period, many of the New Light ministers, under pressure of establishment 355 00:46:43.380 --> 00:46:49.520 persecution in several colonies, began to move towards a libertarian position. 356 00:46:49.520 --> 00:46:52.360 Alicia Williams was a New Light. 357 00:46:52.360 --> 00:46:58.700 The Reverend Samuel Davies, leader of the Southern Newside Presbyterian, declared in 358 00:46:58.700 --> 00:47:07.820 1751 that people had a legal as well as natural right to follow their own judgment and to 359 00:47:07.820 --> 00:47:14.400 to Gauge Governmental Authority Against the Great Principles of Natural Justice 360 00:47:14.400 --> 00:47:20.840 Davies' focus, of course, was on religious aspects of liberty. Princeton, the training 361 00:47:20.840 --> 00:47:27.460 ground of the New Lights, soon developed as a libertarian center. Davies, president of 362 00:47:27.460 --> 00:47:37.020 Princeton from 1759 to 1761, lauded the English Puritan Revolution and exhorted his listeners 363 00:47:37.020 --> 00:47:44.080 to fight if need be for their liberties. His predecessor, the Rev. Aaron Burr, was noted 364 00:47:44.080 --> 00:47:52.000 as a great friend to liberty, both civil and religious, in state and church. Separates, 365 00:47:52.000 --> 00:47:58.800 new lights in Massachusetts and Connecticut, who insisted on clear-cut separation from 366 00:47:58.800 --> 00:48:05.960 the state establishment, petitioned extensively for religious liberty, an exemption from church 367 00:48:05.960 --> 00:48:12.400 Church Taxes, even though the petitions were almost always spurned by the government. 368 00:48:12.400 --> 00:48:20.720 Daniel Hovey of Mansfield was imprisoned in 1747 for refusing to pay the church tax and 369 00:48:20.720 --> 00:48:27.560 petitioned for relief on the ground that liberty of conscience was the unalienable right of 370 00:48:27.560 --> 00:48:30.280 every rational creature. 371 00:48:30.280 --> 00:48:36.200 The separates of Canterbury went beyond this to include the right of liberty and property. 372 00:48:36.200 --> 00:48:43.320 In their petition of 1749, they asserted that God's law strictly limited the functions 373 00:48:43.320 --> 00:48:51.360 of government to defense of everyone in the free enjoyment and improvement of life, liberty 374 00:48:51.360 --> 00:48:57.960 and property from the force, violence and fraud of others. 375 00:48:57.960 --> 00:49:02.960 There are different opinions in ecclesiastical affairs notwithstanding. 376 00:49:02.960 --> 00:49:10.000 The Canterbury separates also insisted on the natural right of parishioners to dissent 377 00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:18.040 and to separate from them, a welcome consistency for that or indeed for any era. 378 00:49:18.040 --> 00:49:25.580 Another leading libertarian petition came in 1743-44 from Exeter, Massachusetts. 379 00:49:25.580 --> 00:49:32.320 The petition asked, Is not liberty equally every man's right? 380 00:49:32.320 --> 00:49:38.360 The Exeter separates asserted the right of private judgment, the right to separate, and 381 00:49:38.360 --> 00:49:43.060 the right to be free of taxes for a religious establishment. 382 00:49:43.060 --> 00:49:48.760 And though it was rejected, they petitioned again eleven years later. 383 00:49:48.760 --> 00:49:56.160 While England was the great fountainhead of intellectual influence in 18th century America, 384 00:49:56.160 --> 00:50:02.040 France also was important, even in the first half of the century, more so than has been 385 00:50:02.040 --> 00:50:08.760 generally believed. By far the most widely read French writer in the colonies was the 386 00:50:08.760 --> 00:50:16.320 great French liberal and deist Francois Voltaire. Despite the enormous prejudice in America 387 00:50:16.320 --> 00:50:24.720 against Roman Catholicism and against France. Voltaire was able to make his way as a representative 388 00:50:24.720 --> 00:50:32.540 of deist and optimist thought and especially as an avowed disciple of John Locke. For liberalism 389 00:50:32.540 --> 00:50:40.680 in 18th century France was a heritage of 17th century liberalism in England and especially 390 00:50:40.680 --> 00:50:49.920 of John Locke. The young Voltaire spent three years of exile in England in the late 1720s, 391 00:50:49.920 --> 00:50:56.880 and there became a firm advocate of religious liberty and of freedom of speech and press, 392 00:50:56.880 --> 00:51:04.220 and of Locke as their philosophical groundwork. Voltaire's libertarian views were therefore 393 00:51:04.220 --> 00:51:11.380 English by Inspiration and Incontent Voltaire conveyed this liberalism to France 394 00:51:11.380 --> 00:51:20.520 with his Philosophical Letters on the English, published in English in 1733 and then in French 395 00:51:20.520 --> 00:51:28.700 in 1734. In the letters, he spread the Lockean message to the continent. He also praised the 396 00:51:28.700 --> 00:51:35.700 Quakers for their Condemnation of War. His English exile also influenced Voltaire to write 397 00:51:35.700 --> 00:51:43.760 modern European history. His popular History of Charles XII was published so that people 398 00:51:43.760 --> 00:51:52.280 could be cured of the folly of conquest. It is the curious belief of many writers that 399 00:51:52.280 --> 00:52:00.600 Whereas English liberalism was moderate, pragmatic and cautious, French liberalism was destructive, 400 00:52:00.600 --> 00:52:03.600 absolutist and revolutionary. 401 00:52:03.600 --> 00:52:07.000 The truth is almost the reverse. 402 00:52:07.000 --> 00:52:12.400 Liberalism emerged as a coherent doctrine and as a full and powerful force in 17th century 403 00:52:12.400 --> 00:52:17.320 England, and a thoroughgoing revolutionary force at that. 404 00:52:17.320 --> 00:52:22.960 French liberalism in the following century was, frankly, taken from England, albeit at 405 00:52:22.960 --> 00:52:29.040 a time when English liberal thought had been all but stifled by the Whig settlement. But 406 00:52:29.040 --> 00:52:36.200 French liberals despaired of the odds of fomenting revolution against the might of French feudalism 407 00:52:36.200 --> 00:52:45.320 and royal absolutism, which were far more rigidly fastened upon France than upon England. 408 00:52:45.320 --> 00:52:52.080 The eighteenth-century French liberals therefore remained content with the futile cause of 409 00:52:52.080 --> 00:53:01.480 urging liberty upon the royal power as a free gift to the people, a vain hope, when in history 410 00:53:01.480 --> 00:53:09.280 has a ruling elite voluntarily surrendered its power and rule as a free gift, unpressured 411 00:53:09.280 --> 00:53:12.560 by Severe and Persistent Opposition from Below.