WEBVTT NOTE Introduction: The Colonies in the Eighteenth Century 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.960 Conceived in Liberty, Volume Two, Salutary Neglect, The American Colonies in the First 2 00:00:07.960 --> 00:00:14.600 Half of the Eighteenth Century, by Murray N. Rothbard. 3 00:00:14.600 --> 00:00:21.760 By liberty I understand the power which every man has over his own actions, and his right 4 00:00:21.760 --> 00:00:29.760 to enjoy the fruit of his labor, art and industry, as far as by it he hurts not the society or 5 00:00:29.760 --> 00:00:36.680 or any members of it, by taking from any member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he 6 00:00:36.680 --> 00:00:45.080 himself enjoys. The fruits of a man's honest industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained 7 00:00:45.080 --> 00:00:52.720 to him by natural and eternal equity, as is his title to use them in the manner which 8 00:00:52.720 --> 00:01:00.880 which he thinks fit. And thus, with the above limitations, every man is so lord and arbiter 9 00:01:00.880 --> 00:01:08.960 of his own private actions and property. Indeed, liberty is the divine source of all human 10 00:01:08.960 --> 00:01:16.940 happiness. To possess in security the effects of our industry is the most powerful and reasonable 11 00:01:16.940 --> 00:01:46.940 to be industrious and to be able to provide for our children and to leave them all that we have is the best motive to beget them but where property is precarious labor will languish the privileges of thinking saying and doing what we please and of growing as rich as we can without any other restriction then that by all this we hurt not the poor 12 00:01:46.940 --> 00:01:55.380 Public, Nor One Another, are the glorious privileges of liberty, and its effects to 13 00:01:55.380 --> 00:01:59.420 live in freedom, plenty and safety. 14 00:01:59.420 --> 00:02:07.180 Alas, power encroaches daily upon liberty, with a success too evident, and the balance 15 00:02:07.180 --> 00:02:09.900 between them is almost lost. 16 00:02:09.900 --> 00:02:18.180 Tyranny has engrossed almost the whole earth and striking at mankind, root and branch makes 17 00:02:18.180 --> 00:02:21.740 the world a slaughterhouse. 18 00:02:21.740 --> 00:02:31.220 Cato's Letters, Volume 2, Introduction, The Colonies in the Eighteenth Century 19 00:02:31.220 --> 00:02:39.600 After the upheavals of the period of the Glorious Revolution in England, late 1680s, early 1690s, 20 00:02:39.600 --> 00:02:46.000 The American colonies had settled down into an uneasy truce by the end of the first decade 21 00:02:46.000 --> 00:02:52.520 of the eighteenth century. During the first half of the eighteenth century, or more precisely 22 00:02:52.520 --> 00:03:00.900 from about 1710 until the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, the colonies settled 23 00:03:00.900 --> 00:03:07.960 into a relatively stable society and form of government. Stable relative to the swift 24 00:03:07.960 --> 00:03:14.000 and Dramatic Changes of the Preceding Century when the American Colonies were founded. 25 00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:20.640 The history of the colonies during this period can therefore be examined in a far more cross-sectional 26 00:03:20.640 --> 00:03:27.000 and less chronological manner than can the early century or the dramatic and exciting 27 00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:32.400 pre-revolutionary and revolutionary eras that followed. 28 00:03:32.400 --> 00:03:38.880 But the first half of the 18th century was not only as stable time for the colonies. 29 00:03:38.880 --> 00:03:44.080 It also saw far greater uniformity between the separate colonies than could have been 30 00:03:44.080 --> 00:03:46.640 imagined in the preceding century. 31 00:03:46.640 --> 00:03:54.040 The diversity of religion, of motivation, of government, of culture, between the various 32 00:03:54.040 --> 00:03:57.080 colonies had been enormous. 33 00:03:57.080 --> 00:04:02.600 What possible connection could there be between the grim Puritan theocrats of Massachusetts 34 00:04:02.600 --> 00:04:10.540 Bay and the tolerant Pacific and enterprising Quakers of Pennsylvania, between the Puritans 35 00:04:10.540 --> 00:04:17.780 and the aristocratic landed elite of tobacco-growing Virginia, or between the Dutch in New Amsterdam 36 00:04:17.780 --> 00:04:20.900 and the Swedes on the Delaware? 37 00:04:20.900 --> 00:04:27.260 But the events and upheavals of the 1680s and 1690s had sown for the first time a firm 38 00:04:27.260 --> 00:04:34.260 thread of uniformity throughout the colonies, the common imposition of political institutions, 39 00:04:34.260 --> 00:04:40.660 a common relationship to the mother country, Great Britain. These common experiences were 40 00:04:40.660 --> 00:04:47.460 slowly but surely too welled as solidarity between these once totally disparate settlements, 41 00:04:47.460 --> 00:04:53.940 A solidarity that would ripen. Without these unifying experiences over the first half of 42 00:04:53.940 --> 00:05:01.660 the century, the united effort of the American Revolution would have been impossible. Politically, 43 00:05:01.660 --> 00:05:07.780 virtually every colony had a royally appointed governor, an upper house, or council, and 44 00:05:07.780 --> 00:05:15.020 a democratically elected lower house, or assembly, engaged in a quiet but critical power struggle 45 00:05:15.020 --> 00:05:45.020 The Royal Appointees 46 00:05:45.020 --> 00:06:14.020 Another vital unifying factor was the spread of a conscious libertarian ideology throughout the colonies during this period, influenced directly by English libertarians who engaged not only in trenchant theoretical arguments, but also in a caustic and powerful critique of the political institutions within Britain itself. 47 00:06:14.020 --> 00:06:23.020 In the vital field of religion, the contrasting deistic movement and the great awakening spread throughout the colonies. 48 00:06:23.020 --> 00:06:31.020 If the result was a deep and long-lasting split between the rationalistic elite and the evangelical masses, 49 00:06:31.020 --> 00:06:43.020 still both movements served to unify the colonies by cutting across the previously disparate and contrasting religious passions of the separate colonies. 50 00:06:43.020 --> 00:07:05.020 Before turning to these common experiences, which tended to unify the colonies and which set the stage, directly or indirectly, for the new nation in the latter part of the century, let us turn to a rundown of the separate colonies, which after all were still separate and diverse in the first half of the century.