WEBVTT NOTE 47. Wilkes and America 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.400 Volume 3, Chapter 47, Wilkes and America 2 00:00:06.400 --> 00:00:12.760 It was no accident that Alexander MacDougall tried to emulate Wilkes. Wilkes had indeed 3 00:00:12.760 --> 00:00:19.160 been the hero and the inspiration of the libertarian movement on both sides of the Atlantic. This 4 00:00:19.160 --> 00:00:26.280 was particularly true in the period since his incarceration in June 1768, an imprisonment 5 00:00:26.280 --> 00:00:30.020 which continued until the spring of 1770. 6 00:00:30.020 --> 00:00:36.000 During his term in jail, Wilkes' supporters ran him successfully four times for parliament 7 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:41.920 in Middlesex, but four times he was denied his seat by parliament itself. 8 00:00:41.920 --> 00:00:49.720 After the third ripoff, a mob surrounded the royal palace shouting, Wilkes and no king! 9 00:00:49.720 --> 00:00:52.920 and was dispersed by troops. 10 00:00:52.920 --> 00:00:57.980 The connections between Wilkes and the American liberal movement enhanced each other's knowledge 11 00:00:57.980 --> 00:01:03.740 of events in the other land. We have seen that the Boston Sons of Liberty struck up 12 00:01:03.740 --> 00:01:10.980 an extensive correspondence with Wilkes in prison. On October 5, 1768, the Boston Sons 13 00:01:10.980 --> 00:01:18.040 wrote admiringly to Wilkes that he was a martyr to universal liberty. Among the prominent 14 00:01:18.040 --> 00:01:26.760 Bostonians who wrote to Wilkes were Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., John Adams, Sam Adams, Dr. Thomas 15 00:01:26.760 --> 00:01:35.520 Young, Joseph Warren, William Palfrey, and Josiah Quincy, Jr. One Bostonian reported 16 00:01:35.520 --> 00:01:41.480 that he had dined with Wilkes in jail and that they both had toasted to the King, to 17 00:01:41.480 --> 00:01:49.840 Liberty, The Farmer, John Dickinson, and James Otis Esquire of Boston. 18 00:01:49.840 --> 00:01:55.440 The closest connection between Wilkes and the American liberals was Arthur Lee, a Virginian 19 00:01:55.440 --> 00:01:57.520 living in London. 20 00:01:57.520 --> 00:02:02.800 Keeping in close touch with the Wilkite movement, through Lee were such leading Americans as 21 00:02:02.800 --> 00:02:07.920 John Dickinson and Arthur's brother, Richard Henry Lee. 22 00:02:07.920 --> 00:02:13.220 Dr. Lee was responsible for a clause in the Wilkite Middlesex Petition denouncing the 23 00:02:13.220 --> 00:02:19.860 oppression of the colonies by Great Britain. Others who served as a liaison between Wilkes 24 00:02:19.860 --> 00:02:25.400 and the American Libertarians were George Haley, Wilkes' brother-in-law, who was the 25 00:02:25.400 --> 00:02:32.500 English commercial agent for John Hancock and William Palfrey, and Lord Sheriffs William 26 00:02:32.500 --> 00:02:38.620 William Lee and Stephen Serrer, American-born merchants who were mercantile partners of 27 00:02:38.620 --> 00:02:45.760 a prominent Bostonian. Wilkes then added oppression of the colonies to the catalog of oppressions 28 00:02:45.760 --> 00:02:53.140 for which he habitually denounced the British government. In February 1769, the Boston Suns 29 00:02:53.140 --> 00:03:01.140 wrote to Wilkes that, the fate of Wilkes and America must stand or fall together. Wilkes 30 00:03:01.140 --> 00:03:08.140 Thomas replied at the end of March that Britain had imposed an Asiatic despotism on Boston 31 00:03:08.260 --> 00:03:14.140 by sending in troops, and he pointed to a parallel between the actions of the soldiery 32 00:03:14.140 --> 00:03:21.140 in Boston and those in London. Unlike the more timorous Whigs, the Wilkite radicals 33 00:03:21.540 --> 00:03:28.340 attacked the Declaratory Act and favored far more liberty for the colonies. As the Wilkite 34 00:03:28.340 --> 00:03:34.980 leader the Reverend John Horne eloquently declared, When the people of America are enslaved, 35 00:03:34.980 --> 00:03:42.780 we cannot be free, and they can never be enslaved whilst we continue free. We are stones of 36 00:03:42.780 --> 00:03:51.300 one arch and must stand or fall together. On February 20, 1769, the supporters of Wilkes 37 00:03:51.300 --> 00:03:56.900 formed the Society of the Supporters of the Bill of Rights to raise funds to finance the 38 00:03:56.900 --> 00:04:03.560 and the Wilkite Cause. Many prominent American liberals, including Samuel and John Adams, 39 00:04:03.560 --> 00:04:09.600 were members of this society. Organizing a mass petition campaign to protest Wilkes's 40 00:04:09.600 --> 00:04:15.920 repeated expulsion from his rightfully won seat, the Wilkites went on to denounce the 41 00:04:15.920 --> 00:04:22.760 entire parliament as unrepresentative and therefore corrupt, and this charge helped 42 00:04:22.760 --> 00:04:29.360 to Radicalize Opinion in America. The petition campaign, organized by the Society of the 43 00:04:29.360 --> 00:04:35.780 Supporters of the Bill of Rights, swept not only London, Westminster and Middlesex, but 44 00:04:35.780 --> 00:04:44.160 also Essex, Surrey, Kent and the West Country, including Devon Cornwall in the town of Bristol. 45 00:04:44.160 --> 00:04:50.160 The American Henry Krueger, head of the Independent Society of Bristol, organized a petition in 46 00:04:50.160 --> 00:04:57.160 In mid-July, signed by half of the 5,000 eligible voters of Bristol, protesting both the cruelties 47 00:04:57.160 --> 00:05:05.160 to Wilkes and the un-politic and un-constitutional taxations and regulations on Your Majesty's 48 00:05:05.160 --> 00:05:07.280 Colonies. 49 00:05:07.280 --> 00:05:11.920 Protest against oppression of the American Colonies was also made by the Middlesex and 50 00:05:11.920 --> 00:05:14.460 London Petitions. 51 00:05:14.460 --> 00:05:19.840 Most of the petitions were brief and did not mention America, but nonetheless drew the 52 00:05:19.840 --> 00:05:30.160 In close association with the Wilkite Society, the Whigs, including Rockingham, Seville, 53 00:05:30.160 --> 00:05:36.680 Daldswell and Edmund Burke, successfully organized petitions in the northern and western counties 54 00:05:36.680 --> 00:05:44.160 of England. All in all, 60,000 people, over one quarter of the voters of England, signed 55 00:05:44.160 --> 00:05:51.600 and the Wilkite Petitions, a true mass movement. Despite frantic attempts, the government was 56 00:05:51.600 --> 00:05:57.400 only able to organize counter-petitions in support of a hard line toward Wilkes and the 57 00:05:57.400 --> 00:06:05.720 Americans from the two controlled universities, four counties and two cities. The enthusiasm 58 00:06:05.720 --> 00:06:13.260 of Americans for Wilkes and his cause was indeed enormous. This rhapsodic credo of one 59 00:06:13.260 --> 00:06:20.620 An American pamphlet, widely circulated in Boston in 1769, was typical. 60 00:06:20.620 --> 00:06:29.100 I believe in Wilkes, the firm patriot, maker of number 45, who was born for our good, suffered 61 00:06:29.100 --> 00:06:34.380 under arbitrary power, was banished and imprisoned. 62 00:06:34.380 --> 00:06:39.660 He ascended into purgatory and returned some time after. 63 00:06:39.660 --> 00:06:45.940 I believe in the spirit of his abilities that they will prove to the good of our country 64 00:06:45.940 --> 00:06:52.980 in the resurrection of liberty and the life of universal freedom forever. Amen. 65 00:06:52.980 --> 00:06:58.660 The Americans were wont to compare Wilkes to their 17th century libertarian heroes Milton 66 00:06:58.660 --> 00:07:05.260 and Sidney and their 17th century republican view was enlivened by the resurgence in Britain 67 00:07:05.260 --> 00:07:12.100 of such embodiments of tyranny as standing armies, arbitrary judicial procedures such 68 00:07:12.100 --> 00:07:16.700 as general warrants and burdensome taxation. 69 00:07:16.700 --> 00:07:23.060 This harking back to the highly relevant 17th century struggles was fueled by the publication 70 00:07:23.060 --> 00:07:30.180 of the multi-volume History of England by the noted libertarian Catherine Macaulay. 71 00:07:30.180 --> 00:07:36.740 The work of Mrs. Macaulay, a correspondent of James Otis and an admirer of Dickinson, 72 00:07:36.740 --> 00:07:43.120 was well known and eagerly read in America, as was Wilkes's own published introduction 73 00:07:43.120 --> 00:07:49.260 to his projected history of England at the turn of the 18th century. Mrs. Macaulay was 74 00:07:49.260 --> 00:07:58.420 the sister of the prominent London Wilkite alderman John Solbridge. As 1769 wore on, 75 00:07:58.420 --> 00:08:06.100 The identification of American radicals with Wilkes intensified as the network of interwoven 76 00:08:06.100 --> 00:08:13.940 grievances expanded in Britain and in America. The Boston merchant William Palfrey wrote 77 00:08:13.940 --> 00:08:23.020 Wilkes in the fall of 1769 of the unremitted order of the Sons of Liberty for his cause 78 00:08:23.020 --> 00:08:29.060 and their sympathy in the distress brought by arbitrary ministers upon Great Britain 79 00:08:29.060 --> 00:08:38.060 and her dependencies. The petition movement of late 1769 drew great support in America. 80 00:08:38.060 --> 00:08:44.580 The South Carolina House showed its solidarity with the Wilkite cause in December by sending 81 00:08:44.580 --> 00:08:51.500 to the Society of the Supporters of the Bill of Rights 1,500 pounds sterling in behalf 82 00:08:51.500 --> 00:09:21.500 On behalf of the just and constitutional rights and liberties of the people of Great Britain and America, a group of Maryland liberals sent Wilkes a symbolic 45 hugs heads of tobacco. And a similar action took place in Virginia. These fellow feeling deepened among the Wilkites too. The London public advertiser argued cogently that the cause of liberty in England and America 83 00:09:21.500 --> 00:09:28.460 America is one common cause, because the attacks on both have been made by the same set of 84 00:09:28.460 --> 00:09:34.260 men with the same views and with the same illegal violence. 85 00:09:34.260 --> 00:09:39.900 Furthermore, the Wilkites began to make use of American arguments against Parliament, 86 00:09:39.900 --> 00:09:45.540 and many middle-sex freeholders refused to pay their taxes on the ground that since their 87 00:09:45.540 --> 00:09:52.540 The American non-importation movement, aided by the continuing encouragement given to American non-importation in the Virginia Press by author Lee. 88 00:10:05.060 --> 00:10:12.060 The Americans were particularly interested in the petitions of Middlesex in London, which championed the colonial revolution in the United States. 89 00:10:15.540 --> 00:10:25.540 and which also came from the heart of English radicalism and from the city with which the American liberals most closely identified. 90 00:10:25.540 --> 00:10:36.540 King George's brusque dismissal of the London Petitions in March 1770 had a sharp and chilling impact on opinion in America. 91 00:10:36.540 --> 00:10:45.140 Until then, the king had always been deemed sacrosanct, and only his ministers or politicians 92 00:10:45.140 --> 00:10:50.140 in parliament were held blameworthy for the regime of oppression. 93 00:10:50.140 --> 00:10:58.100 Now, for the first time, the king himself began to be a butt of libertarian attack in 94 00:10:58.100 --> 00:10:59.840 America. 95 00:10:59.840 --> 00:11:07.000 The great radical organs, the Boston Gazette and Peter Timothy's South Carolina Gazette, 96 00:11:07.000 --> 00:11:11.640 were particular harbingers of this new point of view. 97 00:11:11.640 --> 00:11:17.320 The South Carolina radicals were certainly the leaders of this new and vital turn. 98 00:11:17.320 --> 00:11:21.480 Wilksism had particularly flourished in South Carolina. 99 00:11:21.480 --> 00:11:27.280 As we have seen, only the South Carolina Assembly voted funds for the Wilkite cause. 100 00:11:27.280 --> 00:11:34.600 Christopher Gadsden had formed an active Wilkes Club, consisting largely of Charleston artisans, 101 00:11:34.600 --> 00:11:41.440 and had led the successful Wilkes Fund Drive. The Wilkes Fund movement was led by some of 102 00:11:41.440 --> 00:11:48.520 the most prominent men in the province, large planters Thomas Lynch and Thomas Ferguson's, 103 00:11:48.520 --> 00:11:55.080 wealthy lawyers Peter Manigault, James Parson and John Rutledge, and the merchant Benjamin 104 00:11:55.080 --> 00:12:01.800 and Dart. Of the prominent South Carolinians, only William Henry Drayton and the timorous 105 00:12:01.800 --> 00:12:08.920 Henry Lawrence opposed the Wilkes appropriation. South Carolina's Council and Governor as 106 00:12:08.920 --> 00:12:15.320 well as the Crown were indignant at the Assembly's courageous action and denied the right of 107 00:12:15.320 --> 00:12:21.480 the Assembly to appropriate money without their consent. The Assembly retorted, proclaiming 108 00:12:21.480 --> 00:12:45.440 In April 18, 1770, John Wilkes was finally released from prison to take up his duties 109 00:12:45.440 --> 00:12:49.040 as alderman of the City of London. 110 00:12:49.040 --> 00:12:55.400 The release was celebrated throughout the colonies, from Boston to Charleston, but American rejoicing 111 00:12:55.400 --> 00:13:02.000 in Wilkite's successes was not to last long. The road of struggle against the imperial, 112 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:09.000 feudal and oligarchic structure of Great Britain was difficult enough in the best of circumstances, 113 00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:15.040 and essential to that struggle was unity within the radical camp. But in the autumn and winter 114 00:13:15.040 --> 00:13:21.760 In the year of 1770, a tragic and irreparable split occurred deep within the leadership 115 00:13:21.760 --> 00:13:28.260 and cadres of the radical movement. The Wilkite Organization, the Society of the Supporters 116 00:13:28.260 --> 00:13:36.840 of the Bill of Rights, split wide open with John Wilkes on one side and Parson, John Horn, 117 00:13:36.840 --> 00:13:43.380 and John Sawbridge on the other. Historians have attributed the split to personal frictions 118 00:13:43.380 --> 00:14:13.380 Spain had suffered British intrusion into the Falkland Islands, off the tip of the southwest coast of South America, since Pitt's aggressive occupation four years earlier. Now, in June 1770, 119 00:14:13.380 --> 00:14:21.900 Spain moved to reoccupy the Falklands. Britain made ready for war with Spain, egged on by 120 00:14:21.900 --> 00:14:28.460 the warmongering cries of Chatham and Shelburne, both out of power. Chatham had always yearned 121 00:14:28.460 --> 00:14:34.900 for total victory over France and Spain, and now he saw another chance. Chatham denounced 122 00:14:34.900 --> 00:14:41.940 any negotiations with the Spaniards as appeasement of an inferior and untrustworthy race. He 123 00:14:41.940 --> 00:14:47.500 He called for immediate war against France to achieve the total triumph that his, Chatham's, 124 00:14:47.500 --> 00:14:51.820 enemies had denied to England seven years earlier. 125 00:14:51.820 --> 00:14:58.380 Since England, to Chatham, had the God-given right to rule all the islands of the world, 126 00:14:58.380 --> 00:15:03.860 the Spanish occupation of the remote Falklands became a dagger poised at the heart of English 127 00:15:03.860 --> 00:15:05.580 hegemony. 128 00:15:05.580 --> 00:15:10.900 No concession to Spain, however minute, was tolerable. 129 00:15:10.900 --> 00:15:16.580 Such would destroy the edifice of the British Empire by disgraceful expedience to avoid an 130 00:15:16.580 --> 00:15:23.660 ultimately unavoidable final conflict. To maintain Chatham's grandiose claims, England 131 00:15:23.660 --> 00:15:30.420 was supposedly duty-bound to build and support a navy larger than any other two world fleets 132 00:15:30.420 --> 00:15:38.820 combined. Chatham's and Shelbourne's war hysteria had particularly unfortunate effects 133 00:15:38.820 --> 00:15:45.260 on the Radical Movement. All of his political life, Chatham's erratic, charismatic and 134 00:15:45.260 --> 00:15:52.620 ultra-imperialist role confused and weakened the liberal and radical forces in England, 135 00:15:52.620 --> 00:16:01.540 when in opposition, and only then, Chatham characteristically made libertarian noises. 136 00:16:01.540 --> 00:16:05.780 And the liberals felt that they could not ignore an opposition alliance against the 137 00:16:05.780 --> 00:16:11.580 of Government with a man as popular and influential as Pitt. 138 00:16:11.580 --> 00:16:17.540 Since the autumn of 1768, when Pitt left the cabinet, Chatham had strengthened his ties 139 00:16:17.540 --> 00:16:23.420 with the London radicals and now he was in a position to split their movement. 140 00:16:23.420 --> 00:16:30.420 Specifically in the autumn of 1770, the government, under the pressure of the War Party, frantically 141 00:16:30.420 --> 00:16:37.820 began to build up its Navy and hence to press gang sailors for its ships. John Wilkes, as 142 00:16:37.820 --> 00:16:45.500 an alderman of London, refused to sanction the use of press warrants in London and obstructed 143 00:16:45.500 --> 00:16:53.060 Navy impressmen as an illegal action making slaves of free men. Thus, in a clash between 144 00:16:53.060 --> 00:16:58.060 Liberty and the Supposed Requirements of Empire and State 145 00:16:58.060 --> 00:17:01.040 John Wilkes chose liberty. 146 00:17:01.040 --> 00:17:06.840 Not only did many other London magistrates follow Wilkes in refusing to honor press warrants, 147 00:17:06.840 --> 00:17:12.880 but he led the London Common Council in calling for the prosecution of any magistrates or 148 00:17:12.880 --> 00:17:18.500 constables who issued or executed such warrants for impressment. 149 00:17:18.500 --> 00:17:24.900 The new Lord Mayor of London, Brass Crosby, a Wilkite selected with the help of John Wilkes, 150 00:17:24.900 --> 00:17:30.500 refused to accept press warrants and thus prevented press ganging within the City of 151 00:17:30.500 --> 00:17:36.840 London. To Chatham, all of this was treason. Wilkes and the radicals, he declared, were 152 00:17:36.840 --> 00:17:42.360 laboring to cut off the right hand of the community and to shake the public safety and 153 00:17:42.360 --> 00:17:48.480 should be tried before the House of Commons. It is surely no coincidence that in the split 154 00:17:48.480 --> 00:17:54.040 that then developed within the radical movement, the radical leaders associated with Chatham 155 00:17:54.040 --> 00:18:01.320 and Shelburne joined the anti-Wilkes camp, while Rockingham and the Whigs, who opposed 156 00:18:01.320 --> 00:18:05.840 the war agitation, sided with Wilkes. 157 00:18:05.840 --> 00:18:12.400 The government finally reached a settlement with Spain in early 1771, restoring the English 158 00:18:12.400 --> 00:18:18.200 of the Spanish Port in the Falklands. But soon afterward, England quietly withdrew from 159 00:18:18.200 --> 00:18:25.400 the port, therewith indicating a secret yielding to the Spanish claim. Wilkes, however, continued 160 00:18:25.400 --> 00:18:33.120 his anti-militarist stand and warned, upon becoming sheriff of London in late 1771, that 161 00:18:33.120 --> 00:18:40.380 he would no longer allow the army to interfere in civil functions in London. The sharp decline 162 00:18:40.380 --> 00:18:47.120 in the Wilkite Movement in the years after 1770, as well as the strength of Tory rule 163 00:18:47.120 --> 00:18:53.500 in Great Britain, served greatly to disillusion American liberals about the possibility of 164 00:18:53.500 --> 00:19:00.420 radical success in the home country. From now on, they realized that Americans would 165 00:19:00.420 --> 00:19:07.420 have to rely principally on themselves. If the libertarian ideals of most Americans and 166 00:19:07.420 --> 00:19:14.420 By late 1771, Sam Adams was writing, authorly, that brute force seemed to have made the English people afraid to compel redress of their grievances, and that, therefore, with no great expectation of some happy event from your side of the water, Americans would have to be in America. 167 00:19:37.420 --> 00:19:43.180 Erica herself, under God, must finally work out her own salvation.