WEBVTT NOTE Roundheads, Whigs, and Decivilization: A Hoppean Analysis of Stuart England 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.840 I'm very happy to be with you today and I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you. 2 00:00:04.840 --> 00:00:09.320 I first discovered the Mises Institute, like many others I'm sure, about four years ago 3 00:00:09.320 --> 00:00:10.760 on the internet. 4 00:00:10.760 --> 00:00:14.760 I was a graduate student at the time and I was fortunate enough to attend a week-long 5 00:00:14.760 --> 00:00:22.900 seminar and another conference here in 2002 and when I got the job offer at Falkirk University 6 00:00:22.900 --> 00:00:27.960 last year, I excitedly told my wife that one of the best things about living in Montgomery 7 00:00:27.960 --> 00:00:46.320 When Hans Hoppe's book, Democracy, the God that Failed, first appeared, I read some reviews 8 00:00:46.320 --> 00:00:52.960 and familiarized myself with its thesis concerning democracy's inferiority to monarchy without 9 00:00:52.960 --> 00:00:54.080 actually reading the book. 10 00:00:54.080 --> 00:01:24.080 I think the price tag on the hardcover edition scared me away since I was still a student at the time I've since acquired and read it but I remember musing even back then that if what Hoppe was saying were correct then much of early modern and modern European and American history would have to be re-examined or even rewritten including the history of the field in which I specialized in graduate school 16th and 17th century England the period of the Tudor and Stuart dynasties I continued to 11 00:01:24.080 --> 00:01:40.080 I had to toy with this idea for a few years and decided that if no one beat me to it, I would try my hand at a Hoppeian analysis of early modern England once my PhD was finished and I was comfortably ensconced in a tenure-track university position somewhere. 12 00:01:40.080 --> 00:01:48.080 My conversations with Joe Stromberg at a recent conference inspired me to get serious about that project again, and so here I am today. 13 00:01:48.080 --> 00:02:04.080 What I propose to do is share some preliminary thoughts on how the nature of civil government in early modern England illustrates Hoppe's thesis concerning the relative merits, or more appropriately demerits, of monarchy and democracy. 14 00:02:04.080 --> 00:02:13.080 And I say illustrates, not proves, since of course Hoppe's theory is reached deductively and therefore not subject to empirical verification. 15 00:02:13.080 --> 00:02:18.080 In the interest of time, I've chosen to focus on the 17th century, the period of the Stuart Dynasty. 16 00:02:18.080 --> 00:02:26.080 This period is of particular interest because it includes England's experiment in Republican government under Oliver Cromwell, 17 00:02:26.080 --> 00:02:34.080 as well as the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688, which marked a big step in the direction of democracy in England. 18 00:02:34.080 --> 00:02:39.080 Most of you are probably familiar with the Huyg interpretation of history, 19 00:02:39.080 --> 00:02:44.440 which was dominant in the 19th and well into the 20th centuries and which Murray Rothbard 20 00:02:44.440 --> 00:02:50.440 sharply criticized in his own historical writings. The Whig historian's central assumption was that 21 00:02:50.440 --> 00:02:56.280 in the words of J.P. Kenyon, throughout our history we have progressed steadily and it seems 22 00:02:56.280 --> 00:03:02.680 inevitably towards a state of social and political near perfection located in the present day or in 23 00:03:02.680 --> 00:03:06.160 in this case on the eve of World War I. 24 00:03:06.160 --> 00:03:08.440 Stuart England occupied a key place 25 00:03:08.440 --> 00:03:10.760 in the classical Whig interpretation 26 00:03:10.760 --> 00:03:12.640 as the period when significant progress 27 00:03:12.640 --> 00:03:16.160 towards that ideal parliamentary democratic system 28 00:03:16.160 --> 00:03:18.960 was made when parliament established itself 29 00:03:18.960 --> 00:03:22.760 as the monarch's equal or even superior. 30 00:03:22.760 --> 00:03:24.920 Two of the most famous works of the Whig School, 31 00:03:24.920 --> 00:03:27.900 namely Gardener's account of the civil wars 32 00:03:27.900 --> 00:03:30.700 and Macaulay's treatment of the Glorious Revolution 33 00:03:30.700 --> 00:03:32.980 deal with the Stuart period. 34 00:03:32.980 --> 00:03:35.360 The falling from favor of the Whig interpretation 35 00:03:35.360 --> 00:03:39.420 in the 1920s and 1930s was a serious blow to English 36 00:03:39.420 --> 00:03:42.020 and more specifically Stuart historians 37 00:03:42.020 --> 00:03:45.380 who now had no generally agreed upon theoretical framework 38 00:03:45.380 --> 00:03:47.780 from which to construct an assessment of the past. 39 00:03:48.680 --> 00:03:52.500 The orthodox Marxist interpretation, which like the Whig 40 00:03:52.500 --> 00:03:56.320 was teleological and linear in its approach, 41 00:03:56.320 --> 00:03:58.940 found some adherence but never became standard 42 00:03:58.940 --> 00:04:00.540 and it has since been discredited 43 00:04:00.540 --> 00:04:02.720 even among mainstream historians. 44 00:04:02.720 --> 00:04:04.640 Although in recent years, 45 00:04:04.640 --> 00:04:07.500 the race class gender deconstructionism 46 00:04:07.500 --> 00:04:09.700 endemic in literature departments, 47 00:04:09.700 --> 00:04:11.540 unfortunately has made some headway 48 00:04:11.540 --> 00:04:14.900 in the heretofore more sensible history departments. 49 00:04:14.900 --> 00:04:18.380 No overarching theory of history has yet arisen 50 00:04:18.380 --> 00:04:20.780 with the potential to replace the Whig interpretation 51 00:04:20.780 --> 00:04:23.580 and sweep the field of its competitors. 52 00:04:23.580 --> 00:04:25.180 To quote Kenyon again, 53 00:04:25.180 --> 00:04:31.500 Instead of striding along a brightly illuminated high road, the historian now shuffles uneasily 54 00:04:31.500 --> 00:04:37.460 in a thick fog from one lamppost to another, the lampposts wide apart and eccentrically 55 00:04:37.460 --> 00:04:42.100 sited and frequently shifting their position. 56 00:04:42.100 --> 00:04:46.260 What's exciting to me about Professor Hoppe's theory is its potential to clear up the center 57 00:04:46.260 --> 00:04:48.800 of the confusion in this field. 58 00:04:48.800 --> 00:04:53.060 It provides a framework within which we can more clearly evaluate important developments 59 00:04:53.060 --> 00:04:55.740 and events like the Glorious Revolution. 60 00:04:55.740 --> 00:05:00.340 At the same time, its non-teleological nature frees us 61 00:05:00.340 --> 00:05:02.900 from slavishly searching for predetermined outcomes 62 00:05:02.900 --> 00:05:07.400 such as the triumph of democracy or of the proletariat. 63 00:05:07.400 --> 00:05:09.540 Likewise, because Hoppe's thesis 64 00:05:09.540 --> 00:05:12.420 does not purport to explain everything, 65 00:05:12.420 --> 00:05:15.300 it leaves room for appreciation of other incentives 66 00:05:15.300 --> 00:05:17.100 that motivate historical actors, 67 00:05:17.100 --> 00:05:20.740 some of which may run counter to and even overpower 68 00:05:20.740 --> 00:05:22.980 the incentives Hoppe sees as being inherent 69 00:05:22.980 --> 00:05:26.180 in the Structures of Monarchical and Democratic Government. 70 00:05:26.180 --> 00:05:30.180 In the case of Stuart England, as we will see, religious conviction plays a very powerful 71 00:05:30.180 --> 00:05:33.060 role in this regard. 72 00:05:33.060 --> 00:05:37.980 The genealogy of the Stuart dynasty that I've passed out comes from the British Monarchy's 73 00:05:37.980 --> 00:05:45.980 official website, and I hope it will help everyone keep up with the discussion today. 74 00:05:45.980 --> 00:05:50.060 I'll give a brief overview of each of the monarchs to establish a chronology of the 75 00:05:50.060 --> 00:06:05.060 The First Stuart King of England was James I, who inherited the throne in 1603 from Elizabeth I, his first cousin twice removed. 76 00:06:05.060 --> 00:06:14.060 If you ask the man on the street what he knows about James, he will probably say something about the King James Version of the Bible, which was published in 1611. 77 00:06:14.060 --> 00:06:24.060 He might also tell you that James was homosexual, and given Professor Hoppe's experience, perhaps I shouldn't comment on how this alleged homosexuality might have affected James' time preference. 78 00:06:24.060 --> 00:06:33.060 In fact, the evidence for James' homosexuality is inconclusive, and there are solid grounds for believing that he was not so inclined. 79 00:06:33.060 --> 00:06:42.060 James' reign was largely a peaceful one by the standards of the day, and he might be judged the most successful Stuart King by Hoppean standards. 80 00:06:42.060 --> 00:06:51.060 Despite his strident defense of the divine right of kings, in practice he frequently negotiated with parliament and otherwise acted in a prudent manner. 81 00:06:51.060 --> 00:06:59.060 Upon his death in 1625, James was succeeded by his second son, the first had died prematurely, Charles I. 82 00:06:59.060 --> 00:07:09.060 Charles ran into difficulties with parliament in his early years over, what else, money, and his frustration led him to dissolve parliament in 1629 83 00:07:09.060 --> 00:07:16.060 and attempt to govern without it, relying only on his traditional sources of revenue for the next 11 years. 84 00:07:16.060 --> 00:07:26.060 This effort was reasonably successful until Charles made a disastrous attempt in 1637 to impose the English Book of Common Prayer on the Church of Scotland. 85 00:07:26.060 --> 00:07:33.060 James and Charles were both King of England and King of Scotland simultaneously, although the two remained separate countries. 86 00:07:33.060 --> 00:07:40.060 The members of the Church of Scotland generally believe that the English prayer books skirted too closely to Roman Catholicism. 87 00:07:40.060 --> 00:07:48.060 The Scots revolted against this suspected potpourri and actually fielded an army which invaded and occupied the northern English counties. 88 00:07:48.060 --> 00:07:59.060 Charles did not have sufficient revenue on his own to raise an army to repel the Scots and by 1640 he found himself compelled to summon a new parliament in order to secure the needed funds. 89 00:07:59.060 --> 00:08:04.060 Unfortunately for Charles, repelling the Scots was not the new parliament's top priority. 90 00:08:04.060 --> 00:08:07.060 Many members, indeed, sympathized with the Scots' aims. 91 00:08:07.060 --> 00:08:11.060 And it demanded concessions from Charles before voting him any money. 92 00:08:11.060 --> 00:08:15.060 Charles angrily dissolved the body and called for new elections, 93 00:08:15.060 --> 00:08:18.060 which returned an even more resolute set of gentry, 94 00:08:18.060 --> 00:08:22.060 determined to end what they viewed as royal abuses of prerogative. 95 00:08:22.060 --> 00:08:26.060 The second parliament of 1640 has gone down in history as the long parliament, 96 00:08:26.060 --> 00:08:31.060 in the Long Parliament because it did not officially dissolve until 1659. 97 00:08:31.060 --> 00:08:40.060 It ordered the arrest and impeachment of Charles' most trusted advisors and demanded that Charles permanently give up some of his traditional feudal rights. 98 00:08:40.060 --> 00:08:45.060 The inability of the two sides to reconcile led to an outbreak of civil war in 1642. 99 00:08:45.060 --> 00:08:51.060 The royalists, or cavaliers, and the parliamentarians, or the roundheads, 100 00:08:51.060 --> 00:08:59.060 clashed repeatedly with the Scots occasionally intervening on one side or the other until 1648, at which point the Parliament had triumphed. 101 00:08:59.060 --> 00:09:09.060 In January 1649, Parliament, now a rump purged of its moderate elements and under the influence of the Charismatic General Oliver Cromwell, 102 00:09:09.060 --> 00:09:16.060 took its most radical step yet by executing Charles and abolishing the monarchy and House of Lords. 103 00:09:16.060 --> 00:09:25.060 This inaugurated an 11-year period known as the Interregnum during which time England had a Republican government under the leadership of Cromwell. 104 00:09:25.060 --> 00:09:44.060 This regime became unstable after Cromwell's death in 1658, and in 1660 a general monk and his troops seized control of London and issued an invitation to Charles I's son, also named Charles, who was then living in France, to return to England and become king. 105 00:09:44.060 --> 00:09:50.060 This invitation was eagerly accepted, and Charles II was restored to the throne in triumph in 1660. 106 00:09:50.060 --> 00:10:02.060 Charles' reign was marked by several catastrophes, including war, outbreak of plague, the Great Fire of London, and the formation of the first political parties. 107 00:10:02.060 --> 00:10:06.060 However, none of them was severe enough to bring about his downfall. 108 00:10:06.060 --> 00:10:18.060 He died in 1685, leaving behind 13 children, unfortunately they were all illegitimate, and thus the succession devolved on his younger brother, who became James II. 109 00:10:18.060 --> 00:10:29.060 James appeared to be in a very strong position on his accession, despite his publicly avowed Roman Catholicism, which had occasioned alarm in parliament during the latter years of Charles II. 110 00:10:29.060 --> 00:10:47.060 2. Both his daughters, already adults by that time, had been raised Protestants and were next in the line of succession, and the general feeling was that James, who was already old by 17th century standards in his mid-fifties, would not be around long enough to cause any lasting problems. 111 00:10:47.060 --> 00:11:01.560 However, within three years, he had alienated Parliament by, among other things, attempting to form a permanent standing army and claiming the authority to suspend any law that displeased him, such as the ban on Roman Catholic office holders, at any time. 112 00:11:01.560 --> 00:11:17.560 The final straw for committed Protestants came in 1688 when James' second wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a son, who would undoubtedly be raised as a Roman Catholic, thus raising the prospect of an endless succession of papist kings. 113 00:11:17.560 --> 00:11:28.560 The result was the Glorious Revolution, in which leading bishops and whigs issued an invitation to James' son-in-law and daughter, William of Orange and Mary, the rulers of the Netherlands, 114 00:11:28.560 --> 00:11:32.560 to come to England with an army and save the country from the tyranny which threatened it. 115 00:11:32.560 --> 00:11:36.560 They agreed to do so and encountered little resistance, 116 00:11:36.560 --> 00:11:42.560 James having lost his nerve and fled the country before testing his luck on the battlefield. 117 00:11:42.560 --> 00:11:45.560 This is another reason why the revolution was considered glorious, 118 00:11:45.560 --> 00:11:50.560 in addition to the fact that the Whigs won, there was virtually no bloodshed. 119 00:11:50.560 --> 00:11:53.560 William and Mary were declared king and queen by parliament, 120 00:11:53.560 --> 00:11:57.560 but from this point on it was quite clear that parliament was to be the senior partner in government. 121 00:11:57.560 --> 00:12:02.360 and Government, the body to whom the joint sovereigns owed their position. 122 00:12:02.360 --> 00:12:07.080 Mary died in 1694, followed by William in 1702. 123 00:12:07.080 --> 00:12:11.880 They were childless, and at that time Mary's younger sister Anne, also childless, became 124 00:12:11.880 --> 00:12:16.840 queen and reigned until her death in 1714. 125 00:12:16.840 --> 00:12:23.520 James II's son, James Francis Edward Stuart, was still living in exile at that time but 126 00:12:23.520 --> 00:12:35.520 The Parliament refused to allow the Crown to pass to him, opting instead to offer it to George, the Elector of Hanover, who was the grandson of Charles I's sister, Elizabeth. 127 00:12:35.520 --> 00:12:47.520 George, who could not even speak English, accepted the offer and became George I, the first English monarch from the House of Hanover, which still occupies the British throne today under the name of Windsor. 128 00:12:47.520 --> 00:12:52.520 They changed the name during World War I because Hanover sounded too German. 129 00:12:52.520 --> 00:12:56.080 So much for the overview of the chronology of Stuart England, I would now like to point 130 00:12:56.080 --> 00:13:01.360 out some specific developments of the period which I believe illustrate Hoppe's theory 131 00:13:01.360 --> 00:13:07.560 of monarchy and democracy. Hoppe characterizes the monarchy as a situation in which the state 132 00:13:07.560 --> 00:13:13.200 and its attendant monopoly of violence are privately owned by the monarch. This was essentially 133 00:13:13.200 --> 00:13:17.840 the case in the England of 1603, even though the precedent had been established during 134 00:13:17.840 --> 00:13:22.480 in the course of the Middle Ages that Parliament had to approve any new tax before it could 135 00:13:22.480 --> 00:13:28.960 be lawfully collected. The English, over time, had developed the quite sensible belief that 136 00:13:28.960 --> 00:13:34.680 under normal circumstances the king was to live of his own, that is to say, provide for 137 00:13:34.680 --> 00:13:40.560 the expenses of government from his own pocket. Taxes, with the exception of customs duties, 138 00:13:40.560 --> 00:13:46.520 were only to be levied in extraordinary conditions such as war. Thus, the summoning of Parliament 139 00:13:46.520 --> 00:13:54.520 traditionally had been received throughout the realm with trepidation and suspicion because it was perceived to have few other functions in that of raising taxes. 140 00:13:54.520 --> 00:14:00.520 One of the reasons the reign of Elizabeth I was considered a golden age is because she hardly ever summoned Parliament. 141 00:14:00.520 --> 00:14:08.520 As was customary in the era, Parliament voted to grant the traditional customs duties to James for life upon his accession, 142 00:14:08.520 --> 00:14:13.220 but he was expected to make do with no other tax revenue in peacetime. 143 00:14:13.220 --> 00:14:18.620 James did have other sources of income. In addition to his revenue from the crown lands, 144 00:14:18.620 --> 00:14:24.740 along with revenue from fines and forfeitures, he enjoyed several incidents of feudal overlordship. 145 00:14:24.740 --> 00:14:31.740 Among these were wardship, which was the right to take custody of estates whose owners were 146 00:14:31.740 --> 00:14:37.000 considered ineffectual. For example, there were miners or widows or lunatics or something 147 00:14:37.000 --> 00:14:56.000 And then he also has the right of marriage, which is the authority to arrange the marriages of the heirs of these estates that he has taken into custody. And normally he would be compensated for this by whoever gets to marry the heir to the estate. 148 00:14:56.000 --> 00:15:02.000 He also has the right of respite of homage, which is a sort of estate tax. 149 00:15:02.000 --> 00:15:10.000 The heir to an estate had to pay this fine to James before he could take custody of the estate. 150 00:15:10.000 --> 00:15:13.000 James also has the right of disdraint of knighthood, 151 00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:20.000 which is the requirement that anyone possessing property valued at 40 pounds or more assume knighthood 152 00:15:20.000 --> 00:15:23.000 and perform the duties of a vassal to the king. 153 00:15:23.000 --> 00:15:31.000 and also the right of purveyance, which was the authority to levy food and transport for the royal court at below market prices. 154 00:15:31.000 --> 00:15:41.000 So together these sources of income produced a considerable sum each year, despite the fact that Elizabeth I had sold off roughly a third of the crown lands. 155 00:15:41.000 --> 00:15:47.000 And they should have been sufficient for peacetime administration had James been a frugal man, which he was not. 156 00:15:47.000 --> 00:16:06.000 Deficit spending was a problem for him from the beginning, and from at least 1611 there was talk of striking a bargain with Parliament under which James would give up some of his feudal prerogatives, which graded on some 17th century sensibilities, in exchange for a permanent increase in his tax revenues. 157 00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:36.000 Nothing much actually happened on this front during James' reign, and the traditional sources of royal income were still such that Charles I could make a go of governing without Parliament at all during the peaceful 1630s, although he was compelled to revive some prerogatives which had fallen into disuse in the Middle Ages, and also make very creative use of some others in order to guarantee a sufficient revenue to keep the government operational. Contrast this situation in which the monarch funds the lion's 158 00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:46.000 William III was almost entirely dependent on parliament, not only for wartime financing, but also for the normal expenses of the government and even of his own household. 159 00:16:46.000 --> 00:16:52.000 To his chagrin, parliament decided to reduce his allowance on at least one occasion in the 1690s. 160 00:16:52.000 --> 00:16:53.920 and even of his own household. 161 00:16:53.920 --> 00:16:56.840 To his chagrin, Parliament decided to reduce his allowance 162 00:16:56.840 --> 00:17:00.400 on at least one occasion in the 1690s. 163 00:17:00.400 --> 00:17:03.400 This change in the primary source of government revenue 164 00:17:03.400 --> 00:17:06.840 dated from the 1640s and remained entrenched 165 00:17:06.840 --> 00:17:10.080 even after the restoration in 1660. 166 00:17:10.080 --> 00:17:11.480 This is why I think we can say 167 00:17:11.480 --> 00:17:13.800 that by the late 17th century, 168 00:17:13.800 --> 00:17:16.240 England, despite being a monarchy, 169 00:17:16.240 --> 00:17:18.520 had made an important shift in the direction 170 00:17:18.520 --> 00:17:21.160 of Hoppe's definition of a democracy, 171 00:17:21.160 --> 00:17:28.720 that is a government that is publicly owned and which is administered by officials who function as caretakers, not owners. 172 00:17:28.720 --> 00:17:37.480 Once parliament is in the driver's seat as far as the government's budget is concerned, it inevitably becomes the ultimate arbiter of state policy. 173 00:17:37.480 --> 00:17:47.960 This is also reflected in the increasing frequency of sessions of parliament, whereas it was not unusual in the early 17th century to go for several years between sessions. 174 00:17:47.960 --> 00:17:55.200 By the end of the century, laws were on the books requiring regular convening of the body and reauthorization of crucial spending. 175 00:17:55.200 --> 00:18:06.600 And then in the 1690s, a law entitled the Demise of the Crown Act was passed, which provided for the continued meeting of parliament in the event of the monarch's death. 176 00:18:06.600 --> 00:18:13.160 So here we have the unstated assumption that the government can exist and act in the absence of the king. 177 00:18:13.160 --> 00:18:17.680 That was a concept that would have been unthinkable a hundred years earlier. 178 00:18:17.680 --> 00:18:24.380 and of course there are much lower barriers to entry in parliament than there are into the royal family. 179 00:18:24.380 --> 00:18:26.780 So certainly we cannot stretch this point too far. 180 00:18:26.780 --> 00:18:30.980 The England of 1688 was by no means a democracy in the modern sense, 181 00:18:30.980 --> 00:18:36.580 but the contrasting incentives of monarchical and democratic government described by Hoppe are present, 182 00:18:36.580 --> 00:18:41.780 it seems to me, in this shift toward parliamentary dominance in Stuart England. 183 00:18:41.780 --> 00:18:43.780 So if my reasoning here is correct, 184 00:18:43.780 --> 00:19:02.780 We should expect to see Hoppe's monarchical incentives in the Ascendant in the period before 1642, when the Civil War breaks out, and his democratic incentives dominant thereafter, but especially so during the Interregnum period and after 1688, after the Glorious Revolution. 185 00:19:02.780 --> 00:19:07.780 Some of the areas Hoppe focuses on are not really applicable to the Stuart period. 186 00:19:07.780 --> 00:19:13.780 I'm thinking here mainly of his discussion of the welfare state and the bias towards it in democracies. 187 00:19:13.780 --> 00:19:18.780 Obviously, that monster was nowhere near raising its ugly head in the 17th century. 188 00:19:18.780 --> 00:19:24.780 However, there is still plenty of relevance to observe in other aspects of 17th century state activity. 189 00:19:24.780 --> 00:19:33.780 So in the time I have remaining, I'd like to focus on taxation, debt, the expansion of the state, and foreign policy. 190 00:19:33.780 --> 00:19:40.780 Hoppe argues that because the monarch is the government's owner, his incentives are those of an owner, 191 00:19:40.780 --> 00:19:47.780 and he will tend not to try to maximize his current income at the expense of the capital value of his assets. 192 00:19:47.780 --> 00:20:01.780 This leads him to favor a policy of relatively low taxation because he understands that excessive expropriations would reduce the incentive of his subjects to produce, which could result in his having nothing to expropriate in the future. 193 00:20:01.780 --> 00:20:10.780 He thus does well to adopt policies that increase not only his own prosperity, but also that of his subjects, hence low tax rates. 194 00:20:10.780 --> 00:20:20.780 By contrast, because officials in a democracy are caretakers and not owners, they control only the current use of the state and not its capital value. 195 00:20:20.780 --> 00:20:25.780 They thus have less incentive to give attention to and maintain total government wealth. 196 00:20:25.780 --> 00:20:33.780 They rather tend towards maximizing current income during their limited time in office, a policy that makes capital consumption unavoidable. 197 00:20:33.780 --> 00:20:48.780 and a particularly egregious example of this occurred in 1651 when Parliament auctioned off Charles I's outstanding art collection in an effort to raise money and art historians are still complaining about this 350 years after the fact. 198 00:20:48.780 --> 00:20:55.780 Moderation is not in the interest of a caretaker because what he does not consume now he may never be able to consume. 199 00:20:55.780 --> 00:21:01.780 So in tax policy this means that democratic government will tend towards relatively high rates of taxation. 200 00:21:01.780 --> 00:21:08.780 As I mentioned earlier, the bulk of the government budget in 1603 was paid out of James' personal revenues. 201 00:21:08.780 --> 00:21:17.780 With the exception of customs duties, relatively little was collected in the way of taxes, even if we count James' futile sources of revenue as taxation. 202 00:21:17.780 --> 00:21:27.780 He did occasionally request, and less frequently received, subsidies from Parliament, and in the 17th century, the word subsidy has a specific meaning. 203 00:21:27.780 --> 00:21:34.020 is a kind of property slash income tax, the assessment of which was based primarily on the 204 00:21:34.020 --> 00:21:40.900 realized rental value of one's land. Even this tax was much less onerous than it could have been 205 00:21:40.900 --> 00:21:45.140 because the tax rules had not been updated in 50 years and there's at least one example of the 206 00:21:45.140 --> 00:21:50.340 nobleman being taxed on an amount that was 90 percent less than the actual level of rent he 207 00:21:50.340 --> 00:21:57.700 was receiving from his tenants. In fact, it's easy to find historians who marvel at how undertaxed 208 00:21:57.700 --> 00:22:05.700 Charles I used as many creative strategies as possible to maximize his income without parliamentary aid in the 1630s. 209 00:22:05.700 --> 00:22:13.700 For example, he revived the forest laws, which levied fines on anyone who encroached on the royal forests. 210 00:22:13.700 --> 00:22:19.700 The burdens of this law were so great that it was almost impossible for him to make ends meet. 211 00:22:19.700 --> 00:22:27.140 For example, he revived the forest laws, which levied fines on anyone who encroached on the royal forests. 212 00:22:27.140 --> 00:22:36.020 The burdensome thing about these laws is that it was the 1189 boundaries of the forests that were specified in the laws, 213 00:22:36.020 --> 00:22:41.100 and a lot of whittling away at those borders had occurred in the 450 years since then. 214 00:22:41.100 --> 00:22:45.660 So suddenly you have landowners whose families had occupied these estates for several generations, 215 00:22:45.660 --> 00:22:49.420 and now they're being told that they were encroaching on the king's forests, 216 00:22:49.420 --> 00:22:50.940 and were to be fined accordingly. 217 00:22:50.940 --> 00:22:53.380 So they weren't too happy about that, obviously. 218 00:22:53.380 --> 00:22:56.500 Another expedient of Charles was the extension 219 00:22:56.500 --> 00:22:59.100 of the ship money levy, 220 00:22:59.100 --> 00:23:01.260 which was a tax traditionally assessed 221 00:23:01.260 --> 00:23:03.980 in the coastal counties to fund the Navy, 222 00:23:03.980 --> 00:23:07.860 whose job was mainly to stop piracy in this period. 223 00:23:08.860 --> 00:23:12.180 The extension of that tax to the inland counties. 224 00:23:12.180 --> 00:23:13.540 So these and other innovations 225 00:23:13.540 --> 00:23:15.900 certainly increased royal revenues, 226 00:23:15.900 --> 00:23:18.020 but even so the overall level of taxation 227 00:23:18.020 --> 00:23:23.860 was certainly not excessive compared to what became normal after 1642. 228 00:23:23.860 --> 00:23:29.620 By contrast, once parliament assumed the dominant role in government, taxes jumped to record 229 00:23:29.620 --> 00:23:30.620 levels. 230 00:23:30.620 --> 00:23:36.820 A subsidy in James I's reign was expected to bring in around 80,000 pounds. 231 00:23:36.820 --> 00:23:40.740 And even when parliament was feeling well disposed towards the king, the grant of more 232 00:23:40.740 --> 00:23:46.700 than one subsidy in any given year was unthinkable, even in wartime. 233 00:23:46.700 --> 00:23:51.040 On the other hand, during the Civil Wars of the 1640s, Parliament merrily exacted the 234 00:23:51.040 --> 00:23:57.240 equivalent of one subsidy per month from the hapless English taxpayers within its jurisdiction. 235 00:23:57.240 --> 00:24:03.740 This was achieved by the imposition of brand new excise taxes as well as a new land tax, 236 00:24:03.740 --> 00:24:09.160 euphemistically referred to as an assessment. On top of this, Parliament engaged in wholesale 237 00:24:09.160 --> 00:24:15.200 confiscation of property belonging to royalists and to the Church of England. It can be argued 238 00:24:15.200 --> 00:24:20.400 and that the decision to abolish episcopacy in 1646 was driven as much by the desire 239 00:24:20.400 --> 00:24:25.760 to lay hands on the bishop's property as by any philosophical opposition to that form 240 00:24:25.760 --> 00:24:32.760 of church government. At the Restoration in 1660, the excise joined customs duties as 241 00:24:32.760 --> 00:24:37.000 a permanent feature of the English tax structure, so perhaps we might call this an early example 242 00:24:37.000 --> 00:24:42.960 of Robert Higgs' ratchet effect. The land tax, on the other hand, was judged too radical 243 00:24:42.960 --> 00:24:52.960 for a normal peacetime measure and during the restoration period, that is from 1660 to 1688, it was levied only during war. 244 00:24:52.960 --> 00:25:02.960 However, in 1692, the cash strapped parliament revived the land tax once again and it took its proud place alongside the excise and customs never to go away. 245 00:25:02.960 --> 00:25:09.960 Thus, by the end of the Stuart period, the English people labored under a far greater tax burden than their great grandparents had 246 00:25:09.960 --> 00:25:17.960 and I think we can attribute a significant amount of responsibility for this situation to the incentive structure of the increasingly democratic form of government. 247 00:25:17.960 --> 00:25:24.960 In the case of debt, we see a similar pattern, again using 1642 as a benchmark year. 248 00:25:24.960 --> 00:25:34.960 Hoppe's theory states that monarchs are relatively restrained in their attempts to borrow money and at first blush this seems an absurd statement to early modern historians 249 00:25:34.960 --> 00:25:49.960 The monarch and his heirs, as the owners of the government, are personally liable for all debt that the state incurs. Early modern rulers could and did declare bankruptcy, Philip II of Spain, one of the 16th century's most powerful monarchs. 250 00:25:49.960 --> 00:25:52.560 and his heirs as the owners of the government 251 00:25:52.560 --> 00:25:57.520 are personally liable for all debt that the state incurs. 252 00:25:57.520 --> 00:26:01.760 Early modern rulers could and did declare bankruptcy. 253 00:26:01.760 --> 00:26:04.760 Philip II of Spain, one of the 16th century's 254 00:26:04.760 --> 00:26:08.520 most powerful rulers, did so on multiple occasions. 255 00:26:08.520 --> 00:26:11.040 And they occasionally were compelled by their creditors 256 00:26:11.040 --> 00:26:13.760 to liquidate part of their estates 257 00:26:13.760 --> 00:26:16.960 if they ever hoped to borrow again in the future. 258 00:26:16.960 --> 00:26:23.960 would-be creditors realized that kings were normally poor credit risks and set interest rates on royal loans accordingly. 259 00:26:23.960 --> 00:26:28.960 These considerations provided strong incentives for rulers to minimize their debts. 260 00:26:28.960 --> 00:26:39.960 Now, the early Stuart monarchs were no strangers to borrowing. James I inherited a debt of over 400,000 pounds from Elizabeth I in 1603. 261 00:26:39.960 --> 00:26:46.360 3, thanks to some astute financial management, this number had been reduced to 280,000 pounds 262 00:26:46.360 --> 00:26:55.360 by 1610 before the deficits resumed, and by 1620, crown debt stood at 900,000 pounds. 263 00:26:55.560 --> 00:27:01.040 Charles I, faced with parliamentary intransigence and unwilling creditors in his early years, 264 00:27:01.040 --> 00:27:06.560 resorted to a notorious expedient that has gone down in history as the forced loan, a 265 00:27:06.560 --> 00:27:13.440 Strong-Arm Tactic, which raised over 230,000 pounds from 1626 to 1628, and Charles' debt 266 00:27:13.440 --> 00:27:20.440 by the mid-1630s exceeded 1.1 million pounds. However, next to the post-1642 Parliament, 267 00:27:23.200 --> 00:27:28.080 James and Charles were pikers when it came to borrowing money. From the mid-1640s all 268 00:27:28.080 --> 00:27:34.080 the way through the 1650s, the pay of the army, navy, and militia was in arrears despite 269 00:27:34.080 --> 00:28:04.080 Parliament's Massive Expropriations During the Period. And by 1658, the government had run up 1.5 million pounds of new debt and was operating with an annual deficit of nearly half a million pounds. This situation stabilized after the restoration, but the post 1688 period provided ominous precedence for the future. In 1693, during a war with Louis XIV of France, the government came up with the idea of selling a 270 00:28:04.080 --> 00:28:14.080 The first year of 1694 saw an event that all libertarians should lament. That's the chartering of the Bank of England, the world's first modern central bank. 271 00:28:14.080 --> 00:28:20.080 The Bank of England was created to extend the loan to the people of England. 272 00:28:20.080 --> 00:28:24.080 The bank was created to extend the loan to the people of England. 273 00:28:24.080 --> 00:28:28.080 The bank was created to extend the loan to the people of England. 274 00:28:28.080 --> 00:28:34.160 England, the world's first modern central bank. The Bank of England was created to extend 275 00:28:34.160 --> 00:28:40.280 a loan of 1.5 million pounds to the government and its privileged status also allowed it 276 00:28:40.280 --> 00:28:47.040 to operate on a fractional reserve basis from day one. By 1697, a national debt had been 277 00:28:47.040 --> 00:28:54.040 created which stood at 13.5 million pounds, a sum undreamed of by the early stewards. 278 00:28:54.040 --> 00:28:59.240 Now, there's no evidence that the government ever had any intention of liquidating this debt. 279 00:28:59.240 --> 00:29:09.040 According to Hoppe, this sort of behavior should not surprise us, since democratic office holders and their heirs are not personally liable for the debts they incur on behalf of the government. 280 00:29:09.040 --> 00:29:15.840 The debts are public to be repaid by future and equally non-liable governments. 281 00:29:15.840 --> 00:29:23.240 This fact removes most of the incentives towards restraint in borrowing that weighed upon monarchs. 282 00:29:23.240 --> 00:29:35.240 It is true that in the case of late Stuart England we do not have a nice and neat example of this because the king was still considered to be nominally responsible for the government's operations and expenditures. 283 00:29:35.240 --> 00:29:44.240 Still, parliament was in ultimate control of the budgetary process and there was an implied parliamentary guarantee where the debt was concerned. 284 00:29:44.240 --> 00:29:53.240 By way of analogy, Wheeling III in the 1690s was in a situation similar to that of a child who receives a weekly allowance from his parents. 285 00:29:53.240 --> 00:30:02.240 It's understood that the parents are ultimately liable for any debts their adolescent children incur, and Parliament was in this position vis-a-vis the King. 286 00:30:02.240 --> 00:30:08.240 So I think we can view Stuart England's explosion of debt through this Hoppean lens. 287 00:30:08.240 --> 00:30:20.240 As you probably surmised, higher taxation and greater debt go hand in hand with growth in the size of the state, and Hoppe's theory leads us to expect this development in the case of Stuart England. 288 00:30:20.240 --> 00:30:28.240 Hoppe states that a monarchical system of government creates a sort of class consciousness among the subjects. 289 00:30:28.240 --> 00:30:44.560 Those who have no hope of entering the royal family through marriage or of receiving patronage from the king normally adopt a posture of opposition to any attempted expansion of state authority since they cannot personally benefit from such a development. 290 00:30:44.560 --> 00:30:52.200 This puts the brakes on the state's natural tendency to aggrandize itself and expand its control over the populace. 291 00:30:52.200 --> 00:30:57.240 By contrast, in a democracy where few barriers to entry into the government are present, 292 00:30:57.240 --> 00:31:02.480 that class consciousness erodes as more and more people see a potential personal benefit 293 00:31:02.480 --> 00:31:04.440 from the growth of the state. 294 00:31:04.440 --> 00:31:09.440 To an extent, this latter incentive structure is present in the parliament-dominated government 295 00:31:09.440 --> 00:31:15.120 of late Stuart England, and so I believe Hoppe's insights are applicable in our case. 296 00:31:15.120 --> 00:31:20.520 As we've seen, a taxation was relatively low in the reign of James I, but still there 297 00:31:20.520 --> 00:31:25.240 There were frequent attacks on the king's exercise of his feudal rights, such as wardship 298 00:31:25.240 --> 00:31:26.960 and purveyance. 299 00:31:26.960 --> 00:31:30.400 These were frequent topics of discussion in the parliaments of the era, and this fact 300 00:31:30.400 --> 00:31:34.800 confuses some historians who go back to the 17th century convinced that all the debates 301 00:31:34.800 --> 00:31:38.140 are going to be about these grand abstractions like freedom of speech and natural law and 302 00:31:38.140 --> 00:31:40.320 all this sort of thing. 303 00:31:40.320 --> 00:31:45.060 And when the abortive negotiations were going on to establish a permanent parliamentary 304 00:31:45.060 --> 00:31:50.300 income for James in exchange for the surrender of certain feudal rights, the annual stipend 305 00:31:50.300 --> 00:32:06.300 James sometimes even had great difficulty acquiring funds to do essential things, for example, when his wife Anne of Denmark died, her embalmed body lay in state for ten weeks before the Treasury could come up with the money to bury her. 306 00:32:06.300 --> 00:32:36.300 The 17th century is a period of price inflation, thanks in part to the influx of bullion from the Americas. Combined with the natural tendency of government to expand, by Charles I's reign, the budget numbers were somewhat higher. In 1635, a year in which the budget was balanced, 307 00:32:36.300 --> 00:32:40.300 The government spent £618,000. 308 00:32:40.300 --> 00:32:44.800 Again, public resistance to Charles' aggressive revenue measures was fierce. 309 00:32:44.800 --> 00:32:49.800 The parliament, of course, had been dissolved for refusing to vote Charles the funds he thought he needed. 310 00:32:49.800 --> 00:32:53.100 During the 1630s, opposition came from other quarters. 311 00:32:53.100 --> 00:32:56.300 Probably the most famous example is the Ship Money case, 312 00:32:56.300 --> 00:33:04.100 in which a robust challenge to the legality of Charles' collection of ship money in the inland counties was mounted. 313 00:33:04.100 --> 00:33:15.100 Finally, the opposition to Charles' allegedly excessive methods of raising revenue formed the foundation of what ultimately became the rebellion against him in 1642. 314 00:33:15.100 --> 00:33:22.100 Once again, government growth increases substantially once parliament is in power. 315 00:33:22.100 --> 00:33:32.100 Next to the millions of pounds being thrown around in the interregnum, Charles I's budgets look positively dinky, and we have another instance of the ratchet effect in 1660. 316 00:33:32.100 --> 00:33:48.100 Charles II was voted a permanent income of 1.2 million pounds by the Parliament, and by the time James II came to the throne, that figure was up to 1.9 million pounds, and certainly this is not all attributable to inflation. 317 00:33:48.100 --> 00:34:00.100 Much of the increase was due to the creation of England's first ever standing army under Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s and its subsequent maintenance on and off throughout the Restoration period. 318 00:34:00.100 --> 00:34:18.100 The so-called civil list that Parliament voted for William III's ordinary expenses, not including upkeep of the military, was 700,000 pounds per annum in the 1690s, a sum several times what James was hoping for 90 years before. 319 00:34:18.100 --> 00:34:26.100 Also, by the 1690s, Parliament was spending roughly 5 million pounds per year just on its war with France. 320 00:34:26.100 --> 00:34:32.300 France. Again, these were sums beyond the wildest dreams of the early stewards and representative 321 00:34:32.300 --> 00:34:34.820 of a huge increase in the size of English government. 322 00:34:34.820 --> 00:34:39.900 Finally, I'd like to look at foreign policy, and here we have an example of incentives 323 00:34:39.900 --> 00:34:45.780 running counter to those described by Hoppe. Hoppe argues that the class consciousness 324 00:34:45.780 --> 00:34:52.140 present in a monarchy leads to a more restrained foreign policy, and the reasoning is that 325 00:34:52.140 --> 00:35:22.140 Although monarchs are naturally expansionist, their subjects view foreign policy as the ruler's private affair and are unwilling to pay the taxes necessary for financing wars. Instead, the monarch finds it expedient to acquire new territory through predominantly marriage alliances. Democratic officeholders do not normally have this option because they are only caretakers, and war is the most likely strategy for permanent acquisition of new territory 326 00:35:22.140 --> 00:35:24.740 and its Attendant Expansion of the Tax Base. 327 00:35:24.740 --> 00:35:27.840 The people in democracies are more likely to condone war 328 00:35:27.840 --> 00:35:29.900 if they believe that this enlarged tax base 329 00:35:29.900 --> 00:35:31.820 will bring them personal benefits. 330 00:35:33.140 --> 00:35:35.660 However, we find that in Stuart England, 331 00:35:35.660 --> 00:35:38.620 a powerful incentive not described by Hoppe, 332 00:35:38.620 --> 00:35:41.620 namely religion, exercised an important sway 333 00:35:41.620 --> 00:35:44.500 over the subject's view on foreign policy. 334 00:35:44.500 --> 00:35:47.440 To a large degree, Protestantism defined 335 00:35:47.440 --> 00:35:49.380 the early modern English identity, 336 00:35:49.380 --> 00:35:52.180 particularly after the epic wars with Spain, 337 00:35:52.180 --> 00:35:53.520 of which the most famous incident 338 00:35:53.520 --> 00:35:55.100 was the attempted invasion of England 339 00:35:55.100 --> 00:35:57.220 by the Spanish Armada in 1588. 340 00:35:58.260 --> 00:36:03.260 This war lasted for several decades in the late 16th century. 341 00:36:03.620 --> 00:36:06.100 Englishmen who considered themselves good Protestants 342 00:36:06.100 --> 00:36:08.580 were not satisfied unless hostilities 343 00:36:08.580 --> 00:36:11.840 with some Roman Catholic country were ongoing. 344 00:36:11.840 --> 00:36:15.220 Thus, James I's signing of a peace treaty with Spain 345 00:36:15.220 --> 00:36:18.700 in 1604 was hugely unpopular, 346 00:36:18.700 --> 00:36:20.620 as was his attempt to marry his son 347 00:36:20.620 --> 00:36:24.040 to a Spanish princess in the 1620s. 348 00:36:24.040 --> 00:36:26.700 When the 30 years war broke out in 1618 349 00:36:26.700 --> 00:36:30.140 in the German states, public opinion demanded 350 00:36:30.140 --> 00:36:32.100 that James send military assistance 351 00:36:32.100 --> 00:36:34.420 to his Protestant son-in-law, Frederick, 352 00:36:34.420 --> 00:36:36.260 the Elector of the Palatinate, 353 00:36:36.260 --> 00:36:39.060 against the Austrian Habsburgs who were Catholics. 354 00:36:39.060 --> 00:36:43.880 And all this was despite James's reluctance to do this. 355 00:36:43.880 --> 00:36:45.540 When Charles I came to the throne, 356 00:36:45.540 --> 00:36:48.540 England had been pressured into war with Spain again. 357 00:36:48.540 --> 00:36:52.300 and the peace when eventually negotiated was roundly condemned. 358 00:36:52.300 --> 00:36:54.980 So we have a situation here where James and Charles 359 00:36:54.980 --> 00:36:59.020 by and large preferred a peaceful foreign policy 360 00:36:59.020 --> 00:37:02.060 but were pressured into war by their subjects. 361 00:37:02.060 --> 00:37:04.380 In this case, the incentives Hoppe described 362 00:37:04.380 --> 00:37:07.620 as influencing a monarchy subjects were overpowered 363 00:37:07.620 --> 00:37:10.620 by a contrary impulse based on religious doctrine 364 00:37:10.620 --> 00:37:11.540 and sentiment. 365 00:37:12.500 --> 00:37:14.940 However, attention to Hoppe's theory will prevent us 366 00:37:14.940 --> 00:37:16.820 from being surprised when we learn 367 00:37:16.820 --> 00:37:22.600 that despite its insistence that England go to war with 17th century Europe's great powers, 368 00:37:22.600 --> 00:37:26.320 parliament proved reticent to appropriate the funds necessary to maintain a respectable 369 00:37:26.320 --> 00:37:31.720 war effort, particularly in the case of the Spanish War of the 1620s. And one of Charles's 370 00:37:31.720 --> 00:37:37.720 chief grievances that led him to dissolve parliament in 1629 was this lack of parliamentary 371 00:37:37.720 --> 00:37:41.320 assistance in fighting a war that Charles himself had never been that interested in 372 00:37:41.320 --> 00:37:42.360 in the first place. 373 00:37:43.680 --> 00:37:47.920 Now, after 1642, wars became an even more regular feature 374 00:37:47.920 --> 00:37:49.120 of English foreign policy 375 00:37:49.120 --> 00:37:51.260 and their scale increased as well. 376 00:37:51.260 --> 00:37:53.000 I'm sure many of you are familiar with 377 00:37:53.000 --> 00:37:55.680 the so-called Wars of Commerce against the Dutch 378 00:37:55.680 --> 00:37:59.040 between 1652 and 1674, 379 00:37:59.040 --> 00:38:02.480 which were waged by both Cromwell's interregnum regime 380 00:38:02.480 --> 00:38:05.320 and Charles II, and religion is not really a factor here 381 00:38:05.320 --> 00:38:08.120 since both the English and the Dutch were Protestants. 382 00:38:08.120 --> 00:38:13.280 but we also find Cromwell in the mid 1650s deciding based on his religious 383 00:38:13.280 --> 00:38:17.680 beliefs that England had to go to war with someone and the only question was 384 00:38:17.680 --> 00:38:21.840 who will we attack, France or Spain? We have to fight one of them as his 385 00:38:21.840 --> 00:38:26.160 religious beliefs are dictating this policy and then of course the wars 386 00:38:26.160 --> 00:38:30.480 against Louis XIV in the late 17th century were the largest yet 387 00:38:30.480 --> 00:38:34.040 responsible for huge increases in government spending and borrowing as 388 00:38:34.040 --> 00:39:04.040 So the behavior of the post-1642 English government certainly tracks with Hoppe's observations in this area. During the Stuart period, therefore, we are able to see the conflicting incentives inherent in the monarchical and democratic systems as described by Hoppe. We have established that, from the Hoppean perspective, the early Stuart government was relatively monarchical and the later Stuart government was relatively democratic. We have observed 389 00:39:04.040 --> 00:39:13.040 have observed that in several areas the Stuart State acted during these respective periods in a manner consistent with what a Hoppean analyst would have predicted. 390 00:39:13.040 --> 00:39:19.040 I believe Hoppe's theory of monarchy and democracy has much to contribute to an improved understanding of early modern England, 391 00:39:19.040 --> 00:39:23.040 and I hope that in the future I'll be able to present to you further findings in this area. 392 00:39:23.040 --> 00:39:29.040 Thank you very much. 393 00:39:29.040 --> 00:39:40.040 I have some time for a few questions here. I was interested in the very beginning, the missing element of welfare during this period. 394 00:39:40.040 --> 00:39:48.040 And I guess you wouldn't expect welfare to be a pressing issue if you've got a prosperous country and then you adopt democracy. 395 00:39:48.040 --> 00:39:56.040 You don't have a big demand for welfare until the state screws things up with taxes and remorse initially. 396 00:39:56.040 --> 00:40:08.040 I was wondering when the topic of the poor laws, something that we see a lot of in the 19th century, when did the issue of the poor laws start becoming an issue? 397 00:40:08.040 --> 00:40:20.040 The poor laws actually date to the 16th century. There's some very limited assistance, particularly in the London area, to the poor that's given by the government during the reign of Elizabeth. 398 00:40:20.040 --> 00:40:35.040 But that is always a very limited extent, and of course, as Hoppe would say, the reason that we don't see a big emphasis on welfare during this period is because the people who would be receiving the welfare cannot influence the government in any way in terms of voting or whatever. 399 00:40:35.040 --> 00:40:48.040 So it's not really until the late 19th century, early 20th century that we start to see a big expansion of that kind of, that push for a big expansion of those kind of welfare payments to the low income. 400 00:40:48.040 --> 00:40:52.440 The poor laws themselves actually go back to the 16th century just on a very limited scale 401 00:40:52.440 --> 00:40:57.760 and it was motivated more by the idea of Christian charity, you know, we've got to help these 402 00:40:57.760 --> 00:41:02.920 people and also it was kind of an unsightly thing for these people to be milling around 403 00:41:02.920 --> 00:41:07.960 begging in the capital city and that kind of thing. 404 00:41:07.960 --> 00:41:08.960 Any other questions? 405 00:41:08.960 --> 00:41:09.960 Joe? 406 00:41:09.960 --> 00:41:16.680 This is the end of your hearing, but did you have a chance to look at the incentives for the Treaty of Union in Wisconsin? 407 00:41:16.680 --> 00:41:21.880 I have not. This, what's going on, you said the Treaty of Union? 408 00:41:21.880 --> 00:41:22.380 Yeah. 409 00:41:22.380 --> 00:41:26.080 That's 1707, I believe, 1708. 410 00:41:26.080 --> 00:41:31.160 No, I have not really done, looked into that very closely, 411 00:41:31.160 --> 00:41:38.620 but certainly that would be something interesting to see whether any of these kinds of incentives are at work. 412 00:41:38.620 --> 00:41:41.340 But I can't speak specifically to that at this point. 413 00:41:42.740 --> 00:41:53.820 Another thing that sort of comes up in a historical context, I think, in line with the general story of your thing here is the idea of the colonial trading company, 414 00:41:55.180 --> 00:41:58.180 East India Company and several others. 415 00:41:58.500 --> 00:42:07.820 At this time, there was a transformation from companies which were basically cooperative unions of traders, 416 00:42:07.820 --> 00:42:14.700 working together on joint projects and then all of a sudden after this the 417 00:42:14.700 --> 00:42:22.100 company's become colonial powers with their own military and navies and things 418 00:42:22.100 --> 00:42:27.780 of that nature and that transformation occurs about the same time as you get the transformation in government. 419 00:42:27.780 --> 00:42:36.380 Right, I think the East India Company is chartered in 1603, 1604, right by the time that James comes in and one of the things I didn't 420 00:42:36.380 --> 00:42:43.620 One mention was the monarch's traditional right of granting monopolies. 421 00:42:43.620 --> 00:42:49.780 And so in the 16th and 17th century, the gentry, parliament's always complaining about the 422 00:42:49.780 --> 00:42:54.100 soap monopoly or of course the British East India Company from the very beginning had 423 00:42:54.100 --> 00:43:01.100 a monopoly on trade that was royally granted with the East Indies. 424 00:43:01.100 --> 00:43:08.820 And that transformation of the beginnings of the joint stock corporations and that sort 425 00:43:08.820 --> 00:43:16.100 of thing, that's tracking right along with this and I don't know exactly if you can tie 426 00:43:16.100 --> 00:43:21.500 that into what I was talking about today specifically but that would be interesting to dig into 427 00:43:21.500 --> 00:43:23.780 that a little further. 428 00:43:23.780 --> 00:43:29.400 You go back to the 17th century histories or I should say histories of the 17th century 429 00:43:29.400 --> 00:43:31.320 that you'll see today. 430 00:43:31.320 --> 00:43:35.320 And it's almost all talking about the religious questions 431 00:43:35.320 --> 00:43:37.560 and the political rights and all this kind of thing. 432 00:43:37.560 --> 00:43:41.240 And there aren't really many good discussions 433 00:43:41.240 --> 00:43:43.120 of the economic history. 434 00:43:43.120 --> 00:43:45.920 Historians, for one thing, they're ignorant of economics. 435 00:43:45.920 --> 00:43:47.320 They don't understand it, and they're not really 436 00:43:47.320 --> 00:43:48.120 that interested in it. 437 00:43:48.120 --> 00:43:51.480 So when they go back, about the only real economic histories 438 00:43:51.480 --> 00:43:53.920 that you've seen published in the last 50 years 439 00:43:53.920 --> 00:43:55.440 are those from the Marxist perspective, 440 00:43:55.440 --> 00:43:58.880 because they're trying to set up the eventual revolution 441 00:43:58.880 --> 00:44:03.200 of the Bourgeoisie or whatever, but that's something that really needs to be done. I 442 00:44:03.200 --> 00:44:08.200 think a solid economic history of the period from a good perspective. 443 00:44:08.200 --> 00:44:17.200 I think a lot of economics depends very heavily on nuances in the nature of these companies 444 00:44:17.200 --> 00:44:25.200 and the nature of the Bank of England and the tax structure that, as you said, go unnoticed 445 00:44:25.200 --> 00:44:27.680 in a lot of the historical accounts. 446 00:44:27.680 --> 00:44:32.680 So you're missing some very key aspects. 447 00:44:33.440 --> 00:44:36.500 Yeah, like I said, these standard histories, 448 00:44:36.500 --> 00:44:38.600 you're reading along and they'll talk about 449 00:44:38.600 --> 00:44:41.160 all the military aspects or something like that. 450 00:44:41.160 --> 00:44:43.560 And then they'll say, oh, and by the way, 451 00:44:43.560 --> 00:44:44.800 over the last 50 years, 452 00:44:44.800 --> 00:44:46.840 there have been all these economic developments 453 00:44:46.840 --> 00:44:49.040 and they'll spend a paragraph or two describing it 454 00:44:49.040 --> 00:44:52.840 without really delving into a lot of the interesting details 455 00:44:52.840 --> 00:44:59.840 that can further our understanding of the developments of things like corporations and those sorts of things.