Our Enemy, The State by Albert J. Nock
Part 3
In considering the state's development in America, it is important to keep in mind the
fact that America's experience of the state was longer during the colonial period than
during the period of American independence. The period 1607 to 1776 was longer than the
period 1776 to 1935. Moreover, the colonists came here full-grown and had already a considerable
experience of the state of England and Europe before they arrived, and for the purposes
of comparison, this would extend the former period by a few years, say at least fifteen.
It would probably be safe to put it that the American colonists had twenty-five years longer
Their experience too was not only longer but more varied. The British state, the French,
Dutch, Swedish and Spanish states were all established here. The separatist English dissenters
who landed at Plymouth had lived under the Dutch state as well as the British state.
When James I made England too uncomfortable for them to live in, they went to Holland.
And many of the institutions which they subsequently set up in New England, and which were later
incorporated into the general body of what we call American institutions, were actually
Dutch, though commonly, almost invariably, we credit them to England. They were, for
the most part, Roman continental in their origin, but they were transmitted here from
Holland, not from England. No such institutions existed in England at that time, and hence
Since the Plymouth colonists could not have seen them there, they could have seen them
only in Holland where they did exist.
Our colonial period coincided with the period of revolution and readjustment in England,
referred to in the preceding chapter when the British merchant state was displacing the
feudal state, consolidating its own position and shifting the incidence of economic exploitation.
These revolutionary measures gave rise to an extensive review of the general theory on which the feudal state had been operating.
The earlier stewards governed on the theory of monarchy by divine right.
The state's economic beneficiaries were answerable only to the monarch, who was theoretically answerable only to God.
He had no responsibilities to society at large, save such as he chose to incur,
In 1607, the year of the Virginia Colonies' landing at Jamestown, John Cowell, Regius
Professor of Civil Law at the University of Cambridge, laid down the doctrine that the
monarch is above the law by his absolute power, and though for the better and equal course
in making laws he do admit the three estates unto council, yet this in diverse learned
Man's opinions is not of constraint but of his own benignity, or by reason of the promise
he made upon oath at the time of his coronation. This doctrine, which was elaborated to the
utmost in the extraordinary work called Patriarcha by Sir Robert Filmer, was all well enough
so long as the line of society's stratification was clear, straight and easily drawn. The
The feudal states' economic beneficiaries were virtually a close corporation, a compact
body consisting of a church hierarchy and a titled group of hereditary large holding
landed proprietors. In respect of interests, this body was extremely homogenous, and their
interests, few in number, were simple in character and easily defined. With the monarch, the
With a hierarchy and a small closely limited nobility above the line of stratification
and an undifferentiated populace below it, this theory of sovereignty was passable.
It answered the purposes of the feudal state as well as any.
But the practical outcome of this theory did not and could not suit the purposes of the
rapidly growing class of merchants and financiers.
They wished to introduce a new economic system.
After feudalism, production had been as a general thing for use, with the incidence
of exploitation falling largely on the peasantry. The state had by no means always kept its
hands off trade, but it had never countenanced the idea that its chief reason for existence
was, as we say, to help business. The merchants and financiers, however, had precisely this
Precisely this idea in mind. They saw the attractive possibilities of production for
profit with the incidence of exploitation gradually shifting to an industrial proletariat.
They saw also, however, that to realize all these possibilities they must get the state's
mechanism to working as smoothly and powerfully on the side of business as it had been working
on the side of the monarchy, the church and the land-holding, landed proprietors.
This meant capturing control of this mechanism and so altering and adapting it as to give
themselves the same free access to the political means as was enjoyed by the displaced beneficiaries.
The course by which they accomplished this is marked by the Civil War, the dethronement
as an execution of Charles I, the Puritan Protectorate and the Revolution of 1688.
This is the actual inwardness of what is known as the Puritan movement in England.
It had a quasi-religious motivation, speaking strictly an ecclesiological motivation, but
the paramount practical end towards which it tended was a repartition of access to the
political means.
This is a significant fact, though seldom noticed, that the only tenet with which Puritanism
managed to evangelize equally the non-Christian and Christian world of English-bred civilization
is its tenet of work, its doctrine that work is, by God's express will and command, a duty,
indeed almost, if not quite, the first and most important of man's secular duties.
This erection of labour into a Christian virtue per se, this investment of work with a special religious sanction, was an invention of Puritanism. It was something never heard of in England before the rise of the Puritan state.
The only doctrine anti-dating it presented labour as the means to a purely secular end, as Cranmer's divines put it, that I may learn and labour truly to get my known living.
There is no hint that God would take it amiss if one preferred to do little work and put up with a poor living for the sake of doing something else with one's time.
Perhaps the best witness to the essential character of the Puritan movement in England and America is the thoroughness with which its doctrine of work has pervaded both literatures, all the way from Cromwell's letters to Carl Isle's panegyric and Longfellow's verse.
But the merchant state of the Puritans was like any other. It followed the standard pattern.
It originated in conquest and confiscation, like the feudal state which it displaced.
The only difference being that its conquest was by civil war instead of foreign war.
Its object was the economic exploitation of one class by another.
For the exploitation of feudal serfs by a nobility,
It proposed only to substitute the exploitation of a proletariat by enterprises.
Like its predecessors, the merchant state was purely an organization of the political means,
a machine for the distribution of economic advantage, but with its mechanism adapted
to the requirements of a more numerous and more highly differentiated order of beneficiaries,
A class, moreover, whose numbers were not limited by heredity or by the sheer arbitrary pleasure of a monarch.
The process of establishing the merchant state, however, necessarily brought about changes in the general theory of sovereignty.
The bold doctrine of Cowell and Filmer was no longer practicable, yet any new theory had to find room for some sort of divine sanction,
and Sanction, for the habit of men's minds does not change suddenly, and Puritanism's
alliance between religious and secular interests was extremely close. One may not quite put
it that the merchant enterprises made use of religious fanaticism to pull their chestnuts
out of the fire. The religionists had sound and good chestnuts of their own to look after.
They had plenty of rabid nonsense to answer for, plenty of sour hypocrisy, plenty of
and vicious fanaticism. Whenever we think of 17th century British Puritanism, we think
of Hugh Peters, of praise God barebones, of Cromwell's iconoclasts smashing the mighty
big angels in glass. But behind all this untowardness, there was in the religionists a body of sound
conscience, soundly and justly outraged. And no doubt, though mixed with an intolerable
For the whole deal of unscrupulous greed there was on the part of the merchant enterprises
a sincere persuasion that what was good for business was good for society.
Taking Hamden's conscience as representative, one would say that it operated under the limitations
set by nature upon the typical sturdy Buckinghamshire Squire.
The mercantile conscience was likewise ill-informed and likewise set its course with a hard dogged
Provincial Stubbornness. Still, the alliance of the two bodies of conscience was not without
some measure of respectability. No doubt, for example, Hamden regarded the state-controlled
episcopate to some extent objectively as unscriptural in theory and a tool of antichrist in practice.
And no doubt, too, the mercantile conscience, with the disturbing vision of William Lord
in view, might have found state-managed episcopy objectionable on other grounds than those
of special interest.
The merchant state's political rationale had to respond to the pressure of a growing individualism.
The spirit of individualism appeared in the latter half of the sixteenth century, probably
as well as such obscure origins can be determined as a by-product of the continental revival
of Learning, or it may be specifically as a by-product of the Reformation in Germany.
It was long, however, in gaining force enough to make itself count in shaping political
theory. The feudal state could take no account of this spirit. Its stark regime of status
was operable only where there was no great multiplicity of diverse economic interests
to be accommodated, and where the sum of social power remained practically stable. Under the
British feudal state, one large holding landed proprietor's interests was much like another's,
and one bishop's or clergyman's interest was about the same in kind as another's. The interests
of the monarchy and court were not greatly diversified, and the sum of social power varied
Hence, an economic class solidarity was easily maintained. Access upward from one class to the other was easily blocked, so easily that very few positive state interventions were necessary to keep people, as we say, in their place, or, as Cranmer's Divines puts it, to keep them going, doing their duty in that station of life unto which it had pleased God to call them. Thus, the state was easily maintained.
could accomplish its primary purpose and still afford to remain relatively weak.
It could normally, that is, enable a thorough going economic exploitation
with relatively little apparatus of legislation or personnel.
The merchant state, on the other hand, with its ensuing regime of contract,
had to meet the problem set by a rapid development of social power
and a multiplicity of economic interests.
Both these tended to foster and stimulate the spirit of individualism.
The management of social power made the merchant-enterpreiser feel that he was quite as much somebody
as anybody, and that the general order of interest which he represented, and in particular
his own special fraction of that interest, was to be regarded as most respectable, which
hitherto it had not been.
In short, he had a full sense of himself as an individual, which on these grounds he could
The aristocratic disparagement of his pursuits and the consequent stigma of inferiority which had been so long fixed upon the base-mechanical exacerbated this sense and rendered it at its best assertive, and at its worst disposed to exaggerate the characteristic defects of his class as well as its excellences and lump them off together in a new category of social virtues, its hardness, ruthlessness,
business, ignorance and vulgarity at par with its commercial integrity, its shrewdness,
diligence and thrift. Thus, the fully developed composite type of merchant-enterpreiser financier
might be said to run all the psychological gradations between the brothers Chiribai at
one end of the scale and Mr. Gragrind, Sir Gorgeous Midas and Mr. Bottles at the other.
This individualism fostered the formulation of certain doctrines which, in one shape or another, found their way into the official political philosophy of the merchant state.
Foremost amongst these were the two which the Declaration of Independence lays down as fundamental, the doctrine of natural rights and the doctrine of popular sovereignty.
In a generation which had exchanged the authority of a pope for the authority of a book, or
rather the authority of unlimited private interpretation of a book, there was no difficulty about finding
ample scriptural sanction for both these doctrines. The interpretation of the Bible, like the
judicial interpretation of a constitution, is merely a process by which, as a contemporary
The theory of Bishop Butler said, anything may be made to mean anything, and in the absence
of a coercive authority, papal, conciliar or judicial, any given interpretation finds
only such exceptions, as may, for whatever reason, be accorded it.
Thus, the episode of Eden, the parable of the talents, the apostolic injunction against
being slothful in business, were a warrant for the Puritan doctrine of work.
They brought the sanction of economic interest into complete agreement, uniting the religionist
and the merchant-enterpreiser in the bond of a common intention. Thus again, the view
of man as made in the image of God, made only a little lower than the angels, the subject
of so august a transaction as the atonement, quite corroborated the political doctrine
and of his endowment by his creator with certain rights unalienable by church or state.
While the merchant-enterpreiser might hold with Mr. Jefferson that the truth of this
political doctrine is self-evident, its scriptural support was yet of great value as carrying
an implication of human nature's dignity which braced his more or less diffident and self-conscious
and the doctrine that so dignified him might easily be conceived of as dignifying his pursuits.
Indeed, the Bible's endorsement of the doctrine of labor and the doctrine of natural rights was really his charter for rehabilitating trade against the disparagement that the regime of status had put upon it, and for investing it with the most brilliant luster of respectability.
In the same way, the doctrine of popular sovereignty could be mounted on impregnable scriptural
ground. Civil society was an association of true believers functioning for common secular
purposes, and its right of self-government with respect to these purposes was God-given.
If on the religious side all believers were priests, then on the secular side they were
The notion of an intervening Euro-Devino monarch was as repugnant to scripture as that of an intervening Euro-Devino pope, witness the Israelite commonwealth upon which monarchy was visited as explicitly a punishment for sin.
Civil legislation was supposed to interpret and particularize the laws of God as revealed in the Bible.
and its administrators were responsible to the congregation in both its religious and secular capacities.
Where the revealed law was silent, legislation was to be guided by its general spirit as best this might be determined.
These principles obviously left open a considerable area of choice,
but hypothetically the range of civil liberty and the range of religious liberty had a common boundary.
This religious sanction of popular sovereignty was agreeable to the merchant-enterpreiser.
It fell in with his individualism, enhancing considerably his sense of personal dignity and consequence.
He could regard himself as, by birthright, not only a free citizen of a heavenly commonwealth,
but also a free elector in an earthly commonwealth, fashioned, as nearly it might be, after the heavenly pattern.
The range of liberty permitted him in both qualities was satisfactory. He could summon warrant of scripture to cover his undertakings both here and hereafter.
As far as this present world's concerns went, his doctrine of labour was scriptural, his doctrine of master and servant was scriptural, even bond service, even chattel service was scriptural.
His doctrine of a wage economy of money lending, again the parable of the talents, both were scriptural.
What especially recommended the doctrine of popular sovereignty to him on its secular side, however,
was the immense leverage it gave him for ousting the regime of status to make way for the regime of contract,
in a word, for displacing the feudal state and bringing in the merchant state.
But interesting as these two doctrines were, their actual application was a matter of great
difficulty. On the religious side, the doctrine of natural rights had to take account of the
unorthodox. Theoretically it was easy to dispose of them. The separatists, for example, such
as those who manned the Mayflower, had lost their natural rights in the fall of Adam and
and had never made use of the means appointed to reclaim them.
This was all very well, but the logical extension of this principle into actual practice was
a rather grave affair.
There were a good many dissenters all told, and they were articulate on the matter of
natural rights which made trouble, so that when all was said and done, the doctrine came
out considerably compromised.
Then, in respect of popular sovereignty, there were the Presbyterians.
Calvinism was monocratic to the core.
In fact, Presbyterianism existed side by side with Episcopalism in the Church of England
in the 16th century and was nudged out only very gradually.
They were a numerous body and in point of scripture and history they had a great deal
to say for their position.
Thus the practical task of organizing a spiritual commonwealth had as hard going with the logic
of popular sovereignty as it had with the logic of natural rights.
The task of secular organization was even more troublesome. A society organized in conformity
to these two principles is easily conceivable. Such an organization as Paine and the Declaration
contemplated, for example, a rising out of social agreement and concerning itself only
with the maintenance of freedom and security for the individual, but the practical task
of effecting such an organization is quite another matter. On general grounds, doubtless,
the Puritans would have found this impracticable. If indeed the times are ever going to be right
for anything of the kind, their times were certainly not. The particular ground of difficulty,
The difficulty, however, was that the merchant-enterpreiser did not want that form of social organization.
In fact, one cannot be sure that the Puritan religionists themselves wanted it.
The root trouble was, in short, that there was no practicable way to avert a shattering
collision between the logic of natural rights and popular sovereignty and the economic law
that man tends always to satisfy his needs with the least possible exertion.
This law governed the merchant-enterpreiser in common with the rest of mankind.
He was not for an organization that should do no more than maintain freedom of security.
He was for one that should redistribute access to the political means and concern itself
with freedom and security only so far as would be consistent with keeping this access open.
That is to say, he was thoroughly indisposed to the idea of government.
He was quite as strong for the idea of the state as the hierarchy and nobility were.
He was not for any essential transformation in the state's character, but merely for a
repartition of the economic advantages that the state confers.
Thus, the merchant polity amounted to an attempt, more or less disingenuous, at reconciling
matters which in their nature cannot be reconciled.
The ideas of natural rights and popular sovereignty were, as we have seen, highly acceptable and
highly animating to all the forces allied against the feudal idea. But while these ideas
might be easily reconcilable with a system of simple government, such a simple system
would not answer the purpose. Only the state system would do that. The problem therefore
was how to keep these ideas well in the forefront of political theory, and at the same time
and prevent their practical application from undermining the organization of the political
means. It was a difficult problem. The best that could be done with it was by making certain
structural alterations in the state, which would give it the appearance of expressing
these ideas without the reality. The most important of these structural changes was
that of bringing in the so-called representative or parliamentary system, which Puritanism
introduced into the modern world, and which has received a great deal of praise as an advance towards democracy.
This praise, however, is exaggerated.
The change was one of form only, and its bearing on democracy has been
inconsiderable.
The migration of Englishmen to America
merely transferred this problem into another setting.
The discussion of political theory went on vigorously, but the philosophy of natural
rights and popular sovereignty came out in practice about where they had come out in
England. Here again, a great deal has been made of the democratic spirit and temper of
the migrants, especially in the case of the separatists who landed at Plymouth. But the
facts do not bear it out, except with regard to the decentralizing congregationalist principle
of Church Order
This principle of lodging final authority in the smallest unit rather than the largest
in the local congregation rather than in a synod or general council was democratic and
its thorough going application in a scheme of church order would represent some actual
advance towards democracy and give some recognition to the general philosophy of natural rights
and popular sovereignty.
The Plymouth settlers did something with this principle, actually applying it in the matter
of church order, and for this they deserve credit.
Applying it in the matter of civil order, however, was another affair.
It is true that the Plymouth colonists probably contemplated something of the kind, and that
for a time they practiced a sort of primitive communism.
They drew up an agreement on shipboard, which may be taken at its face value as evidence
of the Democratic Disposition, though it was not in any sense a frame of government like
pens or of any constitutional document. Those who speak of it as our first written constitution
are considerably in advance of their text, for it was merely an agreement to make a constitution
or frame of government when the settlers would have come to land and looked the situation
One sees that it could hardly have been more than this. Indeed, that the proposed Constitution itself could be no more than provisional, when it is remembered that these migrants were not their own men. They did not sail on their own, nor were they headed for any un-preempted territory on which they might establish a squatter sovereignty and set up any kind of civil order they saw fit. They were headed for Virginia, to settle in the jurisdiction of a company in Virginia.
of English Merchant Enterprises, now growing shaky and soon to be superseded by the Royal
Authority and its territory converted into a royal province. It was only by misreconings
and the accidents of navigation that, most unfortunately for the prospects of the colony,
the settlers landed on the stern and rock-bound coast of Plymouth. These settlers were in
In most respects, probably as good as the best who ever found their way to America.
They were bred of what passed in England as the lower orders, sober, hardworking and capable,
and their residence under continental institutions in Holland had given them a fund of politico-religious
ideas and habits of thought which set them considerably apart from the rest of their
countrymen. There is, however, no more than antiquarian interest in determining how far
or they were actually possessed by those ideas.
They may have contemplated a system of complete religious and civil democracy, or they may
not.
They may have found their communist practices agreeable to their notion of a sound and just
social order, or they may not.
The point is that while apparently they may be free enough to found a church order as
democratic as they chose, they were by no means free to found a civil democracy or anything
The London Merchant Enterprises Bound Them in Return for Transportation and Outfit to Seven Years Service
The fundamental fact to be observed in any survey of the American state's initial development is the one whose importance was first remarked, I believe, by Mr. Boehm.
Mr. Beard, that the trading company, the commercial corporation for colonization, was actually
an autonomous state.
Like a state, says Mr. Beard, it had a constitution, a charter, issued by the Crown.
Like the state, it had a territorial basis, a grant of land, often greater in area than
a score of English-European principalities.
It could make assessments, coin money, regulate trade, dispose of corporate property, collect
Taxes, Manage a Treasury and Provide for Defense. Thus, and here is the important observation,
so important I venture to italicize it, every essential element long afterward found in
the government of the American state appeared in the chartered corporation that started
English civilization in America. Generally speaking, the system of civil order established
in America was the state system of the mother countries operating over a considerable body
of Water. The only thing that distinguished it was that the exploited and dependent class
was situated at an unusual distance from the owning and exploiting class. The headquarters
of the autonomous state were on one side of the Atlantic and its subjects on the other.
This separation gave rise to administrative difficulties of one kind and another, and
To obviate the, perhaps for obvious reasons as well, one English company, the Massachusetts
Bay Company, moved over bodily in 1630, bringing their charter and most of their stockholders
with them, thus settling up an actual autonomous state in America. The thing to be observed
about this is that the merchant state was set up complete in New England long before
before it was set up in Old England.
Most of the English immigrants to Massachusetts came over between 1630 and 1640, and in this
period the English merchant state was only at the beginning of its hardest struggles
for supremacy.
James I died in 1625 and his successor, Charles I, continued his absolutist regime.
From 1629, the year in which the Bay Company was chartered, to 1640, when the Long Parliament
was called, he ruled without a parliament, effectively suppressing what few vestiges
of liberty had survived the Tudor and Jacobean tyrannies, and during these eleven years
the prospects of the English merchant state were at their lowest. It still had to face
the distractions of the civil war, the retarding anomalies of the commonwealth, the restoration
and the recurrence of tyrannical absolutism under James II before it succeeded in establishing
in itself firmly through the revolution of 1688.
On the other hand, the leaders of the Bay Colony were free from the first to establish
a state policy of their own devising, and to set up a state structure which should express
that policy without compromise. There was no competing policy to extinguish, no rival
A point of greatest importance to remember is that the merchant state is the only form of state that ever existed in America, whether under the rule of a trading company or a provincial governor or a republican representative legislator.
In this respect the Massachusetts Bay colony is differentiated only as being the first autonomous state ever established in America, and as furnishing the most complete and convenient example for purposes of study.
In principle it was not differentiated. The state in New England, Virginia, Maryland, the Jersey, New York, Connecticut, everywhere, was purely Catholic.
In the New York region the state was very active.
The state in New England, Virginia, Maryland, the Jerseys, New York, Connecticut, everywhere, was purely a class state, with control of the political means reposing in the hands of what we now style in a general way, the businessman.
In the eleven years of Charles' tyrannical absolutism, English immigrants came over to join the Bay Colony at a rate of about 2,000 a year.
No doubt at the outset some of the colonists had the idea of becoming agricultural specialists, as in Virginia, and of maintaining certain vestiges or rather imitations of semi-feudal social practice, such as were possible under that form of industry when operated by a slave economy or a tenant economy.
This, however, proved impracticable. The climate and soil of New England were against it. A tenant economy was precarious, or, for rather than work for a master, the immigrant agriculturalist naturally preferred to push out into un-preempted land and work for himself. In other words, as Turgot, Marx and Hertzka and many others have shown, he could not be exploited until he had been expropriated from the land.
The long and hard winters took the profit out of slave labor in agriculture.
The Bay colonists experimented with it, however, even attempting to enslave the Indians, which they had found could not be done, for the reasons that I have already noticed.
In default of this, the colonists carried out the primitive technique by resorting to extermination, their ruthless ferocity being equaled only by that of the Virginia colonists.
They held some slaves and did a great deal of slave trading, but in the main they became
at the outset a race of small-holding farmers, shipbuilders, navigators, maritime enterprises
in fish, whales, molasses, rum and miscellaneous cargoes, and, presently, moneylenders. Their
remarkable success in these pursuits is well known. It is worth mention here that in order
Consider to account for many of the complications and collisions of interest subsequently ensuing
upon the merchant state's fundamental doctrine that the primary function of government is
not to maintain freedom and security, but to help business.
3.
One examines the American merchant state in vain for any suggestion of the philosophy
of natural rights and popular sovereignty.
The company system and the provincial system made no place for it, and the one autonomous
state was uncompromisingly against it. The Bay Company brought over their charter to
serve as the constitution of the new colony, and under its provisions the form of the state
was that of an uncommonly small and close oligarchy. The right to vote was vested only
in shareholding members, or freemen, of the corporation. On the stark state principle
People laid down many years later by John Jay that those who own the country should
govern the country. At the end of a year, the Bay Colony comprised perhaps about 2,000
persons, and of these certainly not 20, probably not more than a dozen, had anything whatever
to say about its government. This small group constituted itself as a sort of directorate
or Council, appointing its own executive body, which consisted of a governor, a lieutenant
governor and a half dozen or more magistrates. These officials had no responsibility to the
community at large, but only to the directorate. By the terms of the charter, the directorate
was self-perpetuating. It was permitted to fill vacancies and add to its numbers as it
saw fit, and in so doing it followed a policy similar to that which was subsequently recommended
by Alexander Hamilton of admitting only such well-to-do and influential persons as could
be trusted to sustain a solid front against anything savouring of popular sovereignty.
Historians have been very properly made a great deal of the influence of Calvinist theology
embracing the strongly anti-democratic attitude of the Bay Company. The story is readable
and interesting, often amusing, yet the gist of it is so simple that it can be perceived
The company's principle of action was in this respect the one that in like circumstances has for a dozen centuries invariably motivated the state.
The Marxian dictum that religion is the opiate of the people is either an ignorant or slovenly confusion of terms which cannot be too strongly reprehended.
Religion was never that, nor will it ever be, but organized Christianity, which is by no means the same thing as religion, has been the opiate of the people ever since the beginning of the 4th century, and never has this opiate been employed for political purposes more skillfully than it was by the Massachusetts Bay Oligarchy.
In the year 311, the Roman Emperor Constantine issued an edict of toleration in favor of organized Christianity.
He patronized the new cult heavily, giving it rich presents, and even adopted the labarum as his standard, which was a most distinguished gesture and cost nothing.
The story of the heavenly sign appearing before his crucial battle against
Maxentius may quite safely be put down beside that of the apparitions seen
before the battle of the Marne. He never joined the church, however, and the
tradition that he was converted to Christianity is open to great doubt. The
point of all this is that circumstances had, by that time, made Christianity a
The Church was a considerable figure. It had survived contumula and persecution, and had become a social influence which Constantine saw was destined to reach far enough to make it worth courting.
The Church could be made a most effective tool of the state, and only a very moderate amount of statesmanship was needed to discern the right way of bringing this about.
The understanding, undoubtedly tacit, was based on a simple quid pro quo.
In exchange for the right way of bringing this about, the Church was given the right tool of the state.
In exchange for imperial recognition and patronage, and endowments enough to keep up to the requirements of high official respectability, the Church should quit its disagreeable habit of criticising the course of politics, and in particular it should abstain from unfavourable comment on the State's administration of the political means.
These are the unvarying terms, again I say undoubtedly tacit, as it is seldom necessary to stipulate against biting the hand by which one is fed, of every understanding that has been struck since Constantine's day between organized Christianity and the state.
They were the terms of the understanding struck in the Germanys and in England at the Reformation.
The petty German principality had its state church as it had its state theatre, and in
England Henry VIII set up the church in its present status as an arm of the civil service,
like the post office.
The fundamental understanding in all cases was that the church should not interfere with
with or disparage the organization of the political means, and in practice it naturally
followed that the church would go further, and quite regularly abet this organization
to the best of its ability.
The merchant state in America came to this understanding with organized Christianity.
In the Bay Colony the church became in 1638 an established subsidiary of the state, supported
by Taxation. It maintained a state creed promulgated in 1647. In some other colonies also, as for
example in Virginia, the church was a branch of the state service, and where it was not
actually established as such, the same understanding was reached by other means, quite as satisfactory.
Indeed, the merchant state, both in England and America, as soon became lukewarm towards
is the idea of an establishment perceiving that the same modus vivendi could almost as
easily be arrived at under Voluntaryism, and that the latter had the advantage of satisfying
practically all modes of creedal and ceremonial preference, thus releasing the state from
the troublesome and profitless business of interference in disputes over matter of doctrine
and church order.
and Pure and Simple was set up in Rhode Island by Roger Williams, John Clark and their associates
who were banished from the Bay Colony almost exactly 300 years ago in 1636. This group
of exiles is commonly regarded as having founded a society on the philosophy of natural rights
and popular sovereignty in respect of both church order and civil order, and as having
Having launched an experiment in democracy. This, however, is an exaggeration. The leaders
of the group were undoubtedly in sight of this philosophy, and as far as church order
is concerned, their practice was conformable to it. On the civil side, the most that can
be said is that their practice was conformable in so far as they knew how to make it so,
And one says this much only by a very considerable concession.
The least that can be said, on the other hand, is that their practice was for a time greatly
in advance of the practice prevailing in other colonies, so far in advance that Rhode Island
was in great disrepute with its neighbors in Massachusetts and Connecticut, who diligently
disseminated the tale of its evil fame throughout the land with the customary exaggerations
and embellishments.
Nevertheless, through acceptance of the state system of land tenure, the political structure
of Rhode Island was as state structure from the outset, contemplating as it did the stratification
of society into an owning and exploiting class and a property-less dependent class. Williams's
theory of the state was that of social compact arrived at among equals, but equality did
did not exist in Rhode Island. The actual outcome was a pure class state.
In the spring of 1638, Williams acquired about twenty square miles of land by gift from two
Indian sachems, in addition to some he had bought from them two years before. In October
he formed a proprietary of purchasers who bought twelve-thirteenths of the Indian grant.
Bicknell, in his History of Rhode Island, cites a letter written by Williams to the
Deputy Governor of the Bay Colony, which says frankly that the plan of this proprietary contemplated
the creation of two classes of citizens, one consisting of land-holding heads of families
and the other of young men, single persons, who were a landless tenantry, and as Bicknell
said, had no voice or vote as to the offices of the community or the laws which they were
were called upon to obey. Thus the civil order in Rhode Island was essentially a pure state
order as much so as the civil order of the Bay Colony or any other in America, and in
fact the landed property franchise lasted uncommonly long in Rhode Island, existing
there for some time after it had been given up in most other quarters of America. By way
As a way of summing up, it is enough to say that nowhere in the American colonial civil order was there ever any trace of a democracy.
The political structure was always that of the merchant state. Americans have never known any other.
Furthermore, the philosophy of natural rights and popular sovereignty was never once exhibited anywhere in American political practice during the colonial period,
The first settlement in 1607 down to the revolution of 1776.