WEBVTT NOTE Part III 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 Our Enemy, The State by Albert J. Nock 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:07.240 Part 3 3 00:00:07.240 --> 00:00:11.560 In considering the state's development in America, it is important to keep in mind the 4 00:00:11.560 --> 00:00:16.800 fact that America's experience of the state was longer during the colonial period than 5 00:00:16.800 --> 00:00:24.300 during the period of American independence. The period 1607 to 1776 was longer than the 6 00:00:24.300 --> 00:00:33.540 period 1776 to 1935. Moreover, the colonists came here full-grown and had already a considerable 7 00:00:33.540 --> 00:00:38.940 experience of the state of England and Europe before they arrived, and for the purposes 8 00:00:38.940 --> 00:00:47.580 of comparison, this would extend the former period by a few years, say at least fifteen. 9 00:00:47.580 --> 00:00:52.980 It would probably be safe to put it that the American colonists had twenty-five years longer 10 00:00:52.980 --> 00:00:59.980 Their experience too was not only longer but more varied. The British state, the French, 11 00:01:04.700 --> 00:01:11.580 Dutch, Swedish and Spanish states were all established here. The separatist English dissenters 12 00:01:11.580 --> 00:01:16.700 who landed at Plymouth had lived under the Dutch state as well as the British state. 13 00:01:16.700 --> 00:01:22.340 When James I made England too uncomfortable for them to live in, they went to Holland. 14 00:01:22.340 --> 00:01:27.340 And many of the institutions which they subsequently set up in New England, and which were later 15 00:01:27.340 --> 00:01:33.140 incorporated into the general body of what we call American institutions, were actually 16 00:01:33.140 --> 00:01:39.980 Dutch, though commonly, almost invariably, we credit them to England. They were, for 17 00:01:39.980 --> 00:01:44.860 the most part, Roman continental in their origin, but they were transmitted here from 18 00:01:44.860 --> 00:01:51.620 Holland, not from England. No such institutions existed in England at that time, and hence 19 00:01:51.620 --> 00:01:56.260 Since the Plymouth colonists could not have seen them there, they could have seen them 20 00:01:56.260 --> 00:02:00.740 only in Holland where they did exist. 21 00:02:00.740 --> 00:02:06.220 Our colonial period coincided with the period of revolution and readjustment in England, 22 00:02:06.220 --> 00:02:11.060 referred to in the preceding chapter when the British merchant state was displacing the 23 00:02:11.060 --> 00:02:18.060 feudal state, consolidating its own position and shifting the incidence of economic exploitation. 24 00:02:18.060 --> 00:02:26.060 These revolutionary measures gave rise to an extensive review of the general theory on which the feudal state had been operating. 25 00:02:26.060 --> 00:02:31.060 The earlier stewards governed on the theory of monarchy by divine right. 26 00:02:31.060 --> 00:02:39.060 The state's economic beneficiaries were answerable only to the monarch, who was theoretically answerable only to God. 27 00:02:39.060 --> 00:02:45.060 He had no responsibilities to society at large, save such as he chose to incur, 28 00:02:45.060 --> 00:02:52.060 In 1607, the year of the Virginia Colonies' landing at Jamestown, John Cowell, Regius 29 00:02:56.340 --> 00:03:01.220 Professor of Civil Law at the University of Cambridge, laid down the doctrine that the 30 00:03:01.220 --> 00:03:07.000 monarch is above the law by his absolute power, and though for the better and equal course 31 00:03:07.000 --> 00:03:12.860 in making laws he do admit the three estates unto council, yet this in diverse learned 32 00:03:12.860 --> 00:03:19.560 Man's opinions is not of constraint but of his own benignity, or by reason of the promise 33 00:03:19.560 --> 00:03:27.380 he made upon oath at the time of his coronation. This doctrine, which was elaborated to the 34 00:03:27.380 --> 00:03:34.380 utmost in the extraordinary work called Patriarcha by Sir Robert Filmer, was all well enough 35 00:03:34.380 --> 00:03:41.940 so long as the line of society's stratification was clear, straight and easily drawn. The 36 00:03:41.940 --> 00:03:47.900 The feudal states' economic beneficiaries were virtually a close corporation, a compact 37 00:03:47.900 --> 00:03:53.100 body consisting of a church hierarchy and a titled group of hereditary large holding 38 00:03:53.100 --> 00:04:00.100 landed proprietors. In respect of interests, this body was extremely homogenous, and their 39 00:04:00.100 --> 00:04:06.380 interests, few in number, were simple in character and easily defined. With the monarch, the 40 00:04:06.380 --> 00:04:11.760 With a hierarchy and a small closely limited nobility above the line of stratification 41 00:04:11.760 --> 00:04:17.380 and an undifferentiated populace below it, this theory of sovereignty was passable. 42 00:04:17.380 --> 00:04:22.900 It answered the purposes of the feudal state as well as any. 43 00:04:22.900 --> 00:04:27.700 But the practical outcome of this theory did not and could not suit the purposes of the 44 00:04:27.700 --> 00:04:31.500 rapidly growing class of merchants and financiers. 45 00:04:31.500 --> 00:04:35.060 They wished to introduce a new economic system. 46 00:04:35.060 --> 00:04:40.100 After feudalism, production had been as a general thing for use, with the incidence 47 00:04:40.100 --> 00:04:46.120 of exploitation falling largely on the peasantry. The state had by no means always kept its 48 00:04:46.120 --> 00:04:51.540 hands off trade, but it had never countenanced the idea that its chief reason for existence 49 00:04:51.540 --> 00:04:58.540 was, as we say, to help business. The merchants and financiers, however, had precisely this 50 00:04:58.540 --> 00:05:03.860 Precisely this idea in mind. They saw the attractive possibilities of production for 51 00:05:03.860 --> 00:05:11.020 profit with the incidence of exploitation gradually shifting to an industrial proletariat. 52 00:05:11.020 --> 00:05:16.500 They saw also, however, that to realize all these possibilities they must get the state's 53 00:05:16.500 --> 00:05:22.300 mechanism to working as smoothly and powerfully on the side of business as it had been working 54 00:05:22.300 --> 00:05:28.900 on the side of the monarchy, the church and the land-holding, landed proprietors. 55 00:05:28.900 --> 00:05:34.220 This meant capturing control of this mechanism and so altering and adapting it as to give 56 00:05:34.220 --> 00:05:41.660 themselves the same free access to the political means as was enjoyed by the displaced beneficiaries. 57 00:05:41.660 --> 00:05:46.700 The course by which they accomplished this is marked by the Civil War, the dethronement 58 00:05:46.700 --> 00:05:55.100 as an execution of Charles I, the Puritan Protectorate and the Revolution of 1688. 59 00:05:55.100 --> 00:06:00.380 This is the actual inwardness of what is known as the Puritan movement in England. 60 00:06:00.380 --> 00:06:07.380 It had a quasi-religious motivation, speaking strictly an ecclesiological motivation, but 61 00:06:07.380 --> 00:06:13.500 the paramount practical end towards which it tended was a repartition of access to the 62 00:06:13.500 --> 00:06:15.720 political means. 63 00:06:15.720 --> 00:06:21.400 This is a significant fact, though seldom noticed, that the only tenet with which Puritanism 64 00:06:21.400 --> 00:06:27.620 managed to evangelize equally the non-Christian and Christian world of English-bred civilization 65 00:06:27.620 --> 00:06:34.620 is its tenet of work, its doctrine that work is, by God's express will and command, a duty, 66 00:06:34.700 --> 00:06:41.700 indeed almost, if not quite, the first and most important of man's secular duties. 67 00:06:41.700 --> 00:06:56.700 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. 68 00:06:56.700 --> 00:07:10.700 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. 69 00:07:10.700 --> 00:07:20.700 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. 70 00:07:20.700 --> 00:07:39.700 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. 71 00:07:39.700 --> 00:07:45.700 But the merchant state of the Puritans was like any other. It followed the standard pattern. 72 00:07:45.700 --> 00:07:51.700 It originated in conquest and confiscation, like the feudal state which it displaced. 73 00:07:51.700 --> 00:07:56.700 The only difference being that its conquest was by civil war instead of foreign war. 74 00:07:56.700 --> 00:08:01.700 Its object was the economic exploitation of one class by another. 75 00:08:01.700 --> 00:08:04.700 For the exploitation of feudal serfs by a nobility, 76 00:08:04.700 --> 00:08:10.700 It proposed only to substitute the exploitation of a proletariat by enterprises. 77 00:08:10.700 --> 00:08:16.700 Like its predecessors, the merchant state was purely an organization of the political means, 78 00:08:16.700 --> 00:08:22.700 a machine for the distribution of economic advantage, but with its mechanism adapted 79 00:08:22.700 --> 00:08:28.700 to the requirements of a more numerous and more highly differentiated order of beneficiaries, 80 00:08:28.700 --> 00:08:35.700 A class, moreover, whose numbers were not limited by heredity or by the sheer arbitrary pleasure of a monarch. 81 00:08:35.700 --> 00:08:44.700 The process of establishing the merchant state, however, necessarily brought about changes in the general theory of sovereignty. 82 00:08:44.700 --> 00:08:54.700 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, 83 00:08:54.700 --> 00:09:00.060 and Sanction, for the habit of men's minds does not change suddenly, and Puritanism's 84 00:09:00.060 --> 00:09:07.060 alliance between religious and secular interests was extremely close. One may not quite put 85 00:09:07.380 --> 00:09:12.820 it that the merchant enterprises made use of religious fanaticism to pull their chestnuts 86 00:09:12.820 --> 00:09:19.260 out of the fire. The religionists had sound and good chestnuts of their own to look after. 87 00:09:19.260 --> 00:09:24.000 They had plenty of rabid nonsense to answer for, plenty of sour hypocrisy, plenty of 88 00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:29.800 and vicious fanaticism. Whenever we think of 17th century British Puritanism, we think 89 00:09:29.800 --> 00:09:36.380 of Hugh Peters, of praise God barebones, of Cromwell's iconoclasts smashing the mighty 90 00:09:36.380 --> 00:09:43.680 big angels in glass. But behind all this untowardness, there was in the religionists a body of sound 91 00:09:43.680 --> 00:09:50.500 conscience, soundly and justly outraged. And no doubt, though mixed with an intolerable 92 00:09:50.500 --> 00:09:55.220 For the whole deal of unscrupulous greed there was on the part of the merchant enterprises 93 00:09:55.220 --> 00:10:01.300 a sincere persuasion that what was good for business was good for society. 94 00:10:01.300 --> 00:10:07.340 Taking Hamden's conscience as representative, one would say that it operated under the limitations 95 00:10:07.340 --> 00:10:12.340 set by nature upon the typical sturdy Buckinghamshire Squire. 96 00:10:12.340 --> 00:10:18.860 The mercantile conscience was likewise ill-informed and likewise set its course with a hard dogged 97 00:10:18.860 --> 00:10:24.820 Provincial Stubbornness. Still, the alliance of the two bodies of conscience was not without 98 00:10:24.820 --> 00:10:31.340 some measure of respectability. No doubt, for example, Hamden regarded the state-controlled 99 00:10:31.340 --> 00:10:38.340 episcopate to some extent objectively as unscriptural in theory and a tool of antichrist in practice. 100 00:10:39.380 --> 00:10:44.060 And no doubt, too, the mercantile conscience, with the disturbing vision of William Lord 101 00:10:44.060 --> 00:10:50.080 in view, might have found state-managed episcopy objectionable on other grounds than those 102 00:10:50.080 --> 00:10:53.500 of special interest. 103 00:10:53.500 --> 00:10:59.980 The merchant state's political rationale had to respond to the pressure of a growing individualism. 104 00:10:59.980 --> 00:11:05.000 The spirit of individualism appeared in the latter half of the sixteenth century, probably 105 00:11:05.000 --> 00:11:11.100 as well as such obscure origins can be determined as a by-product of the continental revival 106 00:11:11.100 --> 00:11:18.100 of Learning, or it may be specifically as a by-product of the Reformation in Germany. 107 00:11:18.140 --> 00:11:22.860 It was long, however, in gaining force enough to make itself count in shaping political 108 00:11:22.860 --> 00:11:29.660 theory. The feudal state could take no account of this spirit. Its stark regime of status 109 00:11:29.660 --> 00:11:34.820 was operable only where there was no great multiplicity of diverse economic interests 110 00:11:34.820 --> 00:11:41.260 to be accommodated, and where the sum of social power remained practically stable. Under the 111 00:11:41.260 --> 00:11:48.060 British feudal state, one large holding landed proprietor's interests was much like another's, 112 00:11:48.060 --> 00:11:54.020 and one bishop's or clergyman's interest was about the same in kind as another's. The interests 113 00:11:54.020 --> 00:11:59.500 of the monarchy and court were not greatly diversified, and the sum of social power varied 114 00:11:59.500 --> 00:12:29.500 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. 115 00:12:29.500 --> 00:12:34.500 could accomplish its primary purpose and still afford to remain relatively weak. 116 00:12:34.500 --> 00:12:39.500 It could normally, that is, enable a thorough going economic exploitation 117 00:12:39.500 --> 00:12:44.500 with relatively little apparatus of legislation or personnel. 118 00:12:44.500 --> 00:12:49.500 The merchant state, on the other hand, with its ensuing regime of contract, 119 00:12:49.500 --> 00:12:54.500 had to meet the problem set by a rapid development of social power 120 00:12:54.500 --> 00:12:57.500 and a multiplicity of economic interests. 121 00:12:57.500 --> 00:13:03.140 Both these tended to foster and stimulate the spirit of individualism. 122 00:13:03.140 --> 00:13:08.820 The management of social power made the merchant-enterpreiser feel that he was quite as much somebody 123 00:13:08.820 --> 00:13:14.140 as anybody, and that the general order of interest which he represented, and in particular 124 00:13:14.140 --> 00:13:19.500 his own special fraction of that interest, was to be regarded as most respectable, which 125 00:13:19.500 --> 00:13:22.220 hitherto it had not been. 126 00:13:22.220 --> 00:13:27.260 In short, he had a full sense of himself as an individual, which on these grounds he could 127 00:13:27.260 --> 00:13:57.260 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, 128 00:13:57.260 --> 00:14:02.980 business, ignorance and vulgarity at par with its commercial integrity, its shrewdness, 129 00:14:02.980 --> 00:14:10.300 diligence and thrift. Thus, the fully developed composite type of merchant-enterpreiser financier 130 00:14:10.300 --> 00:14:16.020 might be said to run all the psychological gradations between the brothers Chiribai at 131 00:14:16.020 --> 00:14:23.020 one end of the scale and Mr. Gragrind, Sir Gorgeous Midas and Mr. Bottles at the other. 132 00:14:23.020 --> 00:14:34.020 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. 133 00:14:34.020 --> 00:14:46.020 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. 134 00:14:46.020 --> 00:14:51.900 In a generation which had exchanged the authority of a pope for the authority of a book, or 135 00:14:51.900 --> 00:14:58.820 rather the authority of unlimited private interpretation of a book, there was no difficulty about finding 136 00:14:58.820 --> 00:15:05.820 ample scriptural sanction for both these doctrines. The interpretation of the Bible, like the 137 00:15:05.820 --> 00:15:11.380 judicial interpretation of a constitution, is merely a process by which, as a contemporary 138 00:15:11.380 --> 00:15:16.540 The theory of Bishop Butler said, anything may be made to mean anything, and in the absence 139 00:15:16.540 --> 00:15:22.780 of a coercive authority, papal, conciliar or judicial, any given interpretation finds 140 00:15:22.780 --> 00:15:27.980 only such exceptions, as may, for whatever reason, be accorded it. 141 00:15:27.980 --> 00:15:33.460 Thus, the episode of Eden, the parable of the talents, the apostolic injunction against 142 00:15:33.460 --> 00:15:39.420 being slothful in business, were a warrant for the Puritan doctrine of work. 143 00:15:39.420 --> 00:15:44.820 They brought the sanction of economic interest into complete agreement, uniting the religionist 144 00:15:44.820 --> 00:15:51.120 and the merchant-enterpreiser in the bond of a common intention. Thus again, the view 145 00:15:51.120 --> 00:15:56.580 of man as made in the image of God, made only a little lower than the angels, the subject 146 00:15:56.580 --> 00:16:02.960 of so august a transaction as the atonement, quite corroborated the political doctrine 147 00:16:02.960 --> 00:16:09.960 and of his endowment by his creator with certain rights unalienable by church or state. 148 00:16:09.960 --> 00:16:14.160 While the merchant-enterpreiser might hold with Mr. Jefferson that the truth of this 149 00:16:14.160 --> 00:16:20.680 political doctrine is self-evident, its scriptural support was yet of great value as carrying 150 00:16:20.680 --> 00:16:26.840 an implication of human nature's dignity which braced his more or less diffident and self-conscious 151 00:16:26.840 --> 00:16:32.840 and the doctrine that so dignified him might easily be conceived of as dignifying his pursuits. 152 00:16:32.840 --> 00:16:52.840 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. 153 00:16:52.840 --> 00:17:00.520 In the same way, the doctrine of popular sovereignty could be mounted on impregnable scriptural 154 00:17:00.520 --> 00:17:07.280 ground. Civil society was an association of true believers functioning for common secular 155 00:17:07.280 --> 00:17:14.000 purposes, and its right of self-government with respect to these purposes was God-given. 156 00:17:14.000 --> 00:17:18.760 If on the religious side all believers were priests, then on the secular side they were 157 00:17:18.760 --> 00:17:37.760 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. 158 00:17:37.760 --> 00:17:44.760 Civil legislation was supposed to interpret and particularize the laws of God as revealed in the Bible. 159 00:17:44.760 --> 00:17:51.760 and its administrators were responsible to the congregation in both its religious and secular capacities. 160 00:17:51.760 --> 00:17:59.760 Where the revealed law was silent, legislation was to be guided by its general spirit as best this might be determined. 161 00:17:59.760 --> 00:18:04.760 These principles obviously left open a considerable area of choice, 162 00:18:04.760 --> 00:18:11.760 but hypothetically the range of civil liberty and the range of religious liberty had a common boundary. 163 00:18:11.760 --> 00:18:17.760 This religious sanction of popular sovereignty was agreeable to the merchant-enterpreiser. 164 00:18:17.760 --> 00:18:24.760 It fell in with his individualism, enhancing considerably his sense of personal dignity and consequence. 165 00:18:24.760 --> 00:18:30.760 He could regard himself as, by birthright, not only a free citizen of a heavenly commonwealth, 166 00:18:30.760 --> 00:18:38.760 but also a free elector in an earthly commonwealth, fashioned, as nearly it might be, after the heavenly pattern. 167 00:18:38.760 --> 00:18:48.760 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. 168 00:18:48.760 --> 00:19:01.760 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. 169 00:19:01.760 --> 00:19:08.760 His doctrine of a wage economy of money lending, again the parable of the talents, both were scriptural. 170 00:19:08.760 --> 00:19:15.760 What especially recommended the doctrine of popular sovereignty to him on its secular side, however, 171 00:19:15.760 --> 00:19:22.760 was the immense leverage it gave him for ousting the regime of status to make way for the regime of contract, 172 00:19:22.760 --> 00:19:28.760 in a word, for displacing the feudal state and bringing in the merchant state. 173 00:19:28.760 --> 00:19:35.720 But interesting as these two doctrines were, their actual application was a matter of great 174 00:19:35.720 --> 00:19:41.720 difficulty. On the religious side, the doctrine of natural rights had to take account of the 175 00:19:41.720 --> 00:19:48.120 unorthodox. Theoretically it was easy to dispose of them. The separatists, for example, such 176 00:19:48.120 --> 00:19:53.220 as those who manned the Mayflower, had lost their natural rights in the fall of Adam and 177 00:19:53.220 --> 00:19:57.520 and had never made use of the means appointed to reclaim them. 178 00:19:57.520 --> 00:20:02.380 This was all very well, but the logical extension of this principle into actual practice was 179 00:20:02.380 --> 00:20:04.640 a rather grave affair. 180 00:20:04.640 --> 00:20:09.120 There were a good many dissenters all told, and they were articulate on the matter of 181 00:20:09.120 --> 00:20:14.820 natural rights which made trouble, so that when all was said and done, the doctrine came 182 00:20:14.820 --> 00:20:17.340 out considerably compromised. 183 00:20:17.340 --> 00:20:23.740 Then, in respect of popular sovereignty, there were the Presbyterians. 184 00:20:23.740 --> 00:20:26.300 Calvinism was monocratic to the core. 185 00:20:26.300 --> 00:20:31.940 In fact, Presbyterianism existed side by side with Episcopalism in the Church of England 186 00:20:31.940 --> 00:20:37.320 in the 16th century and was nudged out only very gradually. 187 00:20:37.320 --> 00:20:41.740 They were a numerous body and in point of scripture and history they had a great deal 188 00:20:41.740 --> 00:20:43.620 to say for their position. 189 00:20:43.620 --> 00:20:49.300 Thus the practical task of organizing a spiritual commonwealth had as hard going with the logic 190 00:20:49.300 --> 00:20:55.420 of popular sovereignty as it had with the logic of natural rights. 191 00:20:55.420 --> 00:21:01.420 The task of secular organization was even more troublesome. A society organized in conformity 192 00:21:01.420 --> 00:21:07.440 to these two principles is easily conceivable. Such an organization as Paine and the Declaration 193 00:21:07.440 --> 00:21:13.000 contemplated, for example, a rising out of social agreement and concerning itself only 194 00:21:13.000 --> 00:21:18.060 with the maintenance of freedom and security for the individual, but the practical task 195 00:21:18.060 --> 00:21:24.960 of effecting such an organization is quite another matter. On general grounds, doubtless, 196 00:21:24.960 --> 00:21:30.580 the Puritans would have found this impracticable. If indeed the times are ever going to be right 197 00:21:30.580 --> 00:21:37.580 for anything of the kind, their times were certainly not. The particular ground of difficulty, 198 00:21:37.580 --> 00:21:44.700 The difficulty, however, was that the merchant-enterpreiser did not want that form of social organization. 199 00:21:44.700 --> 00:21:50.580 In fact, one cannot be sure that the Puritan religionists themselves wanted it. 200 00:21:50.580 --> 00:21:55.620 The root trouble was, in short, that there was no practicable way to avert a shattering 201 00:21:55.620 --> 00:22:00.740 collision between the logic of natural rights and popular sovereignty and the economic law 202 00:22:00.740 --> 00:22:07.420 that man tends always to satisfy his needs with the least possible exertion. 203 00:22:07.420 --> 00:22:12.140 This law governed the merchant-enterpreiser in common with the rest of mankind. 204 00:22:12.140 --> 00:22:17.360 He was not for an organization that should do no more than maintain freedom of security. 205 00:22:17.360 --> 00:22:22.580 He was for one that should redistribute access to the political means and concern itself 206 00:22:22.580 --> 00:22:29.800 with freedom and security only so far as would be consistent with keeping this access open. 207 00:22:29.800 --> 00:22:34.360 That is to say, he was thoroughly indisposed to the idea of government. 208 00:22:34.360 --> 00:22:40.280 He was quite as strong for the idea of the state as the hierarchy and nobility were. 209 00:22:40.280 --> 00:22:45.160 He was not for any essential transformation in the state's character, but merely for a 210 00:22:45.160 --> 00:22:49.800 repartition of the economic advantages that the state confers. 211 00:22:49.800 --> 00:22:56.640 Thus, the merchant polity amounted to an attempt, more or less disingenuous, at reconciling 212 00:22:56.640 --> 00:23:00.400 matters which in their nature cannot be reconciled. 213 00:23:00.400 --> 00:23:06.360 The ideas of natural rights and popular sovereignty were, as we have seen, highly acceptable and 214 00:23:06.360 --> 00:23:12.360 highly animating to all the forces allied against the feudal idea. But while these ideas 215 00:23:12.360 --> 00:23:17.920 might be easily reconcilable with a system of simple government, such a simple system 216 00:23:17.920 --> 00:23:24.120 would not answer the purpose. Only the state system would do that. The problem therefore 217 00:23:24.120 --> 00:23:29.880 was how to keep these ideas well in the forefront of political theory, and at the same time 218 00:23:29.880 --> 00:23:34.640 and prevent their practical application from undermining the organization of the political 219 00:23:34.640 --> 00:23:41.080 means. It was a difficult problem. The best that could be done with it was by making certain 220 00:23:41.080 --> 00:23:46.420 structural alterations in the state, which would give it the appearance of expressing 221 00:23:46.420 --> 00:23:52.000 these ideas without the reality. The most important of these structural changes was 222 00:23:52.000 --> 00:23:57.640 that of bringing in the so-called representative or parliamentary system, which Puritanism 223 00:23:57.640 --> 00:24:04.640 introduced into the modern world, and which has received a great deal of praise as an advance towards democracy. 224 00:24:05.320 --> 00:24:08.520 This praise, however, is exaggerated. 225 00:24:08.520 --> 00:24:13.640 The change was one of form only, and its bearing on democracy has been 226 00:24:13.640 --> 00:24:18.880 inconsiderable. 227 00:24:18.880 --> 00:24:21.540 The migration of Englishmen to America 228 00:24:21.540 --> 00:24:25.200 merely transferred this problem into another setting. 229 00:24:25.200 --> 00:24:30.040 The discussion of political theory went on vigorously, but the philosophy of natural 230 00:24:30.040 --> 00:24:34.560 rights and popular sovereignty came out in practice about where they had come out in 231 00:24:34.560 --> 00:24:40.720 England. Here again, a great deal has been made of the democratic spirit and temper of 232 00:24:40.720 --> 00:24:45.640 the migrants, especially in the case of the separatists who landed at Plymouth. But the 233 00:24:45.640 --> 00:24:51.200 facts do not bear it out, except with regard to the decentralizing congregationalist principle 234 00:24:51.200 --> 00:24:53.520 of Church Order 235 00:24:53.520 --> 00:24:58.520 This principle of lodging final authority in the smallest unit rather than the largest 236 00:24:58.520 --> 00:25:04.240 in the local congregation rather than in a synod or general council was democratic and 237 00:25:04.240 --> 00:25:09.000 its thorough going application in a scheme of church order would represent some actual 238 00:25:09.000 --> 00:25:14.600 advance towards democracy and give some recognition to the general philosophy of natural rights 239 00:25:14.600 --> 00:25:17.320 and popular sovereignty. 240 00:25:17.320 --> 00:25:22.520 The Plymouth settlers did something with this principle, actually applying it in the matter 241 00:25:22.520 --> 00:25:27.320 of church order, and for this they deserve credit. 242 00:25:27.320 --> 00:25:31.180 Applying it in the matter of civil order, however, was another affair. 243 00:25:31.180 --> 00:25:35.940 It is true that the Plymouth colonists probably contemplated something of the kind, and that 244 00:25:35.940 --> 00:25:39.780 for a time they practiced a sort of primitive communism. 245 00:25:39.780 --> 00:25:44.620 They drew up an agreement on shipboard, which may be taken at its face value as evidence 246 00:25:44.620 --> 00:25:50.280 of the Democratic Disposition, though it was not in any sense a frame of government like 247 00:25:50.280 --> 00:25:57.280 pens or of any constitutional document. Those who speak of it as our first written constitution 248 00:25:58.380 --> 00:26:04.760 are considerably in advance of their text, for it was merely an agreement to make a constitution 249 00:26:04.760 --> 00:26:11.460 or frame of government when the settlers would have come to land and looked the situation 250 00:26:11.460 --> 00:26:41.460 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. 251 00:26:41.460 --> 00:26:47.460 of English Merchant Enterprises, now growing shaky and soon to be superseded by the Royal 252 00:26:47.460 --> 00:26:54.460 Authority and its territory converted into a royal province. It was only by misreconings 253 00:26:54.740 --> 00:27:00.560 and the accidents of navigation that, most unfortunately for the prospects of the colony, 254 00:27:00.560 --> 00:27:07.300 the settlers landed on the stern and rock-bound coast of Plymouth. These settlers were in 255 00:27:07.300 --> 00:27:12.540 In most respects, probably as good as the best who ever found their way to America. 256 00:27:12.540 --> 00:27:19.540 They were bred of what passed in England as the lower orders, sober, hardworking and capable, 257 00:27:19.600 --> 00:27:25.260 and their residence under continental institutions in Holland had given them a fund of politico-religious 258 00:27:25.260 --> 00:27:30.500 ideas and habits of thought which set them considerably apart from the rest of their 259 00:27:30.500 --> 00:27:36.900 countrymen. There is, however, no more than antiquarian interest in determining how far 260 00:27:36.900 --> 00:27:40.180 or they were actually possessed by those ideas. 261 00:27:40.180 --> 00:27:45.260 They may have contemplated a system of complete religious and civil democracy, or they may 262 00:27:45.260 --> 00:27:46.800 not. 263 00:27:46.800 --> 00:27:51.220 They may have found their communist practices agreeable to their notion of a sound and just 264 00:27:51.220 --> 00:27:54.780 social order, or they may not. 265 00:27:54.780 --> 00:27:59.860 The point is that while apparently they may be free enough to found a church order as 266 00:27:59.860 --> 00:28:05.260 democratic as they chose, they were by no means free to found a civil democracy or anything 267 00:28:05.260 --> 00:28:12.260 The London Merchant Enterprises Bound Them in Return for Transportation and Outfit to Seven Years Service 268 00:28:35.260 --> 00:28:42.260 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. 269 00:29:05.260 --> 00:29:11.940 Mr. Beard, that the trading company, the commercial corporation for colonization, was actually 270 00:29:11.940 --> 00:29:14.860 an autonomous state. 271 00:29:14.860 --> 00:29:20.180 Like a state, says Mr. Beard, it had a constitution, a charter, issued by the Crown. 272 00:29:20.180 --> 00:29:25.540 Like the state, it had a territorial basis, a grant of land, often greater in area than 273 00:29:25.540 --> 00:29:28.940 a score of English-European principalities. 274 00:29:28.940 --> 00:29:33.700 It could make assessments, coin money, regulate trade, dispose of corporate property, collect 275 00:29:33.700 --> 00:29:40.260 Taxes, Manage a Treasury and Provide for Defense. Thus, and here is the important observation, 276 00:29:40.260 --> 00:29:46.580 so important I venture to italicize it, every essential element long afterward found in 277 00:29:46.580 --> 00:29:51.140 the government of the American state appeared in the chartered corporation that started 278 00:29:51.140 --> 00:29:57.700 English civilization in America. Generally speaking, the system of civil order established 279 00:29:57.700 --> 00:30:03.320 in America was the state system of the mother countries operating over a considerable body 280 00:30:03.320 --> 00:30:09.480 of Water. The only thing that distinguished it was that the exploited and dependent class 281 00:30:09.480 --> 00:30:16.160 was situated at an unusual distance from the owning and exploiting class. The headquarters 282 00:30:16.160 --> 00:30:23.160 of the autonomous state were on one side of the Atlantic and its subjects on the other. 283 00:30:23.880 --> 00:30:29.040 This separation gave rise to administrative difficulties of one kind and another, and 284 00:30:29.040 --> 00:30:34.540 To obviate the, perhaps for obvious reasons as well, one English company, the Massachusetts 285 00:30:34.540 --> 00:30:40.940 Bay Company, moved over bodily in 1630, bringing their charter and most of their stockholders 286 00:30:40.940 --> 00:30:47.940 with them, thus settling up an actual autonomous state in America. The thing to be observed 287 00:30:48.540 --> 00:30:53.400 about this is that the merchant state was set up complete in New England long before 288 00:30:53.400 --> 00:30:56.240 before it was set up in Old England. 289 00:30:56.240 --> 00:31:02.040 Most of the English immigrants to Massachusetts came over between 1630 and 1640, and in this 290 00:31:02.040 --> 00:31:06.320 period the English merchant state was only at the beginning of its hardest struggles 291 00:31:06.320 --> 00:31:08.360 for supremacy. 292 00:31:08.360 --> 00:31:16.080 James I died in 1625 and his successor, Charles I, continued his absolutist regime. 293 00:31:16.080 --> 00:31:22.240 From 1629, the year in which the Bay Company was chartered, to 1640, when the Long Parliament 294 00:31:22.240 --> 00:31:27.320 was called, he ruled without a parliament, effectively suppressing what few vestiges 295 00:31:27.320 --> 00:31:33.200 of liberty had survived the Tudor and Jacobean tyrannies, and during these eleven years 296 00:31:33.200 --> 00:31:39.640 the prospects of the English merchant state were at their lowest. It still had to face 297 00:31:39.640 --> 00:31:45.600 the distractions of the civil war, the retarding anomalies of the commonwealth, the restoration 298 00:31:45.600 --> 00:31:51.440 and the recurrence of tyrannical absolutism under James II before it succeeded in establishing 299 00:31:51.440 --> 00:31:57.640 in itself firmly through the revolution of 1688. 300 00:31:57.640 --> 00:32:02.880 On the other hand, the leaders of the Bay Colony were free from the first to establish 301 00:32:02.880 --> 00:32:08.920 a state policy of their own devising, and to set up a state structure which should express 302 00:32:08.920 --> 00:32:15.480 that policy without compromise. There was no competing policy to extinguish, no rival 303 00:32:15.480 --> 00:32:22.480 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. 304 00:32:45.480 --> 00:32:52.480 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. 305 00:32:53.340 --> 00:33:00.340 In principle it was not differentiated. The state in New England, Virginia, Maryland, the Jersey, New York, Connecticut, everywhere, was purely Catholic. 306 00:33:04.680 --> 00:33:08.720 In the New York region the state was very active. 307 00:33:08.720 --> 00:33:25.720 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. 308 00:33:25.720 --> 00:33:35.720 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. 309 00:33:35.720 --> 00:33:55.720 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. 310 00:33:55.720 --> 00:34:24.720 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. 311 00:34:24.720 --> 00:34:30.720 The long and hard winters took the profit out of slave labor in agriculture. 312 00:34:30.720 --> 00:34:41.720 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. 313 00:34:41.720 --> 00:34:53.720 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. 314 00:34:53.720 --> 00:35:01.000 They held some slaves and did a great deal of slave trading, but in the main they became 315 00:35:01.000 --> 00:35:08.640 at the outset a race of small-holding farmers, shipbuilders, navigators, maritime enterprises 316 00:35:08.640 --> 00:35:16.240 in fish, whales, molasses, rum and miscellaneous cargoes, and, presently, moneylenders. Their 317 00:35:16.240 --> 00:35:22.040 remarkable success in these pursuits is well known. It is worth mention here that in order 318 00:35:22.040 --> 00:35:27.480 Consider to account for many of the complications and collisions of interest subsequently ensuing 319 00:35:27.480 --> 00:35:32.420 upon the merchant state's fundamental doctrine that the primary function of government is 320 00:35:32.420 --> 00:35:38.420 not to maintain freedom and security, but to help business. 321 00:35:38.420 --> 00:35:41.360 3. 322 00:35:41.360 --> 00:35:46.200 One examines the American merchant state in vain for any suggestion of the philosophy 323 00:35:46.200 --> 00:35:49.480 of natural rights and popular sovereignty. 324 00:35:49.480 --> 00:35:55.040 The company system and the provincial system made no place for it, and the one autonomous 325 00:35:55.040 --> 00:36:01.320 state was uncompromisingly against it. The Bay Company brought over their charter to 326 00:36:01.320 --> 00:36:06.180 serve as the constitution of the new colony, and under its provisions the form of the state 327 00:36:06.180 --> 00:36:11.960 was that of an uncommonly small and close oligarchy. The right to vote was vested only 328 00:36:11.960 --> 00:36:17.800 in shareholding members, or freemen, of the corporation. On the stark state principle 329 00:36:17.800 --> 00:36:22.840 People laid down many years later by John Jay that those who own the country should 330 00:36:22.840 --> 00:36:29.840 govern the country. At the end of a year, the Bay Colony comprised perhaps about 2,000 331 00:36:30.360 --> 00:36:36.680 persons, and of these certainly not 20, probably not more than a dozen, had anything whatever 332 00:36:36.680 --> 00:36:43.440 to say about its government. This small group constituted itself as a sort of directorate 333 00:36:43.440 --> 00:36:48.600 or Council, appointing its own executive body, which consisted of a governor, a lieutenant 334 00:36:48.600 --> 00:36:55.200 governor and a half dozen or more magistrates. These officials had no responsibility to the 335 00:36:55.200 --> 00:37:00.920 community at large, but only to the directorate. By the terms of the charter, the directorate 336 00:37:00.920 --> 00:37:06.340 was self-perpetuating. It was permitted to fill vacancies and add to its numbers as it 337 00:37:06.340 --> 00:37:12.800 saw fit, and in so doing it followed a policy similar to that which was subsequently recommended 338 00:37:12.800 --> 00:37:18.540 by Alexander Hamilton of admitting only such well-to-do and influential persons as could 339 00:37:18.540 --> 00:37:26.400 be trusted to sustain a solid front against anything savouring of popular sovereignty. 340 00:37:26.400 --> 00:37:31.060 Historians have been very properly made a great deal of the influence of Calvinist theology 341 00:37:31.060 --> 00:37:36.960 embracing the strongly anti-democratic attitude of the Bay Company. The story is readable 342 00:37:36.960 --> 00:37:42.640 and interesting, often amusing, yet the gist of it is so simple that it can be perceived 343 00:37:42.640 --> 00:37:53.640 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. 344 00:37:53.640 --> 00:38:04.640 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. 345 00:38:04.640 --> 00:38:25.640 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. 346 00:38:25.640 --> 00:38:34.640 In the year 311, the Roman Emperor Constantine issued an edict of toleration in favor of organized Christianity. 347 00:38:34.640 --> 00:38:45.640 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. 348 00:38:45.640 --> 00:38:50.600 The story of the heavenly sign appearing before his crucial battle against 349 00:38:50.600 --> 00:38:55.760 Maxentius may quite safely be put down beside that of the apparitions seen 350 00:38:55.760 --> 00:39:00.320 before the battle of the Marne. He never joined the church, however, and the 351 00:39:00.320 --> 00:39:05.720 tradition that he was converted to Christianity is open to great doubt. The 352 00:39:05.720 --> 00:39:11.240 point of all this is that circumstances had, by that time, made Christianity a 353 00:39:11.240 --> 00:39:18.240 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. 354 00:39:18.240 --> 00:39:25.240 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. 355 00:39:25.240 --> 00:39:31.240 The understanding, undoubtedly tacit, was based on a simple quid pro quo. 356 00:39:31.240 --> 00:39:38.240 In exchange for the right way of bringing this about, the Church was given the right tool of the state. 357 00:39:38.240 --> 00:40:02.240 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. 358 00:40:02.240 --> 00:40:19.240 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. 359 00:40:19.240 --> 00:40:25.760 They were the terms of the understanding struck in the Germanys and in England at the Reformation. 360 00:40:25.760 --> 00:40:31.640 The petty German principality had its state church as it had its state theatre, and in 361 00:40:31.640 --> 00:40:37.360 England Henry VIII set up the church in its present status as an arm of the civil service, 362 00:40:37.360 --> 00:40:39.360 like the post office. 363 00:40:39.360 --> 00:40:43.920 The fundamental understanding in all cases was that the church should not interfere with 364 00:40:43.920 --> 00:40:49.460 with or disparage the organization of the political means, and in practice it naturally 365 00:40:49.460 --> 00:40:54.680 followed that the church would go further, and quite regularly abet this organization 366 00:40:54.680 --> 00:40:57.720 to the best of its ability. 367 00:40:57.720 --> 00:41:03.080 The merchant state in America came to this understanding with organized Christianity. 368 00:41:03.080 --> 00:41:09.120 In the Bay Colony the church became in 1638 an established subsidiary of the state, supported 369 00:41:09.120 --> 00:41:17.480 by Taxation. It maintained a state creed promulgated in 1647. In some other colonies also, as for 370 00:41:17.480 --> 00:41:22.960 example in Virginia, the church was a branch of the state service, and where it was not 371 00:41:22.960 --> 00:41:29.240 actually established as such, the same understanding was reached by other means, quite as satisfactory. 372 00:41:29.240 --> 00:41:35.480 Indeed, the merchant state, both in England and America, as soon became lukewarm towards 373 00:41:35.480 --> 00:41:40.320 is the idea of an establishment perceiving that the same modus vivendi could almost as 374 00:41:40.320 --> 00:41:46.440 easily be arrived at under Voluntaryism, and that the latter had the advantage of satisfying 375 00:41:46.440 --> 00:41:51.880 practically all modes of creedal and ceremonial preference, thus releasing the state from 376 00:41:51.880 --> 00:41:57.920 the troublesome and profitless business of interference in disputes over matter of doctrine 377 00:41:57.920 --> 00:42:02.080 and church order. 378 00:42:02.080 --> 00:42:08.240 and Pure and Simple was set up in Rhode Island by Roger Williams, John Clark and their associates 379 00:42:08.240 --> 00:42:15.240 who were banished from the Bay Colony almost exactly 300 years ago in 1636. This group 380 00:42:15.840 --> 00:42:21.700 of exiles is commonly regarded as having founded a society on the philosophy of natural rights 381 00:42:21.700 --> 00:42:27.420 and popular sovereignty in respect of both church order and civil order, and as having 382 00:42:27.420 --> 00:42:33.540 Having launched an experiment in democracy. This, however, is an exaggeration. The leaders 383 00:42:33.540 --> 00:42:38.380 of the group were undoubtedly in sight of this philosophy, and as far as church order 384 00:42:38.380 --> 00:42:44.740 is concerned, their practice was conformable to it. On the civil side, the most that can 385 00:42:44.740 --> 00:42:50.940 be said is that their practice was conformable in so far as they knew how to make it so, 386 00:42:50.940 --> 00:42:57.260 And one says this much only by a very considerable concession. 387 00:42:57.260 --> 00:43:01.860 The least that can be said, on the other hand, is that their practice was for a time greatly 388 00:43:01.860 --> 00:43:07.540 in advance of the practice prevailing in other colonies, so far in advance that Rhode Island 389 00:43:07.540 --> 00:43:12.780 was in great disrepute with its neighbors in Massachusetts and Connecticut, who diligently 390 00:43:12.780 --> 00:43:18.700 disseminated the tale of its evil fame throughout the land with the customary exaggerations 391 00:43:18.700 --> 00:43:20.820 and embellishments. 392 00:43:20.820 --> 00:43:25.780 Nevertheless, through acceptance of the state system of land tenure, the political structure 393 00:43:25.780 --> 00:43:32.440 of Rhode Island was as state structure from the outset, contemplating as it did the stratification 394 00:43:32.440 --> 00:43:39.920 of society into an owning and exploiting class and a property-less dependent class. Williams's 395 00:43:39.920 --> 00:43:46.160 theory of the state was that of social compact arrived at among equals, but equality did 396 00:43:46.160 --> 00:43:52.960 did not exist in Rhode Island. The actual outcome was a pure class state. 397 00:43:52.960 --> 00:43:58.720 In the spring of 1638, Williams acquired about twenty square miles of land by gift from two 398 00:43:58.720 --> 00:44:05.800 Indian sachems, in addition to some he had bought from them two years before. In October 399 00:44:05.800 --> 00:44:11.720 he formed a proprietary of purchasers who bought twelve-thirteenths of the Indian grant. 400 00:44:11.720 --> 00:44:16.780 Bicknell, in his History of Rhode Island, cites a letter written by Williams to the 401 00:44:16.780 --> 00:44:23.200 Deputy Governor of the Bay Colony, which says frankly that the plan of this proprietary contemplated 402 00:44:23.200 --> 00:44:29.200 the creation of two classes of citizens, one consisting of land-holding heads of families 403 00:44:29.200 --> 00:44:35.640 and the other of young men, single persons, who were a landless tenantry, and as Bicknell 404 00:44:35.640 --> 00:44:40.840 said, had no voice or vote as to the offices of the community or the laws which they were 405 00:44:40.840 --> 00:44:47.080 were called upon to obey. Thus the civil order in Rhode Island was essentially a pure state 406 00:44:47.080 --> 00:44:53.740 order as much so as the civil order of the Bay Colony or any other in America, and in 407 00:44:53.740 --> 00:44:59.240 fact the landed property franchise lasted uncommonly long in Rhode Island, existing 408 00:44:59.240 --> 00:45:05.720 there for some time after it had been given up in most other quarters of America. By way 409 00:45:05.720 --> 00:45:15.720 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. 410 00:45:15.720 --> 00:45:21.720 The political structure was always that of the merchant state. Americans have never known any other. 411 00:45:21.720 --> 00:45:32.720 Furthermore, the philosophy of natural rights and popular sovereignty was never once exhibited anywhere in American political practice during the colonial period, 412 00:45:32.720 --> 00:45:38.320 The first settlement in 1607 down to the revolution of 1776.