The beginning of American Independence. We live in that part of the world that at one time was known as the New World.
As we all know, the Western Hemisphere was brought to public attention in Europe as a result of the voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492.
In fact, when I went to school, my history book said that Christopher Columbus discovered America in that year.
Actually, we now understand that there may have been a number of other voyages that predated
Columbus. And yet my history book, at that time, a number of years ago, indicated that
Christopher Columbus was the first. And that particular fact is now being disputed by various
scholars in other sciences, such as archaeology and anthropology, who have discovered the
The traces of other landings in the New World and dated them so that we know they occurred
prior to the Columbus voyage. Why did Columbus get the credit?
There is an important point here to keep in mind. Christopher Columbus sailed for the
King of Spain, and at the time of his voyage Spain was the most powerful country in the
World, and Columbus sailed on a political journey that was supported in essence by the
taxpayers of Spain, and the consequence of that fact is that Columbus got a good press.
The other voyages, so far as we can determine, were those that occurred without government
backing.
In other words, private adventurers paying their own way set sail for lands they knew
do not of, and by the time they returned, there wasn't a press corps on hand to welcome
them, and thus they escaped history. But of course when Columbus returned with news of
what he had discovered, there was a large contingent of important people around to greet
him and to ask all kinds of questions, and thus it was that whether Columbus discovered
America or not, it is true that publicity relating to the discovery was first unleashed
by the Columbus voyage. As one wag has told us, Columbus, like so many people operating
for the government, didn't know where he was going when he set out, didn't know where
he was when he got there, and did it all on taxpayers' money. But the fact of the matter
is that he did get publicity, and as a result of that publicity, the entire Western Hemisphere
was opened up for European exploration and settlement.
Since Spain was the most powerful nation in the world at that time, Spain was not slow
in taking advantage of this new discovery, which was essentially a Spanish discovery.
Although Columbus himself was not a Spanish subject, nonetheless he sailed under that
sponsorship, and so Spain took the credit and proceeded to lay claim, in essence, to
the entire Western Hemisphere, North, Central and South America. And a question might be
asked rhetorically, how does it happen that we are today not subjects of Spain?
Certainly Spain had all the advantages. They got here first. They got here a long way
of the World.
We are way ahead of their nearest rivals, who didn't begin coming over until several
years after the Columbus voyage was known about.
And yet we are not Spain, or related to Spain primarily.
Of course in Central America the antecedents are primarily Spanish.
And there is a very strong Spanish influence in South America, although the Portuguese
have actually eclipsed it in many places.
In southwestern United States we have a very strong Spanish influence, but in the main,
in what we think of as the United States, we have fundamentally a British influence,
and of course in Canada we have both a British and a French influence. And yet Britain and
France were much slower than either Spain or Portugal in beginning to develop the New
in the New World. How did it happen that Britain primarily, and France also, got such large
footholds in the New World when they originally got off to such a poor start? If you examine
what happened politically in Europe during this period, you may be able to see certain
things there. What happened was this. Spain had risen to its ascendancy as a result of
of the Moorish Occupation. The Moorish occupation had come into Spain as a result of the expansion
of Islamic ideas, and Spain flourished under the Islamic culture that was imposed on it.
Now, this type of imposition was primarily not so much political as it was religious
and Enterprising.
The Islamic peoples, the Saracens, who came into Spain and whom we call the Moors, were
very much interested in developing industry and business as it was done then.
Of course they did not have mass production as we think of it today.
But they literally took Spain by the scruff of the neck and shoved it forward so that
it became, productively speaking, the most important nation in the world, and this happened
at a time when the Spanish government was weak. If the Spanish government had been strong,
the Moors would never have gotten a foothold. They came in because the Spanish government
was so weak it couldn't keep them out. Now, at the time Columbus sailed, the industry
History and Business of Spain was beginning to go into a decline. It was going into a
decline because there was the emergence of some very, very strong Spanish rulers. But
curiously at the same time this was happening, the contrary type of movement is found in
Great Britain. In Great Britain, which had been under very strong kings such as the Tudors,
which included both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, they passed from the scene.
And when Elizabeth I died in 1603, then the British turned around and introduced a new
ruling house, the stewards.
And the stewards were always incompetent in many areas.
Most historians have commented on this fact.
And the result was that the British government became weak.
Now as the British government became weak about the same time that the Spanish government
was getting strong, this opened up the way for British people to come to the New World.
It came to the New World primarily in a way that tended to emphasize the development of
colonies and the development of American production rather than, as the Spanish were doing, developing
Settlements on the basis of exploitation and taking over and essentially looking for gold
and things of this sort, so that your British colonies, when they began being founded, were
founded with enterprise and colonial survival in mind, whereas the Spanish colonies were
fundamentally provided as outposts of the Spanish Empire and they were more or less
Motus operandi, Motus operandi
and the British colonies began to flourish precisely as the British government in England
began to decline in potency. And the Spanish colonies which were established at an earlier
date began to decline as the Spanish government gained in potency. In fact, this particular
episode gives us a good way, a good guideline, a rule of thumb that we can watch. Whenever
A political agency becomes supreme in a nation. The tendency is very good for the economy
of that nation to weaken. And when the economy is freed from these tentacles, then it tends
to rise, but it does so as the government tends to decline. Now there will be those
who will argue that this is disproved by the actions of the Soviet Union, that the Soviet
Government has demonstrated that it is possible for a strong and powerful government to come
in and at the same time to improve the economy, and that you can have both the government
and the economy expanding at the same time. But I would have to challenge that. In point
of fact, the government of the Tsars was extremely powerful, extremely despotic, and it continued
to hold down the Russian economy so that there was never any chance of an industrial development
in Russia until such time as the government of Lenin appeared. Now, of course, it is true
that at the outset of the Leninist experiment in Russia, the government became the leading
agent in trying to establish industry, commerce, and agriculture. But virtually all of these
These efforts, if you examine them, failed. The way the Russian economy finally began
to take hold was when the government, yes even the government of Stalin, began to back
away and open up the area of the economy so that people in the market could function.
And you'll find that this rule of thumb will apply even in Russia. As an economy grows
is strong, it tends to grow strong as governments pull back. And if governments do not pull
back and let the economy alone, then the economy will weaken.
In our own case, since here in the United States we owe most of our antecedents to the
British Empire and to the British way of thinking and doing, it follows that when we examine
And we will see that this is the case here. The British government began to decline with
the passing of the Tudors, and that was in 1603. The first permanent British settlement
mentioned in our history books is usually Jamestown, which was established in 1607 while
King James I was on the throne. And King James I was a much weaker, much more dilatory ruler
than Queen Elizabeth I. And the stewards from that time on operated in a sort of haphazard
manner insofar as political action was concerned. And during that time the British colonies
in the New World flourished. So we have that background and it's an important thing to
keep in mind whenever you are reading history or examining economic history to see and see
See how things develop. Governments, powerful governments and powerful economies tend to
be opposed. If your economy is going to be strong, then your government cannot be. If
your government is going to be strong, then your economy will not be. And this is the
dilemma that at present we are facing in this country. Many people in this country have
sense that the economy is in very, very serious straits. It is not doing well. And in order
to rectify these problems in the economy, many people are turning to the government
and asking it to do more. The result is that the government day by day, month by month
and year by year gets bigger and stronger and to do so it has to extract more of its
In any case, we do know that following the settlement in Jamestown and then year by year
in other places, British subjects came to the New World, some of them trying to escape
the oppression that they were experiencing in Great Britain, both religious persecution
and economic privation of various sorts, they came to the New World and they established
settlements and they did so with one idea, and that was to colonize and to make the New
World their home, not to exploit it, to take out of it something that was to be sent back,
but to develop it themselves for their own use and to live here and make this land their
own. Now this made a big difference in the development of the territory that is now the
in the United States.
So we began to feel the influx of the British influence, and it began to spread up and down
the entire eastern coastline.
Most of the original settlements were coastal villages at the outset, and then they expanded
and worked back into the interior.
And this condition went right through the first 150 years of the American experience.
During that time, we were British colonies. We finally got thirteen of them, and these
British colonies were at no time out from under the control of Great Britain in a nominal
sense. Everybody over here realized that they were colonists under the British government,
and of course various British governors were sent over and took up residence in the key
in the 18th century, which became, at that time, one of the most important economic
This is the century that brought us the Industrial Revolution, which began in 1760. It brought
us the American Revolution of 1775. It brought us the French Revolution of 1789. It was a
period of vast intellectual stimulation and turmoil. There was a resurgence of all kinds
of Ideas of Great Significance, and it is important to understand our own background
here in the light of what was happening not only here but in other parts of the world.
We in America, who were British subjects and had come over to colonize, had in the main
been motivated either by a religious conviction that we were and of right ought to be free
Men, or by a political conviction which paralleled the religious view to wit that as human beings
we had the same rights anybody else had. The American colonists were fundamentally Whigs,
and the Whiggish movement was opposite the Tory movement. Now the Tory movement was essentially
the loyalist and the royalist group. These were the people that supported the state and
believed that whatever the king did was right, because after all he was divine, and that
the only proper procedure was for everybody to obey the king. That was right in the Tory
framework of reference. But we were Whigs. And we disputed that view. And that's one
of the reasons many of us left England and came to these shores, because we wanted to
to be more independent of the king. We wanted to make up our own minds and manage our own
affairs. And here in the New World we could own property privately. And note, please,
the British government wasn't doing very much to protect it. Oh, of course it will be said,
and accurately, that the British government sent over troops from time to time to help
quell Indian uprisings. But in point of fact, many of these Indian uprisings were simply
The colonists when they came over here found that they had to deal amicably with the Indians
or fail utterly. And so in instance after instance the colonists settled down peaceably,
worked out amicable relationships with the local Indian tribes that they came in direct
contact with, and in the main kept their promises with the Indians, and the Indians treated
The French influence has been and remains strong there even now. Because there had been the political rivalry between England and France in the old world, that political rivalry continued in the new world between the French colonists and the British colonists, and the two governments in the old world were not the least bit averse to using the Indians to try to stir up trouble with their opposing number in the new world.
World. Hence we find Frenchmen encouraging the Indians to attack British settlements,
and we find British officials encouraging the Indians to attack French settlements, and
the colonists were dragged into it because they lived here with the Indians.
This dichotomy, this ambivalence between the promises made by the settlers and the facts
The ethics of what British officialdom did, and French officialdom did, caused the Indian
to feel that the white man spoke with a forked tongue. Because, like most of us, when we
view members of another race, we tend to categorize and collectivize them. And if we hear something
from one member of another race, and then we hear something that is different from another
Remember of that same race? We think that the race is speaking and that the race is
dishonest. Actually what you have is two different persons and one is saying one thing and one
is saying another and the race gets blamed. Well this is what happened. The private colonists,
many times, I don't mean to suggest that in every case this was true, but it was true
in most cases, the colonists dealt fairly with the Indians. They traded with them, they
may be liars but in this particular case the Indians appeared to be liars too and we got
so that we didn't trust each other and the result finally roiled up in the French and
Indian War which actually was a war between Britain and France in which Indians participated
and in the end for which Canada became the war prize. The French lost the war and Canada
was seated to Great Britain as a war prize and that was the event that actually marked
the ascension of George III to the throne. Now George III was a very, very competent
monarch. In fact, historians have said this and I have no reason to quarrel with the statement
that George III was probably the first competent monarch to occupy the British throne since
the death of Queen Elizabeth. Well, he took that view of himself, and I think we've tended
to accept his judgment here. In any case, George III saw that the American colonists,
that is to say the British colonists in America, had become very independent of the crown.
And he decided that something should be done to bring them under a real British rule.
You see, what he discovered was that he had been sending troops over to, quote, protect
them, unquote, from the Indians.
Actually, the colonists resented this.
They didn't need the Indians.
I mean, they didn't need the troops.
They may not have needed some of the Indians either, but they didn't need the troops.
And yet these troops were quartered on them without their consent. A man, a sergeant would
knock at your door and take a look at your house and at you and say, well, I think three
men can live here all right, and he'd order them in, and you had to support them. Well,
this was an outrage, and the colonists didn't like this. Of course, this was our king who
was doing this to us, but we didn't like it, and we said so, and we didn't want the troops
in the first place. We weren't fighting France. This was an old world quarrel that had been
transported to the New World and we got ourselves involved in it, but in any case the war had
ended and France ceded Canada to Great Britain, and now George decided to collect the taxes
to pay for the troops. But in all this period of time, and it's hard for us to realize
this, from 1600 approximately, I'm using a general figure here, on up to 1760, the colonists
was living in these British colonies, hadn't been paying taxes, they hadn't been ruled,
they had actually been living in a state of contractual relationships with each other,
and it had worked out very well. Now all of a sudden, out of a clear blue sky, they got
George III and George decided that they were going to have to pay taxes to help support
their own governments, that is the Crown colonies and all the rest of the things that went on
in Britain, and the Americans backed up and said no. It's a very interesting thing to
keep in mind the kind of ideas that were roiling up during the latter half of the 18th century.
We had these three major revolutions occur. Now the Industrial Revolution was simply a
fantastic breakthrough in the field of manufacture, primarily in the textile industry, but also
So in the manufacture of steel, in the development of new ways to raise agricultural products
and so on, it brought about a complete change in the way that people ordinarily lived.
Now in conjunction with this industrial development there emerged two conflicting bodies of thought
and they led to two different revolutions. The American Revolution on the one hand and
the French on the other. Now here is an important point to keep in mind. The American Revolution
Revolution was essentially a middle-class revolution. It was inspired by this trilogy
of ideas—life, liberty, and property. In fact, life, liberty, and property became the
watchwords of the period from 1775 to about 1785. During that period of time, that was
was the constant cry on the lips of Americans, life, liberty, and property.
The French were undoubtedly inspired by what happened here. But they were listening to
a different drummer. They were following a little different heartbeat, and a man who
had influenced them profoundly was a French philosopher and novelist named Rousseau. And
and Rousseau provided them with a different trilogy of political essences, which were
called liberte, egalite, fraternity. Liberty, equality, fraternity.
Now this particular group of essences is quite different from the concept of life, liberty
and property. In essence, this second trilogy of ideas was to inspire the working class,
Not the middle class, but what we have called earlier the lower classes. The thing that
the French sought to do was to place the working man in a position of power. In other words,
the French sought to establish a government that would represent the downtrodden masses,
so called. Whereas the American Revolution sought to establish the right of each man
to his own life, to his own liberty, and to his own property.
Now, the results of these two different revolutions, both of which came on the heels of the Industrial
Revolution, has in fact altered the appearance of the world. And we are in a very real sense
today continuing both of these same revolutions. The American Revolution has never really been
are the proper essences by means of which to organize society.
These two different views are profoundly at odds, and to understand what happened we are
going to have to take a closer look at them. Thank you.