Thomas Hutchinson: Strictures Upon the Declaration of the Congress of Philadelphia; In a Letter to a Noble Lord. London: 1776.
John Lind: An Answer to the Declaration of Independence. London: T. Cadell, 1776.
The signers of the Declaration of Independence said, “We hold these truths to be self-evidence….” If the truths are self-evident, why say “We hold,” rather than “These truths are….”? The answer is that not everyone will hold a self-evident truth to be self-evident. A “candid” or unbiased world may do so, but not everyone in the world is unbiased. Some minds are too clouded with passion to perceive the obvious—tyrants, for example. In a letter to Parliament in October 1775, George III anticipated the North American colonies’ declaration of independence. “The authors and promoters of this desperate conspiracy have in the conduct of it derived great advantage from the difference of our intentions and theirs.” Likely thinking of the 1774 Articles of Association, he continued, “They meant only to amuse, by vague expressions of attachment to the parent state and the strongest protestations of loyalty to me, whilst they were preparing for a general revolt,” by now seen at Bunker Hill and elsewhere. The aim of the conspirators was to establish “an independent empire.” American Continental Congress representatives John Dickinson and James Wilson replied with their “Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies” in February 1776, calling the king’s argument malicious and false.
One thing continued to led to another, however, and after the Congress did issue its Declaration of Independence several months later, Thomas Hutchinson, the colonial governor of Massachusetts, and the English barrister John Lind published refutations of the Americans’ argument. Seldom read today, they offer a clear picture of the view from London, a view that would prevail there for decades after the colonists and their French allies won the Revolutionary War. Both of the king’s defenders denied the truth of unalienable natural rights.
“Upon first reading” the Declaration, Hutchinson scoffs, “I thought there would have been more policy in leaving the World altogether ignorant of the motives to this Rebellion than in offering such false and frivolous reasons in support of it” (3). He claims to find Congress’s argument so weak that it can only be a cover for the Americans’ real motives: “I am of the opinion, that if no Taxes or Duties had been laid upon the Colonies, other pretenses would have been found for exception to the authority of Parliament” (3-4). For although “the body of the people in the Colonies” were “easy and quiet” in the years prior to the uprising, “fear[ing] no imaginary evils from [Parliament] for a hundred years to come,” some among them “had Independence in view” even before the taxes were imposed (4). They, not the king, are the ones designing tyranny over Americans. Moreover, “if the jurisdiction of Parliament is foreign to their Constitution, what need of specifying instances, in which they have been subjected to it? Every Act must be an usurpation and injury,” if that is the case (21). That is, Hutchinson’s initial rhetorical strategy is to deflect attention from unalienable rights with an ad hominem attack on the revolutionaries.
Thus, while deprecating the idea of natural rights, he flatly denies that the revolutionaries could believe it. A mere appeal to “what they called the natural rights of mankind, to choose their own forms of Government,” would not suffice to advance their design, he claims (4). The evidence of this came when in 1762 the Massachusetts Bay General Assembly demanded a percentage of the impost on sugar, thus implying that they thought such an impost constitutional. The push for American representation in Parliament only started two years later, after Parliament’s enactment of the Sugar Act, but was the proposal was withdrawn as “utterly impracticable” (6). Given the admitted constitutionality of taxation of colonies without their representation in Parliament, and the admitted impracticability of colonial representation, what other conclusion can be drawn, other than the existence of “a determined design” (6) to move toward independence? The scheme worked. “Many thousands of people who were good and loyal subjects, have been deluded, and by degrees induced to rebel against the best of Princes, and the mildest of Governments” (8). As a result, “the people have subjected themselves to the most cruel oppressions of fifty or sixty Despots,” their so-called representatives in the Continental Congress (8).
Hutchinson rejects the opening premise of the Declaration—that the colonists are a distinct people. Parliament, the “Supreme Legislative Authority,” rules all Britons, and is “indisputably bound to keep all parts of the Empire entire, until there may be a separation consistent with the general good of the Empire” (9). Parliament, not colonists, “must be the sole judge” of this good (9).
As for “unalienable” equal rights, what about slavery? (9-10). Does it not belie this claim, or at least display the hypocrisy of those who advance it?
With respect, then, to the premises of the Americans’ syllogism, Hutchinson doubts that there is any natural right of mankind to choose its own forms of government; he denies that the colonists are a distinct people, inasmuch as they are “Britons”; and he charges that the existence of slavery on American soil proves either that there is no unalienable right to liberty or, if there is, the Americans invoke it in flat contradiction to their own practice.
As to the minor premises of the syllogism, there were no laws vetoed by the king that were “wholesome and necessary for the public good,” and the Declaration gives no examples of any such (10). “The laws of England are or ought to be the laws of its Colonies. To prevent any actions” that deviate from ordinary English common law beyond those alterations “that the local circumstances of any colony may make necessary,” all laws enacted by the colonial legislatures are to be laid before the King (10). If disallowed, “they then become of no force” (10). Further, “to pass laws which must have their whole operation, or which must cause some irreparable mischief before the King’s pleasure can be known, would be a usurpation of the People upon the Royal Prerogative” (11). With this, Hutchinson points to the fundamental political dispute between the colonists and the Empire: the Americans want a republican regime wherein they enjoy equal status to residents of England; the British want a mixed regime with the monarchy as the principal ruler of the colonies, along the lines of the Irish model.
Hutchinson (who was born in Boston but remained a Tory) understandably focuses on defending his own term as governor of Massachusetts. No inhabitant of that colony was deprived of representation in the state House of Representatives, argues; if a new settlement was not accorded representation, inhabitants could still vote in the nearest voting district. The royal governor has the right to select the place and time where the legislature will meet, and as for the dissolution of the House of Representatives in 1768, it was justifiable because “No Government can long subsist, which admits of combinations of the subordinate powers against the supreme” power (14). “The regular use of the prerogative in suppressing a begun Revolt, is urged [by the colonists] as a grievance to justify the Revolt” (15). And finally, regarding the colonists’ allegations concerning legislative abuses, the refusal to encourage further population of the North American colonies with emigration is no fit topic for the colonists’ criticisms. “Shall any other than the supreme authority of the Empire judge upon what terms foreigners may be admitted to the privilege of natural born subjects?” (16)
On the judicial powers, the king vetoed laws establishing such powers by the colonists because American creditors were attaching debtors’ assets unilaterally, leaving English creditors without recourse. “This frustrates our own bankruptcy laws” (17). (No doubt it did, but this does lend credence to the colonists’ claim that Americans and the English are two separate peoples.) Further, judges in most American colonies have always been dependent upon the Crown for continuance in office and for their salaries. This has changed in England, but it is the king’s prerogative to determine whether it shall be changed in America. Transporting accused traitors to England for trial is entirely appropriate, given the nature of the crime, which is treason against Great Britain, not against the American state in which the alleged crime occurred.
As to the king’s supposed abuses of executive power, he has sent no “new offices” except thirty or forty commissioners of customs—hardly the “swarms” alleged in the Declaration. On standing armies, the king doesn’t need Americans’ consent to keep them on American soil, only the consent of the English Parliament. And the military power exercised thereby is “superior” to the civil power only when aimed at suppressing a rebellion. Trials of British soldiers accused of murder have been removed from local American courts in order to protect the defendants against prejudiced juries. The trade embargo imposed upon the Americans is the result of the rebellion, not a cause of it.
Hutchinson calls the Americans’ impassioned resistance to taxes imposed without their consent “a subject more dangerous to government than any other” (22). “They could find no fundamentals in the English Constitution, which made representation any more necessary in acts for taxes, than acts for any other purpose”; in fact, “there were no bounds to the power of Parliament by any fundamentals whatever” (23). To demand jury trials for offenses against excise taxes is to go beyond what many of the colonial governments themselves stipulate. And “all regulation of commerce must cease, and the King must be deprived of all the trees reserved for the Royal Navy, if no trials can be but by Jury” (24).
The Americans’ objections to the Quebec Act are equally insubstantial. The New England colonies have no “reason to fear” any change in their constitutions by the extension of Quebec to their borders (25). True, the Quebec constitution differs from theirs, but so what? The constitutions of the colonies differ amongst themselves. No colonial charter has in fact been altered, except for that of Massachusetts, the hotbed of rebellion, where a tightening of imperial rule has been imposed for good reason.
On such charges as “inciting domestic insurrection among us” and deploying “Indian savages” against us, Hutchinson ripostes, “Never was there an instance of more consummate effrontery” (28). “The acts of a justly incensed Sovereign for suppressing a most unnatural, unprovoked Rebellion, are here assigned as the causes of this Rebellion. It is immaterial whether they are true or false.” (28) “To subjects, who had forfeited their lives by acts of Rebellion, every act of the Sovereign against them, which falls short of forfeiture [of life], is an act of favor” (28).
It is in the graver charges against the monarch that Hutchinson walks on the unsteadiest ground. The Americans’ suspicions concerning the Quebec Act aren’t worries about mere ‘difference’. The Declaration objects to the abolition of “the free System of English Laws” there, “establishing therein an Arbitrary government and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies.” That would be a British revolution or regime change in North America, and not for the better. And on the matter of slave revolt and Indian allies, the American charge isn’t a jus ad bellum but a jus in bello complaint, one that Hutchinson waves away as immaterial by pretending it is the former rather than the latter.
What could be the real cause of such deplorable behavior? “Gratitude, I am sensible, is seldom found in a community, but so sudden a revolt from the rest of the Empire, which had incurred so immense a debt, and with which it remains burdened, for the protection and defense of the Colonies” during the French and Indian War, “and at their most importunate request, is an instance of ingratitude no where to be paralleled” (31). The “real design” of the rebels has nothing to do with a decent respect for the opinions of mankind but to propagandize their fellow Americans. “This design has too well succeeded” (32). Deceived by the sophistries trotted out in the Declaration, the colonists now overlook “the absurdity in making the governed to be governors” (32). And those “discerning men” who do see through such fallacies “have concealed their sentiments, because under the present free government in America, no man may, by writing or speaking, contradict any part of the Declaration, without being deemed an enemy of the country, and exposed to the rage and fury of the populace” (32). Indeed so: the first American civil war was on. By appealing to natural right in addition to the English Constitution, the Americans had begun a revolutionary war.
John Lind writes not in defense of his own record as a colonial governor or as a member of the British government in any capacity, having none, but as an English citizen. An experienced lawyer at Lincoln’s Inn, he adopts a rhetorical strategy that attempts to beat the Americans at their own game, namely, an appeal to popular sentiment. The sovereign, George III, should not issue a reply to the Declaration. By lessening His Majesty’s dignity, such a reply would grant too much to the very claims of equality the colonists assert. It would also be imprudent policy, as a royal answer would imply that foreign states have the right to interfere in the king’s “own internal government,” in violation of the principles of the Peace of Westphalia (5); the king must never reply to a document addressed to the world, “candid” or otherwise. What is more, “the Declaration of the American Congress is an insult offered to every one who bears the name of Briton” (7). “The blow given by the Congress appears indeed to be leveled at his Majesty; but the wound was intended for us” (7). Specifically, the king could not have aggrandized his own power by aggrandizing Parliament’s power, nor could he receive more revenues merely because Americans pay a percentage of them. The king defends the interest of Britons, who should pay no more than their fair share of taxes to support their colonies. In so doing, the king has “asserted our rights” against the selfish and rebellious Americans (9).
Lind accuses the Americans of attempting to make Britons “their dupes”—”blind instruments of procuring them that independence, at which they so long have aimed” (10)—first by using a step-by-step ‘salami’ tactic, attempting to slice away at rightful imperial ruling prerogatives over many years, then by “appealing to the passions,” by which he means such arguments as the Declaration propounds. “But they had forgotten, it should seem, that there is another appeal, to which, sooner or later, Britons do not fail to listen—An appeal to good sense” (11). “Happy should I be, were it possible to induce this deluded people to listen to the voice of reason; to abandon a set of men who are making them stilts to their own private ambition” (12). Not only does Lind address ‘the people’ against the Declaration’s appeal to them, but he will attempt to outface its appeal to reason, as well. The rational argument is on the king’s side.
Lind proceeds with a point-by-point criticism of the minor premises of the Declaration’s argument, reserving his critique of the major premises for the appendix. That is, in his appeal to “common sense” (a barb aimed at Thomas Paine’s famous pamphlet, so titled), he will reject the deductive reasoning of the Americans for a more concrete and ‘pragmatic’ refutation. Lind was a friend of Jeremy Bentham, who despised the Declaration precisely because it began with an invocation of natural rights, which Bentham famously termed “nonsense on stilts,” and not on the principle of utility, which he deemed the only sound source of moral and political right. Lind’s strategy is clever, as it ignores or more precisely inverts the syllogistic structure of the Declaration of Independence, making it seem less rational than it is.
The king “has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good,” the Declaration charges. But it is the colonial governor who is authorized to approve colonial legislation. True, the king can still veto laws enacted by colonial legislatures, but this has always been so. The colonists “complain then, that they are not independent. To have an uncontrolled power of legislation,” by this definition, is to be independent” (15). Such a claim strikes at the core of British sovereignty over its colonies, and is legally inadmissible. According to the colonists, the king has “neglected” to assent to “laws of immediate and pressing importance.” This also is nothing new, simply a “constitutional power” of the monarchy (17). More, the king has resisted only such legislation as affect British shipping and trade, Crown prerogatives, and “property of the subjets of the empire in general” (17). “It was not, I suppose, to be endured, that local subordinate legislatures should pass laws injurious to all subjects of the empire” (17). Given the constitutional right to review colonial legislative acts, it is more efficient to undergo review by the king than review by Parliament; the delays the colonists complain of would be even longer if their legislation were stuck in parliamentary committees. The fact that colonial assemblies regard the laws as “wholesome and necessary to the public good” is irrelevant, inasmuch as the legislation they enacted may as well have been “unsalutary and destructive of the public good” from “a regard to the common interests of the whole empire,” of which the American colonies form but a part (21).
The colonists claim that the king “has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people,” effectively denying them representation. But a refusal to increase the number of representatives in the colonial legislatures is no denial of representation. In England itself, the king’s consent is needed for this purpose. The king could as well increase the number of representatives in a colony, but this potentially could be more dangerous to popular rights; he might use this as a device for “acquiring unconstitutional powers” by packing the legislature with his own partisans (26). Americans should beware of getting what they are asking for. In the American case, however, the Massachusetts government was imbalanced in favor of the House, an imbalance which the admission of new municipalities’ representatives to the legislature would have skewed even more against the powers of the royal government. Like Hutchinson, then, Lind advocates the British mixed-regime republic against the American preference for a democratic republic.
Lind dismisses the complaint that the king has “called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records” as little more than whining. “Sickly and feeble must be the constitution of that patriotism, which these hardships… could fatigue into compliance with unpatriotic measures” (29). He joins with Hutchinson in expressing disgust at the “ungovernable mob” of Boston rebels (31). The British would eventually learn that the Americans were neither sickly, nor feeble, nor ungovernable, although they did prove ungovernable from London. Looking back on the controversy from the vantage point of some two-and-a-half centuries, Lind can be seen to exhibit what Aristotle calls “underestimation,” identifying it as one cause of revolutions.
On the charge that the king has repeatedly dissolved representative legislative houses, Lind counters that British monarchs have always had the right to perform “acts done in defense of the rights of the Parliament and the people of Great Britain (32)—as for example in 1768, when the Massachusetts legislature sent a letter to other colonial legislatures urging a “combination” that was “subversive of all government” (34)—specifically, opposition to the Townsend Acts, whereby Parliament had imposed import duties on tea and other products. And again in 1774, the king rightly intervened when the Massachusetts legislature attempted to impeach the Chief Justice, Peter Oliver, a Parliamentary right. In the same year, the king dissolved the Virginia legislature “for practices little short of treason” (36); the Virginians had dared to support Massachusetts after Parliament had closed Boston Harbor in response to the ‘Tea Party.’
His Majesty’s delay in calling new elections after he had dissolved recalcitrant colonial legislatures is yet another constitutional prerogrative, Lind maintains. The people of those colonies and their representatives were still “inflamed,” and the king wanted “to give time for this madness to subside” (38-39). Lind denies the colonists’ claim that when legislatures are suspended the legislative power reverts to the people (as Locke argues). Against the claim that these dissolutions expose the colonies to foreign invasions and domestic convulsions, Hutchinson argues that the colonists ignore “the armies, the victories, and the treaties of that Prince whom they now so ungratefully revile” (40). And as for domestic convulsions, who but the colonial legislators have fomented them?
When it comes to the king’s alleged attempt to prevent the population of the colonies, Lind simply denies the charge and calls it “impossible” (41). And even if true, “How comes it, that local, subordinate legislatures should assume the power of making laws for naturalization?” (41) These are acts of Parliament; the king cannot repeal them, nor the colonial legislatures defy them, under the terms of the English Constitution.
On the colonists’ objections to the Crown’s treatment of the American judicial system, “some of the Colonies wished to introduce innovations, to establish certain courts of justice upon principles which seemed to his Majesty to clash with the general principles of the Constitution” (45). True, the king has indeed made judges dependent upon his will alone for their tenure and salaries. In objecting to this, the colonists have “thrown off all sense of shame” (45). “The commissions of the Judges have always been during the good pleasure of the King” (46). Against this, “it was the policy of the colonies to keep the Judges dependent on the deputies of the people for a temporary, wretched, and arbitrary support”—an instance of “the overbearing spirit of a democracy,” namely, “the passions and prejudices of the multitude,” sentiments far more likely to lead to abuse than kingly power is (46).
The supposed “swarms” of bureaucrats—customs commissioners and admiralty court judges—whom the colonists say have been sent to “harass our people, and eat out their substance,” serve in accordance with the king’s constitutional powers. Moreover, the colonists’ complaints about them instances their “convenient memory”: “Before [i.e., earlier in the Declaration] they complained that the means of justice were so remote, as to be scarcely attainable,” that Americans were being transported across the ocean for trial in England; “now they complain that the means of justice are brought to their own doors” (49). These officers have no new powers; their greater number only reflects the increase in colonial crime. Harass and starve out “our people,” indeed! “Will the Americans confess, that the class of smugglers is so numerous in that country, as to entitle them to be called—by way of eminence—the people?” (50)
Americans are such a bad lot that standing armies sent without their consent—again in accordance with established kingly prerogative, which need not take account of “local, subordinate legislatures” (51)—perform the rightful task of bringing them to heel. It is not to be forgotten, Lind repeats, that Great Britain went into debt to pay for the war against the French, “comply[ing] with the prayers of America, to conquer the enemies of America” (53). Once the French retreated, many of their Indian allies continued to fight, and that is why the standing armies have stood. And the notion that the king has made military powers superior to civil power in America by replacing a civilian with a military governor in Massachusetts overlooks the fact that “no new powers have been conveyed to the Commander in Chief” (55). That is, civilian colonial governors already had the authority to call out troops to quell insurrections and foreign attacks; to appoint General Gage as governor of Massachusetts is only to install with greater military expertise in that office.
Thus far, Lind’s lawyerly arguments have leaned on an interpretation of the English constitution that understands colonies as strictly subordinate to the imperial metropole, and understands the king to be the defender of the realm not only against foreign enemies but against any colonists who, in the name of self-government, defy his more-or-less absolute authority over them. Just as the state-centralizing Tudors had crushed feudalism in England, so the empire-centralizing Hanoverian dynasty of George III should move vigorously to quell any dissent against its rule. In his subsequent arguments Lind extends his accusation against the colonists, who challenge not only royal rule but Parliamentary rule as well. This is in keeping with his ‘populist’ rhetorical strategy.
In complaining that the king “has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws,” the American Congress “throws off its mask” (56). The “others” are none other than the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The Americans deny not only monarchic but Parliamentary authority. The nine accusations they level under this head all evince open rebellion against English constitutionalism. True, king and Parliament have quartered large bodies of armed troops in America. But troops that are stationed in a country must be quartered somewhere, must they not? And if the provincial legislatures fail to provide such quarters, Parliament must. The complaint that king and Parliament protect murderous soldiers by mock trials is a “frantic charge”: Exactly what do the colonists expect, if a soldier kills an “insurgent”? Shall the rightful authorities of the British Empire allow mob justice, or justice at the hands of a ‘hanging jury’ consisting of irrational colonists? (62) “To suffer the trial to take place in the scene of insurrection, in the midst of the insurgents; to appoint the insurgents themselves to be judges, would deserve a severer reproach” (63).
By cutting off trade to the colonies, the king has taken “an act of self-defense” (64). “Let them return to their allegiance, and the Act is repealed by itself” (64). Once again, the colonists suffer from selective amnesia: “Have they forgot that they set the example,” by seizing British ships and condemning British captures (64) in Boston Harbor?
The colonists’ celebrated complaint about British taxation “without our Consent” evokes from Lind a weary sigh at the frailties of humanity. “Such is the selfishness inherent in human nature, that men in general are but too apt to seize any pretense for evading the obligation of paying the servants of the public” (64-65). This is no new power but one exercised before and after England’s 1688 revolution. “They are not represented now? Were they otherwise represented then? No. Did they wish to be represented? Nor that either. But they wished not to be taxed. They were content to enjoy the benefits, but chose to decline bearing any part of the burdens, of Government” (68). There is an obvious problem with Lind’s argument, however. Independence from the British Empire won’t end the need for tax revenues in America. Therefore, the movement for independence on the basis of ‘no taxation without representation’ cannot simply be a desire to be rid of taxes.
It is true, Lind readily admits, that king and Parliament have denied colonists the right to jury trials. But only in the Courts of Admiralty, whose jurisdiction includes navigation and revenues derived from navigation. This is the same in England. Further, given the prevalence of smuggling and piracy in America, “no justice could be expected from juries” there, “because no juries could be found who were not partners of the guilt” (72), allies of the abusers of British merchants. At one time, the colonists “felt that their existence depended on the protection of Great Britain” (73), and so made no objection to such courts. Now that Great Britain has defeated their enemies, colonists bite the hand that shielded them.
King and Parliament have “transport[ed] us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses”? The offenses in question were acts of treason, such as burning His Majesty’s boatyards, ships, and arsenals. In calling these acts “pretended offenses” of “pretended Legislation,” the colonists do deserve credit for one thing: consistency. Unfortunately for their claims, the power to punish treason has been vested in English kings for more than two hundred years. As for the colonists’ complaint that Quebec has been placed under an “arbitrary government” which threatens “the free System of English Laws” in New England, “what have the revolted Colonies to do with his Majesty’s government of another Colony”? (78) The colonists much-bruited worries are themselves pretentious. “Whilst their leaders are alarming them with acts of pretended tyranny, they are really bringing them under subjection to the worst of all tyrants—artful, selfish Demagogues” (78-79) like Thomas Jefferson, John and Samuel Adams, and Patrick Henry. Indeed, Quebec never had a free system of English laws in the first place before England knocked the French out of it and granted French Canadians the right to the free exercise of religion.
The colonists accuse king and Parliament of taking away their charters and altering fundamentally the forms of their governments. Too bad His Majesty and Parliament didn’t happen sooner, Lind declares. The Massachusetts colonists deserve to have their charter revoked, given their behavior. What changes that have been made to American colonial charters were made for the good of the colonists themselves. Parliament, acting on its constitutional right to revoke and re-write the charters, to “new-model the Governments of America” (87), have addressed such abuses as juries being packed with partisans of colonial independence and the control of colonial Councils—the executive branch—by colonial legislatures. Many colonial governors had complained of the latter practice, since Council members, like jury members, were often anti-British members of “a democratic party” (90) hostile to the British mixed regime. “Was it an unpardonable crime to rescue one branch of their Government from such a slavish dependence on another branch?” (90)
The claim that king and Parliament have “suspend[ed] our own Legislatures, and declar[ed] themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever” is grossly exaggerated. This occurred only in New York, Lind claims, and that legislature had refused to station British troops—an imperial prerogative, according to the English constitution.
The final and most horrendous acts falsely attributed to the king by the colonists begin with the claim that the king has “abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.” On the contrary, Lind replies, punishing disobedience is one of the highest acts any government can perform. The Americans are the outlaws, not His Majesty. Plundering, ravaging, burning, killing are all acts first committed by the Americans. Captain Kidd (Lind expostulates) might as well have made the same argument against the Crown’s authority, but the Captain was less presumptuous, having never declared his independence from his mother country. Not only did the colonists initiate the violence, they tortured their enemies with tarring and feathering and, at Lexington, eye-gouging and scalping. “It was only under the terror which such daring outrages inspired, that their rebellious enterprises could have any chance of success” (101).
The king has deployed foreign mercenaries to American shores in an act of “paternal tenderness” toward his own, English, people, whom he has spared from fighting their American brethren, insofar as foreigners have taken their places in that just struggle. The English army is too small, in any event, to put down such a widespread rebellion. And in impressing American sailors to fight against America, are traitors usually treated so well? “To urge the alleviation of punishment as a proof of tyranny, is a piece of folly reserved to the American Congress” (105).
In exciting domestic insurrections and allying with Indian savages, the king is putting down what is itself a domestic insurrection. The colonial governors merely “offered freedom to the slaves of these assertors of liberty” in exchange for their military service under British command against their colonial masters (107). As for the Indians, the English have the right to deploy any troops they choose. Further, “the Congress were the first to engage the Indians in this dispute,” in 1775 at Ticonderoga and elsewhere in New England and Carolina. Like many others since, Lind ignores the Declaration’s identification of Indian savages, as distinguished from Indians generally.
The Americans’ citation of their petitions for redress, stated “in the most humble terms,” have been “answered only by repeated injury,” draws out Lind’s concluding fulmination. “Here [in England] to deny the authority of Parliament is the utmost height of audacity; there [in America} it is the lowest pitch of humility” (111). The Americans “professed to ask only for ‘Life, Liberty, and Property.’ But when they came to explain their professions, it appeared, that by property they meant a total exemption from contributing any thing to the common burdens of the State; by liberty, a total manumission from the authority of Parliament, the Crown, or the Law; an entire abolition of all the customs of their ancestors, all the institutions of their forebears” (116).
The problems with Lind’s conclusion are easily stated. The colonists have not claimed total exemption from contributing anything to the common burdens of the State, only exemption from contributing anything to the common burdens of a State in which they have no political representation. They are not rebelling against taxes enacted by their own legislatures. They claim manumission from the authority of Parliament and Crown insofar as Parliament and Crown have violated their unalienable natural rights; they claim manumission from the authority of English law insofar as that law is (mis)interpreted to serve as a prop for such violations, insofar as it does not contradict the laws of nature and of nature’s God. And as to the customs and institutions of their ancestors and forebears, they have respected them insofar as they do not impinge upon such natural rights as freedom of religion and of self-government free of such aristocratic privileges as primogeniture and rule by those holding titles of nobility.
In his brief appendix to the pamphlet, Lind addresses the major premises of the Declaration’s argument. “The opinions of the modern Americans on Government, like those of their good ancestors on witchcraft, would be too ridiculous to deserve any notice, if like them too, contemptible and extravagant as they be, they had not led to the most serious evils” (119). Theirs is an “absurd and visionary” theory, “repugnant to the British Constitution” (119). All men are not “created equal”; an infant hardly enjoys the natural power of a parent or the political power of a magistrate (120). Governments cannot secure the rights of life, liberty, and property; they can only exist at the expense of them—that is, men alienate their natural rights, the rights they enjoy in the state of nature, in exchange for the civil rights they obtain under government. And in practice the Americans have violated the right to life by invading Canada in an “unprovoked destruction of so many lives” (121); they have violated the right to liberty by suspending the issuance of writs of habeas corpus in cases involving American Tories; and they deny the pursuit of happiness by causing the social and financial ruin of those Americans loyal to their rightful sovereign, the British state. Thus the causes of the rebellion are in fact “light and transient,” as the colonists had consented, in the past, to the exercise of kingly and parliamentary powers. “In praying for the non-exercise of these powers, they acknowledged their legality” (125). And under those powers they flourished.
This argument is even less substantial than Lind’s constitutional arguments. The Declaration clearly states that all men are created equal in their unalienable rights, not in terms of natural or political power. Those rights are not rightly alienated by the social contract but secured by it; it is the natural power to retaliate against the violation of such rights that is alienated—and not even entirely, in all circumstances—in civil society. Therefore, the colonists have acknowledge the “legality” of English constitutional law only in the sense that it has been the existing, conventional law throughout the British Empire, but its existence as a legal convention has been turned against the colonists in contradiction of natural and divine law. It is telling that Lind invokes parental power, as this is indeed his model for royal and even Parliamentary rule over the American colonists, who rather insist that they are not children but men.
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