I
IN CONSIDERING the State's development in
America, it is important to keep in mind the fact that America's
experience of the State was longer
during the colonial period than
during the period of American independence; the period 1607-1776 was
longer than the period 1776-1935. Moreover, the colonists came here
full-grown, and had already a considerable experience of the State in
England and Europe before they arrived; and for purposes of comparison,
this would extend the former period by a few years, say at least
fifteen. It would probably be safe to put it that the American colonists
had twenty-five years' longer experience of the State than citizens of
the United States have had.
Their experience, too, was not only longer, but more varied. The British
State, the French, Dutch, Swedish and Spanish States, were all
established here.
The separatist English dissenters who landed at Plymouth had lived under
the Dutch State as well as under the British State. When James I made
England too
uncomfortable for them to live in, they went to Holland; and many of the
institutions which they subsequently set up in New England, and which
were later incorporated into the general body of what we call
"American institutions,"
were actually Dutch, though commonly - almost invariably - we accredit
them to England. They were for the most part Roman-Continental in their
origin, but they were transmitted here from Holland, not from England.
[1]
No such institutions existed in England at that time, and hence the
Plymouth colonists could not have seen them there; they could have seen
them only in Holland, where they did exist.
Our colonial period coincided with the period of revolution and
readjustment in England, referred to in the preceding chapter, when the
British merchant-State was displacing the feudal State, consolidating
its own position, and shifting the incidence of economic exploitation.
These revolutionary measures gave rise to an extensive review of the
general theory on which the feudal State had been operating. The earlier
Stuarts governed on the theory of monarchy by divine right. The State's
economic beneficiaries were answerable only to the monarch, who was
theoretically answerable only to God; he had no responsibilities to
society at large, save such as he chose to incur, and these only for the
duration of his pleasure. In 1607, the year of the Virginia colony's
landing at Jamestown, John Cowell, regius professor of civil law at the
University of Cambridge, laid down the doctrine that the monarch "is
above the law by his absolute power, and though for the better and
equal course in making laws he do admit the Three Estates unto Council,
yet this in divers learned men's opinions is not of constraint, but of
his own benignity, or by reason of the promise made upon oath at the
time of his coronation."
This doctrine, which was elaborated to the utmost in the extraordinary work called Patriarcha,
by Sir Robert Filmer, was all well enough so long as the line of
society's stratification was clear, straight and easily drawn. The
feudal State's economic beneficiaries were virtually a close corporation, a compact body consisting of a Church hierarchy and a titled group of hereditary, large-holding landed proprietors.
In respect of interests, this body was extremely homogeneous, and their
interests, few in number, were simple in character and easily defined.
With the monarch, the hierarchy, and a small, closely-limited nobility
above the line of stratification, and an undifferentiated populace below
it, this theory of sovereignty was passable; it answered the purposes
of the feudal State as well as any.
But the practical outcome of this theory did not, and could not, suit the purposes of the rapidly-growing class of merchants and financiers. They wished to introduce a new economic system.
Under feudalism, production had been, as a general thing, for use, with
the incidence of exploitation falling largely on a
peasantry. The State had by no means always kept its hands off trade,
but it had never countenanced the idea that its chief reason for
existence was, as we say, "to help business." The merchants and financiers,
however, had precisely this idea in mind. They saw the attractive
possibilities of production for profit, with the incidence of exploitation gradually shifting to an industrial proletariat.
They saw also, however, that to realize all these possibilities, they
must get the State's mechanism to working as smoothly and powerfully on
the side of "business" as it had been
working on the side of the monarchy, the Church, and the large-holding
landed proprietors. This meant capturing control of this mechanism, and
so altering and adapting it as to give themselves the same free access
to the political means as was enjoyed by the displaced beneficiaries. The
course by which they accomplished this is marked by the Civil War, the
dethronement and execution of Charles I, the Puritan protectorate, and
the revolution of 1688.
This is the actual inwardness of what is known as the Puritan movement
in England. It had a quasi-religious motivation - speaking strictly, an
ecclesiological motivation - but the paramount practical end towards
which it tended was a repartition of access to the political means. It
is a significant fact, though seldom noticed, that the only tenet with
which Puritanism managed to evangelize equally the non-Christian and
Christian world of English-bred civilization is its tenet of work, its
doctrine that work is, by God's express will and command, a duty; indeed
almost, if not quite, the first and most important of man's secular
duties. This erection of labour into a Christian virtue per se,
this investment of work with a special religious sanction, was an
invention of Puritanism; it was something never heard of in England
before the rise of the Puritan State. The only doctrine antedating 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 mine own living."
There is no hint that God would take it amiss if one preferred to do
little work and put up with a poor living, for the sake of doing
something else with one's time. Perhaps the best witness to the
essential character of the Puritan movement in England and America is
the thoroughness with which its doctrine of work has pervaded both
literatures, all the way from Cromwell's letters to Carlyle's panegyric
and Longfellow's verse.
But the merchant-State of the Puritans was like any other; it followed
the standard pattern. It originated in conquest and confiscation, like
the feudal State which it displaced; the only difference being that its
conquest was by civil war instead of foreign war. Its object was the
economic exploitation of one class by another; for the exploitation of
feudal serfs by a
nobility, it proposed only to substitute the exploitation of a
proletariat by enterprisers. Like its predecessor, the merchant-State
was purely an organization of the political means, a machine for the
distribution of economic advantage, but with its mechanism adapted to
the requirements of a more numerous and more highly differentiated order
of beneficiaries; a class, moreover, whose numbers were not limited by
heredity or by the sheer arbitrary pleasure of a monarch.
The process of establishing the merchant-State, however, necessarily
brought about changes in the general theory of sovereignty. The bald
doctrine of Cowell and Filmer was no longer practicable; yet any new
theory had to find room for some sort of divine sanction, for the habit
of men's minds does not change suddenly, and Puritanism's alliance
between religious and secular interests was extremely close. One may not
quite put it that the merchant-enterprisers made use of religious
fanaticism to pull their chestnuts out of the fire; the religionists had
sound and good chestnuts of their own to look after. They had plenty of
rabid nonsense to answer for, plenty of sour hypocrisy, plenty of vicious fanaticism; whenever we think of seventeenth-century
British Puritanism, we think of Hugh Peters, of Praise-God Barebones, of Cromwell's iconoclasts "smashing the mighty big angels in glass."
But behind all this untowardness there was in the religionists a body
of sound conscience, soundly and justly outraged; and no doubt, though
mixed with an intolerable deal of unscrupulous greed, there was on the
part of the merchant-enterprisers a sincere persuasion that what was
good for business was good for society. Taking Hampden's conscience as
representative, one would say that it operated under the limitations set
by nature upon the typical sturdy Buckinghamshire squire; the
mercantile conscience was likewise ill-informed, and likewise set its
course with a hard, dogged, provincial stubbornness. Still, the alliance
of the two bodies of conscience was not without some measure of
respectability. No doubt,
for example, Hampden regarded the State-controlled episcopate to some
extent objectively, as unscriptural in theory, and a tool of Antichrist
in practice; and no doubt, too, the mercantile conscience, with the
disturbing vision of William Laud in view, might have found
State-managed episcopacy objectionable on other grounds than those of
special interest.
The merchant-State's political rationale had to respond to the pressure
of a growing individualism. The spirit of individualism appeared in the
latter half of the sixteenth century; probably - as well as such obscure
origins can be determined - as a by-product of the Continental revival
of learning, or, it may be, specifically as a by-product of the
Reformation in Germany. It was long, however, in gaining force enough to
make itself count in shaping political theory. The feudal State could
take no account of this spirit; its stark rTgime of status was operable
only where there was no great multiplicity of diverse economic interests
to be accommodated, and where the sum of social power remained
practically stable. Under the British feudal State, one large-holding
landed proprietor's interest was much like another's, and one bishop's
or clergyman's interest was about the same in kind as another's. The
interests of
the monarchy and court were not greatly diversified, and the sum of
social power varied but little from time to time. 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 put it,
to keep them doing their duty in that station of life unto which it had pleased God to call them.
Thus the State could accomplish its primary purpose, and still afford
to remain relatively weak. It could normally, that is, enable a
thorough-going economic exploitation with relatively little apparatus of
legislation or of personnel.
[2]
The merchant-State, on the other hand, with its ensuing rTgime of
contract, had to meet the problem set by a rapid development of social
power, and a multiplicity of economic interests. Both these tended to
foster and stimulate the spirit of individualism. The management of
social power made the merchant-enterpriser feel that he was quite as
much somebody as anybody, and
that the general order of interest which he represented - and in
particular his own special fraction of that interest - was to be
regarded as most respectable, which hitherto it had not been. In short,
he had a full sense of himself as an individual, which on these grounds
he could of course justify beyond peradventure. 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, ignorance and
vulgarity at par with its commercial integrity, its shrewdness,
diligence and thrift. Thus the fully-developed composite type of
merchant-enterpriser-financier might be said to run all the
psychological gradations between the brothers Cheeryble at one end of
the scale, and Mr. Gradgrind, Sir Gorgius Midas and Mr. Bottles at the
other.
This individualism fostered the formulation of certain doctrines which
in one shape or another found their way into the official political
philosophy of the merchant-State. Foremost among these were the two
which the
Declaration of Independence
lays down as fundamental, the doctrine of natural rights and the
doctrine of popular sovereignty. In a generation which had exchanged the
authority of a pope for the authority of a book - or rather, the
authority of unlimited private interpretation of a book - there was no
difficulty about finding ample Scriptural sanction for both these
doctrines. The interpretation of the Bible, like the judicial
interpretation of a constitution, is merely a process by which, as a
contemporary of Bishop Butler said,
anything may be made to mean anything;
and in the absence of a coercive authority, papal, conciliar or
judicial, any given interpretation finds only such acceptance as may,
for whatever reason, be accorded it. Thus the episode of Eden, the
parable of the talents, the Apostolic injunction against being
"slothful in business,"
were a
warrant for the Puritan doctrine of work; they brought the sanction of
Scripture and the sanction of economic interest into complete agreement,
uniting the religionist and the merchant-enterpriser in the bond of a
common intention. Thus, again, the view of man as made in the image of
God, made only a little lower than the angels, the subject of so august a
transaction as the Atonement,
quite corroborated the political doctrine of his endowment by his
Creator with certain rights unalienable by Church or State. While the
merchant-enterpriser might hold with Mr. Jefferson that the truth of
this political doctrine is self-evident, its Scriptural support was yet
of great value as carrying an implication of human nature's dignity
which braced his more or less diffident
and self-conscious individualism; and the doctrine that so dignified him
might easily be conceived of as dignifying his pursuits. Indeed, the
Bible's indorsement of the doctrine of labour and the doctrine of
natural rights was really his charter for rehabilitating
"trade" against the disparagement that the rTgime of status had put upon it, and for investing it with the most brilliant
lustre of respectability.
In the same way, the doctrine of popular sovereignty could be mounted on
impregnable Scriptural ground. Civil society was an association of true
believers functioning for common secular purposes; and its right of
self-government with respect to these purposes was God-given. If on the
religious side all believers were priests, then on the secular side they
were all sovereigns; the notion of an intervening jure divino monarch was as repugnant to Scripture as that of an intervening jure divino
pope - witness the Israelite commonwealth upon which monarchy was
visited as
explicitly a punishment for sin. Civil legislation was supposed to
interpret and particularize the laws of God as revealed in the Bible,
and its administrators were responsible to the congregation in both its
religious and
secular capacities. Where the revealed law was silent, legislation was
to be guided by its general spirit, as best this might be determined.
These principles obviously left open a considerable area of choice; but
hypothetically the range of civil liberty and the range of religious
liberty had a common boundary.
This religious sanction of popular sovereignty was agreeable to the
merchant-enterpriser; it fell in well with his individualism, enhancing
considerably his sense of personal dignity and consequence. He could
regard himself as by birthright not only a free citizen of a heavenly
commonwealth, but also a free elector in an earthly commonwealth
fashioned, as nearly as might be, after the heavenly pattern. The range
of liberty permitted him in both qualities was satisfactory; he could
summon warrant of Scripture to cover his undertakings both here and
hereafter. As far as this present world's concerns went, his doctrine of
labour was Scriptural, his doctrine of master-and-servant was
Scriptural - even bond-service, even chattel-service was Scriptural; his
doctrine of a wage-economy, of money-lending - again the parable of the
talents - both were Scriptural. What especially recommended the
doctrine of popular sovereignty to him on its secular side, however, was
the immense leverage it gave for ousting the rTgime of status to make way for the rTgime of contract; in a word, for displacing the feudal State and bringing in the merchant-State.
But interesting as these two doctrines were, their actual application
was a matter of great difficulty. On the religious side, the doctrine of
natural rights had to take account of the unorthodox. Theoretically it
was easy to dispose of them. The separatists, for example, such as those
who manned the
Mayflower, had lost their natural rights
in the fall of Adam, and had never made use of the means appointed to
reclaim them. This was all very well, but the logical extension of this
principle into actual practice was a rather grave affair. There were a
good many dissenters, all told, and they were articulate on the matter
of natural rights, which made trouble; so that when all was said and
done, the doctrine came out considerably compromised. Then, in
respect of popular sovereignty, there were the Presbyterians. Calvinism
was
monocratic to the core; in fact, Presbyterianism existed side
by side with episcopacy in the Church of England in the sixteenth
century, and was nudged out only very gradually.
[3]
They were a numerous body, and in point of Scripture and history they
had a great deal to say for their position. Thus the practical task of
organizing a spiritual commonwealth had as hard going with the logic of
popular sovereignty as it had with the logic of natural rights.
The task of secular organization was even more troublesome. A society
organized in conformity to these two principles is easily conceivable -
such an
organization as Paine and the Declaration contemplated, for example,
arising out of social agreement, and concerning itself only with the
maintenance of freedom
and security for the individual - but the practical task of effecting
such an organization is quite another matter. On general grounds,
doubtless, the Puritans would have found this impracticable; if, indeed,
the times are ever to be ripe for anything of the kind, their times
were certainly not. The particular round of difficulty, however, was
that the merchant-enterpriser did not want that form of social
organization; in fact, one can not be sure that the Puritan religionists
themselves wanted it. The root-trouble was, in short,
that there was no practicable way to avert a shattering collision
between the logic of natural rights and popular sovereignty, and the
economic law that man tends always to satisfy his needs and desires with
the least possible exertion.
This law governed the merchant-enterpriser in common with the rest of
mankind. He was not for an organization that should do no more than
maintain freedom and security; he was for one that should redistribute
access to the political means, and concern itself with freedom and
security only so far as would be consistent with keeping this access
open. That is to say, he was
thoroughly indisposed to the idea of government; he was quite as strong
for the idea of the State as the hierarchy and nobility were. He was not
for any essential transformation in the State's character, but merely
for a repartition of the economic advantages that the State confers.
Thus the merchant-polity amounted to an attempt, more or less
disingenuous, at reconciling matters which in their nature can not be
reconciled. The ideas of natural rights and popular sovereignty were, as
we have seen, highly acceptable and highly animating to all the forces
allied against the feudal idea; but while these ideas might be easily
reconcilable with a system of simple government, such a system would not
answer the purpose. Only the State-system would do that. The problem
therefore was, how to keep these ideas well in the forefront of
political theory, and at the same time prevent their practical
application from undermining the organization of the political means. It
was a difficult problem. The best that could be done with it was by
making certain structural alterations in the State, which would give it
the
appearance of expressing these ideas, without the reality.
The most important of these structural changes was that of bringing in
the so-called representative or parliamentary system, which Puritanism
introduced into the modern world, and which has received a great deal of
praise as an advance towards democracy. This praise, however, is
exaggerated. The change was one of
form only, and its bearing on democracy has been inconsiderable.
[4]
II
The migration of Englishmen to America merely transferred this problem
into another setting. The discussion of political theory went on
vigorously, but the philosophy of natural rights and popular sovereignty
came out in practice about where they had come out in England. Here
again a great deal has been made of the democratic spirit and temper of
the migrants, especially in the case of the separatists who landed at
Plymouth, but the facts do not bear it out, except with regard to the
decentralizing congregationalist principle of church order. This
principle of lodging final authority in the smallest unit rather than
the largest - in the local congregation rather than in a synod or
general council - was democratic, and its thorough-going application in a
scheme of church order would represent some actual advance towards
democracy, and give some recognition to the general philosophy of
natural rights and popular sovereignty. The Plymouth settlers did
something with this principle, actually applying it in the matter of
church order, and for this they deserve credit.
[5]
Applying it in the matter of civil order, however, was another affair.
It is true that the Plymouth colonists probably contemplated something
of the kind, and that for a time they practised a sort of primitive
communism. They drew up an agreement on shipboard which may be taken at
its face value as evidence of their democratic disposition, though it
was not in any sense a "frame of government,"
like Penn's, or any kind of constitutional document. Those who speak of
it as our first written constitution are considerably in advance of
their text, for it was merely an agreement to make a constitution or "frame of government"
when the settlers should have come to land and looked the situation
over. 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 unpredmpted 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 of English merchant-enterprisers, now growing shaky, and soon to
be superseded by the royal authority, and its territory converted into a
royal province. It was only by misreckonings and the accidents of
navigation that, most unfortunately for the prospects of the colony, the
settlers landed on the stern and rockbound coast of Plymouth.
These settlers were in most respects probably as good as the best who
ever found their way to America. They were bred of what passed in
England as "the lower orders," sober,
hard-working and capable, and their residence under Continental
institutions in Holland had given them a fund of politico-religious
ideas and habits of thought which set them considerably apart from the
rest of their countrymen. There is, however, no more than an antiquarian
interest in determining how far they were actually possessed by those
ideas. They may have contemplated a system of complete religious and
civil democracy, or they may not. They may have found their communist
practices agreeable to their notion of a sound and just social order, or
they may not. The point is that while apparently they might be free
enough to found a church order as democratic as they chose, they were by
no means free to found a civil democracy, or anything remotely
resembling one, because they were in bondage to the will of an English
trading-company. Even their religious freedom was permissive; the London
company simply cared nothing about that. The same considerations
governed their communistic practices; whether or not these practices
suited their ideas, they were obliged to adopt them. Their agreement
with the London merchant- enterprisers bound them, in return for
transportation and outfit, to seven years' service, during which time
they should work on a system of common-land tillage, store their produce
in a common warehouse, and draw their maintenance from these common
stores. Thus whether or not they were communists in principle, their
actual practice of communism was by prescription.
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. Beard; that the trading-company - the
commercial corporation for colonization - was actually an autonomous
State. "Like the State," says Mr. Beard, "it
had a constitution, a charter issued by the Crown . . . like the State,
it had a territorial basis, a grant of land often greater in area than a
score of European principalities . . . it could make assessments, coin
money, regulate trade, dispose of corporate property, collect taxes,
manage a treasury, and provide for defense. Thus" - and here is the important observation, so important that I venture to italicize it - "every
essential element long afterward found in the government of the
American State appeared in the chartered corporation that started
English civilization in America." Generally speaking, the system of civil order established in America was the State-system of the "mother countries"
operating over a considerable body of water; the only thing that
distinguished it was that the exploited and dependent class was situated
at an unusual distance from the owning and exploiting class. The
headquarters of the autonomous State were on one side
of the Atlantic, and its subjects on the other.
This separation gave rise to administrative difficulties of one kind and
another; and to obviate them - perhaps for other reasons as well - one
English
company, the Massachusetts Bay Company, moved over bodily in 1630,
bringing their charter and most of their stock-holders with them, thus
setting up an actual autonomous State in America. The thing to be
observed about this is
that the merchant-State was set up complete in New England long before
it was set up in Old England. Most of the English immigrants to
Massachusetts came over between 1630 and 1640; and in this period the
English merchant-State was only at the beginning of its hardest
struggles for supremacy. James I died in 1625, and his successor,
Charles I, continued his absolutist rTgime. From 1629, the year in which
the Bay Company was chartered, to 1640, when the Long Parliament was
called, he ruled without a parliament, effectively suppressing
what few vestiges of liberty had survived the Tudor and Jacobean
tyrannies; and during these eleven years the prospects of the English
merchant-State were at their lowest.
[6]
It still had to face the distractions of the Civil War, the retarding
anomalies of the Commonwealth, the Restoration, and the recurrence of
tyrannical absolutism under James II, before it succeeded in
establishing itself firmly through the revolution of 1688.
On the other hand, the leaders of the Bay Colony were free from the
first to establish a State-policy of their own devising, and to set up a
State-structure which should express that policy without compromise.
There was no competing policy to extinguish, no rival structure to
refashion. Thus the merchant-State came into being in a clear field a
full half-century before it attained supremacy in England. Competition
of any kind, or the possibility of competition, it has never had. A
point of greatest importance to remember is that the merchant-State is
the only form of the State that has ever existed in America. Whether under the rule of a trading-company or a provincial governor or a republican representative legislature, Americans have never known any other form of the State.
In this respect the Massachusetts Bay colony is differentiated only as
being the first autonomous State ever established in America, and as
furnishing the most complete and convenient example for purposes of
study. In principle it was not differentiated. The State in New England,
Virginia, Maryland, the 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 "business-man."
In the eleven years of Charles's tyrannical absolutism, English
immigrants came over to join the Bay colony, at the rate of about two
thousand a year. No
doubt at the outset some of the colonists had the idea of becoming
agricultural specialists, as in Virginia, and of maintaining certain
vestiges, or rather imitations, of semi-feudal social practice, such as
were possible under that form of industry when operated by a
slave-economy or a tenant-economy. This, however, proved impracticable;
the climate and soil of New England were against it. A tenant-economy
was precarious, for rather than work for a master, the immigrant
agriculturist naturally preferred to push out into unpredmpted land, and
work for himself; in other words, as Turg(t, Marx, Hertzka, and many
others
have shown, he could not be exploited until he had been expropriated
from the land. The long and hard winters took the profit out of
slave-labour in agriculture. The Bay colonists experimented with it,
however, even attempting to enslave the Indians, which they found could
not be done, for the reasons that I have already noticed. In default of
this, the colonists carried out the
primitive technique by resorting to extermination, their ruthless
ferocity being equaled only by that of the Virginia colonists.
[7]
They held some slaves, and did a great deal of slave-trading; but in the
main, they became at the outset a race of small freeholding farmers,
shipbuilders, navigators, maritime enterprisers in fish, whales,
molasses, rum, and miscellaneous cargoes; and presently, moneylenders.
Their remarkable success in these pursuits is well known; it is worth
mention here in order to account for many of the complications and
collisions of interest subsequently ensuing upon the merchant-State's
fundamental doctrine that the primary function of government is not to
maintain freedom and security, but to "help business."
III
One examines the American merchant-State in vain for any suggestion of
the philosophy of natural rights and popular sovereignty. The
company-system and the provincial system made no place for it, and the
one autonomous State was uncompromisingly against it. The Bay Company
brought over their charter to serve as the constitution of the new
colony, and under its provisions the form of the State was that of an
uncommonly small and close oligarchy. The right to vote was vested only
in shareholding members, or "freemen" of the corporation, on the stark State principle laid down many years later by John Jay, that "those who own the country should govern the country."
At the end of a year, the Bay colony comprised perhaps about two
thousand persons; and of these, certainly not twenty, probably not more
than a dozen, had anything whatever to say about its government. This
small group constituted itself as a sort of directorate or council,
appointing its own executive body, which consisted of a governor, a
lieutenant-governor, and a half-dozen or more magistrates. These
officials had no responsibility to the community at large, but only to
the directorate. By the terms of the charter, the directorate was
self-perpetuating. It was permitted to fill vacancies and add to its
numbers as it saw fit; and in so doing it followed a policy similar to
that which was subsequently recommended by Alexander Hamilton, of
admitting only such well-to-do and influential persons as could be
trusted to sustain a solid front against anything savouring of popular
sovereignty.
Historians have very properly made a great deal of the influence of
Calvinist theology in bracing the strongly anti-democratic attitude of
the Bay Company. The story is readable and interesting - often amusing -
yet the gist of it is so simple that it can be perceived at once. The
company's principle of action was in this respect the one that in like
circumstances has for a dozen centuries invariably motivated the State.
The Marxian dictum that "religion is the opiate of the people"
is either an ignorant or a slovenly confusion of terms, which can not
be too strongly reprehended. Religion was never that, nor will it ever
be; but organized Christianity, which is by no means the same thing as religion, has been the opiate of the people ever since the beginning of the fourth century, and never has this opiate been employed for political purposes more skilfully than it was by the Massachusetts Bay oligarchy.
In the year 311 the Roman emperor Constantine issued an edict of
toleration in favour of organized Christianity. He patronized the new
cult heavily, giving it rich presents, and even adopted the labarum as
his standard, which was a most distinguished gesture, and cost nothing;
the story of the heavenly sign appearing before his crucial battle
against Maxentius may quite safely be put down beside that of the
apparitions seen before the battle of the Marne. He never joined the
Church, however, and the tradition that he was converted to Christianity
is open to great doubt. The point of all this is that circumstances had
by that time made Christianity a considerable figure; it had survived
contumely and persecution, and had become a social influence which
Constantine saw was destined to reach far enough to make it worth
courting. The Church could be made a most effective tool of the State,
and only a very moderate amount of statesmanship was needed to discern
the right way of bringing this about. The understanding, undoubtedly
tacit, was based on a simple quid pro quo; in exchange for
imperial recognition and patronage, and endowments enough to keep up to
the requirements of a high official respectability, the Church should quit its disagreeable habit of criticizing the course of politics; and in particular, it should abstain from unfavourable comment on the State's administration of the political means.
These are the unvarying terms - again I say, undoubtedly tacit, as it is
seldom necessary to stipulate against biting the hand by which one is
fed - of every understanding that has been struck since Constantine's
day, between organized Christianity and the State.
They were the terms of the understanding struck in the Germanies and in
England at the Reformation. The petty German principality had its State
Church as it had its State theatre; and in England, Henry VIII set up
the Church in its present status as an arm of the civil
service, like the Post-office. The fundamental understanding in all
cases was that the Church should not interfere with or disparage the
organization of the
political means; and in practice it naturally followed that the Church
would go further, and quite regularly abet this organization to the best
of its ability.
The merchant-State in America came to this understanding with organized
Christianity. In the Bay colony the Church became in 1638 an established
subsidiary of the State,
[8]
supported by taxation; it
maintained a State creed, promulgated in 1647. In some other colonies
also, as for example, in Virginia, the Church was a branch of the State
service, and where it was not actually established as such, the same
understanding was reached by other means, quite as satisfactory. Indeed,
the merchant-State both in England and America soon became lukewarm
towards the idea of an Establishment, perceiving that the same
modus vivendi
could be almost as easily arrived at under voluntaryism, and that the
latter had the advantage of satisfying practically all modes of credal
and ceremonial preference, thus releasing the State from the troublesome
and profitless business of interference in disputes over matters of
doctrine and Church order.
Voluntaryism pure and simple was set up in Rhode Island by Roger
Williams, John Clarke, and their associates who were banished from the
Bay colony almost
exactly three hundred years ago, in 1636. This group of exiles is
commonly regarded as having founded a society on the philosophy of
natural rights and popular sovereignty in respect of both Church order
and civil order, and as having launched an experiment in democracy.
This, however, is an exaggeration. The leaders of the group were
undoubtedly in sight of this philosophy, and as far as Church order is
concerned, their practice was conformable to it. On the civil side, the
most that can be said is that their practice was conformable in so far
as they knew how to make it so; and one says this much only by a very
considerable concession. The least that can be said, on the other hand,
is that their practice was for a time greatly in advance of the practice
prevailing in other colonies - so far in advance that Rhode Island was
in great disrepute with its neighbours in Massachusetts and Connecticut,
who diligently disseminated the tale of its evil fame throughout the
land, with the customary exaggerations and
embellishments. Nevertheless, through acceptance of the State system of
land-tenure, the political structure of Rhode Island was a
State-structure from the outset, contemplating as it did the
stratification of society into an owning and exploiting class and a
propertyless dependent class. Williams's theory of the State was that of
social compact arrived at among equals, but equality did not exist in
Rhode Island; the actual outcome was a pure class-State.
In the spring of 1638, Williams acquired about twenty square miles of
land by gift from two Indian sachems, in addition to some he had bought
from them two
years before. In October he formed a
"proprietary"
of purchasers who bought twelve-thirteenths of the Indian grant.
Bicknell, in his history of Rhode Island, cites a letter written by
Williams to the deputy-governor of the Bay colony, which says frankly
that the plan of this proprietary contemplated the creation of two
classes of citizens, one consisting of landholding heads of families,
and the other, of
"young men, single persons" who were a landless tenantry, and as Bicknell says,
"had no voice or vote as to the officers of the community, or the laws which they were called upon to obey."
Thus the civil order in Rhode Island was essentially a pure State
order, as much so as the civil order of the Bay colony, or any other in
America; and in fact the landed-property franchise lasted uncommonly
long in Rhode Island, existing there for some time after it had been
given up in most other quarters of America.
[9]
By way of summing up, it is enough to say that nowhere in the American
colonial civil order was there ever the trace of a democracy. The
political structure was always that of the merchant-State; Americans have never known any other.
Furthermore, the philosophy of natural rights and popular sovereignty
was never once exhibited anywhere in American political practice during
the colonial period, from the first settlement in 1607 down to the
revolution of 1776.
[1] Among these institutions are: our system of free public education;
local self-government as originally established in the township system;
our method of
conveying land; almost all of our system of equity; much of our criminal
code; and our method of administering estates.
[2] Throughout Europe, indeed, up to the close of the eighteenth
century, the State was quite weak, even considering the relatively
moderate development of social power, and the moderate amount of
economic accumulation available to its predatory purposes. Social power
in modern France could pay the flat annual levy of Louis XIV's taxes
without feeling it, and would like nothing better than to commute the
republican State's levy on those terms.
[3] During the reign of Elizabeth the Puritan contention, led by Cartwright, was for what amounted to a theory of
jure divino
Presbyterianism. The
Establishment at large took the position of Archbishop Whitgift and
Richard Hooker that the details of church polity were indifferent, and
therefore properly subject to State regulation. The High Church doctrine
of
jure divino episcopacy was laid down later, by
Whitgift's successor, Bancroft. Thus up to 1604 the Presbyterians were
objectionable on secular grounds, and afterwards on both secular and
ecclesiastical grounds.
[4] So were the kaleidoscopic changes that took place in France after
the revolution of 1789. Throughout the Directorate, the Consulship, the
Restoration, the two Empires, the three Republics and the Commune, the
French
State kept its essential character intact; it remained always the
organization of the political means.
[5] In 1629 the Massachusetts Bay colony adopted the Plymouth colony's
model of congregational autonomy, but finding its principle dangerously
inconsistent with the principle of the State, almost immediately
nullified their action; retaining, however, the name of
Congregationalism. This mode of masquerade is easily recognizable as one
of the modern State's most useful expedients for maintaining the
appearance of things without the reality. The names of our two largest
political parties will at once appear as a capital example. Within two
years the Bay colony had set up a State church, nominally
congregationalist, but actually a branch of the civil service, as in
England.
[6] Probably it was a forecast of this state of things, as much as the
greater convenience of administration, that caused the Bay Company to
move over to Massachusetts, bag and baggage, in the year following the
issuance of their charter.
[7] Thomas Robinson Hazard, the Rhode Island Quaker, in his delightful
Jonnycake Papers, says that the Great Swamp Fight of 1675 was
"instigated
against the rightful owners of the soil, solely by the cussed godly
Puritans of Massachusetts, and their hell-hound allies, the
Presbyterians of Connecticut; whom, though charity is my specialty, I
can never think of without feeling as all good Rhode Islanders should, .
. . and as old Miss Hazard did when in like vein she thanked God in the
Conanicut prayer-meeting that she could hold malice forty years." The Rhode Island settlers dealt with the Indians for rights in land, and made friends with them.
[8] Mr. Parrington (
Main Currents in American Thought,
vol. I, p. 24) cites the successive steps leading up to this, as
follows: the law of 1631,
restricting the franchise to Church members; of 1635, obliging all
persons to attend Church services; and of 1636, which established a
virtual State monopoly, by requiring consent of both Church and State
authority before a new church could be set up. Roger Williams observed
acutely that a State establishment of organized Christianity is
"a politic invention of man to maintain the civil State."
[9] Bicknell says that the formation of Williams's proprietary was "a landholding, land-jobbing, land-selling scheme, with no moral, social, civil, educational or religious end in view";
and his discussion of the early land-allotments on the site where the
city of Providence now stands, makes it pretty clear that "the
first years of Providence are consumed in a greedy scramble for land." Bicknell is not precisely an unfriendly witness towards Williams, though his history is avowedly ex parte
for the thesis that the true expounder of civil freedom in Rhode Island
was not Williams, but Clarke. This contention is immaterial to the
present purpose, however, for the State system of land-tenure prevailed
in Clarke's settlements on Aquidneck as it did in Williams's settlements
farther up the bay.
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