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The Constitution for the
United States, Its Sources and Its Application
Senate Report 93-549 War and Emergency Powers Acts,
Executive Orders, and the New World Order
Who is Running America?
Senate Report 93-549 War and Emergency Powers Acts,
Executive Orders, and the New World Order
Who is Running America?
Our Enemy, The State
by Albert J. Nock - 1935
by Albert J. Nock - 1935
CHAPTER 3
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.
Chapter 3
Footnotes https://www.blogger.com/null
[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. https://www.blogger.com/null
[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. https://www.blogger.com/null
[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. https://www.blogger.com/null
[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. https://www.blogger.com/null
[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. https://www.blogger.com/null
[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. https://www.blogger.com/null
[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. https://www.blogger.com/null
[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." https://www.blogger.com/null
[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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