The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

by Bernard Bailyn

  20. Otis, Rights of the British Colonies (JHL 7), pp. 41, 73n, 47, 39–40.

  21. Gough, Fundamental Law, pp. 45, 35–36.

  22. Andrew Eliot, A Sermon Preached before His Excellency Francis Bernard … (Boston, 1765: JHL Pamphlet 15), p. 19; [Martin Howard, Jr.,] A Letter from a Gentleman at Halifax (Newport, 1765: JHL Pamphlet 10), p. 10; Bland, Colonel Dismounted (JHL 4), pp. 27, 29.

  23. Samuel Adams, quoted in Randolph G. Adams, Political Ideas of the American Revolution (3d ed., New York, 1958), p. 138; the texts of the letters are in Adams’ Writings (H. A. Cushing, ed., New York, 1904–1908), I, 152 ff. (see esp. p. 156); the Circular Letter is at pp. 184–188. [William Hicks], The Nature and Extent of Parliamentary Power Considered … (Philadelphia, 1768: JHL Pamphlet 24), p. 31; Zubly, Humble Enquiry (JHL 28), p. 5.

  24. Samuel Cooke, A Sermon Preached at Cambridge … (Boston, 1770), p. 11; Charles Turner, A Sermon Preached before His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson (Boston, 1773), pp. 16, 17, 18–19; Peter Whitney, The Transgressions of a Land … (Boston, 1774), p. 8; Mather, America’s Appeal (JHL 59), pp. 22–23; Four Letters on Important Subjects (JHL 69), pp. 18, 15–16, 19, 22.

  25. Genuine Principles (JHL 70), pp. 4, 35, 34; on Hulme and the influence of his Essay, see Robbins, Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman, pp. 363–365. Among the many other statements of the idea of a fixed constitution published by 1776, see especially those of the Tories; e.g., Seabury, A View, in Vance, Letters of a Westchester Farmer, p. 123; and [Thomas Bradbury Chandler], What Think Ye of the Congress Now? … (New York, 1775), p. 44. But for a dramatic illustration of the speed with which Revolutionary ideas were maturing, compare Chandler’s and Seabury’s understanding with that expressed by the Concord Town Meeting in 1776, in S. E. Morison, ed., Sources and Documents of the American Revolution … (Oxford, 1923), p. 177.

  26. Howard, Halifax Letter (JHL 10), p. 11.

  27. Otis, Vindication (JHL 11), pp. 4, 3–4, 8, 9, 13, 14.

  28. [John Dickinson], An Address to the Committee of Correspondence in Barbados … (Philadelphia, 1766), in Paul L. Ford, ed., Writings of John Dickinson (Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, XIV, Philadelphia, 1895), pp. 261, 262; John Dickinson, A Speech Delivered … 1764, in ibid., p. 34; [Silas Downer], A Discourse Delivered in Providence … at the Dedication of the Tree of Liberty (Providence, 1768: JHL Pamphlet 25), p. 6.

  29. [Alexander Hamilton], The Farmer Refuted … (New York, 1775), in Papers of Alexander Hamilton (Harold C. Syrett, et al., eds., New York and London, 1961–), I, 122; [Philip Livingston], The Other Side of the Question … (New York, 1774: JHL Pamphlet 51), p. 9.

  30. Jefferson, Summary View (JHL 43), p. 22; Otis, Vindication (JHL 11), p. 32; Four Letters on Interesting Subjects (JHL 69), p. 22; [Arthur Lee], “Monitor III,” Virginia Gazette (R), March 10, 1768 (see also nos. IV and V where Lee works out further his arguments for “a confirmation of our rights … to merit the title of the Magna Carta Americana”); Eliot to Hollis, July 10, 1769, in MHS Colls., 4th ser., IV, 442. Later there would be doubts about the value of enumerating rights just as there would be about other of the ideas developing before 1776. See particularly Madison’s penetrating analysis in his letter to Jefferson of October 17, 1788, Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Julian P. Boyd, ed., Princeton, 1950–), XIV, 18–19, especially arguments 2 and 4.

  31. Anon., “A Concise View of the Principles of the Constitution and Government of the United States…,” in Jedidiah Morse, comp., Annals of the American Revolution … (Hartford, 1824), p. 385.

  32. Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History (New Haven, 1934–1938), I, 440; McIlwain, Constitutionalism and the Changing World, p. 241 (cf. Andrews, Colonial Period, II, 102 ff.). See, in general, Benjamin F. Wright, Jr., “The Early History of Written Constitutions in America,” Essays … in Honor of Charles Howard McIlwain (Cambridge, 1936), pp. 344–371. For the claim that “to Plymouth belongs the credit for having established what may fairly be described as the first American constitution” (the code of laws of 1636), see George L. Haskins, “The Legacy of Plymouth,” Social Education, 26 (1962), 9.

  33. Andrews, Colonial Period, II, 137 (cf. 49), 283n; III, 269, 287n–288n, 286. On the Duke’s Laws of New York, see A. E. McKinley, “The Transition from Dutch to English Rule in New York,” American Historical Review, 6 (1900–01), 704 ff.

  34. [Thomas Fitch, et al.], Reasons Why the British Colonies Should Not Be Charged with Internal Taxes (New Haven, 1764: JHL Pamphlet 6), p. 9; Dickinson, Speech Delivered … 1764, in Ford, Writings, p. 30; Cooke, Sermon Preached at Cambridge, p. 33. Dickinson’s assumption in 1764 that Pennsylvania’s Charter of Privileges of 1701 was in effect unalterable fundamental law is particularly important. See David L. Jacobson, “John Dickinson’s Fight against Royal Government, 1764,” W.M.Q., 3d ser., 19 (1962), 72–74. For a particularly valuable analysis of the extent to which colonial charters had taken on the characteristics of modern written constitutions before the Revolution, and at the Revolution in effect became, by subtle alterations, actual state constitutions, see Charles R. Erdman, Jr., The New Jersey Constitution of 1776 (Princeton, 1929).

  35. Samuel Webster, The Misery and Duty of an Oppressed and Enslav’d People … (Boston, 1774), pp. 10 ff. (the quotation is at 22); Mather, America’s Appeal (JHL 59), p. 24. See also Johnson, Some Important Observations (JHL 19), pp. 42 ff.; and, for a full presentation of this theme and of the political significance of the renewal of “jeremiad” preaching on the eve of the Revolution, Perry Miller, “From the Covenant to the Revival,” The Shaping of American Religion (James W. Smith and A. Leland Jamison, eds., Religion in American Life, I, Princeton, 1961).

  36. Haskins, “Legacy of Plymouth,” pp. 9–10, 22; Andrews, Colonial Period, I, 458; George L. Haskins, Law and Authority in Early Massachusetts (New York, 1960), pp. 136 ff., 120.

  37. Andrews, Colonial Period, III, 117, 119; The Colonial Laws of New York … (Charles Z. Lincoln, et al., eds., Albany, 1894–1896), I, 244–248; Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York … (E. B. O’Callaghan and Berthold Fernow, eds., Albany, 1856–1887), IV, 263–264.

  38. The Grants, Concessions, and Original Constitutions of the Province of New Jersey … (Aaron Learning and Jacob Spicer, eds., [Somerville, N.J., 1881]), pp. 382–409; John E. Pomfret, The Province of West New Jersey, 1609–1702 (Princeton, 1956), pp. 92 ff.; Andrews, Colonial Period, III, 273–274 (cf. 167), 286; The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters … (F. N. Thorpe, comp., Washington, D. C., 1909), V, 3044 ff.

  39. Grants of New Jersey, pp. 394, 395; Colonial Laws of New York, I, 247.

  40. Hamilton, Farmer Refuted, in Syrett, Papers, I, 163.

  41. McIlwain, Constitutionalism and the Changing World, pp. 26–29, 52–55, 72 ff.; Gough, Fundamental Law, pp. 117 ff.; Margaret A. Judson, The Crisis of the Constitution … 1603–1645 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1949), chaps. iv, v; George L. Mosse, The Struggle for Sovereignty in England (East Lansing, Mich., 1950), chap. iv.

  42. Margaret A. Judson, “Henry Parker and the Theory of Parliamentary Sovereignty,” Essays [to] McIlwain, pp. 152, 144, 150, 151.

  43. Judson, “Henry Parker,” pp. 153, 163, 164; Gough, Fundamental Law, pp. 176 ff.

  44. McIlwain, Constitutionalism and the Changing World, pp. 63–64; on the complexities of Blackstone’s position, see Ernest Barker, Essays on Government (Oxford, 1945), pp. 137–138; for Blackstone’s application of these ideas to the question of Parliament’s control of the colonies, see Lawrence H. Gipson, “The Great Debate … on the Stamp Act, 1766, as Reported by Nathaniel Ryder,” Pa. Mag., 86 (1962), 17.

  45. T. C. Hansard, The Parliamentary History of England … (London, 1806–1820), XVI, 612; [Jared Ingersoll], Mr. Ingersoll’s Letters Relating to the Stamp-Act (New Haven, 1766; JHL Pamphlet 22), p. 13.

  46. Otis, Rights of the British Colonies (JHL 7), pp. 12, 39, 47, 48. The passage in Grotius (De Jure Belli Et Pacis, I, i, 10, ¶ 5) containing
the arithmetical example Otis used concerns natural law as a logically necessary restriction on omnipotent power, and it is broadly suggestive of the context of Otis’ thought and of the reasons for his ultimate dilemma: “Natural law,” Grotius wrote, “is so immutable that it cannot be changed by God himself. For though the power of God be immense, there are some things to which it does not extend: because if we speak of those things being done, the words are mere words, and have no meaning, being self-contradictory. Thus God himself cannot make twice two not be four; and in like manner, he cannot make that which is intrinsically bad, not be bad.” See, in general on Otis’ constitutional arguments the Introductions to his Rights of the British Colonies and to his Vindication of the British Colonies (JHL 11), in Bailyn, Pamphlets, I.

  47. Thus, e.g., Bolingbroke had used the phrase in condemning Walpole’s “Robinocracy”: such a ministerial government “may properly be called … imperium in imperio, which hath been always treated as a solæcism in politics by the best writers upon government…” The Craftsman, no. 172 (October 18, 1728), as republished, vol. V (London, 1731), p. 153. So also in The Votes and Proceedings of the Freeholders … of … Boston … (Boston, [1772]: JHL Pamphlet 36), p. 4, Catholics are condemned as introducing “that solecism in politics, imperium in imperio, leading directly to the worst anarchy and confusion, civil discord, war and bloodshed”; “imperium in imperio,” Daniel Leonard wrote, is “the heighth of political absurdity.” The Origin of the American Contest with Great-Britain … (New York, 1775: JHL Pamphlet 56), p. 56. For the explicit repudiation of the formula, see Iredell’s remarks, quoted below, pp. 224–225.

  48. Rights of the British Colonies, p. 40; Adams, Works, X, 296–297; Otis, Vindication (JHL 11), pp. 4, 14, 5; [Otis], Brief Remarks on the Defence of the Halifax Libel … (Boston, 1765), pp. 22, 5. On the political embarrassment of Otis’ ambiguity, see Governor Bernard’s statement of 1770, quoted in Gipson, British Empire, XII, 39.

  49. Ellen E. Brennan, “James Otis: Recreant and Patriot,” New England Quarterly, 12 (1939), 722.

  50. “If, intemperately, unwisely, fatally,” Edmund Burke predicted in his Speech on American Taxation, “you sophisticate and poison the very source of government by urging subtle deductions … from the unlimited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty, you will teach them by these means to call that sovereignty itself in question. When you drive him hard, the boar will surely turn upon the hunters. If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. Nobody will be argued into slavery.”

  51. Andrew C. McLaughlin, “The Background of American Federalism,” American Political Science Review, 12 (1918), 215. The interpretation in the pages that follow owes much to this essay which argues “that the essential qualities of American federal organization were largely the product of the practices of the old British empire as it existed before 1764” and that “the discussions of the generation from the French and Indian war to the adoption of the federal Constitution, and more particularly, the discussions in the ten or twelve years before independence” were devoted to the problems of this kind of organization. See also McLaughlin, Foundations of American Constitutionalism, chap. vi; McIlwain, “Historical Background of Federal Government.”

  52. Thus Burlamaqui in his Principles of Natural and Politic Law (1747; first complete English trans., 1752) argued that “there are two sorts of obligations, one internal and the other external. By internal obligation I understand that which is produced only by our own reason, considered as the primitive rule of conduct, and in consequence of the good or evil the action in itself contains. By external obligation we mean that which arises from the will of a being on whom we allow ourselves dependent and who commands or prohibits some particular things under a commination of punishment” (I, vi, 13; see also I, x, 8–10). Similarly, Vattel, arguing that nations, like men, are naturally “free and independent of each other” except where a bonded obligation has been incurred, pointed out that such an obligation “and the right correspondent to it … is distinguished into external and internal. The obligation is internal, as it binds the conscience, and as it comprehends the rules of our duty; it is external, as it is considered relatively to other men, and as it produces some right between them.” He then discussed the freedom of action permissible to nations in the light of internal and external obligations. Law of Nations (London, 1759: the edition used by both Otis and Bland), I, Introduction, secs. 16–17, 20, 27 (pp. 5–7). For an example of the direct use of Burlamaqui’s distinction between internal and external obligations in the discussion of Parliament’s powers in America, see Samuel Cooper to Thomas Pownall, March 25, 1773, in American Historical Review, 8 (1902–03), 328. For the importance of the distinction in Harrington’s thought, see Charles Blitzer, An Immortal Commonwealth (New Haven, 1960), pp. 111 ff.

  53. Bland, Colonel Dismounted (JHL 4), p. 22; [Stephen Hopkins], The Rights of Colonies Examined (Providence, 1765: JHL Pamphlet 9), pp. 10, 11. For Hopkins’ later distinction between taxing the colonies in their “interior police” and in their “foreign importations,” see Bailyn, Pamphlets, I, 504.

  54. On Connecticut’s pamphlet and the issues involved, see Introduction to Pamphlet 6 in Bailyn, Pamphlets, I, and the documents cited there; Dulany, Considerations (JHL 13), p. 33.

  55. Hutchinson to Ebenezer Silliman, Boston, November 9, 1764, quoted in Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis (Chapel Hill, 1953), p. 216; Thomas Whately to John Temple, May 2, 1767, in MHS Colls., 6th ser., IX, 83. Cf. Edmund S. Morgan, “Colonial Ideas of Parliamentary Power, 1764–1766,” W.M.Q., 3d ser., 5 (1948), 311–341, where it is argued that the colonists never admitted Parliament’s right to levy external taxes, the presumed concession being an attribution to the colonists by writers and debaters in England, and that the colonists’ arguments against Parliamentary taxation appeared fully developed in the Stamp Act crisis. The present interpretation, which owes much to Morgan’s, differs from it not so much on whether or not this concession was ever made by the colonists (I find that it was, though uncommonly and, in the ways indicated, indeliberately) but on the more basic question of the development of the colonists’ constitutional ideas. In the perspective of the fundamental problem of sovereignty, whether the colonists did or did not admit Parliament’s right to impose “external” taxes is less important than that they universally thought in terms of “internal” and “external” spheres of government, and that this distinction, of which the taxing issue was a specification, provided them with the means of discriminating among and qualifying the sovereign powers of Parliament. (On this point, see, in addition, the citations in note 65 below.) For an example of the colonists’ admission of external taxation, see, besides those cited in Bailyn, Pamphlets, I, Charles Carroll’s explanation of the propriety of Parliament’s taxing the colonies by “disallowing drawbacks and imposing duties on our imports and exports,” in his letter to Henry Graves, September 15, 1765, Unpublished Letters of Charles Carroll of Carrollton … (Thomas M. Field, ed., New York, 1902), p. 90. Cf., more generally, James Iredell’s “Causes Leading up to the American Revolution,” in Griffith J. McRee, Life and Correspondence of James Iredell (New York, 1857–58), I, 287 ff.

  56. Albert H. Smyth, ed., The Writings of Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1905–1907), IV, 421, 424, 445, 446. On Franklin’s constitutional ideas, see Verner W. Crane, ed., Benjamin Franklin’s Letters to the Press, 1758–1775 (Chapel Hill, 1950), pp. xxxvii–xlvi, 60–61, and documents cited there.

  57. Dulany, Considerations (JHL 13), p. 15.

  58. [John Dickinson], Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania … (Philadelphia, 1768: JHL Pamphlet 23), pp. 20, 24.

  59. Hickes, Nature and Extent of Parliamentary Power (JHL 24), p. xiii (see also, p. 23: “while the power of the British Parliament is acknowledged sovereign and supreme in every respect whatsoever, the liberty of America is no more than a flattering dream, and her privileges
delusive shadows”); Downer, Discourse (JHL 25), p. 7; Zubly, Humble Enquiry (JHL 28), pp. 2–4, 6, 9.

  60. [William Knox], The Controversy Between Great Britain and Her Colonies Reviewed … (London, 1769), as reprinted in Old South Leaflets, no. 210 (S. E. Morison, ed.), pp. 8–9, 10–11 (pp. 34–35, 44, 50 in the original edition). Cf. [John Mein], Sagittarius’s Letters and Political Speculations … (Boston, 1775), p. 12; [Jonathan Boucher], A Letter from a Virginian … ([New York], 1774: JHL Pamphlet 46), pp. 20, 23; Leonard (“Massachusettensis”), Origin of the American Contest (JHL 56), pp. 62–63.

  61. The entire debate was published by order of the House in a 126-page pamphlet entitled The Speeches of His Excellency Governor Hutchinson to the General Assembly … 1773. With the Answers of His Majesty’s Council and the House of Representatives Respectively … (Boston, 1773: JHL Pamphlet 37). The same documents, with the exception of the governor’s concluding speech of March 6, are reprinted in [Alden Bradford, ed.], Speeches of the Governors of Massachusetts, from 1765 to 1775 … (Boston, 1818), pp. 336–396. The passages quoted in the paragraphs that follow are from pp. 5, 7, 11, 13, 18, 19, 20, 31, 35, 56–57, 60, 61, 81, 115, of the pamphlet, corresponding to pp. 337, 338, 340, 342, 344, 345, 351, 353, 364, 368, 369, 379 in Bradford’s Speeches.