28. William T. Hutchinson, et al., eds., Papers of James Madison (Chicago, 1962–), I, 112, 170–175; Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, II, 562–563, 564, 565, 566; Journal of the House of Delegates of Virginia. Anno Domini, 1776. (Richmond, 1828), pp. 25, 7, 15, 35, 48, 24–25.
29. Goen, Revivalism and Separatism, pp. 269, 208 ff., 273 ff.; on Backus, see pp. 215–224.
30. Amos Adams, Religious Liberty an Invaluable Blessing … (Boston, 1768), pp. 39, 32.
31. [Isaac Backus], A Seasonable Plea for Liberty of Conscience, Against Some Late Oppressive Proceedings … (Boston, 1770), pp. 8, 3, 14; Isaac Backus, A Letter to a Gentleman in the Massachusetts General Assembly, Concerning Taxes To Support Religious Worship ([Boston], 1771), pp. 10 ff., 20, 21, 18.
32. Eliot to Hollis, Boston, January 29, 1771, MHS Colls., 4th ser., IV, 455, 456, 457.
33. Ibid., 455; The Acts and Resolves, Public and Private, of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay … (Boston, 1869–1922), IV, 1036, 1040, 1038.
34. Charles Turner, A Sermon Preached before His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson … (Boston, 1773), p. 39; Isaac Backus, An Appeal … (Boston, 1773), pp. 16 ff., 23, 28, 30 ff., 43–44, 54, 55, 52.
35. Allen, American Alarm (JHL 39), 4th sec., pp. 2, 3, 7, 8, 9.
36. The three paragraphs that follow are derived from Adams, Diary and Autobiography, III, 311, 312; and Alvah Hovey, A Memoir of the Life and Times of the Rev. Isaac Backus, A.M. (Boston, 1858), pp. 205, 210, 220–221.
37. Parsons, Freedom, pp. 8–9n, 7, 9–10, 14, 15.
38. Parsons, Freedom, pp. 8–9n; Samuel Williams, A Discourse on the Love of Our Country … (Salem, 1775: JHL Pamphlet 55), p. 15.
39. [John Adams], Thoughts on Government … (Philadelphia, 1776: JHL Pamphlet 65), p. 27. The sentiment was widely shared. Thus the contemporary historian David Ramsay wrote in his History of the American Revolution (Philadelphia, 1789), I, 356: “In no age before, and in no other country, did man ever possess an election of the kind of government under which he would choose to live. The constituent parts of the ancient free governments were thrown together by accident. The freedom of modern European governments was, for the most part, obtained by the concessions or liberality of monarchs or military leaders. In America alone, reason and liberty concurred in the formation of constitutions.”
40. On the derivation and development of this classical theory of the English constitution and the ambiguities within it, see above, Chap. III, pp. 67–76, and notes 15, 16.
41. Allen, American Alarm (JHL 39), 1st sec., p. 12; Warren, Oration (JHL 35), pp. 9–10. For a general discussion of this problem in the earlier eighteenth century, see Bernard Bailyn, The Origins of American Politics (New York, 1968), chap. iii.
42. James C. Ballagh, ed., Letters of Richard Henry Lee (New York, 1912–1914), I, 19.
43. [William Hicks], Considerations upon the Rights of the Colonists to the Privileges of British Subjects … (New York, 1766: JHL Pamphlet 18), pp. 12–13; Adams (“Novanglus”), Works, IV, 117; Bernard Bailyn, “Politics and Social Structure in Virginia,” James M. Smith, ed., Seventeenth-Century America (Chapel Hill, 1959), p. 113.
44. Letters to the Ministry from Governor Bernard, General Gage, and Commodore Hood … (Boston, 1769 [Evans 11176]), p. 12; Copies of Letters from Governor Bernard, &c. to the Earl of Hillsborough [Boston, 1769], p. 9. See also Edward Channing and Archibald C. Coolidge, eds., The Barrington-Pernard Correspondence … (Cambridge, 1912), pp. 198, 256–258.
45. [William H. Drayton], A Letter from Freeman of South-Carolina … (Charleston, 1774: JHL Pamphlet 45), p. 4; Select Letters on the Trade and Government of America … by Governor Bernard … (2d ed., London, 1774), p. 83; No. 3. The Dougliad. On Liberty … [New York, 1770: JHL Pamphlet 33], pp. 2–3.
46. Copy of Letters Sent to Great-Britain by His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson … and Several Other Persons … (Boston, 1773: JHL Pamphlet 40), p. 31; Adams (“Novanglus”), Works, IV, 25, 27, 28; Drayton, Letter from Freeman, pp. 32, 18 (cf. 12). Adams’ opponent “Massachusettensis” (Daniel Leonard), who in the end advocated nothing more drastic than filling all the Council seats in the colonies by crown appointment, favored that solution because it was at least an approximation of the proper arrangement which was ruled out because “the infant state of the colonies does not admit of a peerage.” Novanglus and Massachusettensis … (Boston, 1819), p. 194. For Adams’ “Sixth principle of revolution … the necessity of resisting the introduction of a royal or Parliamentary nobility or aristocracy into the country,” see MHS Colls., 5th ser., IV, 344.
47. Nor did it disappear after Independence. The idea in its original form continued to be advocated, retrospectively for the thirteen colonies, prospectively for Canada, not only by exiled loyalists like Joseph Galloway and William Smith, Jr., but also by leading English officials like the younger Pitt, who attributed the loss of the colonies to “the want of more resemblance in their constitution with that of Great Britain.” The result was the Constitutional Act of 1791 which authorized for Canada the creation of life peers to sit in the legislative councils of the provinces. Corinne C. Weston, English Constitutional Theory and the House of Lords, 1556–1832 (London, 1965), pp. 160 ff.
48. [Thomas Bradbury Chandler], What Think Ye of the Congress Now? … (New York, 1775), pp. 34–35; Ramsay, History, I, 350. On the “quick transition from monarchy to republic in form and belief,” see Cecelia M. Kenyon, “Republicanism and Radicalism in the American Revolution…,” W.M.Q., 3d ser., 19 (1962), 165–166; Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Julian P. Boyd, ed., Princeton, 1950–), II, 26.
49. [Charles Inglis], The True Interest of America … Strictures on a Pamphlet Intitled Common Sense … (Philadelphia, 1776), pp. 17, 49 ff.; Jonathan Boucher, A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution … (London, 1797), p. lxix.
50. Rev. Samuel Johnson to the Archbishop of Canterbury, July 13, 1760, quoted in Oscar Zeichner, Connecticut’s Years of Controversy (Chapel Hill, 1949), p. 28; Madison to Jefferson, October 24, 1787, Boyd, Jefferson Papers, XII, 276–277; The Federalist, no. 14; Roy N. Lokken, “The Concept of Democracy in Colonial Political Thought,” W.M.Q., 3d ser., 16 (1959), 570–580. Cf. Robert R. Palmer, “Notes on the Use of the Word ‘Democracy,’ 1789–1799,” Political Science Quarterly, 68 (1953), 203–226. For a characteristic description of how democracies succumb to demagogues, see [James Chalmers], Additions to Plain Truth … (Philadelphia, 1776), pp. 128–129. For John Adams’ frantic efforts to keep the distinction between a democracy and a republic clear (“I was always for a free republic, not a democracy, which is as arbitrary, tyrannical, bloody, cruel, and intolerable a government as that of Phalaris with his bull is represented to have been. Robespierre is a perfect exemplification of the character of the first bellwether in a democracy”), and for his bewildering attempts to define republicanism so as to accommodate the balance of the English constitution without “either an hereditary king or an hereditary nobility,” see his letters to Mercy Warren, 1807, in MHS Colls., 5th ser., IV, 394, 325, 353, 473. His conclusion that he “never understood” what a republican government was (“and I believe no other man ever did or ever will”) appears to be well substantiated by his subsequent statement that “to speak technically, or scientifically, if you will, there are monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical republics” (Works, X, 378). Throughout, however, he was grappling with the problem of recreating the “equipoised” balance of the English constitution in the circumstances of the American states. Cf. Robert R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution … The Challenge (Princeton, 1959), pp. 58–59, 267–276.
51. Thus Ian Christie’s description of the extreme English radicals of the Revolutionary period: “They were no democrats … their ideal was a broad, propertied oligarchy, in which the lower orders should clearly know and accept their place — Hollis [Mayhew’s and Eliot’s mentor in libertarianism] even advocated keeping the masses illiterate.” Wilkes, Wyvill and Reform (London, 1962), pp.
15–16. See also Christie’s emphasis in his general conclusions, pp. 222 ff., on the contrast between the reforming radicalism of the 1760’s, concerned primarily with the threat to constitutional liberties in England and America, and the later, working-class radicalism “which could be described in the words of the Chartist, Rayner Stephens, as ‘a knife and fork question.’” Note the parallel interpretation in Weston, English Constitutional Theory, pp. 143 ff. Christie’s description of the radicals of the 1760’s holds equally well for most of the commonwealthmen and coffeehouse radicals of the early eighteenth century, whose views became so influential in America. Trenchard and Gordon, for example, refused to consider any alteration in the property structure of England (Cato’s Letters, no. 85); objected not to inequality as such but only to artificial inequality (no. 45); were anti-majoritarian (no. 62); and were vehemently opposed to charity schools, which, they said, “take the lowest dregs of the people from the plough and labor to make them tradesmen, and by consequence drive the children of tradesmen to the plough, to beg, to rob, or to starve … there are few instances in which the public has suffered more than in breeding up beggars to be what are called scholars … What benefit can accrue to the public by taking the dregs of the people out of the kennels and throwing their betters into them?” (no. 133)
52. Copies of Letters from Governor Bernard, p. 16; [John Randolph], Considerations on the Present State of Virginia ([Williamsburg], 1774), in Earl G. Swem edition (New York, 1919), pp. 15, 17; Andrew Eliot, A Sermon Preached before His Excellency Francis Bernard … (Boston, 1765: JHL Pamphlet 15), p. 49; Dickinson, Farmer’s Letters (JHL 23), p. 58; Drayton, Letter from Freeman (JHL 45), p. 4; Inglis, True Interest of America, pp. 24, 53; [John Lind?], An Englishman’s Answer to the Address from the Delegates … (New York, 1775), p. 19; Edward Barnard, A Sermon Preached before His Excellency Francis Bernard … (Boston, 1766), p. 13.
53. The majority in all the states, Ramsay wrote, “saw and acknowledged the propriety of a compounded legislature, yet the mode of creating two branches out of a homogeneous mass of people was a matter of difficulty.” Ramsay, History, I, 351.
54. [Thomas Paine], Common Sense … (Philadelphia, 1776: JHL Pamphlet 63), pp. 6, 7, 8, 11, 54, 56, 57.
55. Harold Laski, quoted in Harry H. Clark, ed., Thomas Paine (New York, 1961), p. cl.
56. Chalmers, Plain Truth (JHL 64), pp. 3, 4, 8, 11, 10, 62, 63, 65. “Rationalis,” in an essay published as an Appendix to Plain Truth, continued the defense of the English constitution, claiming that the trouble with England was not its constitution but the use made of it by corrupt politicians. “The infinite distractions and mischiefs which have happened in the ancient and modern republics” were only too well known: lacking balance and control, these governments bred factions one of which in each case triumphed over the others, and turned itself into “a many-headed monster, a tyranny of many.” “Scenes of blood and devastation … the fury of one party encountering the rage of another … [men] as fierce and savage as wolves and tigers … terrible disorders, outrage, and confusion … arbitrary power” — these were the fruits of governments dominated by the democracy, in Greece, in Carthage, in Rome, in Holland, and even in England when Cromwell seized the power from the Commonwealth and ruled “with absolute sway” (pp. 71, 75–78).
57. Inglis, True Interest, p. 17. On the printing history of the pamphlet, which was originally entitled The Deceiver Unmasked …, see Adams, Bibliographical Study, entries 219a–c.
58. Adams, Diary and Autobiography, III, 330, 331, 333; Adams, Thoughts on Government (JHL 65), pp. 8, 9, 10, 11–12, 13, 14, 15, 21, 26. Cf. Adams’ autobiographical summary under the date 1775, which illustrates particularly well the complex shift that took place in conceiving of balance in government, from a balance of formal socio-constitutional orders to the separation of functioning powers of government: “But what plan of a government would you advise? [he was asked at the Continental Congress.] A plan as nearly resembling the governments under which we were born and have lived as the circumstances of the country will admit. Kings we never had among us, nobles we never had. Nothing hereditary ever existed in the country: nor will the country require or admit of any such thing: but governors and councils we have always had, as well as representatives. A legislature in three branches ought to be preserved, and independent judges. Where and how will you get your governors and councils? By elections. How, who shall elect? The representatives of the people in a convention will be the best qualified to contrive a mode.” Diary and Autobiography, III, 356.
59. Boyd, Jefferson Papers, I, 333, 335; Henry to Adams, Williamsburg, May 20, 1776, in Adams, Works, IV, 201; [Carter Braxton], An Address to … Virginia; on the Subject of Government … (Philadelphia, 1776: JHL Pamphlet 66), pp. 10, 13, 11, 22, 20, 23, 15–16, 18.
60. Letters of Richard Henry Lee, I, 203; Boyd, Jefferson Papers, I, 334, 504, 366.
61. The People the Best Governors: Or, a Plan of Government Founded on the Just Principles of Natural Freedom ([Hartford?], 1776: JHL Pamphlet 68), pp. [3]–6.
62. “The Interest of America,” in Force, American Archives, 4th ser., VI, cols. 841–843.
63. The assembly was to be popularly elected; the senate was to be chosen by specially elected deputies from among themselves; and the council, together with the governor and lieutenant governor, was to be chosen by the assembly and senate together from among those who had served as senators. The main duty of the council was to serve as a plural executive but it was to participate also in the legislative process as a third house. The triple-headed complexity of the whole, it was explained, would give “maturity and wisdom to acts of legislation, as also stability to the state, by preventing measures from being too much influenced by sudden passions.” An Essay of a Frame of Government for Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1776), pp. [3], 5 ff., 10, 11 ff.
64. The Genuine Principles of the Ancient Saxon, or English Constitution … (Philadelphia, 1776: JHL Pamphlet 70), pp. 17, 4, 16, 13, 18–19, 23, 36, 37.
65. “Essex Result,” in Theophilus Parsons, Memoir of Theophilus Parsons … (Boston, 1859), p. 370.
66. Four Letters on Interesting Subjects (Philadelphia, 1776: JHL Pamphlet 69), pp. 19–20.
67. Felix Raab, The English Face of Machiavelli (London, 1964), pp. 221, 216.
68. Boucher, “On Civil Liberty, Passive Obedience, and Nonresistance,” A View of the Causes and Consequences, p. 499n.
69. Horace Walpole, like so many other European writers of the eighteenth century, noted the fact, recording in his Memoirs the story making the rounds in London at the time the colonists were seeking affiliation with the crown to the exclusion of Parliament, “that a wealthy merchant in one of the provinces had said, ‘They say King George is a very honest fellow; I should like to smoke a pipe with him,’ so little conception had they in that part of the world, of the majesty of an European monarch!” Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third (Denis Le Marchant, ed., London, 1845), II, 72n.
70. Johnson, Some Important Observations (JHL 19), pp. 27–28.
71. Isaac Backus, A Fish Caught in His Own Net … (Boston, 1768), p. 61; Allen, American Alarm (JHL 39), 4th sec., p. 11; 1st sec., p. 15; Adams, Religious Liberty, pp. 38, 39.
72. Johnson, Some Important Observations (JHL 19), p. 22; “Sentiments of the Several Companies,” Force, American Archives, 5th ser., II, col. 817.
73. Richard Bland, An Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies … (Williamsburg, 1766: JHL Pamphlet 17), p. 25; Four Letters on Interesting Subjects (JHL 69), pp. 2–3.
74. E.g., Eliot, Sermon (JHL 15), pp. 12–30; Turner, Sermon, p. 30.
75. Bailyn, “Politics and Social Structure in Virginia,” p. 94n15; Gad Hitchcock, A Sermon Preached Before … Gage … (Boston, 1774), pp. 27–28; Cooke, Sermon, p. 16; Jason Haven, A Sermon Preached Before … Bernard … (Boston, 1769), pp. 46–47; Peter Whitney, The Transgressions of a Land … (Boston, 1774), p. 16.
76. [Charles Leslie], The Finishing Stroke.
Being a Vindication of the Patriarchal Scheme of Government … (London, 1711), p. 87. (I owe this reference to Mr. John Dunn.)
77. [John Allen], An Oration upon the Beauties of Liberty … (Boston, 1773: JHL Pamphlet 38), p. 28.
78. Isaac Hunt, The Political Family, or a Discourse Pointing Out the Reciprocal Advantages Which Flow from an Uninterrupted Union Between Great-Britain and Her American Colonies … (Philadelphia, 1775), pp. 6, 7, 29–30.
79. [Samuel Seabury], Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continental Congress Held at Philadelphia September 5, 1774 … ([New York], 1774), in Clarence H. Vance, ed., Letters of a Westchester Farmer (1774–1775) (Publications of the Westchester County Historical Society, VIII, White Plains, 1930), pp. 59, 61, 62; [Seabury], The Congress Canvassed … ([New York], 1774: JHL Pamphlet 49), p. 20.
80. [Thomas B. Chandler], The American Querist: Or, Some Questions Proposed … ([New York], 1774: JHL Pamphlet 47), pp. 4, 5, 30; [Thomas B. Chandler], A Friendly Address to All Reasonable Americans … (New York, 1774: JHL Pamphlet 50), p. 5.
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution Page 39