John Cotton, The Devine Right to Occupy the Land (1630)

1. John Cotton, The Devine Right to Occupy the Land (1630) • “The placing of a people in this or that country is from the appointment of the Lord.” In other words, God assigns land to a certain people. • God makes room for people in three ways: • He casts out enemies of a people before them by lawful war. (Heathens) • He gives a foreign people favor or rights to a land through purchase • He makes available places in a country that are vacant, even if the land it not totally vacant • “…[N]o nation is to drive out another without special commission from Heaven, such as the Israelites had, unless the natives do unjustly wrong them, and will not recompense the wrongs done in a peaceful manner.” • “We (the Puritans) must discern how God appoints us this place.”

2. 5. How do a people know if they should emigrate? • ·       Sake of knowledge • ·       Gain sake • ·       Establish a colony • ·       Talents are better employed elsewhere • ·       To escape bad authorities and avoid evils • ·       When some grievous sins overspread a country • ·       When escaping over-burdensome debts and miseries • ·       When persecuted • Questions: • Was North America vacant? • Does God really appoint a people land?

3. John Winthrop • A Model of Christian Charity • Main Points: • God has made different classes of men, and, indeed, of all things. All men are not created equal. The reason hereof: • In conformity to the rest of the world, and demonstrating his wisdom, God created a great variety and differences in his creatures for the preservation of the whole. • The differences give humans the opportunity to manifest the work of the Spirit within them. • The poor should be loyal and honest in their service to their betters and to authorities. • The rich and powerful should honestly and loyally dispense with justice and mercy to the poor. • God made variety and differences so that all men would have a need of one another. This mutual need knits mankind “more nearly together in the Bonds of Brotherly affection.” Thus, by serving his fellow mankind, man serves “the glory of his creator and the common good of the creature, man.”

4. John Winthrop, A Model of Christian Charity • We have made a covenant with God to form a new colony in a new land and live as God would want us. • If We Are Good: If we fulfill our covenant (i.e. do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God) the “Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as his own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways. So that we shall see much more of his wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies…” We will be considered to be a city upon a hill, and the eyes of all peoples will be upon us. • If We are Bad: “…if we shall neglect the observation of these articles which are the ends we have propounded, and, dissembling, with our God, shall fall to embrace the present world and prosecute our carnal intention, seeking great things for ourselves and our posterity, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us; be revenged of such a [sinful] people and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant.” • Questions: • Did the Puritans live up to their ideals? • Why was it necessary for them to leave England? • Does community negate individualism?

5. John Winthrop, A Model of Christian Charity • Questions: • In this world, does God always punish the wicked and bless the virtuous? • Are all men created equal or created different? What does God expect us to do in regard to treating people equally? When should men be considered equal? When should they be considered unequal? • What were Winthrop’s views of equality? • Winthrop’s views of community? • What was the Puritan covenant? • Were the eyes of the world really on the Puritans? Were they really a city upon a hill?

6. Trial of Anne Hutchinson (1637) • Background of John Winthrop: • Born in 1588 near Groton, Suffolk, England • Served as the governor of Massachusetts for twelve years • Was a Puritan (traveled to Massachusetts for his religion: to be away from the impure in England) • Had an education in law • In 1634he was censured by John Cotton. Cotton and others believed that Winthrop was to lenient in religious discipline. Winthrop changed his views in order to get back in good graces with the clergy. • Background of Anne Hutchinson: • Born in 1591 in England • Was the daughter of a Puritan clergyman • Had fourteen children • Antinomianism: a belief in an individual, unmediated experience of salvation, in which the elect can be certain of their future state. In other words a person who holds that the moral law is no obligation for those who have true faith. A God speaks directly to that person.

7. Main Points: • Male authorities in the Puritan society believed that a woman’s role was to specifically be a wife and mother and not doing so was unnatural. • Anne Hutchinson was a woman and her views were not lightly taken by the opposite sex. She held meetings in her home with not only women, but also men. For this time period a woman was not to hold meetings of any kind especially with the opposite sex. The meetings that Hutchinson held chastised the Puritan teachings and aided others in having new ideas about a religion that had been taught for years the exact same way. Her new ways of thinking eventually exiled her from the colony. • Church and state were not separate. • “Your course is not to be suffered for, besides that we find such a course as this to be greatly prejudicial to the state.” In today’s society many a court trials have been held in order to separate church and state. In these times they coincided with each other and that left more room for accusations of disobeying the law. Anne Hutchinson was accused of violated the laws of God and church and state. The governor mentions during the trial that she is dishonoring her parents by not following the Puritan teachings. • The Puritan society had no toleration for new ideas. • When people of this time period had a new idea is was most likely in their best interest to forget it if it dealt with religion and/or politics. It was looked as not an innovated idea, but as an appalling idea. Ideas about these subjects were quickly accused as being an attack upon the church and its officials. Hutchinson’s meetings were looked upon as having “troubled the peace of the commonwealth and the churches”. They believed that she truly held a personal attack on the church. • “Your conscience must keep or it must be kept for you”. • The leaders of the colony believed that everyone must behave and believe a certain way to be socially acceptable. If followers of the colony were believed to be behaving unacceptably they were “dishonored” publicly for not only humiliation, but also to stop others from not conforming to the strict Puritan beliefs and laws.

8. John Winthrop • Little Speech on Liberty • Main Points: • The question addressed: how does the authority of the magistrates stand in relation to the liberty of the people? • When you see weakness in the leaders (magistrates) you have chosen, you should reflect upon your own weaknesses since you chose them. • The magistrates try to govern and judge as best as can according to God’s laws, as well as our own. • If the magistrate’s error is clearly out of wickedness, he must be held accountable for his transgressions. However, if it is not clear that his error was due to evil intentions, then the people, who have a covenant with their leaders, need to bear the consequences of the error.

9. 4. There are two kinds of liberty:  a.     Natural liberty: This is a liberty man shares in common with beasts. Man, as he stands in relation to man, has the liberty to do good or evil. The exercise of [natural] liberty makes men grow more evil, and in time to be worse than brute beasts…. This is that great enemy of truth and peace, that wild beast, which all the ordinances [authorities] of God are bend against, to restrain and subdue it.  b.     Civil or federal liberty: This liberty is in reference to the covenant between God and man, in the moral law, and the politic covenants and constitutions, amongst men themselves. This liberty is the proper end and object of authority…, it is a liberty to that only which is good, just, and honest. This liberty is maintained and exercised in a way of subjection to authority; it is of the same kind of liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. Analogy: women’s subjection to her husband’s authority makes her free.

10. Conclusion: The best way to preserve our civil liberties is to uphold and honor the power of authority. If we quietly and cheerfully subject ourselves to civil liberty, such as Christ allows us, it will be for our own good. If the magistrates fail honestly at any time, you should advise them. Since they are doing their best to follow God’s laws, the magistrates will hearken good advice. In this way, upholding and honoring the power of authority will preserve your liberties. Remember to study the questions at the beginning of each document.

11. Samuel Adams,The Rights of the Colonists (1772) • Natural Rights of the Colonists as Men: • Right to life • Right to Liberty • Right to Property with support to defend it • Right to enter or leave a society • “Those are evident Branches of…the first Law of Nature— • All men have a Right to remain in a State of Nature as long as they please: And in case of intollerable Oppression, Civil or Religious, to leave the Society they belong to, and enter into another.” • “All positive and civil laws, should conform as far as possible, to the law of natural reason and equity.”

12. Samuel Johnson • Taxation No Tyranny (1775) • Main Points: • 1. Americans are able to bear taxation. • Every adult pays taxes: • “Of every empire all the subordinate communities are liable to taxation, because they all share the benefits of government, and, therefore, ought to all furnish their proportion of the expense.” • “As all are born the subjects of some state or other, we may be said to have been all born contenting to some system of government.” • “Humanity is very uniform. The Americans have this resemblance to Europeans, that they do not always know when they are well.”

13. Samuel Johnson Taxation No Tyranny (1775) • 3. Americans have no proof that parliament ever ceded to them exemption from obedience. • Now there are only two choices: “to allow their claim to independence or to reduce them, by force, to submission and allegiance…. • “If the subject refuses to obey, it is the duty of authority to use compulsion. Society cannot subsist but by the power, first of making laws, and then of enforcing them….” • 4. The American rebels are hypocrites. •  “If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”

14. Thomas Paine, Common Sense (January 10, 1776) Main Points: This is a very important issue that will affect all future generations. …The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. “Tis not the affair of a city, a province, or a kingdom, but of a continent of at least one eighth part of the habitable globe. “Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings now. Congress is unable or unwilling to make a decision. Thomas Paine wrote “Common Sense” to speak out about the indecision of Congress. This document was written to call people to action in a sense and to move Congress to make a final break from the tyranny of Britain. Europe, not England is the mother country to the people of America. Great Britain’s motives were that of interest not of attachment to the people that made the move to America. 4. God is the true King of America.        The King of America reigns above and does not havoc of mankind like the Royal of Britain. The colonists have done well for themselves and do not need help from Britain.   Not a single advantage will come from being connected to Great Britain. The colonists must pull together and stand firm.         “Now is the seedtime of continental union, faith, and honor.” Too much has happened and hard feelings are felt on all sides.  For, as Milton wisely expresses,” never can true reconciliation grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep.”

15. Main Points OF Thomas Paine’s Common Sense • THERE IS NO GOING BACK AFTER BLOOD HAS BEEN SPILT. Any attempts to work with Great Britain before the “nineteenth of April, i.e., to the commencement of hostilities, are…useless now…” “The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, ‘tis time to part.” • WE CAN SURVIVE ECONOMICALLY WELL WITHOUT THE BRITAIN. “I challenge the warmest advocate for reconciliation to show, a single advantage that this continent can reap, by being connected with Great Britain.” • We should look at the many injuries that the colonies have undergone and will continue to undergo as long as we are connected with Great Britain. (3rd¶) • BRITAIN IS PROTECTING HER OWN INTEREST, NOT OURS. We don’t need Britain for protection against her enemies nor do we need her for commerce. • “…whenever a war breaks out between England and any foreign power, the trade of America goes to ruin, because of her connection with Britain.” • WE DO NOT NEED A KING TO GOVERN OURSELVES. Do away with monarchies because the divine law (of God) should be “King of America” and the people should form a government of their own (a republican charter). • “…let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law the word of God…law ought to be king” • England is not run by France even though the king is a descendant from France. • AMERICA HAS GROWN UP. Children cannot survive on milk alone and never get any meat....The colonies have grown up and need to be set free to live on their own just as children do.

16. Edmund Burke (1729-1797) • Conciliation with America (1775)

17. Document Analysis: 3 main points • Use of force is not the best option • Last resort • Not the British way • More destruction than good, alienation • A temporary measure: subdue, but not govern • American colonies are different from Britain and as such requires their own government • Liberty • Geographically remote • Only its own government can cope with problems • Britain should respect rights of its colony

18. Edmund Burke • “the use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed , which is perpetually to be conquered.” • “ My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is not always the effect of force; and an armament is not a victory. If you do not succeed, you are without resource; for, conciliation failing, force remains; but, force failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left….” • “A further objection to force is, that you impair the object by your very endeavours to preserve it. The thing you fought for is not the thing which you recover; but depreciated, sunk, wasted and consumed in the contest….” (Page 21.) • Founder of Conservatism: “Burke maintained that society was a contract, but ‘the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, to be taken up for a temporary interest and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties.’ The state was a partnership but one ‘not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead and those who are to be born.’ No one generation therefore has the right to destroy this partnership; instead, each generation has the duty to preserve and transmit it to the next. Burke advised against the violent overthrow of a government by revolution, but he did not reject the possibility of change. Sudden change was unacceptable, but that did not eliminate gradual or evolutionary improvements.” (Spielvogel, p. 612)

19. Adam Smith • America and the Wealth of Nations (1776) • Union of the people of Britain and those of her American colonies is important, and is in both peoples interests. • The uniting of the distant parts of the world has generated wealth and industry. • Native Americans have suffered “every sort of injustice” because of the Europeans’ superiority of force. • Nothing will better establish equality among nations “than that mutual communication of knowledge and of all sorts of improvements which an extensive commerce from all countries to all countries naturally, or rather necessarily, carries along with it.” • The unjust oppression of industry of other countries falls back…upon the heads of the oppressors, and crushes their industry more than it does that of those other countries. • The mercantile system deranges the “natural and most advantageous distribution of stock…. Monopoly of one kind or another…seems to be the sole engine of the mercantile system….”

20. Adam Smith • To what is Smith reacting? • The “invisible hand” of the laws of supply and demand • Monopolies? • “Even the regulations by which each nation endeavours to secure to itself the exclusive trade of its own colonies, are frequently more hurtful to the countries in favour of which they are established than to those against which they are established.”

21. Main Points of the Declaration of Independence • All men are created equal. “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,. • Men are given by god certain unalienable rights. “They are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” • We have the right by god to declare our independence from England. “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them… • Governments derive their authority from the consent of the people. “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” • When a government abuses it’s power, the people have the right to overthrow it. “That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it… • The colonies tried repeatedly to compromise with King George, but has been a tyrant. “Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

22. Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence • Independence is declared. • All men are created equal. “All men are created equal. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal….” • Men have unalienable Rights: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. • Governments derive their authority from the consent of the people. “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” • When a government acts despotically, the people have a right and a duty to overthrow it. “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” • We have tried to compromise, but King George has persistently been a tyrant.

23. Factious Majority Factious Minority James Madison, Federalist #10 (1787-1788) Human nature is selfish and passionate, and when combined with reason, individuals have “liberty.” Liberty = pursuit of property => classes and factions (everyone cannot have equal property). Classes • REMOVE CAUSES: People could remove the causes of faction, but this would destroy liberty. This solution is worse than the problem. • SOLUTION: The Federalists sought to work with human nature. They advocated letting factions run their course, arguing that in a large republic they would compete with one another and effectively cancel each other out. • THREE FACTORS THAT WILL CHECK THE TYRANNY OF A FACTION: • LARGE POLITY: Thousands of factions will result in a diffusion of factions that will tend to cancel each other out. • REPRESENTATION: Representative government will act as a filter, protecting the republic form the passions of the masses. • SEPARATION OF POWERS: A federal government and a separation of powers will result in a system checks and balances in power.

24. Jefferson on Slavery (1784) • Facts about Jefferson • Third President1801-1809 • Born: April 13, 1743 in Albemarle County, Virginia • Died: July 4, 1826 in Monticello in Virginia • Married to Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson • Author: The Declaration of Independence • Supported by slave labor his entire life • Bought eight or more slaves while president • Slaves Born into Freedom • Children raised with parents till 21 • Government paid education/trade school • Colonized together • Sent to parts of the world for equal number of whites • Separation of the races is needed because deep rooted prejudices between white and black that will end in extermination of one or the other.)

25. Differences of Color • Superior beauty (why not in man) • The difference is fixed in nature • Greater degree of transpiration ….. (Work better in heat) • Require less sleep • Seem brave more adventuresome…… (Don’t think about what they do) • Love seems to be a desire not a passion. • Memory is equal but reasoning is inferior to whites… • Arts…even Indians had traits of design.. • Music...Very gifted…but composition questioned… • No poets …..Misery • Romans and Natural History…

26. Slavery and Laws Branded as thieves No property…Can’t take a little from one who has taken all from him.. Morals….their situation their change their morals..? Slavery is Familiar Children learn from their parents. Why work They are a firm basis for our nation... Emancipation (Masters or Revolution) Slavery is harmful the to slave owners and their posterity: “The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it…”

27. Thomas Jefferson is believed to have fathered children with his slave, Sally Hemings http://www.cnn.com/US/9905/17/jefferson.reunion/ http://www.michaelcosm.com/sub_feat/feat_jeff.html

28. Thomas Jefferson on Slavery • “Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race. To these objection, which are political, may be added others, which are physical and moral.” • Who is Sally Hemings, and how her relationship to Jefferson affect our reading of Jefferson on slavery? • “The circumstance of superior beauty, is thought worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic animals; why not in that of man?” • sweat and disagreeable odor • “They are more ardent after their female; but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven his given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them. In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection.” Are the above generalities useful? Jefferson is a keen observer, but is he as keen as an empathizer? • “…in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior…” • “Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry.” Is Jefferson’s assessment of good poetry broad or narrow? What factors is he not taking into consideration? • “…though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.” What does such a conclusion by one of our most important Founding Fathers who wrote that “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence tell us about the deep roots of prejudice and racism in our country? • “The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it…”

29. Letters from an American FarmerWritten by Michel St. John De Crevecoeur Main Points • The metamorphosis of an European into an American • Crevecoeur likens poor Europeans to useless plants that are transplanted and have take root and flourished in America • The freedom and opportunities in North America (social, religious, etc.) • The chance to be a “freeman” and there are “no princes, for whom we toil, starve, and bleed: we are the most perfect society now existing In the world. Here man is free as he ought to be;” • To describe and define what it meant to be an American • “The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions.”

30. Michel St. John de Crevecoeur • Are Crevecoeur’s Letters a work of fiction or non-fiction? • Development of the wilderness • No system of vassalage: “It is not composed, as in Europe, of great lords who possess everything, and of a herd of people who have nothing.” • More equality • People of cultivators • “Here the rewards of his industry follow with equal steps the progress of his labour…” • “As freemen they will be litigious; pride and obstinacy are often the cause of law suits.” • “Here religion demand but little of him; a small voluntary salary to the minister, and gratitude to God; can he refuse these?” • “…the laws inspect our actions, our thoughts are left to God.” • “…how religious indifference becomes prevalent.” • On the frontier: “they are often in a perfect state of war.” • Who is Crevecoeur’s main intended audience? • The melting pot. • “He does not find, as in Europe, a crowded society, where every place is over-stocked.” • “The rich stay in Europe, it is only the middling and the poor that emigrate.” • “…he now feels himself a man, because he is treated as such.” • “[He] feel an ardour to labour he never felt before.”

31. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on Aristocracy (1813)

32. Some Main Points • Adams: Aristocracy and democracy are always at odds. …whig and Tory belong to natural history.” • Adams: “…there is a natural aristocracy among men, the grounds of which are virtue and talents.” Jefferson: “…there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.” • Jefferson: We should have faith in democracy and in the people’s ability to elect the natural aristocracy to positions of power. “I think the best remedy is exactly that provided by all our constitutions, to leave to the citizens the free election and separation of the [aristocrats] from the pseudo-[aristocrats], of the wheat from the chaff. In general they will elect the real good and wise: in some instances, wealth may corrupt, and birth blind them; but not in sufficient degree to endanger the society….” • Adams: Aristocracy has its pitfalls, but entrusting power to the people may be worse. “When I consider the weakness, the folly, the pride, the vanity, the selfishness, the artifice, the low craft and mean cunning, the want of principle, the avarice, the unbounded ambition, the unfair cruelty of the majority of those (in all nations) who are allowed an aristocratical influence, and, on the other hand the stupidity with which the more numerous multitude not only become their dupes, but even love to be taken by their tricks, I feel a stronger disposition to weep at their destiny, than to laugh at their folly.” • Adams: “Your distinction between natural and artificial aristocracy, does not appear to me founded.”

33. Jefferson and Adams on Aristocracy • Adams: “…parties and factions will not suffer improvements to be made. As soon as one man hints at an improvement, his rival opposes it. No sooner has one party discovered or invented any amelioration of the condition of man, or the order of society than the opposite party belies it, misconstrues it, misrepresents it, ridicules it, insults it, and persecutes it. Records are destroyed. Histories are annihilated or interpolated or prohibited; sometimes by Popes, sometimes by Emperors, sometimes by aristocratical, and sometimes by democratical assemblies, and sometimes by mobs….” What is Adam’s view of humankind and its ability to govern itself? Why might he caution against democratic government? • What is natural and artificial aristocracy, according to Jefferson? • How does Jefferson hope to avoid unenlightened mob rule in a democratic society? • Jefferson: “Every one, by his property, or by his satisfactory situation, is interested in the support of law and order.” • Jefferson on Europe: “Science had liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example had kindled feelings of right in the people. An insurrection has consequently begun, of science, talents and courage against rank and birth, which have fallen into contempt.” • Jefferson: “Every folly must run its round; and so, I suppose, must that of self-learning, and self sufficiency; of rejecting the knowledge acquired in past ages, and starting on the new ground of intuition. When sobered by experience I hope our successors will turn their attention to the advantages of education.”

34. Daniel Webster Against Universal Manhood Suffrage (1820)

35. Daniel Webster • Against Universal Manhood Suffrage (1820) • Property should have its weight and influence in political arrangement. “…power naturally and necessarily follows property.He maintains that a government founded on property is legitimately founded; and that a government founded on the disregard of property is founded in injustice, and can only be maintained by military force….” “It seems to me to be plain, that, in the absence of military force, political power naturally and necessarily goes into the hands which hold the property. In my judgment, therefore, a republican form of government rest, not more on political constitutions, than on those laws which regulate the descent and transmission of property.” • If the nature of our institutions be to found government on property, and that it should look to those who hold property for its protection, it is entirely just that property should have its due weight and consideration in political arrangements. Life and personal liberty are no doubt to be protected by law; but property is also to be protected by law, and is the fund out of which the means for protecting life and liberty are usually furnished. We have no experience that teaches us that any other rights are safe where property is not safe. Confiscation and plunder are generally, in revolutionary commotions, not far before banishment, imprisonment, and death.” • Property should be given representation in the Senate because it is just and also because it provides that check which the constitution and the legislature requires.”

36. George Bancroft (1800-1891) The Office of the People (1835)

37. George Bancroft • The Office of the People (1835) • Truth is one. It never contradicts itself: One truth cannot contradict another truth. Hence truth is a bond of union. But error not only contradicts truth, but may contradict itself; so that there may be many errors, and each at variance with the rest. Truth is therefore of necessity an element of harmony; error as necessarily an element of discord. Thus there can be no continuing universal judgment but a right one. Men cannot agree in an absurdity; neither can they agree in a falsehood. • “For who are the best judges in matters of taste? Do you think the cultivated individual? Undoubtedly not; but the collective mind. The public is wiser than the wisest critic.” • A government of equal rights must…rest upon the mind; not wealth, not brute force, the sum of the moral intelligence of the community should rule the State. • “The duty of America is to secure the culture and the happiness of the masses by their reliance on themselves.” • “The government by the people is in very truth the strongest government in the world. Discarding the implements of terror, it dares to rule by moral force, and has its citadel in the heart.” • “…the measure of the progress of civilization is the progress of the people.”

38. Alexis de Toqueville Democracy in America (1835) “The majority lives in the perpetual practice of self-applause, and there are certain truths which the Americans can only learn from strangers or from experience.”

39. Main Points: • Democratic government = sovereignty of the majority • The very essence of government consists in the absolute sovereignty of the majority; for there is nothing in democratic states which is capable of resisting it. • The moral and intellectual authority of the majority. • The moral authority of the majority is partly based upon the notion, that there is more intelligence and more wisdom in a great number of men collected together than in a single individual, and that the quantity of legislators is more important than their quality. The theory of equality is in fact applied to the intellect of man….” • The majority can do no wrong. • The French, under the old monarchy, held it for a maxim (which is still a fundamental principle of the English Constitution) that the King could do no wrong; and if he did do wrong, the blame was imputed to his advisers. This notion was highly favorable to habits of obedience, and it enabled the subject to complain of the law without ceasing to love and honor the lawgiver. The Americans entertain the same opinion with respect to the majority.

40. Main Points (continued): • The majority is not immune to misusing absolute power. • “If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their characters by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength.” • The system of checks and balances merely through a separation of powers is a delusion. • “The form of government which is usually termed mixed has always appeared to me to be a mere chimera. Accurately speaking there is no such thing as a mixed government, (with the meaning usually given to that word), because in all communities some one principle of action may be discovered, which preponderates over the others.” • The main evil of the present the democratic institutions of the United States arise from their overpowering strength. • “In my opinion the main evil of the present democratic institutions of the United States does not arise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their overpowering strength; and I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country, as at the very inadequate securities which exist against tyranny.”

41. Main Points (continued): • What Tocqueville would prefer: “If, on the other hand, a legislative power could be so constituted as to represent the majority without necessarily being the slave of its passions; an executive so as to retain a certain degree of uncontrolled authority; and a judiciary, so as to remain independent of the two other powers; a government would be formed which would still be democratic, without incurring any risk tyrannical abuse.” • Unlike monarchies, the authority of the majority is both moral and physical. • “The authority of a king is purely physical, and it controls the actions of the subject without subduing his private will; but the majority possesses a power which is physical and moral at the same time; it acts upon the will as well as upon the actions of men, and it represses not only all contest, but all controversy. I know no country in which there is so little true independence of mind and freedom of discussion as in America.” • If one goes outside the barriers of acceptable public opinion, as deemed by the majority, there is very little liberty of opinion. • “In America the majority raises very formidable barriers to the liberty of opinion: within these barriers an author may write whatever he pleases, but he will repent it if he ever step beyond them. Not that he is exposed to the terrors of an auto-da-fe, but he is tormented by the slights and persecutions of daily obloquy.” • Auto-da-fe: (1) public announcement of the sentences imposed on persons tried by the Inquisition and the public execution of those sentences by the secular authorities. (2) The burning of a heretic at the stake. • Obloquy: (1) abusively detractive language or utterance; calumny. (2) The condition of disgrace suffered as a result of abuse or vilification; ill repute.

42. Main Points (continued): • Democratic Republics enslave the souls of their citizens through oppressive pressures to conform. • “The excesses of monarchical power had devised a variety of physical means of oppression: the democratic republics of the present day have rendered it as entirely an affair of the mind as that will which it is intended to coerce. Under the absolute sway of an individual despot the body was attacked in order to subdue the soul, and the soul escaped the blows which were directed against it and rose superior to the attempt; but such is not the course adopted by tyranny in democratic republics; there the body is left free, and the soul is enslaved. The sovereign can no longer say, “You shall think as I do on pain of death;” but he says, “You are free to think differently from me, and to retain your life, your property, and all that you possess; but if such be your determination, you are henceforth an alien among your people….” • “Your fellow creatures will shun you like an impure being; and those who are most persuaded of Your innocence will abandon you too, lest they should be shunned in their turn. Go in peace! I have given you your life, but it is in an existence incomparably worse than death.” • The majority lives in the perpetual practice of self-applause, and there are certain truths which the Americans can only learn from strangers or from experience.

43. Main Points (continued): • Lawyers are an important check against the passions of the majority. • In visiting the Americans and in studying their laws, we perceive that the authority they have entrusted to members of the legal profession, and the influence which these individuals exercise in the Government, is the most powerful existing security against the excesses of democracy. • Lawyers are attached to public order beyond every other consideration, and the best security of public order is authority. • Lawyers: the American Aristocracy. “In America there are no nobles or men of letters, and the people is apt to mistrust the wealthy; lawyers consequently form the highest political class, and the most cultivated circle of society. They have therefore nothing to gain by innovation, which adds a conservative interest to their natural taste for public order. If I were asked where I place the American aristocracy, I should reply without hesitation that it is not composed of the rich, who are united together by no common tie, but that it occupies the judicial bench and the bar.”

44. Main Points (continued): • An expansive frontier makes American democracy viable in practice. • Their ancestors gave them love of equality and of freedom; but God himself gave them the means of remaining equal and free, by placing them upon a boundless continent, which is open to their exertions. • Millions of men are marching at once towards the same horizon; their language, their religion, their manners differ, their object is the same. The gifts of fortune are promised in the West, and to the West they bend their course. • The passions which agitate the Americans most deeply are not their political but their commercial passions; or, to speak more correctly, they introduce the habits they contract in business into their political life. They love order, without which affairs do not prosper; and they set an especial value upon a regular conduct, which is the foundation of a solid business; they prefer the good sense which amasses large fortunes to that enterprising spirit which frequently dissipates them; general ideas alarm their minds, which are accustomed to positive calculations, and they hold practice in more honor than theory.

45. John L. O’Sullivan, Manifest Destiny Westward Expansion: “Our Manifest destiny is to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” • “Texas is now ours.” Texas has no obligation to Mexico and the United States needs welcome the annexation of Texas. • “There is a great deal of Annexation yet to take place, within the life of the present generation, along the whole line of our northern border.”