(The following is part 5 of a series on the American Revolution, which begins with the serialization of chapter 7 of my book Defeating Slavery: Hamilton’s American System Showed the Way, which dealt with the Declaration of Independence. Having concluded that chapter in part 4, (Parts 1, 2, and 3 can be found on the blog, I am moving on to some of the debate about the Declaration, which will help us appreciate its uniqueness.)
By Nancy Spannaus
The first British responses to the American Declaration of Independence, of course, came from the British officials stationed in the former colonies, who were immediately aware of what had happened. The document itself didn’t arrive in Great Britain until August, and King George withheld his views until an address to Parliament on November 31 of that year.
Unofficially, however, the word spread like wildfire. Many British functionaries already believed that the Americans had already shown themselves to be demanding independence, and that with the Declaration, they were only throwing off the mask, as a secretary of Royal Navy Admiral Richard Howe put it. The Declaration was published in numerous British newspapers, sometimes without comment and other times with commentary dripping with contempt.
It was left to British pamphleteer John Lind, a close friend of Jeremy Bentham, to come forward with an extensive attack on the Declaration. I have been unable to find the month of publication, but it would appear to be prior to the King’s pronouncement, as Lind (writing anonymously) says it would be below the King’s dignity to answer the Americans’ charges, but that he felt it useful to do so. Attached to his attempt at a point-by-point refutation of the Declaration’s charges against King George, was an appendix entitled “A Short Review of the Declaration” [1] reliably attributed to Bentham, which is what we’ll turn our attention to today.
“Absurd and visionary”
Bentham first discusses the Preamble – the statement of principle which is the core of the Declaration. This is actually useful, because it is on the issues of principle outlined there that we can find the fundamental reasons for the conflict between the British government and the American colonies. It is worth quoting his summary paragraph in full:
In this preamble however it is, that they attempt to establish a theory of Government; a theory, as absurd and visionary, as the system of conduct in defence of which it is established is nefarious. Here it is, that maxims are advanced in justification of their enterprises against the British Government. To these maxims, adduced for this purpose, it would be sufficient to say, that they are repugnant to the British Constitution. But beyond this they are subversive of every actual or imaginable kind of Government.
Just what are these maxims? “That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. …”
Under Bentham’s view of the British Constitution – and those of his oligarchical backers – ordinary people have no natural and inalienable rights, much less be able to have equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness! Even their aspirations to have those rights are a threat to a British government based on preserving the privileges of birth, class, and wealth.
Of course, the writers of the Declaration did not believe that all people were equal in all respects, as Abraham Lincoln was to point out in his debate with Stephen Douglas. But that doesn’t stop Bentham from mocking the very concept of equal rights by implying that it meant that a child could be equal in power to a parent, or other inanities.
What supporters of the Declaration believed was that we as human beings have the inherent right not to bow to wealth and privilege, but to exercise our powers to live and prosper in a society committed to ensuring fundamental rights to all.
Government “at the expence of one or another of these rights”
The next object of Bentham’s mockery is the Declaration’s statement that “To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, ….”
What offends Bentham with this assertion? He claims that “it is subversive of every actual or imaginable kind of Government.” Why, the very idea that you could have a government that did not trample on one or another of those inalienable rights! He writes: “They perceive not, or will not seem to perceive, that nothing which can be called Government ever was, or ever could be, in any instance, exercised, but at the expence of one or another of these rights.”
Think about this for a minute. Once again, Bentham has revealed a core difference in principle between the kind of government the American revolutionaries were proposing, and the British (or other) monarchy. Leading American statemen, like many of their English republican predecessors, believed that legitimate governments were bound to respect, and provide for the realization of, the inalienable rights of its citizens. Indeed, they believed that the King himself was illegitimate if he did not devote himself to the common good of the people.
But not Bentham, nor his backers. He asserts that government must be defined by its exercise of power, which would inevitably mean trampling on the rights of a portion of the population. Some must be killed, some must be imprisoned, and others must be oppressed – it’s just the way it is for the established ruling class to continue to rule. And it’s a fantasy to think that government should do anything about it. Nor should people think they have a right to participate in their government and consent to its actions–just trust the powers-that-be.
In his later writings, Bentham himself provided a concrete example of this kind of thinking by addressing the question of usury. Usury—the charging of exorbitant interest rates—has long been considered an evil by all the world’s major religions, and many governments sought to protect the poor from such outright theft by enacting anti-usury laws.
But Bentham, who hated religion, felt compelled in 1787 to write a whole pamphlet entitled “Defence of Usury,” in which he preached every individual’s right to take advantage of others by maximizing profit anyway they can. Government must not try to protect the basic rights of the population to fairness (and stay out of debtors’ prison!)—it must let the powerful do what they will.
Bentham is right in asserting that there had been no successful governments which had enshrined the rights which the Declaration asserted; one could argue that there is still none today. But his core argument is one of principle, asserting that the Americans have “put the axe to the root of all Government,” by trying to restrain the sovereign (and Parliament) with demands to respect the inalienable rights of their populations.
A more fundamentally irreconcilable difference between the British and the original American philosophies of government would be hard to find.
Reading the Future
Bentham’s third attack on the Preamble is his claim that the Americans are not really complaining of how they have been oppressed, but how they might be oppressed if the British government’s powers were not challenged. While the Declaration’s “facts submitted to a candid world” refute that charge, there is still a core of truth here. The Founders were indeed looking to what their future might be if they submitted to the measures Parliament was imposing. They could see what had happened to India, for example, where famine and mass murder were hallmarks of British rule. They had seen a process of tightening control that had ominous portents of their future.
They were determined that we escape that fate ourselves, and indeed, spread the ideas of the Declaration far and wide.
An Interesting Side Note
According to some sources, John Lind’s pamphlet, and Bentham’s appendix, were secretly commissioned by the British government itself.[2] The pamphlet was circulated in the American colonies, but undoubtedly another major target was the British population. Many British subjects, including members of Parliament, sympathized with the American cause, and some undoubtedly wished to mount their own campaign to secure their “inalienable rights” at home.
It is interesting to note that already back in February 1776, Dr. Richard Price, a Welsh preacher, had published a pamphlet supporting the cause of American independence. Entitled Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America, it sold out rapidly and was reprinted in a cheaper version to gain even broader circulation.
Next Installment: Frederick Douglass on the Declaration
[1] The section is called “A Short Review of the Declaration,” and can be found in full by clicking here.
[2] See Dupont, Christian Y.; Onuf, Peter S., eds. (2008). Declaring Independence: The Origin and Influence of America’s Founding Document : Featuring the Albert H. Small Declaration of Independence Collection. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Library. ISBN978-0979999703.
Tags: Declaration of Independence, government, Jeremy Bentham, Nancy Spannaus