The Rise and Fall of England, IV. C. Carson

the balance of powers and gave impetus to the formulation of the structure as a principle necessary to liberty (classically expressed as the separation of po\vers). This intellectual outlook and the re lated ideas \vere essential, too, be cause however po\vers may be dis persed and counterbalanced in theory, they can still be used for interventionist and oppressive ends if there is not a widespread confidence in the desirability and beneficence of liberty. There is a popular myth. in our era to the effect that men have ever longed for and sought after liberty when they were oppressed, which they usually \vere. This myth has been given currency by numerous historical novels, stories, 359 360 THE FREEMAN June plays, movies, and the like. The myth contains, at best, a half truth. It may be true that each individual person has usually longed for more operating room for himself and has sought to re move the restrictions that restrain him. But this urge and drive can be, and frequently has been, some thing quite different from a de votion to greater liberty for every one. Quite often, men have been satisfied with special privileges for themselves, at whatever cost in oppression to others, though they may mask their quest for privilege under the guise of the love of liberty.

The Fear of Freedom The rnatter goes deeper than mere selfishness, too. Frequently, men have not only failed to make the effort to extend liberty throughout society but have also had a positive fear of and aver sion to such a condition. Some of the best minds of the ages have been devoted to erecting elaborate justifications for limiting liberty and maintaining oppression. Nor need these justifications have been insincere, though some of them may have been. In truth, the pros pect of liberty can arouse exten sive fears, for it raises the specter of chaos, disorder, things out of control, the fabric of society rent, and conflict let loose. What would happen to religion, men have asked, if the people were not required to attend church and were not taxed to support it? Would the most persuasive sup port of morality be lost? Would not the binding ties of community become unknit? What would be come of the "lower orders" of men? If compulsion were removed, would they not fall prey to 'the consequences of their natural bent to indulgence and laziness? Would not the people be confused and misguided if they had available for consideration every heterodoxy which a free press might publish?

How could authority be main tained if men might characterize it by whatever vagrant thoughts entered their minds? What would happen economically if men were free? Would men in general not fall prey to the consequences of the bent of men to sell as high as they could and buy as cheaply as possible? Who knows what chaos would result, in wages, in rents, in prices, in trade, if they were not controlled and directed? When these fears of the conse quences of liberty have been added to the danger that those in power 'would lose their special privileges and become the object of retribu tion by the formerly oppressed, it is easy to see why liberty usually has not been sought with great devotion.

1968 THE INTELLECTUAL THRUST TO LIBERTY 361 Champions of Liberty in the 17th and 18th Centuries So it was that at the beginning of the seventeenth century a cham pion of liberty would have been hard to find in England. No doubt, many would have liked the powers of the monarch reduced, but they would only have turned these same powers over to Parliament, most likely. Yet, before the end of the century not only were there open champions of liberty but many had come to believe that liberty was both possible and desirable. This was largely the result of the development and propagation of ideas favorable to liberty. The great age of such liberal thought got under way impressively around the middle of the seventeenth cen tury and continued more or less unabated until the end of the eighteenth century, and beyond. It begins with such men as John Lilburne, John Milton, James Har rington, Algernon Sidney, and con tinues through John Locke, Robert Molesworth, John Trenchard, Thomas Gordon, down through AdalTI Smith, Thomas Paine, and Edmund Burke, among others.

Back of this outpouring of thought about liberty, back of its spread to the point \vhere it had become the common possession of Englishmen with any learning, was an intellectual frame\vork within which the ideas were acceptable and liberty came to be thought of as a jewel almost be yond price. The general intellec tual outlook can be described as the natural law philosophy. Its sway in Europe is usually referred to as the Age of Reason and Age of the Enlightenment. The basic ideas associated with it are nat ural law, natural order, right rea son (or, just reason), social con tract, and natural rights. Foundations of Natural Law The natural law philosophy was not new to the seventeenth cen tury. Its formulation in philosophy can be traced back to classical an tiquity where its most prominent applications were made in Rome. Cicero was perhaps the most ar ticulate early spokesman for nat ural law. He defined it in this way: True law is right reason conform able to nature, universal, unchange able, eternal. ... This law cannot be contradicted by any other law, and is not liable either to derogation or abrogation. Neither the senate nor the people can give us any dispensa tion for not obeying this universal law of justice .... It is not one thing at Rome, and another at Athens; one thing today, and another tomorrow; but in all tinles and nations this uni versal law nlust for ever reign, eter nal and imperishable .... God hinl self is its author, its promulgator, its enforcer, and he who does not 362 THE FREEMAN June obey it flies from himself, and does violence to the very nature of man.!

The tradition of natural lavv thought was kept alive in the time of the Roman Empire particularly by the Stoics, and it passed also into Christian thought where it was much revered in the High Middle Ages. Europeans recovered and refurbished it during the Renaissance and successive re vivals of classical thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen turies. It would be true to say, I think, that the natural law philosophy survived and ,vas present in some form from the time of the Roman Republic to the middle of the sev enteenth century. But it usually occupied an inferior place to the ology, or to other philosophical tenets. It came into its own in the seventeenth century with the im pact of scientific developments, de velopments associated with such names as Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Francis Bacon, Descartes, Leibniz, Boyle, and Newton. Men must ever have observed signs of regularity and order in the uni verse, of the alternation of day and night in a predictable pattern, of the coming in and going out of the tides, of the rotation of sea1 Wilson O. Clough, ed., Intellectual Origins of American Nat1'onal Thought (New York: Corinth Books, 1961, 2nd ed.), pp. 58-59.

sons, of the rising and going down of sap in trees, of the cycle through which the moon goes, and so on. Scientific Measurement Some of these facts have long been put to practical uses. What the scientists did was to explain the phenomena of regularity in the universe in terms of precise mathematical formulae. They dem onstrated mathematically that our universe is heliocentric, that the heavenly bodies move in elliptical pattern~, that freely falling bodies accelerate at a uniform rate, that heavenly bodies are held in their orbits by their tendency to fall counterbalanced by their attrac tion for one another (the law of gravity), and so on. In short, they held not only that the regularities existed, that bodies were governed by laws, but that these laws were so precise that they were capable of mathematical expression. Most astounding, these laws can be dis covered and known by the mind of man. As Descartes put it, God has established the laws of nature just as a king establishes the laws of his kingdom. And there is none of them which we can not un derstand if we apply our n1inds to consider it, for they are innate in our minds, just as a king would stan1p his laws in the hearts of his subjects if he had the power to do 1968 THE INTELLECTUAL THRUST TO LIBERTY 363 so.... They are eternal and immut able because God is always the same.2 The natural law philosophy was mightily revived and buttressed by these astounding new demonstra tions. Not only did it gain in au thority but also men began early to search for a similar precision in social phenomena. Preserved Smith has said, "The idea of a natural law, a natural ethics, and a natural religion, found in germ much earlier, now became domi nant."3 As to what was made of it in the eighteenth century, he says that there was a "resolute and successful effort to transfer the scientific spirit to other intel lectual fields and to propagate it among ever larger strata of the population . . . ," and "to bring under the reign of natural law the social disciplines, philosophy, re ligion, law, education, and even literature and art .... "4 A Secure Footing for a Faith in Freedom The importance of this natural law doctrine was manifold. In the first place, it provided secure foot ing for the belief in and thrust 2 Quoted in Preserved Smith, A His tory of ModeTn Culture, I (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1957), 19l.

3 Preserved Smith, The Enlighten ment (New York: Collier Books, 1962, originally published as vol. II, A History of Modern Culture), p. 36. 4 Ibid., p. 118. toward liberty. If there is an order in the universe established and maintained by God, man does not have to bring order by the exer tion of his will. Chaos and dis order will not be the result of liberty. On the contrary, if men are allowed to follow the laws of their nature, if they are permitted to pursue their own ends, if gov ernment pursues its defensive function, if things are allowed to follow their natural course, a be neficent order will prevail. If men may make choice of their own re ligious faith, religion will be stronger rather than weaker be cause of the fervor and attach ment they will bring to its prac tice. If all ideas are permitted ex pression, the best ideas will win in the contest. If men may pursue freely their own economic ends, prosperity will result. Of course, these ideas did not spring full blown overnight, nor did everyone rush to embrace them when they were presented. But this was the tendency of thought under the im pact of a prevailing natural law philosophy. It did provide a frame work for confidence that a much greater liberty would result in order and peace rather than chaos and war.

An Authority Secondly, the natural law philos ophy provided an authority to ap364 THE FREEMAN June peal to, one that could be ranged against the established authority. The established authority always has going for it the great weight of its own momentum and past acceptance. It is a perilous under taking almost always to challenge it. In seventeenth century Eng land, to question the monarch was to court imprisonment. To resist him was to risk death, and that done in most imaginative fashion. But beyond the risk of life and limb involved in challenging the established authority, one needs always a confidence in one's own rightness. This is not easy to achieve by sane men; the estab lished authority has the weight of centuries behind it and the testi mony and support of many famous seers. Natural law - frequently combined with an appeal to the au thority of the Bible in the seven teenth century - provided an au thority whose rightness was superior to custom, tradition, us age, and anything else in history when these ran counter to it. Nat ural law is antecedent to all man made law, law established by God himself; he who takes it for a shield has a basis and defense superior to any other. Moreover, reason, the common possession of mankind, could be used in the dis covery of it. This could be and was used to justify popular govern ment and to add weight to the authority of the IIouse of Commons in England.

Limited Government - and Progress Thirdly, the analogy to the way order was maintained in the uni verse was used to buttress the idea of devices for restraining govern ment. The heavenly bodies are kept in their orbits by a kind of balance of powers exerted from and upon them. So, too, should there be powers and counterbal anced powers in government to restrain and prevent the arbitrary exercise of power. And fourthly, the natural law philosophy provided the ground for conceiving a different system than the one that prevailed. Most men are apt to accept any going system and suppose that the way things are done under it are the way they should be done. The new outlook provided a method of an alysis and an altered vision from \vhich to consider the reordering or rearrangement of the system that prevailed. The method of ap proach was to look at the nature, or essence, of things, to consider how they would operate naturally without some arbitrary interven tion, and to discover the natural laws that would come into play.

In this way, they could arriye at the way things ought to be - that is, in accord with their natures in contrast to the way they were.

1968 THE INTELLECTUAL THRUST TO LIBERTY 365 The Role of the Levellers Some examples will now illus trate how English thinkers applied the natural law mode of thinking over the years in the thrust to ward liberty. The first major ef fort was during the period of the civil war or Puritan Revolution in the middle of the seventeenth cen tury. Among the more thorough going of the reformers were those known as the Levellers, led by John Lilburne. The Levellers be lieved that government should be authorized and restrained by a written agreement. They proposed to vest government power in a legislature, but they favored many prohibitions upon its ac tions, these prohibitions indicat ing mainly how they thought liberty should be secured. One writer describes the prohibitions on the legislature in this way: It may not compel or restrain any person in matters of religion, nor impress men for military service, "every man's Conscience being to be satisfied in the justness of that cause wherein he hazards his own life, or may destroy others." ... It may not exempt any person from the operation of the laws on the pretext of tenure, grant, charter, patent, de gree, birth, residence, or parliamen tary privilege. . . . It may not con tinue laws abridging the freedom of foreign trade, and may not raise money by excise taxes or except by an equal rate levied upon real and personal estate It may not continue tithes It may not take away the liberty of each parish to elect its own ministers .... 5 That the Levellers based their arguments upon natural law is ap parent from their writings. Lil burne justified the actions of the army under Cromwell by appeal ing to "the prime Laws of Na ture," and "the principles of Saifety, flowing from Nature Reason, and Justice, agreed on b; common consent."6 John Overton another Leveller, declared that "ali men are equally born to like pro priety, liberty and freedome, and as we are delivered of God by the hand of nature into this world, ev ery one with a naturall, innate freed orne . . . even so are we to live, everyone equally alike to en joy his Birthright and priviledge; even all whereof God by nature hath made him free."7 Those more in the mainstream of the Puritan Revolution also fre quently based their arguments upon natural law. John Milton, in explaining the natural right of re sistance to tyranny and to depose a tyrannical king, declared "that all men naturally were born 5 Perez Zagorin, A History of Politi cal Thought in the English Revolution (Rutledge and Kegan Paul, 1954), p. 37.

6 Quoted in ibid., p. 15. 7 Ibid., p. 22.

366 THE FREEMAN June free ... ," that this "authority and power of self-defence and preser vation being originally and natu rally in everyone of them, and unitedly in them all ... ," and that those appointed to govern them are "but to be their deputies and commissioners, to execute by vir tue of their intrusted power, that justice which else every man by the bond of nature and of cove nant must have executed for him self, and for one another."8 Areopagitica Milton is most famous in politi cal thought, ho\vever, for his de fense of freedom of the press. Un derlying the follo\ving argument is the conception of an order with in men that attracts them to the true: "And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licens ing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let Truth and False hood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter."!) Similar natural law foundations underlay the work of such diverse figures as James Harrington and Thomas 8 Leo Weinstein, The A,rye of Reason (New York: George Braziller, 1965), pp. 138-39.

!J John Milton, Areo]J(l.t!iticCl, Richard C. Jebb, commentary (Cambridge, Eng land: Cambridge University Press, 1918), p. 58. Hobbes. Many - N edham, Ludlow, Sidney, Neville, and Marvell-took up the cudgels for liberty.lO The classic statement of the natural rights doctrine based on the natural law philosophy was made, however, by John Locke in connection with the Glorious Revo lution of 1688-1689. In his Two Treatises on Civil Government, Locke so felicitously stated the position that it has ever and again been attributed to him, though that would be to overstate the case. Locke's familiar thesis goes this way. In a state of na ture - that is, in that condition in which men find themselves naturally if we strip away the socially erected institutions - men have a "perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man."ll That is, in a state of nature men have the right to life, liberty, and property, rights derived from and sanc tioned by natural la\v.

However, as Locke sees it, in such a condition the individual would not necessarily be in a posi tion to defend these rights against 10 See Caroline Robbins, The E(ryh tee nth - C e n t 11 rye 0 m Tn 0 n we a l t hTn en (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959), pp. 22-23. 11 Clough, op. cit., p. 149.

1968 THE INTELLECTUAL THRUST TO LIBERTY 367 aggressors. This being so, he en ters into community with others for mutual protection and defense, yielding up so much of his pow ers to government as areneces sary to defend him in the enjoy ment of his natural rights. The "freedom of men under govern ment is to have a standing rule to live by, common to everyone of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things where that rule pre scribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, un known, arbitrary will of another man: as freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of nature."12 The Whig Movement The thrust to liberty in the eighteenth century in England was made primarily by those who thought of themselves as Whigs. This category included politicians and thinkers as well. There are many who might be called up in this connection, but for the first half of the eighteenth century it will suffice here to refer to the work of two of them: John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon.

These two, by way of their writ ings, carried on a broad ranged argument for the maintenance and extension of liberty. They advo12 Ibid., p. 153. cated and supported freedom of speech and of press, security of property, religious toleration, and a broad range of rights for men. The foundation of their positions was in natural law, right reason, and natural rights. Regarding the origin of liberty, Trenchard said: All men are born free; Liberty is a Gift which they receive from God himself; nor can they alienate the same by Consent, though possibly they may forfeit it by Crimes.l 3 Gordon defined liberty as "the Power which every Man has over his own Actions, and his Right to enjoy the Fruit of his Labour, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Members of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys."14 Regarding free speech and property, Gordon said, "With out Freedom of Thought, there can be no such thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech .... This sacred Privilege is so essential to free Government, that the Security of Property; and the Freedom of Speech, always go together .... "1;') 13 David L. Jacobson, ed., The English Libertarians (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Mer rill, 1965), p. 108.

14 Ibid., p. xxxvi. 15 I bid., p. 38.

368 THE FREEMAN June Of liberty in general, Gordon thought it an unqualified blessing. "Can we ever over-rate it, or. be too jealous of a Treasure which includes in it almost all Human Felicities? Or can we encourage too much those that contend for it, and those that promote it? It is the Parent of Virtue, Pleasure, Plenty, and Security; and 'tis in nocent as well as lovely. In all Contentions between Liberty and Power, the latter has almost con stantly been the Aggressor. Lib erty, if ever it produce any Evils, does also cure them .... "16 By way of such writings as these, by way of speeches, state ments, and philosophical examina tions, the tide was turned from the fear of the consequences of liberty to open admiration of the blessings. Though men had from the outset contended for the se curity of property, they were slow to see the full implications of such a position. At a time (for most of the eighteenth century) when Englishmen boasted of their liberty, when religious toleration had become commonplace, when men could speak freely with little fear of punishment, when many of the shackles had been struck from enterprise, mercantilistic policies still held sway. Though the natural law philosophy had long reached a dominance, it was 16 Ibid., p. 70.

apparently not easy for men to see that there is a natural har mony of interests in the economic realm, that men of many nations competing for gain do not make enemies of nations but rather ,vork to the benefit of all. Foundation of Classiclal Economics There was a tendency for thought in the eighteenth century to move toward the theoretical justification of economic liberty. It can be seen in the writings of Hutcheson and Hume, in the French Physiocrats, Quesnay and Turgot, and among such Italian thinkers as Bandini and Becca ria. 17 But it was Adam Smith who constructed an economics from these and other materials that would become the foundation of classical economics. He did this in his massive work, The Wealth of Nations, first published in 1776. Smith was not only a master of economic theory but also filled his work with historical examples which displayed his erudition in that area. Much of the burden of Smith's work was devoted to ex posing the fallacies of mercan tilism. At the same time that he did this, however, he set forth the premises of a science of economy based upon the natural law phi losophy. He held that the greatest 17 See Smith, The Enlightenment, pp. 194-201.

1968 THE INTELLECTUAL THRUST TO LIBERTY 369 liberty in matters economic is con sonant with and productive of the widest prosperity, that when each man seeks his private gain he, at the same time, contributes to the general well-being, that in foreign trade all participants benefit, and that conSUlners everywhere (that is, all of us) benefit from ex change. His argument that there is a natural harmony between pri vate acquisitiveness and public gain is worth reproducing here to show how he used the natural laws to support economic liberty: But the annual revenue of every society is always precisely equal to the exchangeable value of the whole annual produce of its industry, or rather is precisely the same thing with that exchangeable value. As every individual, therefore, endeav ours as much as he can both to em ploy his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every indi vidual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, in deed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is pron10ting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of for eign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce n1ay be of the greatest val ue, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his in tention ... .18 The intellectual thrust toward liberty continued apace into the nineteenth century, but enough has been said here to show that the stage was set in outlook for freeing men from their earlier op pression, that men were coming generally to prize liberty rather than to fear it. From this came the impetus to change laws and remove obstacles to individual ex ertions.

A Balance of Powers Before leaving this topic, how ever, there is a counter point to be made. Rationalists were behind the thrust to liberty; they based their arguments upon natural law. But in England there were not only Whigs but Tories as well, not only rationalists but traditional ists also, not only exponents of universal truths but men conscious of the value of custom, tradition, and old institutions. These played their part, however backhandedly it may appear, in the establish ment of liberty in England. The rationalist ideas became .the common possession of thinkers in western Europe by or before 18 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Na tions, Edwin Cannan, ed., II (New Rochelle: Arlington House, n. d.), p. 29-30.

370 THE FREEMAN June the end of the eighteenth century. Yet, they did not result in stable governments and extended· liberty in many lands when applied by en lightened despots or under the im pulse of the French Revolution. They did not do so, we judge, be cause they broke too radically with the past, and did not take into account the peculiar predilections and institutions of peoples. Britain followed a different course, for the most part. The bal ance of powers there was a curious blending of ancient institutionshereditary monarchy, hereditary Lords, elected Commons, common law courts - to safeguard liberty. When the rational assault bid fair to undermine these, defenders of the ancient and tried rose to its defense. Edmund Burke is rightly the most famed of these. For so persuasively declaring that cus tom, tradition, reverence, awe, and even prej udice are essential to an ordered liberty, he should be reck oned a spokesman for liberty also, and in a goodly company, not one of the least. ~ The next article in this series u'ill deal with "Liberty and Property Secured."

Freedom of Speech WITHOUT freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as Wisdom; and no such thing as Liberty without freedom of speech; which is the right of every man, as far as by it he does not hurt or control the right of another; and this is the only check it ought to suffer, and the only bounds it ought to know. This sacred privilege is so essential to free governments, that the security of property and the freedom of speech always go together; and in those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything else his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech. JO H N TRE N CHARD (1662-1723), Cato's Letters Prefer to Forget .. .5~. What Censors.... ,~,:. .... ~:~ "., % NEIL M. CLARK THE chap-who-knows-what's-best, whether parent, teacher, preacher, politician, or professional do gooder, looks over a boy's (or girl's) shoulder, and says, "Why waste your time reading trash?