The Squeeze on the Middle on the Middle Class; W. H. Chamberlin

world, the British in the seven teen'th century, the American and the French in the eighteenth. The French was perverted and dis torted to some extent by the greater misery of the masses, es pecially of the Parisian mob, which lent itself to the manipula tion of extremist demagogues, in toxicated with doctrinaire ideas of establishing not equality of op portunity, the American ideal, but complete material equality, to be enforced by dictators operating in the name of virtue and using the guillotine whenever moral sua sion failed. Out of all the turmoil and excesses of the French Revo lution, its Napoleonic aftermath and the various royal, imperial, and republican regimes that fol lowed during the nineteenth cen tury, middle-class social and eco nomic values acquired a firm foot ing. France supplied some of the most eloquent and erudite expon91 92 THE FREEMAN February ents of the free economy, such men as Frederic Bastiat and Jean Say.

It is the nature of absolute power, whether it be that of a king surrounded with inherited pomp, ceremony, and pageantry or that of a revolutionary dictator, to recognize no limits on what it may do with regard to those un der its rule. So it is significant that John Locke, the outstanding philosopher of the British consti tutional revolution whose ideas very much influenced the leaders of the American Revolution, in sisted upon the natural right of man to "life, liberty, and prop erty." There was never any doubt in Locke's mind, or to those of the educated middle class for whom he spoke, that property, far from being opposed to liberty, is one of the essential rights of free men. Locke, a true liberal in the origi nal sense of a word now often per verted and misapplied, went so far as to describe the preservation of their property as "the great and chief end of men's uniting into commonwealths."

The rising and expanding mid dle class was open to any able and industrious citizen, whatever his origin and background. What they more or less consciously wanted and needed was a state authority strong enough to protect honestly acquired possessions against spoli ation but not so strong as to en gage in spoliation itself. No Taxation Without Representation It is not surprising that some of the movements that led to the establishment of the supremacy of Parliament in Great Britain and to the separation of the United States from Great Britain were triggered by one specific property right: the right of the individual not to be taxed without his con sent. In his effort to govern with out the inconvenience of having a Parliament in session, King Char les I resorted to an old tax known as ship money. In the past it had been levied only in time of war and in certain maritime parts of the country. Charles imposed the levy in peace, and without geographical limitations.

One of the leaders of the op position in Parliament, John Hampden, refused to pay the tax, contending that it was illegal. Seven out of twelve judges who heard the case, under strong pres sure from the Crown, ruled against Hampden. But his stand aroused nationwide attention and sympathy and, as soon as Parlia ment was again called, "ship money" was ruled illegal. Hamp den, a country landowner, was as willing to fight for liberty as to 1969 THE SQUEEZE ON THE MIDDLE CLASS 93 speak for it. When the differences between King and Parliament reached the point of civil war, Hampden raised a regiment among his tenants and lost his life in one of the many skirmishes and small battles that followed. In the United States, also, "tax ation without representation" was a fighting issue. Like many other small causes of big events, the British levies on stamps and tea were petty in immediate impact; but the underlying claim that a Parliament in London three thou sand miles away might lay imposts on colonists who were not (and, under the travel and other circum stances of the time probably could not be) represented there excited justified suspicion and resistance.

The colonists knew very well that taxation accepted without protest would probably mean double or treble taxation in the future. Irresponsible bureaucracy ranked high with arbitrary taxa tion among the causes which led the American colonists, when pro tests and remonstrances had failed, to take up arms. This is evident from the following clause in the indictment of King George III in the Declaration of Inde pendence: He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance. How surprised and shocked would have been the men who fought against a foreign tyranny at Lexington and Bunker Hill and Saratoga and Yorktown if they could have foreseen today's bu reaucratic monster, in the shape of Federal, state, and local govern ments, costing almost $9,000 a second to operate, and doubling its exactions from the labor of its citizens every ten years.

Design for Limited Government N a such monster was envisaged in the Constitution which the de liberations of a representative group of leading citizens of the various states yielded as the con structive fruit of the achievements of the American revolutionaries in arms and diplomacy. It is an un commonly useful and instructive exercise periodically to read over this charter of American laws and liberties. And one of its most striking features is the sparseness of promises as to what the new government will do for the people (indeed, there are practically no such promises), compared with the many explicit guaranties as to what the government may not do to the people as a whole or as in dividuals. These immunities in cluded, until the adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, as surance against the imposition of the graduated income tax.

94 THE FREEMAN February The kind of government out lined by the American Constitu tion is in line with the political philosophy of John Locke and Adam Smith that "every man is by nature first and principally com mitted to his own care." What the Constitution promised is not to make each citizen healthy, wealthy, and wise - something beyond the power of government - but to re move state obstacles to his achiev ing these objectives by his own ef forts. This was the logical outcome of the struggle against absolute mon archy and feudalism, a struggle in which the middle class played a leading role. It was under this phi 10sophy that the middle class pros pered and expanded, because it was no closed hereditary caste but a group in the community which any one might join with the requisite conditions of industry and ability. Social Security? But today, at first gradually and imperceptibly, then more boldly and blatantly, a completely differ ent philosophy of statism has tend ed to supplant individualism, both in the United States and in Great Britain and in varying degrees in other Western countries. (One need hardly refer to the European and Asian countries where the in dividual has lost all liberties -eco nomic, personal, and political, to the grasping thrust of an all-pow erful state).