Common Sense - Whatever Happened to It?

The breach between England and her Ameri,can colonies. had 1975 COMMON SENSE - WHATEVER HAPPENED TO IT? 647 been widening, due on the one hand to skillful agitation by such Colonial spokesmen as the Adamses in New England and Jefferson, Henty and others in the south, and on the other hand to the incredible stupidity of a suc~ cession of British ministers and Colonial governors. The governors, especially, have scar,ce1ybeen given their due as cre!ators of discord. Looking back from 1975, it is hard to believe the arrogance and ruth lessness with which some o~ them conducted .their administrations. To be sure, it was an age of ruth lessness in the management of public affairs; but distance from London seemed to bring out the worst in certain types of mag istrate. Sir Edwin Sandys in Vir ginia and William Bradford at Plymouth are examples of the best in early colonial leadership; Sir Thomas Dale of Virginia, with his re,cord of shooting, breaking and even burning those who op posed him, was probably the worst.

But a lot of history is involved betwe'en the settlement of James town and .Plymouth and the tense period that climaxed in 1776. Dis tance tends to telescope the dec ades, and it is hard to realize today that 187 years of experience, good and bad, had gone into the making of colonial America. In that long time,. almost without their being aware of it, literally a new rac,eof peopl'e, the Americans, had been forged into being. . Ready for Independence Weare apt to think of what we now call "The Spirit of '76" as a mood of fiery rebellion on the one hand and of ruthless repression on the other. And both attitudes were indeed pres,ent. But quite apart from the heat of grievance and dispute, there were thoughtful men on both sides of the Atlantic who realized that a permanent state of union was not likely to be maintained between an insular England and a remote group of colonies that were' plainly destirned for great development and ulti mate nationhood. Such an idea, however, was anathema to the American loyalists, and was ut terly repugnant to those short sighted British leaders who were not concerned with a long-range view of empire, but were dete;r mined to bring the rebellious co lonials to their knees.

All this, however, leaves out of 8ocount the attitude of the average citizen of Mass1achusetts, or Dela~ ware, or Pennsylvania, or Vir ginia. They were confronted with a wrenching problem of psychol ogy and habituation. Despite the fact that by 1776 the colonies were by no means exC'lusively, or even predominantly, popuaatedby peo pl,e of British origin, England, by 648 THE FREEMAN November force of long usage, was still re garded as the "mother country;" and by both sentiment and inertia the colonists generally were reluc tant to dissolve the union. They were angry over the tax policies of their overseas govern ment; they were ready to resist stoutly the indignities they had been made to suffer; they were even prepared, at cost of blood and life, to fight the hated "Red coats" - as they had demonstrated at Bunker Hill and elsewhere. But they were not yet quite ready to face the ultimate issue of separa tion. Somehow, they felt, reason would prevail. The "bonds of con sanguinity" would be stronger than the divisive influences. In some way the present troubles would be resolved, the wounds would be healed, and all would be well. Hope springs eternal; and in the large affairs of a troubled mankind it is well that this is so; but hope wasn't doing much for the cause of American indepen dence in the early weeks of 1776.

Controls Imposed The situation, in brief, was this: Around 1764 the British parliament enacted a bill known as the American Revenue Act. It was the first effort at raising money for the Crown in the colonies, and it aroused much opposition. It was followed in 1765 by the Quartering Act, which required the col onies to find barracks and supplies for British troops. Next, in the same year, came the detested Stamp Act. It was intended to reimburse the British government for about one-third of the outlay for a colonial military establish mentwhich was, ostensibly at least, to protect the colonies from the Indians, the French, and other dangers. In a different atmosphere the colonials might have accepted this as a reasonable division of costs. But the act was passed in England and imposed on the colonies ("Taxa tion without representation ;") and it was constantly visible and irri tating, because the stamps must be affixed to nearly everything the colonists used,even to dice and playing cards. It aroused great animosity, and it was repealed in 1766, partly through the efforts of William Pitt, but largely because of the devastating testimony given by the ubiquitous Benjamin Franklin, who appeared in London as an agent for Pennsylvania. But it left deep scars of resentment; and these were not healed by the Tea Act of April 1773, the addi tional Quartering Act of 1774, and the so-called Coercive Acts of the same year, which were designed to discipline Massachusetts by clos ing the Port of Boston.

All these and other grievances 1975 COMMON SENSE - WHATEVERHAPPENEDTO IT? 649 led to the calling of the First Con tinental Congress in September of 1774. Getting' quickly down to business the Congress said (with 12 of the 13 colonies represented) that: (a) the Coercive Acts should not be obeyed; (b) Massachusetts should with hold taxes from London until those acts were repealed; (c) the people generally should arm and form their own militia; and (d) that stiff economic sanctions should be invoked against the British. But the Congress might have saved its breath and ink. Whitehall was obdurate ... and so were the colonies. Lord North came forward with a Conciliation Plan, but the Lords would have none of it - and indeed, Parliament countered with the New England Restraining Act, which forbade first New England, and later New Jersey, Pennsyl vania, Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina, to trade with any nation except Britain.

On February 2, 1775, the Second Massachusetts Provincial Congress met at Cambridge and framed measures that would prepare that Colony for war. On February 28 British troops landed at Salem to seize colonial military supplies. On April 18 some 700 British troops set out from Boston for Concord to destroy supplies known to be stored there; and that night three men - Dr. Samuel Prescott, Richard Dawes, and especially a silversmith named Paul Revere galloped into immortality. A Continental Army Thereafter events moved with great speed. In May of 1775 the Second Continental Congress met and took a number of actions, the most significant of which was mili tary - namely, to adopt the colonial forces (which by then were actually besieging the British in Boston) as a Continental Army; to au thorize the raising of six compan ies of riflemen to march on Bos ton; and especially to elect George Washington as Commander-in Chief of the American forces. Be fore he could get to Boston, how ever, the Battle of Breed's Hill (to be known as the Battle of Bunker Hill, the nearby eminence originaUy selected for the' Colonial position) was fought, and Ethan Allen had seized Ticonderoga and Crown Point. An undeclared war was rapidly getting into gear.

But what was the issue? The col onists were angry about unfair taxes and discriminatory laws. They resented the highhanded me thods of the "home government" a government they had no part in electing and in which they had no representation. They personified 650 THE FREEMAN November these and other evils in the corpu lent image of King George, and damned him roundly. But are these the sort of issues that men will die for? Will they fight a long and bloody w'ar over a tax on tea? After Breed's Hill-what? With perhaps a third of the colonists strongly opposed to any war, how could they be led to support one over a matter of quarterin.g some red-coated troopers? As for creating a New Nation, which would have been an imagin :ative .and emotional issue big enough for blood, hp,rdly anybody was even thinking about it, and those who did were not at all en thusiastic about the idea. Benjamin Franklin, though he had long be fore written a plan for a union of the -colonies as colonies, had small confidence that they could be formed into a nation. Patrick Henry is known as a great patriot, and so he was; but his patriotism was centered in the sovereign state of Virginia, even though at Philadel phia he had declared to the First Continental Congress "I am not a Virginian, but an American." But in the crunch he opposed the adop tion of the Constitution because he thought the country was just too big for' anyone government to manage!

In short, what the colonial leaders needed was a gut issue and they simply didn't have it. Thomas Paine And so we come back to Thomas Paine. On the 9th of January 1776 he published at Philadelphia a little book - a pamphlet, really -- with the title Common Sense. And in no time at all there was no longer any question about what the issue would be. It was Independence! Not nationalism. Not nationhood not yet, that is, except perhaps in the minds of a very few. Paine, indeed, came /close to it in his "hints" on how to organize for in dependence, though even his con cept seems to have been that. of a federation of free colonies. ~0, 1975 COMMON SENSE-WHATEVER HAPPENED TO IT? 651 not a new nation - not yet. That was something else. But· indepen dence!J ust to be free of England and on their own! American Independence: A Pearl 01 Great Price Men saw at once that here was a value worth all it might cost. Paine put it clearly :. "The object con tended for ought always to· bear some just proportion to the' ex pense. The removal of North [then Prime Minister] or the whole de testable j unto is a matter un worthy the millions· we have ex pended .... If the whole continent must take up arms, if every man must be a soldier, it is scarcely worth our while to fight against a contemptible ministry only. Dearly, dearly do we pay for the repeal of the Acts if that is all we fight for."

Paine's little book was read everywhere throughout the col onies, and with tremendous effect. Washington wrote of it that it had "worked a powerful change in the minds of many men." Paine was a master of· biting inve'ctive, but he employed little of it in Common Sense. The argument for the most part (except when he paid his dis.;. respects to kings in general and George III in particular) is calm, simple and effective. Nor did it lack passages of sardonic humor, as when he wrote: "Sman islands ... 'are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something absurd in supposing a continent to be per petually· governed by an island." Some members of the New York Provincial Congress, .still loyal to England, considered issuing a pamphlet to answer Paine's thesis; but they finally decided that it was unanswerable, as indeed it was. In a short time the book had been read all over the colonies -- and from that time on there was very little question. as to what the Con tinental Congress would do when it met in June. CommonSense had furnished the answer.

And common sense-not the book, but the frame of mind and habit of behavior· denoted by the phrase - supplied the people of the new country with many another answer. When the weary years had dragged on to Yorktown and the war was ended, common sense led· them to adopt in earnest the idea of a strong central government to re place the sprawling and conflicting authorities of the several colonies. Common sense· instructed them to make it simple and close to the people, and to limit its authority. Common sense, plus a hot mem ory of past inj ustices, led them to avoid too much central domination, and to reserve great power and autonomy to the states. They were not intent upon making a govern ment that should dominate their 652 THE FREEMAN November lives and regulate their occupa: tions, but in creating and defining the minimums of power and au thority necessary to guarantee their freedom.

Common sense told them that men work best where there is the least restraint upon their activi ties, other than what is necessary for the enforcement of laws that were enacted for the protection and benefit for all. Common sense, some 40 years later, would lead them and their political heirs to complete the break with England by fighting the War of 1812. Trial and E"9r During that period the new young nation was going through a time 'of trial and error. Its leaders were feeling their way into nation hood and international status. No doubt there were misj udgments and blunders, since they too were men of passion, prej udice, occa sional ignorance, and fallibility, like their fathers and great-grand children. Some years ago it became a kind of literary fad to point out their errors and dwell upon them at wearisome length. Some historians and self-nomi nated social critics have ridiculed Washingtpn himself as being rather pettily concerned with titles and protocol. They forget that he was a trail maker, ever conscious of the fact that he was the first President of a nation destined for a great role in the drama of world history.

If he fussed over details of eti quette he was also meticulous in his conduct as head of state; and in both his social and official de portment he was guided m·ainly by the dictates of common sense. He wanted the new nation to develop its agriculture, trade and industry with the least possible restraint and interference by the govern ment. The plain common sense born of his own experience in manufacturi~g, farming and land development cautioned him to avoid the dangers of unrelieved public debt, and he wrote solemn warnings against it. Other leaders were equally in fluenced by the canons of ordinary good· judgment. They were in the m·ai'n idealists, even visionaries, as to the· future of their country; but they were quite practical and down-to-earth in the important matter of keeping the country sol vent and making its institutions work. They accepted the idea of a public debt (even Paine wrote ap provingly of it) as an ordinary and recurrent fiscal phenomenon in the life of a going concern; but nobody was willing to spend the nation to the verge of bankruptcy.

Franklin's oft-quoted reply to the lady who, when the Constitu tional Convention adj ou~ned, asked 1975 COMMON SENSE - WHATEVER HAPPENED TO IT? 653 him "What have you given us?" supplies the clue to a very prag matic attitude 'then prevalent. He said, as most people now know, "A republic, madam - if you can keep it." Like most of his peers, he was well aware of the tendency people have always shown to load their governments down with ad ventitious paraphernalia - the ma chinery of special privilege, sump tuary regulations, social and poli tical tinkerings, much of it haloed over with the aura of good intent, but an of it an ultimate tax burden on the average citizen and another handicap in his quest for human progress and freedom. If the Founders had needed an object les son they had it glaringly before them in the worthless "Continen tals" (paper money) they had been forced to issue in financing the war.

It Stands to Reason Common sense! What a wealth of homely virtue the term implies! And what a service its exercise has been, in both great and small affairs. Let me recall a personal experience with it. Many years ago my wife and I were preparing to "restore" an old house we had purchased in northern Virginia. The memory of it fits into this article the more readily because we discovered that the place had actually belonged to George Washington at the time of his death. The house, which had become dilapidated, was in two sections. The two-story part, we knew from local records, had been built dur ing the Civil War; but the lower log section was undoubtedly there when Washington owned the place, for in a careful listing of ~is properties attached to his will he mentioned that the place had "a good house" on it. But I am reaching too far back. Our renovation, I assure you, was undertaken in fairly modern times, relatively speaking. Full of en thusiasm and good intent, we plunged into our project - and before we knew it we were up to our ears in blueprints, elevations, levels, heating systems, patios; aU outside our expectations and cer tainly beyond our resources, which were slender. So we said woah-up, halted everything, caught our breath - and started over.

In our neighborhood there was a small-time house builder - a car penter, in fact, who, with his two sons and a couple of neighbors, made a dependable construction team. He himself was a trans planted, twangy product of Maine, and he belongs in this chronicle because I am remembering two phrases he often used, both per tinent to our present discussion. With a yellow scratch pad and a stubby pencil, he went over the 654 THE FREEMAN November place with us, floor by floor and foot by foot, asking what we wanted, sometimes agreeing with our wishes by saying "Eyeh" (which is down-east for "yes") but often saying"no" quite firmly, and explaining why, structurally, it couldn't or shouldn't be done. And over and over, in explaining matters to us, he made use of two phrases: (a) "it stands to reason" and (b) "it's just common sense." Before I leave him,-let me record gratefully that his frequent appeals to reason and invocations of com mon sense saved usa great deal of money and finally gave usa house of real comfort, authenticity and beauty.

It stands to reason. It's just plain common sense. H-omely, po tent phrases! When high-flown arguments load. us down with rhetoric; when bureaucratic jar gon confuses or misleads; then simple, common sense may wen be the really dependable compass, in lieu of more sophisticated gui dance. It is a safe rule, for states men as well as house builders. In... deed, -it was often followed by the men who set the course of our country -in its early days. Nor was its use confined to the foundationbuiIdersalone. Tower ing figures of the later years, un versed in abstruse argument, -re sorted to its homely logic with great benefit to the nation. Writing of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, Carl Schurz lamented that the President had been greatly underestimated. "Reis a man of profound feeling, correct and firm principles and incorruptible honesty," Schurz wrote; and he added that Lincoln "possesses to a remarkable degree the character istic, God-given trait of this peo ple - sound common sense."

The Aging Process 8r;ngs fears and D~ubts The decades have slipped by and the nation has aged and grown. From less than three million peo ple on the ,edge of _a vast world new to men, we have become a 210 million-people giant, spanning a continent - a nation of vast wealth, importance and influence. We are rich in achievement, science, cul ture. We should be the envy of the wor ld, and in some ways we are. Yet we are deeply troubled. The way ahead is obscure. We fear for the present; we are doubtful about our future. Once -rich in minerals and fossB energy, we now lag far behind some less "advanced" coun tries, and we are dependents in the markets of the world for some of the rarer ores, and -for liqUid fuel. More -than all this,'we'are --he wildered ill a fog of pseudo-eco norilics,and -are being 'misled into disastrollsexperiments 'by ,the in:.

1975 COMMON SENSE - WHATEVER HAPPENED TO IT? 655 fluential devotees of this or that sociologic or economic "ism." In the name of financial stability we have debased our money and cut in half at least, possibly to one third, the buying power of the dollar holdings of our people - a bitter pill for those who possess some degree of wealth, but a disas ter for those who do not. The pro cess by which this is done is called "inflation" and it is made to appear as a whimsical kind of thing that just happens now and then, instead of the predictable re sult of certain actions - such as following a permanent policy of not paying our debts. With a loudly professed interest in human welfare we have set up a governmentally operated old age pension system that has been broadened and extended until it now threatens to collapse unless further inroads are made into the earnings of everybody to support it. To the end of "protecting" con sumers, we have passed regulatory laws and created enforcement agencies that have driven many producers frantic (and sometimes out of business) with nagging bureaucratic supervision and ex pensive, frustrating, duplicating paper work. Confronted with the greatest need we have ever known for energy in the form of fossil fuel, we have not only penalized the production of ~ such fuels but have hampered the exploration neces sary to find them.

All this at a time when we very badly need an active economy with high levels of employment, wages and corporate earnings. Well ... but these are themes for books, not paragraphs; and many books, indeed, have been written, and no doubt will be, about what happened to this country around the middle of the 20th Century. Perhaps it will be enough to pose here one or two questions in con clusion. Act Responsibly First, if the New York or Phila delphia or Boston of, say, 1800, had ever foolishly spent itself into bankruptcy, with no apparent re gard for huge deficits annually in curred, - what would its leaders have done when finally confronted with fiscal reality? Run to Wash ington and beg a handout from the national government? Try to get the state legislature to bail them out? Cry to heaven that they were being mistreated by banks and other leaders? Or would they, like any sensible householder or any prudent housewife, face a few facts, cut out some frills, have a little less "fun" for a while, pay up their debts, balance their bud get, and in general proceed like . . . well, like people· of common sense?

656 THE FREEMAN November Second, if the Federal govern ment had failed for many years to live within its income, and if as a result it had accumulated a debt of some 500 billion dollars; and if the government had simply lost count of all the agencies and bureaus tucked away in its vast buildings in the Capitol and all over the country; and if the deficit for the current year was going to reach the staggering amount of sixty billion dollars .... Given such conditions, would President Adams or Monroe (or whoever) listen long to a lot of academic theoreticians and. tryout a number of time-worn expedients - or would they face reality, as ordinary people do in their affairs? Perhaps they might remember that Adam Smith had said, not long before, that "what is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarcely be folly in that of a great kingdom." If so, would they go on spending and running up ruinous deficits, or would they sensibly cut out some unnecessary or less urgent things, spend less than is to he taken in, apply the excess to p,aying off the debt, and so restore the nation's cred!it and the value of its money? That's a great oversimplification of a com plex problem, perhaps - but is it also, maybe, just common sense?

And finally, in surveying the current scene and trying to under stand the American situation, we encounter the tollowing episode: In recent months one of the tele vision networks ran a series in which a reporter each day would visit an average family and ask how they were being affected by the depression. One such visit in cluded two parents - young people perhaps in their middle thirties, and two sub-teenage children. Home scenes were shown - an average, well-kept middle class dwelling. But this was the clincher: The father said his regular job (at $14,000 a year) simply didn't give them enough to maintain a proper standard of living; so he was moonlighting on a job that paid him an additional $10,000 a year. And they were still having trouble making out on the $24,000 because, for one reason, the two children kept asking him for things, and he was forced to tell them he just couldn't afford to buy them!

So, all things considered, per haps one more ques,tion is in order at the end, as it was at the begin ning: Common sense . .. whatever hap pened to it?