American Revolution and the Spectre of Anarchy: The Hamilton-Seabury and Price-Lind Debates

0:00So, the American Revolution wasn't a conflict about anarchism. Neither side was pro-anarchist. But the issue of anarchism keeps coming up or being raised or bubbling to the surface in a lot of the debates over the American Revolution. One famous example is in Parliament, Burke gives this speech, in his famous speech on conciliation with the colonies. and the colonies. Burke says, you know, lately during the revolution, obviously the English government isn't working in the colonies anymore and the new colonial governments don't really have it act together yet. So really for the last year or so, the colonies have been in a state of anarchy and yet apart from fighting us, it's all been relatively peaceful and orderly and therefore we should try and make peace with the colonies as quickly as possible before they come to realize that they don't need government at all.

0:53Now given that it's Burke, I'm not sure how much of that was serious, how much of that was tongue-in-cheek, probably some of each, just as I think sort of his earlier youthful, his own youthful defense of anarchism I think was partly serious and partly tongue-in-cheek and I have a footnote where I tell you what to read on that issue. But I'm not going to be talking about Burke, I'm going to be talking about these two debates What Happened in the American Revolution? One in 1774 between Samuel Seabury, who was an Episcopal minister in the colonies, a loyalist defender of the British Crown, and a teenage Alexander Hamilton on the other side defending the American Revolution.

1:39And the other debate is going to be two years later in 1776 on the other side of the Atlantic. We have a debate between Richard Price, who was a dissenting clergyman and a radical philosopher defending the American Revolution. This is the famous Richard Price, whose later defense of the French Revolution prompted Burke to write his attack on the French Revolution and his attack on Price, which in turn encouraged people like Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft and so forth to attack Burke and so created much for the printers, and on the other side of that debate is John Lind, who was a follower of Bentham, who was critical, like Bentham, critical of natural rights, and also critical of American Revolution, although not all utilitarian critics of natural rights were critical of American Revolution, but he was.

2:34Okay, so starting off with Hamilton and Seabury. Now you might initially think that in a debate between Samuel Seabury and Alexander Hamilton, there's not going to be much for a libertarian to like. On the one side, we've got Alexander Hamilton, who tends to be libertarian's least favorite founding father. On the other hand, we've got Samuel Seabury, an opponent of the American Revolution, which is, you know, the one war that libertarians like. So, you know, I think, all right, it was just the two bad guys fighting each other and in certain respects, it is two bad guys fighting each other, but each of them makes a number of good libertarian points against the other. In fact, I can argue that the two of them add up to, you know, one complete libertarian and one complete status if you sort of mix and match the relevant bits of them.

3:22So starting with what Seabury said in his pamphlet debate with Hamilton, the main concern that's driving Seabury is that the Continental Congress had passed these measures restricting trade with Britain, saying from now on we shouldn't be importing tea and stuff from from Britain, and Seabury's worried that this is going to be a restriction on free trade. And so Seabury raises what sound like, at least when he has this hat on, sound like libertarian objections to what the Continental Congress is doing. So here's an excerpt.

4:11Here when he says you, he's talking to, for those of you who have a paper, I'm starting Will you submit to this slavish regulation? You must, our sovereign lords and masters, the high and mighty delegates in Grand Continental Congress assembled, have ordered and directed it. They have directed the committees and respective colonies to inspect the conduct of the inhabitants and see whether they violate the association, whether they drink any tea or wine with their families after the 1st of March, or where any British or Irish manufacturers etc. etc. If they do, their names are to be published in the Gazette, that they may be publicly known and universally condemned as foes to the, it should be rights of British America, not the tithes of British America, but I suppose they would have been against the importation of tithes as well, and enemies of American liberty.

5:10And then the parties of the said association will respectively break off all dealings with him or her. In plain English, they shall be considered as outlaws, unworthy of the protection of civil society and delivered over to the vengeance of a lawless, outrageous mob to be tarred, feathered, hanged, drawn, quartered and burnt over our American freedom. You can see there's a little ambiguity here as to whether these measures that Congress is imposing were meant to be enforceable or not. Will you be instrumental in bringing the most abject slavery on yourselves? Will you choose such committees? Will you submit to them? Should they be chosen by the weak, foolish, turbulent part of the country people?

5:55Do as you please, but by him that made me, I will not. No, if I must be enslaved, let it be by a king at least, and not by a parcel of upstart lawless committeemen. If I must be devoured, let me be devoured by the jaws of a lion and not gnawed to death by rats and vermin. How these guys were good writers. And a little later he says, you know, tell them you are Englishmen and you will maintain your rights and privileges and will eat and drink and wear whatever the public laws of your country permit. Notice that sort of the libertarian ring falters a little bit in that last part, you know, I can eat and drink or wear whatever the laws of my country permit, without asking leave of any illegal tyrannical congress or committee on earth.

6:41And it goes on, there's more good rhetoric, you know, if you want, you can let these people in to examine their tea canisters and molasses jugs and your wives and daughters' petticoats bow and cringe and tremble and quake, but I repeat, by heaven I will not, know my house Do as you please, but should any pragmatical committee gentleman come to my house and give himself airs, I shall show him the door, and if he does not soon take himself away, a good hickory cudgel shall teach him better manners. The first committee man that comes to rob me of my tea or my wine or molasses shall feel the weight of my arm, and should you, and this time you as Hamilton, should you be the However lightly you may think of it, a stroke of my cudgel would make you real, notwithstanding the thickness of your skull.

7:32So this is his main objection to the Continental Congress, is that it's violating rights of trade, rights of trade that the colonists have as Englishmen, have under English law. So despite sort of the natural rights flavor to this passage, but the actual rights that Now, another objection that Seabury raises is that the Continental Congress doesn't actually rest on consent. Now, as we'll see, Seabury is not really a big fan of government by consent, but he knows that these guys he's arguing with are, and that their objection to parliament is that Americans don't have representation in parliament, therefore government of parliament over the in the Colonies is not my consent.

8:23And he keeps stressing, well, first of all, how many people actually voted for these people in the Continental Congress? A lot of us are just out in the country. You suddenly hear, hey, there's some Continental Congress that's established, and there are various people who are involved in the know, and they voted for it. Most of us, we just heard about these guys. Not one in 100 people voted for it. And second, and again, this is sort of a lock-in point he's making, even if they are our representatives, Truly their power isn't absolute, you know, as we'll see, it's not clear whether you can say this in complete consistency, but truly their power isn't absolute. If it's a delegated power, well, under the Lockean understanding, which Seabury is sort of adopting here, you know, as a kind of devil's advocate, Well, not that he was an advocate exactly, but he's saying even if you grant these locking principles, it seems as though they wouldn't support the Continental Congress because the Continental Congress is going beyond any authority we could have plausibly delegated to it by interfering with trade.

9:24However, you know, so that's all the libertarian side of Seabury, but as we've already seen the hints, ultimately he bases on the rights that, these rights that he's so concerned about, he bases on English law rather than on natural law, which means that if English law were to impose these same horrible things that he thinks would be slavery when opposed by the Continental Congress, says the British Parliament wouldn't impose them. It's not clear that you can have any argument against their doing so, since for his conception of liberty is the freedom to eat and drink and wear whatever the public laws of your country permit. And he goes on to say that the authority of Britain over the colonies is absolute.

10:13The British colonies make a part of the British Empire. As parts of the body, they must be be subject to the general laws of the body, the talk of a colony independent of the mother country is no better sense than talk of a limb independent of the body, in every government there must be a supreme absolute authority lodged somewhere, and therefore the colonists rights derive not from nature but from the indulgence or grant of the parent state. So that although it sounded nice when that line about preferring to be devoured by the jaws of the lion rather than by the rats and vermin, turns out he really thinks you shouldn't It's not just that it's cooler to be eaten by a lion than by rats, it's just that the lion has a right to eat you and the rats don't, that's the difference. It's the English lion, and really American rats.

11:01Then, Seabury complains about Hamilton's constant use of natural rights language, and Seabury says, says, a man in a state of nature may be considered as perfectly free from all restraints of law and government, and then the weak must submit to the strong, from such a state I confess I have a violent aversion. I think the form of government we lately enjoy is a much more eligible state to live in. So he's saying, all right, you're talking about natural rights, the rights we have in a state of nature. Well, everyone knows state of nature is a Hobgian in the jungle. We don't want that, and that's what you're advocating. So now we've got Hamilton, and again we're going to see that there's a lot of libertarian content in what Hamilton's saying, although in some ways Hamilton is most libertarian, but you will, I think, see seeds of trouble to come in some of the things Hamilton says.

11:55But initially, Hamilton reacts to Seabury's attack on natural rights the way libertarians always react to that sort of thing. He gets snarky and offers his opponent a reading list. So there's a slide from Hamilton, through ignorance of natural rights in this enlightened age cannot be admitted as a sufficient excuse for you, yet it ought in some measure to extenuate your guilt. If you will follow my advice, there still may be hopes of your reformation. Apply yourself without delay to the study of the law of nature. I would recommend your perusal grotesque, Pufendorf, Locke, Montesquieu and Berlimacchi. I might mention other excellent writers on this subject, but if you attend diligently to these, you will not require any others. And then he goes on to give a fairly standard Lockean criticism. He says, first of all, you know, you say in a state of nature there are no restraints of law and government, wrong, unless you're an atheist like Hobbes, and Hamilton assumes Hobbes was an atheist, unless you're an atheist like Hobbes you must think that there's always

12:52Because the law of God, as revealed through the law of nature, we can infer God's intentions from the way that he's made us. And so, of course, there are moral restrictions on what we can do to each other even in a state of nature. It's as if you keep swearing by him who made you, you know, you must not really be an atheist so you ought to buy this. And it has this famous line, the sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among and then he goes on to say in a state of nature, so no one had the right to impose any orders on anyone else in a state of nature but when you decide to get together and form a government, government has to rest on consent.

13:49The only distinction between freedom and slavery, says Hamilton, is this. Under freedom, a man is governed by the laws to which he is given his consent, either in person or by his representative. Under slavery, he is governed by the will of another. So that's the difference. And because Americans don't have the right of representation in parliament, we are not free. We are slaves. Now, of course, any libertarian is going to ask, Well, just merely having representation in parliament, what exactly does being governed by your consent mean? Does it mean by the individual's consent? Or does it mean some kind of collective consent or majoritarian consent? If the majority consents to something and I'm in the minority, does that really count as consent? What are we talking about here?

14:36Locke had attempted to address this problem, at least on a standard reading of Locke, Locke attempts to address this by saying you need unanimous consent to establish civil society Once you establish it, then within civil society, majority consent is good enough for the rest of it. You join a society and you agree to be bounded by majority rule and other stuff, but the initial consent has to be unanimous. But Hamilton doesn't say anything like that, so you can wonder about that. Anyway, even if we grant that being represented in the Continental Congress makes that a legitimate authority over you, of course there's a further question of are people really legitimately represented in the Congress?

15:25Hamilton pretty much ignores Seabury's worry that most people never had a chance to vote for that Congress. What about Seabury's other objection, which is this Congress is imposing stuff that goes beyond any power we would or should have delegated by interfering with free trade? Here Hamilton begins to sound a bit more like the Hamilton we all know and love with a characteristically sweeping interpretation of what the government's authority is. He says, when the political salvation of any community is depending, it is incumbent upon on those who are set up as its guardians to embrace such measures as justice, vigor and a probability of success to amend them, recommend them. So in other words, we've got this problem of dealing with Britain, the best solution we've come up with is not to trade with them and so therefore we have the right to require that.

16:20And he goes on to argue that in civil society you have not just a duty to refrain from injuring In a civil society, it is the duty of each particular branch to promote not only the good of the whole community, but the good of every other particular branch. If one part endeavors to revile the rights of another, the rest ought to assist in preventing injury. Where they do not but remain neutral, they are deficient in their duty and may be regarded in some measures accomplices. So in other words, if you go on trading with Britain, when Britain is imposing this nasty So we have threatened with absolute slavery from Britain. It has been proved that resistance by means of remonstrance and petition would not be efficacious. Restriction on our trade is the only peaceable method in our power to avoid the impending mischief. It follows therefore that such a restriction is necessary.

17:19Now again, you might wonder how you can really justify this on natural rights grounds. You really justify not only agreement to sort of submit your contracts to disputes and so forth, but actually you have an enforceable duty to come to the assistance of society. There's also something a bit imperious about the tone with which Hamilton criticizes Seabury's It was hardly to be expected that any man could be so presumptuous as openly to controvert the equity, wisdom, and authority of the measures adopted by the Congress, an assembly truly respectable in every account, whether we consider the characters of the men who composed it, the number and dignity of their constituents, or the important ends for which they are appointed.

18:13How dare you criticize things, and Seabury says fairly enough, hey, you know, I thought we were Englishmen, I thought we had the right to express our opinions about the government. So Hamilton raises good objections to the rule of Britain over America, Seabury raises some good objections to the rule of Congress over America, put them together, and it seems as though neither government had any legitimate authority. Okay, in the Price-Lynn debate, Price starts off by distinguishing a whole bunch of different kinds of liberty. There's religious liberty and moral liberty and so forth in terms of what it's liberty to, and then argues that liberty means being free from arbitrary constraint by other people. But in Price, we find the systematic ambiguity as to whether it's individual He talks about the majority and says that you're free so long as the majority of people are not subject to some external will.

19:18On the other hand, he says things like, every man is his own legislator, which makes it sound as though some kind of individual consent is needed. So Price seems like he's generally a libertarian-minded guy, but there are ambiguities here, which Lind quickly exploits. And Lin says, look, we shouldn't define liberty by what it's a liberty to, we should define it by what kind of constraint it's free from. So, are you free from physical coercion, are you free from some other kind of threat, and so forth, and he talks about it in those terms, and all that seems fine. But then Lin says, well, complete freedom is impossible, because it would mean my freedom, then I would have the freedom to enslave you.

20:03Now, in a way, that doesn't seem like a fair criticism of Price, because Price says the only restrictions that freedom allows are restrictions that come from other people's freedom, so it doesn't seem like he's got that problem, but then Linda raises what seems like a better objection, which is, look, either, you know, suppose either consent has to be unanimous or else it can just be the majority, and if it's just the majority, then what happens to the minority? seems as though by your definition they're not free and then it has to be unanimous then either you get sort of a deadlock where no one can do anything without anyone else's consent or else people are free to go their own way and people are free to go their own way that's anarchy as inconsistent with any government whatever you're not an anarchist price so you know what's the deal and he also says look the very notion of government implies some kind of asymmetry and rights between those who govern and those who are governed

21:00And therefore, this notion of equal liberty that you would defend is inconsistent with any kind of government at all. And again, that would be crazy anarchy. So, even though Price's principles are generally more libertarian than Lindt's, Lindt does point to what seems like a plausible identification of an inconsistency in Price. It's not clear that price can really defend, on the one hand, these principles, on the other hand, having a monopoly state, as opposed to anarchy. So I think that although these people were not anarchists, on either side, I think that it's no coincidence that right after the American Revolution, you suddenly find more and more anarchist theories suddenly popping up, where there hadn't been that many before, suddenly you get one anarchist and another showing up.

21:53showing up, and I think it's because a lot of these debates help sort of bring the issue to the surface by suggesting, you know, if we really adopt, take seriously these liberal republican principles that people are going for, it seems as though you take them to the logical extreme, it seems to question the legitimacy of the state as such. Okay? Thank you very much.