The Beginning of American Independence

0:00The beginning of American Independence. We live in that part of the world that at one time was known as the New World. As we all know, the Western Hemisphere was brought to public attention in Europe as a result of the voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492. In fact, when I went to school, my history book said that Christopher Columbus discovered America in that year. Actually, we now understand that there may have been a number of other voyages that predated Columbus. And yet my history book, at that time, a number of years ago, indicated that Christopher Columbus was the first. And that particular fact is now being disputed by various scholars in other sciences, such as archaeology and anthropology, who have discovered the The traces of other landings in the New World and dated them so that we know they occurred prior to the Columbus voyage. Why did Columbus get the credit?

1:09There is an important point here to keep in mind. Christopher Columbus sailed for the King of Spain, and at the time of his voyage Spain was the most powerful country in the World, and Columbus sailed on a political journey that was supported in essence by the taxpayers of Spain, and the consequence of that fact is that Columbus got a good press. The other voyages, so far as we can determine, were those that occurred without government backing. In other words, private adventurers paying their own way set sail for lands they knew do not of, and by the time they returned, there wasn't a press corps on hand to welcome them, and thus they escaped history. But of course when Columbus returned with news of what he had discovered, there was a large contingent of important people around to greet him and to ask all kinds of questions, and thus it was that whether Columbus discovered America or not, it is true that publicity relating to the discovery was first unleashed

2:22by the Columbus voyage. As one wag has told us, Columbus, like so many people operating for the government, didn't know where he was going when he set out, didn't know where he was when he got there, and did it all on taxpayers' money. But the fact of the matter is that he did get publicity, and as a result of that publicity, the entire Western Hemisphere was opened up for European exploration and settlement. Since Spain was the most powerful nation in the world at that time, Spain was not slow in taking advantage of this new discovery, which was essentially a Spanish discovery. Although Columbus himself was not a Spanish subject, nonetheless he sailed under that sponsorship, and so Spain took the credit and proceeded to lay claim, in essence, to the entire Western Hemisphere, North, Central and South America. And a question might be asked rhetorically, how does it happen that we are today not subjects of Spain?

3:28Certainly Spain had all the advantages. They got here first. They got here a long way of the World. We are way ahead of their nearest rivals, who didn't begin coming over until several years after the Columbus voyage was known about. And yet we are not Spain, or related to Spain primarily. Of course in Central America the antecedents are primarily Spanish. And there is a very strong Spanish influence in South America, although the Portuguese have actually eclipsed it in many places. In southwestern United States we have a very strong Spanish influence, but in the main, in what we think of as the United States, we have fundamentally a British influence, and of course in Canada we have both a British and a French influence. And yet Britain and France were much slower than either Spain or Portugal in beginning to develop the New in the New World. How did it happen that Britain primarily, and France also, got such large footholds in the New World when they originally got off to such a poor start? If you examine

4:39what happened politically in Europe during this period, you may be able to see certain things there. What happened was this. Spain had risen to its ascendancy as a result of of the Moorish Occupation. The Moorish occupation had come into Spain as a result of the expansion of Islamic ideas, and Spain flourished under the Islamic culture that was imposed on it. Now, this type of imposition was primarily not so much political as it was religious and Enterprising. The Islamic peoples, the Saracens, who came into Spain and whom we call the Moors, were very much interested in developing industry and business as it was done then.

5:31Of course they did not have mass production as we think of it today. But they literally took Spain by the scruff of the neck and shoved it forward so that it became, productively speaking, the most important nation in the world, and this happened at a time when the Spanish government was weak. If the Spanish government had been strong, the Moors would never have gotten a foothold. They came in because the Spanish government was so weak it couldn't keep them out. Now, at the time Columbus sailed, the industry History and Business of Spain was beginning to go into a decline. It was going into a decline because there was the emergence of some very, very strong Spanish rulers. But curiously at the same time this was happening, the contrary type of movement is found in Great Britain. In Great Britain, which had been under very strong kings such as the Tudors, which included both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, they passed from the scene.

6:39And when Elizabeth I died in 1603, then the British turned around and introduced a new ruling house, the stewards. And the stewards were always incompetent in many areas. Most historians have commented on this fact. And the result was that the British government became weak. Now as the British government became weak about the same time that the Spanish government was getting strong, this opened up the way for British people to come to the New World. It came to the New World primarily in a way that tended to emphasize the development of colonies and the development of American production rather than, as the Spanish were doing, developing Settlements on the basis of exploitation and taking over and essentially looking for gold and things of this sort, so that your British colonies, when they began being founded, were founded with enterprise and colonial survival in mind, whereas the Spanish colonies were fundamentally provided as outposts of the Spanish Empire and they were more or less Motus operandi, Motus operandi

8:24and the British colonies began to flourish precisely as the British government in England began to decline in potency. And the Spanish colonies which were established at an earlier date began to decline as the Spanish government gained in potency. In fact, this particular episode gives us a good way, a good guideline, a rule of thumb that we can watch. Whenever A political agency becomes supreme in a nation. The tendency is very good for the economy of that nation to weaken. And when the economy is freed from these tentacles, then it tends to rise, but it does so as the government tends to decline. Now there will be those who will argue that this is disproved by the actions of the Soviet Union, that the Soviet Government has demonstrated that it is possible for a strong and powerful government to come in and at the same time to improve the economy, and that you can have both the government and the economy expanding at the same time. But I would have to challenge that. In point

9:38of fact, the government of the Tsars was extremely powerful, extremely despotic, and it continued to hold down the Russian economy so that there was never any chance of an industrial development in Russia until such time as the government of Lenin appeared. Now, of course, it is true that at the outset of the Leninist experiment in Russia, the government became the leading agent in trying to establish industry, commerce, and agriculture. But virtually all of these These efforts, if you examine them, failed. The way the Russian economy finally began to take hold was when the government, yes even the government of Stalin, began to back away and open up the area of the economy so that people in the market could function.

10:32And you'll find that this rule of thumb will apply even in Russia. As an economy grows is strong, it tends to grow strong as governments pull back. And if governments do not pull back and let the economy alone, then the economy will weaken. In our own case, since here in the United States we owe most of our antecedents to the British Empire and to the British way of thinking and doing, it follows that when we examine And we will see that this is the case here. The British government began to decline with the passing of the Tudors, and that was in 1603. The first permanent British settlement mentioned in our history books is usually Jamestown, which was established in 1607 while King James I was on the throne. And King James I was a much weaker, much more dilatory ruler than Queen Elizabeth I. And the stewards from that time on operated in a sort of haphazard manner insofar as political action was concerned. And during that time the British colonies

11:42in the New World flourished. So we have that background and it's an important thing to keep in mind whenever you are reading history or examining economic history to see and see See how things develop. Governments, powerful governments and powerful economies tend to be opposed. If your economy is going to be strong, then your government cannot be. If your government is going to be strong, then your economy will not be. And this is the dilemma that at present we are facing in this country. Many people in this country have sense that the economy is in very, very serious straits. It is not doing well. And in order to rectify these problems in the economy, many people are turning to the government and asking it to do more. The result is that the government day by day, month by month and year by year gets bigger and stronger and to do so it has to extract more of its In any case, we do know that following the settlement in Jamestown and then year by year

12:57in other places, British subjects came to the New World, some of them trying to escape the oppression that they were experiencing in Great Britain, both religious persecution and economic privation of various sorts, they came to the New World and they established settlements and they did so with one idea, and that was to colonize and to make the New World their home, not to exploit it, to take out of it something that was to be sent back, but to develop it themselves for their own use and to live here and make this land their own. Now this made a big difference in the development of the territory that is now the in the United States. So we began to feel the influx of the British influence, and it began to spread up and down the entire eastern coastline.

13:49Most of the original settlements were coastal villages at the outset, and then they expanded and worked back into the interior. And this condition went right through the first 150 years of the American experience. During that time, we were British colonies. We finally got thirteen of them, and these British colonies were at no time out from under the control of Great Britain in a nominal sense. Everybody over here realized that they were colonists under the British government, and of course various British governors were sent over and took up residence in the key in the 18th century, which became, at that time, one of the most important economic This is the century that brought us the Industrial Revolution, which began in 1760. It brought us the American Revolution of 1775. It brought us the French Revolution of 1789. It was a period of vast intellectual stimulation and turmoil. There was a resurgence of all kinds of Ideas of Great Significance, and it is important to understand our own background

15:35here in the light of what was happening not only here but in other parts of the world. We in America, who were British subjects and had come over to colonize, had in the main been motivated either by a religious conviction that we were and of right ought to be free Men, or by a political conviction which paralleled the religious view to wit that as human beings we had the same rights anybody else had. The American colonists were fundamentally Whigs, and the Whiggish movement was opposite the Tory movement. Now the Tory movement was essentially the loyalist and the royalist group. These were the people that supported the state and believed that whatever the king did was right, because after all he was divine, and that the only proper procedure was for everybody to obey the king. That was right in the Tory framework of reference. But we were Whigs. And we disputed that view. And that's one of the reasons many of us left England and came to these shores, because we wanted to

16:48to be more independent of the king. We wanted to make up our own minds and manage our own affairs. And here in the New World we could own property privately. And note, please, the British government wasn't doing very much to protect it. Oh, of course it will be said, and accurately, that the British government sent over troops from time to time to help quell Indian uprisings. But in point of fact, many of these Indian uprisings were simply The colonists when they came over here found that they had to deal amicably with the Indians or fail utterly. And so in instance after instance the colonists settled down peaceably, worked out amicable relationships with the local Indian tribes that they came in direct contact with, and in the main kept their promises with the Indians, and the Indians treated

18:13The French influence has been and remains strong there even now. Because there had been the political rivalry between England and France in the old world, that political rivalry continued in the new world between the French colonists and the British colonists, and the two governments in the old world were not the least bit averse to using the Indians to try to stir up trouble with their opposing number in the new world. World. Hence we find Frenchmen encouraging the Indians to attack British settlements, and we find British officials encouraging the Indians to attack French settlements, and the colonists were dragged into it because they lived here with the Indians.

19:01This dichotomy, this ambivalence between the promises made by the settlers and the facts The ethics of what British officialdom did, and French officialdom did, caused the Indian to feel that the white man spoke with a forked tongue. Because, like most of us, when we view members of another race, we tend to categorize and collectivize them. And if we hear something from one member of another race, and then we hear something that is different from another Remember of that same race? We think that the race is speaking and that the race is dishonest. Actually what you have is two different persons and one is saying one thing and one is saying another and the race gets blamed. Well this is what happened. The private colonists, many times, I don't mean to suggest that in every case this was true, but it was true in most cases, the colonists dealt fairly with the Indians. They traded with them, they

20:33may be liars but in this particular case the Indians appeared to be liars too and we got so that we didn't trust each other and the result finally roiled up in the French and Indian War which actually was a war between Britain and France in which Indians participated and in the end for which Canada became the war prize. The French lost the war and Canada was seated to Great Britain as a war prize and that was the event that actually marked the ascension of George III to the throne. Now George III was a very, very competent monarch. In fact, historians have said this and I have no reason to quarrel with the statement that George III was probably the first competent monarch to occupy the British throne since the death of Queen Elizabeth. Well, he took that view of himself, and I think we've tended to accept his judgment here. In any case, George III saw that the American colonists, that is to say the British colonists in America, had become very independent of the crown.

21:51And he decided that something should be done to bring them under a real British rule. You see, what he discovered was that he had been sending troops over to, quote, protect them, unquote, from the Indians. Actually, the colonists resented this. They didn't need the Indians. I mean, they didn't need the troops. They may not have needed some of the Indians either, but they didn't need the troops. And yet these troops were quartered on them without their consent. A man, a sergeant would knock at your door and take a look at your house and at you and say, well, I think three men can live here all right, and he'd order them in, and you had to support them. Well, this was an outrage, and the colonists didn't like this. Of course, this was our king who was doing this to us, but we didn't like it, and we said so, and we didn't want the troops in the first place. We weren't fighting France. This was an old world quarrel that had been

22:47transported to the New World and we got ourselves involved in it, but in any case the war had ended and France ceded Canada to Great Britain, and now George decided to collect the taxes to pay for the troops. But in all this period of time, and it's hard for us to realize this, from 1600 approximately, I'm using a general figure here, on up to 1760, the colonists was living in these British colonies, hadn't been paying taxes, they hadn't been ruled, they had actually been living in a state of contractual relationships with each other, and it had worked out very well. Now all of a sudden, out of a clear blue sky, they got George III and George decided that they were going to have to pay taxes to help support their own governments, that is the Crown colonies and all the rest of the things that went on in Britain, and the Americans backed up and said no. It's a very interesting thing to keep in mind the kind of ideas that were roiling up during the latter half of the 18th century.

23:55We had these three major revolutions occur. Now the Industrial Revolution was simply a fantastic breakthrough in the field of manufacture, primarily in the textile industry, but also So in the manufacture of steel, in the development of new ways to raise agricultural products and so on, it brought about a complete change in the way that people ordinarily lived. Now in conjunction with this industrial development there emerged two conflicting bodies of thought and they led to two different revolutions. The American Revolution on the one hand and the French on the other. Now here is an important point to keep in mind. The American Revolution Revolution was essentially a middle-class revolution. It was inspired by this trilogy of ideas—life, liberty, and property. In fact, life, liberty, and property became the watchwords of the period from 1775 to about 1785. During that period of time, that was was the constant cry on the lips of Americans, life, liberty, and property.

25:18The French were undoubtedly inspired by what happened here. But they were listening to a different drummer. They were following a little different heartbeat, and a man who had influenced them profoundly was a French philosopher and novelist named Rousseau. And and Rousseau provided them with a different trilogy of political essences, which were called liberte, egalite, fraternity. Liberty, equality, fraternity. Now this particular group of essences is quite different from the concept of life, liberty and property. In essence, this second trilogy of ideas was to inspire the working class, Not the middle class, but what we have called earlier the lower classes. The thing that the French sought to do was to place the working man in a position of power. In other words, the French sought to establish a government that would represent the downtrodden masses, so called. Whereas the American Revolution sought to establish the right of each man to his own life, to his own liberty, and to his own property.

26:42Now, the results of these two different revolutions, both of which came on the heels of the Industrial Revolution, has in fact altered the appearance of the world. And we are in a very real sense today continuing both of these same revolutions. The American Revolution has never really been are the proper essences by means of which to organize society.

27:33These two different views are profoundly at odds, and to understand what happened we are going to have to take a closer look at them. Thank you.