investigation to disclose the fact that the Revolution settlement, so satisfactory nationally, was inadequate imperially. But as the idea of growth, familiar enough in the case of individuals, had not yet been thought of as extending to communities, and as there was no open demand from the colonies for a reconsideration of their status in relation to the kingdom, it did not occur to Englishmen that there was any need for an imperial stocktaking. The great political thinker of the period was John Locke, who was exalted to an especial eminence in the minds of his countrymen because of the ability with which he defended the Revolution. His writings caused him to be associated in a peculiar way with the constitution, as may be seen from the frequency with which his name was quoted by the political pamphleteers of the eighteenth century. The national judgment accepted him as the high priest of a constitution which Englishmen felt was wellnigh perfect. Even a man of so radical a temperament as John Toland (1670-1722) ventured to claim that the English system of government was "the most free and best constituted in all the world".1 Locke's two treatises on Civil Government, in which he set forth the principles of the Revolution, though ostensibly treating of government in general, were inspired by events in his own country. Yet while his reasoning covered adequately the case of Great Britain, it failed to solve the problems of the Empire, though of that Empire few possessed a fuller knowledge than Locke himself. The friend and secretary of Shaftesbury, he had assisted in drawing up the Carolina constitution and knew the difficulties that beset newly formed communities. After the Revolution he became one of the leading officials of the Board of Trade and Plantations and was noted as an authority on economics. But he never seems to have divined that the government of England and the government of the Empire were two different matters. This was due to the fact that his works on Civil Government, though abstract in form, were essentially a defence of the Revolution. They were political pamphlets in the guise of general treatises on government, and consequently had only a national application. His researches did not extend beyond England, so that he did not realise that what was primarily a national settlement had inaugurated new problems for the Empire. Had Locke cared to stretch his survey so as to take in the colonies, he would have discovered in America ample material to throw light on the minds and temper of the colonists. The first action of New England, on hearing of the Revolution, had been to overthrow the government of Sir Edmund Andros, an action which indicated in unmistakable fashion the detestation with which the colonists regarded English regulation of their affairs. It was fundamentally a protest, not against the tyranny of Andros or of 1 Harrington, J., Works, ed. Toland (1747), p. viii. James II, but against the principle of government from a distance. This was the significant lesson to be gleaned from America; but the importance of the proceedings at Boston was not discerned by the leading Englishmen of the Revolution period. This possibly may have been because in the eyes of Englishmen New England counted for little in comparison with the West Indies. But the day of Caribbean supremacy was passing, and the Revolution, by bringing Great Britain to grips with France, was to reveal that the centre of gravity in colonial matters was shifting from the West Indies to the Hudson. Locke could not have gained his high reputation in England as a political thinker by writing merely on government in the abstract; his works owed their peculiar merit to their association with the Revolution. Many Englishmen felt that the constitution had received its final form in 1689, and Locke was appealed to as its most authoritative interpreter. His influence was most actively beneficent in the support which his reasoning lent to the cause of religious toleration. In some respects, however, it was harmful, as his adoption of the doctrine of the separation of powers caused many of his countrymen to oppose the development of Cabinet government. But whereas Englishmen honoured Locke as the foremost defender of their national system of government, Americans valued him as the preacher of general truths. His writings furnished an arsenal of the abstractions that have an irresistible fascination for unsophisticated people and are at the same time difficult to deal with dialectically. Thus it was chiefly as the apostle of liberty that he found favour in American eyes, and during the controversy stirred up by the Stamp Act the colonial pamphleteers underlined their arguments with copious quotations from Locke's works. Pride of place among the abstractions was held by the idea of natural right, an idea so illusory as to lack the support of any historical argument. Locke did not confine himself to the legitimate sense in which that conception might be employed, namely, that national laws ought to conform to man's innate regard for what is fair and just, but he implied that over and above all national laws there existed a code which all men instinctively recognised and obeyed. Similarly he pressed into his service the equally unhistorical idea of the social compact. It had appeared almost spontaneously in political thought because it seemed to offer a simple and adequate explanation of the relations of men in a political and social organisation, since it laid down an intelligible hypothesis by which law could be reconciled with liberty and freedom with discipline. It proved an effective reply to the theory of the Divine Right of Kings and formed the natural basis of a democratic conception of government. Even the champions of prerogative did not challenge it. It had been accepted by Hooker and it found a place in the works of the most eminent jurists from Grotius to Blackstone. CHARLES DAVENANT 619 Borrowing these abstractions from Locke, the Americans employed them to rebut the claims of the British Parliament, as Englishmen in the previous century had used them to combat the pretensions of the Crown. Locke's influence was strongest during the destructive phase of the American Revolution; during the constructive phase it was displaced by that of Montesquieu. For though the doctrine of separated powers was English in inception and had been glorified by the writings of Locke, it was through the medium of the great French thinker that it made its deepest impression on the mind of America. Considering his eminence as a thinker and his practical knowledge of colonial affairs, Locke threw surprisingly little light on the nature of the problems of the British Empire, and more useful guidance with respect to imperial matters can be obtained from several of his contemporaries, notably Charles Davenant, who by reason of his position as Inspector-General of Imports and Exports from 1705 till his death in 1714 was one of the chief authorities on the trade and revenue of the kingdom. The contradictions which appear in his writings on some important points are themselves of interest as reflecting the conflict between old practice and new tendencies which forms one of the most significant chapters in the history of the eighteenth century. Economists were beginning to value colonies as markets for home manufactures as well as sources of supply, and an opinion was gradually developing that commerce would flourish most where restriction was least. While Davenant showed that he was receptive to the new ideas, he was too much under the influence of routine and official duties to advocate any practical change; and, liberal though his views were, he insisted on that intimate connection between trade and politics which had been the most constant feature of English colonial administration since 1660. He was no victim of the fallacy so prevalent among his contemporaries that money and wealth were synonymous, and he inferred that high duties and prohibitive regulations would retard rather than develop trade, but when he came to deal with these matters in practice he succumbed to the influence of the prevailing view. Thus he accepted the protectionist policy upon which English administration of the colonial system was based, for he approved of the colonies being forbidden to trade directly with other countries than England. His praise of the colonies as useful receptacles for English malcontents could have been written only by one to whom the interests of the mother country were almost the sole consideration. The subordination of the colonies in the imperial system was insisted on. "Colonies", he wrote, "are a strength to their mother kingdom, while they are under good discipline, while they are strictly made to observe the fundamental laws of their original country, and while they are kept dependent on it."1 An intuition that such a system 1 Davenant, C., Works (1771), ¤, 10. would be repugnant to high-spirited men is evident in his admonition not to teach colonists the art of war, though he conceded that Plantations remote from the mother country might be allowed arms and shipping for their protection. Like many other officials he recognised that the general affairs of America could never be satisfactorily dealt with until the barriers erected by colonial particularism had been pulled down, and he outlined a liberally conceived scheme of American union. It is instructive to note that his diagnosis of the situation drove him, like Bacon and Harrington, to accept the possibility of the colonies becoming "great nations". He realised the wisdom of conceding them a generous measure of self-government, and in this connection one of his sentences has a ring of Lord Durham about it: "Without doubt, it would be a great incitement to their industry, and render them more pertinacious in their defence, upon any invasion which may happen, to find themselves a free people and governed by constitutions of their own making". But the idea of growth crept into his mind rather as a particular instance than as a general principle, for he held it as axiomatic that the potential "great nations" should always be kept "dependent upon their mother country". Consequently there is a striking contrast between his acquiescence in colonial self-management and his proposals to rearrange the colonies to suit the convenience of Great Britain. The settlers in America had spread over more land than could be cultivated or easily defended, and he was strongly in favour of grouping them all in a more compact area. Touching on the question of the privileges enjoyed by colonists, Davenant stated: "We shall not pretend to determine whether the people in the Plantations have a right to all the privileges of English subjects", and he was anxious that a declaratory law should be made stating that "Englishmen have right to all the laws of England, while they remain in countries subject to the dominion of this kingdom". How far the privileges of English subjects could be reconciled with the dependence which was the fate of colonies Davenant did not stop to examine, but he was strongly of opinion that the legal relationship between the colonies and the kingdom should be properly investigated. He was particularly sound in demonstrating the need of stimulating a love of England among the colonists, for there did not exist either in Great Britain or in the Plantations any sentiment of imperial patriotism. More consistent, but at the same time more narrow, were the views of William Paterson on colonial questions. Trade was his passion, and his dream of a grand free emporium of commerce ultimately took shape in the Darien scheme, which revealed the necessity of a firmer bond between England and Scotland than that provided by 2 Ibid. п, 35, 36. 1 Davenant, C., Works (1771), II, 53. WILLIAM PATERSON 621 the union of the Crowns. Even more than Davenant he insisted on the connection between trade and politics, and he strongly favoured the institution of a Council of Trade, for which he was a most pertinacious pleader. Sir Dalby Thomas, the historian of the West Indies, had advocated the establishment of an advisory Council of Trade in the hope of remedying the customs grievances of the colonists,1 but Paterson designed for his Council a much wider sphere than that. The project was mooted in his Darien proposals, and in 1700 he suggested the institution of such a body to carry on the government of Scotland. After the Union of 1707 he pressed the need of a Council of Trade on the notice of the British Government, but without avail. The essence of his creed was that the rule of merchants would mean good government, because in the interests of trade they would be careful to keep their subjects contented. A trader himself, he entertained the most exalted idea of the beneficent influence of merchants. From their knowledge of the several countries of the world they naturally tended to become "zealous promoters of free and open trade, and consequently of liberty of conscience, general naturalisations, unions, and annexions".2 3 But few shared his faith in merchant princes, in whose ranks there was none more free from the prejudices of the age than Paterson himself. He attacked the restrictions on the colonies and championed the principles of free trade with great clarity and force. He complained that "the navigation and trade of Great Britain only lies now under greater hardships than that of any other country", and he was in favour of granting "a permission trade to the people of all nations upon easy and reasonable terms". With regard to the colonies, he urged that, apart from trade duties, "no impositions may for ever be laid upon the inhabitants without their own consent, and that neither, excepting only toward securing and maintaining their respective governments". But his liberalism was selfishly dictated by the interests of commerce, and his ideals were those of the countinghouse. The dominion which the influence of commerce exercised over his mind led him to deprecate Great Britain's military commitments in the War of the Spanish Succession. The naval efforts that were made did not satisfy him, and he felt that a proper application of maritime power might well have ousted Spain from the West Indies. The same idea was pungently expressed by Swift, who "wondered how it came to pass that the style of maritime powers...did never put us in mind of the sea; and while some politicians were showing us the way to 1 Thomas, D., An Historical Account of the Rise and Growth of the West India Colonies (1690) (Harleian Miscellany), 11, 365-6. 2 Paterson, W., Writings (ed. Bannister), 1, 247. 8 Ibid. II, 170. See chapter xvIII. 4 • Ibid. 1, 149. |