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CHARLES DAVENANT

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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), п, 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".1 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 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.

2

should

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 a Ibid. ¤, 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

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), I, 247.

3 Ibid. II, 170.

5 See chapter XVIII.

4 Ibid. 1, 149.

Spain by Flanders, others to Savoy or Naples, that the West Indies should never come into their heads".1

Davenant, Paterson and John Law of Lauriston were the most liberal representatives of the school which emphasised the association of trade with politics. If under Law's magnificently conceived system commerce was to be at once the chief aim and principal prop of the State, it was at the same time intended to be the handmaid of the interests of the people. The views of such men, however, were probably less representative of the opinion of the mass of the people than those of such rigid mercantilists as Sir Josiah Child, John Cary and Sir William Petty, who had no sympathy whatever with the idea of colonisation as a process of nation-building and wished to confine Plantations to the tropical and semi-tropical regions of the earth.

From the beginning of the eighteenth century new ideas began to permeate the mercantile system. The craze for stock-jobbing, of which Law's Mississippi scheme and the South Sea Company were the most conspicuous examples, was an indication of changing economic ideas. Land was no longer esteemed as the only source of wealth, and the development of commerce brought into prominence a new class of men who were despised by the landed gentry as upstarts. The domination of commerce was accompanied by a lowering of moral standards, which roused the terrible wrath of Swift against all stock-jobbers. The most influential writer on the Tory side, he yet stood above all parties, so that his judgments are personal rather than partisan. Particularly he resented the aggressiveness of the commercial spirit and the cunning of the Whigs in associating themselves peculiarly with the Protestant succession. "We have carried on wars", he wrote, "that we might fill the pockets of stock-jobbers. We have revised our Constitution, and by a great and national effort have secured our Protestant succession, only that we may become the tools of a faction who arrogate to themselves the whole merit of what was a national act." Stock-jobbers he detested as men "who find their profit in our woes", and he believed that the Whigs were hostile to the landed interest. The influence of the commercial element on government he regarded as deplorable, since under its inspiration men came "with the spirit of shopkeepers to frame rules for the administration of kingdoms". He deprecated the tendency of the age to send every living soul either into "the warehouse or the workhouse". Government, he warned his countrymen, consisted of something more than "the importation of nutmegs and the curing of herrings".

The trend of constitutional development, with its diminution of the power of the monarch, was little to his taste, and it was his constant plea to bring back the constitution to "the old form". But

1 Swift, J., Works, ed. Scott, W., v, 28.

SWIFT ON COLONISATION

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though his view of history was static, he recognised that Magna Carta was not indefeasible but might be changed by Act of Parliament. The position of the colonies under the constitution he never discussed, but like the majority of his countrymen he probably regarded them as mere possessions. If he had had the power, he would have installed the Anglican Church in a more prominent position in the colonies, and it was one of his complaints against the War of the Spanish Succession that it prevented Queen Anne from extending her care of religion to her American Plantations. Swift was an imperialist in the sense that he recognised the need of Great Britain to plant colonies, but he stripped colonisation of its veil of humanitarianism and exposed the sordid motives and brutality with which it was accompanied. Literature contains no more stinging description of the founding of a modern colony than that given in the last chapter of Gulliver's Travels. "A crew of pirates are driven by a storm, they know not whither; at length a boy discovers land from the topmast; they go on shore to rob and plunder; they see a harmless people, are entertained with kindness; they give the country a new name; they take formal possession of it for their king; they set up a rotten plank or a stone for a memorial; they murder two or three dozen of the natives, bring away a couple more by force for a sample, return home, and get their pardon. Here commences a new dominion, acquired with a title by divine right. Ships are sent with the first opportunity; the natives driven out or destroyed; their princes tortured to discover their gold; a free licence given to all acts of inhumanity and lust; the earth reeking with the blood of its inhabitants: and this execrable crew of butchers employed in so pious an expedition is a modern colony sent to convert and civilise an idolatrous and barbarous people." At a time when material considerations were in the ascendant there was little of exaggeration in such an indictment.

Swift's contempt of traders predisposed him against the mercantile system, and his own experience in Ireland of the working of that system made him irrevocably hostile to it. The ruin of the Irish woollen industry in the interests of Britain aroused his bitter animosity, and in a pamphlet published in 17202 he recommended the Irish people to retaliate on the restrictions on their commerce by a policy of non-importation, a device which was later adopted with some success by the American colonists. He supported Molyneux in his claim that the Irish Parliament possessed the full and sole competence to legislate for Ireland, and the general line he took in opposing British domination was substantially the same as that adopted by the Americans after the passing of the Stamp Act. Thus his advice to the Irish people to use only Irish goods anticipated a 1 Swift, J., Works, ed. Scott, W., xii, 378–9.

2 A Modest Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures, 1720.

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