By: Tony Williams
In
1825, near the end of his life (which, of course, occurred on the fiftieth
anniversary of the Declaration of Independence), Thomas Jefferson wrote a
letter to Henry Lee regarding the intent and sources of the Declaration of
Independence. Jefferson freely
admitted that his lasting contribution to explaining the causes of separation
and defining the purposes of American government was not entirely
original.
This
was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new
principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things
which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense
of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to
justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Neither
aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any
particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the
American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called
for by the occasion. All
its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether
expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary
books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, &c. …[1]
Jefferson was correct: many patriots
were expressing the same argument for natural rights from God and republican self-government
based upon the consent of the governed.
One such essay was written in 1775 by a precocious young New York
college student who had recently emigrated from the West Indies and immediately
joined the patriot cause especially after the Boston Tea Party and repressive
Coercive Acts that violated the liberties of New Englanders.
Tory Anglican minister, Rev. Samuel
Seabury, of New York, printed a scathing attack on the Continental Congress and
questioned the legality of its continental association which banned imports
from Great Britain as Americans had repeatedly done for a decade to protest
British tyranny. He called the
Congress “a venomous brood of scorpions” who threatened to “sting us to death.”[2]
The young man, Alexander Hamilton,
immediately took up his pen and responded to Seabury with a couple of lengthy
pamphlets entitled A Full Vindication of
Congress and Farmer Refuted. Farmer Refuted was an essay that
demonstrated the veracity of Jefferson’s claim that the principles he laid out
in the Declaration of Independence were circulating among patriots throughout
the American colonies.
Hamilton begins his argument by
refuting Seabury’s contention that Hamilton’s state of nature (imaging the
nature of man before government existed) would be a Hobbesian world free of
moral restraint and be a “war of all against all.” Contrarily, Hamilton argues that God created a natural moral
law that was “an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory
upon all mankind.” He quotes
Blackstone (and, indirectly, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and others) for
support that, “No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this.”
So, Hamilton contends that there is a
fabric of morality sown into human nature. He also maintains that human beings are endowed by their
Creator with reason to discover this moral law as well as with natural rights
built into their natures.
Upon
this law depend the natural rights of mankind: the Supreme Being gave existence
to man, together with the means of preserving and beautifying that
existence. He endowed him with
rational faculties, by the help of which to discern and pursue such things . .
. and invested him with an inviolable right to personal liberty and personal
safety.[3]
In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson
wrote that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”[4] Hamilton makes the same argument for
God-given rights with an eloquence rivaling Jefferson:
The
sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or
musty records. They are written,
as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of Divinity
itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.
In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson
also stated that republican self-government was based upon a social contract
(from John Locke) with the purpose of protecting natural rights. “That to secure these rights,
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed.” Hamilton
agrees, quoting Blackstone again, that the “principal aim of society is to
protect individuals in the enjoyment of those absolute rights which were vested
in them by the immutable laws of nature . . . the first and primary end of
human laws is to maintain and regulate these absolute rights of individuals.” In his own words, Hamilton strongly agrees with the
consensual origins of government and its purpose to protect individual
rights.
The
origin of all civil government, justly established, must be a voluntary compact
between the rulers and ruled, and must be liable to such limitations as are
necessary for the security of the absolute rights of the latter; for what
original title can any man, or set of men, have to govern others, except their
own consent?
Hamilton and Jefferson agreed that a
tyrannical government was defined by stripping the people of their natural
rights, thereby violating the very purpose for which it was created. It broke the social contract, and the
people had the right to disobey its laws and rebel. Jefferson stated, “That whenever any form of government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute new government . . . as to them shall seem most
likely to effect their safety and happiness.” In Farmer Refuted,
Hamilton also contends that there is a right of rebellion against tyrannical
government.
To
usurp dominion over a people in their own despite, or to grasp at a more
extensive power than they are willing to intrust, is to violate the law of
nature which gives every man a right to his personal liberty, and can therefore
confer no obligation of obedience.
The Lockean ideas that God endowed all
humans with natural rights embedded into their humanity and that government was
a social compact established to protect those rights but forfeited its right to
popular obedience when it failed to fulfill this purpose was at the
philosophical foundations of the creation of the American republic in
1776. These principles found their
most popular and well-known expression in the Declaration of Independence, but
they had been stated by numerous others including the pamphlets of James Otis
and Richard Bland, George Mason in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and an
essay written in 1775 by a young genius who embraced the principles of the
glorious cause for liberty.
In his later defense of the Constitution
as Publius in Federalist #84,
Hamilton wrote that, “The Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and
to every useful purpose, a BILL OF RIGHTS.”[5] What he meant is that the proposed
Constitution was a written framework of government established in a social
contract of the sovereign people through deliberation with the very purpose of
protecting natural rights. Thereby,
he weaved the seamless ideals of Farmer
Refuted (and the Declaration of Independence) to the Constitution into a
single garment of American self-government.
Or, as Abraham Lincoln put it so
poetically, the Constitution created a republican government to protect the
natural rights in the Declaration of Independence.
The
assertion of that principle, at that time, was the word, “fitly spoken” which
has proved an “apple of gold” to us. The Union, and the Constitution, are the
picture of silver, subsequently framed around it. The picture was made, not to
conceal, or destroy the apple; but to adorn, and preserve it. The picture was
made for the apple–not the apple for the picture. So
let us act, that neither picture, or apple shall ever be blurred, or bruised or
broken.
Tony Williams is the Program Director
of the Washington, Jefferson & Madison Institute, which is hosting a seminar on
Alexander Hamilton and the Constitution to commemorate Constitution Day.
[2] Quoted in
Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (New
York: Penguin Press, 2004).
[3] This, and
all other quotes from Farmer Refuted, can be found in Richard B. Vernier, The
Revolutionary Writings of Alexander Hamilton (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund,
2008); the Ashbrook Center on-line document library at http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-farmer-refuted/;
and the forthcoming WJMI primary source reader with commentary, J.David Gowdy
and Tony Williams, Alexander Hamilton and
American Constitutionalism.
[4] The
Declaration of Independence can be read at http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/declaration-of-independence/.
[5] Federalist
#84 can be found at http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/federalist-no-84/,
and Gowdy and Williams, Alexander
Hamilton and American Constitutionalism.
