The primary
justification for the American Revolution was that it was a rebellion against
tyranny. The American colonists believed
that it was not only their right, but also their duty, to overthrow the British
monarchy, which they felt had engaged in both civil and religious tyranny, or
despotism. As Thomas Jefferson penned in our nation’s Declaration of
Independence, “Governments long established
should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all
experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils
are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they
are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing
invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute
Despotism, it is their right, it is their
duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future
security.” In the writings of Locke and Sidney, among others, the signers of the
Declaration, and the Patriots of 1776, found their political principles and “self-evident”
truths, confirming that the fight for the cause of liberty and self-government
was not only justified, but worth their blood.
John Locke (1632-1704) was an Oxford
scholar, medical researcher and physician, political operative, economist and
ideologue for a revolutionary movement, as well as being one of the great
philosophers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Recognized
as a primary source for the political theory of natural rights behind the Declaration,
Locke defined tyranny in his “Essay Concerning the True, Original, Extent and
End of Civil-Government”:
"Tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which
nobody can have a right to." (Chapter 18, sec. 199).
"[Tyranny is] ... when the governor, however entitled,
makes not the law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not
directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the
satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular
passion." (Chapter 18, sec. 199)
"Whenever the power that is put in any hands for the
government of the people, and the protection of our properties, is applied to
other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass or subdue them to the
arbitrary and irregular commands of those that have it; there it presently
becomes tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many." (Chapter
18, sec. 201)
"The legislature acts against the trust reposed in
them, when they endeavour to invade the property of the subject, and to make
themselves, or any part of the community, masters, or arbitrary disposers of
the lives, liberties or fortunes of the people." (Chapter 19, sec. 221)
When
such conditions exist, wrote Locke, the people are justified in exercising
their power to resume their original God-given liberty, and establish a new
government. He said, “…whenever the Legislators endeavour to take away, and
destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under
Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are
thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience … [Power then] devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their
original Liberty, and, by the Establishment of a new Legislative (such as
they shall think fit) provide for their own Safety
and Security, which is the end for which they are in Society. (Chapter 19, sec. 222). However, as Jefferson and his fellow
signers agreed, Locke states that “… such revolutions happen not upon every
little mismanagement in public affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part,
many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human frailty will be
borne by the people without mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of abuses, prevarications, and artifices, all tending
the same way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel
what they lie under, and see whither they are going, it is not to be wondered
that they should then rouse themselves,
and endeavor to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the end
for which government was at first erected . . . (Ch. 19, sec. 225))(italics show
comparative phraseology used in the Declaration).
Alongside
Locke, in the Revolutionary War period, Algernon Sidney was a popular hero and was
regarded as the “true martyr of liberty.” His writings were well-known to all
of the Founding Fathers, were found with Locke’s two Treatises on Government in
colonial libraries, and were generally known to the American public at the time
of the revolution.
[2] Published in England over twenty-five years
before the revolution, Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government
became the Colonists’ second testator or witness to Locke’s line of reasoning
regarding tyranny. Sidney wrote:
“Those multitudes
that enter into such contracts, and thereupon form civil societies, act
according to their own will: Those that are engaged in none, take their
authority from the law of nature; their rights cannot be limited or diminished
by any one man, or number of men; and consequently whoever does it, or attempts
the doing of it, violates the most sacred laws of God and nature.” II:5:81.
“For if the liberty of one man cannot be limited or
diminished by one, or any number of men [unless by common justice for crimes],
and none can give away the right of another, 'tis plain that the ambition of
one man, or of any faction of citizens, or the mutiny of an army, cannot give a
right to any over the liberties of a whole nation.” II:5:82.
“They who admit of no participants
in power, and acknowledge no rule but their own will, set up an interest in
themselves against that of their own people, lose their affections, which is
their most important treasure, and incur their hatred, from whence results
their greatest danger.” II:30:242.
However, unlike Locke, Sidney
adds an important dimension to the argument, stating that that religion and
virtue are the springs of good government, and those leaders who are the “enemy
to virtue and religion” are also “an enemy of mankind.” Sidney writes, "Virtue is the
dictate of reason, or the remains of divine light, by which men are made
beneficent and beneficial to each other. Religion proceeds from the same
spring; and tends to the same end; and the good of mankind so entirely depends
upon the two, that no people ever enjoyed anything worth desiring that was not
the product of them; and whatsoever any have suffered that [which] deserves to
be abhorred and feared, has proceeded either from the defect of these, or the
wrath of God against them. If any [leader] therefore has been an enemy to
virtue and religion, he must also have been an enemy to mankind, and most
especially to the people under him." II:27:212.
In this regard, the revolutionary war may be viewed as
much a battle against “the corruption of 18th century British high
society,”
as it was a rebellion against financial oppression and excessive taxes. While the Founders and American colonists
were very concerned with their civil liberty and economic freedom, demanding
“no taxation without representation,” they were equally (or even more) concerned
with their religious liberty, particularly in preserving their rights of
individual conscience and public morality. Historian Edmund Morgan suggests that “the [revolutionary]
movement in all its phases, from the resistance against Parliamentary taxation
in the 1760’s to the establishment of a national government in the 1790’s … was
affected, not to say guided, by a set of values inherited from the age of Puritanism,”
which he calls collectively the “Puritan Ethic.”
A careful reading of the grievances
of the thirteen colonies in the Declaration evidences both economic and
political, as well as moral causes for declaring their independence from Great
Britain, including including “works of
death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty
& Perfidy.”
Even after the war was concluded, and
the Constitution was signed September 17, 1787, the citizens of the several
states were still wary of tyranny and of giving the new federal government too
much power. One delegate to the Constitutional Debates for Ratification in
North Carolina warned about the concession of excessive power to rulers and the
risk of tyranny:
“Mr. Chairman, I
wonder that these gentlemen, learned in the law, should quibble upon words. I
care not whether it be called a compact, agreement, covenant, bargain, or what.
Its intent is a concession of power, on the part of the people, to their
rulers. We know that private interest governs mankind
generally. Power belongs originally to the people; but if rulers be not
well guarded, that power may be usurped from them. People ought to be cautious in giving away
power. These gentlemen say there is no occasion for general
rules: every one has one for himself. Every one has an
unalienable right of thinking for himself. There can be no inconvenience from
laying down general rules. If we give away more power than we ought, we put
ourselves in the situation of a man who puts on an iron glove, which he can
never take off till he breaks his arm. Let
us beware of the iron glove of tyranny. Power is generally taken from the
people by imposing on their understanding, or by fetters [shackles].” --William Goudy, July
21, 1788.
May we learn from the lessons of history, the writings of Locke
and Sidney, and the Declaration of Independence itself, and “beware of the iron
glove of tyranny.”
