The American Revolution: Against Tyranny As Dedication to Truth and Creation

The American Revolution: Against Tyranny As Dedication to Truth and Creation¹

To understand America, you have to understand the American Revolution. To understand the American Revolution, you have to understand the events leading up to the Revolution. To understand the events leading up to the Revolution, you have to understand the legislation passed by Parliament. To understand Parliament, you have to understand the English Constitution. To help understand all of that you should look at the doctrinal or ideological battles of the time and that means reviewing a series of pamphlets written by some of the shrewdest minds in the British Empire.

These exchanges reveal a serious failing of British political organization, one that could not peacefully accommodate the changing social, geopolitical and economic realities. At the heart of the matter was the concentration of political power, and hence economic might, in the hands of a relatively few landowners. The American colonies had always been thirteen large business enterprises separated from Great Britain by thousands of miles of oceans. The colonies’ primary purpose was to provide raw materials for British manufacturing industries which then manufactured the goods by which to increase the wealth of Britain. Parliament’s legislation, to include the Navigation Acts and the series of laws that originated during the French and Indian War, were all intended, if not also designed, to maintain the power and wealth of the landed elite in Great. It has been called a mercantilist system but it neither properly accounted for the rise of a new people nor was open to innovation. The American Revolution was rejection of tyranny and a commitment to cooperation with God in creation. The American Revolution set in motion an important phase in the development of humanity’s proper end.

The Navigation Acts – Making America A Colony To Be Exploited

Beginning in 1650, Parliament passed laws called the Navigation Acts.² These Acts served to restrict with whom the colonists could trade while at the same time making England the center of the English economic system. All goods going to the colonies from Europe had to pass through England first, and all raw materials from the colonies had to first go to England. In addition, there were restrictions on things like the composition of ships’ crews, reporting requirements, carriage requirements for manufactured goods, bonding requirements. Ordinances passed by colonial legislatures that ran afoul of the Navigation Acts were null and void, and disputes under the Navigation Acts were handled by the Admiralty Courts which provided far fewer procedural safeguards than the civil courts. The Acts were adjusted over time and they were not always well enforced. The tenure of Prime Minister Robert Walpole from 1721 to 1742 was one marked by laxity in the enforcement of the Navigation Acts, and may have helped to set the stage for colonial resistance to later acts brought about by Prime Minister George Grenville (1763 to 1765) and others as the colonists had grown comfortable with this laxity. But the laxity served another purpose – it give some flexibility to a system that was being increasingly utilized for the purpose of shifting costs from a landed, controlling, plutocratic minority in England. Colonists had to contend with structural problems that made it difficult for them to comply with the increasingly harsh regulations from London. Yet, the reality was, and always had been, that the colonies in America existed to generate wealth for England, or more properly, to make money for the English ruling and plutocratic class.

One of the most important people to observe this situation was Thomas Pownall. Born in 1722, he attended Trinity College from whence he graduated in 1744 with a bachelor’s degree. He entered the Board of Trade that same year, and in doing so joined his brother John, with whom Thomas was close, and who served in a variety of increasingly important positions at the Board of Trade. The Board of Trade was the brain, the nerve center, of the British colonial empire and ultimately the one agency most responsible for Britain’s economic might. In 1753, Thomas took an assignment as Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey and the following year attended the Albany Conference at which he met Benjamin Franklin and with whom he became lifelong friends.³ From 1757 until late 1759, Pownall was the governor of Massachusetts, and after that was appointed Governor of South Carolina. He never went to South Carolina, instead returning to England where he made a name for himself discussing the colonies. It was there that he would become a Member of Parliament, argue strenuously on behalf of the colonies and their rights, and even collaborate – or perhaps conspire – with Ben Franklin and David Barclay to bring about the American Revolution. But that was at least a dozen years in the future and in 1764 he was busy describing the situation in the colonies with the possibilities for trade that they presented. In that same year he authored and anonymously published a book, which became quite popular, entitled The Administration of the Colonies.⁴

To begin, Pownall recognized the enormous potential of commerce as well as its vast importance to Great Britain and all other countries. He wrote:

“But since the people of Europe have formed their communication with the commerce of Asia; have been for some ages past, settling on all sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and in America, have been possessing every seat and channel of commerce, and have planted and raised that to an interest which has taken root—since they now feel the powers which derive from this, and are extending it to, and combining it with others; the spirit of commerce will become that predominant power, which will form the general policy and rule the powers of Europe: and hence a grand commercial interest, the basis of great commercial interest, the basis of a great commercial dominion under the present…circumstances of the world, will be formed and arise. The rise and forming of this commercial interest is what precisely constitutes the present crisis.”⁵

Power between countries would ultimately be based on the prosperity that commerce provided. Pownall was hopeful that Great Britain would rise to the occasion and create a commercial empire unrivaled:

“The great minister [Prime Minister George Grenville], whose good fortune shall have placed him at this crisis, in the administration of these great and important interests – will certainly adopt the system which thus lies in nature, and which by natural means alone, if not perverted, must lead to a general dominion, founded in the general interest and prosperity of the commercial world, must build up this country to an extent of power, to a degree of glory and prosperity, beyond the example of any age that has yet passed….”⁶

That required the “forming of some general system of administration”⁷ so as to make the British Empire stronger. That in turn required taking into account the challenges presented by and encountered by the colonists. First, the “idea of colonies, and their special circumstances”⁸ were to be considered as Pownall explained:

“In the establishing of colonies, a nation creates people whose labour, being applied to new objects of produce and manufacture, opens new channels of commerce, by which they not only live in ease and affluence within themselves, but, while they are laboring under and for the mother country, (for there all their external profits center) become an increasing nation, of appropriate and good customers to the mother country. These not only increase our manufactures, increase our exports, but extend our commerce; and if duly administered, extend the nation, its powers, and its dominions, to wherever these people extend their settlements.”⁹

Essential to the system is to keep England as the hub, if you will. The colonies must remain the spokes and there “must be guarded against having, or forming, any principle of coherence with each other above that, whereby they cohere in this center; having no other principle of intercommunication between each other, than that by which they are in a joint communion with Great Britain as the common center of all.”¹⁰

Pownall recognized that the Navigation Acts held a “general principle of the laws of trade regulating the colony trade” which is “that the colonies shall not, on one hand, be supplied with anything but from a British market, nor export their produce anywhere but to a British market.” With some exception, the “colonies shall import all their supplies from Britain, and carry all their produce to Britain.”¹¹

There were benefits to loosening the strictures on American trade, and hence effecting some changes in the Navigation Acts. Pownall explained:

“If now, instead of confining this market for the colonies to Britain only, which is a partial and defective application of the general principle whereon the act of Navigation is founded; this colony trade was made, amidst other courses of trade, an occasion of establishing British markets even in other countries, the true use would be derived to the general interest from these advantageous circumstances, while in particular the colonies and the mother country would be mutually accommodated.”¹²

But the colonists had problems, and these problems centered on revenues. That in turn rested on a shortage of currency. The mother country, England, was draining the colonies of money, a situation that was exacerbated by the fact that the colonies were not allowed to coin money:

“Here it will be necessary to remark, that, while administration is taking measures to secure and establish those duties which the subject ought to pay to government, it much behoves the wisdom of that administration to have care that the subject hath some species of money out of which to pay.

“The British American colonies have not, within themselves, the means of making money or coin. They cannot acquire it from Great Britain, the balance of trade being against them. The returns of those branches of commerce, in which they are permitted to trade to any other part of Europe, are but barely sufficient to pay this balance.– By the present act of navigation, they are prohibited from trading with the colonies of any other nations, so that there remains nothing but a small branch of African trade, and the scrambling profits of an undescribed traffic. To supply them with silver. However, the fact is, and matters have been so managed, that the general currency of the colonies used to be in Spanish and Portuguese coin. This supplied the internal circulation of their home business, and always finally came to England in payments for what the colonists exported from thence. If the act of navigation should be carried into such rigorous execution as to cut off this supply of a silver currency to the colonies, the thoughts of administration should be turned to the devising some means of supplying the colonies with money of some sort or other: and in this view, it may not be improper to take up here the consideration of some general principles, on which the business of money and a currency depends.

“Silver, by the general consent of mankind, has become a DEPOSITE, which is, THE COMMON MEASURE of commerce….The truth established and rightly understood, it will be seen that the state of trade in the colonies is the best, and that administration of the colonies the wisest, which tends to introduce this only true and real currency amongst them. And in this view I must wish to see the Spanish silver flowing into our colonies, with an ample and uninterrupted stream, as I know that that stream, after it hat watered and supplied the regions which it passeth through, must, like every other stream, pay its tribute to its mother ocean: As this silver, to speak without a metaphor, after it hath passed through the various uses of it in the colonies, doth always come to, and center finally in Great Britain.”¹³

Without currency, in particular silver, the colonies were being drained, starved, of money. Money, as you may recall from your economics classes, is both a store of value, and a medium of exchange. It is something that is needed to grow economies and, therefore it is a useful tool in making the land productive and industry useful. Money is an important tool by which man can participate in creation with God. The Americans were being denied this tool, and their productivity was stifled. While this was just one of the many policies the British instituted to retard American fruitfulness, it was one of the more serious. Other policies, as we shall see later, included restricting western settlement, limiting manufacturing, and destroying businesses.

Pownall wrote

“An increasing country of settlers and traders must always have the balance of trade against them, for this very reason, because they are increasing and improving, because they must be continually wanting further supplies which their present circumstances will neither furnish nor pay for:–And for this very reason also, they must always labour under a decreasing silver currency, though their circumstances require an increasing one…”¹⁴

Pownall’s suggestion was that “On the first view of these resources, it will be matter of serious consideration, whether government should establish a mint and coinage specially appropriated for the use of the colonies; and on what basis this should be established…”¹⁵ Along with a mint, establishing a bank was one of Pownall’s recommendations as there were none such in the colonies, a fact he alluded to when writing “a bank in the colonies, which is quite a new and untried measure…”¹⁶

Another solution was offered by Pennsylvania. Pownall explained:

“In the common cursory view of things, our politicians…are apt to think, that a country which has the balance of trade against it, and is continually drained of its silver currency, must be in a declining state; but there we may see that the progressive improvements of a commercial country of settlers, must necessarily have the balance of trade against them, and a decreasing silver currency; that their continual want of money and other materials to carry on their trade and business must engage them in debt – But that those very things applied to their improvements, will in return not only pay those debts, but create also a surplus to be still carried forward to further and further improvements. In a country under such circumstances, money lent upon interest to settlers, creates money. Paper money thus lent upon interest will create gold and silver in principal, while the interest becomes a revenue that pays the charges of government. This currency is the true Pactolian stream which converts all into gold that is washed by it. It is on this principle that the wisdom and virtue of the assembly of Pensilvania established, under the sanction of government, an office for the emission of paper money by loan….”¹⁷

Pownall held an acute understanding of the importance of good monetary policy. He could very well be a member of the Federal Reserve today. He wrote

“If a nation has a quantity of money equal to its commerce, the lands, commodities, and labour of the people shall bear a middle price. This state is the best, and tends most to enrich the people, and make their happiness lasting. If they should mint paper to pass for money, the increase of quantity in the former will lessen the value of the latter, will raise the price of lands and rends, and make the labour of such a people, and the commodities, be rated higher than in other places. Men’s fortunes will rise in nominal, not real value; from whence idleness, expense and poverty shall follow. Under these circumstances, their real money, instead of their commodities, shall be exported from them. Here the paper will be their bane and destruction. But if their commerce, or uses of money, exceed the quantity of it, their lands, labour, and commodities shall sink beneath their worth in other countries. Few purchases of lands will be found in regard to the superior profit that must attend the use of money in trade: the wealthy merchant shall b at the head of affairs, with few competitions…The wealthy only shall accumulate riches, the commonwealth shall decline, and in time farmers and artisans must desert the place for another, where their labour shall be better rewarded. Here the use of paper-money will shake off the fetters and clogs of the poor. Merchants will multiply; they will raise the price of labour, and of the fruits of the earth, and thereby the value of lands. An equal distribution of gain and profit shall succeed, and destroy the partial accumulations of wealth.”¹⁸

Taxes drained the currency that the colonies had and made them less productive. The colonists knew this, and while taxation was an issue, the real issue was a lack of currency. Lack of currency retards economic development and for America, that had a serious, negative impact on development of the resources of this land. This meant, in Natural Law terms, retarding the mandate of provident destination and this lead to suffering for the nations of the world. In addition to the taxes levied by the Parliament, additional administrative requirements were established that complicated and made more difficult economic development of the Americans who were already restricted in what they could manufacture and with whom they could trade. The question of taxation – which was framed as an issue of taking property – raised the ideological discussion that implicated the English Constitution, and made clear that there was a new people with a new mission, a new mandate, from the Creator. This ideological discussion was essential for setting out the essential mission or purpose of America which is to serve God by rejecting tyranny and to bring the world together by cooperating in creation with all that entails.