Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
spiritual son of a notable line of bishops and priests who upheld the
royal prerogative through evil times and good, throwing the august
sanction of religion about the monarchical state. A fearless, capable,
outspoken man was this English-born southerner, taking counsel of
his own thought, not over-tolerant of those who differed with him,
holding himself _in loco parentis_ to his parishioners, and exacting
obedience from them. He was another Increase Mather, with the same love
of domination, the same directness of purpose and strength of will. A
man of conspicuous parts and equally conspicuous position: not only a
clergyman, but a gentleman of affairs, owner of a large plantation and
many slaves, concerned with public business and a volunteer statesman:
a sort of unofficial adviser and secretary to draft provincial laws.
Above all of independent mind. He would truckle to no man, and he
subjected the opinions of his neighbors to the same scrutiny that he
gave his own. For the popular orator and the demagogue he had frank
contempt, and mass prejudices and mob power held no terrors for him.
There was both courage and futility in his free, outspoken career.
He refused to be intimidated or turned aside by popular disfavor.
“For more than six months I preached, when I did preach, with a pair
of loaded pistols lying on the cushions; having given notice that if
any one attempted, what had long been threatened, to drag me out of
the pulpit, I should think myself justified in repelling violence by
violence.” One day he promptly knocked down a burly blacksmith who
had been set on him, but there came a time when his church was filled
with armed men, and his friends, fearing for his life, held him back
forcibly from mounting the pulpit. That episode marked the end of his
career in America. He had plainly become obsolete, and he was driven
home to his native England. There as an old man, he published in 1797
thirteen sermons, preached in America between 1763 and 1775, with
an historical preface, under the title, _A View of the Causes and
Consequences of the American Revolution_, and dedicated to his old
neighbor and friend, General Washington.
The political philosophy of Jonathan Boucher, as elaborated in
these discourses, is frank and unequivocal. It is the voice of
seventeenth-century Cavalier England, speaking to an alien people, bred
up in another philosophy of government. Church and state, the Bible and
the British constitution, the divine authority of God and the divine
authority of the _status quo_, have got themselves curiously fused--and
confused--in the mind of this disciple of Laud. It was the result
not of ignorance but of conviction. When the revolutionary movement
began to make a stir about him, the parish priest took the situation
seriously and set about preparing himself to cope with it. Before then
he had been no student of political theory, but now he turned to his
books. “With sincerity in my heart, and my Bible in my hand,” he said,
“I sat down to explore the truth ... to read and study what had been
collected and laid down on the subject of government by writers ...
who got their materials ... from the only pure sources of information,
the law of God, and the law of the land.”[231] The restriction in his
choice of writers is suggestive of his bias; it eliminated at one
stroke the main body of political speculation, not only the English
thinkers of the preceding century, but the continental followers of the
natural-rights school. Actually, however, Boucher did not limit himself
so narrowly, for he refers frequently to Locke, and he was fairly
familiar with the main doctrines of the revolutionary philosophy. But
his most cherished discovery was Sir Robert Filmer’s _Patriarcha_,
and having digested Filmer’s quaint theory, thenceforth he remained a
confirmed patriarchist. The absurd jumble of Hebraic precedent and Tory
prejudice which Filmer had laboriously put together and which Locke had
knocked to pieces, was wholly convincing to this belated advocate of
divine right, who proceeded to wipe the dust off the precious volume
and expound its doctrines to an amazed congregation.
The single and sacred duty of the subject, Jonathan Boucher was
convinced, is faithful obedience to the powers that are set over him.
Those powers derive from God and are instituted for the subject’s good.
It follows, therefore, that the unpardonable sin is rebellion against
lawfully constituted authority. “The doctrine of _obedience for
conscience sake_,” he asserted, “is ... the great _cornerstone_ of all
good government.”[232] With Daniel Leonard he makes much of it, but he
appeals rather to the sanctions of religion than to the law.
Obedience to Government is every man’s duty, because it is every
man’s interest; but it is particularly incumbent on Christians,
because ... it is enjoined by the positive commands of God....
If the form of government under which the good providence of God
has been pleased to place us be mild and free, it is our duty to
enjoy it with gratitude and with thankfulness.... If it be less
indulgent and less liberal than in reason it ought to be, still it
is our duty not to disturb the peace of the community, by becoming
refractory and rebellious subjects, and _resisting the ordinances
of God_.[233]
Those great and good men, who, _like wise master-builders_,
have from time to time so _fitly framed together_ our glorious
Constitution, well knew that _other sure foundation no man could
lay_ than ... obedience, not only _for wrath_, but _for conscience
sake_.[234]
Because this spirit of obedience was openly flouted in America, where
every influence made for rough individual liberty, Jonathan Boucher
feared for the future. Loose principles were abroad, notions of popular
sovereignty under the majority will, that must give “rise to a low and
unworthy opinion of government,” unless the people were recalled to
their duty. Particularly dangerous, he thought, was “that loose notion
respecting government, which has long been disseminated among the
people at large with incredible industry, namely, that all government
is the mere creature of the people, and may therefore be tampered with,
altered, new-modelled, set up or pulled down, just as tumultuous crowds
of the most disorderly persons in the community (who on such occasions
are always so forward to call themselves _the people_) may happen in
some giddy moments of overheated ardour to determine.”[235]
The unhappy results of such evil principles Boucher saw spread
through America. With the insidious undermining of respect for
law and government, the vicious conception of republicanism made
its appearance. “Everything in America had a republican aspect,”
he commented in after years; and he agreed with Bernard that “the
splitting America into many small governments weakened the governing
power, and strengthened that of the people.”[236] If Parliament had
been wise enough to consolidate government in America, drawing it to a
single head, and investing it with dignity and authority, the country
would not have become, like revolutionary France, “a mean and odious
republic.” As a minister and a loyal British subject, Jonathan Boucher
would not seduce the American people “by any flowery panegyrics on
liberty. Such panegyrics are the productions of ancient heathens and
modern patriots: nothing of the kind is to be met with in the Bible,
nor in the Statute Book. The word _liberty_, as meaning civil liberty,
does not, I believe, occur in all the Scriptures.”[237]
To respect the laws, is to respect liberty in the only rational
sense in which the term can be used; for liberty consists in
subserviency to law. “Where there is no law,” says Mr. Locke,
“there is no freedom.”... True liberty, then, is a liberty to do
everything that is right, and the being restrained from doing
anything that is wrong.[238]
The evils which flow from disrespect for authority carry much further
than the unsettling of the political _status quo_; they end by
overturning the entire social order. If any group or class rejects
the divine plan according to which God has set each in its due place,
society as a whole is involved in strife that may lapse into anarchy.
It was an unhappy scene, prophesying an unhappier future, that the
minister beheld in contemporary America.
There never was a time when a whole people were so little governed
by settled good principles.... Both employers and the employed,
much to their mutual shame and inconvenience, no longer live
together with anything like attachment and cordiality on either
side; and the laboring classes, instead of regarding the rich as
their guardians, patrons, and benefactors, now look on them as so
many overgrown colossuses whom it is no demerit in them to wrong.
A still more general ... topic of complaint is, that the lower
classes, instead of being industrious, frugal, and orderly (virtues
so peculiarly becoming their station in life) are become idle,
improvident, and dissolute.[239]
With social morality thus dangerously undermined, the Americans were
a natural prey to demagogues, who filled the land with their clamor
of patriotism and liberty. The situation in Virginia was peculiarly
dangerous by reason of long-standing debts to English merchants which
the planters were unable to pay; they found themselves in consequence,
impaled on the horns of an unhappy dilemma, “to be loyal and be ruined,
or to rebel and be damned.”[240]
Instructed by the colonial troubles, Jonathan Boucher elaborated a
theory of the true origin and purpose of government, a theory taken
straight out of Filmer, which he expands thus:
As soon as there were some to be governed, there were also some to
govern.... The first father was the first king: and ... it was thus
that all government originated, and monarchy is the most ancient
form.[241]
The glory of God is much concerned, that there should be good
government in the world: it is, therefore, the uniform doctrine
of the Scriptures, that it is under the deputation and authority
of God alone that _kings reign and princes decree justice_. Kings
and princes (which are only other words for supreme magistrates)
were doubtless created and appointed, not so much for their own
sakes, as for the sake of the people committed to their charge: yet
they are not, therefore, the creatures of the people. So far from
deriving their authority from any supposed consent or suffrage of
men, they receive their commission from Heaven; they receive it
from God, the source and original of all power.[242]
Instituted by God and functioning under divine sanction, government
becomes, therefore, a divine instrument, for the security of which He
is greatly concerned: “Everything our blessed Lord either said or did,
pointedly tended to discourage the disturbing a settled government.”
“Unless we are good subjects, we cannot be good Christians.” Jesus
“thought it would be better, both for Judea in particular, and for
the world in general, that ... the people should not be distracted
by a revolution, and ... that there should be no precedent to which
revolutionists might appeal.” “The only very intolerable grievance in
government is, when men allow themselves to disturb and destroy the
peace of the world, by vain attempts to render that perfect, which
the laws of our nature have ordained to be imperfect.” “To suffer
nobly indicates more greatness of mind than can be shown by acting
valiantly.”[243] Jonathan Boucher was the high Tory of the Tory cause
in America. He refused to strike his flag to the pirate craft of
republicanism; he would not truckle to newfangled notions; but stood up