Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
commercial restraint, as from taxation, for the purpose of revenue,
I pronounce them futile, frivolous, and groundless.[252]
How characteristic of Pitt is the shrewd purpose, covered over with
pretentious rhetoric, to seize the imperialistic substance of trade
control for the London merchants, and graciously yield in the name of
liberty, the shadow of taxation!
Discussion of abstract rights interested Dickinson no more than it did
Pitt; but he cared greatly for English liberty, by which he meant the
rights of propertied gentlemen recognized by the British constitution,
for which his ancestors had struggled. He had no wish to enlarge
those rights, for he believed they were adequate to the well-being
of Englishmen. No thought of a republican form of government crossed
his mind. He had no sympathy with democracy; he believed in a “mixed
government” as exemplified in the British system; and while he was not
an outspoken advocate of an American peerage, he would have approved of
its institution. Like so many upper-class Americans, he was English as
well as colonial; he could not conceive that the heritage of England
to her sons was circumscribed by geographical lines, and he habitually
thought and spoke in terms of the British Empire, and never in local
terms. What he most feared was a misunderstanding that would widen
into rupture. There is more than a hint of the doctrine of passive
resistance in his counsel of moderation:
The cause of _liberty_ is a cause of too much dignity to be sullied
by turbulence and tumult. It ought to be maintained in a manner
suitable to her nature. Those who engage in it, should breathe a
sedate, yet fervent spirit, animating them to actions of prudence,
justice, modesty, bravery, humanity, and magnanimity.... I hope,
my dear countrymen, that you will, in every colony, be on your
guard against those, who may at any time endeavour to stir you
up, under pretense of patriotism, to any measures disrespectful
to our Sovereign and our mother country. Hot, rash, disorderly
proceedings, injure the reputation of a people, as to wisdom,
valour, and virtue, without procuring them the least benefit. I
pray god, that he may be pleased to inspire you and your posterity,
to the latest ages, with a spirit of which I have an idea, that
I find a difficulty to express. To express it in the best manner
I can, I mean a spirit, that shall so guide you, that it will be
impossible to determine whether an _American’s_ character is most
distinguishable, for its loyalty to his Sovereign, his duty to
his mother country, his love of freedom, or his affection for his
native soil.[253]
In these earlier years of the controversy Dickinson seems to have
remained placidly unaware of the sordid realities of parliamentary
huckstering, the details of which Franklin was daily noting in his
letters. He seems honestly to have believed in the justice and good
intentions of the King and his ministers, and he felt little sympathy
for the New England malcontents. But as the debate dragged on, and the
English politicians in whose rectitude he had professed confidence,
clearly were playing into the hands of British trading interests, going
so far as to seek to bolster up the falling fortunes of the East India
Company at the expense of colonial merchants, he was impelled to speak
with plebeian warmth. His _Two Letters on the Tea Tax_, written in
November, 1773, are as vigorous in denunciation as Samuel Adams could
have penned.
_Five Ships_, loaded with +TEA+, on their Way to _America_, and
this with a View not only to _enforce_ the _Revenue Act_, but to
_establish_ a _Monopoly_ for the _East-India Company_, who have
espoused the Cause of the Ministry; and hope to repair their
broken Fortunes by the Ruin of _American_ freedom and Liberty! No
Wonder the Minds of the People are exasperated ... to a degree of
Madness.... Pray have you heard, whether _they_ and the _Ministers_
have not _made a Property_ of +US+, and whether +WE+, our +WIVES+
and +CHILDREN+, together, with the +HARD EARNED FRUITS OF OUR
LABOUR+, are not _made over_ to this almost _bankrupt Company_,
to augment their Stock, and to _repair_ their _ruined Fortunes?_
Justice seems to have forsaken the old World.... The Rights of
free States and Cities are swallowed up in Power. Subjects are
considered as Property.... Are we ... to be given up to the
Disposal of the _East-India Company?_.... Their conduct in Asia,
for some Years past, has given ample Proof, how little they regard
the Laws of Nations, the Rights, Liberties, or Lives of Men. They
have levied War, excited Rebellions, dethroned lawful Princes,
and sacrificed Millions for the Sake of Gain ... hackneyed as
they are in Murders, Rapine, and Cruelty, [they] would sacrifice
the Lives of Thousands to preserve their Trash, and enforce their
measures.[254]
The ideal of a beneficent British Empire, extending English freedom
through the world, appealed to the imagination of Dickinson; but the
reality of British imperialism, “hackneyed in murders, rapine and
cruelty,” seeking to extend its exploitation to America, striking at
the trade interests of Philadelphia and his merchant friends, was
enough to disturb his legal calm. What fate awaited American rights
and liberties if the London imperialists were permitted to prey upon
them, he began to comprehend. The bones would be picked clean, and
America would become another India. It was the deepening fear of such
a possibility that sapped Dickinson’s loyalty, and reconciled him to
independence after the thing was done.
The later years of Dickinson were happier than those of the middle
period. The conservative reaction that set in with the conclusion of
peace carried the emerging party of nationalism back to the position
of Whiggery, which Dickinson had tenaciously occupied. The leaders of
that party were coming to agree on the necessity for a closer alignment
in defense of property rule, and they gladly accepted Dickinson as
an ally and co-worker. He was chosen a member of the Constitutional
Convention, and there found a congenial audience for the exposition of
his political principles. In the debates he spoke as a high Federalist
who would like to go further toward the model of the British system
than the state of the public mind rendered expedient. A strong and
stable government, he believed, depended upon a just balance of king,
lords, and commons.
A limited monarchy he considered as _one_ of the best governments
in the world. He was not certain that the same blessings were
derivable from any other form. It was certain that equal blessings
had never yet been derived from any of the republican forms. A
limited monarchy, however, was out of the question. The spirit of
the times, the state of our affairs, forbade the experiment, if it
were desirable. Was it possible, moreover, in the nature of things,
to introduce it, even if these objects were less insuperable? A
house of nobles was essential to such a government. Could these
be created by a breath, or by a stroke of the pen? No. They were
the growth of ages, and could only arise under a complication of
circumstances none of which existed in this country. But, though a
form the most perfect, _perhaps_, in itself, be unattainable, we
must not despair.[255]
Granted the necessity of a republican form of government, the question
so vital to Whiggery remained, how could property secure and maintain
a commanding position in the government? The reply was obvious; it
must be through limitation of suffrage rights. If the vote could be
restricted to property holders, even though small freeholders were
included, the common rights of property would be secure.
Mr. Dickinson had a very different idea of the tendency of
vesting the rights of suffrage in the freeholders of the Country.
He considered them as the best guardians of liberty; And the
restriction of the right to them as a necessary defence agst. the
dangerous influence of those multitudes without property & without
principle, with which our country like all others, will in time
abound.[256]
A further safeguard offered in the proper constitution of the Senate.
As a representative of a small state, Dickinson was concerned that the
several states should enjoy a parity of power in the upper house, as he
was concerned that the Senate should provide a safeguard for property
interests. It must be rendered secure from factional unrest and
democratic aggression. He was very likely at one with his friend George
Clymer, in holding that “a representative of the people is appointed
to think _for_ and not _with_ his constituents”; and to the end that
the right persons should be chosen to do the national thinking, he
laid down the principle that, “In the formation of the Senate, we
ought to carry it through such a refining process as will assimilate
it as nearly as may be to the House of Lords in England.”[257]
Such expressions throw sufficient light upon Dickinson’s opinions
of democratic government, but they do not prepare us for a curious
inconsistency that marked his last years, namely, his friendship for
Jefferson and his sympathy with the Jeffersonian program. The reasons
for this strange shift are not clear, but it is generally attributed
to his fear of consolidation that might end in subordinating the small
states to the greater ones. It certainly was not due to any sympathy
with agrarianism.
Dickinson was in no sense a serious political thinker. He was a
cultivated lawyer who defended with skill and grace a ready-made
philosophy, unconcerned about the social significance of that
philosophy. Scarcely anywhere else in his writings does he show to such
poor advantage as in the nine _Letters of Fabius_ written in defense
of the Constitution during the great debate. There is in them not
a single illuminating comment. His most anxious concern is shown in
his reply to George Mason’s direct charge, that the “government will
commence in a moderate aristocracy; it is at present impossible to
foresee whether it will, in its operation, produce a monarchy, or a
corrupt oppressive aristocracy.”[258] After searching the records of
the past he concludes that “the uniform tenor of history ... holds up
the _licentiousness_ of the people, and _turbulent temper_ of some of
the states, as _the only causes_ to be dreaded, not the conspiracies
of federal officers.”[259] The argument had been somewhat staled by
Federalistic repetition, but Dickinson soberly accepted it as sound
historical interpretation. His cleverest defense he found in an
appeal to the analogy of the British constitution, which has only one
democratic branch, and that “diseased” by inadequate representation, to
withstand the power and influence of king and lords; if English liberty
has been thus safeguarded, what danger can threaten America with “a
constitution and government, every branch of which is so extremely
popular”?[260]
However greatly the writings of Dickinson, from the Farmer’s Letters
to the _Letters of Fabius_, may have appealed to Whiggish lawyers, it
is inconceivable that they should have appealed to the rank and file
of Americans. As an eighteenth-century gentleman he little understood
the spirit of liberalism that was stirring in many minds; he did not
sympathize with the turbulent forces that were driving towards a
different social order; and in consequence his technical arguments
seem today curiously old-fashioned. Franklin’s common sense kept him
a realist; but Dickinson’s loyalty made him an idealist, incapable of
understanding current economic forces either in England or America. The
colonial was so ingrained in his habits of thought that it was hard for