Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
precedent and authority. If he could base the American grievance on
the Whig doctrine of representation, he might rally the English Whigs
to the American cause. This was sound constitutionalism, and Adams was
too shrewd not to profess the highest respect for the glorious British
constitution. “You know there is a charm in the word ‘constitutional,’”
he slyly suggested to a fellow colonial; and such respect, not to say
veneration, he trumpeted to the world, until it may well have seemed
that he did protest too much.
In his first line of defense Adams was on familiar ground, and he
was supported by the authority of Locke, whose opinions were sacred
in the eyes of English Whigs. What use he made of him is evident;
“the immortal Locke,” he calls him at one time, and at another, “one
of the greatest men that ever wrote.” He had been a disciple of
Locke since his first interest in political theory, and he thought
and spoke habitually in terms of the natural-rights school. It is
sometimes asserted that the appeal to natural rights was made only
after the breakdown of the colonial argument drawn from constitutional
practice.[263] But as early as 1765 Adams based his argument on Locke
in assuming the economic origin of government, and the inevitable
connection between property and parliamentary representation.[264]
How heavily he leaned on the natural-rights school appears again
and again; particularly in a brilliant series of articles, signed
“Candidus,” written in 1771, where he paraphrases the _Second Treatise
on Government_:
Mr. Locke has often been quoted in the present dispute ... and very
much to our purpose. His reasoning is so forcible, that no one has
ever attempted to confute it. He holds that “the preservation of
property is the end of government, and that for which men enter
into society. It therefore necessarily supposes and requires
that the people should have property, without which they must be
suppos’d to lose that by entering into society, which was the _end_
for which they enter’d into it; too gross an absurdity for any man
to own. Men therefore _in society having property_, they have such
right to the goods, which by the law of the community are theirs,
that no body hath the right to take _any part_ of their subsistence
from them without their consent: Without this, they could have no
property at all. For I truly can have no property in that which
another can by right take from me when he pleases, against my
consent. Hence, says he, it is a mistake to think that the supreme
power of any commonwealth can dispose of the estates of the subject
arbitrarily, or _take any part_ of them at pleasure. The prince or
senate can never have a power to take to themselves the whole or
any part of the subjects’ property without _their own_ consent;
for this would be in effect to have no property at all.”--This is
the reasoning of that great and good man. And is not our own case
exactly described by him?[265]
This was excellent doctrine in the eyes of the English Whigs, and
it explains in part the support which Pitt and Camden lent to the
colonial cause. But in his second line of defense, namely, that the
English constitution was a fundamental charter of the natural rights
of the subject, and that a statute which disregarded those natural
rights was null and void, Adams was on less tenable ground. Every
attempt to establish such a principle, whether that fundamental law
be conceived of as the “law of God and nature,” special compacts like
the Magna Charta, or the Common Law, has met with failure in English
constitutional practice. Nevertheless Adams made use of the argument,
derived, very likely, from Coke.
Magna Charta itself is in substance but a constrained Declaration
or proclamation, and promulgation in the name of King, Lords, and
Commons, of the sense the latter had of their original, inherent,
indefeazible natural Rights, as also those of free Citizens equally
perdurable with the other. That great author, that great jurist,
and even that Court writer Mr. Justice Blackstone holds that this
recognition was justly obtained of King John sword in hand: and
peradventure it must be one day sword in hand again rescued and
preserved from total destruction.[266]
[Magna Charta] is affirm’d by Lord Coke to be declaratory of
the principal grounds of the fundamental laws and liberties of
England. “It is called _Charta Libertatum Regni, the Charter
of the Liberties of the kingdom_, upon great reason ... because
_liberos facit, it makes and preserves the people free_.”... If
then according to Lord Coke, _Magna Charta_ is declaratory of
the principal grounds of the _fundamental_ laws and liberties of
the people, and Vatel is right in his opinion, that the supreme
legislature cannot change the constitution, I think it follows,
whether Lord Coke has expressly asserted it or not, that an act of
parliament made against Magna Charta in violation of its essential
parts, is void.[267]
Adams was probably fully aware of the weakness of the argument. The
well known attempt of Coke to establish a body of super-parliamentary
law that sanctioned the annulling of a statute had been a total
failure. Parliament had refused to yield sovereignty to the lawyers.
The Tories were on stronger ground in asserting Hume’s doctrine that
“the only rule of government is the established practice of the age,
upon maxims universally assented to”; and the established practice
was sufficient reply to the argument that “it is the glory of the
British constitution that it hath its foundations in the law of God and
nature.” Moreover the doctrine of virtual representation was at hand
to cover any discrepancy between natural rights and existing practice;
the argument from Locke was met by a legal refinement which held that
as the charter of Massachusetts was as of the manor of East Greenwich,
the freemen of Boston were personally represented by the parliamentary
member from that borough.
When Adams fell back upon his third line of defense, the appeal to
the colonial charter, he broke with the English Whigs completely. The
royal charters, by authority of which the colonies had been founded and
governed hitherto, were exalted by him into a secondary fundamental
law, subordinate to the English constitution, but with authority
beyond an act of parliament. This organic law of the charter was “the
only medium of their political connection with the Mother State,” he
argued, and as sacred to Americans “as Magna Charta is to the People of
Britain, as it contains a Declaration of all their Rights founded in
natural Justice.”[268]
Thus we see that Whatever Govermnt in general may be founded in,
Ours was manifestly founded in Compact.... By this Charter, we have
an exclusive Right to make Laws for our own internal Government &
Taxation: And indeed if the Inhabitants here are British Subjects
... it seems necessary that they should exercise this Power
themselves; for they are not represented in the British Parliamt &
their great Distance renders it impracticable: It is very probable
that all the subordinate legislative Powers in America, were
constituted upon the Apprehension of this Impracticability.[269]
After all, the futility of argument as a colonial defense against
Grenville or Townshend was evident to so shrewd a student of political
realism as Samuel Adams. If the colonies were to preserve their
traditional liberties, more effective means must be found than appeal
to justice or colonial use and wont. Force must be used, and that
force--short of armed rebellion--could be only an aroused public
opinion. It was like to prove a difficult business, this arousing of
an effective public opinion, and not wanting in danger; but neither
difficulty nor danger would deter a calculating enthusiast like Adams
from undertaking it. He was ready to devote his life to the work of
creating and guiding a popular interest in political measures.
The means which he made use of were as novel as they were repugnant
to the Tory statecraft. He was the first American to understand the
power of publicity, and not the least of his services to democracy was
his attack upon the principle of secret government. Affairs of state
had always been guarded jealously from public knowledge, on the theory
long before stated by Sir Robert Filmer that the subject must “have
nothing to do to meddle with mysteries of state, such _arcana imperii_,
or cabinet councils, the vulgar may not pry into.” Adams now proposed
to lay them open to common inspection. He insisted that questions of
governmental policy be taken out of the exclusive jurisdiction of
secret councils, and transferred to Faneuil Hall where the freemen
of Boston might examine them, and where the “Cause of Liberty” might
“be warmly espoused and ably vindicated.” Here was a revolutionary
proposal indeed, with its demand for public discussion and a popular
referendum; and naturally it gave offense to the crown officials. It
meant the vulgarization of government. It was a disturbing thought
to such men that government might come to be regarded as the common
concern of the tax-paying public; that the town meeting might fall
under the control of the plebeian mass and crowd in with its demands
upon the aristocratic Council. How could gentlemen deliberate freely
and determine wisely, with demagogues sitting in judgment on every word
and vote? So disturbing to gentlemen was any criticism that one of
Hutchinson’s followers went so far as to charge Adams with “Indecency
in ‘undertaking to answer a Governor’s Message,’” to which he replied:
I know very well that it has been handed as a political Creed of
late, that the Reasoning of the People without Doors is not to be
regarded--But every “transient Person” has a Right publickly to
animadvert upon whatever is publickly advanc’d by any Man, and I am
resolv’d to exercise that Right, when I please, without asking any
Man’s Leave.[270]
Effective organization of the rank and file of the people was the
business at hand. It was a new problem and there was need of new
methods. The Caucus Club, founded by his father, served as a training
school for the leaders; there the policies were determined upon for the
town meeting and the assembly, and there the plans for a continental
union were laid in Non-Importation Agreements, organization of
Committees of Correspondence, and the like. The program there agreed
upon Adams made it his business to put through the town meeting, as
the first step. When he faced his fellow Bostonians in Faneuil Hall
he relied upon the influence which long years of familiar intercourse
with all sorts and conditions of men had won for him, and many a Boston
freeman went to the meeting ready to vote for “whatever the old man
wanted.” Behind the imposing figure of John Hancock, or the eloquence
of John Adams, was certain to be the directing mind of the “master of
the puppets,” as Hutchinson sneeringly called Samuel Adams.
His hours of triumph in Boston town meeting or in the assembly were
preceded by an incredible amount of labor with the pen as well as with
the tongue, for this master politician was the journalist as well as
the organizer of the New England revolution. The public opinion on
which he depended was daily being made in chimney corners and tavern
talk, and he proposed to mold it through the agency of a party press.
No other pen in Boston was so busy as his. “There is Sam Adams writing
against the Tories,” his fellow townsmen are said to have remarked
when they saw his familiar candle burning long into the night. When he
was away in attendance on the Continental Congress he reproached his