A Theory of Politics
A Theory of Politics
In The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Bernard Bailyn describes how in the years leading up to the Revolution, Americans became convinced that power rather than ideology or tradition ultimately prompted all government action. This theory of politics, which galvanized resistance to the mother country and inspired the establishment of a new republic, was not hastily assembled on the eve of war. Rather, it was the culmination of decades if not centuries of political thought. From the Magna Charta and the birth of common law to Britain’s civil wars and the machinations of Robert Walpole, English history was replete with examples of uncontrolled power overwhelming the law, subverting the constitution, and extinguishing freedom.
There were no exceptions; history and bitter experience had confirmed it time and again. And so after defeating the British and winning their independence, the former colonies established a new constitutional order, one with clearly defined checks and balances and a separation of powers.
George Mason, a Virginia planter and delegate to the Constitutional Convention—whose Virginia Declaration of Rights provided a foundation for the Bill of Rights—embodies this attitude.
Like Patrick Henry and John Dickinson, Mason firmly believed that as transplanted Britons, Americans were entitled to all the rights and privileges of Englishmen. Mason articulates this position in a 1766 letter to the Committee of Merchants in London, protesting the Declaratory Act:
“Let our fellow-Subjects in Great Britain reflect that we are descended from the same Stock with themselves, nurtured in the same Principles of Freedom; which we have both suck'd in with our Mother's Milk: that in crossing the Atlantic Ocean, we have only changed our Climate, not our Minds, our Natures & Dispositions remain unaltered; that We are still the same People with them, in every Respect; only not yet debauched by Wealth, Luxury, Venality, & Corruption.”
He was, after all, but a man “who adores the wisdom and happiness of the British constitution”—same as any other free-born Britisher.
But Mason feared that the mother country was dangerously close to losing its empire on account of that same “venality and corruption.” One had to look no further than Parliament’s total disregard for their “beloved laws and constitution” on the other side of the Atlantic.
The only way to escape disaster, Mason insisted, would be for England to renew “the vigor and spirit of her own free and happy constitution.”
Mason’s fondness for the English constitution might come as a surprise to those who believe the US Constitution was created out of whole cloth. But for all its merits, our constitution was not conjured ex nihilo and still owes much to its British antecedent; John Dickinson, and George Mason would be the first to agree.
When protesting the Townshend Acts in Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1767 to 1768), Dickinson defends the “principles and spirit of the British constitution,” insisting that until recently, the government has always been “constitutionally checked and controlled.”
And in 1774, on the precipice of revolution, George Mason argues that the colonial militias have a responsibility to take up arms to preserve “those inestimable rights which we inherit from our ancestors” and prevent “the ruin of the constitution.” In these same remarks, Mason warns that “the history of all nations who have had liberty and lost it, puts these facts beyond doubt. We have great cause to fear that this crisis is approaching in our mother country. Her constitution has strong symptoms of decay. It is our duty by every means in our power to prevent the like here.”
If the British did not have a written constitution (apart the short-lived Instrument of Government from 1654-1657), as we are accustomed to, what was the English constitution, and how did it work?