Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs
“For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.”
Continued from ‘Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession’.
The London Parliament had passed the Intolerable Acts after the Boston Tea Party, and had come to the colonies to back them up with force. The Battle for Bunker Hill had been fought and Bostonians were surrounded by armed soldiers. George Washington had recently been made general of the Continental Army.
Continental Army, 1779-1783, by Henry Alexander Ogden. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
While many were ready to fight, others were espousing the idea of reconciliation with Great Britain. Paine was steadfastly against the idea, and made an effort to disprove all benefits to living under English rule.
The first argument he debunks is that since America had thus far flourished under the rule of Great Britain, the country must remain under British rule to have continued prosperity.
“We may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat,” Paine writes. “Or that the first twenty years of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty.”
He goes so far as to reject the idea the American connection with Britain is the source of the colonies’ prosperity in the first place.
“The commerce, by which she hath enriched herself are the necessaries of life,” he wrote. “And will always have a market while eating is the custom of Europe.”
Gold, silver, and other valuable metals had yet to be found in the colonies.
Some argued that Great Britain was the protector of America in the many wars it faced, but Paine rightfully pointed out that much American money and blood had been spilled, too. In fact, he asserted, they would not have been at war at all if not for their involvement with the British.
“…she did not protect us from our enemies on our account, but from her enemies on her own account, from those who had no quarrel with us on any other account, and who will always be our enemies on the same account.”
Paine utterly ridiculed the idea that America should show deference to Britain as the originator of the colonies, as a child should a parent. He pointed out that no parent should treat a child as Britain behaved toward America and the colonists, and further so, the inhabitants of the American colonies came from all over Europe (and elsewhere), not solely from England.
“This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe.” Paine writes. “ Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster…”
American interests, in Paine’s arguments, were not in the wars of the British Empire, but in trade with the whole of Europe.
“As Europe is our market for trade, we ought to form no partial connection with any part of it,” he writes. “It is the true interest of America to steer clear of European contentions, which she never can do, while by her dependence on Britain, she is made the make-weight in the scale of British politics.”
The British crown and government were not acting as a good steward toward the colonies.
The crown had repeatedly refused to act on the petitions from colonists about their problems with how they were governed. They were met with silence, or reactionary violence. Paine considered that the continued overtures of peaceful redress on behalf of the colonists only served to flatter the vanity of the king. When colonists took action beyond talk, the crown sent armies to put down the resistance to the unfair policies.
Paine suggested the relationship was irreconcilable, even if the majority wanted it. The British government had mistreated many, and the appearance of thousands more British soldiers in Massachusetts had not improved things. People’s homes and families had been destroyed. Hundreds, if not thousands, of men had nothing left but to fight for liberty from the empire that had harmed them. Paine asked how anyone in such a position could be expected to reconcile with British rule again.
“But if you have, and still can shake hands with the murderers, then you are unworthy the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant,” he writes.
Even had reconciliation been favorable, the crown had not offered any terms of compromise, and in fact seemed to regard the idea of compromising with the colonists to be disdainful.
Furthermore, on the practical side of things, Paine suggested the distance and delay in communication would make real direct governance by Britain impossible before much longer. Waiting the months it took for messages to be relayed across the Atlantic Ocean would make it impossible to react to things in a meaningful timeframe. If the country were invaded or in other serious danger, the matter could be over before England even knew about it.
Paine instead proposed a republican style of government, with no king, only the law. He recommended that after the law was written, they have a ceremony. The law would be placed upon a Bible, and a crown upon the law.
“For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other,” he writes.
After the ceremony, he recommended the crown should be destroyed.
Continued in ‘Of the Present Ability of America, with Some Miscellaneous Reflexions’.