America before 1787: The Unraveling of a Colonial Regime 9780691242668
An original account, drawing on both history and social science, of the causes and consequences of the American Revoluti
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Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Chapter 1 Introduction
PART I MICROFOUNDATIONS
Chapter 2 The Psychology of the Main Social Groups: Motivations
Chapter 3 The Psychology of the Main Social Groups: Beliefs
PART II CONFLICTS
Chapter 4 British-American Relations
Chapter 5 Divide and Rule
Chapter 6 Collective Action in America
PART III THE EMERGENCE OF NATIONAL POLITICS
Chapter 7 Deliberating Bodies
Chapter 8 Conclusion
Appendix: Bibliographical Overview
References
Index
A note on the type
Citation preview
a m eric a befor e 1787
America before 1787 t he u n r av el i ng of a col on i a l r egi me
Jon Elster
pr i nc et on u n i v e r si t y pr e ss pr i nc et on & ox for d
Copyright © 2023 by Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is committed to the protection of copyright and the intellectual property our authors entrust to us. Copyright promotes the progress and integrity of knowledge. Thank you for supporting free speech and the global exchange of ideas by purchasing an authorized edition of this book. If you wish to reproduce or distribute any part of it in any form, please obtain permission. Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to permissions@press.princeton.edu. Published by Princeton University Press 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 99 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6JX press.princeton.edu All Rights Reserved ISBN: 978-0-691-24265-1 ISBN (e-book): 978-0-691-24266-8 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available Editorial: Rob Tempio and Chloe Coy Production Editorial: Jenny Wolkowicki Cover design: Simran Rohira Production: Lauren Reese Publicity: William Pagdatoon Copyeditor: Maia Vaswani This book has been composed in Miller Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Hilde, again
con t e n ts
Preface · xi chapter 1 Introduction
1
1
The Thirteen Colonies
Uncertainty
8
Conclusion
22
PA RT I
MICROFOU N DATIONS
25
chapter 2
The Psychology of the Main Social Groups: Motivations 27
Reason, Interest, Passion
27
Honor, Deference, Shame, Contempt
30
Anger, Envy, and Injustice
49
Enthusiasm
81
Love of Liberty
101
Fear and Interest
105
Conclusion
126
chapter 3
The Psychology of the Main Social Groups: Beliefs
128
The Nature of Beliefs
128
Possibilism
131
Mutual Misunderstandings
137
Rumors and Conspiracy Theories
160
Costs and Benefits of Empire
170
Ignorance, Secrecy, and Publicity
180
Theories and Mechanisms
189
Conclusion [ vii ]
200
[ viii ] con ten ts
PA RT II
CON FLICTS
203
chapter 4
British-American Relations
205
The Board of Trade
205
Courts, Judges, and Juries
213
The Rise of the Lower Houses
225
No Taxation without Representation
238
Home Rule versus Rule at Home
248
Conclusion
252
chapter 5
Divide and Rule
254
Triadic Structures
255
Britain and the Colonies
259
Britain, Colonies, and Indians
266
Masters and Slaves
271
Conclusion
275
chapter 6
Collective Action in America
277
General Issues
278
Franklin and Madison
281
Defense Unions
288
Boycotts
298
Financing the Confederation
342
Collective Action in the Continental Congress
349
Conclusion
352
PART III
THE EMERGENCE OF NATIONAL POLITICS 353
chapter 7
Deliberating Bodies
355
Colonial Legislatures
355
The Continental Congresses
372
State Constitutions and Legislatures
387
Conclusion
394
con ten ts [ ix ]
chapter 8 Conclusion
396
Two Prerevolutionary Regimes
396
Challenges to Authority
397
Patriots, Neutrals, Loyalists
399
Ideology
405
Religion
408
Crowds
419
History and Theory
428
Edmund Burke
429
Appendix: Bibliographical Overview · 435 References · 439 Index · 455
pr eface
this book bega n as a background chapter in a book comparing the making of the American constitution (1787) and the French constitution (1791). It turned out that the understanding of each of these processes required a substantive presentation not only of the events triggering them, but also of the psychological and institutional aspects of, respectively, the American colonies and the French ancien régime. As the two background chapters swelled in length, I decided to publish them separately as volumes 1 and 2 of a trilogy. Volume 1, France before 1789: The Unraveling of an Absolutist Regime, was published in 2020. The present volume 2 deals with America before 1787. The comparison between the two constituent assemblies w ill be the topic of volume 3, 1787 and 1789: The Making of Two Constitutions. Strictly speaking, the title of the present volume is a bit misleading, since the discussion of some crucial events in 1786 and early 1787 is postponed to volume 3. However, I do cite sayings and events from the last two years before Independence to illustrate permanent features of the colonial regime. The original background chapters w ere quite selective. I focused on aspects of the preconstitutional systems that would prove relevant for the understanding of the constitution-making processes, while ignoring some aspects that would normally have their place in a free-standing monograph such as the present one. In transforming the chapter into a book, I have taken account of more dimensions of the colonial regime, although the weights I give them are still shaped by their relevance for constitution-making. I am not a historian. I have never had the exhilarating experience my historian friends have told me about, of opening a box with documents or accounts that nobody has seen for centuries to discover that conventional wisdom is wrong. Yet by reading the historians, and by consulting the massive trove of original sources made freely available on the internet by public-spirited organizations, or b ehind paywalls that are fortunately lifted by my employer, Columbia University, I hope I have learned enough about the period to propose some hypotheses and generalizations. I also hope that my amateur status as historian can be partially offset by my competence as a social scientist. The book is in fact programmatic, as an attempt to practice the u nion of history and psychology. These are, in my opinion, the two main pillars of the social sciences. As in volume 1, the emphasis will be on individual psychology and political institutions. In the preface to the first volume (p. x) I wrote the following, which applies equally to the present book: [ xi ]
[ xii ] Pr eface
The book is written in three layers. The first is the main text, where I summarize my main claims and suggestions. The second consists of the footnotes where I cite my sources. The third consists of the footnotes where I pursue some theoretical issues in more detail. (Some footnotes serve both functions.) Hence the footnotes are intended to bridge the gap between two scholarly communities, by pointing social scientists to new explananda and historians to new explanations. In the Appendix, I discuss the main writings by contemporaries and historians that I rely on. (Some readers may want to look at t hese summaries first.) I am grateful to Richard Bourke, T. H. Breen, Rachel Hammersley, and Eric Posner for comments on some of the chapters, and to Jack Rakove for comments on an ur-draft of chapter 6. Two anonymous reviewers made useful and constructive comments. Both emphasized that the present volume is not a traditional historical narrative. This is true. The book is intended to provide a toolbox of richly documented mechanisms that can serve in the construction of narratives. In volume 3 I s hall attempt to provide a more continuous narrative.
Unless otherwise noted, all italics within quotations are mine.
ch a p t er on e
Introduction
this chapter serves two purposes. First, it provides a summary overview of the thirteen mainland provinces (excluding Nova Scotia) that made up colonial America.1 (The Caribbean colonies will be mentioned only when relevant for the mainland ones.) Second, it provides a statement of the main theoretical framework of the analysis, with repetitions from volume 1 kept at a minimum.
The Thirteen Colonies I shall introduce the discussion by presenting James Madison’s raw notes from 1783, describing the situation of the thirteen states.2 The context was the funding of the confederation. Although it obviously needed some “general revenue,” the states differed in their interests in what the revenue would fund and, consequently, in the amount of revenue to be raised. In a remarkable memorandum on the interests of each of the thirteen states, Madison lists 1. I shall not be rigorous in my use of the terms “colony,” “state,” or “province,” the last being an umbrella term for the first two. When I refer to “the colonies,” it is obviously to the period before 1776. 2. “Notes on Debates, 26 February 1783,” Founders Online, National Archives, https:// founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-06-02-0091.The notes should be read in conjunction with Madison’s “Observations Relating to the Influence of Vermont and the Territorial Claims on the Politics of Congress” (Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-04-02-0092). In the words of Brant (1948, 149), “[One] can search in vain for noble attributes in the motives Madison ascribed to the individual thirteen states. Self-interest, prejudice, envy, jealousy, and the intrigues of speculators w ere the springs of their policies.” Brant goes on to say that “it is noteworthy that he did not confine himself to economic motives, even though t hese predominated. It was this ability to judge actions by motives, combined with his own freedom from unworthy aims and harmful impulses, that lifted Madison’s knowledge of government into a genius for the building of it.”
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a number of reasons why the several states might favor or oppose taxation at the level of the Confederation. Some would support it b ecause an impost duty levied by the confederation would spare them predatory imposts levied by neighboring states. The latter would oppose it for the same reason. Many would support “abatements”—that is, compensation for their disproportionate losses or expenses during the revolutionary war; other states, which could not make a claim for such losses, would oppose measures to satisfy it. Some but not all would support revenue to absorb their debts or the debts of the confederation incurred during the war. Since the revenue was expected to strengthen the authority of the central government over the western lands, states that claimed a prior entitlement to these and states that wanted to acquire them had opposing interests. T hese issues far from exhaust the lines of conflict and division that existed among the states, but they amount to a solid body of policy preferences. Madison organized his assessments as follows: New Hampshire would approve the establishment of a General revenue, as tending to support the confederacy, to remove causes of future contention, and to secure her trade against separate taxation from the States thro which it is carried on. She would also approve of a share in the vacant territory. Having never been much invaded by the Enemy her interest would be opposed to abatements, & throwing all the separate expenditures into the common mass. The discharge of the public debts from a common treasury would not be required by her interest, the loans of her citizens being under her proportion. Massachussetts is deeply interested in the discharge of the public debts. The expedition to Penobscot [in today’s Maine] alone interests her, she supposes, in making a common mass of expences: her interest is opposed to abatements. The other objects wd. not peculiarly affect her. Rhode Island as a weak State is interested in a general revenue as tending to support the confederacy and prevent future contentions, but against it as tending to deprive Her of the advantage afforded by her situation of taxing the commerce of the contiguous States. as tending to discharge with certainty the public debts, her proportion of loans interest her rather against it. Having been the seat of the war for a considerable time, she might not perhaps be opposed to abatements on that account. The exertions for her defence having been previously sanctioned, it is presumed in most instances, she would be opposed to making a common mass of expences. In the acquisition of vacant territory she is deeply and anxiously interested.
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Connecticut is interested in a general revenue as tending to protect her commerce from separate taxation by N. York & Rhode Island: and somewhat as providing for loan office creditors. Her interest is opposed to abatements, and to a common mass of expences. Since the condemnation of her title to her Western claims, she may perhaps consider herself interested in the acquisition of the vacant lands. In other respects she wd not be peculiarly affected. New York is exceedingly attached to a general revenue as tending to support the confederacy and prevent f uture contests among the States. Although her citizens are not lenders beyond the proportion of the State, yet individuals of great weight are deeply interested in provision for public debts. In abatements N. York is also deeply interested. In makg. a common mass also interested, and since the acceptance of her cession, interested in those of other States. New Jersey is interested as a smaller State in a general revenue as tendg to support the confederacy, and to prevent future contests and to guard her commerce agst. the separate taxation of Pensylvania & N.Y. The loans of her Citizens are not materially disproportionate. Although this State has been much the theatre of the war, she wd. not perhaps be interested in abatements. Having had a previous sanction for particular expenditures, her interest wd. be opposed to a common mass. In the vacant territory, she is deeply and anxiously interested. Pennsylvania is deeply interested in a general revenue, the loans of her Citizens amounting to more than 1/3 of that branch of the public debt. As far as a general impost on trade would restrain her from taxing the trade of N. Jersey it would be against her interest. She is interested against abatements; and against a common mass, her expenditures having been always previously sanctioned. In the vacant territory she is also interested. Delaware is interested by her weakness in a general revenue as tending to support the confederacy & f uture tranquility of the States; but not materially by the credits of her Citizens: Her interest is opposed to abatements & to a common mass. To the vacant territory she is firmly attached. Maryland. Having never been the Seat of war & her Citizens being creditors below her proportion, her interest lies agst. a general revenue, otherwise than as she is interested in common with others in the support of the Confederacy & tranquility of the U. S. but against abatements, and against a common mass. The vacant lands are a favorite object to her.
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Virginia. In common with the Southern States as likely to enjoy an opulent and defenceless trade is interested in a general revenue, as tending to secure her the protection of the Confederacy agst. the maritime superiority of the E. States; but agst it as tending to discharge loan office debts and to deprive her of the occasion of taxing the commerce of N. Carolina. She is interested in abatements, and essentially so in a common mass, not only her excentric expenditures being enormous; but many of her necessary ones havg. rcd. no previous or subsequent sanction. Her cession of territory would be considered as a sacrifice. North Carolina. Interested in a general revenue as tending to ensure the protection of the Confederacy agst. the maritime superiority of the E. States and to guard her trade from separate taxation by Virginia and S. Carolina. The loans of her Citizens are inconsiderable. In abatements and in a common mass she is essentially interested. In the article of territory, she would have to make a sacrifice. South Carolina is interested as a weak & exposed State in a general revenue as tending to secure to her the protection of the confederacy agst. enemies of every kind, and as providing for the public creditors, her citizens being not only loan offices creditors beyond her proportion, but having immense unliquidated demands agst. U. States. As restraining her power over the commerce of N. Carolina, a general revenue is opposed by her interests. She is also materially interested in abatements, and in a common mass. In the article of territory her sacrifice wd. be inconsiderable. Georgia as a feeble, an opulent, & frontier State is peculiarly interested in a general revenue, as tending to support the confederacy. She is also interested in it somewhat by the credits of her Citizens. In abatements She is also interested, and in a common mass, essentially so. In the article of territory She would make an important sacrifice.3 hese dense notes refer to issues that will be revisited throughout this book T as well as in volume 3. At this stage, we can note the overall impression of the huge heterogeneity of interests among the states, a fact noted by many contemporaries. In 1760, a visiting Anglican clerk, Andrew Burnaby, wrote that “such is the difference of character, of manners, of religion, of interest, of the different colonies, that I think, if am not wholly ignorant of the human mind, 3. “Notes on Debates, 26 February 1783,” Founders Online, National Archives, https:// founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-06-02-0091.
In troduction [ 5 ]
ere they left to themselves there would soon be a civil war from one end of w the continent to the other, while the Indians and Negroes would with better reason, impatiently watch the opportunity of exterminating them altogether.”4 In the same year, Benjamin Franklin wrote that the colonies were “not only under different governors, but have different forms of government, different laws, different interests, and some of them different religious persuasions and diff erent manners.”5 Many other statements to the same effect, contemporaneous and more recent, could be cited. They all suggest the problem of interest aggregation: how could t hese disparate and often conflicting provinces unite around a common cause? As we s hall see in chapter 6, their history provides examples of failure, of partial success, and, finally, of durable success. The final stage is left for volume 3. The thirteen colonies came into existence at different times: V irginia 1607 Massachusetts 1620 New Hampshire 1623 Maryland 1624 Connecticut 1636 Rhode Island 1636 Delaware 1638 Carolina 1653; divided into North Carolina and South Carolina 1729 New Jersey 1664 New York 1664 Pennsylvania 1682 Georgia 1732 Their borders were sometimes ill defined, a fact that could give rise to controversies.6 Conventionally, they are often aggregated into three regions: New E ngland (Mass ac hus etts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island), the Middle Colonies (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware), and the Southern Colonies (Maryland, V irginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia). They can also be classified as landlocked versus seaboard colonies, as having small versus large populations, and as slavery-based versus non-slavery-based economies. These distinctions all gave rise to different economic or political interests, generating many struggles. In some colonies,
4. Burnaby (1798) 1904, 153. 5. “The Interest of G reat Britain Considered, [17 April 1760],” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-09-02-0029. 6. “Happy are the people whose territories are encircled by obvious natural boundaries, easily distinguished but not easily passed,” such as rivers, lakes, and mountains (Ramsay [1809] 1858, 83). See also Governor Bernard’s proposal to divide the colonies by “natural boundaries instead of imaginary lines” (Slaughter 2013, 222).
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the distinct interests of the seaboard and the backcountry also gave rise to many controversies. According to the census of 1790, the thirteen colonies occupied a territory of 827,844 square miles. Today, the mainland United States, excluding Alaska, occupies 3,119,884 square miles. The “western lands” w ere the territories beyond the Appalachian mountain range, all the way to the Pacific. English kings had granted some colonies territorial rights to parts of these lands, which became the object of struggles among the colonies and between settlers and the Indian tribes that occupied huge areas on the continent. From their inception, the colonies w ere regulated by charters modeled, roughly, on the English system. In Merrill Jensen’s summary: The structure of government in e very colony was essentially the same, whether royal, proprietary, or corporation. At the head was a governor with executive authority. . . . Governors w ere appointed by the crown or proprietor and were elected only in Connecticut and Rhode Island. The second common feature was a council which acted as both an advisory body to the governor and as an upper house to the legislature. The proprietors appointed the councils in their colonies and the Crown those in the royal colonies, with the exception of Massachusetts, where the council was elected annually by lower h ouse and the outgoing council. In Connecticut and Rhode Island the councils w ere elected by the voters. [Finally, t here w ere] the elective or lower h ouses of the colonial legislatures.7 ngland (after 1707, Great Britain)8 was not only a model, but also the sovE ereign of the colonies. I discuss the complex and evolving transatlantic politics in chapter 4. In many respects the Seven Years’ War with France and Spain (1756–63) was a tipping point in the development of the colonies. One the one hand, it transformed British colonial policy from what Burke referred to as “a wise and salutary neglect”9 to one of rigorous and often harsh regulations and even harsher practices. On the other hand, France’s defeat in that war created a strong desire for revenge, which motivated heavy financial and military support to the colonists in the Revolutionary War.10 Although the American 7. Jensen 1968, 21. Many more details will be provided in chapter 4. 8. I s hall not be rigorous in my use of “English” and “British,” since many comments apply to events before as well as after 1707. 9. PDNA 5:605. 10. “Congress knew, that a diminution of the overgrown power of Britain, could not but be desirable to France. Sore with the loss of her possessions on the continent of North- America by the peace of Paris in the year 1763, and also by the capture of many thousands of her sailors in 1755, antecedent to a declaration of war, she must have been something more than h uman, not to have rejoiced at an opportunity of depressing an antient and
In troduction [ 7 ]
colonies would almost certainly have gained their independence sooner or later without that support, the defeat of the British in 1781 and the subsequent peace in 1783 would not have occurred without it. The cost of the support was an important cause of the bankruptcy of 1788 that led to the calling of the Estates General in 1789 (see volume 3). It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that the American Revolution caused the French Revolution. If the French had anticipated that the colonists would eventually separate from G reat Britain, cool interest should have led them to let things take their own course (and spare themselves, or postpone, the revolution of 1789). However, for an angry agent it is not enough that an opponent suffer: he must suffer at the hand of the agent.11 Moreover, an angry agent may not have the composure needed to reflect before acting: reflection takes time, but an angry agent wants to act at once.12 Cooler heads could take a longer view. “Long before the imperial crisis broke out in the 1760s the expectation that the colonies would some day become independent had been considered in the abstract by numerous writers on both sides of the Atlantic.”13 In France, Turgot observed in 1750 that “colonies are like fruits that remain attached to the tree only u ntil they are ripe: once they are self-sufficient they do what Carthage did [when gaining its independence from the Phoenicians in 650 BCE] and what Amer ica will do one day.”14 David Ramsay wrote in 1789 that “The supposition of the Americans receiving aid from France or Spain, was on this and several other occasions ridiculed, on the idea that these powers would not dare to set to their own colo nies the dangerous example of encouraging t hose of Great-Britain, in opposing their sovereign. It was also supposed, that they would be influenced by considerations of future danger to their American [Caribbean] possessions, from the establishment of an independent empire in their vicinity.”15 As the “occasion” was a debate in the House of Commons, I conjecture that t hese considerations were due to wishful thinking on the part of defenders of the war.
formidable rival” (Ramsay [1789] 1990, 2:60–61). Herbert Lüthy (2005, 593) remarks that “it would probably have been superhuman to resist the temptation” to humiliate Britain; see also volume 1, 173–74. 11. Elster 2015a, 73. 12. Elster 2015a, 149. 13. Christie and Labaree 1976, 268. 14. Turgot 2018, 1:201. De Witt (1861) provides an abundant documentation of French views in the 1760s and 1770s about the prospects of American independence. 15. Ramsay (1789) 1990, 1:286. He repeats the idea in volume 2, adding that “Transported with indignation against their late fellow subjects, [the British] w ere so infatuated with the American war, as to suppose that trifling evils, both distant and uncertain, would induce the court of France to neglect an opportunity of securing great and immediate advantages” (67).
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Uncertainty An important part of the story I shall be telling in subsequent chapters concerns the beliefs of agents on each side of the Atlantic about t hose on the other side—about their motivations as well as about their likely actions or reactions. A fuller discussion is reserved for chapter 3. H ere, I s hall consider a subset of British beliefs about America to make some conceptual points about belief formation. Sometimes, the British calculated that the Americans would react to British policies along the lines of rational self-interest, and w ere proven correct. When the British provided bounties to the Americans for producing goods needed in England, the colonists responded. For instance, when in 1705 “Parliament offered substantial bounties for tar, pitch, resin, turpentine, hemp, masts, yards, and bowsprits produced in the colonies . . . , the naval stores in South Carolina grew rapidly.”16 Innumerable such examples could no doubt be cited. Responding to incentives is indeed a paradigm of self-interested rationality. Yet the British miscalculated dramatically the impact on Americans of the Tea Act. Commenting on the Boston Tea Party, Lord North said in Parliament: that it was impossible for him to have foreseen the proceedings in America respecting the tea; that the duty had been quietly collected before; that the great quantity of tea in the warehouses of the East-India company, as appeared by the report of the secret committee, made it necessary to do something for the benefit of the company ; that it was to serve them that nine-pence in the poundweight draw back was allowed ; that it was impossible for him to foretell the Americans would resist at being able to drink their tea at nine-pence in the pound cheaper.17 The reduced price of tea was the net effect of two oppositely directed mea sures: a tax on tea in Americ a and a drawback (subsidy) on exported tea in G reat Britain.18 North viewed the Americans as customers, who would respond only to the net effect. In Franklin’s words, North had “no Idea that any P eople can act from any Principle but that of Interest; and [he believes] that 3d. [three pence] in a Pound of Tea, of which one does not drink perhaps 10 lb in a Year, is sufficient to overcome all the Patriotism of an American!”19 In other words, North neglected the possibility that the tax was not merely an
16. McCusker and Menard 1985, 279–80. For a similar response to bounties on indigo, see ibid. (187) and Rabushka (2008, 760). 17. PDNA, 5:299. 18. Rabushka 2008, 758–65. 19. Letter to Thomas Cushing, June 4, 1773, Franklin Papers, vol. 20, https:// franklinpapers.o rg/framedVolumes.jsp. Italics in original.
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injury—as citizens the Americans might view the tax as an insult.20 I shall discuss this mind-set further in chapter 2. Here I shall only point out that North was not wrong in asserting after the fact that it was impossible to foresee the effects of his measures; he was wrong only in assuming, before the fact, that he could. In other words, he neglected the fundamental and radical uncertainty that is a pervasive, if very often underestimated, feature of political life.21 This neglect, although irrational, is intelligible, since the psychological state of uncertainty can be very unpleasant. Some individuals may be characterized by what Otto Neurath called “an emotional disposition for which the elimination of doubt means a release from a feeling of displea sure.”22 We may think of this disposition as uncertainty aversion, related to, but distinct from, inaction aversion.23 The impact of the Tea Act illustrates the attitudinal difference and behavioral divergence between economic man and political man.24 One cannot ill always trump t hose assume, however, that the motivations of the latter w of the former. “Six weeks after King George III assented to the repeal of the Stamp Act, the news reached the American colonies. . . . Americans drank to the repeal and ignored the accompanying Declaratory act,”25 which asserted that Parliament had absolute power to legislate for the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” Emotions are manipulable by leaders, transient, and with a short
20. The fear of the citizens at large was not the only source of opposition to the Tea Act. Smugglers worried that they would not be able to undersell the new price, and merchants that they would lose their trade to the East India Company (Ramsay [1789] 1990, 1:90). Moreover, to an indeterminate extent these agents may have contributed to shaping popu lar reactions. 21. For a recent survey, see J. Kay and King (2020). The classical statement appears in Keynes (1936, ch. 12). 22. Neurath (1913) 1983, 6. 23. There is a considerable literature on the effects of uncertainty aversion. The most relevant for present purposes is Dicks and Fulghieri (2019). 24. In the present book and, I believe, in most primary and secondary sources, the tension between economic and political man is treated as a mainly American dilemma. However, in a letter from Boston dated November 20, 1774, the author exhorts the British to resist the American tactic of using nonimportation to pressure them: “It is evident, that the proceedings of the continental Congress, that they are intended to create an influence at the general election in favour of America, by interesting your merchants and manufacturers in their behalf. They are encouraged to expect, from their success on former occasions, that the Legislature w ill be forced into a compliance with their unreasonable demands. I hope, however, that motives of resentment, if not of policy, will induce them to forgo a temporary interest, rather than continue an ignominious commerce” (Willard 1925, 11). 25. Cook 1995, 106. See also Botta (1834, 1:97): Americans “saw the consequences of the confirmation of the authority of parliament only in the distance; and considered the assertion of certain rights of parliament merely as speculative principles thrown out to spare its dignity, to soothe British pride, and facilitate the digestion of so b itter a morsel.”
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half-life, whereas interests are more permanent. Only when the former are activated can they trump the latter. In the context of Anglo-American conflicts, the impact of emotions can be illustrated by considering three ways of trying to force compliance: deterrence, compellence, and punishment. Deterrence is based on threats: agent A tells agent B to do X on pain of A punishing B if B fails to comply. The threat has to be credible, in the sense that B has to believe that A will be motivated—by interest or by emotions— to implement the threat if B d oesn’t comply.26 The threat of ostracizing violators of nonimportation or nonconsumption agreements (chapter 6) was credible b ecause everybody knew that emotions w ere r unning high, and also because nonostracizers might themselves be subject to ostracism.27 A major issue at the Federal Convention concerned the credibility of threats by the small state delegations to withdraw from the assembly and secede from the Union u nless they got their way. A rehearsal for this process took place in June 1776, when some deleg ations to the Continental Congress made it clear that if the Declaration of Independence was a dopted at that time, they “must retire & possibly their colonies might secede from the Union” (chapter 7).28 The threat seemed credible at the time, for reasons to be discussed in volume 3.29 Compellence (see volume 1, 167) is intended to apply when A makes life so hard for B that B eventually decides to comply with A’s demands. As originally formulated by Thomas Schelling in the context of the Vietnam War, the key assumption is that B is so strongly motivated by material interest that increasing material deprivation will ultimately force compliance. This assumption undergirded many British measures in the 1760s and 1770s. Defending his policy toward the Americans, George III wrote in 1774 that “nothing but feeling the inconvenience of their situation can bring their pride to submit to” compliance.30 Three years later, writing to Lord North, he persisted:
26. Credibility of promises is also an important issue, which I discuss in chapters 3 and 4. 27. Credibility may also be affected by social norms about what constitutes acceptable punishment. Some threats are so disproportionate to the issue at hand that they are easily ignored. In 1774, an American customs officer ignored a threat to be hanged, “but gave in later when the mob threatened to cut his ears off—as if he believed it might follow through on that lesser threat but not on the more serious” (Maier 1991, 129n.). See also an example from France in volume 1 (168). 28. “Notes of Proceedings in the Continental Congress, 7 June–1 August 1776,” Found ers Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01 -02-0160. 29. See also Elster (2021a) for a preview. 30. George III 1927–28, 3:156.
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If [General Howe] and his b rother w ill act with a little less lenity, which I r eally think cruelty, as it keeps up the contest, the next campaign w ill bring the Americans in a temper to accept such terms as may enable the M other Country to keep them in order; for we must never come into such as may patch for a year or two, and then bring on new boils; the regaining of their affections is an idle idea; it must be the convincing of them that it is in their interest to submit, and then they will dread further boils.31 In 1765, Governor Bernard predicted that if the courts and ports were closed, “economic necessity would force the p eople of Massachusetts to accept the Stamp Act,” on pain of famine.32 Conversely, American boycotts of Britain in the 1760s and 1770s (chapter 6) were intended to bring Britain to its knees (which they did). David Ramsay accurately diagnosed the British strategy when he wrote that the “British supposing the Americans to be influenced by the considerations which bias men in the languid scenes of tranquil life, and not reflecting on the sacrifices which enthusiastic patriotism is willing to make, proceeded in their schemes of distress.”33 If the British had had more sympathy with the Americans, they would not have tried to starve them into submission.34 It they had had more empathy, they would have understood that the strategy wouldn’t work, unless perhaps if it were carried out in a nonconfrontational manner. Thus in 1775, the British secretary of war Viscount Barrington argued that compellence would work, but only if it took the form of a “bloodless” naval blockade that would not stimulate the colonies to fight: “If these ideas are well-founded, the colonies w ill in a few months feel their distress; their spirits not animated by any l ittle successes on their part or violence of persecution on ours, will sink.”35 His proposal was not accepted. Whereas deterrence and compellence aim at modifying behavior in a given case, punishment, as far as it is motivated by instrumental considerations, aims at setting an example to the punished agent or to others in the future. The behavior of Britain t oward Massachusetts is an important case, to be discussed in chapter 6. The efficacy of punishment as a tool of behavior modification is of course disputed. Similarly to the threat of punishment, actual punishment is indeterminate ex ante in its consequences. It may achieve its 31. Quoted in Black 2008, 439. 32. Morgan and Morgan 1995, 136–37. 33. Ramsay (1789) 1990, 2:101. 34. Not everybody did. Among the causes of Britain’s defeat, Phillips (2012, 538) cites “the 1775–1778 reluctance of the Howe brothers to crush the Patriots and the Howe family’s preference for trying to win in a way that kept the 13 colonies’ attachment.” For a full discussion, see Mackesy (1992, 32–37). 35. Barrington 1814, 146. See also Shy (1990, 106) for an appreciation of his assessment.
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aim, have no effect, or backfire. Two eighteenth-century observers doubted its efficacy: In a letter to his son, Lord Chesterfield commented on “the affair of our American Colonies, relatively to the late imposed Stamp duty, which our Colonists absolutely refuse to pay. The Administration are for some indulgence and forbearance to t hose froward c hildren of their m other country; the Opposition are for taking vigorous, as they call them, but I call them violent measures; not less than ‘les dragonnades’; and to have the tax collected by the troops we have there. For my part, I never saw a froward child mended by whipping.”36 David Hume, using the same metaphor (but applied only to grown-ups), wrote that in conversation at Lord Bathurst’s he had observed “that Nations, as well as Individuals, had their different ages, which challeng’d a different Treatment. For Instance, My Lord, said I to the old Peer, you have sometimes given your Son a Whipping, and I doubt not, but it was well merited and did him much good: Yet you will not think proper at present to employ the Birch: The Colonies are no longer in their Infancy.”37 Above, I discussed cases where material interest and passion for a cause suggest different courses of action, and politicians miscalculated the effects of their action by focusing only on the first of these motivations. In chapter 2, I shall consider the fine grain of the second. H ere, I want to consider another issue: the indeterminacy of American responses to British policy decisions. The problem was not that the British miscalculated t hese responses, but that to calculate was a m istake.38 I am not suggesting they could have done better, but they could have abstained from basing highly consequential decisions on sharp assumptions that amounted to little more than guesses born of pride or prejudice. Uncertainty obtains when an agent is unable to form a well-grounded belief that can serve as the basis for a uniquely determined rational choice. The belief need not take the form of the sharp probabilistic assessments we
36. Chesterfield, Letter CCLXXXIII in The PG Edition of Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son, Project Gutenberg, 2004, last updated August 8, 2016, https://www.gutenberg.org /files/3361/3361-h/3361-h.htm.He voted for repeal of the Stamp Act (Hume 2011, 2:22). On the “dragonnades,” see Hume (2011, 1:162). They w ere tools both of compellence and of punishment. 37. Hume 2011, 2:287–88. Mossner (1954, 553) writes that “Hume was on the side of the colonies . . . with a consistency that perhaps cannot be found in any of his leading contemporaries.” For other family metaphors, see Bumsted (1974, 535–37). 38. Some forty years ago, I made the same point with respect to the choice among different energy sources: “I do not attempt to answer the substantial question: what w ill happen if we choose one or the other of the proposed energy forms? Rather, I am arguing that for important parts of the energy issue this question cannot be answered, and that this impossibility is the substantial result which must be the basis for choice” (Elster 1983a, 185).
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meet in economic textbooks, but virtually never in actual decisions.39 For practical purposes, an intuitive judgment such as “more likely than not” can be good enough (at least if the two possible outcomes are deemed more or less equally good). When even that minimal test fails, the agent is in a state of uncertainty. When the agent knows the full set of options and all their possible consequences but is unable to attach numerical probabilities to them (known unknowns), some weak rationality criteria apply. They are consistent with the agent choosing the option with the best worst consequences, the best best consequences, or some weighted average of the two.40 As these criteria fail the uniqueness test, they can serve only to tell the agent what to avoid, not what to do. Any positive choice will be decided by temperamental factors such as pessimism or optimism or, as Keynes said, by “animal spirits.” To illustrate, consider the decision to go to war against another country. A decisive factor can be the morale or fighting spirit of the troops on both sides. Unless both countries have a track record from past wars fought u nder similar conditions, the only way to discover the facts is by actually fighting. The poor performance of Italian troops against Greece in World War II was perhaps to be expected, at least by neutral observers, but there was no way decision-makers in Whitehall could form a well-founded belief at a distance about the morale of American regulars and militia or of that of the loyalists.41 They tried, to be sure, often relying on poor analogies and reaching opposite conclusions (see chapter 3).42 In 1775, George III’s self-image shifted “to that of George the strong, first soldier of the Empire, whose army faced disgrace at the hands of an armed rabble. The change was encouraged by the warrior-courtiers, men who had acquired their opinions, at first or second hand, of colonial ability in the Seven Years War. They remembered the volunteer regiments, recruited by high enlistment bounties or occasionally by draft from the militia, that gave more trouble than assistance in the conduct of the 39. J. Kay and King 2020, ch. 3 and passim. 40. Arrow and Hurwicz 1971. Their theorem is somewhat artificial, since in the presence of known unknowns a rational agent should suspect the existence of unknown unknowns: the agent may not know the full set of options nor all their possible consequences. Also, if the deciding agents know the situation so well that they do have that knowledge, it is hard to imagine that they would not be able to form some probabilistic estimates, at least of the ordinal kind (e.g., “more likely than not”). The analysis calls for the “Madisonian caveats” against excessive precision that I discuss in volume 1 (9). Most fundamentally, any attempt to formalize decisions must ignore creativity (J. Kay and King 2020, 47). 41. In chapter 3, I discuss a remarkable “experiment” that General Cornwallis conducted to test the commitment of the North Carolinian loyalists. For a recent discussion, see “How to Forecast Armies’ Will to Fight: What Motivates the Dogs of War?” (Economist, September 5, 2020, 63–64). The collapse of the Afghan army in August 2021 provides a spectacular example. The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 provides another. 42. For a case study of the use of analogies in the Vietnam War and its disastrous results, see Khong (1992), summarized in Elster (2015a, 49–50).
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war. . . . They unwisely equated t hese units with the angry militia Gage faced in Massachusetts.”43 Edmund Burke was by far the most acute commentator on the pervasive uncertainty in colonial matters. In a speech in the House of Commons on the Boston Port Bill, he asked Lord North, “Sir, can anything in the world be more uncertain than the operation of [this bill]? W hether it will increase these combinations, or lessen [them], whether it will irritate or whether it will terrify, are things in the womb of time. . . . I beg leave to have it observed that this remedy will have an uncertain operation.”44 In the “Speech on Conciliation with America” given on March 22, 1775, he responded to Lord North’s proposals as follows: First, Sir, permit me to observe, that the use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment, but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed which is perpetually to be conquered. My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is not always the effect of force, and an armament is not a victory. A further objection to force is that you impair the object by your very endeavors to preserve it. The thing you fought for is not the thing which you recover, but depreciated, sunk, wasted, and consumed in the contest.45 I shall place Burke’s observations within a larger set of issues, that of the uncertainties associated with a spectrum of policy choices: • Severe repression • Moderate repression • Concessions • Deliberate inaction • Preemption The common features of each of these options are simple: it might work, it might not, and one c an’t know. Severe repression. The uncertainty stated in the first passage quoted from Burke can be dubbed the autocrat’s dilemma. When faced with a ctual or potential opposition, an autocratic ruler may be tempted to enact measures of severe repression. A ruler who reflects, as autocrats sometimes do, may won der whether the repression might not trigger hatred rather than fear; or (see also volume 1, 20, 115, 116), in Burke’s terms, repression can increase rather than lessen the forces of opposition. This idea can occur quite spontaneously. A drawing from the London Observer on January 4, 2009, shows a boy sitting 43. Shy 1965, 415–16. 44. PDNA, 4:124. 45. Burke 1981–2015, 3:118–19; Burke’s italics. The second objection is unrelated to the objection from uncertainty but perhaps equally important.
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on a heap of rubble, asking himself whether the bombing by the e nemy fighters in the sky w ill make him more or less likely to fire rockets at them when he grows up. On one reading, there is no right answer to the question. The boy just can’t know; nor, more relevantly for my purposes, can the generals on either side of the conflict. In De clementia (I.8), Seneca urges rulers to reflect on this issue: “Kings by clemency gain a security more assured, b ecause repeated punishment, while it crushes the hatred of a few, stirs the hatred of all.”46 Even when politicians ignore this advice, officers may follow it. In 1765: [Lieutenant Governor Cadwallader] Colden virtually challenged the New York mob to attack Fort George by ordering extensive preparations for defense, and it was only the coolness of the officers within that prevented the American Revolution from beginning on November 1, 1765, with an attack on it. . . . Major James, in command at the time, testified before Parliament that if he had fired he could have killed 900 of the mob on that night, but he added that the opposition could thereupon have assembled 50,000 fighting men from NY and NJ alone, and that it would have been impossible to holdout against such a force.47 In 1774, “Lord North may have believed that [the Coercive Acts] would dampen dissent. As with so many imperial policies that only make sense thousands of miles from the places where they w ere implemented, this one interrupted routine business while inflating universal anger.”48 In 1777, General Gates asked a British peace commissioner: “Is it thus [by destruction and massacres] your king’s generals think to make converts to the royal cause? It is no less surprising than true, that the measures they adopt to serve their master, have a quite contrary effect.”49 To repeat, the lesson from these and many similar episodes is not that the British politicians or officers miscalculated, but that they made the mistake of calculating. After unsuccessfully opposing the Boston Port Bill of 1774 in Parliament, Rose Fuller commented: “I will now take my leave of the whole plan; you will commence your ruin from this day! I am sorry to say that not only the House has fallen into this error, but the p eople approve of the measure. The p eople, I am sorry to say, have been misled. But a short time w ill prove the evil tendency of this bill. If ever there was a nation rushing headlong to ruin, it 46. General Burgoyne made a similar observation when “at the surrender ceremony on October 17, 1777, [he] complimented [the American general] Gates of having an inexhaustible fund of men who w ere ‘like the Hydra’s head, when cut off, seven more spring in its stead’ ” (O’Shaughnessy 2013, 162–63). 47. Morgan and Morgan 1995, 206. 48. Breen 2019, 35. 49. Ramsay (1789) 1990, 2:50. Clearly, Gates refers to behavioral conversion caused by fear, not to inner conversion.
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is this.”50 In the same debates, Isaac Barré said that the government had “been continually goading and teasing America for these ten years past. I am afraid, you will, by these acts of violence, drive them to rebellion.”51 If my argument is valid, Fuller and Barré weren’t right; they were lucky. One might suppose that the uncertainty was due to lack of information about the true state of the colonies, and that the actions taken were due to the fact that this lack itself was ignored.52 I believe, however, that the prob lem runs deeper, as also suggested by John Shy: “That political chaos [at the accession of George III] was the result is not surprising, and historians have labored to reduce it to some sort of order. Their efforts c an’t wholly succeed, because the chaos was real and not an illusion born of complexity.”53 As he writes elsewhere, “What was the intricate interplay and feedback between attitude and behavior, events and attitude? Did p eople get war weary and discouraged, or did they become adamant toward British efforts to coerce them? . . . The essential difficulty in answering these questions lies less in the lack of evidence than in the nature of the subject.”54 Reliable causal theories rather than facts were the crucial missing ingredient. Moderate repression. A second source of uncertainty is the numerous attempts throughout history to deal with a problem by adopting what in retrospect appears as a half-measure, getting the worst of two worlds rather than, as expected, the best of both (volume 1, 169, 233). The first and one of the best historians of the Revolutionary War, David Ramsay, wrote in 1789 that “instead of persevering in their own system of coercion, or indeed in any uni form system of colonial government, [the rulers of Great Britain] struck out a middle line, embarrassed with the consequences of both severity and of lenity, and which was without the complete benefits of e ither.”55 He had been preceded in this view by General Gage, who in 1770 “advised that it was better to do nothing than to do it halves.”56 Ministers in London, too, thought that “partial severity was general mercy.”57 Referring to the same facts, Burke said in 50. PDNA, 4:404–5. 51. PDNA, 4:175. 52. Dunning and Kruger 1999. 53. Shy 1965, 46–47. 54. Shy 1990, 167. 55. Ramsay (1789) 1990, 1:85. In theory, a policy that is “without the complete benefits” of either of two desiderata could well be an optimal trade-off. However, Ramsay implies that single-minded pursuit of either (a “corner solution”) would have been better than the “middle line” compromise. For other comments on the inefficacy of half measures, see Botta (1834, 1:83, 115, 123). 56. Shy 1965, 320. Commenting on British policy in Boston in the same period, Phillips (1999, 90) writes that the “effectiveness of the propaganda of men like Sam Adams . . . could be traced to unprecedented peacetime employment of British military forces in numbers sufficient to outrage the colonists, but not to control them.” 57. Ramsay (1789) 1990, 1:85.
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the House of Commons that “you showed your ill will to America, at the same time you dared not execute it.”58 Some years before, however, Gage had offered a hundred soldiers to each of the governors of Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Maryland. They did not accept the offer, thinking that “100 men was a number which might be provocative without being effective.”59 Concessions. Commenting in 1770 on the effects of the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766, Burke referred to uncertainty by the same phrase, italicized below, that I cited from his speech in 1774: “However peace was restored—whether the condescension of this country would encourage them to the same violence in resisting other laws and that their success in defensive would embolden them to offensive measures; or would operate to make them more ready to obey was in the womb of time.”60 Three crucial episodes in Boston from 1765, 1770, and 1774 show how the presence of a crowd could turn concessions into defeats. As a prelude to the repeal of the Stamp Act, a crowd wrecked the mansion of Andrew Oliver, secretary of the colony. “Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson made an effort to calm the crowd, [but] he and the sheriff were driven away in a hail of stones. The next day Oliver resigned [his] commission . . . and the crisis appeared resolved. . . . But instead of satisfying the crowd Oliver’s resignation seemed only to whet its appetite for larger game: Thomas Hutchinson.”61 Franklin “had hoped that the Americans would show proper appreciation when the Stamp Act was repealed, but remained disappointed.”62 Episodes of this kind fueled the worry in London “that the Americans would never be satisfied, that they were really after independence, not legislative autonomy, so repeal of one statute would just encourage them to demand more.”63 In the aftermath of the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, a committee that included Samuel Adams demanded the withdrawal from the city of the two British regiments. The lieutenant governor answered “that the troops were placed in the town by order from the King, and that he had no authority to remove them. This increased the temper of the people, and upon a second application Col. Dalrymple, the commanding officer, offered to remove one regiment, to which the soldiers on guard [who were involved in the massacre] belonged. This was giving up the point. It was declared not satisfactory; and Mr. Adams said to him if he could remove one he could remove both, and it was at his peril to refuse it.”64 58. PDNA, 3:258. See also Bourke (2015, 317): “The threat of trying Boston radicals for treason or misprision of treason . . . was at once galling and half-hearted.” 59. Shy 1965, 211. 60. Burke 1981–2015, 2:326. 61. Christie and Labaree 1976, 59. 62. Kammen 1974, 187. 63. Reid 1986–93, 4:129. 64. Hutchinson 1883, 79. For a detailed narrative, see Hutchinson (1828, 273–76).
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In the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, the Massa chusetts House of Representatives initiated proceedings against the judges of the Supreme Court for having received their salary from the king rather than from the assembly. In a letter to Lord Dartmouth in February 1774, Governor Hutchinson asserted that “advantage was taken of the weak state of body, by which the mind was also affected, of one of the Judges, and he was induced, in consequence of the resolves of the last Session, to send a letter to the Speaker, expressing his determination to comply with the demand of the House. Hav ing carried this point with one, the others were afraid of increasing the rage of the people against them, if they refused to comply with the renewed demand made upon them.”65 Thus, while in 1770 one man’s concession triggered the crowd’s demand for more, in 1774 one man’s concession triggered more concessions b ecause of fear of the crowd. There w ere probably many other occasions on which the crowd was a virtual actor. Deliberate Inaction. When a government faced with various options ends up doing nothing, it is often, perhaps usually, because of stalemate among the actors.66 For instance, when Pennsylvania failed to respond to Indian threats in 1756, it “did not happen, as many contemporaries charged, b ecause the Quaker oligarchs in the assembly preferred watching defenseless backwoodsmen die to troubling their own consciences by making military appropriations. . . . The most significant cause of Pennsylvania’s inaction lay instead in the character of provincial politics, which had been deadlocked since 1740 over the question of taxing proprietary lands.”67 Deliberate inaction seems to be rare. Seneca (De ira I.11) provides a classical example: “How else did Fabius restore the broken forces of the state but by knowing how to loiter, to put off, and to wait—things of which angry men know nothing? The state, which was standing then in the utmost extremity, had surely perished if Fabius had ventured to do all that anger prompted.” In Americ a, as we shall see in chapter 2, John Adams admitted that “Fabius’s Cunctando was wise and brave,”68 but fretted over the inactivity that Washington’s strategy imposed upon him. In later chapters I s hall also cite examples of deliberate inaction that take the form of giving an opponent rope to hang himself (see also volume 1, 116). 65. Hutchinson 1883, 113. For a detailed narrative, see Hutchinson (1828, 442–43). 66. Observers can be tempted to read intentions into inaction that were not in fact there. Thus when Governor Hutchinson failed to receive a response to his repeated cries of wolf to the English authorities, the reason was “perhaps, he argued in his endless efforts to impute rationality to the impenetrable silence of the deities that ruled his political existence, perhaps to the politically sophisticated in England silence was a proper expression of the contempt that was felt for such petty defiance” (Bailyn 1974, 304). 67. Anderson 2001, 160–61. 68. “From John Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, 25 November 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-03-02-0170.
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Inaction aversion is a fundamental tendency that can arise from a variety of mechanisms that I s hall now analyze and illustrate. The list is probably not exhaustive, nor are the mechanisms necessarily mutually exclusive. Emotions can induce inaction aversion, by two mechanisms. First, as I shall argue in the next chapter, an agent in the grip of a strong emotion such as enthusiasm or anger may have an almost irresistible urge to act at once. Second, a prudent and rational agent who is tempted to do nothing may be deterred by the contempt of o thers. “In the revival of newspaper appeals a fter the fall of Charleston [in 1780], one writer warned, ‘In times of public danger like the present, I hold e very species of inaction of the nature of treason.’ ”69 In the next chapter, I shall give other examples of rational prudence being castigated as pusillanimity. Keynes argued that uncertainty, too, can induce inaction aversion: “Even apart from the instability due to speculation, there is the instability due to the characteristic of human nature that a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical expectations, whether moral or hedonistic or economic. Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which w ill be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits— a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.”70 Along a different line of argument, Keynes, misquoting Paul Valéry, argued in 1933 that in the movements t oward national self-sufficiency: An even worse danger than silliness is Haste. Paul Valéry’s aphorism is worth quoting—“Political conflicts distort and disturb the p eople’s sense of distinction between matters of importance and matters of urgency.” The economic transition of a society is a thing to be accomplished slowly. What I have been discussing is not a sudden revolution, but the direction of secular trend. We have a fearful example in Russia today of the evils of insane and unnecessary haste. The sacrifices and losses of transition w ill be vastly greater if the pace is forced.71
69. Royster 1979, 286. 70. Keynes 1936, 161–62. Pascal (2011) put it differently and more strongly: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” For putative examples of animal spirits in politics, see Elster (2013, 182–83). Taleb (2012, ch. 7) has a wide-ranging discussion. 71. Keynes 1978, 22:245. The original reads: “Le résultat des luttes politiques est de troubler, de falsifier dans les esprits la notion de l’ordre d’importance des questions et de l’ordre d’urgence. Ce qui est vital est masqué par ce qui est le simple bien-être. Ce qui est d’avenir par l’immédiat. Ce qui est très nécessaire par ce qui est sensible. Ce qui est profond et lent par ce qui est excitant” (Valéry 1960, 948).
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Even when an agent confronted with a major decision knows that there is nothing to be gained and something to be lost by acting immediately, its sheer importance may create a momentum that tolerates no delay. Just like emotions, the importance of a decision may generate a sense of urgency. Finally, inaction aversion might be triggered by the intolerable burden of waiting to carry out a scheduled and dangerous action, such as a suicide mission. According to one Kamikaze pilot, the stress of waiting was “unbearable.” To counteract the urge to take immediate and premature action, “the first rule of the Kamikaze was that they should not be too hasty to die. If they could not select an adequate target, they should return to try again later.”72 In Afghani stan, organizers sometimes prefer the technique of remote detonation, which “reduces mistakes caused by attacker stress, such as premature detonation.”73 George Ainslie argues that urgency or inaction aversion “names the effort of using mental suppression to defer action” and that “the anguish of Kamikaze pilots came from this process raised to a power.”74 In the conclusion, I cite George Lefebvre’s suggestion that the psychology of crowd members preparing for action owes much to this mechanism. In G reat Britain, decision-makers w ere largely incapable of waiting. Without suggesting any specific explanation, Ian Christie and Benjamin Labaree comment on the inaction aversion of British decision-makers: “In making their decisions, the British politicians did not perceive the full range of choice before them. The grounds for action seemed compelling, and action followed. The grounds for inaction at first hardly obtruded upon their notice at all.”75 By contrast, George Washington’s deliberate adoption of a quasi- Fabian strategy was among the main reasons for the success of the Americans in the war, even though he was to some extent constrained by the enthusiasm of his troops (see below).76 Preemption. This strategy—the satisfaction of latent or potential demands—requires a degree of foresight rare among politicians. In May 1848, Tocqueville, who knew more about revolutions than anyone before or since, wrote to Lord Radnor that “the only way to attenuate and postpone [the] revolution is to do, before one is forced to do it, all that is possible to improve
72. Peter Hill 2005, 28, 25. 73. UNAMA 2007, 50. 74. Ainslie 2021, 335. 75. Christie and Labaree 1976, 52. 76. Of the main American generals, Horatio Gates was the only one to explicitly advocate a Fabian strategy (D. Fischer 2004, 79). Washington’s strategy of a “war of posts” (see chapter 2) also relied, however, on avoiding “a general attack on open ground” (chapter 2). For my purposes here, the distinction seems unimportant.
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the situation of the people.”77 In other words, the timing of concessions can be crucial. Commenting on the role of a governor suspended between instructions from Britain and his colony’s resistance, Leonard Labaree writes that “a conscientious governor was likely to hesitate so long before disregarding an instruction that the assembly would look upon any indulgence that he finally showed them as a forced surrender rather than a voluntary act of generosity. His concession, therefore, would weaken rather than strengthen his position in the province.”78 Burke, too, stressed the importance of timing: “early reformations are made in cold blood; late reformations are made u nder a state of inflammation.”79 Among British officials, one can cite, as a plausible example of preemption, extracts from the “Principles of Law and Polity” that Governor Bernard of Massachusetts wrote in the spring of 1764, probably before he knew about the adoption of the Sugar Act.80 The document included notably the following clauses: 62. A Representation of the American Colonies in the Imperial Legislature is not impracticable: and therefore 63. The propriety of a Representation of the American Colonies in the Imperial Legislature, must be determined by expediency only. 64. A Representation of the American Colonies, in the Imperial Legislature, is not necessary to establish the authority of the Parliament over the Colonies. But 65. It may be expedient for quieting disputes concerning such authority, and preventing a separation in future times.81
77. Tocqueville 2003, 630. The best-known successful attempt to implement his recommendation is perhaps Bismarck’s social insurance program. Workers, he said, “will think that if the state comes to any harm, I’ll lose my pension” (Ritter 1983, 35). Alexander II of Russia also perceived that “the only means of avoiding revolution—and what Louis XVI did not do—was to preempt [devancer] and prevent it” (Carrère d’Encausse 2008, 454). In volume 3, I discuss attempts by the French privileged classes to defang the revolution by preemption; they were too late. 78. Labaree 1964, 436. 79. Burke 1981–2015, 3:492. 80. The Act was adopted by Parliament on April 11. The first reference in Bernard’s correspondence to the “Principles of Law and Polity” occurs in a letter dated June 23 (Bernard 1774, 23). In a resolution that I cite in chapter 2, on May 24 the Bostonian representatives in the Massachusetts assembly adopted a protest against impending taxes, but the text seems to refer to the Sugar Act itself and not to its intimation of future taxation. More importantly, perhaps, Bernard’s document does not mention the Sugar Act. 81. Bernard 1774, 80.
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In 1764, American demands for representation in the British Parliament were at most marginal.82 Once the demand was made, most came to recognize that the mechanics of colonial representation did in fact make it “impractical,” but Bernard did show unusual foresight in trying to prevent separation. In their comment on the document, the Morgans write that “no one in England felt the urgency of the situation as Bernard did,” but that “they would have been wise to listen to [him].”83
Conclusion In conclusion to this chapter, it seems appropriate to quote from two letters by Thomas Hutchinson, both from his time as lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. The first was written in 1765, a few days a fter his h ouse in Boston had been ransacked and destroyed by a mob that, wrongly, believed he was somehow responsible for the passage of the Stamp Act, a measure of which “he had strongly disapproved from the time he first heard of it.”84 After describing the events and the damage, he concludes: “On the one hand it will be said if concessions be made the parliament endanger the loss of their authority over the colonies on the other hand if external force should be used there seems to be danger of a total lasting alienation of affection. Is there no alternative?”85 The second letter was written on May 11, 1770, two months a fter the Boston Massacre, in which British soldiers killed five people in a crowd that were harassing them. Writing to a British friend, he charged that “You [Britain] never ought to have mad[e] any concessions from your own power over the colonies and you ought not to have attempted an exertion of power which caused such a general dissatisfaction thro the Colonies.”86 Like the earlier letter, the second reads like the cri de coeur of a man who feels damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. Finally, I shall illustrate the dilemma between interest and emotion by a dialogue from The Maltese Falcon. Stating that he is in possession of the falcon, Sam Spade refuses to hand it over to Mr. Gutman, who has spent years looking for it: Spade: “If you kill me, how are you going to get the bird? If I know you can’t afford to kill me till you have it, how are you g oing to scare me into giving it to you?” 82. Reid 1986–93, 4:99. 83. Morgan and Morgan 1995, 19. 84. Bailyn 1974, 62. 85. Hutchinson 2014–22, 1:293. 86. Hutchinson 2014–22, 3:220–21.
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Mr. Gutman: “That is an attitude, sir, that calls for the most delicate judgment on both sides, because, as you know, sir, men are likely to forget in the heat of action where their best interest lies and let their emotion carry them away.” Spade, too, was all smiling blandness. “That’s the trick, from my side, to make my play strong enough that it ties you up, but yet not make you mad enough to bump me off against your better judgment.”87 The “trick” that haunted the British was to find a level of pressure on the Americans that would make them comply out of self-interest while not triggering emotions that would override interest. They did not and could not know what that level was. 87. Hammett 1999, 553–54.
pa rt i
Microfoundations
ch a p t er t wo
The Psychology of the Main Social Groups mo t i vat ions
Reason, Interest, Passion As in volume 1 (chapter 1), I rely on a classification of human motivations into reason, interest, and passion. By “reason” I s hall understand the rational pursuit of the long-term public good, by “interest” the pursuit of the good of a proper subset of society (a person or a group), and by “passion” the pursuit of goals defined by one of the twenty-odd emotions that can be robustly distinguished from one another by their cognitive antecedents or behavioral consequences. In any given case, it may prove difficult to determine which motivation is at work, partly b ecause of the intrinsic complexity and fluidity ecause of the inadequacy of our of the human mind (volume 1, 8), partly b vocabulary, and partly because of the incentives generated by social interactions for agents to misrepresent their motivations to o thers (deception) or to themselves (self-deception).1 An important special case concerns the difficulty of distinguishing between prudential and visceral fear. Often enough, however, we can form a reasonable conjecture by triangulating different sources.2 By and large, the American founders had little trust in what Madison called “the mild voice of reason.”3 Samuel Adams was no doubt representative when he wrote on April 30, 1776, that “mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason. Events which excite t hose feelings w ill produce wonderful Effects. The Boston Port bill suddenly wrought a Union of the Colonies which 1. Elster 1999, ch. 5. 2. Elster 2015a, ch. 3. 3. Federalist, no. 42.
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could not be brot about by the Industry of years in reasoning on the neces sity of it for the Common Safety. . . . [O]ne Battle would do more towards a Declaration of Independency than a long chain of conclusive Arguments in a provincial Convention or the Continental Congress.”4 Yet an alliance of reason and passion, notably in the form of enthusiasm, could, as we s hall see, be remarkably powerful. Motivations play a dual role in social life. They trigger action directly, and the imputation of a motivation to another agent can trigger action indirectly. Both effects can be illustrated by comments on the treatment of the American loyalists after the end of the Revolutionary War. Illustrating the first effect, in 1783 New York chancellor Robert Livings ton wrote to Alexander Hamilton: “I seriou[s]ly lament with you the violent spirit of persecution which prevails h ere and dread its consequences upon the wealth commerce & future tranquility of the state. I am the more hurt at it because it appears to me almost unmixed with pure or patriotic motives. In some few it is a blind spirit of revenge & resentment but in more it is the most sordid interest.”5 The phrases I have italicized correspond to reason, emotion, and interest, respectively. The adjectives are telling, suggesting a hierarchy of motivations: reason is pure; passion is blind (leading to distorted perceptions and disregard of consequences); interest is sordid.6 Here I italicize the same motivations, imputed to o thers: “American whigs w ere exasperated against those of their fellow citizens who joined their enemies, with a resentment which was far more b itter, than that which they harboured against their Euro pean adversaries. Feeling that the w hole strength of the states was scarcely sufficient to protect them against the British, they could not brook the deser tion of their countrymen to invading foreigners. They seldom would give them credit for acting from principle, but generally supposed them to be influenced either by cowardice or interest, and w ere therefore inclined to proceed against them with rigor.”7 4. S. Adams 1907, 284–85. 5. “To Alexander Hamilton from Robert R. Livingston, 30 August 1783,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-03-02 -0283.See McDonald (1982, 75–76) for the context. 6. When an interest is regarded as sordid, an agent w ill often misrepresent it as a con cern for the public good or even as passion (Elster 1999, ch. 5). 7. Ramsay (1789) 1990, 2:287. For another instance of his appeal to this triad see ibid., 1:186: It was a fortunate circumstance for the colonies that the royal army was posted in New-England. The people of that northern country have their passions more u nder the command of reason and interest, than in the southern latitudes, where a warmer sun excites a greater degree of irascibility. One rash offensive action against the royal forces at this early period, though successful, might have done great mischief to the cause of America. It would have lost them European friends, and weakened the disposition of the other colonies to assist
Psychology: Moti vations [ 29 ]
My appeal to this trio of motivations is not anachronistic. When Publius analyzed the spurs to action, he consistently framed the issues in t hese terms.8 As shown above, both a central actor and the foremost contemporaneous observer of the revolution did so as well. Although I have not been able to trace a direct influence, the approach originated among the seventeenth- century French moralists, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, and La Bruyère.9 Many of the actions that concern me in this book can be illuminated by a famous maxim by the last writer, also cited in volume 1 (p. 74) as an illustration of French policy t oward Great Britain after the defeat in the Seven Years’ War: “Nothing is easier for passion than to overcome reason; its greatest triumph is to conquer interest.”10 While adopting the same trio of motivations, the authors of the Federalist Papers focus on how interest and passion can overcome reason.11 Yet as we saw in chapter 1, the passions of political man could easily overcome the interests of economic man. Imputations of actual motivations must be distinguished from possible motivations. Hume wrote that it is “a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave: Though at the same time, it appears somewhat strange, that a maxim should be true in politics, which is false in fact.”12 If he meant, as he almost certainly did, that for decisions under uncertainty we should assume, as a worst-case heuristic, that people are motivated only by their self-interest, he was wrong. There are worse t hings than self-interest, such as envy, malice, prejudice (a kind of standing emotion), and pridefulness.13 Imputations of motivations can themselves be motivated. Although Bentham in general followed Hume when he wrote that “in the framing of laws, suspicion can not possibly be carried to too high a pitch,”14 he was also aware of the dangers of the hermeneutics of suspicion: them. The patient and the politic New-England men, fully sensible of their situation, submitted to many insults, and bridled their resentment. In civil wars or revolutions it is a matter of much consequence who strikes the first blow. 8. White 1987; Elster 2020b. 9. Elster 1999, § 2.3. 10. La Bruyère 1881, 4.77. 11. Elster 2021a. 12. Hume 1987, 42–43; Hume’s italics. One may infer what he meant by this statement through a comparison with what he thought about religious men: “When he heard a man was religious, he concluded he was a rascal, though he had known some instances of very good men being religious” (Mossner 1954, 597). 13. Writing to his son, Lord Chesterfield (Letter CCX) said that “our Tacituses and Machiavels go deep, suspect the worst, and, perhaps, as they often do, overshoot the mark” (The PG Edition of Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son, Project Gutenberg, 2004, last updated August 8, 2016, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3361/3361-h/3361-h.htm). To overshoot the mark is to underestimate the role of reason in politics; an opposite bias is to underestimate the role of passion. 14. Bentham 1989, 15.
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Whatever position the King [Louis XVI] takes, whatever sacrifices he makes, he will never succeed in silencing these slanderers: they are a vermin that bad temper and vanity w ill never fail to nourish in even the most healthy political body. It is first and foremost vanity that is the most prolific source of this injustice. One wants to deal subtly with everything . . . and prefers the most contrived assumption to the shame of having suspected that the behavior of a public person might have a laudable motive. If Washington persists in his retirement, it can only be a means to use the road through anarchy to open up the path to despotism.15 Imputations of motives need not stem from low motives, however. Citing all the three motivational complexes I have described, Irving Brant writes that under “the high sway of his emotions” the young James Madison “described the conservatives in terms of self-interest, the radicals in terms of patriotism.”16 In chapter 3, I shall discuss the psychological mechanisms that led American colonists to impute far-fetched motivations to the British government—either as beliefs about its intentions or as worst-case, slippery- slope assumptions.
Honor, Deference, Shame, Contempt hese attitudes form a cluster. Deference is owed to honor. Dishonorable acts T trigger contempt in observers. Contempt induces shame in the target. T hese are, at least, typical reactions. Jointly, they conferred stability to the colonial regime, just as for a long time they did to the French ancien régime. In volume 1 (p. 232) I conjecture that the French Revolution can be traced back to the moment when contempt by nobles triggered anger rather than shame in members of the third estate. The ensuing lack of deference may then have infused anger into the contempt as well. Tocqueville’s analysis of changing master-servant relations can serve as a paradigm.17 The language of honor is fluid, with many cognate words. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the meanings of both “dignity” and “reputation” overlap with that of “honor.” Gordon Wood writes that honor “subsumed self-esteem, pride [pridefulness], and dignity, and was akin to glory and fame.”18 Also, what counted as honorable or dishonorable varied immensely, as David Hackett Fischer shows:
15. Bentham 2002, 17–18. The passage was written in late 1788 or early 1789. For comments, see Elster (2013, 166). 16. Brant 1941, 144. 17. Tocqueville 2010, 4:1019. 18. G. Wood 1991, 39.
Psychology: Moti vations [ 31 ]
The social operation of honor, reputation, and shame was similar in some respects among Quakers, Puritans, and Anglicans in the 17 th and early 18 th centuries. But the substance of these social ideas differed very much from one group to another.19 When Cotton Mather celebrated the “honor” of New E ngland’s found ers, he meant a reputation for being “a studious, humble, patient, reserved and mortified person.”20 Honor in V irginia was compounded of two ideas. One of them was . . . “primal honor,” which meant physical courage and tenacity of will—in short honor as valor. The other idea has to do with gentility, breeding, character and good conduct. This was honor as virtue.21 A Quaker’s honor was far removed from the code of chivalry that existed among Virginia gentlemen. It was also not the same as the contractual code that was kept by New England’s specially elected saints. Instead it was a reputation for Christian love, peace, “good neighborhood,” godliness, and doing good to o thers.22 We can add that in the Appalachian backcountry, codes of honor were similar to the “amoral familism” of Southern Italy, causing everybody to be on hair- trigger alert for what might offend the family honor.23 Given this semantic and conceptual variation, it may be most useful to define honor by the “social operations” that sustain it—namely, the treatment meted out to deviants and violators: “blaming, naming, and shaming,” on occasion ostracism and violence, and, most important, the expectation of any of these. “When Virginians misbehaved, they were punished by rituals of public humiliation. The common punishments w ere meant to shame them, sometimes by the same devices that were used in Puritan New E ngland.”24 A weakness with this approach is that it covers violations not only of codes of honor but also of everyday social norms, such as the norm of turning off one’s cell phone at a dinner party. This flaw is perhaps inevitable. An action that for one observer is only a minor misstep may for another reveal a significant character flaw (“Who steals an egg will steal an ox”).25
19. D. Fischer 1989, 583. 20. D. Fischer 1989, 188. 21. D. Fischer 1989, 396. 22. D. Fischer 1989, 583. 23. Banfield 1967. 24. D. Fischer 1989, 397. 25. A paradox of shame is that it “involves taking a single unworthy action or characteristic to be the w hole of a person’s identity” (Lindsay-Hartz, de Rivera, and Mascolo 1995, 297). An action may be taken to be indisputable proof of the character of the person
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By and large, the American elite did not define its honor by rank. In France, the “norms of préséance” that regulated arrangements of seating, order of convocation, place in a procession, order of salutation, order of speaking, and other situations in which individuals had to be treated differentially in space or time shaped behavior in innumerable ways. Although rivals might sometimes reach a compromise, quarrels over préséance more often caused violence, decision paralysis, or withdrawal from social interaction (volume 1, 40–47). Rank mattered in America, too, but its importance was not inflamed by nobility and the cult of ancestry. In addressing others, a writer might use, in ascending order, “no title or Mr., Gentleman, Esquire, Honorable.”26 Such rankings could have implications for behavior. Gordon Wood cites several instances of deference and rules of precedence in colonial Americ a. At Yale college, “students . . . had to remove their hats at varying distances from the person they approached, depending on the status of that person: ten rods [fifty meters] for the president, eight rods for a professor, and five rods for a tutor. . . . On the eve of the Revolution the colonists squabbled over the proper seating at the governor’s table, to the point where Joseph Edmundson, the Mowbray herald extraordinary of the English College of Arms, had to be called in to prepare ‘Rules of Presidency’ to lay down the precise social position of the various colonial officials.”27 (The rules are reproduced in table 2.1.) In France, a person who failed to obtain the seat he claimed for himself or his wife might well have left the room rather than yielding to the herald. For another example, in 1752 the lower h ouse of the New Jersey legislature complained, perhaps surprisingly, that “upon delivery of Bills to the Council for their Concurrence the Council received the same without rising, as heretofore has been usual.”28 Virginia stands out in its concern for honor.29 More than any other colony, the province had historically tight links with the British nobility. “Of 152 Virginians who held top offices in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, at least sixteen were connected to aristocratic families, and 101 were the sons of rural baronets, knights and the rural gentry of E ngland. . . . Only eighteen were the sons of yeomen, traders, mariners, artisans or ‘plebs.’ ”30
rather than an isolated piece of behavior that may be ascribed to negligence or momentary weakness of will. 26. Main 1965, 219. 27. G. Wood 1991, 21 28. Main 1967, 52. 29. In a study of “the culture of honor,” Nisbett and Cohen (1996) provide an ingenious and compelling experimental analysis of behavioral differences in contemporary America between southern and northern subjects, the latter tending to “chicken out” more frequently in hostile confrontations. Interestingly, they did not find that the southerners’ refusal to yield was enhanced by the presence of observers, suggesting that their sense of honor was driven by pridefulness rather than by fear of shame. 30. D. Fischer 1989, 216.
Psychology: Moti vations [ 33 ] Table 2.1 Rules of Precedency Men
Women
Governor of the province
Governors’ wife
President of the council
His wife
Counsellors
Their wives
Speaker of the Commons House of Assembly
His wife
Chief justice
His wife
Baron of the Exchequer
His wife
Associate judges
Their wives
Baronets
Their wives
Attorney general
His wife
Judge of the Admiralty
His wife
Secretary of the province
His wife
Gentlemen of the Assembly
Their wives
Mayor
His wife
Aldermen
Their wives
Members of the Corporation
Their wives
The Virginians “extended the full array of English social o rders and reinforced them. . . . Camden in his Britannia, and Dugdale in his diary, enumerated no fewer than six ranks of ‘esquires’ alone, plus many shadings of ‘gentility.’ ”31 This rank consciousness could, as in France, lead an official to withdraw from a body to which he belonged rather than accepting an inferior seating: “The members of a country court were as sensitive to the pecking order among themselves as were the members of the council. There were frequent disputes about precedence in t hese bodies, and a man would sometimes refuse to sit at all if not placed higher than another on the list of councilors or judges, though the placement had no apparent function.”32 In this colony, “hierarchical ideas also applied in treatment of the disorderly. . . . Gentlemen-felons were sometimes sentenced to be branded with a ‘cold iron’ which left no mark that might destroy their honor.”33 I now consider the motivational mind-set of British elites—politicians and officers. In a sustained denunciation of their political mores, John Shy writes that “the political correspondence of the times is shot through with a cant which, whether hypocritical or sincere, reveals a common body of assumptions about the game of politics: the appeal is always to personal honor, consistency, 31. D. Fischer 1989, 383. 32. Morgan 2003, 288–89. 33. D. Fischer 1989, 399.
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reputation, loyalty, trust, obligations, but rarely is it suggested that any of these might not be identified with the national interest or public welfare.”34 With the exceptions of Edmund Burke and Benjamin Franklin, neither of whom had important executive powers, t here was not in British politics anyone as public-spirited as Vauban, Turgot, or Malesherbes in eighteenth-century French politics (volume 1, 120–23, 244). With regard to the military, Shy writes that field officers mostly “lacked that ascetic professional attitude, prized in the twentieth century, but scorned as mean and narrow in the eighteenth. Put in charge of a post in the wilderness, British majors and lieutenant colonels thought first how to live nobly, plan grandly, and, if possible, find the fortune that would provide for their heirs. Honor and affluence not obedience or hon esty, w ere their paramount concerns.”35 Among French officers, honor was an equally obsessive concern, understood in a way that did not prevent the two outstanding generals of the régime, Condé and Turenne, from fighting against the army of Louis XIV at some points in their careers. As noted, defining characteristics of what scholars refer to as “honor” vary a great deal, but the distinction between honor by ascription and honor by achievement applies to them all.36 As a rough generalization, British highborn politicians claimed honor by ascription through birth, while British officers sought honor by achievement through action. The former identified themselves with, and justified their actions by, the honor of their country. “As the protests [against the Stamp Act] from across the ocean poured into England, Parliamentary hackles r ose, and the Minister could rejoice, for, as he had calculated, the members reacted to the denial of their authority with the wreath of injured dignity.”37 Burke consistently made fun of the desire for dignity, as in a speech to the House of Commons in 1768: When the Stamp Act was repealed t here was peace in America, and trade flowed in its usual channels. The very next year, such was the fashion of throwing our own burdens upon the shoulders of others, we began to hanker a fter an American revenue; when you had determined upon that one year, many people thought that we should let down some thing of our haughty dignity for the sake of the peace, and prosperity of this country. When they had the peace, they began to pine and whine for their dignity, for some little t hing that should give them back their dignity.38 34. Shy 1965, 5. 35. Shy 1965, 290. 36. Elster 1999, 207–10. 37. Morgan and Morgan 1995, 65. 38. PDNA, 4:7. Ramsay ([1789] 1990, 1:155) refers to “pride and passion, u nder the specious names of national dignity and zeal for the supremacy of parliament” as the motivations of the British politicians. Adam Smith ([1776] 1981, 616–17) wrote perspicuously
Psychology: Moti vations [ 35 ]
It does not appear that British politicians w ere much concerned with personal honor in their policy statements about the colonies. Instead, they invoked a kind of vicarious honor on behalf of the nation, an idea that may seem incongruous or even meaningless to some modern minds, but which has had, and retains, an enormous and malign influence in human affairs. Under Louis XIV, the glory of France mattered more than the welfare of the French (volume 1, 36, 202, 229), a mind-set we also find in Napoleon and Charles de Gaulle.39 Moreover, Louis XIV conducted an aggressive foreign policy motivated by the desire to increase his glory, not simply defend it against attack or invasion. His quest for glory had causal efficacy. In England the quest was largely spurious. In an extended discussion of the motives behind the establishment of British colonies, Klaus Knorr dismisses appeals to “the glory that would redound to the king and the nation. . . . Careful perusing of the literature and the annals of that period [1570–1660] leads to the inescapable conclusion that . . . the a ctual weight of this factor was exceedingly small, if not negligible. The very hackneyed cursoriness of its inclusion among a string of broadly discussed arguments proves that the overwhelming majority of writers had little confidence in its appeal value. . . . There is not a single writer who advocates the establishment of colonies mainly for the glory of king or nation.”40 Yet even if Britain created the colonies for instrumental—economic and strategic—reasons, once established their perpetuation became a matter of noninstrumental honor.41 If individuals violated a code of honor for the sake of monetary gain, such as not paying a gambling debt, they could be shamed by their peers. If a nation, in Burke’s words, v iolated its dignity for the sake of peace, ostracizing the king, the government, or its supporters were not meaningful options. It may be true that a fter the Rockingham government repealed the Stamp Act,
that “No nation ever voluntarily gave up the dominion of any province, how troublesome soever it might be to govern it, and how small soever the revenue which it afforded might be in proportion to the expence which it occasioned. Such sacrifices, though they might frequently be agreeable to the interest, are always mortifying to the pride of every nation, and what is perhaps of still greater consequence, they are always contrary to the private interest of the governing part of it.” 39. Elster 2009b, 52–55. In an interesting contrast, during the Seven Years’ War, Vaudreuil, the French governor of Canada, resisted the idea of “[dying] without dishonor. . . . His charge was to protect the welfare of all the colonists of New France, not to sustain the reputation of French arms” (Anderson 2001, 408). 40. Knorr 1944, 27–28. He comments that this fact “surely distinguished English liter ature from the bulk of French writings in a most pleasing manner” (63n.). 41. For a parallel, when p eople have no preformed opinion on a given subject, they are better able to form one by rational consideration of the available information than to change it later upon receiving new information that would have dissuaded them from forming it in the first place.
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“politicians outside the administration [held it] in the utmost contempt,”42 but if so, it was not a contempt capable of shaming anyone. Vicarious honor had no clear action tendencies. For British officers in America, achieving honor or avoiding dishonor could be dominant considerations, sometimes at the expense of military efficiency. Achieving a given end with fewer means conferred honor. Thus, before the battle at Saratoga, George Germain, the secretary of state for the American colonies, “was unperturbed when he discovered that the junction [between Generals Howe and Burgoyne] was unlikely to happen, writing that it would be ‘more honor for Burgoyne if he does the business without any assistance from New York.’ ”43 In b attle, taking cover before the e nemy might be efficient, but “British officers said that cover meant cowardice.”44 An enemy might take advantage of this attitude. In the campaign of 1777, Washington “could not believe that general Howe with a victorious army . . . should come out of Philadelphia only to return thither again. He therefore presumed that to avoid the disgrace of such a movement, the British commander would, from a sense of military honour, be compelled to attack him, though under g reat disadvantages.”45 The search for honor among American officers could also occur at the expense of military efficiency. The desire for fame: encouraged in some officers a blend of touchiness and recklessness that was, in effect, if not in intent, suicidal. . . . In combat, some of them indulged the flight to fame despite its needless cost or risk to both their cause and their men. Admirers of John Laurens regretted that “he fell unnecessarily in an unimportant skirmish” at the end of the war, due to “his rash exposure.” John Marshall later said that Laurens, who was 42. Morgan and Morgan 1995, 273. 43. O’Shaughnessy 2013, 114. 44. Royster 1979, 12. He adds that “the soldier who had the freedom to hide behind fences and trees also had the freedom to flee.” Commenting on the retreat of the British army from Concord on April 19, 1774, a British officer wrote that “upon our return [from Concord] we were fired upon from every h ouse, barn, ditch, hill, and place that afforded cover; and though the w hole Country about us was raised, and they had very superiority which number and the knowledge of places could give them, the rebels never made one gallant or manly attempt upon us. . . . The rebels fought like the savages of the country, and treated some, that had the misfortune to fall, for they scalped and cut of their ears with the most unmanly barbarity” (Willard 1925, 76–77). The last sentence suggests that manliness was defined by adherence to a code of honor, not as courage. The attitude persisted in the British army for more than a c entury. In the Boer war, “the notion that certain acts were not ‘cricket’ was carried to such absurd lengths that the [British] trooper was given no training in the ‘cowardly’ art of building defensive positions or head cover” (Dixon 1976, 54–55). Hume (1983, 2:388) cites a similar decision by an English commander in the Hundred Years’ War. 45. Ramsay (1789) 1990, 2:21.
Psychology: Moti vations [ 37 ]
27 years old when he died, pursued military fame “with the ardour of a young soldier, whose courage seems to have partaken largely of that romantic spirit which youth and enthusiasm produce in a fearless mind.” . . . [T]he extra dare, unnecessary for victory, even an impediment to it, excited officers b ecause it contained the hidden edge of their prowess. . . . [In their search for glory, some officers] went beyond concern for victory, beyond care for their men’s lives, and even beyond the thought of future service in the revolution.46 I s hall return to enthusiasm in a l ater section. H ere, I note only that the search for honor was not necessarily, or even usually, fueled by this emotion. Like most emotions, enthusiasm has a short half-life, whereas the concern with honor could be consuming and durable. In the revolutionary generation, it often took the form of a desire for fame. Douglas Adair wrote that the American founders were “drunk with the hope of fame.”47 In the Federalist Papers (no. 72), Publius affirmed that “the love of fame [is] the ruling passion of the noblest minds.” Their idea of fame crucially involved a posthumous reputation, “honor across space and time,”48 unlike both the crude and near-pathological desire for popularity that motivated the French minister Necker (volume 1, 175–77) and the competitive desire to appear as “more disinterested than thou” that sometimes motivated the French framers of 1789 (discussed in volume 3). “The awareness of posterity strongly moved the revolutionaries during the war. Americans liked to picture themselves as o thers saw them: Continental- Army officers worried about what British officers thought of them; Americans sought the respect of the French in order to win allies. . . . But the most popu lar and long-lasting mirror of their fancy was their posterity.”49 The desire for fame must also be distinguished from ambition, understood as a strong and permanent desire for an improved personal situation. The latter is not an emotion, as it does not abate with time, although its object can change. It differs from the desire for fame in that ambition is consistent with a desire to be the power behind the throne. As we shall see, many Americans attributed the zeal of ordinary citizens in their country to enthusiasm. Adam Smith, though, ascribed it to ambition: The persons who now govern the resolutions of that they call their continental congress, feel in themselves at this moment a degree of 46. Royster 1979, 205–7. 47. Adair 1974, 34. Similarly, the French framers seemed “drunk with disinterestedness” (Lebègue 1910, 261) when on May 16, 1791, they declared themselves ineligible to serve in the first ordinary legislature (see volume 3). 48. G. Wood 1991, 207. De Gaulle (2000, 614) asserts that in decisions he took in 1945 he was motivated by the future reputation of France, at two removes, as it were, from ordinary popularity-seeking. 49. Royster 1979, 7.
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importance which, perhaps, the greatest subjects in Europe scarce feel. From shopkeepers, tradesmen, and attornies, they are become statesmen and legislators, and are employed in contriving a new form of government for an extensive empire. . . . Five hundred different people, perhaps, who in different ways act immediately under the continental congress; and five hundred thousand, perhaps, who act under those five hundred, all feel in the same manner a proportionable rise in their own importance. Almost every individual of the governing party in Americ a, fills, at present in his own fancy, a station superior, not only to what he had ever filled before, but to what he had ever expected to fill; and u nless some new object of ambition is presented e ither to him or to his leaders, if he has the ordinary spirit of a man, he w ill die in defence of that station.50 Adam Smith thus anticipated recent political scientists who claim that revolutionaries are motivated by their expectation to have “a good position in the new state which is to be established by the revolution.”51 His argument is awkward, or worse, not only in itself but also because of the strange juxtaposition of ambition and sacrifice. I conjecture that Adam Smith, while struck by the disinterest of the revolutionaries, never thought of them as enthusiasts, a term that in Hume’s and Smith’s England had strong negative connotations, ranging from sentimentality to fanaticism (see section “Enthusiasm,” below). The impetus of the prospect of fame is blunted when responsibility is diluted, as Madison noted in “Vices”: “However strong this motive [the desire for reputation] may be in individuals, . . . its efficacy is diminished in proportion to the number which is to share the praise or the blame.”52 Observers from Aristotle to Bentham have noted that “What’s everybody’s business is nobody’s business.”53 Based on his frustration with the conduct of the war, Hamilton complained in 1780 that: Lately Congress . . . have gone into the measure of appointing boards. But this is in my opinion a bad plan. A single man, in each department of the administration, would be greatly preferable. It would give us a chance of more knowledge, more activity, more responsibility and of course more zeal and attention. Boards partake of a part of the inconveniencies of larger assemblies. Their decisions are slower their energy less their responsibility more diffused. They will not have the same 50. A. Smith (1776) 1981, 623. 51. Tullock (1971), passim; cited approvingly by Acemoglu and Robinson (2001, 941); criticized in Elster (2015c). 52. “Vices of the Political System of the United States, April 1787,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-09-02-0187. 53. Elster 2013, 149–50. See chapter 6 for an appeal to this maxim in a memorandum by artisans in Philadelphia.
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abilities and knowledge as an administration by single men. Men of the first pretensions w ill not so readily engage in them, b ecause they will be less conspicuous, of less importance, have less opportunity of distinguishing themselves. The members of boards will take less pains to inform themselves and arrive to eminence, b ecause they have fewer motives to do it.54 Congress wanted to dilute power, in the fear that if given to “a single man” he might use it to increase it. It did not appreciate, as Madison and Hamilton did, the possible loss of efficiency. This issue forms part of the background for the increasing desire, in many quarters, for a more efficient and centralized government, a desire that entered into the c auses that ultimately led to the adoption of the 1787 constitution. Charles Royster writes that “two different prospects could arouse an officer’s anxious concern about his standing with other officers and the public: fame and shame.”55 In the ordinary course of life, shame is the more important motivation. People rarely seek, or obtain, praise from complying with social norms, be they norms of etiquette, the norm of keeping promises, or positive and negative norms of reciprocating. Since compliance is taken for granted, rarely noted, and virtually never rewarded, the norms are enforced by the shaming of violators. By contrast, going beyond the call of duty by performing supererogatory acts can attract praise and even fame, which can be powerful motivations. Whereas Hamilton stressed the carrot of fame, Bentham emphasized the stick of shame.56 According to A. O. Lovejoy, John Locke was unusual among early modern writers in recognizing “both the positive and the negative aspects of approbativeness [the desire for approval].” For the most part, “those who were keenly aware of the potency of the love of praise were rarely equally sensible to the potency of the fear of blame, and vice versa.” Lovejoy also writes that, for Locke, fear of blame was a “more prevalent and potent motive” than desire for praise.57 In colonial America it was probably more prevalent, but perhaps not more potent. In fact, compared to later periods it seems that in America both shame and fame w ere experienced more strongly and avoided or sought more intensely. In Virginia, “shame had an emotional power which 54. “From Alexander Hamilton to James Duane, [3 September 1780],” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-02-02 -0838.For the inefficiency of these boards, see also Jillson and Wilson (1994, 106–12). Similarly, Ramsay ([1789] 1990, 1:354) objected to the practice, common to all states except New York, of requiring the governor to be assisted by a council: “It destroyed the secrecy, vigor and dispatch, which the executive power ought to possess, and by making governmental acts the acts of a body, diminished individual responsibility.” 55. Royster 1979, 204. 56. Elster 2013, 164. 57. A. Lovejoy 1961, 135–36.
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it has lost today. Loss of reputation was a form of social death.”58 In what was otherwise a very different society, New E ngland, “the social cement of their world was a sense of belonging and an intense fear of ‘shame,’ which was the emotion one felt when reputation was lost.”59 Casual observation suggests that in the contemporary world, the desire for posthumous fame has also lost some of its motivating force. A. O. Lovejoy cites three eighteenth-century writers who expressed the felt intensity of the pain of shame: Voltaire as saying, “To be an object of contempt to t hose with whom one lives is a thing that none has ever been, or ever will be, able to endure”; Adam Smith as asserting, “Compared with the contempt of mankind, all other evils are easily supported”; and John Adams to the effect that “the desire of esteem is as real a want of nature as hunger; and the neglect and contempt of the world as severe a pain as gout and stone.”60 In America, “dissidents faced intense pressure from committees and mobs to take Patriot oaths and serve in their militias. . . . In South Carolina, a Loyalist complained that he and his friends faced ruin b ecause they w ere not allowed the Liberty to pass over any Ferry, nor deal in any Store, nor have Corn ground at any Mill; they are not allowed to purchase Salt to eat with their Provisions, [and] their Estates are threatened to be taken from them.”61 In chapter 6 I shall discuss how the fear of shame before their fellow citizens, together with other motivations, sustained participants in the nonimportation and nonconsumption movements. Contempt can affect a target person emotionally, by causing the intensely painful feeling of shame, or materially, by causing others to withdraw and thus block mutually beneficial transactions. During the Revolutionary War, even nonshunners of loyalists w ere sometimes shunned. In V irginia—the most intransigent of the colonies—a man who rented an apartment from a parson who had condemned the association was obliged to give it up.62 If contempt is expressed verbally and deliberately, rather than by withdrawal behavior or by involuntary physiognomic reactions, it can generate anger in the target person (see volume 1, 232). In the unruly politics of New York State in the eighteenth century it would be unwise, for instance, to use Hilary Clinton’s 58. D. Fischer 1989, 397. 59. D. Fischer 1989, 188. 60. A. Lovejoy 1961, 181, 191, 199. 61. A. Taylor 2016, 217. The emotional impact of these sanctions was probably more important than the material losses they imposed (Elster 1999, 146–47). In New York toward the end of the eighteenth century, “whipping, the most common punishment meted out by the courts for minor offenses, was not permitted for men of rank, though the stripping away of the right to use ‘Mister’ before one’s name, or ‘Gentleman’ a fter it, may have been more painful than the lash” (Nash 1979, 8). 62. Schlesinger 1968, 514. For other examples see Van Tyne (2007, 215) and Breen (2010, 171).
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rhetoric of “a basket of deplorables” about the supporters of one’s opponent. “ ‘Be not allways wiser than your Company but suit yourself to their pre sent humor,’ was [council member Cadwallader] Colden’s advice to [fellow council member James] Alexander. ‘The despising of these fooleries begets an aversion in the common herd.’ ” A leveling tract “which bears the title ‘The Almighty made us equal all’ excoriates ‘people in Exalted Stations’ who look with contempt on ‘those they call the Vulgar, the Mob, the herd of Mechanics.’ ”63 Gary Nash writes that in the riots and h ouse invasions the Stamp Act triggered in Boston, “behind every swing of the ax and every hurled stone, behind every shattered crystal goblet and splintered mahogany chair, lay the fury of a Bostonian who had read or heard the repeated references to an impoverished people as ‘rabble’ and to the Caucus [Club] as a ‘herd of fools, tools, and sycophants.’ ”64 Upward social mobility can generate double contempt from above and from below as well as mutual contempt between the newly arisen and those left behind. Commenting on ennoblement in the ancien régime, Tocqueville wrote that, “not only did nobles refuse to tolerate in their electoral assemblies anything that smacked of the bourgeoisie, but the bourgeois w ere equally firm in rejecting anyone who had the appearance of a nobleman. In some provinces, the newly ennobled w ere rejected on one side b ecause they w ere not noble enough and on the other because they were already too noble.”65 In 1735, a South Carolina newspaper published a letter by “Blackamore,” a self-described “ordinary mechanic,” who made the same point: “With Regard to the Respect shown them by the true Gentry and the no Gentry, our half Gentry are exactly in the case of the Molattoes. . . . They are the Ridicule and Contempt of both sides.” The case of the mulatto is spelled out as follows: It is observed concerning the Generation of Molattoes, that they are seldom well belov’;d either by the Whites or the Blacks. Their Approach towards Whiteness, makes them look back with some kind of Scorn upon the Colour they seem to have left, while the Negroes, who do not think them better than themselves, return their Contempt with Interest. And the Whites, who respect them no Whit the more for the nearer Affinity in Colour, are apt to regard their Behaviour as too bold and assuming, and bordering upon Impudence. As they are next to Negroes, and just above ’em, they are terribly afraid of being thought Negroes, and therefore avoid as much as possible their Company or Commerce; and Whitefolks are as little fond of the Company of Molattoes.66
63. Bonomi 1971, 98, 136, 171. 64. Nash 1979, 297. 65. Tocqueville 2011, 86. 66. South-Carolina Gazette, March 22, 1735.
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The analogies are imperfect, since the French newly ennobled or the American half gentry were not the illegitimate offspring of those whose respect they sought. Winthrop Jordan writes that “on the [American] continent, unlike the West Indies, mulattoes represented a practice about which men could only feel guilty. To reject and despise the production of one’s own guilt was only natu ral.”67 The implication, which would warrant further study, is that a White man might feel contempt for a mulatto whom he had not himself generated, by a kind of projection of collective guilt. I have warned against excessive precision in attempts to impute actions or beliefs to specific emotions, a warning that is particularly appropriate h ere. It can be hard, sometimes impossible, to distinguish contempt from anger and hatred. (Some recent discussions also include disgust.) Also, verbal expressions of these emotions are unreliable. When p eople say, “I hate him because of what he did to me,” they usually intend only to communicate that she or he is very angry; in fact, the very anger makes the report unreliable. (“He who can describe how his heart is ablaze is burning on a small pyre.”) Historians, too, may sometimes use the terms in ways that differ from the more technical meanings that I briefly spell out in the next paragraph. Generally speaking, emotions are individuated by their cognitive antecedents and their action tendencies.68 The cognitive antecedent of anger is that the target person has performed a bad action, that of hatred that she or he is a bad or dangerous person, and that of contempt that she or he is an inferior person. Hitler was angry when the British bombed Hamburg in 1940, he hated Jews, and felt contempt for the Slavs—all emotions that hampered his effort to win the war. The action tendency of anger is to punish the offender, that of hatred to remove them from the earth (Aristotle) or at least from the vicinity, and that of contempt is to avoid all interaction. The distinctions are clear enough and to some extent confirmed by laboratory studies.69 Yet it is easy to think of cases in which the agents themselves would be hard put to say what they feel and what they want to do. In particular, because of the “paradox of shame” (note 25 above), an agent may fluctuate between framing a bad action as a punctual event, triggering anger, and as revealing a character trait, triggering contempt. In V irginia, the belief that slaves were both dangerous and inferior made it “natural not only for their owners but also for their fellow servants to lump them together in a lower common denominator of racist hatred and contempt.”70 Neutrals, f ree riders, and loyalists in the Revolutionary War triggered these emotions in many patriots. T. H. Breen cites “a widely circulated piece entitled 67. Jordan 2012, 175. 68. For details, see Elster (1999, 2021a). 69. A. Fischer and Roseman 2007. 70. Morgan 2003, 330.
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‘A Last Advice to the Tories and Refugees in New York’ [in which] a writer warned that Tories ‘who have done nothing, and said nothing’ might possibly escape the wrath of former neighbors, but ‘depend upon it, they will ever be treated as underling wretches, and held in abhorrence and contempt.’ ”71 Although Breen asserts that “with a few notable exceptions [Americans] refused to allow hate to define their revolution,”72 he also writes that “the revolutionaries . . . hated the neutrals as much as they hated the Tories. They seemed like f ree riders trying to take advantage of the wartime sacrifices of other Americans.”73 In American reactions to the Stamp Act, the opportunism of free riders triggered equally strong emotions. The “Savannah merchants were willing to play the role [to break ranks] which those of North Carolina had disdained, and they earned the hatred and contempt of the other colonists for this betrayal of American unity.”74 In a standard work on the loyalists, we read that “as the war advanced and one outrage after another was attributed to natural Tory depravity, the Whigs forgot that these men had been their respected neighbors, and believed them to be born with a natural ferocity like a savage.”75 Such essentialist beliefs are the breeding ground for hatred. When loyalists were executed for treason after the war rather than receiving a prison sentence, a fine, or loss of civil rights, we can infer that members of the court acted out of hatred rather than anger or contempt.76 Deference has been cited as the “psychological cement” of colonial V irginia and as an aspect of the “ligaments that held [American] society together”.77 Crucially, deference was an uncoerced respect toward, or at least accep tance of, the governing elites.78 Historians describe it as “deep-seated” and “ingrained.”79 Gordon Wood’s description of this mind-set applies, mutatis mutandis, to other premodern societies: eople in lowly stations . . . were apt to be filled with consternation and P awe when confronted with what w ere called gentle folks, . . . beings of a superior order. They often stood red-faced and fumbling, caps in hand, 71. Breen 2019, 219. 72. Breen 2019, 86. 73. Breen 2019, 95. 74. Morgan and Morgan 1995, 172. They use “hatred” and “fury” as synonyms (136–37), underlining my warning against taking the terms of historians in a technical sense. 75. Van Tyne 2007, 190; see also 192. 76. Van Tyne 2007, 268–73. See also Elster (2006, 229–34) for the choice between prison and execution of agents and collaborators with the Germans in trials in occupied countries after World War II. The latter punishment was usually reserved for torturers and informers, who were also the most hated agents. 77. D. Fischer 1989, 384; G. Wood 1991, 63. 78. Greene 1988, 199. 79. “Deep-seated”: Kars 2002, 70; Morgan and Morgan 1995, 248. “Ingrained”: Christie and Labaree 1976, 16.
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when talking with gentlemen. No wonder many of the most h umble developed what was called a “down look.” Old George Hewes of Mas sachusetts, seventy years a fter the event, still had seared into his mind the memory of being scared “almost to death” during a visit he made as a twenty-year old apprentice cobbler to the home of Squire John Hancock. Common p eople, noted the Maryland physician Alexander Hamilton, knew “how to fawn and cringe” before “a person of more than ordinary rank.” They stared “like sheep” at a gentleman’s “laced hat and sword.”80 Jackson Turner Main cites a contemporary observer in Maryland writing in 1783: “The g reat respect shewn to p eople of wealth, has annexed an awe to their persons, which the greatest familiarities can scarcely conquer. Hence the lower class of mankind rarely expect justice when contending against the rich. The g reat distance between the extremes of rich and indigents, prevents that familiar intercourse necessary to create respect; the wealthy are generally deemed tyrants, who in their turn, view the opposite extreme, as an inferior species unworthy the formality of judges.”81 As the deferential classes rarely left first-hand testimonies, we can only speculate about the psychological c auses and effects of this attitude.82 Most likely, it owed a g reat deal to adaptive preference formation.83 The belief that t hings cannot be otherwise, because all dimensions of oppression and exploitation coincide, generates a sense of inevitability that serves, in Barrington Moore’s words, as an anesthetic,84 or, in Marx’s words, as opium for 80. G. Wood 1991, 29. Elsewhere Wood (63) links deference to patron-client relations. No doubt the latter generated deference, but I conjecture that deference toward superiors with whom one did not have an ongoing personal relation was at least as important as a “cement of society.” The conjecture is supported by the text by Jackson Turner Main cited below. 81. Main 1965, 229. 82. In his fictional account of the lives of slaves in the Old South, Whitehead (2017, 30) makes the intriguing suggestion that when slaveholders allowed slaves to celebrate a birthday, it may have been because they had decided that “a small freedom was the worst punishment of all, presenting the bounty of true freedom into painful relief.” 83. Elster 1983b, ch. 2. When adaptive preferences take the form of “sour grapes”— downgrading what you cannot have rather than upgrading what you have—it can also affect kings. Thus to rationalize the loss of America, in 1782 George III (1927–28, 6:154) wrote to Lord Shelburne that “I cannot conclude without mentioning how sensibly I feel the dismemberment of America from this Empire, and I should be miserable indeed if I did not feel that no blame on that Account can be laid at my door, and did I not also know that knavery seems to be so much the striking feature of its Inhabitants that it may not in the end be an evil that they become Aliens to this Kingdom.” Readers of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice will recognize the reaction of Mr. Collins upon being rejected by Elizabeth Bennet. 84. Moore 1978, 460–61. See Scott (1985, 332–35) for a criticism of Moore’s idea that what is seen as inevitable also comes to be perceived as just. The idea of adaptive preferences does not necessarily have this normative implication.
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the p eople. Like these substances, adaptive preferences have both a numbing and a paralyzing effect: they alleviate the pain while also blunting any urge to act. Both effects can be reinforced by a tendency to gild the chains, if we accept Tocqueville’s assertion that “there is nothing more familiar to man than recognizing a superior wisdom in the one who oppresses him.”85 Also, the observation that those around one exhibit deference makes it natural to adopt the same attitude oneself, either as a matter of course or by the contempt directed toward those who stick their necks out (“the law of Jante”). The collapse of deference—the release from adaptive preferences—can result from the appearance of a chink in the armor. In what is probably the most famous single analysis in Tocqueville’s book on the old regime, he writes that: It is not always going from bad to worse that leads to revolution. What happens most often is that a people that put up with the most oppressive laws without complaint, as if they did not feel them, reject t hose laws violently when the burden is alleviated. . . . The evil that one endures patiently because it seems inevitable becomes unbearable the moment its elimination becomes conceivable. Then, every abuse that is eliminated seems only to reveal the others that remain, and makes their sting that much more painful. The ill has diminished, to be sure, but sensitivity to it has increased.86 Along the same lines, Peter Wood comments that by the 1730s, Carolinian “slaveowners had begun to debate the degree to which kindness and leniency were inducements to res ist ance rather than deterrents against it. T here is no way to judge w hether the many runaways whose masters considered them well used disappeared because of benevolent treatment, such as it was, or in spite of it. Tokens of generosity within an overwhelmingly hostile system may well have engendered further bitterness.”87 Commenting on the reforms in postrevolutionary America, Winthrop Jordan writes that “the less suffering there was, the less reason why t here should be any,” apparently contradicting
85. Tocqueville 2010, 3:721. 86. Tocqueville 2011, 157; see comments in volume 1 (88). Burke (1981–2015, 3:139) might seem to argue the opposite, when he questions the maxim that “the fewer c auses of dissatisfaction are left by government, the more the subject w ill be inclined to resist and rebel.” It is clear, however, that he is questioning the idea that concessions will always produce more demands b ecause they signal a weakness of the government (volume 1, 119; also chapter 1 above), not the idea that they will make the pain be felt more acutely. 87. P. Wood 1996, 244. In Virginia, Robert Carter treated his slaves exceptionally well. “Leniency and ‘indulgence’ w ere consciously spurned by most slaveowners; such treatment they believed ‘spoiled’ slaves. But this permissive empathetic way of dealing with slaves worked for Carter” (Mullin 1972, 71)—until, in the Revolutionary War, they took the opportunity to run off and joined the British (Mullin 1972, 72; A. Taylor 2013, 25).
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his later statement that “as slavery became less brutal, t here was less reason why it should be abolished.”88 Perhaps the first statement refers to subjective reasons, the second to objectives ones. Similarly, the observation that some of those around you fail to exhibit deference to shared superiors may undermine the sense of inevitability. When British soldiers stationed in Boston in 1774 took advantage of invitations to desert, “Colonel Leslie . . . was convinced that social equality in Massachusetts was the true cause of desertion, b ecause it removed the feeling of insubordination.”89 The fear of this effect may have motivated a 1691 law in V irginia that “forbade masters to free slaves unless they paid for the transportation of them out of the colony.”90 Out of sight, freed slaves would be out of mind. Referring to a later period, Tocqueville wrote that: The Americans of the South have understood that emancipation always presented dangers when the emancipated person could not one day come to be assimilated with the master. To give a man liberty and leave him in misery and disgrace, that is to do what, if not to provide a future leader of a slave revolt? It had already been noted for a long time, moreover, that the presence of the free Negro cast a vague restlessness deep within the soul of those who w ere not f ree, and made the ideas of their rights penetrate their soul like an uncertain glimmer. The Americans in the South have in most cases removed from the masters the ability to emancipate.91 88. Jordan 2012, 366, 368. The first of these two statements expresses a fact that has intrigued later writers. Writing in 1800, Governor Monroe of V irginia was puzzled by the slave insurrection that took place that year. “It seemed strange that the slaves should embark in this novel and unexampled enterprise of their own accord, [as] their treatment has been more favorable since the revolution” (Monroe 1903, 240–41; see also Mullin 1972, 141). The Wall Street Journal was still puzzled, when it wrote (July 18, 1966, quoted in Perlstein 2008, 121]) that it “is surprising, although to an extent understandable, that the more civil rights is piled onto the statute books, the more Federal money poured into attempts at Negro betterment—the more the anger rises.” Mullin (1972, 102) “hazards” the speculation that the “elite status” of bicultural (often skilled) slaves “did little to assuage the galling, painful impress of slavery; in fact, it intensified it.” 89. Shy 1965, 413–14. In a letter from Boston dated February 20, 1775, the author (“a Gentleman on board the Fleet”) questions this risk: “Desertion no longer prevails among the troops. Nor do they meet with that encouragement to desert as they did soon a fter their arrival; the common people are tired of treating them according to their first plan, as brothers; they are now considering them as enemies, indeed they ever held them in that light, but u nder a mask which they have now laid aside” (Willard 1925, 69). 90. Morgan 2003, 337. For similar legislation in the Carolinas, see P. Wood (1996, 102) and Jordan (2012, 123–24). 91. Tocqueville 2010, 2:580. Whether freed slaves would become natural leaders of slave rebellions is perhaps doubtful. Madison, who wrote from experience, asserted that “experience [had] shown that a freedman immediately loses all attachment & sympathy with his former fellow slaves” (“From James Madison to Joseph Jones, 28 November 1780,”
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Conversion, too, might cause this restlessness of the soul. For White observers, this state could appear as impudence or inappropriate pridefulness. A “ ‘common objection [to conversion],’ declared the Reverend Thomas Bacon in a sermon addressed to Negroes and published for White men, is ‘that your being baptized only makes you more proud and saucy.’ ”92 Traveling in Amer ica in the 1740s, the Finnish naturalist Peter Kalm accurately identified one effect of conversion as the status incongruence (see volume 1, 6) inherent in the tension between the plantation’s inequality, set in stone, and the unconditional equality of the church: here are . . . some who would be ill pleased [with negro enlightenT ment], and would in e very way hinder their negroes from being instructed in the doctrines of Christianity. To this they are led partly by the conceit of its being shameful to have a spiritual b rother or s ister among so despicable a p eople; partly by thinking that they would not be able to keep their negroes so subjected afterwards; and partly through fear of the negroes growing too proud on seeing themselves upon a level with their masters in religious matters.93 Deference, once undermined, cannot be recreated at will. This is, I believe, the central message of the introduction to Tocqueville’s Democracy in Amer ica. It can be illustrated by a comment on the equalizing consequences of the Revolutionary War: “[An] effect of the war was the rapid erosion of defer ential political behavior, which had characterized above all the apolitical majority: once they had seen and even taken part in hounding, humiliating, perhaps killing men known to them as social superiors, they could not easily reacquire the unthinking respect for wealth and status that underpinned the old order.”94 Notwithstanding this irreversibility, an elite may try to recreate deference by rearguard actions: “After 1753, royal instructions limited American land grants to no more than 1,000 acres per individual, but colonial officials and speculators colluded to evade the limit. In 1772, New York’s Governor William
Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison /01-02-02-0120). The freedom of a slave might make other slaves more rebellious, but not propel the freed slave to the head of their rebellion. 92. Jordan 2012, 182. 93. Kalm 1987, 209. See also Jordan (2012, 191–93) on “spiritual equality and temporal subordination.” The first of these two aims may have undermined the second, since the support for conversion of slaves in a colony decreased when their proportion in the population increased (Bonomi 2003, 119). As I discuss in chapter 5, another unwanted effect of conversion was that one would have to teach the slaves English and thus destroy the Babel of African languages that kept the slaves from communicating among themselves. Incidentally, the Babel in the Bible was explicitly stated as divide et impera (Gen. 11:6–7). 94. Shy 1990, 242–43.
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Tryon justified such evasions to a superior in E ngland: ‘I conceive it, My Lord, good policy to lodge large Tracts of Land in the hands of Gentlemen of weight and consideration. They will naturally farm out their lands to Tenants: method which will ever create subordination and counterpoise, in some measure, the general leveling spirit, that so much prevails in some of his Majesty’s Governments.’ ”95 In New York State, “landlords without doubt had originally hoped to operate their states as feudal quasi-baronies.” However, “in a country without a legally protected aristocracy, where social rank ‘had always to be earned anew’ by each generation, and where ‘social differences were considered to be incidental rather than essential to community order,’ the anachronistic posturing of ‘manor lords’ and ‘patroons’ invited the irreverent scorn of ordinary folk.”96 By itself, the release from adaptive preferences does not generate successful collective action. Release from pluralist ignorance may also be needed. To bring out this point, let me first cite an observation by Jack Greene to the effect that “Colonial Massachusetts was . . . a standing example of one of the early modern British political theorists’ favorite maxims, that all government depended on opinion.”97 Although Greene does not cite Hume, he was certainly aware of the most famous of these maxims: Nothing appears more surprising to t hose who consider h uman affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we s hall find, that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have noth ing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.98 here is an important ambiguity in the term “opinion.” As is clear from his T essay, Hume had in mind first-order opinions about the substantive policies of the government. However, for the stability of government, second-order opinions about the distribution of first-order opinions matter equally. If most citizens disapprove of what the government is d oing, but each believes that he or she is among the few to do so, they are in a state of pluralistic ignorance that makes it unlikely that they w ill join forces in collective action (volume 1, 24–25). Thus, when a government contemplates taking a controversial step, it should implement it quickly without giving the affected persons time to 95. A. Taylor 2016, 67–68. 96. Bonomi 1971), 188; also 226, citing Pole (1971, 45) and Bailyn (1971, 319). 97. Greene 2010, 142, 98. Hume 1987, 32.
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communicate with one another. Carlo Botta writes that “[if] the stamp act had been carried into immediate execution in the colonies, they would perhaps have submitted to it. . . . The principal colonists would not have had time to launch into discussions. . . . They certainly would not have had as much scope to inflame each other against the duty as they afterwards did.”99
Anger, Envy, and Injustice The main focus of this section w ill be on anger and perceived injustice. Although I do not consider it particularly important, I shall also discuss the role of envy, for three reasons listed h ere in declining importance. Anger and envy are easily confused, in the sense that an initial pang of envy can be transmuted into anger. Historically, Tocqueville’s claim that American society and democracies in general are suffused with envy remains influential. It is not uncommon to argue, notably by libertarians of the Mont Pèlerin variety, that theories of justice and injustice are only disguised or transmuted forms of envy.100 The American independence movement and subsequent war were fueled by two emotions: anger and enthusiasm.101 To simplify, the former was triggered by perceived injustice, the latter by the prospect of freedom. Anger by itself need not lead anywhere (see the failures of “Occupy Wall Street” and of the French “Yellow Vests”). Edmund Morgan writes that Bacon’s uprising in Virginia in 1676 was “a rebellion with abundant causes but without a cause; it produced no real program of reform, no revolutionary manifesto, not even any revolutionary slogans.”102 In the OED definition I adopt h ere, enthusiasm is “rapturous intensity of feeling in f avor of a person, principle, cause, e tc.; passionate eagerness in any pursuit, proceeding from an intense conviction of the worthiness of the object.”103 While anger is backward-looking and enthusiasm forward-looking, the two fused in America.104 In the Federalist Papers, 99. Botta 1834, 1:39. 100. Schoeck 1987; Mora 1987. 101. The latter motivation had also been crucial in the Seven Years’ War: “the enthusiasm for the common cause that Amherst [the British commander] called ‘Zeal’ was the only engine that could drive the campaigns against Canada to their completion” (Anderson 2001, 322). The enthusiasm arose when and because Pitt decided to treat the Americans as “allies rather than subordinates” (455), creating the perception of a common cause. At the same time, b ecause of his insensitive treatment of the Indians Amherst gave that group “what they had never had before: a common grievance” (471). 102. Morgan 2003, 269. 103. “Enthusiasm, n.,” OED Online, Oxford University Press, accessed July 13, 2022, https://www-oed-com.ezproxy.c ul.columbia.edu/view/Entry/62879?redirectedFrom =ENTHUSIASM#eid.The definition covers both observer enthusiasm and agent enthu siasm. Here I am concerned only with the latter. I discuss the former in Elster (2021a). 104. As they did in the making of the Norwegian constitution of 1814 (Elster 2018b). I pursue this comparison later in this chapter.
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Publius urges his readers to “recollect that all the existing [state] constitutions were formed in the midst of a danger which repressed the passions most unfriendly to order and concord; of an enthusiastic confidence of the people in their patriotic leaders, which stifled the ordinary diversity of opinions on great national questions; of a universal ardor for new and opposite forms, produced by a universal resentment and indignation against the ancient government; and whilst no spirit of party connected with the changes to be made, or the abuses to be reformed, could mingle its leaven in the operation.”105 American and British agents reacted with anger and indignation to perceived violations of norms of hierarchy and of norms of justice. In everyday language, the distinction between anger and indignation and that between the two kinds of norm are blurred. They are used here as terms of art. The distinction between anger and indignation (volume 1, 15) turns on the number of agents who are involved. Anger is a second-party emotion, felt by A when B imposes an unjust harm on A. Indignation is a third-party emotion, felt by A on observing B unjustly harming C. A fter the British government (B) enacted the Boston Port Act, the inhabitants of Massachusetts (C) felt anger and those of the other colonies (A) indignation. The distinction between the two kinds of norm can be illustrated by the difference in contemporary America between the ideology of White supremacists and the belief that “Black lives matter.” In the American colonies, it can be illustrated by a comment on Bacon’s uprising. Bacon “had probably never intended it to turn into a rebellion. Considering the grievances of Virginia’s impoverished freemen, it is surprising that he was able to direct their anger for so long against the Indians. But for t hose with eyes to see, t here was an obvious lesson in the rebellion. Resentment of an alien race might be more powerful than resentment of an upper class.”106 The idea of harm will be understood broadly, as covering both (perceived) injury and insult. The idea of injury w ill be understood narrowly, as covering the intentional and unjustified infliction of physical or material suffering. Thus wish frustration due to another’s action does not by itself count as an injury, nor does physical suffering due to an action not intended to impose it, or the pain caused by another’s greater achievements. (All of these may, however, be transmuted into anger.) The idea of insult will be understood broadly, as covering both verbal challenges and symbolic actions such as the refusal of Quakers to uncover their heads in the presence of social superiors. The idea underlying these (stipulative) definitions is the linking of harm to the intention of the harming agent as perceived, whether correctly or not, by the harmed agent.
105. Federalist, no. 49. 106. Morgan 2003, 269–70.
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The action tendency of anger is to harm the person (or collective entity, such as a tribe, a colony, or a nation) that has harmed one. When B harms A, A desires to harm B, and w ill do so in the absence of external or internal counterforces. I s hall devote more space to anger triggered by (popular) norms of justice than to (elite) norms of hierarchy. For my purposes, the latter matter mainly because their violation can trigger actions that trigger the former. In volume 1 (91–92) I cite several episodes that illustrate the difference between the anger (or indignation) of the urban elites, born of a violation of the norms of hierarchy, and the anger (or indignation) of the people, born of the injustice of those norms.107 In the present book, the most relevant instance occurred in the military, when British “regular” officers refused to treat American “provincials” as their peers. Anger can be triggered by (beliefs about) e ither remote or proximate c auses of harm, When, as in the relation of Americans to Great Britain, the remote cause is also geographically distant, the action tendency is often directed against the proximate cause—that is, against imperial officials in America. As we s hall see, a fter the passage of the Stamp Act, crowds wrecked the h ouses of suspected stamp collectors. Yet Americans could also strike directly at the government in London, through passive resistance. By refusing to import or consume British products, they made British merchants pressure the government until the offending act was repealed. The Americans could also take direct actions against British establishments, as when the impressment of Americans by the British navy triggered riots in Boston that “ensured that nearly all the pressings in the colony took place at sea.”108 I shall discuss six arenas of anger: Riots triggered by decisions by the British Parliament Boycott of British goods triggered by the same decisions Bad feelings between American and British officers on occasions when they served in the same wars Reactions to predatory behavior by British naval officials Reactions to oppressive behavior by colonial governments before 1776 Reactions to oppressive behavior by state governments after 1783 In complex and cumulative ways, interactions in these arenas contributed to the pattern of “two steps forward, one step backward” that characterized the period between 1756 and 1787 (volume 3).
107. I go on to note the popular indignation in Paris when servants of the rich were exempt from the militia (volume 1, 93). In Virginia in 1716, Governor Spotswood had to scrap plans for the militia “finding that no man of an estate is under any Obligation to Muster . . . even the servants or overseers of the Rich are likewise exempted” (Shy 1965, 13). 108. Brunsman 2013, 228.
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In the interpretation of these and other episodes, some methodological issues arise. We have documentary evidence about the actions that triggered American responses and about these responses themselves. Between these two observable variables, there must exist an unobservable motivational variable triggered by the former and triggering the latter. Without prejudging the issue, I assume here that this mediating variable is an emotion. (See below and chapter 6 for the mediating role of interest.) If both the relation between triggering actions and emotions and that between emotions and triggered responses were one-one (necessary and sufficient conditions), we would be able to infer the nature of the emotion from its upstream c auses or downstream consequences. However, these relations can also be one-many or many-one.109 Oppression by a tyrant can trigger e ither anger or fear (chapter 1). Fight can be triggered either by anger or by fear. Rejection of a profitable proposal can be triggered either by envy (if it profits the proposer much more) or by anger (if it is seen as unfair because unequal). Because of this slack, inferences from behavior to motivations are fragile. Sometimes the indeterminacy can be reduced by fine-tuning, as two examples w ill show. First, we can exclude anger as the sole motivation of rioters if they steal property or consume liquor rather than merely destroying what they find. The second example requires more elaboration. The question of w hether beh avior contrary to an agent’s interest is due to anger or to envy has been studied experimentally in “ultimatum games.”110 Among the varieties of envy, I s hall mainly discuss “black envy,” expressed in the willingness to harm oneself if by d oing so one can harm the envied agent even more. “White envy,” by contrast, involves only the willingness to harm another agent at no cost to oneself.111 Observationally, it can be difficult to distinguish black envy from anger, since the latter emotion can also involve the desire to hurt another at some cost to oneself. As Hume asked, “Who does not see that vengeance, from the force alone of passion, may be so eagerly pursued as to make us knowingly neglect every consideration of ease, interest, or safety?”112 As in the French ancien régime (volume 1, 67), in North Carolina in the 1770s “arson could . . . send a powerful message when t hose in power v iolated local standards of fairness. . . . D esperate and angry, arsonists risked their lives and property to obtain revenge.”113 However, one can construct artificial situations in the laboratory that allow one to choose between these two explanations of counterinterested behavior. 109. Elster 2011. 110. The following draws on Camerer (2003, 81–82). 111. Elster 2021a. 112. Hume 1751, appendix 2. 113. Kars 2002, 60, 74.
Psychology: Moti vations [ 53 ] Game I Proposer 5, 5
Game II Proposer 8, 2
•
Responder
•
8, 2
0, 0
8, 2
2, 8
Responder 8, 2
0, 0
figure 2.1 Two ultimatum games.
In these two laboratory games, a proposer A can propose a division of (say) ten dollars between A and a responder B. In figure 2.1, the first number refers to A’s (proposed or realized) takings and the second to B’s. B can accept the proposal or reject it. In the latter case, neither gets anything (0, 0). In game I, A is constrained to choose between an egalitarian division (5, 5) and an inegalitarian one benefiting A (8, 2). In game II, A is constrained to choose between two inegalitarian divisions, one benefiting A (8, 2) and the other benefiting B (2, 8). In both games, the proposal is (8, 2). If responders w ere envious and cared only about unequal outcomes, rejection rates should be the same in both games. However, they are much higher in game I than in game II.114 This difference constitutes strong evidence that it is the perceived intention of the proposer to disregard the interest of the responder that triggers the anger of the latter. Going beyond laboratory games, how could one observe (or exclude) black envy “in the wild,” outside the laboratory, and, more specifically, in the Anglo- American world? Could the destructive behavior of crowd members, at the risk of being arrested and severely punished, be motivated simply by the sight of g reat wealth, honestly (or not manifestly dishonestly) acquired? Or did they act on the Balzacian inference, “behind every great fortune there is a great crime”? The question is muddled by the frequent transmutation of envy into anger, caused by the fact that the latter is ranked more highly in the hierarchy of motivations.115 A telltale sign could be the presence or absence of third- party feelings. A may feel indignant at B’s harming C, but not feel vicarious envy at B’s having a greater fortune than C. In the end, only detailed case studies will allow us to sort out the motivations at work. In his writings about America and about democracies more generally, Tocqueville repeatedly emphasized the importance of envy in the motivations of individuals, and even in polities. “Democratic institutions develop the
114. Camerer 2003, ch. 2. 115. Elster 2015a, ch. 9.
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sentiment of envy in the human heart to a very high degree.”116 About his travels in America, he writes that “I found in the United States the restlessness of heart that is natural to man when, all conditions being more or less equal, each one sees the same chances to rise. T here I encountered the democratic sentiment of envy expressed in a thousand different ways.”117 In his Recollec tions, he cites the “democratic disease of envy” as one of the main c auses of the 1848 French Revolution.118 These statements must refer to envy among individuals, with the issue of white versus black envy being indeterminate. In one passage, however, he seems to refer to black envy: here is . . . a manly and legitimate passion for equality that incites T men to want to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the small to the rank of the great. But in the human heart a depraved taste for equality is also found that leads the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level and that reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in liberty. Not that peoples whose social state is democratic naturally scorn liberty; on the contrary, they have an instinctive taste for it. But liberty is not the principal and constant object of their desire; what they love with undying love is equality; they rush toward liberty by rapid impulses and sudden efforts, and if they miss the goal, they resign themselves; but without equality nothing can sat isfy them, and rather than lose it, they would agree to perish.119 As I have argued elsewhere, this passage can plausibly be understood as imputing black envy to citizens of democracies.120 The first two statements I have italicized refer to white envy only, but the latter two suggest the more virulent form—cutting off your nose to spite your face. I do not know w hether or to what extent Tocqueville’s claims apply to the Jacksonian democracy he studied. Some may reflect his common tendency to state his views about France in terms that are ostensibly about democracy in general or even about America. Disregarding these issues, we can ask whether and to what extent they apply to America before 1787. More precisely, we can look for evidence in the books by Terry Bouton and Woody Holton on the unruly years between 1783 and 1787. Their books provide virtually no suggestion that they, or contemporaneous observers, view alleged “levelling” and “agrarian laws,” or, more specifically, emissions of paper money and debtor relief legislation, as motivated by envy of any kind.121 Instead, participants 116. Tocqueville 2010, 2:316. 117. Tocqueville 2010, 2:503. 118. Tocqueville 1987, 63. 119. Tocqueville 2010, 1:89–90. 120. Elster 2009a, 62–63. 121. As a partial exception, “many of the framers of the [Pennsylvania] 1776 constitution had wanted to . . . include a clause allowing the state to ensure equality by confiscating
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in protests and insurrections were motivated by a powerful blend of anger, caused by perceived violations of popular conceptions of justice, and hunger. They wanted to improve their situation, which would necessarily impair that of the more wealthy, but the impairment was not a motivating desideratum in itself. The desire for liberty and the desire for well-being may sometimes have competed, and for some persons the latter may have counted for more than the former, but contrary to Tocqueville’s claim t here is no evidence that equality of well-being ever trumped freedom. The preceding comments all related to envy among individuals. In a pamphlet from 1705, Francis Makemie asserted that “pride and envy” among the colonies would prevent them from “uniting under a single head.”122 Jack Greene writes that between 1720 and 1860, “the growing disparity in wealth, power, and development between North and South produced among white southerners a mixture of resentment and envy toward northerners similar to what their own black neighbors had felt for them.”123 In 1835, Tocqueville asserted that the union that been established might break up for the same reason: The states that are growing less quickly than the o thers cast a look of distrust and envy on t hose that fortune f avors. From that comes this profound malaise and this vague uneasiness that you notice in one part of the Union, and that contrast with the well-being and confidence that reign in the other. I think that the hostile attitude taken by the South has no other c auses. . . . . . . It must not be imagined, however, that the states that lose power are becoming depopulated or are declining; their prosperity is not stopping; they are growing even more quickly than any kingdom of Europe. But it seems to them that they are becoming poor b ecause they are not becoming rich as quickly as their neighbor, and they believe they are losing their power because they suddenly come in contact with a power greater than theirs. So it is their sentiments and their passions that are wounded more than their interests. But isn’t this enough for the confederation to be at risk?124 Strictly speaking, this is nonsense. States or colonies do not have beliefs or passions. However, there is no reason to be so strict (volume 1, 8). We can wealth from extremely rich people. The plank (some say it was authored by Benjamin Franklin) had declared that ‘future legislatures of this State should have the power of lessening property when it became excessive in individuals’ b ecause concentrations of wealth were ‘a danger to the happiness of mankind.’ The measure was voted down however” (Bouton 2007, 62; see also Holton 2007, 109). In contrast to this proposal of a ceiling on income, nobody to my knowledge proposed to have a floor. 122. Makemie 1897, 270. 123. Greene 1988, 2–3. The comparison seems dubious. 124. Tocqueville 2010, 2:609, 610–11.
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unpack Tocqueville’s statements as referring either to such mental states in political leaders or in the population at large. It seems most likely that t hese would have been elite views, as ordinary people probably lacked the knowledge about other colonies or states that might ignite their passion (see also volume 1, 72, 219). I do not know, however, whether any elite members held such views. Although we can easily imagine delegates to the Continental Congress embracing measures that would make their state better off in relative terms while worse off in absolute terms, I am unaware of any such cases. A central case is the anger felt by colonists at what they saw as unjust treatment by the British Parliament and by the officials who executed its policy in America. They had three behavioral responses at their disposal: petitions, crowds, and boycotts. Among petitions, the most ambitious seem to have been those presented by the Stamp Act Congress that I s hall discuss in chapter 6. They had mostly little or no impact, perhaps because they did not enter the public domain. I shall say more about them in volume 3. Crowds and boycotts were vastly more efficacious means of protest. In both, the anger of the collective could turn not only outward, against the common e nemy, but also inward, against persons who did either too much or too l ittle. Hostile commentators on both sides of the Atlantic routinely referred to American crowds as “lawless rabble” or “mobs,” implying that the members of a crowd w ere motivated by greed or craving for liquor rather than by a demand for justice. The charge was sometimes justified, if the participants stole money or drank the liquor they found, confirming Gouverneur Morris’s dictum that that ordinary people had “no morals but their interests.”125 Yet the common p eople had no interest in destroying property they could have sold or liquor they could have drunk. As in France (volume 1, 136), political crowds were often characterized by a morality of disorder that allowed for destruction but not theft, beating up an e nemy but (I conjecture) not raping his daughter.126 “No British official was lynched by an American mob.”127 More strongly, “no man or w oman was ever lynched by a political mob in prerevolutionary America.”128 The mixed motives of some of the Boston crowds, as inferred from their behavior after the passage of the Stamp Act, are well brought out by David Ramsay: [The crowd] next pulled down a new building, lately erected by Mr. Oliver, the stamp master. They then went to his house, before which they 125. Quoted in G. Wood 1991, 27. By contrast, in 1770 Dr. Andrew Eliot explained resis tance of Boston merchants to the nonimportation movement by the fact that “persons in trade w ere weary, and as interest is generally their god, began to be furious” (Schlesinger 1968, 232). 126. For a sustained analysis, see Maier (1991). 127. Reid 1977, 2. 128. Reid 1977, 55.
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beheaded his effigy, and at the same time broke his windows. Eleven days a fter similar violences w ere repeated. The mob attacked the h ouse of Mr. William Story, deputy register of the court of admiralty—broke his windows—forced into his dwelling house, and destroyed the books and files belonging to the said court, and ruined a great part of his furniture. They next proceeded to the h ouse of Benjamin Hallowell, comptroller of the customs, and repeated similar excesses, and drank and destroyed his liquors. They afterwards proceeded to the house of Mr. Hutchinson, and soon demolished it. They carried off his plate, furniture and apparel, and scattered or destroyed manuscripts and other curious and useful papers, which for thirty years he had been collecting.129 More subtly, demands that justice be done could be addressed to the rich or powerful in the colonies and not only to those who represented the overseas community. In Carl Becker’s classical expression, issues of “home rule” and of “who should rule at home”130 were intertwined, sometimes inextricably. According to Kathleen Burk, “crowds did not normally steal personal property. The theft of personal property and the lower class character of the crowd suggest that Hutchinson was targeted in part because he was a rich aristocrat. For some contemporaries, this implied the threat of an American class war on top of the colonial-British conflict.”131 For another example, among many, consider an event in March 1766 when a mob broke into the house of Richard King, a wealthy merchant and creditor in today’s Maine, destroyed his furniture, and burned his papers. Many of the rioters w ere his customers and owed him money, and they also suspected that he was a prospective Stamp Act officer. In his claim for redress before the court, King alleged: That Your Petitioner perciveing the Injuerys he had sustained by the Riot appeared to be pointed more at his papers then aney other Part of his Intrest and that maney Persons appeared Determined to take advantage of the Distruction of his Securities for the Discharge of their Debts &c. That sum from whome your Petitioner had Purchised Lands began to threaten a reEntery, upon finding their Deeds w ere not on Record, alledging for their Justification that your Petitioner had obtained Deeds, Bonds, and Notes by taking the Advantage of People.132
129. Ramsay (1789) 1990, 1:64–65. 130. Becker 1960, 22. 131. Burk 2007, 122. 132. J. Adams 1965, 108.
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A witness at the trial testified: that the day before the Riot at Mr. King’s house, I was talking with Amos Andrews near his house, when Andrews asked me, if I had heard what they w ere g oing to do. I asked him what? He answered we are going to pay King a visit and take him down; don’t you intend to go? You have a dispute with him, and you see how he trys to cheat you, and may judge by that, how he uses every body and dont you intend to show some resentment? He is a bad man, and w ill ruin us all, if he goes on at this rate; if something or other is not done with him, if he is not humbled, it is not worth while for any of us to live here; and he is hard hearted to the w idow and orphan. I asked him who was going? He answered he was going, and all their people up their road; that e very body almost was going; and that Stewart’s family was g oing. I asked him if he should certainly go; he said he should certainly go, and gave me his word and promise over and over again, that he would go, for he said it must be done. I asked him what he proposed to do to King if he went. He answered, we propose to take him out and cut his ears off. I told him, that would not do, for it was monstrous; he then said we w ill take him out and whip him; He also talked with me about the Stamp Act, and said that King was a favourer of it, and had the Stamp papers in his house; and that it was probable if that Act took place, he would be Stamp Master for Scarborough.133 As we saw in chapter 1, in 1765 Governor Bernard intended to starve Boston by compellence. In a letter to the Board of Trade, he predicted, first, “an Insurrection of the Poor against the rich” and then, “when all the Provisions in the Province are divided amongst the People without regard to Property, they may be insufficient to carry them through the Winter.”134 In a comment, the Morgans write that “what [Bernard] did not see was that [the men directing the opposition to the Stamp Act] would be able to turn the hatred of the poor against the British government instead of against the rich. It was true that if the ports were closed, famine would be the result in Boston, but before the poor should rise against the rich their fury would be aimed against the men who had closed the ports.”135 The aim of an action against the rich would be to take their wealth; that of an action against the men who had closed the ports to destroy theirs. A wealthy man who was also rumored to become a stamp
133. J. Adams 1965, 121–22. 134. Francis Bernard, “388: To the Earl of Halifax,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 2015 (The Papers of Francis Bernard, vol. 2, 1759–1763, p. 352), https://www.colonialsociety .org/publications/3111/388-earl-halifax. 135. Morgan and Morgan 1995, 137.
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master might incur either fate, as shown by the contemporaneous statements cited above. As in France (volume 1, 136), crowds could police those who did too much by trying to benefit personally from riots, looting rather than destroying property. In the Boston Tea Party, “an Interloper, . . . who had found Means to fill his Pockets with Tea, upon being discovered, was stripped of his Booty and his Cloaths together, and sent home naked. A remarkable instance of Order and Justice among Savages.”136 The intruders also took care to prevent property damage other than to the tea—“a padlock accidentally broken was supposedly replaced.”137 “The few men who tried to grab some tea for themselves were severely reprimanded and ridiculed.”138 I have not seen references to policing—by naming, shaming, and blaming—those who did too little by staying at home rather than joining the crowds. According to Pauline Maier, “everywhere, ‘followers’ proved more ready than ‘leaders’ to use force so as to assure that the Stamp Act would not go into effect.”139 If so, threatening or punishing nonparticipants would have been redundant. Although it seems inconceivable that there would not have been some citizens who needed to be shamed into rioting, their contribution may have been marginal. While most rioters may not have needed shaming, in organizing a boycott it was essential to shame those who did “too little,” as illustrated in an eloquent statement by George Mason that I s hall cite in chapter 6. H ere, I shall raise a question that applies to all arguments that explain participation in collective action by the shaming of nonparticipants: What motivates the sham ers? Above, I cited sources stating that the nonshunners of f ree riders might themselves be shunned, an idea that can be traced back to Tocqueville.140 If accepted, it implies that solidarity could be a simple m atter of self-interest or rational fear. A moment’s reflection suggests, however, that this cannot be the whole story. If it were, we would have to imagine an infinite chain of shunners each of whom was motivated by the self-interested fear of being punished for not shunning. At some point in the chain, external motivations would run out of steam so that shunners would have to be motivated by the internal motivations of anger or contempt directed at free riders.141 Descriptions of the fate of those who crossed the picket line amply confirm the emotional character of the reactions they met (chapter 6).
136. Samuel Cooper to Franklin, December 17, 1773, Franklin Papers, vol. 20, https:// franklinpapers.org/framedVolumes.jsp.The intruders w ere disguised as Indians, so the comment may be ironical. 137. Maier 1991, 276. 138. Burk 2007, 139 (citing Ray Raphael). 139. Maier 1991, 59. 140. Tocqueville 2010, 2:418–19. 141. Elster 1989, 105.
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Drawing on Fred Anderson’s history of the Seven Years’ War,142 we can trace its impact on Anglo-American relations. Before they confronted each other a fter 1775, professional British officers and soldiers and American volunteers or militia members had often served together in fighting Indians or the French. The relationship had always been tense, leaving Americans with deep resentment at being treated as second-rate soldiers. “Even before the conflicts with Parliament in the 1760s and 1770s, Americans had seen generations of military men in British imperial administration and had suffered the high-handed contempt that the British army held for provincials,”143 to which we can add the brutality of British Army discipline. The effects w ere felt at both ends of the military hierarchy. At the upper end, the Royal Proclamation of November 12, 1754, “stipulated that all provincial officers . . . would be deemed junior to all regular officers. . . . This order reduced the most experienced colonial military leaders, colonels and generals not excepted, to a level below that of the newest pimpled ensign in the regular army. No self-respecting colonial officer would willingly serve under such conditions.”144 At the lower end, “the extension of regular discipline to provincial armies would discourage if not put a stop to enlistment, for no matter how patriotic or e ager for the pay potential recruits might be, they knew very well that regular court-martials routinely sentenced soldiers to severe whipping, and not infrequently to death, for infractions of discipline.”145 The upper-end regulations w ere modified in 1755, “so that provincial field officers and generals would rank as ‘eldest captains’ when in joint service with regulars. . . . [T]wenty-year-old subalterns could no longer issue o rders to senior colonial officers, although the most junior redcoat majors were still free to do so. In [the mind of the British commander in chief], this was a great concession. The provincials thought otherwise.” 146 When Pitt a fter severe military setbacks gave further concessions in 1758, he decreed that “provincial majors, colonels, and generals would enjoy a status equivalent to their counterpart ranks in the regular army, ranking as juniors only to the regular offi cers of comparable grade.”147 As indicated in the italicized expressions, even at the end of these successive upgradings of the provincials, the regulars still retained a priority, which also translated into military orders: “When, immediately a fter the surrender [of Montréal in 1760], Amherst ordered all of his 142. Anderson 2001. 143. Royster 1979, 36. 144. Anderson 2001, 139–40. During the Revolutionary War, similar tensions arose between loyalist troops and the regular British army (O’Shaughnessy 2013, 192). Thus the unequal treatment of British and American troops had the double effect of alienating Americans and weakening the British in the fight that partly had its roots in that alienation. 145. Anderson 2001, 140. 146. Anderson 2001, 145. 147. Anderson 2001, 215.
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provincials back to work on the rear-line forts while sending his regulars into early winter quarter, his action spoke clearly of what he understood to be the value . . . of the provincial troops. It was an opinion that the provincials did not share, and which they—predictably—resented.”148 “Even in so successful a year as 1759, the dominant memory that a New England provincial might take home from the armies was unlikely to be a pleasant one. . . . No m atter how much the colonists in general rejoiced in the British victories, for the provin cials themselves, the war was nothing as much as a protracted, often painful lesson in the differences between themselves and the regulars; differences more profound than any of them, believing that they w ere neither more or less than ‘Englishmen born,’ had any reason to expect.”149 At the lower end of the hierarchy, the “Kadaverdiziplin” seems to have persisted throughout the war. Anderson argues that it left a durable imprint in the minds of the soldiers: Service alongside the king’s troops made nothing more obvious to the provincials than that a coercive disciplinary system was the engine that drove the British army, and that the blood of common soldiers was its lubricant. Provincials who had volunteered to serve for a single campaign u nder their neighbors or older kinsmen w ere simply stunned to witness the operation of a system of military justice in which officers routinely sentenced enlisted men to corporal punishments that stopped just short of death, and not infrequently inflicted the death penalty itself. . . . The experience of service with the regulars left endur ing marks on the provincials, and not only on t hose who left the army with scars on their back. From 1756 onward, the Anglo-American armies became armies of intercultural contact in which tens of thousands of American colonists encountered the British cultural and class system. . . . [B]ecause the great majority of provincial common soldiers were young men, whose influence on their society would grow more palpable as they acquired property and household-leadership in later years, the impact of their wartime experience might be felt for years a fter their discharge from the service.150 It is impossible to assess the exact importance of American reactions to British haughtiness and brutality, or to determine their exact nature: anger, fear, 148. Anderson 2001, 412–13. By and large, the provincials were less competent than the regulars, who preferred to use them to “build roads, garrisons, haul supplies, and thereby free effective soldiers—redcoats who had the discipline and training that seemed all but impossible to instill in Americans—to win battles” (228–29). 149. Anderson 2001, 371. 150. Anderson 2001, 286–87, 288.
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or hatred. It seems plausible, nevertheless, that the behavior of the British undermined the respect for and deference t oward the British, and left m ental schemata that could be easily activated in direct confrontations. These attitudes built on and reinforced old prejudices. “Long before, and building toward, the Seven Years War was a history of mutual bad experiences, which, as usual, each side interpreted differently. Americans who had ample contact with our British military men found them bureaucratic, inept, arrogant, brutal and stubbornly inattentive to good advice from p eople who had experience on the ground. The British soldiers thought the Americans w ere cowardly, disorderly, unpatriotic, impecunious, and provincial.”151 There are many years that can be cited as the “tipping point” in the American Revolution, or a point of no return. Some historians have pointed to the Sugar Act of 1764 as a decisive step. “Six of its sections concerned new taxes but more than forty additional sections were devoted to a revision of the custom and commerce regulations which amounted to a constitutional revolution in the relations of the colonies to the home country.”152 I shall focus on the regulatory sections, which proved more important.153 The new system had two main flaws: it could not control the abuses that it addressed,154 and it generated abuses of its own. In addition, the controls set in place were unfair, as they did not exist for similar practices, notably smuggling, in G reat Britain.155 For my purposes, the new abuses are the most important, as they generated widespread disillusionment among the Americans they affected. They arose as a consequence not only of the Sugar Act but also of the 1767 Townshend Acts. A summary of Oliver Dickerson’s summary of the “constitutional” sections of the Sugar Act will suggest the spirit of the law: Cockets [seals or certificates of seals] w ere now required to be carried by all ships found more than two leagues—seven miles—off the coast. The two leagues rule affected all coastwise traffic, which had formerly been subject only to local control. [Costly bonds had to be posted for many products previously covered by a general bond for all enumerated products.] The universal custom had been for vessels to load as best they could, then proceed to the nearest customhouse, give bonds, and comply with other clearance regulations. T here was neither fraud nor suspicion of fraud in the regular practice. A fter 1764, following this regular trade custom became a crime punishable by forfeiture of ship and cargo. 151. Slaughter 2013, 166. 152. Dickerson 1951, 17. 153. Dickerson 1951, 172; Jensen 1968, 49. 154. Anderson 2001, 575; Slaughter 2013, 223; Morgan and Morgan 1995, 43. 155. Phillips 1999, 88; Christie and Labaree 1976, 92–93, 112–13. I have not seen evidence that ordinary colonials were aware of and resented this unequal treatment.
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A final provision was the legal details for disposing of vessels, goods, and other property seized u nder this and other laws. One third went to the person who informed against the ship or individuals connected with it; another third to the governor where the seizure was made; and one third to the imperial treasury. Such a system would support an army of political favorites, unsalaried snoopers and swarms of officers sent over to prey upon colonial commerce.156 In richly documented chapters, Dickerson shows abuses that arose in practice. “The major part of the damage was done between the years 1768 and 1772 by the tactless, arbitrary, and mercenary operation of [the acts] by a new race of custom officers and particularly by the conduct of the American Customs Commissioners at Boston.”157 Their tricks of the trade included the use of informers, entrapments, seizing goods on trivial and technical grounds, invasion of seamen’s traditional rights, reversal of the burden of proof, an accumulation of fees that went into the pockets of officials rather than to general revenue, and writs of assistance (general powers to search and seize). As t hese predatory practices evoke a comparison with those denounced in Cicero’s In verrem it is not surprising that Dickerson compares the commissioners to the Roman proconsuls: From the day they landed, the Customs Commissioners became a part of the [Britain-friendly administration of Massachusetts] and devoted the vast powers entrusted to them to a promotion of basic changes in the century-old colonial-imperial system. They entered upon their new duties with the attitude of the staff of an army occupying an enemy country. Some of them assumed the airs of royal proconsuls sent out to bring law and order to a rebellious colonial world. Had it not been for the unfortunate personalities of [three commissioners], there might have been no Revolution. From 1768 and 1772 there was almost open warfare between the agents of the Commissioners and the trading fraternity of New England and some of the other major ports.158 Citing the harassment of Henry Laurens, a rich merchant who became an active patriot, Dickerson writes that the open “mistreatment had done much to dissolve the cement of loyalty which he and his friends and associates had held for the British Empire under which they had prospered.”159 After the Laurens affair, “the British Treasury Office put admiralty judges on salary to eliminate conflict of interest from seizures, but the loyalty that had bound
156. Dickerson 1951, 179–84; quotes at 179, 181, 183. 157. Dickerson 1951, 208. 158. Dickerson 1951, 209–10. 159. Dickerson 1951, 231.
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colonists to the empire . . . would not be repaired.”160 At sea, the invasion of seamen’s rights “created feelings of personal injustice and group animosities towards the customs officers that rapidly dissolved the cement of loyalty.”161 More generally, “from one end of America to the other the old devotion to the commercial colonial empire had been undermined.”162 Thus in addition to the release from adaptive preferences and from pluralistic ignorance that I discussed earlier, colonists experienced the dissolution of loyalty to the empire and the creation of new loyalties. “Collectively, the literal and malicious enforcement of apparently minor provisions of the revenue acts altered the nature of business in the colonies and drove competitors and p eople of different class, professional, and regional interest together against a common enemy.”163 While not necessarily generating anger and retaliation at the time, the disillusionment may have removed m ental barriers that could have blocked reactions to later provocations. Predatory custom enforcement does not make a revolution, but like the Stamp Act it may have been a “Prologue to Revolution,” as in the subtitle to the Morgans’ book. Up to this point, I have discussed how actions by the British government, British officers, and imperial officials triggered angry responses by American citizens. I shall now consider responses to actions by American assemblies, first under the colonial regime and then a fter Independence. As elsewhere in this section, the focus will be on how perceived injustice caused popular anger and violence. Colonial assemblies were elite bodies, with membership extended over time.164 Even when representatives were elected by wide male suffrage, the eligibility requirements could be more stringent, and even when these were lax, “not before the mid-1770s did more than a few writers question the concept of gentleman rule.”165 We can expect, therefore, that assemblies would 160. Slaughter 2013, 260. 161. Dickerson 1951, 219. 162. Dickerson 1951, 255. 163. Slaughter 2013, 252. 164. In what was probably an extreme case, “In 1724, there were twelve members of [Virginia’s Royal Council]; all without exception w ere related to one another by blood or marriage. . . . As early as 1660, e very seat on the Council was filled by members of five related connections. As late as 1775, every member of that august body was descended from a counselor who had served in 1660” (Morgan 2003, 222). 165. Dinkin 1977, 55; see also Bailyn 1970, 88. Yet as J. R. Pole (1971, 96) shows, there were exceptions. Commenting on elections to the assembly in Pennsylvania, he writes, “If Lloyd [the speaker of the assembly] and his party had hoped to establish themselves as a legislative corps exercising a kind of avuncular authority to which their constituents gave a merely obedient consent, they received in 1710 a shock which ought to reverberate through the pages of the history of representative government, for in the election of that year every single member of the previous Assembly was turned out of his seat.” In V irginia, when the governor conferred the post of tobacco inspector on twenty-five members of the assembly,
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enact laws and regulations that served elite interests, which they often did. The interests in question could be material or political, the latter often serving the former. In some colonies, the legislation was so blatantly self-serving and harmful to the bulk of the population that it triggered petitions, litigation against officials, and calls for legislative change. If these did not go anywhere, the accumulated frustration could lead to violence. I shall illustrate what could lead to that last step by considering two uprisings, Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia in 1676 and the Regulator movement in North Carolina from 1766 to 1771. We have direct evidence about the motivations of the participants in the first from the grievances written up by V irginia counties at the request of British commissioners a fter the rebellion. T hese grievances added up to “a bill of particulars of the ways in which the few were fleecing the many,”166 and “a unique record of seventeenth-century American expectations, oligarchical oppressions, and imperial possibilities.”167 While some grievances are parochial, I s hall cite o thers that address general issues.168 For North Carolina, I shall cite excerpts from two remarkable petitions by inhabitants of Anson County and of Orange and Rowan Counties from October 1769. The petitions confirm a recent statement that “for sheer effrontery the corruption in North Carolina resembles the graft uncovered by the muckrakers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It lacks the connection with organized crime which has characterized corrupt government in recent times, but in extensiveness and in its implication of leading political figures, it equals the activities of more modern political machines.”169 For both colonies, grievances and demands tell us more about corruption and predation than court proceedings could, as courts were often at the core of the abuses.
in “1715 the electors gave him their answer in one of the most remarkable of colonial landslides. The campaign resulted in the defeat of all except one of the burgesses holding inspectorships, and the return of 37 new members in a House of 52; it was comparable— though on entirely different issues—with the Pennsylvanian result of 1710” (131). In the making of the Massachusetts constitution of 1780, “It was . . . feared that members of the legislature would have a corrupt interest in the places created in the new constitution framed by themselves. This was one of Boston’s strongest objections. The dissatisfaction of the p eople, manifested in a vote of some 10,000 against 2,000, could hardly have been more pronounced” (181–82). See also the “Statement of Berkshire county representative” in Handlin and Handlin (1966, 377). 166. Morgan 2003, 277. We also have the answers of the commissioners to some of the grievances. I cite both from the publication in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (VMHB). 167. Webb 1985, 12. 168. When the royal commissioners read them, they w ere convinced that “Bacon’s Revolution had been incited by Berkeleyan oppression, had been supported by most Virginians, and was being kept alive by [Governor] Berkeley’s revenge” (Webb 1985, 136). 169. Douglass 1983, 79. Ferguson (1979, 98) writes that “local government in North Carolina was more corrupt than anywhere else in America.”
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arlier, I cited Edmund Morgan as asserting that Bacon’s Rebellion E showed how “resentment of an alien race might be more powerful than resentment of an upper class.” In the immediately preceding sentence, he wrote that “considering the grievances of V irginia’s impoverished freemen, it is surprising that [Bacon] was able to direct their anger for so long against the Indians.”170 Although many of their grievances involved protection against the Indians and measures related to the rebellion, I shall refer only to alleged abuses by the assembly and officials of the courts. The excerpts below are from a selection of the grievances. They may not be representative in a statistical sense, but they are not atypical.171 Although they “were somewhat after the fact, their reiteration of complaints against the government pointed directly to the assembly and claimed it to be the primary source of the trouble.”172 Frequent and expensive assembly meetings A complaint ag’t too frequent Assemblyes and the high Charges of Burgesses of Assembly. (VMHB 1894, 168) MB—That ye last assembly continued many years and by their frequent meeting being once every yeare hath been a continuall charge and burthen to the poor Inhabitants of this Collony; and that the burgesses of the said Assembly had 150 lb tobacco p day for each member they usually continueing three or 4 weekes togither did arise to a great-some, And that the said assembly did give to severall gentlemen (for what ser vice we know not) great somes of tobacco, all which with the publique nessessary charge did Raise the Levy to a very great & excessive heith. (VMHB 1894, 170–71)173 Secrecy of decisions That it has been the custome of County Courts att the laying of the levy to withdraw into a private Roome by which meanes the poore people not knowing for what they paid their levy did allways admire [wonder] how their taxes could be so high. (VMHB 1894, 172) 170. Morgan 2003, 269. 171. They overlap considerably, for instance, with the summaries in Morgan (2003, 276–77) and Douglass (1983, 90–91). 172. D. Lovejoy 1987, 49. 173. In the late seventeenth century a prosperous craftsman in Virginia could earn twenty to thirty pounds of tobacco a day (US Department of Labor 1934, 113). “A few weeks’ attendance generally brought more than an ordinary man was likely to make in a year” (Morgan 2003, 148).
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That no p’son may be sett Tax f ree but by a full board, and not by any magistrates p’ticular f avor to ye g reat opression of other poore p’sons. (VMHB 1895, 289) That our County Records may bee f ree open for every man to search and Require coppies as theire occasions, from time to time, s hall and may Require at ye apoynted place and office, paying ye Clerk his just fees. (VMHB 1895, 290) That, t here may be a considerable fine and stricter Injunction Inserted or added to the act concerning ye court to examine theire orders in open court and not any pticular Majestrate to presume ye same Private at his h ouse which ye clerk contrary to the true Tenure of Law (in force) when often yt [that] Majestrate so doing is not prsnt at half of ye orders entered, whereby possable many ill conveniences may arise and corruption practised as heretofore on our Eastern Shore. (VMHB 1895, 291) Wee desire to know for what wee doe pay our Leavies evrie year and that it may noe more be layd in private but that wee may have f ree libertie to hier and see evrie particular for what it is raised and that ther may noe more fifts be given to noe particular person or persons what soeever nether in publick or by private which hath been only means to make us poore and miserable. (VMHB 1895, 389) That the commiconers or Justices of peace of this county heretofore have illegally and unwarrantably taken upon them without our consent from time to time to impose, rayse, assess and levy what taxes, levies and imposicons upon us they have at any time thought good or best liked, great part of which they have converted to theire owne use, as in bearing their expense at the ordinary allowing themselves wages for severall businesses which ex officio they o ught to doe and otherways as by account of the same on the booke for levies may appeare. (VMHB 1895, 142) Excessive tenure of sheriffs That no Sheriff may officiate two yeares together. (VMHB 1895, 291) Whereas it was formerly a custom for Sheriffs to remaine in ther place but one year, now it is altered, for they doe find such a great benefit by it, that they will buy the office, and hold it two yeares soe that they predominate over the poor comentrie, whereas the sheriffs are allowed ten pound for evrie hundred that a hogshead containes besides his sellarie, he allowes us but thirtie the which wee desire he may be taken off from it or allow us as much. (VMHB 1895, 387–88)
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That contrary to the lawes of England and this Country high sheriffs have usually continued two yeares and under sheriffs 3 or 4 yeares together: wee humbly pray that for the f uture that no person may continue sheriffe above one year. (VMHB 1895, 172) Multiple office holding Wee humbly desire yt [that] t hose Gent’men who sett in his majesties Courts of Judicature heere may not at once be of ye Militia. (VMHB 1895, 38) That no Counseller may sit in any inferior Court. (VMHB 1895, 387–88) Monetary exactions That severall small debts bring in g reat proffitts to the Clarkes & sheriffs by reason men are forced to sue for very small debts to the some of 200 lb tobacco to the great expence of the poore debtr and creditor. Wee humbly desire that a Justice of peace . . . or who e lse may be thought fitt may have power to grant order for any some under 450 lb tobacco & caske and likewise execution without further troble to the Court. (VMHB 1894, 172) That Col. Bridger had fined severall men for not coming to trouping or else where which were fined some one hundred, 200, 300, pounds of tobacco, all the which wee desire to know to what use it is put and that it may be produced for a publiqe good it amounting to severall thousands of tobacco, the which as wee doe suppose Col. Bridger makes use to his own private Interest. (VMHB 1895, 386) And not herewith contented he the said Hill (minding covetiously to enrich himselfe by defrauding us his majesties subjects) trusts divers, poore, idle, disolute persons with quantities of drink at his ordinary, which at his extraordinary rates come to g reat quantities of Tobacco more than they were able to pay, and then sueing them some to Judgement or which wee rather believe combining with them to confess Judgement for the said debts, and then causing them to be taken in execution, and he himselfe Goaler as aforesaid suffers them to escape, and then compells us his majesties subjects to pay their debts to the g reat impoverishment of this County. (VMHB 1895, 143) In one grievance, not cited above, the petitioners ask for a tax exemption to which the commissioners answer that this grievance “is wholly mutinous to desire a thing contrary to his Majesties Royall pleasure & benefitt and also against
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an Act of Parliament” (VMHB 1894, 170). The tone of virtually all the grievances is in fact deferential. The authors were not reacting against the overall imperial framework but against abuses. Morgan’s description (cited above) of Bacon’s rebellion as “with abundant c auses but without a cause” also applies to this corpus of local grievances. Unlike the North Carolina uprising a c entury later, to which I s hall turn shortly, they did not produce anything like a manifesto. Yet the substantial overlap in the complaints suggest a coherent insurrectional mind-set, directed against the proximate power of Governor Berkeley but not (yet) against the remote authority of Britain.174 In Marjoleine Kars’s words, the North Carolina Regulators constituted “the highest agrarian rebellion before Independence.”175 Moreover, she writes, their demands for reform “are extraordinary. No other such wide ranging, radical, and concrete vision of agrarian reform has come down to us from the pre-Revolutionary period.”176 The two petitions, from Anson County and Orange and Rowan Counties, are both signed October 1769 (with an editorial question mark for the date of the latter). W hether or not they w ere coordinated, taken together they amount to a veritable manifesto, with articulated grievances and reform proposals. As in the V irginia grievances, the attitude toward the royal government is deferential; many complaints concern violations of royal instructions by the governor and his council. As in France (volume 1, 118), the complainers assumed that they would get justice “if only the king knew.” One grievance from Anson County refers to “the violation of the King’s Instructions to his delegates, their artfulness in concealing the same from him; and the great Injury the P eople thereby sustains.”177 Among the grievances from the counties some stand out: Oppressive lawyers That L awyers, Clerks, and other pentioners; in place of being obsequious Servants for the Country’s use, are become a nuisance, as the business of the people is often transacted without the least degree of fairness, the intention of the law evaded, exorbitant fees extorted, and the sufferers left to mourn under their oppressions. (Anson County petition)
174. The grievances from Charles City County (VMHB 1895, 132–41) include a long preamble in which the authors first praise the king’s “unparalelled mercy, in soe frankly pardoning our many grievous crimes and disorders late commited to happening amongst us” and then go on to condemn the behavior of the governor in numerous strong and specific denunciations. 175. Kars 2002, 3. 176. Kars 2002, 173. 177. Tryon 1981, 379. The excerpts below from the two petitions are all found in ibid. (375–80).
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That an Attorney should have it in his power, either for the sake of ease or interest, or to gratify their malevolence and spite, to commence suits to what Courts he pleases, however inconvenient it may be to the Defendant: is a very great oppression. (Anson County petition) That all unlawful fees taken on Indictment, where the Defendant is acquitted by his Country (however customary it may be) is an oppression. (Anson County petition) That Lawyers, Clerks, and others, extorting more fees than is intended by law; is also an oppression. (Anson County petition) And may it please you to consider of, and pass an act, hereby to allow Clerks of Courts, Crowns &c, certain yearly stated salarys, instead of perquisites; making it highly penal for any Clerk to demand, or even to receive, directly or indirectly, any fee, gift, or reward, under Colour of his Office, any other than his certain stated Salary. (Anson County petition) And may it please you to consider of, and pass an Act, effectually to restrain Lawyers from demanding or even receiving, any other, or greater fee or reward, than is now established by the Laws of this province. (Orange and Rowan Counties petition) And seeing the now Acting Clerks, have, notwithstanding their many Enormitys, so fortifyed themselves against all the Laws now in force as to render themselves invulnerable to prosecutions, partly from their own superior Cunning, and partly from our invincible Ignorance We humbly beseech you, to take the same under your serious Consideration, and for our Relief, to pass an Act to call in all the now acting Clerks, and to fill their places with Gentlemen of probity and Integrity, and may it please you to insert some clause in said Act, prohibiting Judges, L awyers, or Sheriffs, from fingering any of their fees, directly or indirectly, until the Cause, suit or Action, on the which the said fee is due, be brought to a final Determination; and that all Obligations for more than the L egal fee, to be void in Law; this Measure will we hope, effectually prevent t hose Odious delays in Justice, so Destructive, yet fatally common among us. (Orange and Rowan Counties petition) Taxes And may it please you to consider of and pass an Act, to Tax e very one in proportion to his Estates; however equitable the Law as it now stands, may appear to the Inhabitants of the Maritime parts of the province, where estates consist chiefly in Slaves; yet to us in the frontier, where very few are possessed of Slaves, tho’ their Estates are in proportion (in
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many instances) as of one Thousand to one, for all to pay equal [a poll tax], is with Submission, very grievous and oppressive. (Orange and Rowan Counties petition) That the mode of Taxation be altered, and each person to pay in proportion to the proffits arising from his Estate. (Anson County petition) Politics That at all elections each suffrage be given by Ticket & Ballot. (Anson County petition) We therefore humbly implore your Excellency, your honours, and your Worthys . . . to consider of, and pass an Act to prevent and effectually restrain every Lawyer and Clerk whatsoever, from offering themselves as Candidates, at any f uture Election of Delegates, within this Province; and in case any such should be chose, that choice s hall be utterly void, in the same manner as the Law now allows in case of Sheriffs being Elected. (Orange and Rowan Counties petition) That we your poor Petitioners, now do and long have laboured under many and heavy Exactions, Oppressions and Enormity, committed on us by Court Officers, in every Station: the Source of which our said Calamity, we impute to the Countenance and Protection they receive from such of our L awyers and Clerks, as have obtained seats in the House of Rep resentatives, and who intent on making their own fortune, are blind to, and solely regardless of their Country’s Interest: are ever planing such schemes, or projecting such Laws as may best Effect their wicked purposes—witness the Summons and petition Act, calculated purely to enrich themselves, and Creatures, at the expence of the poor Industrious peasant, besides a certain Air of Confidence, a being a Part of the Legislature gives these Gentlemen, to the perpetration of every kind of Enormity within reach of their respective offices; and seeing Numbers either from Interested views, for the sake of Treats, or from other sordid Motive, are still so infatuated, and w ill be, as to vote for t hese Gentle men. (Orange and Rowan Counties petition) Lastly we humbly implore you to have your Yeas and Nays, inserted in the Journals of your House, and Copys of such Journals, transmitted along with the Copys of the Acts to e very Justice that by this means we may have an opportunity to Distinguish our friends from our foes among you, and to Act accordingly at any f uture choice. (Orange and Rowan Counties petition) We do not find here the complaints about secrecy in legal proceedings that had a dominant place in the V irginia grievances. In North Carolina, the central
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complaint is the interlocking of legal and political institutions that rendered ordinary people powerless. The complaints also discuss electoral procedures, naming both the problem (bribery and influence) and the remedy (secret voting). They object to the poll tax, and propose to replace it by an estate tax that would bear more heavily on the seaboard plantations. Yet, as in the V irginia grievances, these punctual objections and remedies seem less important than the overall denunciation of oppression by self-serving elites. Surprisingly, neither set of grievances discusses issues of (legal) apportionment and (physical) presence in the elected assemblies. Three f actors contributed to overrepresentation of the seaboard elites and to the disregard of the interests of small farmers. First, as new communities settled in the backcountry, the seaboard-dominated assembly could and did use its voting power to deny them equal apportionment. “Legislators saw that granting equal representation to newly created communities meant diminishing their own power. To preserve their superiority, some legislatures withheld repre sentation completely or assigned new regions fewer representatives than the older areas had.”178 Second, w hether or not the western lands obtained de jure proportional representation, the greater distance to the seat of the assembly, usually located on the seaboard, created de facto underrepresenta tion b ecause travel was “difficult, time-consuming, and expensive.”179 In the South Carolina backcountry, p eople “could vote if they wished to travel from a hundred to two hundred miles to the seacoast parishes, but they could not be sure to which parish they belonged b ecause parish lines had not been drawn very far inland.”180 In addition, “the absence of courts in the west became as much a grievance as the increasingly grotesque underrepresentation of the frontier districts in the assembly.”181 Third, the Board of Trade sometimes disallowed the addition of new representatives. “In 1743 the Board instructed the [Massachusetts] governor not to give his assent to any similar law [adding representatives] in the f uture, on the ground that ‘This practice of erecting 178. Zagarri 1987, 43. The imbalance was due not only to self-serving decisions by seaboard assemblies but also to a premodern idea that the principle of equal representation should apply to communities rather than to individuals (see Pole 1971, 52–53, 174–81, and passim, as well as chapter 7 below). 179. Zagarri 1987, 21. The comment concerns the late eighteenth century, but applies a fortiori to earlier periods. Costs of traveling could also have another effect. In Pennsylvania, “geographical inequality [between the seaboard and the backcountry] did not at first generate an opinion among westerners that they were deprived of rights. In some cases, they elected easterners to the few seats allotted them in order to avoid the cost of sending someone to the seat of government, which was always in the east” (Morgan 2002, 97). 180. Jensen 1968, 28–29. 181. Anderson 2001, 598. As he also writes, “the backcountry in both Carolinas was a magnet for all kinds of disorderly elements: debtors, escaped convicts, military deserters, fugitive slaves, runaway servants, deerskin hunters, and outlaw gangs that settlers with property and families to protect called ‘banditti’ ” (598–99).
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new towns and vesting them with this privilege, having formerly by its frequency been found to produce many inconveniences and particularly that of continually increasing the number of Representatives.’ ”182 Although the issues mentioned in the previous paragraph were not at the forefront in 1676 or 1769, they became important after the end of the Revolutionary War. Ultimately, they contributed to the conflicts that led to the calling of the Federal Convention (volume 3). Even when the state constitutions a dopted a fter 1776 did not stipulate unequal influence of eastern and western counties, geography and money often conspired to produce the same effect. The case of Massachusetts is emblematic: Although several members of the Convention that drafted the 1780 Constitution demanded that the state assume all costs of the delegates, [the] Constitution as drafted and adopted provided that each town should pay the expenses of its own representatives incurred in attending the session. . . . The point about payment was of very great consequence and of greater practical signification, in all probability than the question of the precise basis of representation. Interior towns, especially t hose at more than a day’s journey from Boston, very frequently failed to send a member at all. The cost of maintaining a representative in the capital through the legislative session was a heavy burden to which the frugal farmers saw little reason to subject themselves; were it necessary to be represented, in order to put the town’s view in some dispute, a single member would be cheaper than two. For the seaboard towns the capital was relatively accessible. Their greater wealth also made it easier for them to maintain representatives. All the normal cir cumstances of economic and political life therefore tended to give the advantages to the east coast.183 The elections to the Massachusetts legislature in May 1786 took place on the background of widespread poverty in the province and demands for tax and
182. Dickerson 1912, 254. Elsewhere, the board spelled out its real reason: “There are now [1743] 160 towns in the province [MA], most of which send two representatives. We think this enough. This destroys the balance between the assembly and the council” (256n). This was a general policy (APC 1908–12, 5:25–34). Hutchinson (1828, 54) justifies the practice in Massachusetts by the fact that “many affairs are determined by the joint ballot of the two houses.” As far as I know, those affairs were limited to the election of new members of the council by joint ballot of the lower h ouse and the council itself. In South Carolina, “low- country leaders . . . were reluctant to consent to an extension of representation, especially when British policy restricting the size of the Commons after 1767 meant that it could be done only by a general reapportionment in which the low country could lose some of its seats” (Greene 1972, 39). 183. Pole 1971, 204.
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debt relief. “In view of the growing discontent a large deleg ation might have been expected from the western counties. In fact, of 314 towns entitled to representatives, no fewer than 145 failed to elect a member.”184 Suggested explanations include (as above), the cost of travel, lack of coordination among the western counties, and self-defeating anger. The frustration was one of many factors that prepared the ground for Shays’s Rebellion (see volume 3). In Virginia, according to Jefferson, “nineteen thousand men, living below the falls of the rivers, possess half the senate, and want four members only of possessing a majority of the house of delegates; a want more than supplied by the vicinity of their situation to the seat of government, and of course the greater degree of convenience and punctuality with which their members may and will attend in the legislature. T hese nineteen thousand, therefore, living in one part of the country, give law to upwards of thirty thousand, living in another, and appoint all their chief officers executive and judiciary.”185 Jefferson’s “analysis grew constantly more correct as time went on and population moved into the western sections.”186 In Pennsylvania, the 1776 constitution substituted proportional for regional representation and thus did away with the underrepresentation of the western counties. These areas were, however, disadvantaged in other respects. “Farmers struggling to get from under a load of unpaid debts and taxes could not afford to leave the plow to spend months in Philadelphia debating laws.”187 To obtain legal title to land on the frontier, poor settlers had to make the expensive trip to Philadelphia.188 Without the title, they could not vote. After 1783, the most contentious issue in the state assemblies was perhaps the redemption of wartime bonds. By that time, the certificates that had been used to pay soldiers and suppliers during the war had depreciated to a small fraction of their face value. Speculators bought up large quantities of certificates at bargain-basement rates from the original recipients. Once the end of the war was in sight, many holders of these instruments demanded redemption in specie (gold and silver) at face value and, when promised, with interest. Because the Continental Congress could not get enough states to agree on a federal impost to fund the redemption, many states funded it by heavy taxation in specie. The result was a naked class struggle, and certainly the perception of opposed class interests, between rich bondholders on the east coast who were overrepresented in the assembly and poor farmers in the backcountry who w ere taxed to transfer what l ittle wealth they had to the former (I s hall discuss these conflicts more fully in volume 3, chapter 2). “Although a host of 184. Pole 1971, 234. 185. Jefferson 1984, 244. 186. Pole 1971, 297. 187. Bouton 2007, 129. 188. Bouton 2007, 121–22.
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farmers and soldiers had held on to their bonds, the majority had not, and by value most of the debt had concentrated in the hands of a few.”189 In Massa chusetts, “nearly 80 percent of the state debt made its way into the hands of speculators who lived in or near Boston, and nearly 40 percent into the hands of just thirty-five men.”190 “Americans w ere acutely aware that most of the tribute that public officials exacted from them went to bondholders” and “resented the sacrifices their assemblymen exacted on behalf of bond speculators.”191 They did not “accept the legislative argument that the chief beneficiaries were ‘worthy patriots’ who had come to the aid of the state in its time of need.”192 Understandably, veterans who had sold their bonds to speculators out of necessity w ere “especially angry.”193 At the same time, “bondholders w ere acutely aware that the value of their investments hinged on the willingness of the state legislatures to impose taxes.”194 As a consequence, “many bondholders, recognizing that political events determined the value of their investments, made efforts to influence politics.”195 Of “the thirty-five men who held over 40 percent of the state debt, all of them during the 1780s e ither served in the state h ouse themselves or had a close relative in the state house.”196 Although we cannot determine the actual influence of the speculators on the legislators, “in the eyes of their countrymen [their] influence was enormous.”197 The perceived injustice of this procedure triggered several proposals. Some proposed to differentiate among the bondholders. “Taxpayer advocates in at least nine states proposed to treat the original recipients of bonds differently from those who had purchased them on the open market.”198 The former would receive the face value of the bonds, the latter only what they had paid themselves, perhaps with interest or perhaps only the interest.199 Others 189. Bouton 2007, 37. 190. Richards 2002, 75. 191. Bouton 2007, 38. 192. Richards 2002, 79. 193. Richards 2002, 79. 194. Bouton 2007, 40. 195. Bouton 2007, 41. 196. Richards 2002, 78. 197. Bouton 2007, 41. As I am concerned with the subjective perceptions that motivated action rather than with objective facts, the observation by Brown (1993, 48) that “interest payments to state and federal creditors represented only a relatively small proportion of what these direct specie taxes w ere earmarked for” does not necessarily affect my argument. Taxpayers may also have objected to their taxes being used to pay French and Dutch creditors, but surely not with the same virulence. 198. Holton 2007, 55. 199. In one atypical case, the original bondholders w ere army generals and friends of Robert Morris, while the secondary ones w ere farmers, soldiers, and suppliers (Bouton 2007, 141).
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wanted to distinguish among the decision makers. In Philadelphia, Pelatiah Webster proposed that in decisions concerning the public debt, assembly members who were “directly or indirectly possessed, interested, or concerned, otherwise than as an original holder, in any public securities” should not be allowed to vote, any more than “a judge or juryman should sit in judgment in a cause, in the event of which he is personally interested.”200 The proposals reflect a popular conception of justice (see below). To my knowledge, no assembly adopted a self-denying ordinance of this kind. To address t hese issues, farmers had the choice between political action and private resistance. In April 1786, voters in Rhode Island elected an assembly of “Reliefers” that issued paper money and made it legal tender for all debts, private and public. In Massachusetts, the session that began in May 1786 could, in principle, have enacted prorelief measures, had not the western counties been underrepresented compared with the eastern ones. The farmers w ere caught in a classical collective action dilemma. “The very factors which made representation urgent also made it more burdensome. The harder the times, the more inducement to the towns to cut their costs. That any one town’s one or two representatives would be able to make an effective impression on the general policies of the [state assembly] or on the condition of the [state] always seemed improbable.”201 In addition to this rational calculation, the abstention from the assembly also had an emotional root. “Even though numerous New Hampshire and Massachusetts towns defeated their antirelief assemblymen in the in the spring 1786 elections, their action was cancelled out by other towns that expressed their anger at the legislature’s harsh fiscal and monetary policies by withdrawing their representatives altogether.”202 Taken as a whole, the states demonstrated a remarkable variety of forms of resistance. (The discussion of Shays’s Rebellion is postponed to volume 3.) Like their near contemporaries in France (volume 1, 221), farmers in Virginia used arson to destroy property records that were needed to execute the law.203 In New Jersey, “taxpayers formed groups that purchased the office of excise collector—all with the express purpose of not making anyone pay.”204 In a remarkable analysis, Terry Bouton explains that in Pennsylvania, [ordinary folk] built a series of concentric rings of protection . . . around their communities. . . . Working from the outermost rings to the inner ones, the first was formed by county revenue officials who tried to thwart tax collection. The second ring was composed of county justices of the peace who refused to prosecute delinquent taxpayers and 200. Webster 1791, 302–3. 201. Pole 1971, 234–35. 202. Holton 2007, 134. 203. Holton 2007, 146. 204. Holton 2007, 147.
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tax collectors. The third ring was formed by juries who acquitted those accused of not paying their taxes. The fourth ring was composed of sheriffs and constables who would not arrest non-paying citizens. The fifth ring involved ordinary folk attempting to stop tax collection and property foreclosures through nonviolent protest. Ring six was p eople trying to achieve those same goals through violent crowd action. Ring seven was composed of self-directed country militias that refused to follow orders to stop any of this protest.205 The bondholders who wanted to be repaid at face value for paper money they had acquired at a 90 or 99 percent discount w ere certainly motivated by self- interest, but also by a notion of what was their due. In America, in fact, two conceptions of justice confronted each other head on. On the one hand, an elite conception of justice held that issuing money and bonds entailed a morally binding promise that these instruments would keep their value. Pacta sunt servanda (promises are to be kept). Comparisons with female chastity w ere common. In 1736, a South Carolina newspaper wrote that “A Merchant’s Credit and a Virgin’s Virtue ought to be equally sacred.”206 In 1779, the Continental Congress issued a statement that a bankrupt republic would “appear among reputable nations like a common prostitute among chaste and respectable matrons.”207 In 1784, “Philadelphia bondholders petitioning against plans to withhold their annual interest declared that ‘credit may be considered as the chastity of the state.’ For the government to pick and choose among its creditors—to allow original holders’ claims while denying ‘an interest of 40 or 50 per cent [to] a few speculators’—would be ‘as indelicate, as it would be to measure female honor by calculations in arithmetic.’ ”208 In 1786, a correspondent to a New York newspaper recalled with nostalgia the times “before the commencement of the late war, when public faith was still in the possession of vestal chastity [and paper money] circulated freely and at its full nominal value on a perfect equality with specie.”209 Keeping a promise and protecting chastity w ere absolutes. “Honor was the most precious possession of a gentleman. It had no degrees—a gentleman could not lose a little honor,”210 any more than a w oman could be a little bit pregnant. In a phrase as applicable to the twenty-first as to the eighteenth century, Keynes referred to “the absolutists of contract” as “the real parents of Revolution.”211 205. Bouton 2007, 146. 206. Cited in Breen (2004, 138), who also cites other passages to the same effect. 207. JCC, 15:1060. 208. Holton 2007, 94–95 (citing the Philadelphia Gazette, December 15, 1784, 3). 209. Ferguson 1961, 18. 210. Royster 1979, 207. 211. Keynes 1922, 68.
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The moral or moralistic overtones of the debate are also evident in Madison’s denunciation written in November 1786. Paper money, he wrote, is “pernicious 1. by fostering luxury, extends instead of curing scarcity of specie—2. by disabling compliance with requisition of Congs. 3. serving dissentions between States. 4. destroyg. confidence between individuals. 5. discouraging commerce—6 enrichg collectors & sharpers—7 vitiating morals—8 reversing end of Govt. which is to reward best & punish worst. 9. conspiring with the examples of other States to disgrace Republican Govts. in the eyes of mankind.”212 On the other hand, a popular conception of justice condemned policies that caused hardships for taxpayers—farmers and veterans—for the benefit of speculators. In 1784, the son of the general who was to suppress Shays’s Rebellion “said the conflict between creditors and the parallel dispute pitting ‘the creditors of the public, particularly of the army,’ against taxpayers had both ‘arisen from [a] principle of opposition, against the interests of those, whose subsistence is derived from the labours of others.’ ”213 A correspondent writing under the name of “Justice” “urged the Connecticut legislature to scale down the war bonds so citizens would not be ‘unjustly taxed to pay more than the real value.’ ”214 Another Connecticut writer said that the value of the securities when they bought them, with interest, “is all [the speculators] can justly demand.”215 The popular sense of injustice was fueled by the belief that the speculators w ere behind the legislation that would enable them to reap astronomical profits. Their gains w ere not the fruits of productive labor, but the reward to lobbying. According to Merrill Jensen, to the farmer “no talk was more idle than that about the sacred obligations of the state to public creditors; for him it was a mask of greed and a cloak for the legal confiscation of property.”216 The elites disagreed with this conception. In 1784, Philadelphia bondholders, including Benjamin Rush, argued that “the speculator, who purchased a certificate during the low ebb of public credit, merits all the profit that can arise from it, by the risk he ran, and the confidence he manifested in the state.”217 James Madison also addressed this issue. In November 1782, he affirmed “that the principle established by the plan of the 18th. of March 1780, 212. “Notes for Speech Opposing Paper Money, [ca. 1 November] 1786,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-09-02 -0066. 213. Holton 2004, 283. 214. Holton 2004, 285. 215. Holton 2004, 56. 216. Jensen 1950, 240. 217. Philadelphia Gazette, December 15, 1784, 3. Holton (2007, 86–87) writes that bondholders asking the federal government to redeem their claims in full were not necessarily animated by e ither of the polar motivations of cynical self-interest and the common
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with respect to the money in question was, that the Holder of it sd. receive the value at which it was current & at which it was presumed he had received it; that a different rule adopted with regard to the same money in different stages of its downfall wd. give general dissatisfaction.”218 In other words, bondholders would be less dissatisfied if all their holdings were redeemed at the same current low rate than if one imposed a seemingly more just, but intrinsically more controversial, redemption at the value at the time of purchase. In February 1790, he proposed to differentiate between “original sufferers” who had sold their certificates and the current holders. In a simplification of his complex argument, Madison asserted that while both had claims to redemption, those of the former were based on “humanity” and those of the latter on “justice.” The profit of speculators was a just reward to risk-taking: “the holders by assignment, have claims, which I by no means wish to depreciate. They w ill say, that whatever pretensions others may have against the public, these cannot effect the validity of theirs. That if they gain by the risk taken upon themselves, it is but the just reward of that risk. That as they hold the public promise, they have an undeniable demand on the public faith.”219 To this argument, defenders of popular conceptions of justice could retort, without questioning the general value of keeping promises and paying debts, that the original sales of the bonds and certificates had been bargains of desperation. In a remarkable exchange between artisans and merchants in Philadelphia to which I s hall return in chapter 6, the former wrote that “the limiting [of ] tavern expences, porters and carriers charges, ferriages, and numerous other matters, by the former laws of this state, are founded on the ere laid on, that the persons practicing probability, that if no such restraints w those employments would take an unjust advantage of the immediate neces sity of others, and compel them to pay just what they pleased.”220 The same argument justified “restraints” on secondary bondholders. An often-cited editorial on “the publick faith” from the Hampshire Herald, to which I shall return in volume 3, first argues against the redemption of bonds at face value and then addresses a possible objection to the argument: “It will perhaps be said, ‘the creditor of government sold his security under par, from necessity, being unable to wait for payment, and the purchaser bought it in the expectation of gain, and therefore is intitled to the sum originally promised.’ But on this supposition, the purchaser is to be considered an good. “Neither of these models allows for the possibility that [they] w ere motivated by a sense of grievance that was genuine and questionable at the same time.” 218. “Notes on Debates, 7 December 1782,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/d ocuments/Madison/01-05-02-0159. 219. “Discrimination between Present and Original Holders of the Public Debt, [11 February] 1790,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov /documents/Madison/01-13-02-0030. 220. Quoted in Schultz 1987, 134. See also Holton 2007, 90; A. Taylor 2016, 318.
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EXTORTIONER, as much as the man who takes advantage of his neighbour’s necessity, to exact excessive usury for the loan of money; and well may the government interpose to defeat the oppressive intention of the SPECULATOR, as of the USURER.”221 In the phrase I have italicized, the writer assumes tacitly that the low purchase price of the bond must be due to the seller’s high discounting of the f uture, in contrast to the purchaser’s greater ability to wait. In a risk-free bargaining process, the advantage will in fact always lie with the more patient agent who can afford to wait because of having greater wealth. It is unclear, however, why this fact should provide any moral justification for redemption at face value. On the contrary, as the editorial states, the superprofit is morally equivalent to usury, taking unfair advantage of another’s misfortune, a practice morally condemned by most religions and legally prohibited in many countries.222 However, the purchase of war bonds was not a risk-free process. The outcome of the war was uncertain, and even in the event of an American victory redemption at face value was also uncertain. For this reason, the claim that superprofit was the just reward to risk might seem to have some plausibility. Nevertheless, in my view the claims of the original bondholders were anchored in distributive justice, not in humanity or benevolence. This is not the place to pursue this issue. What m atters is the popular perception. The elite conceptions of justice must be distinguished from the norms of hierarchy I discussed earlier. The former, pacta sunt servanda and fiat justitia ruat caelum (let justice be done should the heavens fall), are horizontal and symmetrical, and apply to each of the contracting parties. James Wilson, Robert Morris, and other leaders of the Revolutionary War spent time in debtor’s jail. The latter are vertical and asymmetrical, and apply only to the subordinate party in the relationship.223 The former are embedded in the impersonal procedures of the market and the law, whereas the latter belong to a system of highly personal relations. The two varied in time and space, New England and Virginia presenting polar cases with an overall trend t oward market dominance. However, in many cases the upper echelons in the hierarchy must have gravitated naturally t oward norms from which they had much to gain. 221. Hampshire Herald, January 31, 1786. 222. Defenders of usurious rates of interest might (and do) argue that they are due to, and justified by, a high risk of default, disregarding the fact that the risk is created, at least in part, by the high rates. From the point of view of the usurer, t here could in fact be two locally optimal solutions: lower interest rates with higher probability of repayment and higher rates with lower probability. In that case, the usurer would choose the higher (global) maximum, which might be the one with the lower interest rate. I conjecture that in an inchoate form, such considerations are part of the psychology of usury. 223. The bottom-up norms of deference were accompanied by top-down norms of con descension (D. Fischer 1989, 385–86; Wyatt-Brown 2007, 59, 63, 67; G. Wood 1991, 41), but I doubt that violations of the latter triggered sanctions of the violator.
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We can also learn something about perceptions (or professions) of injustice from Franklin’s answers to the questions put to him in the parliamentary hearings on the Stamp Act in February 1766. Asked w hether “the American stamp-act [was] an equal tax on that country,” he answered, “I think not. . . . The greatest part of the money must arise from law suits for the recovery of debts, and be paid by the lower sort of people, who were too poor easily to pay their debts. It is therefore a heavy tax on the poor, and a tax upon them for being poor.”224 To a question of whether he knew that Stamp money would be spent in America, he answered, “I know it is appropriated by the act to the American service; but it w ill be spent in the conquered colonies [Canada and West Indies], where the soldiers are, not in the colonies that pay it.”225 Asked whether “from the thinness of the back settlements, would not the stamp-act be extremely inconvenient to the inhabitants?” he answered, “To be sure it would; as many of the inhabitants could not get stamps when they had occasion for them, without taking long journeys, and spending perhaps three or four pounds, that the Crown might get six-pence.”226 Each answer implicitly appeals to a conception of justice: that burdens should not fall disproportionately on the poor, that taxpayers should benefit from the services they fund, and that taxes should not induce unequal costs of compliance. The first and third are principles of distributive justice, the second of commutative justice (quid pro quo).
Enthusiasm As noted, the American Revolution would not have taken off, or taken the course it did, had it been based on anger and grievances only. The prospects of individual liberty and national independence provided the cement of the movement. Anger can motivate disinterested destruction, as when it triggers desire for revenge with no concern for costs or risks, but it has no constructive aim. In the American Revolution the aim was liberty, and the force that, in alliance with anger, brought it about was enthusiasm.227 I s hall first discuss the neglected latter emotion, and then, in the following section, the puzzling cult of liberty in the midst of slavery. 224. PDNA, 2:245. 225. PDNA, 2:236. Asked w hether “trade from the colonies where the troops are posted [would not] bring back the money to the old colonies,” he answered, “I think it would come from the colonies where it was spent directly to England.” 226. PDNA, 2:236. 227. Many contemporary statements oscillate among “enthusiasm,” “zeal,” “spirit,” “patriotism,” and “virtue” in characterizing the motivations of the revolutionaries. One cannot always assume that they refer to the same state of mind, but they are closely related. The motivation may have been close to magical thinking (Elster 2017), as “when e very Man considered the Fate of his Country as depending on his own Exertions” (General Jedidiah Huntington, quoted in Royster 1979, 284).
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In textbooks, handbooks, and scholarly articles dealing with emotions, enthusiasm is virtually never mentioned, let alone discussed at any length. Nevertheless, casual observation and introspection confirm its existence and importance. I shall argue that it was a key to the American victory—a necessary but not sufficient condition. Historically, enthusiasm has been a controversial and ambiguous idea.228 In the Anglo-American literature of the early modern period, it mainly connoted religious extravagance, fanaticism, and intolerant zeal. Hume’s characterization is probably representative: [In addition to superstition, the] mind of man is also subject to an unaccountable elevation and presumption, arising from prosperous success, from luxuriant health, from strong spirits, or from a bold and confident disposition. In such a state of mind, the imagination swells with g reat, but confused conceptions, to which no sublunary beauties or enjoyments can correspond. Every thing mortal and perishable vanishes as unworthy of attention. And a full range is given to the fancy in the invisible regions or world of spirits, where the soul is at liberty to indulge itself in e very imagination, which may best suit its present taste and disposition. Hence arise raptures, transports, and surprising flights of fancy; and confidence and presumption still encreasing, t hese raptures, being altogether unaccountable, and seeming quite beyond the reach of our ordinary faculties, are attributed to the immediate inspiration of that Divine Being, who is the object of devotion. In a little time, the inspired person comes to regard himself as a distinguished favourite of the Divinity; and when this frenzy once takes place, which is the summit of enthusiasm, every whimsy is consecrated: Human reason, and even morality are rejected as fallacious guides: And the fanatic madman delivers himself over, blindly, and without reserve, to the supposed illapses [sudden attacks] of spirit, and to inspiration from above. Hope, pride, presumption, a warm imagination, together with ignorance, are, therefore, the true sources of ENTHUSIASM.229 Hume adds some important qualifications. When comparing the enthusiasm of Protestant sects with the superstition of the Catholic Church, he notes that “religions, which partake of enthusiasm are, on their first rise, more furi ous and violent than t hose which partake of superstition; but in a little time become more gentle and moderate [because] its fury is like that of thunder and tempest, which exhaust themselves in a little time.”230 In language explained 228. The following is a compressed version of the discussion of Hume and Kant in Elster (2021a). 229. Hume 1987, 74. 230. Hume 1987, 76–77; italics in original.
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below, enthusiasm has a short-half life. Even more strikingly, he claims that “superstition is an e nemy to civil liberty, and enthusiasm a friend to it.”231 In France, the opposition between enthusiastic Jansenists and superstitious Jesuits reproduces, within Catholicism, the general opposition between Protestantism and Catholicism: “The Jesuits are the tyrants of the people, and the slaves of the court: And the Jansenists preserve alive the small sparks of the love of liberty, which are to be found in the French nation.”232 For all its excesses, then, Hume thought enthusiasm was to some extent redeemed by its implacable opposition to authority. In Germany, Kant a dopted a different conception of enthusiasm. The natu ral starting point is his distinction between Enthusiasmus and Schwärmerei. The latter term, sometimes rendered as “visionary rapture,” is applied to those who think they are directly inspired by God. In this respect, it is close to Hume’s idea of enthusiasm; in a precritical writing, Maladies of the Head, Kant also refers to the Schwärmer as a fanatic.233 Here he also sharply distinguishes Schwärmerei from enthusiasm, asserting about the latter that “nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without it.”234 In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, he wrote that “the idea of the good with affect is called enthusiasm. This state of mind seems to be sublime, so much so that it is commonly maintained that without it nothing great can be accomplished.”235 Yet Kant’s praise of enthusiasm is qualified. In what is probably a reference to enthusiasm in the French Revolution, he asserts that it “shakes everything and goes beyond all bounds.”236 He also asserts that enthusiasm, like any other affect, is “blind, either in the choice of its end, or, if this is given by Reason, in its implementation; for it is that movement of the mind that makes it incapable of engaging in free consideration of principles.”237 This statement is somewhat opaque, but I take it to mean that an enthusiast chooses morally good ends but, “drunk with disinterestedness” (see note 47 above), is incapable of choosing the best means to realize them.238 Enthusiasts may easily, therefore, become fanatics if they persist in ignoring practical objections and obstacles to their ideas. In her monograph Kant et la Schwärmerei, Béatrice 231. Hume 1987, 78; italics in original. 232. Hume 1987, 79. 233. Kant 2007, 73. 234. Kant 2007, 73. We may note for later reference that enthusiasm is asserted only as a necessary condition for great achievements. 235. Kant 2000, 154. In the precritical writing he omitted the qualification “it is commonly maintained.” 236. Kant 2007, 409. 237. Kant 2000, 154. 238. This interpretation is close to that of Frierson (2014, 224–25): “flights of imagination generate feelings that outstrip the capacity for reflection, and agents can find themselves pulled into enthusiastic frenzies that can be powerful, but literally out of control in that one does not exercise rational agency over ‘implementation.’ ”
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Allouche-Pourcel hits the nail on the head when she writes that enthusiasm illustrates the idea that the best can be the e nemy of the good.239 The references to enthusiasm among American writers in the revolutionary period owe nothing to Kant, yet in their overall positive tone they are closer to Kant than to Hume. In 1765, one year a fter the publication of Maladies of the Head, where Kant asserts that “nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without” enthusiasm, John Adams wrote of the “first planters in these colonies” that “their enthusiasm, considering the principles on which it was founded and the ends to which it was directed, far from being a reproach to them, was greatly to their honor; for I believe it w ill be found universally true, that no great enterprise for the honor or happiness of mankind was ever achieved without a large mixture of that noble infirmity.”240 The similarity to Kant, in time and in substance, is uncanny.241 As we s hall see, Adams had himself experienced the impatience of enthusiasm. David Lovejoy writes that “intellectually, this was a historic moment. Adams here introduced to his generation a broad, positive understanding of enthusiasm, which heretofore had been only as a religious delusion.”242 He also comments that “like that of the Great Awakening, Revolutionary enthusiasm had its millennial side and a vision of the future. As attitudes toward it tended to shift, and as the word itself expanded in meaning beyond religion to politics, so the millennial promise . . . expanded, too, and took on patriotic dress.”243 Charles Royster also emphasizes this double shift: During the revolution, some p eople, especially loyalists, called some instances of public defiance of Britain enthusiastic, by which they meant to deplore such conduct as a sign of disorder, even m ental unbalance. But the most common use of the word carried t oday’s meaning: 239. Allouche-Pourcel 2010, 105. The Schwärmer, too, is incapable of listening to objections, since divine inspiration cannot be wrong. 240. “IV. ‘A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law,’ No. 2, 19 August 1765,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06 -01-02-0052-0005.Warning in 1776 against incorporating a unicameral assembly in the North Carolina constitution, Adams adopted a more traditional attitude: “A single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual; subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities, or prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments. And all these errors ought to be corrected and defects supplied by some controlling power” (“III. Thoughts on Government, April 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06 -04-02-0026-0004). Perhaps his early positive judgment on enthusiasm reflects his own. 241. There may even be common descent, rather than just similarity. Adams “was familiar . . . with the writings of . . . the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, one of the few early eighteenth- century thinkers who had anything good to say about enthusiasm” (D. Lovejoy 1985, 228). When Kant states that it is “commonly maintained” that nothing great is ever achieved without it, “he could have in mind . . . writers such as Shaftesbury or Rousseau” (Clewis 2018, 191). 242. D. Lovejoy 1985, 228. 243. D. Lovejoy 1985, 226.
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praiseworthy ardor. . . . 35 years before the revolution, most Americans would have deplored enthusiasm in religion though not fully agreeing on what conduct deserved the term. During the revolution, most Americans approved of enthusiasm in politics and war. We can infer that this difference entailed not only a shift in meaning—that is, using the word to describe less extravagant states of emotion—but also a shift in value—that is, greater approval of heightened emotion. When “A JERSEY SOLDIER” looked back over the troops’ sufferings and depreciated pay for the preceding two years, he said in 1779, “Nothing but a kind of enthusiasm, in the sacred cause of freedom, could have secured their continuance in the army u ntil this time.”244 The Marquis of Chastellux recounts his meeting with Thomas Jefferson in 1782 in words that express the ambiguous attitude toward enthusiasm among Americans: [The] conformity of feelings and opinions [between Jefferson and himself] was so perfect that not only our tastes were similar, but our predilections also—those predilections or partialities which dry and methodical spirits hold up to ridicule as enthusiasm, but which sensitive and animated men proudly call by this very same name of enthusi asm. I recall with pleasure that as we were conversing one evening . . . , we happened to speak of the poet Ossian. It was a spark of electricity which passed rapidly from one to the other; we recalled the passages of those wonderful poems which had particularly struck us.245 The example conveys perhaps a flavor of sentimentality rather than of a “noble infirmity.”246 Some critics of enthusiasm interpreted it as a latter-day Cromwellianism, in which religious sectarianism and political dictatorship suppressed all dissent and independent thought. “The loyalists argued that a rebellion that relied, as the American did, on a spirit of popular enthusiasm would certainly 244. Royster 1979, 145–46. I do not think “praiseworthy ardor” is today’s meaning. I believe it corresponds better to usage if we define the emotion by the mental state of the actor, not of the observer. There can be enthusiasts on both sides in a war, but at most one of them can be praiseworthy. 245. Chastellux 1786, 2:36. 246. Tocqueville (2001, 137) asserts that enthusiasm “is a passion which in revolutionary times often creates illusions in those who are its objects, who persuade themselves that it is they whom the crowd r eally adores, while in reality the crowd only adores its own ideas, for which by chance you are momentarily the instrument.” When Royster (1979, 104) refers to how “we watch Americans’ voluntary engagement in war decrease at the same time that their enthusiasm for independence is increased,” he may also have had in mind an attitude revealed as a pseudo-emotion by virtue of not having any action tendencies. Elsewhere he writes that the “characteristic abuse of enthusiasm, whether aided by the love of freedom or by alcohol, was to be satisfied with the feeling while giving up the effort” (146).
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become a dictatorship b ecause it could tolerate no disagreement. A prisoner confined in the Philadelphia jail by order of Congress left graffiti on the wall that said, in part, ‘The days of Cromwell, puritanic rage / Return’d to curse our more unhappy days.’ ”247 In this resurgence of Cromwellianism, “politics and religion w ere both involved: increasing public anger at the governing British elite, but also the spiritual effect of the G reat Awakening, which resurrected many of the sects, enthusiasms, and excitements of the 1640s and 1650s.”248 Turning now to analysis, I s hall adopt the OED definition cited above, with emphasis on enthusiasm for a cause. In this sense, enthusiasm can: 1. Reduce risk aversion 2. Trigger urgency (inaction aversion), which truncates the search for information 3. Induce motivated belief formation 4. Induce neglect of self-interest in pursuit of the cause 5. Impart supernormal energy 6. Have a short half-life Brief and then more extensive comments follow, comparing enthusiasm to anger and fear. 1. Enthusiasm and anger tend to lower the risk aversion of the agent, in contrast to the tendency of fear to increase it.249 2. All three emotions generate urgency, which truncates the time- consuming process of gathering the information needed for rational belief formation. 3. Enthusiasm and anger tend to trigger the familiar phenomenon of wishful thinking, notably more optimistic risk assessments, in contrast to the tendency of fear to generate the less well-known (but widespread) phenomenon of counterwishful thinking.250 As La Fontaine wrote, “Each believes easily what he fears and what he hopes.” 4. All three emotions can induce sacrifices and neglect of self-interest. 5. Anger and fear involve the mobilization of the organism against a threat or danger, creating an adrenaline rush that can sustain extraordinary efforts. 6. All three emotions have a short half-life. 247. Royster 1979, 263. 248. Phillips 1999, 107. 249. Lerner and Keltner 2001. Risk aversion can be measured by the extent to which an agent has to be compensated for risk. Suppose a lottery ticket will yield either $100 or $0 with 50 percent probability each. An agent is willing to pay up to $50 − x for the ticket. If x > 0, the agent is risk averse, the more risk averse the larger is x. For x = 0, the agent is risk neutral; for x p = q > s, a constellation with two notable features, one reflecting and another violating normative pressures on constituent assemblies. On the one hand, there is a pressure to induce r > p and/or t > p. Since constitution making is a more serious task than ordinary legislation, creating constraints and rights for the indefinite f uture, (some) citizens usually deprived of the suffrage should be enfranchised in electing delegates to the constituent assembly or in ratifying the proposed constitution. In the making of the New Hampshire constitution, the rule was r = s > p.122 However, the pattern was not universal. In the constituent process in Maryland in 1776, for instance, the rule was r = p.123 Nevertheless, the practices of the conventions that ratified the 1787 constitution,124 and of many nineteenth-century state constitutional conventions,125 testify to the strength of this pressure. On the other hand, t here is a pressure for s ≥ p, or, to put it the other way around, a pressure against s