Book review: A Defence of Liberty Against Tyrants
Based on your own education in American history, what book (after the Bible) was the catalyst and guide for America’s founding fathers to engage in the American Revolution? Actually, in my own education, even the Bible wasn’t given any credit. (That in itself is a lie by omission.) The only book I recollect being mentioned by my teachers and in my textbooks was Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.
Well, the teachers and the textbook writers & publishers here and now must stand corrected by John Quincy Adams, who was there and then. He wrote: “…Common Sense is a pamphlet just as contemptible, almost throughout just as remote from sound human sense, as ll the others by which, in later times, he has made himself a name. …If such a work could have produced the American revolution, it would have been best for reasonable men to concern themselves no longer with that event. But it was certainly at all times, by the wiser and better men, considered, endured, and perhaps encouraged only as an instrument to gain over weaker minds to the common cause.”
OK, if Common Sense was not the political blockbuster it is given credit for, what was being read and absorbed and implemented by the founders? John Adams (JQA’s father, the 2nd president, who was right in the middle of the American Revolution) named another book as the most influential on the eve of the War for Independence: A Defence of Liberty Against Tyrants. Adams, ranking right up there with Washington, Jefferson, Henry, and Franklin, should know.
I for one am going to take my cue on all things American Revolution from John Adams and John Quincy Adams over any and all 20th-century textbook writers & publishers, and history teachers. I have already read Common Sense, so I read A Defence of Liberty Against Tyrants to see what REALLY inspired the valiant and genius men who were America’s founding fathers.
The original Latin title of the book was Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos. It was a French Huguenot tract, published in the late 16th century (2 centuries prior to 1776), authored under the pseudonym Junius Brutus. (First, what we call “books” they called “tracts.” What does that say about our own education and attention span? But I digress…)
The “tract” asks and answers 4 questions:
- Whether subjects are bound and ought to obey princes, if they command that which is against the law of God…
- Whether it be lawful to resist a prince who doth infringe the law of God; by whom, how, and how far it is lawful…
- Whether it be lawful to resist a prince who doth oppress or ruin a public state, and how far such resistance may be extended…
- Whether neighbor princes may, or are bound by law to aid the subjects of other princes, persecuted for true religion, or oppressed by manifest tyranny…
The answer to each question is “Yes.” The first two might have had the most direct application to the various European wars, in which religion and politics were almost inextricably intertwined. However, for the American colonists, the third question would be paramount. When you read the “long train of abuses” in the Declaration of Independence, they are not explicitly religious in nature, but political, economic, and social (which, of course, Christians recognize must be grounded in religious principle). Fortunately, the third question is also the most thoroughly developed argument, and thus afforded the Sons of Liberty and their compatriots with a well-reasoned philosophy of civil disobedience most suited to their situation. The fourth question’s answer would have been used to appeal to potential allies (like France, which would have been very familiar with the thinking in the document).
The book – er, tract – is not exactly a page-turner, by modern tastes. It requires sustained attention to the thread of its main argument, which can be easily lost amid the dozens and dozens and dozens of examples and illustrations from the Bible and history.
Defence turned the usual thinking on the relationship of ruler and subjects upside down, and led, I believe, to the “consent of the governed” idea that ultimately made its way into the Declaration: “The king is established by the Lord God…to the end he should administer justice to his people and defend them…” The main political covenant is between God and the people, with the king to administer and safeguard it. If the king usurp God’s law and mistreat His covenant people, then the king loses his right to rule.
Defence (humorously, to me) points out that “…none were ever born with crowns on their heads, and sceptres in their hands.” Despite the custom of hereditary succession that had encrusted monarchies over the centuries, and citing Biblical examples of Israel’s selections of Saul and then David as their kings, it goes on: “…in some kingdoms and countries, the right of free election seems in a sort buried; yet, notwithstanding, in all well-ordered kingdoms, this custom is yet remaining.” Kings are merely agents of God and His people: they are delegated authority from God, and they borrow authority from the people. Then: “To conclude in a word, all kings were at first were altogether elected, and those who at this day seem to have their crowns and royal authority by inheritance, have or should have, first and principally their confirmation from the people.” You can see how this kind of thinking would cause colonists to protest “taxation without representation,” et al.
Defence does put some limits on the people’s right to revolt.
- The people must revolt only as a last resort: “Their duty is, first to admonish the prince…(until) the disease…becomes unrecoverable.”
- The people must act collectively, not individually. “Therefore, as all the whole people is above the king…yet being considered one by one, they are all of them under the king.”
- The people must act through other duly constituted rulers: “It is…permitted the officers of a kingdom…to suppress a tyrant; and it is not only lawful…but their duty expressly requires it.”
- To avoid revolt, the people should even flee, if possible: “But if the princes and magistrates…do not resist him, we must…retire ourselves into some other place.”
It is easy to see how closely the American colonists followed these principles: e.g., the Olive Branch Petition, et al. (#1), the consensus of all 13 colonies (#2), acting through the Continental Congress (#3), and their previous flight as Pilgrims and Puritans (#4). Examples could be multiplied by better historians than I.
It appears that the historical evidence and the personal testimony of America’s founders agree that Defence, and not Common Sense, was (after the Bible) the main book of the Revolution. I guess I am going to have to question everything I ever learned growing up about the history of my own country.