Endowed by Their Creator

This is an interesting phrase. If the Founding Father meant “God” why didn’t they just use the “G” word? Along with the phrase “Nature’s God” it leads some to assume this is a Deist or Stoic document. It reminds me of the current debate over saying “Merry Christmas” vs. “Happy Holidays.” Obviously the Founders weren’t upset with the generic references to the Deity. They apparently didn’t have a Bill O’Reilly to bemoan the specter of “secular Whigs.” Still, why the use of the word “Creator?”

Let’s look at the whole sentence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The Declaration's preamble is virtually a summary of Locke’s Second Treatise. Locke derives natural rights from the natural law of self-preservation. These quotes of the Founders indicate the fundamentality of the law of self-preservation. In other words, it is man’s mortality that requires that he labor and secure the product of his labor. Being mortal is obviously “unalienable”; man was created as a mortal being, requiring industry for his sustenance and self-preservation.

This, of course, is a very naturalistic derivation of rights. Locke (as Aquinas before him) saw no conflict between reason and religion--nor did the Founding Fathers. However, this line of argument fits awkwardly with the Bible as it is usually understood. In the Bible, Adam initially didn’t have to labor to sustain his life. Self-preservation and hard work become necessary by his Fall. Thus, the need for private property to secure the fruit of his labor wasn't inherent in his creation; it was Adam’s Fall and eviction from the Garden of Eden that changed his fate. God as Lord and Master, not as Creator, imposed that burden. Isn't this how the Founders read the Bible? Or Locke?

It isn’t clear that this notion of “unalienable” or “inalienable” rights comes from Locke. Locke refers to the law of self-preservation as a duty owed to God, our creator (Ch 2, section 6). If we go further and consult Locke’s “The Reasonableness of Christianity” we find:

“what Adam fell from (is visible) was the state of perfect obedience, which is called justice in the New Testament; though the word, which in the original signifies justice, be translated righteousness: and by this fall he lost paradise, wherein was tranquillity and the tree of life; i. e. he lost bliss and immortality ... that the state of paradise was a state of immortality, of life without end; which he lost that very day that he eat: his life began from thence to shorten, and waste, and to have an end; and from thence to his actual death ...”

Adam wasn’t created mortal with a need for self-preservation and rights. Human nature apparently changed 5700 years ago (rather recent by evolutionary standards!) If this is the case, Natural Law is not Eternal Law! It is not “coeval with mankind” as Blackstone expressed it. This agreement of religion and reason isn't as easy as promised.

For Locke, mankind became mortal after the Fall, securing rights became part of man’s need of self-preservation. While Locke implies rights are unalienable, it was John Trenchard who added this powerful wording in letter No. 59 called “Liberty Proved to be the Unalienable Right of all Mankind”. He writes, “All men are born free; liberty is a gift which they receive from God himself; nor can they alienate the same by consent, though possibly they may forfeit it by crimes.” The logic here isn’t as clear and rigorous as Locke. It introduces the grace of God (i.e. gift), which makes rights an alienable addition; and he doesn’t tie rights to self-preservation. (He does better in letter No. 60 when he essentially paraphrases the “2nd Treatise” and “Letter of Concerning Toleration.”)

How well does the Lockean theory fit with the spirit of religion? The centrality of self-preservation, “the first law of nature” as Sam Adams puts it, is an odd focus for a religious foundation. Duty, as opposed to self-interest, tends to be the operative concern of every religion to my knowledge. After all, are people so passionate about killing themselves that one has to issue exhortations to do otherwise?

As far as political philosophy is concerned, Locke and the Founding Father used religion in a minimalist manner. Very little is required to establish the principle of unalienable rights. What is missing may be more interesting than what is included. Not only are all the other “natural laws” of social morality superfluous but God’s positive laws also aren’t required for the establishment of fundamental political principles. Locke makes a distinction between God’s positive law and natural law. He quotes Hooker making the same distinction. (By the way, Aquinas makes the same distinction.) By omitting God’s positive law, all the commandments and covenants of the Bible become irrelevant to the political foundation of a rights-respecting order. Lockean theory is explicitly religious but in a minimal manner that allows almost any religion or no religion to sign-on to his philosophy.

I’m not implying that the Founders weren’t generally predisposed to religion or the lessons of the Bible. My focus is on the public document and the reasoning that went into it. I think we can agree that the whole purpose of this important sentence in the Declaration is to remove man's rights from positive law. It is general enough that no one is offended--orthodox, deist, or otherwise. I can’t help but think that the Founders wanted it that way.

John Adams on Virtue

The Founding Fathers held that virtue was a prerequisite for a sustainable republic. But what did they mean by “virtue?” Here are a few quotes from John Adams’ Novanglus, published in the Boston Gazette in 1774. After 200 years we do not exactly use the word in the same way. As an experiment, ask people today what comes to mind when they hear the word virtue and see if they sound like any of the quotes below.

Adams argues that without virtue, liberty cannot survive.

"When a people are corrupted, the press may be made an engine to complete their ruin; and it is now notorious, that the ministry are daily employing it, to increase and establish corruption, and to pluck up virtue by the roots. Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence, than the body can live and move without a soul. When these are gone, and the popular branch of the constitution is become dependent on the minister, as it is in England, or cut off, as it is in America, all other forms of the constitution may remain; but if you look for liberty, you will grope in vain; and the freedom of the press, instead of promoting the cause of liberty, will but hasten its destruction, as the best cordials taken by patients in some distempers become the most rancid and corrosive poisons." (Novanglus III)

The converse holds as well: without liberty, virtue withers. Dependency begets corruption which begets more dependency.

"Obsta principiis, nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society." (Novanglus III)

Odd, that sounds familiar! Speaking of familiar here is Adams on the debt problem:

"That is the reason that the Massachusetts has paid its debt [for the French and Indian War], and the British minister, in thirteen years of peace, has paid none of his? Much of it might have been paid in this time, had not such extravagance and speculation prevailed, as ought to be an eternal warning to America, never to trust such a minister with her money. What is the reason that the great and necessary virtues of simplicity, frugality, and economy cannot live in England, Scotland, and Ireland, as well as America?" (Novanglus IV)

"But when luxury, effeminacy, and venality are arrived at such a shocking pitch in England; when both electors and elected are become one mass of corruption; when the nation is oppressed to death with debts and taxes, owing to their own extravagance and want of wisdom, what would be your condition under such an absolute subjection to parliament? You would not only be slaves, but the most abject sort of slaves, to the worst sort of masters! at least this is my opinion." (Novanglus II)

Since virtue is a public concern, the clergy are asked to speak out against political corruption.

"It is the duty of the clergy to accommodate their discourses to the times, to preach against such sins as are most prevalent, and recommend such virtues as are most wanted. For example,—if exorbitant ambition and venality are predominant, ought they not to warn their hearers against those vices? If public spirit is much wanted, should they not inculcate this great virtue? If the rights and duties of Christian magistrates and subjects are disputed, should they not explain them, show their nature, ends, limitations, and restrictions, ..." (Novanglus IV)

Now, how does that compare to today's everyday use of the word virtue?

Witherspoon at Tusculum

Historical Society of Princeton sponsored a house tour on November 6 that included the country home of John Witherspoon. It remains a private home and has been enlarged by the addition of several wings. Some of the original rooms are only slightly modified. In the picture, to the right of the front door, was Rev. Witherspoon’s library-study, which I estimate to be about 13ft square (similar to mine!)

The guide explained that Rev. Witherspoon called his home Tusculum after Cicero’s country estate. Overall our guide gave an excellent talk on the Witherspoon’s life and country home. When I asked, he gave further details on Witherspoon’s relationship to James Madison. By the way, he noted that the right reverend would have pronounced his name Weatherspoon. Kudos to the Historical Society for providing access to this site and knowledge guides.

Do the Founders Agree On Natural Rights?

What do the Founding Fathers say about natural rights?

"I say RIGHTS, for such they have, undoubtedly, antecedent to all earthly government, — Rights, that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws — Rights, derived from the great Legislator of the universe."
From John Adams, A dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765

"Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature."
From Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists, 1772

"This is what is called the law of nature, 'which, being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is, of course, superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid, derive all their authority, mediately, or immediately, from this original.' Blackstone.

Upon this law, depend the natural rights of mankind, the supreme being gave existence to man, together with the means of preserving and beatifying that existence. He endowed him with rational faculties, by the help of which, to discern and pursue such things, as were consistent with his duty and interest, and invested him with an inviolable right to personal liberty, and personal safety. …

'The principal aim of society is to protect individuals, in the enjoyment of those absolute rights, which were vested in them by the immutable laws of nature; …' Blackstone. …

I would recommend to your perusal, Grotius, Puffendorf, Locke, Montesquieu, and Burlemaqui."
From Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775

"That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."
From George Mason, The Virginia Declaration of Rights, June 12, 1776

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
From Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

Are all the founding fathers on the same page? It is clear that they reject the thesis that rights are a human convention. And it’s clear that they attribute rights to a supreme being. But do they agree how and when? The dominant thesis is that rights were created when man was created—as an inherent unalienable part of his being. If this is so, conventions, covenants, and commandments, created after man came into being are not and can not be a source of natural rights—even God’s covenants. Hugo Grotius, to take Hamilton’s recommendation, explains this as follows:

“Natural right is the deictate of right reason, shewing the moral turpitude, or moral necessity, of any act from its agreement or disagreement with a rational nature, and consequently that such an act is either forbidden or commanded by God, the author of nature. The actions, upon which such a dictate is given, are either binding or unlawful in themselves, and therefore necessarily understood to be commanded or forbidden by God. This mark distinguishes natural right, not only from human law, but from the law, which God himself has been pleased to reveal, called, by some, the voluntary divine right, which does not command or forbid things in themselves either binding or unlawful, but makes them unlawful by its prohibition, and binding by its command."

There is God, the author of nature, and God who issues subsequent commands.

"Now the Law of Nature is so unalterable, that it cannot be changed even by God himself. For although the power of God is infinite, yet there are some things, to which it does not extend. Because the things so expressed would have no true meaning, but imply a contradiction. Thus two and two must make four, nor is it possible to be otherwise."

In other words, once man was created, his nature, including his rights, are a metaphysical fact as certain as the law of identity. But what about the covenants in the Bible?

"The very meaning of the words divine voluntary right, shows that it springs from the divine will, by which it is distinguished from natural law, which, it has already been observed, is called divine also. … Now this law was given either to mankind in general, or to one particular people. We find three periods, at which it was given by God to the human race, the first of which was immediately after the creation of man, the second upon the restoration of mankind after the flood, and the third upon that more glorious restoration through Jesus Christ. These three laws undoubtedly bind all men, as soon, as they come to a sufficient knowledge of them."

I'm not raising an epistemological issue—how do we know about rights? It's the metaphysical issue that concerns me. Where in reality are rights? According to Grotius and most of the founders, it is in human nature from the very moment man was created. It is a very part of his being and unalienable. If this is true, neither man's covenants nor God's can change this fact. Did the Founding Fathers all agree?

The Declaration--Nonsense Upon Stilts?

The natural rights tradition of our Founding Fathers came under attack shortly after our country’s founding. In the English-speaking nations the foremost critic was Jeremy Bentham, who called natural rights “nonsense upon stilts.” Bentham founded the Utilitarian school of social thought, with its ethical criteria of maximizing aggregate happiness. Together with Pragmatism, these two consequentialist schools of ethics would dominate the next two centuries of American social thought. But Bentham has nothing to do with America’s Creation … or so I thought.

I was browsing the excellent collection of books on the American Revolution in the Jefferson Library--that’s Jefferson Township, New Jersey--when in an unusual collection of essays, I found Bentham’s critique of the Declaration of Independence, written on behalf of the British government. Long before the excesses of the French Revolution, Bentham had already engaged in a frontal assault on the very notion of natural rights. Here is what he has to say in John Lind's book, An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress (London, 1776), p119-132:

“They are about ‘to assume,’ as they tell us, ‘among the powers of the earth, that equal and separate station to which”—they have lately discovered—'the laws of Nature, and of Nature’s God entitle them.' What difference these acute legislators suppose between the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, is more than I can take upon me to determine, or even to guess. If to what they now demand they were entitled by any law of God, they had only to produce that law, all controversy was at an end. Instead of this, what do they produce? What they call self-evident truths. 'All men,' they tell us, 'are created equal.' This surely is a new discovery; now, for the first time, we learn, that a child, at the moment of his birth, has the same quantity of natural power as the parent, the same quantity of political power as the magistrate.

The rights of 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'—by which, if they mean any thing, they must mean the right to enjoy life, to enjoy liberty, and to pursue happiness—they 'hold to be unalienable.' This they 'hold to be among truths self-evident.' At the same time, to secure these rights, they are content that Government should be instituted. They perceive not, or will not seem to perceive, that nothing which can be called Government ever was, or ever could be, in any instance, exercised, but at the expense of one or other of those rights.—that, consequently, in as many instance as Government is ever exercised, some one or other of these rights, pretended to be unalienable, is actually alienated.”

It is interesting how he rejects Locke’s concept of owning one’s own life in favor of a different idea: successfully enjoying life—a turn that suggests the emergence of utilitarianism. One might say there are two views of equality: equality of ends vs. equality of process. As a utilitarian, Bentham would come to view the ends, in the aggregate, as the criteria of good government. If his misrepresentation of the doctrine of natural rights isn’t clear, read the following:

“… that of enjoying liberty, and pursuing happiness;--that is,--if they mean anything,--pursuing it wherever a man thinks he can see it, and by whatever means he thinks he can attain it:--That is, that all penal laws—those made by their selves among others—which affect life or liberty, are contrary to the law of God, and the unalienable rights of mankind:--That is, that thieves are not to be restrained from theft, murderers from murder, rebels from rebellion.”

Need I comment?

What Did the Founding Fathers Learn From Cicero?

The thesis of Carl J. Richard's provocative new book, Why We’re All Romans, wouldn’t have been a surprise to those educated in colonial colleges. The liberal arts curriculum of our founding fathers was dominated by Roman literature and letters. Fluent knowledge of Latin was an admission requirement and necessary to understand the lectures—which were all in Latin. A study of the founder’s education gives us a glimpse into a worldview that is almost foreign to the modern reader.

Caroline Winterer, in The Culture of Classicism, describes the importance of classical languages and culture in early American college education. The emphasis on Latin literature was part of colonial higher education from the founding of our first college, Harvard, in 1636. In addition to Latin, students were expected to translate “the New Testament (which they referred to as the ‘Greek Testament’”. “A century later the language curriculum had hardly changed, an example of the intellectual constancy that characterized American college education ...” By 1776 there were nine colleges “remarkably uniform in their classical curriculum.”

Colonial colleges were founded by different religious denominations and at first completely staffed by the ministry to prepare students for the ministry. By 1750 40% of the graduates still went into the ministry. What is remarkable is the degree that Latin-based classical humanism was found to be in concord with the religious purpose of the institution. The hostility today that we often see between secular Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions was virtually absent in our colonial period.

We tend to think of Greece first when we think of the glory of classical civilization but the colonials looked to Rome—Republican Rome. The change came in the beginning of the 19th century when European trends (and Hegel’s influence) downplayed Rome in favor of Greece. Carl J. Richard is right about Rome’s influence … when we talk about our founding fathers.

Of all the Roman writers, Cicero was the most respected and revered. “As all the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united than Cicero, his authority should have great weight” wrote John Adams (1778). A young Thomas Jefferson studied Latin under Rev. James Maury. “In terms of classical authors, Maury saved his highest praise for Cicero, whom he called ‘Reason’s great Highpriest and Interpreter.’ Jefferson would share this opinion” [p38] Maury had Jefferson read De Officiis. [p34] Years later Jefferson would recommend Cicero’s ethical works to his nephew, Peter Carr.

We think of Cicero first and foremost as an orator and statesman but his treatises on ethical philosophy were virtually textbooks on the subjects in the Latin-based classical education. First and foremost of these was Cicero’s De Officiis, often translated as On Duty or On Moral Obligation. It was universally read through out Western Christendom. In Konigsberg, before one steps into Orthodox Russia, a young Immanuel Kant studied Cicero’s De Officiis in his sixth year of grammar school about the same time Samuel Adams was learning to read his copy.

This humanistic liberal arts education originated in the 14th century. Petrarch championed the study of Cicero as an alternative to Scholastic learning. He saw Cicero as applicable to civic affairs while scientific Scholastic studies appeared to be “merely academic.” As a devout Christian and loyal church member he could say “You would fancy sometimes … it is not a Pagan philosopher but a Christian apostle who is speaking.” Indeed, St. Ambrose’s De Officiis is modeled after Cicero’s. Of surviving hand-copied books, Cicero’s De Officiis is the second most numerous of Latin texts. It was also the second Latin text to be published with the advent of the printing press.

Cicero has disappeared from the college curriculum. His works are rarely studied in philosophy and only appear as a footnote on Roman history. His ideas are alien to the modern mind. We still read John Locke and the Bible, but I maintain the ethnical and political thoughts of a Latin-based liberal arts tradition that spanned five centuries is also crucial for understanding the mindset of colonial America. The importance of this book on the classical humanist education and its near complete omission from 20th century cannon shows a radical shift in ethical thought.

I hope I’ve conveyed the importance if Cicero’s ethical writings on 18th century thought. But I’m afraid the task isn’t that easy. There still the nagging question: what exactly did the Founding Fathers learn from reading Cicero? What can Cicero’s works tell us about the Founding generation?