Life of Johnson: Americans and the end of the war

So my interest in seeing Johnson thwarted by American victory is not to be satisfied. He says almost nothing, only expressing his relief when the administration that lost the war was replaced. It seems it had an effect on him though, for he says twice to Boswell that he no longer enjoys talking about current politics; in 1783 he says, "I'd as soon have a man to break all my bones as talk to me of public affairs, internal or external. I have lived to see all things as bad as they can be." I am a little sorry for him; the American victory began the utter defeat of his kind of Toryism, though after the rapid losses from that day to the mid-19th century it took another century for old Toryism to be extinguished entirely. The fissioning of the Anglican communion, which is happening right now in the split Lambeth and FUCA conferences, shows how far things have changed from the days of loyalty to Church and Crown, but how the forms still linger.

The Anglican problems, which were caused by the theological novelties of the North American Anglicans (Episcopalians) and of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, remind me of what Johnson said about freedom of religion: "Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test." It seems the gay bishop thinks much the same.

I promised to return to Taxation No Tyranny, but there is not a lot there; I think Boswell is right that it is largely bluster and sophistry. But there are two interesting arguments. The first is a familiar one; if the state's power of coercion is an affront to liberty, then there must either be anarchy or tyranny. He does not give theoretical grounds for believing the state will not become tyrannous, even though he values the power of coercion over individual liberty, but then again no one has found a theoretical basis for valuing liberty over government power that does not lead at least some enthusiasts to anarchy. What he ought to give is a discussion of the mechanisms by which the emphasis can shift back and forth between state power and liberty. He could then argue that the American revolts were a disruption of those processes and that giving in to them would make the damage irreparable. His desire to give colonies no quarter and to reserve all powers to the parent state makes that impossible though. His views remind me of Hobbes, though I do not remember a reference to him and the index does not have anything useful.

The other interesting argument still causes trouble today. Johnson spends several paragraphs on a mock Declaration of Independence by Cornwall, which because of their independent linguistic and ethnic background as Celts he considers a stronger case than the Americans make. The underlying argument is the same one used against Woodrow Wilson's puffy idealism: if any people desiring a state must have one, who can be refused a state? Soon enough all states will the size of Lichtenstein, if long tenure imposes no limits on secessions because of historical grievances or ethnic identities. A cruelly oppressed people might safely be granted that right without risking general secession, except that the colonists managed to convince themselves they were cruelly oppressed when they were really governed lightly. It is embarrassing how extravagant the complaints were when the offenses were so much less than everyday federal actions now. What makes more sense is that a people should form a separate state when it has become numerous and prosperous and has shown an effective and beneficial ability to govern itself. That is not as exciting as sic semper tyrannis and other bloody slogans, and of course men of good will and intelligence can agree on a principle like that yet bitterly disagree that it applies to any particular instance. Still, it is no way out, to try to make the whole problem disappear into the primacy of the Crown.

Life of Johnson: Americans

Johnson bitterly hated America and was violent on the subject of the tax protests, even before the revolution. He wrote a long pamphlet against the tax protests, called Taxation No Tyranny, which Boswell, who favored the American complaints, said was largely bluster and sophistries. From my first read, it seems he had a theory of apostolic succession in government, so that once a proper government was formed, all subsequent alterations and branches derived their authority from the original, or else had no authority at all. I have never heard that before, so I want to think about it more.

Otherwise, he has not made many interesting arguments. He wastes time on the straw man that Americans were opposed to taxation itself, though he admits they granted the theoretical right of taxation. Much later he addresses the real question, of taxation without representation, making the expected argument that the colonists are included in parliamentary representation as much as all the other groups of people who have no direct vote. He does not appear to realize that those other groups might well deserve representation as well. He even uses the existence of rotten boroughs, unrepresented cities, and the small electorate as arguments against the idea that every region deserves representation. In a way, the thread of his thought does resemble what later happened, with America splitting away, then the formation of legislatures in Canada in 1791, the reform of rotten boroughs in 1831 and again in 1867, the grant of representation to cities founded in modern times in 1832, and the extension of suffrage in 1832.

He adds that the original colonists had the potential (though few the actual ability) to vote before they left England, so their departure was a voluntary abandonment of the right to vote. I suppose that is true, though it seems more likely that they abandoned voting on practical rather than theoretical grounds. In any case, why would that original choice to abandon the vote descend from those few original settlers to the three million Americans of 1778, in their large(ish) cities governed by assemblies? They had no practical ability to move to England, and the original condition of the settlers, of small armed camps in the wild, with little need for representation in England, did not resemble the young commercial states, with their frequent and complex interaction with England.

He did suggest that the "planters," which I hope does not mean only the Southern plantation owners whose slave-owning he elsewhere condemned, could have bought large estates in England, which would have given them the vote and potentially seats in parliament. That idea was not very practical, given the danger and distance that had prevented trans-Atlantic land holding for two centuries, and again revealed how little he cared whether representation was distributed unevenly. That method would have made a small group of self-selected wealthy men the sole representatives of the colonies, without recourse for the rest of the colonists.

He argues that royal charters to the colonies can be amended at will by the king or parliament, without appeal by the colonies, while the colonies are not allowed to point to long-standing usage to prove their rights. In a way, that grants the colonists' argument, that parliament and the king were beginning to strip the colonies of their traditional rights, and that to grant the power of taxation without representation was to put all freedoms at the whim of the king. He does not mention it, but the colonists were also greatly exercised by the thought that religious restrictions would follow on taxation, with the appointment of bishops from England and the enforcement of Anglicanism as the state religion.

The pamphlet was written in 1775; it is surprising how little Johnson mentions the war afterward, even in 1778. Since he and Boswell fight so bitterly on the subject that they stop seeing each other for a while, more than once, perhaps his lack of comment is only tact on his or Boswell's part. Still, he does not mention the war in letters to others. Only with Gen. Burgoyne's defeat does war news in the ordinary sense break in.