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III. Property and the Cult of Liberty
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the transmission of restricted liberty 69 held together by the monarchy, that would collapse at the point of separation from the Crown. This lack of other local groups that could serve as potential allies was an incentive to seek a symbolic partnership with ‘‘the people’’ against London, even if it carried a risk of greater politicization of the masses. In a sense, such a partnership was a practical strategy similar to that of the French bourgeoisie who sought political support among the plebeians against the nobles. But the American strategy tended to stress freedom, while the French put the accent on levelling and on citizens’ duties to the state.∞∫ It therefore made perfect sense for the leaders of the rebellious colonies to invoke liberties and rights protecting private property, while London called for respecting civic obligations to the state. III. Property and the Cult of Liberty Power always follows Property. —John Adams, 1776 An effective social hierarchy did emerge in British America by the early eighteenth century, but it developed along di√erent lines than in England, in that it was almost exclusively centered around property. In contrast to the metropolis and its celebration of lineage, the rise in the 1730s of a stable colonial upper class was primarily based on economics. The resulting convergence between commercial activities and a genteel lifestyle was more e√ortless than in Britain. The American elite were a hybrid breed, in some ways resembling the bourgeoisie that was to crystallize in Europe in the nineteenth century. Even Southern slave-owning planters who styled themselves as landed gentry were in essence agrarian capitalists and entrepreneurs. Ambitious provincials were fortunate that at home they did not need to overcome the barriers of birth faced by ‘‘new men’’ in England. Sometimes, they were rudely reminded of the continuing importance of such criteria: when the wealthy Virginia planter William Byrd II visited the mother country and tried to marry into the English upper classes, he was shocked at the contempt and rejection he encountered.∞Ω The title to elite privilege in Amer- 70 culture and liberty in the age of the american revolution ica was almost entirely based on property, something that, unlike heredity, could be achieved. Successfully amassed wealth bestowed status within a relatively short time, even on a former indentured servant. Unlike in England , rank based on property alone carried little cultural stigma. For all practical purposes, there were no old gentry. Only a few of the ‘‘better sort’’ had been in this category for more than a generation or two, and their e√orts to achieve gentility were mostly a case of self-fashioning, not a battle with condescending, pedigree-waving neighbors. Rivalry with the old nobility was not an issue; separation from the non-elite was. Although the American gentry were atypical in their rise through property alone, property in eighteenth-century British culture did remain the bridge that conjoined political privilege and the cultural identity of the privileged . In people’s minds, property a≈rmed unequal liberty by demarcating divisions across society, and by assigning degrees of freedom. Property qualifications were also liberty qualifications. Those with the greatest amount of property claimed the fullest amount of liberty. They, in fact, claimed property in liberty as the only ones who could rightfully own it. The unpropertied ranks could not do so, just as peasants in England were seen as incapable of properly owning a library or portraits of ancestors, because they had no use for them. In short, the value placed on property and its legal security was not simply a means of preserving one’s possessions, it was equivalent to a defense of liberty. This link between property and freedom was common in early modern Western cultures. One need only recall the almost material value placed on exclusive liberties in contemporary France, where privilege was defined not only as a ‘‘useful and honorable distinction which certain members of society enjoy,’’ but also as property of sorts, with value measurable in coin. The value in this case was created by the power of the state, which sold monopolies and was then able to able to enforce their protection. O≈ces and rents were literally listed as ‘‘immeubles’’—that is, property attached to houses or land—and were passed on to the next generation. Such property in privilege was often more secure than money, and so could be traded on the market.≤≠ It is not di≈cult to see why privileges of liberty...