American Political Writing During the Founding Era: 1760–1805: Two Volume Paperback Set

10. The Tribune, No. xvii

PolWritV1_051-100.indd 92 2/21/12 9:03 AM [ 10} THE TRIBUNE No. xvii CHARLESTON, 1766 Few Americans today realize that the revolutionary war was fought as much to preserve American virtue as it was to secure economic independence. Americans, as well as Europeans, tended to view Americans as embodying the sturdy traits of the traditional English yeomen-frugality, industriousness, temperance, simplicity, openness, and virility. They viewed England, on the other hand, as the prototype of a corrupt society characterized by luxury, venality, effete cowardice, and a love ofrefinement and distinction. Excessive wealth and inequality were the cause of English corruption, and a moderate wealth more or less equally distributed in America was the source of virtue. Breaking with English control thus preserved the basis of American liberty, its pristine virtues, and provided immediate political liberty. This piece appeared in the October 6, q66 issue of the South Carolina Gazette (Charleston). Its theme runs throughout the literature of the founding era, although in the late I 78os and I 790s a counter argument in favor of economic growth becomes more prominent. As the stability and prosperity of this kingdom must primarily depend on freedom, and the security of freedom can only be in public virtue, it must of course follow to be pronounced, that whatever tends to undermine public virtue should be most carefully guarded against. This hydra mischief is pictured with great life, by a late Poet in the following lines. He pride, he pomp, he luxury diffus'd; He taught them wants beyond their private means; PolWritV1_051-100.indd 93 2/21/12 9:03 AM [ 93} THE TRIBUNE And strait in bounty's pleasing chains involv'd, They grew his slaves-Who cannot live on little, Or, as his various fortune shall permit, STANDS IN THE MARKET TO BE SOLD. That luxury naturally creates want, and that want, whether artificial or real, has a tendency to make men venal, are truths that are too evident to be disputed. Luxury therefore leads to Corruption; and whoever encourages great luxury in a free state must be a bad citizen; so, of course, whatever government does the same must be a bad government, because it therein acts against the interest of the community. That we had ministers [ 1enough to avow and glory in such a system, there can be no intelligent man who will be so hardy as to deny; and their motives to such practice have been these, an unworthy compliance with the will of the sovereign, in un-national engagements, and unconstitutional gratifications to themselves and their adherents. The fatal effects of this wicked system are what we are now groaning under, an insupportable load of debts, taxes, pensions, sine-cures, and employments, with an universal spirit of Rapine and Combination, to supply the cravings of avarice, luxury, and prostitution; while the waste of the drones of the hive exceeds all the means of industry to furnish, with but a reserve of what is needful for its own support. And the wicked plea having long been, we must make necessity impel the utmost exercions of labour to the utmost, for public good, so it seems at least to have become the mad aim of partiallity, even to add starving to toil, upon a similar wise plan to that of the [ 1who undertook to make his horse live without eating; which he had no sooner brought him to do than the horse unfortunately died. But surely a large body of men of eminence, who should have thought themselves free, and to have had an honour to support, must have abandoned all principles, or been made of an odd kind of stuff, to ever suffer themselves to be told openly, that every man had his price, and that a minister would be a pitiful fellow, who did not turn out every one that would not implicitly obey his orders, even in their discharge of a most sacred trust from others; and by way of countenancing the profligacy he encouraged, dared boldly to alledge; that the man was a fool, who pretended to be a whit honester than the times in which he lived. Surely, while such were open doctrines, we ought not to wonder at PolWritV1_051-100.indd 94 2/21/12 9:03 AM [ 94) CHARLESTON, q66 the wicknedness of any practice, or at what we have been made since to suffer by them. All that...