The Political Theory of the American Revolution

Extract

The American Revolution was an event of particular interest to political theorists. Although it produced no thinkers to stand with Aristotle or even Locke and no book to be compared with The Republic or even The Prince, it was a high point in the long and fascinating career of the school of natural law. For this reason, the political theory of the Revolution deserves a more precise rendition than it has hitherto received. My purpose in this article is to do just that: to outline the theory of the Revolution for the benefit of political theorists and intellectual historians. Rather than quote from scattered sources, I shall attempt to express the general sense of the leaders of the Revolution. If one able Revolutionist had set himself consciously to express the political consensus of his time, to cast the principles of 1776 in a pattern for later ages to inspect and ponder, this might well have been the outline he would have chosen to follow—this was the political theory of the American Revolution:

The political and social world is governed by laws as certain and universal as those that govern the physical world. Whether these laws are direct commands of God, necessities of nature, or simply inescapable lessons of history makes very little practical difference. In any or all of these cases, men are guided and restricted by a moral order that they can defy but not alter. Revelation, reason, and experience, means through which men come to understand these laws, point out at least four instances in which they are applicable to the affairs of men. The higher law, or law of nature, is all of these things: