The Preservation of English Liberty, I

Abstract

Abstract The English Context Compared with That of America and France The ideology of the American Revolution was largely British in origin, and the arguments that American reformers used against Negro slavery had long been commonplace in British political and moral philosophy. Yet by the 1770s antislavery thought had considerably different implications in the two countries. In England there was no “fundamental shift in values” that mobilized the society into revolution. There was no counterpart to the American need for self-justification. No new hopes or obligations arose from an attempt to build a virtuous republic. Such phrases as “created equal,” “inalienable rights,” and “the pursuit of happiness”-all of which had appeared in classic liberal texts-were qualified by a reverent constitutionalism that looked to Saxon precedent to legitimize ideals of freedom. The notion of man’s inherent rights, when assimilated to the historical concept of British “liberty,” implied little challenge to traditional laws and authorities. And by the 1790s the very idea of inherent rights was giving way to radical and conservative forms of Utilitarianism. Like the Americans of a later generation, most Englishmen looked back to a long sanctified revolution-the Glorious Revolution of 1688-which had supposedly restored the foundations of a free society.