Article4

American colonists had far greater opportunities to live well and gain wealth than most people in Europe. Land was cheap and available. Almost any white man with ambition could gain the fifty acres of land required to vote in most colonies.

Colonial society had its class and social distinctions. Yet, because of the economic opportunities that were available, such distinctions were less important than in the older societies of England and Europe. As one colonist boasted, "Neither is my cap worn out from lifting it in the presence of gentlemen."

Americans had a greater sense of equality because feudalism and its inherited social distinctions never became established here. There was no nobility whose social and economic posi-tions were protected by law. In Great Britain, the laws prohibited the land of the nobility from being sold and required that it be inherited by the oldest son. Since economic and political power was based on this land, it was passed down in the families of nobility for generations. Although such laws had existed in some areas in the colonies, all were eliminated soon after the Revolution.

It is true that those people who came from educated British families or those with great personal wealth had an advantage over those who arrived in the colonies almost penniless and unknown. But wealth and family name did not mean automatic success in a land without a rigid class system; and their lack rarely held back for long those with ambition.

Americans were far more equal than most Europeans in their economic, social, and political life. As one British gentlewoman commented on her visit to the colonies, "In America, there is a disgusting equality." While some upper-class Americans may not have liked the situation, a high degree of opportunity and equality was a central and permanent characteristic of American society.

In this land of almost unlimited opportunity, one of a candle-maker's seventeen children, Benjamin Franklin, could rise to become a great inventor, statesman, and diplomat. A corset-maker's son, Thomas Paine, could become an important and famous leader of public opinion. And Alexander Hamilton, an illegitimate son of poor parents, could become the first Secretary of the Treasury of the newly formed United States.

The rights to life, liberty, and property were mentioned in many of the documents of the colonial period. Americans, like many of the English, thought there was a close relationship between property and liberty. If property was not secure, they argued, neither was liberty. Thus, property and liberty, as well as life itself, were thought to require special protection.

As a result, political rights such as suffrage (the right to vote) were seen as essential to protect the individual's property. If one of the major purposes of government was to protect property, it seemed reasonable to limit the right to vote to people who possessed at least a small amount of property. Fifty acres was the usual requirement. Since land was easily gained, this requirement did not exclude large numbers of white males.

Colonial voters used their political rights to protect their right to property. As early as 1641, for example, voters passed the Massachusetts Body of Liberties, one of many colonial documents that formed the basis for our Bill of Rights. It protected the right of free men to own property and made it illegal for the government to take that property away without fair compensation. Today, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments protect that same right.

In addition, the Body of Liberties forbade the government to tax property without the consent of citizens or their representatives. This limitation on government is also found in the Petition of Right and the English Bill of Rights of 1689. Other protections included the right to a trial by jury, free elections, and the prohibitions against self-incrimination (testifying against yourself in court) and cruel and unusual punishment, rights protected today by our Bill of Rights.

Although the Body of Liberties limited suffrage, it also granted non-voters certain political rights. Today, these same rights -- our rights to assemble, to petition our government, and to speak and write freely -- are protected by the First Amendment.

Not all Americans, however, enjoyed the right of property and the political rights that accompanied it, such as the right to vote. In some colonies, for example, only Protestants were allowed to vote and hold political office.

Laws also limited women's ability to own property and manage their own legal and personal affairs. Although laws varied in different colonies, women usually had the legal status of under-age children. Below are just two examples of such laws:

2. The husband may put an end to his wife's sole trade whenever he pleases, and at the end of it, the profits of it will be his sole property.

The most glaring example of the violation of rights was seen in the slave system which treated human beings as property and denied them their basic rights. By 1760, one million people lived in the colonies; one-fifth of these were African Americans. Most blacks were slaves who clearly did not have the natural rights of life, liberty, and property.

The British often noted the contradiction between the colonists' demands for liberty and their continued tolerance of slavery. As one observer asked, "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negones?" The Reverend Samuel Hopkins criticized his fellow Americans for "making a vain parade of being advocates for the liberties of mankind, while...you at the same time are continuing this lawless, cruel, inhuman, and abominable practice of enslaving your fellow creatures."

In the years following the adoption of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, slave owners would claim that forcing them to free their slaves would he a violation of their right to property. Opponents would argue that every human being had a natural right to liberty. This argument over natural rights and to whom they applied eventually contributed to the Civil War.

In some places, slaves were allowed a limited amount of self -government during the colonial period. In addition, there were free blacks who owned property, ran businesses, and later participated in the Revolution. In many instances, they gave their lives in the cause of freedom.

For much of the colonial period, Great Britain paid little attention to the American colonies. Britain had become a world power and was often at war with European nations. In addition, the colonies were a long way from Britain and communications were slow. As a result, for more than 150 years before the Revolution, the American colonists had been largely free to govern themselves. They had achieved considerable experience in self-government. This indifference was know as Salutary Neglect.

The colonists had also enjoyed even greater freedoms than were actually allowed by British law. For example, British law did not give the colonists the right to trade directly with foreign nations. For many years, however, the British did not enforce these laws. Therefore, the colonists had grown accustomed to trading with almost anyone they wished. Many colonists had become quite wealthy doing so.

All of this changed with Britain's victory over France in 1763. The Seven Years' War had been expensive and Britain saw the colonies as a source of much needed money from taxes and trade. Disputes soon developed between the colonists and the British government over both economic and political issues.

Parliament passed a series of laws intended to raise taxes to help pay the debts left by the Seven Years' War. These taxes would also pay the expenses of keeping British troops in America to protect the colonists. In 1765, for example, Parliament passed the Stamp Act which required the colonists to pay for stamps to be attached to legal documents, liquor licenses, playing cards, newspapers, pamphlets, and almanacs. (These taxes had already been used in Britain.) The Stamp Act set off a storm of protest, including riots and the destruc-tion of the stamp distributor's house in Boston.

As the conflict grew, the British government began to limit further the rights of the colonists. The British began to restrict the Americans' right to express their opposition to the acts of Parliament that affected them. when the colonists disobeyed laws they thought unfair, they found themselves denied the legal protections traditionally enjoyed by Englishmen. They were refused the protections of the writ of habeas corpus and trial by jury.

Each time Parliament tried to regain some sort of control over the colonies, the Americans resisted. They complained that the British were plotting "designs for destroying our constitutional liberties." In April 1775, the governor of Massachusetts sent 700 British soldiers to Lexington and Concord to arrest the colonial leaders and seize their arms and ammunition. There they met the resistance of "Minutemen" who had been alerted and "fired the shot heard 'round the world." By the end of the day, 273 British and 95 American casualties had been inflicted.

Richard Henry Lee introduced a resolution in the Continental Congress on June 7, 1776, which called for a declaration of independence. By that time, the Americans were already at war with the British. "Nothing is left now but to fight it out," said a North Carolinian.

The Americans and the British were fighting over two conflicting principles: parliamentary sovereignty and natural rights. Sovereignty is the ultimate power in a state. The British and Americans had different views about where sovereignty lay. The British believed sovereignty rested with Parliament; Americans thought that the people were sovereign.

The British believed that the supremacy of Parliament, the great achievement of the Glorious Revolution, provided the best protection for their rights. The Americans believed strongly in the ideas of the natural rights philosophy, which said there were certain rights that no one, even Parliament, could violate. This belief directly contradicted the idea of parliamentary sovereignty. If Parliament's powers were limited in any way, then it did not have the supreme or sovereign power of government. While the British saw par-liamentary sovereignty as the protector of rights, the Americans had come to view it as the violator of rights.

There was no compromise possible between these two principles. The Declaration of Independence states that "governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," that is, the ultimate power of government, or sovereignty, lies with the people

4. How did the unique experience of the American colonists, their knowledge of history, and the ideas of the natural rights philosophers contribute to the Founders' views on individual rights and limited government?