Bruce Smith (1851–1937)

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The important although little known Australian classical liberal Bruce Smith (1851–1937) was one of the very few voices in Australia arguing for a radical and consistent liberalism in opposition to the statist (i.e. interventionist) version of liberalism which was home-grown in the colonies and the equally interventionist “New Liberalism” which was being imported from Britain. Greg Lindsay and Gregory Melluish of the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney attempted to revive interest in his work with the republication in 2005 of his main book Liberty and Liberalism: A Protest against the growing Tendency toward undue Interference by the State, with Individual Liberty, Private Enterprise and the Rights of Property (1887), with some assistance from myself. I got the text coded, they published it in book form, and I put it on the Online Library of Liberty which I directed. See it here.

I have now added the text to my own website, along with some biographical material about Smith, and a copy of another of his books Truisms of Statecraft: An Attempt to Define, in General Terms, the Origin, Growth, Purpose, and Possibilities, of Popular Government (London: Longmans, 1921). See the main page for Australian Classical Liberals and Libertarians, the Bruce Smith bio page, and the HTML version of Liberty and Liberalism here.

David Kemp devotes some space to discussing Smith’s ideas in A Free Country: Australians’ Search for Utopia 1861–1901 (2019) which suggests he is sympathetic to Smith’s kind of classical liberalism, which derived from the English radical liberal Herbert Spencer and the people around the Liberty and Property Defense League, which he contrasts with the other source of influence on Australian liberal thought, that of the much more moderate and even interventionist ideas of John Stuart Mill. The protectionists in Australia seized upon Mill’s glaring exception to the principle of free trade, namely the “infant industries argument” as a justification for the protectionist party in Victoria which ultimately was able to make this policy one of the foundation stones of Australia’s deeply flawed federation of 1901. The other dead-weight stones which were hung around the neck of Australian liberty were the racist White Australia policy, the deeply interventionist compulsory labour arbitration system, and the state socialism of government owned and run railways and other “infrastructure”). Smith opposed all of these awful policies but had little influence over the ultimate outcome.

As Greg Melluish notes in his Introduction:

Bruce Smith’s *Liberty and Liberalism* is significant for two major reasons. The first is that it was the one major critique of the new liberalism produced in the Australian colonies. The second is that it is the most important theoretical expression of classical liberalism written in Australia. It was an account of liberalism that owed a lot to the principles of Darwinian evolution. In part, its significance lies in the fact that it owes its intellectual substance to the Melbourne school of free trade liberalism which has largely been ignored by historians such as Stuart Macintyre who have focused primarily on statist liberals such as Syme, Pearson and Deakin.

And that his influence ultimately lies not in his “political success” or lack thereof but:

… the importance of Smith’s political career did not lie in his political achievements. They were not substantial. Rather Smith’s continuing presence in public life was important because through him the tradition of classical liberalism also continued to have a public presence. There has been a tendency to paint both Smith and his work on liberalism as some sort of anachronistic dinosaur, a vestige from an earlier age. This is both incorrect and highly ideological. It rests on the dangerous notion that liberalism was being ‘progressive’ by becoming more statist.

It seems that Australian libertarians have to still face the same charges some 140 years later.

In re-reading the book I came across a couple of my favourite passages which I include below as an appetiser to reading the entire book. The first is his view of what it is the limited state should actually do; and the second is his view of the role of the state in education, mass, compulsory, state education being one of the cornerstones of the edifice of the Australian state for both “left” and “right”.

On the proper function of a “legislator” (CIS ed. pp. 299-300):

The broad principles, then, which I should venture to lay down as guides for any one assuming the responsible position of a legislator are three in number.
1. The state should not *impose taxes*, or *use the public revenue* for any purpose other than that of *securing equal freedom to all citizens*.(29)
2. The state should not interfere with the *legally acquired property* of any section of its citizens for any other purpose than that of *securing equal freedom to all citizens;* and in the event of any such justifiable interference amounting to appropriation; then, only conditional upon the lawful owner being *fully compensated*.
3. The state should not in any way restrict *the personal liberty* of citizens for any other purpose than that of *securing equal freedom to all citizens*.

I repeat that I do not offer these as *conclusive tests* of the wisdom of any proposed legislation. I claim for them this use, however, that they should, in every case, be applied to any such proposal; and if, on such application, the new rights sought to be conferred, and the restrictions on liberty which they must necessarily involve, do not conflict with either of the three principles, there can be little objection to its legislative sanction. If, however, any such proposal *is* found to come into conflict with either of those principles; then, I contend, a great responsibility is cast upon him or them who demand the interference of the legislature; and he or they should be forced to prove, conclusively, that the necessity for the proposal is *so urgent* that it overrides the consideration of its transgressing one of the fundamental principles upon which our social system has been built up. He should be compelled, too, to show a strong probability that the proposed means *will effect the desired end*, without producing an *equally or more injurious* result to society, in *some other direction*, or at *some other time*. The effect of the regular application of these principles to proposed measures would be, in the first place, to determine on which side the burden of proof lay; and then it would rest with those who have cast upon them the responsibility of giving the legislative sanction, to determine (1) whether the *necessity* has been proved; (2) whether, under all the circumstances of the case, that necessity is *sufficiently urgent* to justify the subversion of a principle which is immemorial, and which has for centuries served as one of the pillars of our social fabric; (3) whether it has been shown that the proposed measure will effect the purpose aimed at, without, at the same time, producing injurious results to society in *some other*, perhaps unsuspected, *direction*, or at *some other time*.(30)

Smith’s Notes

(29) I am well aware that the first of these three principles could, strictly speaking, be included within the second, for to impose taxes is really to interfere with property; and to use the public revenue, in which each and every citizen has an interest, practically produces a similar result; but inasmuch as the lapping of the two is not palpable, I have chosen to separate them.

(30) “It is not sufficient (says Professor Stanley Jevons) to show by direct experiment or other incontestable evidence that an addition of happiness is made. We must also assure ourselves that there is no equivalent or greater subtraction of happiness—a substraction which may take effect either as regards other people or subsequent times.”

And on education (CIS ed. pp. 307 ff.):

*State Education*.—I have no hesitation in characterising the maintenance of state education as a distinct transgression of the first principle of the three which I have deduced from an analysis of man’s wants as an individual member of society, viz., that the state should not *impose taxes, or use the public revenue* for any other purpose than that of *securing equal freedom to all citizens*. It is undoubtedly true that every citizen should have the *liberty* to be educated if he so wish; but state education, as now established in most English-speaking communities, involves a recognition of a right to be supplied with the *means* by which to secure such education. No one, I think, has ever seriously disputed the proposition with which I have opened this section of the present chapter. With the exception of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s treatment of the subject in his “Social Statics,” I do not think any other writer has recorded his objections to the system on that ground. …

… But now, having admitted so much, I have yet to ask—should the state *supply* this education? Are there not a hundred things more necessary for all classes? However desirable reading, writing, and arithmetic may be, mankind succeeded without them. Is not food more important—is it not absolutely indispensable? So also clothing, shelter, warmth in winter, medicine in sickness. Is it not more important that the food we eat should be wholesome, than that our education should be good? Yet the state takes upon itself none of these wants. It does not undertake the supply of meat, bread, butter, or milk. It does not concern itself about the thickness or sufficiency of our clothing; about the temperature of our dwellings. Surely the proper feeding of the *body* is of as much importance as the feeding of the *mind*. Then why should education be undertaken by the state? While many hundreds of children, in Great Britain, are being taught to read and write, they are suffering from a want of clothing, and in some cases from an empty stomach. Why does the state not come to the rescue in those more important wants? There must surely be some other reason for state interference in this matter. Now, the advocates of state education have John Stuart Mill on their side. Let us then see what arguments he advances. In the first place, he justifies the state taking education in hand on the ground that it is one of those commodities which the consumer cannot judge for himself. He, therefore, claims it as an exception to the rule of allowing the individual to be the judge of his own wants. Practically, this means that every man, being a judge of butter, or sugar, or bread, or meat, or cloth, or linen, he should be left to look after his own interest; but in matters in which he is *not* a “competent judge” it is “admissible in principle that the government should provide it” for him. Considering the authority from which this doctrine comes, it is indeed extraordinary. Let us see where it would lead. Mill himself admits that even in “material objects produced for our use,” it is “not true universally” that the consumer is the best judge. If this is so, which we may assume on the admission, should the state provide for the stupid people? Should the state undertake the function of advising citizens what is, and what is not a good article? This is really what Mill’s doctrine would lead to. To go further; if the state is only to interfere when the inability of the consumer to judge the article is tolerably universal, why should not the state take in hand the work now performed by lawyers, physicians, and chemists? How many of the public are “competent judges” of law or physic? How many of them are “competent judges” as to whether they really want such advice? Surely the state should come in here also! I cannot follow up the illustrations of its unsoundness as an argument; but it applies to such subjects of “consumption” as art, literature, the drama, and even the sciences. It is true that the masses are not “competent” judges of the higher branches of culture; but is it not unreasonable to assume that their ignorance is so profound that they cannot appreciate the advantages of reading the newspaper, writing a letter, and being able to correctly add up an account, or expeditiously check the money-change which they receive in their every-day transactions? Yet these are obvious results of the ordinary state-school curriculum, and if any part of the masses are so dense that they cannot really discern these advantages, I venture to think that when the schooling has been forced upon them it will not be to much purpose. But if this reason—the inability of the consumer to judge any commodity for himself—is a sufficient one for justifying the assumption by the state of the supply of that commodity, where is the result to terminate?

Reflections on the Workers Party

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Date: 28 Oct. 2020

Revised: 6 Oct. 2022

Nine years ago I was on a panel organised by the Mises Seminar in Sydney, 26 November, 2011 on Australian Libertarian Politics – “On the Workers Party” You Tube. I found the notes of my presentation recently and reproduce them here with some revisions.

I have also put online a copy of the wonderfully radical Workers Party Platform of 1975 written largely by Bob Howard. See the new section on Australian Classical Liberals and Libertarians and copies of the Platform: HTML version or facsimile PDF version.

I concluded with some thought about the strategy for achieving radical change, stating that I was a “Hayekian” in that I found his essay “Intellectuals and Socialism” (1949) persuasive. Since then I have written more on the strategy needed for bringing about a free society, namely

  1. a “Liberty Matters” online discussion “On the Spread of Classical Liberal Ideas” (March 2015) “ Paper.
  2. and a research paper “Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Scribblers: An Austrian Analysis of the Structure of Production and Distribution of Ideas”. A paper given at the Southern Economics Association, New Orleans, November 21-23, 2015. Paper.

Here are the comments and reflections I gave at the panel presentation in 2011 (with some revisions).

Some Thoughts on the Workers Party

Here are some random thoughts:

  • re-reading the WP Platform (WPP) I was struck by how “Randian” it now seems. This is both good and bad. Good because it shows how they/we were struggling to be consistent and the most consistent libertarian political theory we knew about at that time was that of Rand’s. This shows considerable naivete as a “party of principle” usually has a very short life span and we knew it. Thus, the choice of the name “Workers Party” was to meant to be provocative and perhaps a bit whimsical.
  • the badge of our consistency was the motto [the “fundamental principle”] which appeared at the bottom of each page – “No man or group of men has the right to initiate the use of force, fraud or coercion against another man or group of men”. As Merilyn Giesekem/Fairskye said in an issue of freeEnterprise this was unfortunately sexist but reflected Rand’s own view of the world and her speech patterns. This motto is straight out of Rand’s writings.
  • the thorough-going radicalism of the WPP is reflected in the dependence on the “fundamental principle” for all things; and that it applied to EVERYTHING and EVERYBODY, especially the state, politicians, and government functionaries.
  • how anti-state the WPP was. The best example was the idea of new departments to be set up in a WP regime designed specifically to dismantle the state [See Section 2.4]. This was and is truly revolutionary and no one else has ever thought of this to my knowledge. The aim was to reduce all government departments to 5 within 12 months of achieving office. Only the Dept. of Defence would remain after the job of dismantling the rest of the government had ended. It was proposed that there would be four new departments which would oversee the dismantling of the Australian state:
    • Review of Laws and the Legal System.
    • Reduction of Taxation.
    • Reduction of Government Control
    • Rehabilitation of Tax Consumers
  • the exaggerated hopes and false expectations we had in 1975 can be summed up in the following points:
    • the “if only they knew” fallacy – the idea that if only people knew “the facts” or heard the philosophy expressed in a coherent way, the statist scales would fall from their eyes and they would all immediately become supporters/converts
    • the “immediatist” fallacy – the idea that immediate radical change can take place without having laid the intellectual foundations many decades before. The world view of academics, journalists, intellectuals, party activists had been shaped by decades of education in and propaganda about the justice of and necessity for massive government intervention in the economy. This mindset would not change because of the activity of a few ideologues in one election campaign.
    • the “we are different from everybody else” fallacy which takes the following forms:
      • the idea that an intense burst of electoral activity would not physically and mentally exhaust us (I think a major reason for the collapse of the WP was this exhaustion and we hadn’t prepared for it);
      • the idea that because of the purity and consistency of our ideas “we” would not be tempted to play the traditional games of power which all political activists are subject to, we would never sell out by watering down our principles in order to have more “mass appeal”.
  • 1972-1975 was a truly radicalising moment which helped foster the emergence of the WP. The coming to power of the Labor Party in 1972 and its radical socialist agenda galvanized anti-socialists (even within the Liberal Party) and gave a group like us in the WP an opportunity to have our free market and anti-socialist message heard. However, once the Labor Party experiment collapsed in chaos, bankruptcy, and massive electoral defeat this radicalising moment passed and so did the WP. There was a naive hope that the new PM Malcolm Fraser (who had supposedly read Ayn Rand) would work for some of the radical reforms the WP had advocated.
  • It might be interesting to compare the WP’s strategy of 1975 with that of Ron Paul within the American Republican Party which burst into bright flame briefly and then fizzled out.

One of the Key Sections in the WPP [2.4]

2.4.– Reducing Government

See the relevant section.

On attaining office, the Party will:

Immediately abolish death duty, gift duty, capital gains tax and sales tax, and gradually reduce to an absolute minimum all other taxes, including personal and company taxes; and, as soon as possible thereafter, reduce all other taxes until government activities as far as practical, can be financed through charges for special services rendered.

At all times, the Party will ensure that the government spends no more than it receives.

Government expenditure will be continually reduced. In addition to the measures outlines elsewhere, the Party will, within 12 months of attaining office, examine the functions of all government departments, with a view to gradually reducing them to five in number:

The Department for Defence Against Internal and External Aggression.

The Department for the Review of Laws and the Legal System.

The Department for the Reduction of Taxation.

The Department for the Reduction of Government Control.

The Department for the Rehabilitation of Tax Consumers.

(The latter four departments would be phased out on completion of their roles.)

Some Personal Reflections

I came across the writings of Ayn Rand during the summer holidays between years 10 and 11 of high school [1972-73]. I read The Fountainhead and then Atlas Shrugged in short order.

Sometime during 1973 I found an advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald for a meeting of the “Ayn Rand Discussion Group” in Sydney. My parents very reluctantly let me go to the meeting. It was there that I met Bob Howard and the other Sydney-based libertarians. I was barely 16 years of age.

I recall that Bob and his friends were in the middle of a fiery debate over the proper role of the state. Some of them had just discovered Murray Rothbard’s theory of anarcho-capitalism and were challenging the orthodox Randians who of course believed in “limited government”. As a freshly minted Randian I found this a fascinating debate and I threw myself into it. I remember reading Roy Childs’ “Open Letter to Ayn Rand” (originally written in 1969) which sealed the debate for me in favour of anarcho-capitalism.

I was a by-stander while the WPP was being written. As a friend of Bob Howard I discussed matters with him but was not directly part of the official writing committee.

I worked with Bob on his election campaign in December 1975 when he stood for the seat of Berowra in Sydney. It was during this campaign that I met my wife-to-be who was also active in his election campaign [was this then a “campaign romance”] with who I’ve been ever since.

Here are the election results. Bob Hoard got 3.6% of the primary vote.

I watched with some sadness as the WP disintegrated shortly after 1975 election. It changed its name to the “Progress Party” in order to overcome the perceived stigma of the name “Workers Party”, and then disappeared.

The path for radical change I have adopted since then has been a version of the Hayekian “Intellectuals and Socialism” strategy, namely the very long-term strategy Hayek developed after studying how socialists achieved change in the early and mid-20thC. You might summarize this as attempting to influence the people (academics) who influence the people who originate and implement government policy (journalists, lobbyists, policy makers, politicians), who in turn influence voters who vote in elections. The groups I have been active with ever since, the Institute for Humane Studies (celebrated its 50th anniversary 2011) and the Liberty Fund (50th anniversary 2010), have followed this Hayekian strategy, more or less.

The Art of the Levellers

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In the course of putting together a multi-volume collection of over 300 Leveller Tracts I came across some very interesting title pages which used typography and occasionally woodcuts to add graphical force to the political and economic arguments being made by the authors. The pamphlets were published in their thousands during the 1640s and 1650s – the London bookseller George Thomason collected 23,000 of them over a period of twenty years and these comprise a major collection which is held by the British Library.

See The Art of the Levellers

One of my favourites is this one depicting John Lillburne in prison. I think of it as a 17th century attempt at “photoshopping” an image – here the prison bars have been added over an image of him dressed in quite formal clothes.

“The Liberty of the Freeborne English-Man, Conferred on him by the house of lords. June 1646.“ The medallion is surrounded by the words “John lilburne. At the age of 23. The Year 1641.” Made by G. Glo.

Beneath is a poem which states:

Gaze not upon this shaddow that is vaine,
But rather raise thy thoughts a higher straine,
To GOD (I meane) who set this young man free,
And in like straits, can eke (also) deliver thee.
Yea though the lords have him in bonds againe
LORD of lords will his just cause maintaine.

The tracts were published by dissidents who did not have much money to publish expensively produced material and so they were printed on cheap paper (which deteriorated quickly and made microfilming later very difficult), using printers who were often sloppy in their typesetting (which only added to the problems for the modern reader of anarchic 17th century spelling and punctuation), and any illustrations they used had to be cheaply done as well.

I have put online a sample of some of the main kinds of illustrations and decorations used in the pamphlet literature of the 1640s, such as the use of decorative borders, large fonts for emphasis, the sculpting of the type into interesting shapes, and the use of crude illustrations and even cartoons of key figures.

For example, some of my favourites include the following:

Anon., A Dialogue betwixt a Horse of Warre, and a Mill-Horse; Wherein the content and safety of an humble and painfull life, is preferred above all the Noyse, the Tumults, and Trophies of the Warre. Full of harmelesse Mirth, and variety. (2 January, 1644).

This is one of the more charming pamphlets in the collection. The title page shows a woodcut of two horses, one a large and aggressive looking “horse of war” (no doubt used by soldiers in both the King’s and the Parliament’s armies), and a smaller work horse which was used to turn a mill wheel to grind flour. In the pamphlet the two horses have a conversation about the merits of the work they have to do and in classic fashion the argument is made that the work of the war horse is destructive of both life and property, while the work of the mill horse is productive economic activity which benefits ordinary people. The typesetter has used a very different font for the dialog of each horse throughout the pamphlet (which actually makes it quite hard to read). Note also the war horse on the left is in a dominant position in the picture (higher and larger, with its head held high) while the work horse on the right is lower with its head slightly bowed.

Another is John Taylor, The World turned upside down: OR, A briefe description of the ridiculous Fashions of these distracted Times. By T. I. a well-willer to King, Parliament and Kingdom. (28 January, 1647).

For some people the civil wars, revolution, and then execution of King Charles, turned the world up-side down. Here we have a depiction of what an “up-side down world” might look like. There are churches in the sky, fish flying in the sky, rabbits and rats chasing cats, a man pushed by a wheel barrow and a cart by a horse. In the center there is a man standing on his hands, waving his legs like hands, and his head coming out of his groin. This is the physical equivalent of what the Leveller movement wanted to do politically to England.

Richard Overton wrote a series of pamphlets taking on the voice of “Martin Mar-Priest” , “mar” meaning scarred or disfigured, at least in the eyes of the intolerant Presbyterians whom Overton was attacking. This one is called:

[Overton or Lilburne], A Reall Persecution or, The Foundation of a general Toleration, Displaied and Portrayed by a proper Emblem, and adorned with the same Flowers wherewith the Scoffers of this last age have strowed their Libellous Pamphlets. Collected out of several books of the Sectaries to discover to world their wicked and abusive language against godly Presbyterian Ministers. (13 February, 1647).

It is in the form of a broad-sheet which contains this amusing illustration:

Title:”The Picture of an English Persecutor or, a Foole Ridden-slave) : Presbeterian Sectary”
The Rider’s Speech Bubble: I should ??
The Ridden’s Speech Bubble: My cursed speeches against Presbetry declares unto the world my foolery.
Page in Book: Martin’s Eccho ?? ?? Martin ?? Mar- Preist

Caption below cartoon: For opposing Authority, Reviling the Assembly, Slandering the Governmnet by Presbytry and disturbing the ministers at the time of their publique exersis by giveing up bills in mockery calling the ministers preistsrideing slaves, horse leeches Cormorants gorbellyd Idoll consistory of devills etc : hath not this discoverd Ishmaels carnell Spirits persecuting godly Isaaks.

This pamphlet is in the form of a broad-sheet which lists the supposed crimes committed and the criticisms made by the opponents of tithes. The sheet includes an illustration of a tithe-paying “slave” being ridden by a Presbyterian who is mockingly described as “holy humble gentle”. The person being ridden has the ears of a donkey and is possibly Martin Mar-Priest or one of his supporters as he has in his hands Overton’s pamphlet “Martin’s Eccho”. His speech bubble contains the words “My cursed speeches against Presbetry declares unto the world my foolery”. The Presbyterian seems to be wearing a fool’s cap (so he is the fool not the person being ridden) and the words in his speech bubble are unfortunately illegible.

Interestingly Overton compares the Ordinance giving only state sanctioned priests the right to run churches and provide religious services to the monopoly given to some politically well-connected individuals to produce soap: “59. The Ordinance permitting none to Preach but such as are Ordained, is a Patten of the Spirit worse then the Monopoly of Soap.” In another phrase he tellingly describes the state-privileged religion of the Presbyterians as “56. Their Religion moves upon the wheel of the State”, who expect the people to willingly submit to being ridden by “a Tithe divouring Priest” and (1.) “stand still gaping with your mouths open, and quietly bow down your backs whilst you are bridled and sadled, and let the holy humble gentle Presbyterians get up and ride” all the way “to the Devil” (2.).

Richard Overton on Tyrants

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About Richard Overton

Richard Overton (c. 1599–1664) is one of the intellectual and political leaders of the Levellers during the English Revolution. Little is known about his early life although he probably graduated from Queens College, Cambridge and worked as an actor before becoming involved in political pamphleteering at which he excelled. He wrote dozens of pamphlets in the early 1640s in which he attacked Catholicism and the Anglican establishment. He may have been imprisoned for debt in 1642 which kept him silent for a while but he returned to the fray with a popular tract “Mans Mortalitie” (1643) in which he argued that man’s soul died with him and was not resurrected until Judgement Day. Overton became close friends with William Walwyn and John Lilburne who co-authored many tracts with him.

Gradually his concerns moved from the religious to more political and philosophical matters as he developed more general theories about the equality of all men under the law, the need for Parliament to represent the interests of all citizens, the need to replace the Monarch with a republican form of government, and opposition to the system of class and political privilege which governed the British state. In addition to many individual pamphlets he also wrote editorials for the Leveller weekly journal The Moderate.

As a leader of the Leveller movement he was often singled out and imprisoned in Newgate and The Tower between 1846-47 from which he continued to write and protest, most notable of these is his “An Arrow against all Tyrants and Tyrany” (Oct. 1646) written or “fired” (as he put it) from the Newgate prison; and then again in 1649. After Cromwell crushed the Leveller movement in 1649 Overton sought exile in Holland and little is known about his activities after that date.

“An Arrow against all Tyrants and Tyrany” is his best known pamphlet and it shows both Overton’s satirical and hard-hitting style of writing and the radicalism of his ideas. It begins with a typical long title which neatly summarizes his arguments, contains a mocking and irreverent place of publication in order to deceive the censors, and supporting documents to bolster his case for appeal. It then has an eloquent defence of the idea of the natural rights to liberty and property which all men have, regardless of their station in life, and is followed by two specific grievances against the growing encroachments on liberty by the House of Lords and the Presbyterian clergy, before closing with some veiled threats against what might happen to “England’s Bloody Parliament” if these grievances are not remedied.

About “An Arrow against all Tyrants and Tyrany”

See the whole pamphlet.

As he says, Richard Overton fired this arrow “against all tyrants” while he was in Newgate prison in October 1646. He was imprisoned there for lengthy periods between August 1646 and September 1647; and then again in the Tower of London with the other Levellers John Lilburne, William Walwyn, and Thomas Prince during the crackdown on the movement by Cromwell between March and November 1649. In spite of this he was able to write about 40 pamphlets in which he expressed some of the most radical and consistent political views of the Leveller movement. His ideas were strongly democratic (urging the right to vote of ordinary working men) and republican (thus breaking with the more moderate Parliamentarians who wanted to create a constitutional monarchy) and were based upon the following ideas.

He believed that under natural law all men were equal, that there existed a social contract which was the only legitimate foundation of society, that the traditional liberties of Englishmen had been crushed by the invading Normans who placed them under a “yoke” of tyranny, but that successive agreements made with the monarchs who followed (such as Magna Carta) had created a system of “fundamental laws” guaranteeing individual liberty which all monarchs and parliaments were obliged to uphold and defend, that ultimately the people were the sovereign power (not the King) and all representatives of the people were accountable to them.

In this justly famous pamphlet Overton begins by providing a clear and passionate defence of the idea of “self-ownership” (or “self propriety” as he called it) upon which rested all other claims to liberty by an individual. The opening paragraph of the pamphlet states:

TO every Individuall in nature, is given an individuall property by nature, not to be invaded or usurped by any: for every one as he is himselfe, so he hath a selfe propriety, else could he not be himselfe, and on this no second may presume to deprive any of, without manifest violation and affront to the very principles of nature, and of the Rules of equity and justice between man and man; mine and thine cannot be, except this be: No man hath power over my rights and liberties, and I over no mans; I may be but an Individuall, enjoy *my selfe* and my selfe propriety, and may write my selfe no more then my selfe, or presume any further; if I doe, I am an encroacher & an invader upon an other mans Right, to which I have no *Right.* For by naturall birth, all men are equally and alike borne to like propriety, liberty and freedome, and as we are delivered of God by the hand of nature into this world, every one with a naturall, innate freedome and propriety (as it were writ in the table of every mans heart, never to be obliterated) even so are we to live, every one equally and alike to enjoy his Birth-right and priviledge; even all whereof God by nature hath made him free.

And by individual, he meant all male individuals, not just the wealthy or privileged. According to Overton “by nature we are the sons of Adam” (the daughters of Adam would have to wait a few more centuries – although Mary Chidley and Margaret Fell might beg to disagree with him) from whom we have derived our natural rights to property and liberty. These natural rights belonged to everybody, and as he admonished a member of Parliament:

Be you therefore impartiall, and just, active and resolute care neither for favours nor smiles, and be no respector of persons, let not the *greatest Peers* in the Land, be more respected with you, then so many *old Bellowes-menders, Broom men, Coblers, Tinkers or Chimney-sweepers,* who are all equally *Free borne;* with the hudgest men, and *loftiest Anachims* in the Land.

However, these natural rights of “Free borne Englishmen” were violated by power hungry and ambitious “opportunity Politicians” and intolerant and oppressive Presbyterian Clergymen who behaved like so many “ravening wolves, even as roaring Lyons wanting their pray, going up and down, seeking whom they may devour.”

The true radicalism of Overton’s political views can be found in his comparison of the government to a school master privately employed by a father to teach his children and who can be removed at will if he does not not perform his job satisfactorily:

So that such so deputed, are to the *Generall* no otherwise, then as a Schoole-master to a particular, to this or that mans familie, for as such an ones Mastership, ordering and regulating power, is but by deputation, and that *ad bene placitum,* and may be removed at the parents or Head masters pleasure, upon neglect or abuse thereof, and be confer’d upon another (no parents ever giving such an absolute unlimited power to such over their children, as to doe to them as they list, and not to be retracted, controuled, or restrained in their exorbitances) Even so and no otherwise is it, with you our Deputies in respect of the Generall, it is in vaine for you to thinke you have power over us, to save us or destroy us at your pleasure, to doe with us as you list, be it for our weale, or be it for our wo …

After 1649 little is known of Overton’s movements. He spent some time in exile in the Netherlands only to resurface briefly in the mid-1650s when he became involved in Sexby’s plots to overthrow and perhaps even assassinate Cromwell (see his Killing no Murder (Sept. 1657)). He was arrested again in 1659 and may have spent time in prison. He seems to have completely disappeared from view by the end of 1662 and the place and date of his death are unknown.

A final thing to note is Overton’s hallmark insertion of a contemptuous and also fake statement about the name and location of the pamphlet’s publisher:

Printed at the backside of the Cyclopian Mountains, by Martin Claw-Clergy, Printer to the reverend Assembly of Divines, and are to be sould at the signe of the Subjects Liberty, right opposite to persecuting Court. 1646.

James Mill on Politics and Class

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James Mill (1773-1836), the father of John Stuart, has not been served well by editors of his writings, so I made my own anthology of 28 essays and articles written in the 1820s and 1830s.1 They include a dozen articles he wrote for the 1824 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, most notably those of “caste,” “Government,”and “Liberty of the Press,” and 14 articles for the important “review” periodicals The Westminster Review and The London Review which were very important organs for the dissemination of liberal reform ideas.

Like most of the radicals and liberals of his day he had a theory of class to explain who exploited the hard working and industrious ordinary people of Britain. He and the other Benthamites talked about “the ruling few” who had their own “sinister interests” which they were pursuing, and “the subject many” who paid the taxes. Interestingly he also used a couple French terms to describe the relationship between these two groups (probably because the French classical liberals were more advanced than their English counterparts in their thinking about class), such as: “society is divided into two classes, Ceux qui pillent, et Ceux qui sont pillés (those who pillage and those who are pillaged). Ten years after this was written Frédéric Bastiat developed his own radical theory of “la spoliation” (plunder” where society was divided into two antagonistic classes “la classe spoliatrice” (the plundering class) and “les classes spoliées” (the plundered classes).

For a snippet of Jeremey Bentham’s and James Mill’s thinking about class see this short essay.2

  1. See this anthology of The Political Writings of James Mill: Essays and Reviews on Politics and Society, 1815-1836. [↩]
  2. A brief essay on Mill and Bentham on class – See this short essay. [↩]