A big thank you to Stephen for this Independence Day post. Everyone have a fun and safe holiday!!!!
This Independence Day, I’d like to take the occasion to ruminate concerning the very nature of independence itself, contrasted to freedom whilst juxtaposed against the obligated, which is all just a fancy, albeit olde fashioned, manner of stating a desire to take a historically contextual examination of the meaning of the words themselves.
The Founding Fathers did not call themselves “freedom fighters”, or the “Sons of Freedom”, but rather the “Sons of Liberty”. Ever wonder why? They did not name their revolution a struggle for freedom, nor a war of liberation, they fought for independence, political independence, the liberty to rule their own lands and make laws which favored their own prosperity.
Going back a little further in time to the feudal era, it is important to know what the feu was in the feudal era. The feu was the rent, that obligation which was payed by the tenant to his lord. Okay, further elucidation: a “lord” is a fancy word which really means something along the lines of a combination of owner of the land and political leader at the same time.
(This is distinguished from the later term of landlord, a division where society would separate the functions of land ownership from the functions of civic leadership as society moved out of the feudal era.)
The tenant being the occupier of the land, a more expansive term than a mere serf which was in essence a type of tenant farmer of the lowest level, though a village craftsman like a blacksmith or carpenter would also be a tenant owing his feu in payment of rent, for the land that they used or even for the license to operate their craft.
The more skilled one’s labor the more likely that the person would be under the patronage of some lord, which is to say a direct employee in the hire of the feudal estate which was basically a state corporation ran by the lord.
Why is this important in relation to freedom? A freeman, or free man, was a man free of obligation, a feudal obligation, or the obligation to pay the feu, one who was not in the employ of a lord, thus one to whom no other person owed obligation in return. The freeman was a poor man, poorer than the serfs, what we would think of as a day laborer. He might have work if there was work to be had, or he may be forced into begging when there was no work, or try his hand at criminal endeavors.
Freedom, in the feudal society, was not something which was sought, not something to be championed. Hollywood’s image of William Wallace crying out that the English would never take his freedom would have been downright bizarre to the real contemporaries of Wallace. Who would want the poverty of freedom, to be outcast from society, owing allegiance and obligation to no man?
The Founding Fathers were not so removed from these times to have fully lost the meaning of these words, but as the nations of Europe had fairly recently moved to a more mercantile economy the “feu” was become relegated to a fairly meager taxation, feus paid in “money rents” as Prof. Smith referred to them, were becoming less burdensome with the influx of new world silver from the Spanish colonies.
Essentially, the feu was the medieval world’s property tax, and this property tax was the primary source of revenue for the medieval state. The inflation created by Spain’s discovery of large quantities of silver, as well as gold and copper, in the New World, meant that the tax burden steadily decreased for most Englishmen as their feus were denoted and paid most often in terms of the price of the crops rather than the crops themselves.
It was also at this time of increased mercantile commerce that the states turned to taxing not the labor of their farmers directly but taxing the profits of commerce itself through the impositions of tariffs and duties.
The serf is subject, obligated and servile to the lord. The freeman at the very least was master of his own life and his own choices. With the rise of mercantilism, the freeman rose in standing in society. No longer the beggar looking for work, he was the merchant, the craftsman, the farmer, but in a new age with far less tax obligation, between the freeman and the serf arose the citizen, the rise of the middle classes with a more limited civic obligation and greater ownership and responsibility of his own life and resources.
The word “freeman” came to be synonymous with “citizen” and the obligation to the state became less tied to the formal feudal taxation system and more a question of civic responsibility. “Freemen” had the civic obligations of any other subject, but those subjects had freed themselves of many of the feudal obligations which placed them as medieval serfs and servants. The US was not fighting to become “freemen” because all English subjects considered themselves already free men under a system bound by the rule of law.
It was not the burden of taxation which the colonists rebelled, but the imposition of those taxes and other laws from a parliament three thousand miles away in England which showed itself indifferent if not sometimes hostile to the interests of the people in their own colonies. They passed laws favoring industries in England, but keeping the colonies as a cheap source of raw materials, discouraging the colonists from developing their own industries and resources.
Colonials felt like they were being legislatively forced back into positions of servitude. The full list of the grievances of the colonials is set forth in the Declaration of Independence in that extensive list which follows the opening eloquence which are routinely ignored these days as few people ever read past the opening lines.
With the indifference shown by the parliament to their local interests, the quartering and support of the British army in the colonies felt less like protection from the hostilities of the Indian tribes and French and Spanish intrigues than it did an occupying force to keep the colonists under control. After all, the French in America were relatively few, as many Indians were allies as enemies, and the Spanish were preoccupied with their own colonies in South and Central America.
Thus the war was for independence, for self rule. If the colonists were going to pay to support an army, then should not they actually control that army? If they were going to negotiate with their neighbors over the boundaries, shouldn’t their interest be more important than men on an entirely different continent.
The Sons of Liberty wanted just that, liberty, the responsibility and control of their own lives and their own destiny free from the misguided and uninformed governance from people unacquainted with their problems, their situation, who looked upon them as children to be governed rather than fellow Englishmen to be respected as equals.
Liberty is not freedom, it is not the absence of an obligation to your fellow man, but neither is it ever a subjugation to the will of other men, it is the adult responsibility of making decisions, organizing your own affairs, and living with the consequences of your decisions and bargains. Liberty is political adulthood, with both its opportunities and consequences.
The UK these days strain in a situation reminiscent of the revolutionary days, increasingly suppressed by the whims of a foreign government in which they seem to have little say, which appears to have interest contrary to that which the UK considers in its best interests, subjected to the dictates of Brussels, occupied by foreign mercenaries, or refugees, to whom the EU appears to give free license.
What was the Brexit referendum but a declaration of the Englishman’s desire for that political autonomy and liberty to both set the course of their own destiny and a willingness to accept the consequences thereof? We may be on the verge of seeing the UK struggle for its own liberty against the EU the way we strived for our own self-governance from them some 233 years ago.
Remember our own political struggles in this age. The feu, being essentially a tax on the productivity of the peasant farmer in an agrarian society which funded the operations of the government and denied the peasant ownership of property, and thus liberty. While a property tax is the most direct corollary to the feu, what would you consider the income tax imposed since 1913 but a tax on the very labor of Americans?
As “refugees” are to Europe, illegal aliens are to America, a mercenary workforce who certain people would give free license to undermine the political and economic basis of the citizen’s liberty, an indirect tax through the agency of lawlessness. In many ways, the media, academia, beltway, and coastal leftist enclaves has been Brussels to our Brexit, though we are in a better political position with regards to influence in our federal government.
On this day of liberty, renew our commitment to political independence embracing the rights and responsibilities of liberty, eschewing simultaneously the lure of a juvenile freedom and the OCD of tyranny. A merry Independence Day to all our gracious readers.
