More on Algernon Sydney

It was great to read the lost (and found) essay by Rothbard on the libertarian origins of the American Revolution, particulary his comments on Algernon Sidney:

To Sidney, revolution and freedom were closely linked. Whenever people’s liberties were threatened or invaded, they had the right, nay the duty, to rebel. Everyone might legitimately slay a tyrant, and there is much justification for defending the rights of individuals against tyranny. Revolution to Sidney was not an evil but the people’s great weapon for the overthrow of tyranny and for exercising their rights to popular government. There was nothing sacred about governments, which on the contrary should be changed as required.

Sydney, who opposed King Charles II for overstepping his powers, was put to death for treason in 1683, after a trial that blatantly violated his rights as an Englishman and trampled any semblance of justice. The indictment was issued without a grand jury proceeding. He was refused a copy of the indictment. Hearsay and perjured testimony were allowed against him. Despite no proven overt act against the king, parts of an unpublished manuscript that argued that the king was not above the law that were found among Sydney’s private papers (which became Discourses Concerning Government, published 15 years later) were twisted into a conviction. The abuses involved were so blatant that Parliament overturned his conviction in 1689.

Sydney also inspired those American colonists most determined to defend their rights and liberties, particularly his most radical claim of a right to revolution to counter a king that exceeded his legal authority. According to scholar Thomas G. West, American revolutionaries “warmly admired Sydney’s principles and his fighting republican spirit. His death as a martyr to liberty provided them with a model in their own risky enterprise against the force of British arms.” Modern Americans have overlooked Algernon Sydney, despite his important influence on our founding. This is at least in part because Discourses Concerning Government is difficult to follow. It is an exhaustive, section by section rebuttal to Patriarcha, published by Sir Robert Filmer in 1680.

Filmer’s primary purpose was to argue for the divine right of kings, which provided the wrong answer to the question: “Is the king for the people, or the people for the king?” Sydney’s response was the same as that which led to the American Revolution. In Discourses, Sydney was engaged in “asserting the liberty...granted by God to all mankind,” and opposing government tyranny, because each person had “an equal liberty of providing for themselves...no one having any other right than was common to all.” He taught American colonists a greater understanding of liberty, the relationship between liberty and virtue, the rule of law, and the right to throw off tyranny. He wrote of men’s inalienable rights, sacrificed his life for them, and helped inspire the Revolutionary War almost a century later, to defend them. Consider some of why America’s founders thought so highly of Sydney:
On Liberty

God in goodness and mercy to mankind has with an equal hand given to all the benefit of liberty...
...our rights and liberties are innate, inherent...
The liberties of nations are from God and nature, not from Kings.
...all men saw...that man is naturally free, that he cannot justly be deprived of that liberty without cause, and that he does not resign it, or any part of it, unless it be in consideration of a greater good which he proposes for himself.
They who are equally free, may equally enjoy their freedom.
...our natural liberty...is of so great importance that from thence only can we know whether we are freemen or slaves...
...this equality of right and exemption from the dominion of any other is called liberty: that he who enjoys it cannot be deprived of it, unless by his own consent, or by force...
A people, in relation to domestic affairs, can desire nothing but liberty...Their endeavors to secure that seldom hurt any except such as invade their rights...
...in relation to my house, land, or estate; I may do what I please with them, if I bring no damage upon others... the state takes no other cognizance of what passes between me and [others], than to oblige me to perform the contracts I make, and not to do that to them which the law forbids...without prejudice to the society into which I enter, I may and do retain to myself the liberty of doing what I please in all things relating peculiarly to myself, or in which I am to seek my own convenience.
...if the liberty of one man cannot be limited or diminished by one or any number of men, and none can give away the right of another, ‘tis plain that the ambition of one...cannot give a right to any over the liberties of a whole nation. Those who are so set up have their root in violence or fraud, and are rather to be accounted robbers and pirates than magistrates.
I see no reason to believe that God did approve the government of one over many...but a faculty as well as a liberty was left to everyone...
He that oppugns the public liberty...arrogates to himself that which he denies to all men
...government[s]...degenerate into a most unjust and despicable tyranny, so soon as the supreme lord begins to prefer his own interest or profit before the good of his subjects...such an extreme deviation from the end of their institution annuls it; and the wound thereby given to the natural and original rights of those nations cannot be cured, unless they resume the liberties of which they have been deprived...

On Liberty and Virtue

Liberty produces virtue, order and stability...
...virtue...has been found...in all nations that have enjoyed their liberty...
...all that was ever desirable or worthy of praise and imitation in Rome did proceed from its liberty...if this virtue and the glorious effects of it did begin with liberty, it did also expire with the same...
...liberty...was no sooner overthrown than virtue was torn up by the roots...
...the best men, during the liberty of Rome, thrived best...so soon as liberty was subverted, the worst men thrived best...
...corruption, venality, and violence...were neither the effects of liberty, nor consistent with it.
...liberty cannot be preserved, if the manners of the people are corrupted...
...if vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established.

On Government and the Rule of Law

...governments...in which every man’s liberty is least restrained...would certainly prove to be the most just, rational and natural...
As governments were instituted for the obtaining of justice and the preservation of liberty...Laws and constitutions ought...to constitute that which is most conducing to the establishment of justice and liberty.
...prerogative is instituted only for the preservation of liberty...
...princes are obliged by the law of nature to preserve the lands, goods, lives and liberties of their subjects...
...the power which the prince has be given for the good of the people, and for the defense of every private man’s life, liberty, lands and goods...If the public safety be provided, liberty and property secured, justice administered, virtue encouraged, vice suppressed, and the true interest of the nation advanced, the ends of government are accomplished...magistracy is not instituted...but for the preservation of the whole people, and the defense of the liberty, life and estate of every private man...rights and liberties...which we have received from God and nature.
...the best men...were contented with a due liberty, under the protection of a just law...consider whether the wisest, best and bravest of men are not naturally led to be pleased with a government that protects them from receiving any wrong, when they have not the least inclination to do any?
...if the safety of the people be the supreme law, and this safety extend to, and consist in the preservation of their liberties, goods, lands and lives, that law must necessarily be the root and beginning, as well as the end and limit of all magistratical power, and all laws must be subservient and subordinate to it. The question will not then be what pleases the king, but what is good for the people; not what conduces to his profit or glory, but what secures the liberties he is bound to preserve...he is not the master, but the servant of the commonwealth; and the utmost extent of his prerogative is to be able to do more good than any private man.
But if the safety of nations be the end for which governments are instituted, such as take it upon them to govern...are by the law of nature bound to procure it; and in order to do this, to preserve the lives, lands, liberties and goods of every one of their subjects; and he that...exercises a power of disposing of them according to his will, violates the laws of nature in the highest degree.
This is the ground of all just governments; for violence or fraud can create no right...
But as liberty consists only in being subject to no man’s will...if there be no other law in a kingdom than the will of a prince, there is no such thing as liberty. Property is also an appendage to liberty; and ‘tis...impossible for a man to have a right to lands or goods, if he has no liberty, and enjoys his life only at the pleasure of another...
...laws...are under God the best defense of our lives, liberties, and estates.

On Tyranny and the Right of Revolution

...is it possible that any one man can make himself lord of a people...to whom God had given the liberty of governing themselves, by any other means than violence or fraud...is not the invasion of it the most outrageous injury that can be done to all mankind, and most particularly to the nation that is enslaved by it?
[One] could not imagine that a free nation...did intend to give up their persons, liberties and estates...
...we are free-men...no man has a power over us, which is not given...and conducing to the ends for which they are given, which can be no other than to defend us from all manner of arbitrary power...
...the king neither has nor can have any prerogative which is not for the good of the people, and the preservation of their liberties.
But nothing can be more absurd than to say that one man has an absolute power above law to govern according to his will, for the people’s good, and the preservation of their liberty: For no liberty can subsist where there is such a power...He is a free man who lives as best pleases himself, under laws made by his own consent...
...detract nothing from the public liberty, which the law principally intends to preserve...the people continue as free as the internal thoughts of a man, and cannot but have a right to preserve their liberty, or avenge the violation.
...the rights and liberties of a nation must be utterly subverted and abolished, if the power of the whole may not be employed to assert them, or punish the violation of them.
...if we have the same spirit [our ancestors] had, we may easily restore our nation to its ancient liberty, dignity and happiness; and if we do not, the fault is owing to ourselves...
...we know no people who have a better right to liberty, or who have defended it than our own nation. And if we do not degenerate from the virtue of our ancestors, we may hope to transmit it entire to our posterity.
Shall it be lawful for [rulers] to usurp a power over the liberty of others, and shall it not be lawful for an injured people to resume their own?
...imposters...endeavor to persuade the people they ought not to defend their liberties, by giving the name of rebellion to the most just and honorable actions that have been performed for the preservation of them...
...encourage those who defend, or endeavor to recover their violated liberties, to act vigorously in a cause that God does evidently patronize.
...hands and swords are given to men, that they only may be slaves who have no courage...when liberty is overthrown by those, who of all men ought with the utmost industry and vigor to have defended it.
...we ought not to...think God has so far abandoned us into the hands of our enemies, as not to leave us the liberty of using the same arms in our defense as they do to offend and injure us.
...slaves by nature...have no comprehension of liberty...But some nations are naturally strong...They know how to preserve their liberty, or to vindicate the violation of it...he is a fool who knows not that swords were given to men, that none might be slaves, but such as know not how to use them.

In Discourses Concerning Government, Algernon Sydney began with the purpose of “proving the natural, universal liberty of mankind.” But he saw that it was not enough to just focus on the logic of liberty while liberty was being eroded in fact. He proposed to go further, and “establish the natural liberty of all mankind in its utmost extent.” And he helped inspire the American Revolution with his devotion to liberty, because “a people from all ages in love with liberty and desirous to maintain their own privileges could never be brought to resign them.” If we paid more attention to him again, perhaps people who have lapsed from their heritage of liberty will begin to love it once more.