Liberty Against Itself: British Freedoms in North America Matthew Hc Arles Connell Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College

Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2014 Liberty Against Itself: British Freedoms in North America Matthew hC arles Connell Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Connell, Matthew Charles, "Liberty Against Itself: British Freedoms in North America" (2014). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 2343. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2343 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. LIBERTY AGAINST ITSELF: BRITISH FREEDOMS IN NORTH AMERICA A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Political Science by Matthew C. Connell B.A., The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, 2001 M.A., Louisiana State University, 2009 May 2015 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Ellis Sandoz, the chair of my committee. His unfailing encouragement, patience, and support throughout this process got me across the finish line. I am grateful to have been his student. I would like to thank the other members of my committee, all of whom taught me throughout my graduate coursework: Dr. James R. Stoner Jr., Dr. Cecil Eubanks, and Dr. Wayne Parent. I appreciate the ways each was available to me throughout this process. Their scholarship and teaching has had a profound effect upon my thinking and the questions that preoccupy this dissertation. I would like to thank my friends Matthew and Jessica Wierzbinski, Meg and Grant Piotrowski, Phyllis Theroux, Ragan Phillips, Chris Freeman, Amanda Beal, and Tim Corwin. Thank you all for being there when it was needed. I would like to thank John P. McEvoy, the Rothesay McEvoy family, my extended Connell family, Susan Holman and family, Karen and Danny Duvall, Mike and Sue Keys, my father-in-law, Steve Keys, my mother-in-law, Jeannie Keys. I would like to thank my sisters: Maggie, Cathleen, Emily, and Mary Rose. Your support has meant so much to me. Thanks to my two favorite teachers: my mother, Maureen Connell and my father John Connell. They’ve guided me in everything I’ve done that is good or worthwhile. My dad passed away when I began work on this dissertation. An extra thanks is owed to my mother. She pushed me out the door in elementary school when I refused to go. She has kept pushing me out the door and didn’t stop until this dissertation was finished. I would ii not have finished without her love, support, and example. I would like to acknowledge and thank give thanks to the life of my brother Kevin Connell. Finally, and most importantly, I am grateful for my wife Andrea and my daughter Eleanor. I love you both. Thank you for everything you do, for your support, for giving me perspective, and for going through this with me. I couldn’t have done it without you. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………..ii ABSTRACT …………...………………………………………………………………...v CHAPTER I CONSCIOUNSESS, ORDER, AND THE ENGLISH EXPERIENCE…..1 CHAPTER II INTERREGNUM OF CONSENSUS ……………………………….......87 CHAPTER III 1688-89 AND THE LIBERAL ETHOS……….…………………….....118 CHAPTER IV BRITISH LIBERTY AND CANADIAN SENTIMENTS …………….150 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………207 VITA……………………………………………………………………………………222 iv ABSTRACT My dissertation explores the theoretical foundations of what I refer to as the Canadian liberal ethos. Taking the British parliamentary revolution of 1688 as pivotal event I examine the development of political liberty in its English incarnations and trace its development as it was expressed in colonial British North America. This dissertation hopes to provide an explanatory analysis the of the liberal ethos that can: (a) shed light on the pre-suppositions of liberty in a liberal democratic order, (b) contribute to our understanding of the principles that informed the settlement of British North America through an examination of community and coercion, and, (c) consider the role that 1688-89 had on the development of political thought and the exercise of political power in British North America. This dissertation contributes to the growing literature that examines Canadian political foundations and the principles that informed it. By approaching the topic from a British perspective I hope that the theoretical and philosophical currents that emerged in 17th century Britain can be understood as they were applied, with both success and failure, to the colonization of British North America. v CHAPTER I: CONSCIOUSNESS, ORDER, AND THE ENGLISH EXPERIENCE Part I. Introduction A. The Question This dissertation begins with a question: To what extent can the Canadian understanding of political liberty be traced back to the principles articulated during the British parliamentary revolution of 1688-89? More generally though, it explores the intellectual and institutional roots of the Canadian experience of liberty through the prism of both Western and British political development. The thesis argued is simple: the roots of Canadian order, with varying degrees of success, and within the limits of the practicable, confronts the very contemporary challenge of political order that is unique to modern governments, namely, diversity and community. These realities become confrontational within the context over competing self-understandings that lurk behind a liberal government’s constitutional face. As such, this topic engages with questions beyond the strictly material and attempts to be attentive to an understanding of human nature, its differentiated ontological structures, and what is recognized as legitimate authority. Scholarship on the Canadian founding has largely dismissed philosophical foundations as undergirding the Canadian polity.1 And it is true: a single political philosophy that typifies the Canadian political experience is oxymoronic, particularly if Canada is understood as multi-cultural, both in point of fact and as a prescriptive matter of policy. The difficulties of locating philosophical substance to Canadian government 1 See Donald Smiley, Canada in Question (McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1972); E.R. Black Divided Cook, “Canada 2000: Towards a Post-Nationalist Canada,” Cite Libre (Fall 2000): 81-88. Cook sums up much of this shared sentiment, stating: “It is well known that the Fathers of Confederation were pragmatic lawyers for the most part, more given to fine tuning the details of a constitutional act than waxing philosophical about human rights or national goals.” 82. 1 however, lessen when approached through the experiences of political philosophy and its applications in practice. This dissertation seeks to contribute to this effort by examining the development of the liberal ethos, specifically British liberty and the transformative effect it has had upon both British and non-British nationals in British North America. The classical understanding of political community emphasized homonoia – or “like-mindedness” - as the basis of a political community. In The Politics, Aristotle claimed that, “it is peculiar to man as compared to the other animals that he alone has a perception of good and bad and just and unjust and other things [of this sort]; and partnership in these things is what makes a household and a city.”2 In other words, according to Aristotle, the substance of a political regime depends upon its ability to share an orientation directed towards a good; this capacity to recognize moral goods is the source of political order and is a political community’s distinctively human feature. Understanding a political society according to a shared telos demands a specific understanding of human consciousness or nature (which Aristotle provides); only through this understanding of a shared nature can a community orientate itself towards collective public goods. Unsurprisingly however this philosophical anthropology breaks down when the component parts of a political community do not share a vision of a mutual good or do not recognize foundational principles that they can call common. While discerning human goods on Aristotelian foundations is in itself no small feat, the rise of natural sciences, and the adoption of their methods to study political phenomena, has at the very least created, “a fundamental, typically modern dualism of a 2 Aristotle, Aristotle’s Politics, translated by Carnes Lord (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), 37. 2 nonteleological natural science and a teleological science of man.”3 Where the telos of Aristotle insists upon natural ends as the basis of understanding and organizing human activity, modern natural sciences replace teleology with an understanding of human activity rooted in a causal determinism with no natural telos. In contrast to Aristotelian telos the modern citizen requires require direction and management regarding the exercise of political right. This is all to say, that this dualism of modernity has compounded the problem of political difference by creating competing foundations by which communities strive to achieve a sense of shared purpose. Broadly speaking, one self-understanding grounds

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