CONCEIVED IN LIBERTY VOLUME II The Ludwig von Mises Institute dedicates this volume to all of its generous donors, and in particular wishes to thank these Patrons: Gary G. Schlarbaum Mr. & Mrs. Justin G. Bradburn, Jr. Dr. John Brätland John WT. Dabbs Stephen W Modzelewski Sir John & Lady Dalhoff John W. Deming Dr. & Mrs. George G. Eddy James L. Bailey Roger L. Erickson James Bailey Foundation Dr. Larry J. Eshelman Bill D. Brady Bud Evans Brady Industries Harley-Davidson of Reno Jerome Bruni Mr. & Mrs. Walter A. Frantz, III The Jerome V. Bruni Foundation Douglas E. French W.W Caruth, III Albert L. Hillman, Jr. Barbara Bullitt Christian Donald L. Ifland G. Douglas Collins, Jr. Michael L. Keiser Mr. & Mrs. Willard Fischer Jim Kuden Larry R. Gies Arthur L. Loeb Mr. & Mrs. William W Massey, Jr. Roland Manarin Richard Mclnnis Joseph Edward Paul Melville E.H. Morse Robert A. Moore Mr. & Mrs. Victor Niederhoffer James A. O'Connor Niederhoffer Investments, Inc. James O'Neill Mr. & Mrs. Mason Pearsall Michael Robb Don Printz, M.D. Mr. &C Mrs. John Salvador Conrad Schneiker James M. Rodney Mr. &c Mrs. Edward Schoppe, Jr. Sheldon Rose Jack DeBar Smith Menlo Smith Sunmark Capital Corp. Mr. & Mrs. Allan R. Spreen William V Stephens Lawrence Van Someren, Sr. Byron L. Stoeser J. Billy VerPlanck Mark M. Adamo Mr. & Mrs. Quinten E. Ward Maurice Brainard Family Trust Dr. Thomas L. Wenck Richard Bleiberg David Westrate John Hamilton Bolstad Betty K. Wolfe Mr. & Mrs. J.R. Bost Walter Wylie CONCEIVED IN LIBERTY VOLUME II "SALUTARY NEGLECT": THE AMERICAN COLONIES IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MURRAY N. ROTHBARD MISES INSTITUTE AUBURN, ALABAMA Copyright © 1999 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, 518 West Magnolia Avenue, Auburn, Alabama 36832-4528. The first edition was published in 1975 by Arlington House, Publishers. All rights reserved. Written permission must be secured from the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this book, except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles. ISBN: 0-945466-26-9 By Liberty, I understand the power which every man has over his own ac- tions, and his right to enjoy the fruit of his labour, art, and industry, as far as by it he hurts not the society, or any members of it, by taking from any member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys. The fruits of a man's honest industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal equity, as is his title to use them in the manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above limitations, every man is sole lord and arbiter of his own private actions and property. Indeed, Liberty is the divine source of all human happiness. To possess, in security, the effects of our industry, is the most powerful and reasonable incitement to be industrious: And to be able to provide for our children, and to leave them all that we have, is the best motive to beget them. But where property is precarious, labour will languish. The privileges of think- ing, saying, and doing what we please, and of growing as rich as we can, without any other restriction, than that by all this we hurt not the public, nor one another, are the glorious privileges of Liberty; and its ejects, to live in freedom, plenty, and safety. Alas! Power encroaches daily upon Liberty, with a success too evident; and the balance between them is almost lost. Tyranny has engrossed almost the whole earth, and striking at mankind root and branch, makes the world a slaughterhouse. .. Cato's Letters Contents PREFACE 9 INTRODUCTION The Colonies in the Eighteenth Century 13 PART I Developments in the Separate Colonies 15 1. Liberalism in Massachusetts 17 2. Presbyterian Connecticut 25 3. Libertarianism in Rhode Island 26 4. Land Tenure and Land Allocation in New England 28 5. New Hampshire Breaks Free 32 6. The Narragansett Planters 34 7. New York Land Monopoly 36 8. Slavery in New York 44 9. Land Conflicts in New Jersey 47 10. The Ulster Scots 53 11. The Pennsylvania Germans 57 12. Pennsylvania: Quakers and Indians 59 13. The Emergence of Benjamin Franklin 64 14. The Paxton Boys 73 15. The Virginia Land System 76 16. The Virginia Political Structure 80 17. Virginia Tobacco 83 18. Slavery in Virginia 86 19. Indian War in North Carolina 89 20. The North Carolina Proprietary 91 21. Royal Government in North Carolina 94 7 22. Slavery in South Carolina 97 23. Proprietary Rule in South Carolina 101 24. The Land Question in South Carolina 104 25. Georgia: The "Humanitarian" Colony 107 PART II Intercolonial Developments 121 26. Inflation and the Creation of Paper Money 123 27. The Communication of Ideas: Postal Service and the Freedom of the Press 141 28. Religious Trends in the Colonies 156 29. The Great Awakening 159 30. The Growth of Deism 170 31. The Quakers and the Abolition of Slavery 174 32. The Beginning of the Struggle over American Bishops 181 33. The Growth of Libertarian Thought 186 PART III Relations with Britain 199 34. Assembly Versus Governor 201 35. Mercantilist Restrictions 205 36. King George's War 215 37. Early Phases of the French and Indian War 226 38. The Persecution of the Acadians 238 39. Total War 245 40. The American Colonies and the War 250 41. Concluding Peace 256 42. Administering the Conquests 265 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY 269 INDEX 279 Preface What! Another American history book? The reader may be pardoned for wondering about the point of another addition to the seemingly inexhaustible flow of books and texts on American history. One problem, as pointed out in the bibliographical essay at the end of Volume I, is that the survey studies of American history have squeezed out the actual stuff of history, the narrative facts of the important events of the past. With the true data of history squeezed out, what we have left are compressed summaries and the historian's interpretations and judgments of the data. There is nothing wrong with the historian's having such judgments; indeed, without them, history would be a meaningless and giant almanac listing dates and events with no causal links. But, without the narrative facts, the reader is deprived of the data from which he can himself judge the historian's interpretations and evolve interpretations of his own. A major point of this and the other volumes is to put back the historical narrative into American history. Facts, of course, must be selected and ordered in accordance with judg- ments of importance, and such judgments are necessarily tied into the histori- an's basic world outlook. My own basic perspective on the history of man, and a fortiori on the history of the United States, is to place central impor- tance on the great conflict which is eternally waged between Liberty and Power, a conflict, by the way, which was seen with crystal clarity by the Amer- ican revolutionaries of the eighteenth century. I see the liberty of the individ- ual not only as a great moral good in itself (or, with Lord Acton, as the high- est political good), but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes: moral virtue, civilization, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity. Out of liberty, then, stem the glories of civilized life. But liberty has always been threatened by the encroachments of power, power which seeks to suppress, control, cripple, tax, and exploit the fruits of liberty and production. Power, then, the enemy of liberty, is conse- quently the enemy of all the other goods and fruits of civilization that man- kind holds dear. And power is almost always centered in and focused on that central repository of power and violence: the state. With Albert Jay Nock, the twentieth-century American political philosopher, I see history as centrally a race and conflict between "social power"—the productive consequence of vol- untary interactions among men—and state power. In those eras of history when liberty—social power—has managed to race ahead of state power and control, the country and even mankind have flourished. In those eras when state power has managed to catch up with or surpass social power, mankind suffers and declines. For decades, American historians have quarreled about "conflict" or "con- sensus" as the guiding leitmotif of the American past. Clearly, I belong in the "conflict" rather than the "consensus" camp, with the proviso that I see the central conflict as not between classes (social or economic), or between ideolo- gies, but between Power and Liberty, State and Society. The social or ideologi- cal conflicts have been ancillary to the central one, which concerns: Who will control the state, and what power will the state exercise over the citizenry ? To take a common example from American history, there are in my view no inherent conflicts between merchants and farmers in the free market. On the contrary, in the market, the sphere of liberty, the interests of merchants and farmers are harmonious, with each buying and selling the products of the other. Conflicts arise only through the attempts of various groups of merchants or farmers to seize control over the machinery of government and to use it to privilege themselves at the expense of the others. It is only through and by state action that "class" conflicts can ever arise. This volume is the history of the American colonies in the first half of the eighteenth century. It is generally dismissed in the history texts as a quiet period too uneventful to contemplate.