By Mark Graham
“Many of the American Tories were Anglicans and knew well that in opposing the revolution they were opposing Locke. They appealed to the older political philosophy of Richard Hooker.”
What is one to make of George Grant’s claim that American Tories opposed Locke and appealed to Hooker? Any casual but educated reader today of his Lament for a Nation will surely have a general idea of the political philosophy of John Locke, but that of Richard Hooker would likely be little known even to most contemporary Anglicans. This is itself lamentable (if my feeble pun may be forgiven). Grant’s brief inclusion of a contrast between Locke and Hooker was not a throwaway historical aside but philosophically key to the substance of the book. His biographer, William Christian, writes of the Lament: “In ninety-seven pages George distilled his years of study of theology and philosophy, together with his knowledge of history and his acute attention to the daily passage of political events.”1 Although Lament for a Nation enjoyed a broad readership throughout the decades, to understand the compactness of its references (unintended to be mere passing references) requires a knowledge of theology, philosophy, and history approaching Grant’s own. What follows is not an exhaustive treatment of the differences between the worldviews of Locke and Hooker, but hopefully it provides Red Tory Standard readers with enough information about Hookerian political philosophy to help contextualize Grant’s comment.
Richard Hooker and Anglicanism in the Colonies
Although a minority of the colonial population, Anglicans were disproportionately represented among the Tories who rejected the American Revolution (henceforth: “Rebellion”). Their monarchism alone was enough grounds for a theologically sound churchman of the established Church of England to reject rebellion. The Book of Common Prayer contained prayers “for the King’s Majesty” at Morning and Evening Prayer services (also said by some daily at home), Collects for the monarch during Communion services, and royal references in the Litany and in other suffrages. These prayers of the Established Church went well beyond the belief shared by many other types of Christians that believers should prayer for those in power. For Anglicans, the monarch was (and still is) the “Supreme Governor” of the Church of England itself, a state Church that exists precisely because it rejected Papal Supremacy in favour of Royal Supremacy. Anglican Tories would have also been familiar with The Book of Homilies, including its 21st Homily, An Homily against Homily Against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion, in which one could certainly find no justification for rebellion against the Crown. Grant’s claim, however, is that the Loyalists appealed to the political philosophy of Richard Hooker, a philosophy which, unlike Locke’s, provided an underlying intellectual foundation that was inherently contrary to the Rebellion.
Among the Church of England’s many Anglican Divines, Richard Hooker was one of the earliest and the greatest of its systematic theologians. Written in the late 16th century primarily as a defence of the Church of England against both Puritan and Catholic extremes, his masterwork, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, also contained a good deal of political thought that would shape English conservative temperament for centuries to come. (It is fair to say that Hooker was something of a precursor to Edmund Burke himself.) When John Locke wrote his Two Treatises of Government a century later, he (mis)quoted Hooker a number of times to lend a veneer Established Church authority, even calling him “the Judicious Hooker.” As implied by the passage from Lament for a Nation, George Grant believed that the Loyalists would have seen through the veneer and recognized that Locke’s appropriation of Hooker to be selective and distorting.
Insights into Hooker’s political philosophy can be gleaned from almost anywhere from his voluminous Laws, but it is in Chapter 10 of Book 1 where it is most concentrated. I have selected 5 passages to introduce readers to Hookerian political thought and show some ways in which Hooker and Locke differed in order to give some background to Grant’s claim. It is my hope that readers will digest the beauty of Hooker’s prose, but, aware that Anglican theology students refer to Hooker affectionately and despondently as the Church of England’s Cicero (i.e., he is difficult to read), I have paraphrased most of the content of the passages at the beginning of each exposition.
Consent: historic and corporate, not individual
To be commanded we do consent, when that society whereof we are part hath at any time before consented, without revoking the same after by the like universal agreement. Wherefore as any man’s deed past is good as long as he himself continues; so the act of a public society of men done five hundred years since stands as theirs who presently are of the same societies, because corporations are immortal; we were then alive in our predecessors, and they in their successors do live still. (Laws I.10.8)
For Hooker, we have “consented” to being governed whenever the society to which we belong has previously given its consent and has not later withdrawn that consent except by another act of unanimous agreement by the entire community. Just as a person’s past decisions remain valid as long as that person remains the same individual, so the decisions of a community made 500 years ago remain valid as the decision of those who belong to that community today. This is because political societies (“corporations”) are a kind of immortal body. We are alive in our predecessors, and they continue to live in us, their successors.
John Locke also used “consent” language, and he even appealed to Hooker as he did so. Lockean consent, however, is individualistic, contractual, and revocable at the whim of a living generation; Hookerian consent is historic, corporate, and revocable only by the agreement of the entire body politic. To be commanded is not something we individually consent to. There is no re-signing of a liberal social contract each generation. Our signature is our birth into the community to which we belong. This inherited consent can only be revoked by universal agreement, not by one faction of innovators overpowering all others. The very existence of neutral or Loyalist factions at the time of the American Rebellion would have delegitimized the the Patriots’ cause in the eyes of Hooker, and in the eyes of anybody with a Hookerian socio-political worldview.
Hooker’s political society is a “corporation.” A corporation is body composed of individuals forming a single body. Like a body, it does not die when its limbs or members die. As an immortal Person, its decisions made even 500 years remain valid. (And the American colonies were nowhere close to 500 years old!) Hooker’s conception of society as a single, multi-generational body will cause any traditionalist conservative to recall Edmund Burke’s assertion in his Reflection on the Revolution in France that society is “a contract between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” For Burke, those members of the immortal body who just happen to be alive should not unilaterally override the wishes of those who came before (nor the potential wishes of those yet to be born). Hooker took a softer view that a single generation could give consent to a new contract, but only by unanimous consent. There was no unanimous consent for the reshaping of the colonies into a Republic.
Lawful Power: derived from Natural Law and corporate consent
By the natural law, whereunto [God] hath made all subject, the lawful power of making laws to command whole politic societies of men belongeth so properly unto the same entire societies, that for any prince or potentate of what kind soever upon earth to exercise the same of himself, and not either by express commission immediately and personally received from God, or else by authority derived at the first from their consent upon whose persons they impose laws, it is no better than mere tyranny. (Laws I.10.8)
According to natural law, the natural law to which God has made all people subject, the rightful authority to make laws for the entire political community belongs, in the fullest sense, to the community itself. If any ruler on earth claims to make laws on his own without either the “direct commission” of God or the authority originally derived from the people he governs, then he is no better than a tyrant.
On the surface, aspects of Lockean thought seem to echo those of Hooker in the above passage. Locke grounds his entire political philosophy in (his own understanding of) natural law, a natural law to which all people were subject, and according to which the rightful authority to make laws over a society belonged to society itself. Like Hooker, he certainly insisted that rule without the consent of ruled was tyranny. Many Anglican Tories, however, would have understood, as Hooker did, that Natural Law grants law-making power to the entire corporate society as an historic, immortal body: not to individuals who have formed a society for the sake of collectively protecting their assumed individuals rights that pre-existed in a state of nature (as Locke conceived of such things). Hooker unquestionably asserts that it would be tyranny to rule without the consent of the ruled, but, for Hooker, that consent has already been given long ago and cannot be rescinded except by unanimous consent. Such a stringent understanding of consent by corporation renders rebellion immoral in almost any circumstance. Rebellion would, in fact, be kind of reverse tyranny, where individual limbs have defied the will of their own corporate body.
Hooker allows that a ruler would not be tyrannical if he lacked the consent of the ruled, provided he had received a direct commission from God. This does not mean that Hooker was a divine-right absolutist in regard to monarchy. His idea of commission, “immediately and personally received by God,” indicates extraordinarily rare conditions, the kind we might find with the biblical prophets and judges. Likewise, few Anglican Tories were divine-right absolutists, but faced with the present threat of rebellion, they surely doubled down on loyalty to King George III, the Supreme Governor of their Church. In their minds would have been the words of the Apostle Paul which he wrote to the church in Rome: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.” They would have also known from their specifically Anglican An Homily against Homily Against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion that: “[a] rebel is worse than the worst thief, murderer, or adulterer… For rebellion is the mother of all evils… It is the root of all other sins against God and man.” Consequently, although these Tories would likely not have been philosophically absolute monarchists, their disposition of respect for the Crown combined with their wariness of any rebellion would have made them effectively so.
Necessity of Government: rooted in human sinfulness and maintenance of the common good
Political laws, ordained for external order and regiment amongst men, are never framed as they should be, unless presuming the will of man to be inwardly obstinate, rebellious, and averse from all obedience unto the sacred laws of his nature; in a word, unless presuming man to be in regard of his depraved mind little better than a wild beast, they do accordingly provide notwithstanding so to frame his outward actions, that they be no hindrance unto the common good for which societies are instituted. ( Laws I.10.1)
Hooker’s political vision is deeply realistic (detractors might say pessimistic) about human evil. He thought that political laws established to maintain order in society are only conceived of correctly when lawmakers assume that individuals are inwardly stubborn, rebellious, and resistant to the very moral laws built into themselves. Unless lawmakers assume that humans, due to their “depraved minds,” posses a moral sense little better than that of wild beasts, then they will fail to frame laws appropriately to prevent individual human actions from being hinderances to the common good, the common good being the entire purpose of forming civilized human society.
For Hooker, government exists not merely to protect individual rights in a state of nature, but to restrain sin (even innate sinful human nature) and direct human action toward the common good. This stands in sharp contrast to Locke’s more optimistic account of the state of nature. For Locke, men in a state of nature are are free, equal, and independent, governed by a law of nature discoverable by reason that teaches “no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions” (Second Treatise §6). Government is instituted primarily as a protective mechanism to secure those natural rights more effectively than individuals would be able to do so in a state of nature. Hooker sees laws as necessary restraints on deeply flawed human beings; Locke sees them as safeguards for naturally rational individual actors. Hooker’s government is proactive and directive toward the common good; Locke’s is more defensive and protective of assumed natural rights.
This highlights a core difference between the underlying assumptions of liberalism and conservatism regarding human nature. Liberalism, in its classical and even modern forms, tends toward optimism about human beings in their natural state: individuals are fundamentally rational, free, and capable of self-government if only liberated from arbitrary or tyrannical power, or some kind of constraint. Conservatism is more cautious about human nature. For the conservative, government is necessary to restrain vice, cultivate virtue, and direct individuals toward the common good. For the liberal, government’s role is primarily to secure pre-existing (and quite abstract!) natural rights. A liberal sees at least potential for self-ordered, societal harmony once artificial constraints have been removed; a conservative denies even that potential, and sees a permanent need for authoritative order and inherited institutions to temper flawed human nature. These contrary views of human nature lie not only at the heart of the philosophical divide between American Tories and the rebel Patriots, but also in the fundamental divide between liberalism and conservatism. The Tory worldview that Loyalist refugees brought to British North America after the American Rebellion eventually contributed to Canada forming with more conservative underpinnings than the quintessentially liberal United States: “Peace, order, and Good Government,” not “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Two Foundations of Society: natural sociability and agreed-upon order
Two foundations there are which bear up public societies; the one, a natural inclination, whereby all men desire sociable life and fellowship; the other, an order expressly or secretly agreed upon touching the manner of their union in living together. The latter is that which we call the Law of a Commonweal, the very soul of a politic body, the parts whereof are by law animated, held together, and set on work in such actions as the common good requireth. (Laws I.10.1)
In Hooker’s political framework, there are two foundations that support every human society: one is that people possess natural sociability, meaning they naturally desire to live together and form communities; the other is that people establish, either expressly or implicitly, some kind of agreed-upon order that determines how they will live together. The second is what Hooker calls “the Law of the Commonweal,” or what we would call today “the common good.” The Law of the Commonweal is like the soul of body that is society, giving life to its parts, holding them together, and directing them toward the actions that are necessary for the common good.
For Hooker, natural sociability and agreed-upon order together constitute the corporate body whose consent, as we has seen, is historic and effectively irrevocable. People are social creatures who have a natural inclination toward an ordered fellowship for the sake of the Commonweal. For Locke, people form political societies not out of natural inclination of sociability oriented to the common good, but through private consent to protect their own individual rights more effectively. Hooker’s society is organically formed by people, who, although flawed and in need of authoritative order, desire to form a corporate whole animated by law for the common good. Locke’s society is an essentially artificial, contractual arrangement.
This contrast between organic society and artificial society is yet another key difference between conservatism and liberalism in general. Anglican Tories during the American Rebellion held a more authentically conservative view of society than the liberal view of their their rebel counterparts. Throughout his Lament, George Grant rightly identifies as liberalism what many Americans today call “conservatism.” He labels American conservatives as “old-fashioned liberals” and argues that “their concentration on freedom from governmental interference has more to do with nineteenth-century liberalism than with traditional conservatism, which asserts the right of the community to restrain freedom in the name of the common good.”
Strife: the end of an individualist view of rights
Men always knew that when force or injury was offered they might be defenders of themselves…. [yet] no man might in reason take upon him to determine his own right, and according to his own determination proceed in maintenance thereof, inasmuch as every man is towards himself and them whom he greatly affecteth partial; and therefore that strifes and troubles would be endless, except they gave their common consent all to be ordered by some whom they should agree upon. (Laws I.10.4-5)
Hooker acknowledges that men have always understood that if another person attempts to harm them by force, they then have a natural right to defend themselves. He contends, however, that no man can reasonably be allowed to decide for himself what his own rights are and then act upon what he individually has decided. The reason for this is clear to Hooker: every man is biased in his own favour and for the benefit of those he loves. Conflicts would be endless unless all gave their “common consent” to be governed by some agreed-upon authority.
This is in profound disagreement with Locke on the consequences of political individualism. Locke’s state of nature, although inconvenient in the sense that individual rights are may not be best protected, is nonetheless populated by rational actors capable of recognizing natural law (if only freed from their constraints) and thereby recognizing for themselves their natural rights. Hooker, while he asserting that humans are inclined toward natural sociability, recognizes that the partiality inherent in every flawed human heart makes such self-directed judgment of rights dangerous and a potential cause of endless strife. Government is not merely a protective contract that societies as collections of individuals can enter or exit at will: it is a necessary restraint on innately selfish human nature.
Anglican Tories would have been wary of the natural and individual rights rhetoric of the Patriot cause. It is noteworthy that Hooker does not deny something akin to the concept of natural human rights. He did acknowledge a natural right to self-defence, but he did not hold to the expansive, pre-political rights language that was characteristic of Locke and later liberalism. Rights, for Hooker (and for the Loyalists), were not natural but were understood within the context of corporate, not contractual, consent. As it turns out, American Tories were justified in their wariness this liberal rights rhetoric. They saw the rights championed by the Patriots turn quickly to strife in the form of bloody Rebellion.
Hooker’s little-known contribution to Canadian conservatism
Contemporary Episcopalians (and the multiple schismatic sects of Anglican heritage) in the Unites States today might object to the presentation of classic Anglican theology as fundamentally contrary the American Revolution. Anglicanism in the newly formed republic had to reimagine itself without Royal Supremacy, without even monarchy, and somehow pray for a new nation born out of the very kind of rebellion expressly forbidden by their own Book of Homilies. The name “Episcopalian” itself is a result of American Anglicans forced to disassociate themselves with England and the Crown. Even a staunch Loyalist clergyman like Samuel Seabury conveniently changed his tone after the Revolution and became the first Bishop (consecrated in the Scottish Episcopal Church) of an independent American Episcopal Church.
Not all clergy could bring themselves to such a modification of their religion. Charles Inglis, rector of Trinity Church in New York, faced the same crisis, but left for Nova Scotia to build up Loyalist Anglicanism in British North America, becoming the first Bishop of what would later be the Anglican Church of Canada. The essence of Richard Hooker’s political philosophy and Loyalist Toryism was carried north by Anglicans like Inglis. George Grant recognized this Hookerian and Loyalist influence as one of the deep sources of Canadian conservatism and of Canada itself, setting it on a path distinct from the Lockean liberalism to the south.
1. William Christian, George Grant: A Biography (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 244.