It’s increasingly common in our day and age, when the State
has (to all intents and purposes) achieved the status of a god, to use the
coercive power of the State to get whatever you want. This, of course, is the exact opposite of the
“act of social justice,” by means of which ordinary people organize to effect
positive change in the institutions of the common good.
The habit of organizing for the common good was, in fact,
the characteristic of American life that struck Alexis de Tocqueville most
forcefully when he visited the United States and ended up writing Democracy in America.
Organizing for the common good, however, typically requires
power, defined as “the ability for doing.”
If you don’t have power, you can’t “do” anything. Power, however, ordinarily comes from capital
ownership.
It is, of course, possible to carry out acts of social
justice using “people power.” The Civil
Rights movement is a graphic example of how effective this can be — in the
short term. The problem is that, unless
the “people power” is first directed at gaining democratic access to the means
of acquiring and possessing private property in capital in order to secure the
gains that are made, the gains will either be ephemeral and the effort will
have to start all over again, or people will look to the State to guarantee
through its coercive power that which people should be able to guarantee for
themselves with capital ownership.
When that happens, the State falls prey to special interests
— whoever can deliver the most votes or money power to keep the politicians in
office. Power tends to corrupt, and the
absolute power of the modern Nation State over every aspect of human life
corrupts absolutely.
Nor is this a recent phenomenon. The trial of Sir Thomas More, an individual
whom Jonathan Swift (not Samuel
Johnson) characterized as “the person of the greatest virtue these islands ever
produced,” is a case in point.
More, despite his lamentable proclivity for puns, knew right
from wrong. He refused to go along with
Henry VIII’s very public program to gain a very private end. Such was the corrupt nature of the Tudor
regime that More wasn’t even allowed to mind his own business and remain
silent. The king wanted More’s
enthusiastic endorsement of something that he and everyone else knew was
wrong. To try and force More’s hand,
various bureaucrats maneuvered More into an untenable situation by inventing
crimes and then accusing him of them.
Unusually for a dramatic work, Adrian Bolt was extraordinarily
accurate in his play about More, A Man
for All Seasons . . . except for attributing Jonathan Swift’s assessment to
Samuel Johnson. . . .
Bolt took much of the dialog of the trial scene in A Man for All Seasons straight out of William
Roper’s and Nicholas Harpsfield’s biographies.
He updated some of it, of course, since most people today wouldn’t know
that calling Richard Rich a “javel” was an insult.
What this writer found interesting is something that Bolt
left out of the trial scene; a legal point that would not have made sense to
non-lawyers and would have been very difficult to portray dramatically: the
fact that, even if More had said exactly what Rich claimed he said in his
perjured testimony, it would not have been treasonous!
It would have been a private conversation (i.e., not a public declaration),
expressing an opinion, and therefore not “malicious,” i.e., intending to deprive the king of his title. Thus, even
if More had made the statement reported by Richard Rich he would not
have been guilty.
Case in point: during the reign of one of the Edwards, I,
II, or III, I don’t recall which one, two Anglo-Irish earls, Fitzgerald and
Butler (traditional enemies, by the way), got into an argument, and Fitzgerald
called the king a few names. Butler
tattled on him to Parliament in an effort to get Fitzgerald attainted a traitor
. . . so that he, Butler, could be awarded the Fitzgerald lands. No self-interest there.
The case came up before Parliament, and Parliament declared
that because the words had been said in private conversation and not in public it was a matter touching the king’s personal dignity, and not
treasonous. It was therefore referred to
the king to see what he wanted to do about it, if anything.
Before the king could take the matter under consideration,
Butler probably figured he was in a great deal of trouble for instigating a lot
of fuss about nothing, and decamped for France.
The king told Fitzgerald to mind his tongue in the future, but otherwise
go home and mind his own business.
I don’t recall how much trouble Butler got into for
commencing what today would be called a frivolous lawsuit and opening himself
up to a charge of malicious prosecution (and wasting Parliament’s and the king’s
time), but it must have been a lot if he ran away to France, leaving his lands
without the king’s permission. I don’t
recall that Butler forfeited his lands, but he could have for his stunt.
Of course, the Plantagenets were elected, not self-appointed
as were the Tudors, and (usually) a bit less dictatorial. A Plantagenet claimant to the throne had to
present his case to Parliament, while the Tudors simply ordered Parliament to
recognize them. Richard III was, I
believe, the last king of England actually to present his case to Parliament.
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