Thursday, April 24, 2025

From Thomas Jefferson's personal library - 'An Historical Essay on the English Constitution' by Obadiah Hulme (London, 1771)


There were some books that Jefferson had multiple copies of in his personal library; these were books by what he called the "True Whigs". 

One was Obadiah Hulme's 1771 Historical Essay on the English Constitution in (available on Archive.org here). Hulme is an obscure figure, very little is known about him apart from that he also wrote A Plan of Reconciliation Between Great Britain and Her Colonies. It traces the origins of liberty in England to long before Magna Carta, and has some very precise points to make about the Glorious Revolution.

Hulme's "hot take" is that the King wasn't the problem - the Parliament was. Here's a series of extracts on the theme –


1) CONTEXT & KNOWLEDGE OF THE 1689 BILL OF RIGHTS

"... James the Second, inherited all the diabolical spirit of his whole house; was a person that no experience could teach wisdom, laws make honest, nor oaths bind; and therefore the whole nation united, as one man, to exclude him, and his detested race, from the crown of these realms for ever.

We are now come to that epocha, of the English history, commonly called the REVOLUTION; in which the English people were made to believe, that their laws, liberty, and religion were going to be established upon the most constitutional, firm, and stable foundation, under the immortal King William the third, of glorious memory.

Before the parliament, or rather the convention, tendered the crown to William, they made a declaration*, containing, thirteen articles, of some of the rights and liberties of the people, which had been violated in the three late reigns. In the thirteenth of which they declare, That for the redress of grievances, and for the amending, strengthening, and preserving of the laws, Parliaments ought to be held frequently…"

(* Even though Hulme uses the term 'declaration' here, the document presented at the coronation wasn't William's 1688 Declaration but rather the 1689 Bill of Rights.)


2) PARLIAMENT DECEIVES THE REVOLUTION

"… But it appears very evident that, upon this critical occasion, the convention did not do their duty to the people and meant to usurp a power, in the legislative authority, to determine how often the people should exercise their elective rights…

William the third favoured us with this Dutch amendment. But from his time the House of Commons began to act as principals, and to forget their relation to their constituents, as agents, and deputies, from a state formed upon a delegated power; and disposed of the elective rights of the people, as they found it convenient for themselves ..." 


3) WHEN DID IT ALL GO WRONG?

"... I shall therefore not hesitate to date the decline of our constitution, from the REVOLUTION, because the principles of the rebel-parliament of restraining the exercise of the elective power of the people, by acts of parliament, were adopted, into the constitution, at that very critical period of our history.

Hitherto, it had only the prerogative of the crown to struggle with (saving the single instance of the rebel-parliament above mentioned), but at the revolution, which brought William the third to the crown of England, he, and his parliament, began the practice of restraining, the elective power of the people, by the legislative authority..."


4) WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE?

"... Had King William, at the revolution, intended to have established an independent house of commons, he would have restored the constitution to its first principles; and established annual parliaments; and a new house of commons every year. This would have been an infallible remedy, against all corruption; because no corruption can stick upon a body of men, that is continually changing.

As standing water soon stinks, and a running stream throws out all impurities, so a standing house of commons will ever be a standing pool of corruption..."


.................

Thomas Jefferson's inspiration for his own Revolution is right there in black and white.

- see The Lamp of Experience; Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution by Trevor Colbourn, chapter entitled 'Thomas Jefferson and the Rights of Expatriated Men'.

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