Boston's Samuel Adams and the Glorious Revolution

Samuel Adams was a graduate of Harvard and was one of Boston’s founding Sons of Liberty. He

“… learned about more contemporary writers and philosophers such as John Locke and James Harrington. The events of the Glorious Revolution and the rise of Parliament had spawned a tidal wave of discussion about the relationship of power, liberty, government, and the right of revolution.

Adams nodded quick agreement with Locke's assertion that the goal of good government was to ensure men rights to life, liberty, and property. 

While based on more secular concerns, Locke's concept of the covenant between government and citizens was parallel to Adams's own deep-seated commitment to the covenant of his ancestors …”

– from Samuel Adams : Radical Puritan by Dr. William M. Fowler Jr. (1997)

This extract is from Dr Fowler's 2017 presentation in the video below

"... the first Irish to arrive in Boston were those from the northern part of the island - Ulster

Presbyterians driven off their lands in the late 18th century, they came to America by the tens of thousands. They were not welcomed in Puritan Boston where the the great eminent Divine Cotton Mather proclaimed that "the arrival of these people is simply one more way by which the devil is attempting to unsettle us". Most of these Scots Irish as we have come to call them moved West beyond the Appalachians but some did come to Boston. Of those a number left and trekked north to establish the towns of Londonderry in New Hampshire and the coastal town of Belfast in Maine – names that echoed from the land from which they had come. But others remained here often in distressed conditions. To attend to their needs in 1737 a group of gentlemen merchants and "others of the Irish Nation residing in Boston" founded the Charitable Irish Society "for the relief of their Irish Brethren poor aged and infirmed persons and such as have been reduced produced by sickness shipwreck and other accidental misfortunes". 

Professor Harvey J. Kaye on Thomas Paine – "if it was just a matter of independence the American Revolution would not have been worth pursuing".

Not merely a cosmetic change of nationality. Liberty.

"In fact, Paine later said that if it was just a matter of independence the American Revolution would not have been worth pursuing. What makes it worth pursuing is the opportunity to create a new kind of government and polity..."

1774: “a trade is carried on in human flesh between the Pennsylvanians and the province of Ulster”

In the Belfast News-Letter, 22 March 1774, a report was published, entitled 'Diary of the Proceedings of the House of Commons, Thursday 10 March 1774'. 

It describes the servant markets of Philadelphia – the city where the First Continental Congress would meet from 5 September - 26 October of that year.  The report said that “a trade is carried on in human flesh between the Pennsylvanians and the province of Ulster” – a servant was worth £15, a saddle horse worth between £25-£40. You could buy two Ulster human servants for the same price as a horse.

“… Dr. (John) Williamson's evidence went to prove, that on an average, for the fifty years preceding the late war, 3000 emigrants came yearly from the North of Ireland to settle in Pennsylvania; that since the war, the number varied from two to five or six thousand annually; that during the two last years they might amount to 7500 each year, as that was about the number he was informed, by the officer of health, came into the province; but that he understood this increase of emigration was owing chiefly to the riots, the rise of lands, and that among all he conversed with, none of them attributed it to the decline of the linen manufacture.

On being interrogated more closely, he confessed that some few said the badness of trade and want of employment was the cause, but he could not pretend to tell what trade or what employment they meant. He likewise said that none of them brought the implements of their trade with them, nor, if weavers, followed their trade.

While he was explaining this part of this evidence, he dropped and expression which called forth the attention of the committee. It was on his saying that a labouring man was of more value, or worth more, than a weaver, or almost any other, except a blacksmith, and one or two other trades; by which it appeared, that a trade is carried on in human flesh between the Pennsylvanians and the province of Ulster.

Such of the unhappy natives of that part of Ireland as cannot find employment at home, sell themselves to the masters of vessels, or persons coming from America to deal in that species of merchandise.

When they are brought to Philadelphia, or to the port which is about thirty miles off, they are either sold a-board the vessel, or by public vendue, which sale or arrival there is public notice given of, either by hand-bill, or in the newspapers.

They bring generally fifteen pounds currency at market, are sold for the term of their indentures, which is from two to four years, and on its expiration, receive a suit of cloaths, and implements of husbandry, consisting of an hoe, an axe, and a bill from their task-masters.

Several gentlemen in the committee expressing their abhorrence of such a barbarous traffic, Mr. Cavendish* asked the value of an ox in that country, or the price of beef, to which he answered he did not know; but Mr Rose-Fuller**, resolving to have some information from him, in order to estimate the comparative value between a man and other animals, asked him the price of a saddle-horse, to which the Doctor replied, from £25 to £40 currency. 

The committee broke up at half after eight, and adjourned till Tuesday.”

  

* William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire.

** Rose Fuller was an MP from 1756-77, who owned plantations in the West Indies.

 

W.E.B. Du Bois - "the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America" - an example from South Carolina in 1751

Published in 1896, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870 is a remarkable and comprehensive study - it's online here. Its author, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963), was the first Black American to gain a PhD from Harvard - Carter G. Woodson was the second.

If you text-search it for "Ireland" you get various returns. Slave owners weren't the only ones to benefit from exploiting people. The colonial governments got a tax take from it too. Here's some pretty astonishing tax legislation from the General Assembly of South Carolina on 14 June 1751. It's quite the introduction –

"Whereas, the best way to prevent the mischiefs that may be attended by the great importation of negroes into this Province, will be to establish a method by which such importation should be made a necessary means of introducing a proportionable number of white inhabitants into the same...

 

Here's the section about 'negro' slaves –

"... That from and immediately after the passing of this Act, there shall be imposed on and paid by all and every the inhabitants of this Province, and other person and persons whosoever, first purchasing any negro or other slave, hereafter to be imported, a certain tax or sum of:

• ten pounds current money for every such negro and other slave of the height of four feet two inches and upwards;

• and for every one under that height, and above three feet two inches, the sum of five pounds like money;

• and for all under three feet two inches, (sucking children excepted) two pounds and ten shillings like money..."

And here's the section about 'poor foreign protestant' indentured servants –

"... the same is hereby applied for payment of the sum of:

• six pounds proclamation money to every poor foreign protestant whatever from Europe, or other poor protestant (his Majesty's subject) who shall produce a certificate under the seal of any corporation, or a certificate under the hands of the minister and church-wardens of any parish, or the minister and elders of any church, meeting or congregation in Great Britain or Ireland, of the good character of such poor protestant, above the age of twelve and under the age of fifty years;

• and for payment of the sum of three pounds like money, to every such poor protestant under the age of twelve and above the age of two years; who shall come into this Province within the first three years of the said term of five years, and settle on any part of the southern frontier lying between Pon Pon and Savannah rivers, or in the central parts of this Province," etc. For the last two years the bounty is £4 and £2."

Black people categorised and valued by height; Europeans categorised and valued by age. And the government getting its tax cut. What a shocking era. This is way beyond my area of knowledge, so I'm just posting it here for others to follow up on. 

• Du Bois Wikipedia page is online here.

William Smith of New York, 1777 – "I am one of King William's Whigs: for Liberty and the Constitution".

William Smith (1728-93) was one of the New York "Presbyterian Triumvirate" of lawyers who organised legal resistance to the 1765 Stamp Act. However, in later years, he decided to not support full independence for the American colonies.

In October 1777 British regiments burned down a number of Whig properties in New York state, including Declaration of Independence co-author Robert R. Livingston's home manor of Clermont. A few weeks later on Christmas Day,  Livingston and James Duane said to Smith "you'll become a Republican too". Smith told them –

"If you wanted a new Government, it should have been on the British model. I am a Whig of the old stamp - no Roundhead - one of King William's Whigs: for Liberty and the Constitution". 

• In 1780 during the War of Independence, Smith wrote The Candid Retrospect; or The American War Examined, by Whig Principles, the text of which is online here.

• The Library of Congress publication The Development of a Revolutionary Mentality: Papers presented at the first symposium, May 5 and 6, 1972 is online here, with excellent papers by a number of academics such as Caroline Robbins ('European Republicanism in the Century and a Half Before 1776'), Pauline Maier ('The Beginnings of American Republicanism, 1765-1776'), Mary Beth Norton ('The Loyalist Critique of the Revolution'), and Esmond Wright ('Men With Two Countries'). Here's some from Maier –

Americans of the mid 18th century held defined and emphatic views on government. They were “no friends to republicanism,” as Charleston’s Christopher Gadsden emphasised in 1763, but instead “ardent lovers” of the British Constitution, which was for them “the Work of Ages... the Envy and Admiration of the Universe, the Glory of the English Nation.” 

No form of government seemed so fitted for the preservation of liberty. King, Lords, and Commons shared power in a mixed structure that prevented any one of them from pursuing its own interests at the cost of the nation’s freedom. 

Even the colonial Sons of Liberty, who organised to resist the Stamp Act in 1765 and 1766, were outspoken in their conviction of “the Superior Excellence of the English Constitution to that of any other Form of Government upon Earth.” And should independence ultimately become necessary—a prospect the Sons of Liberty envisaged only with the “darkest Gloom and Horror”—they assumed that the institutions of a separate America would resemble those of the mother country, that ex-colonists would set about “erecting an Independent Monarchy here in America.”

• Dictionary of Canadian Biography entry on William Smith is online here.

Daniel J. Boorstin on the Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution (1965)

I still encounter people who can't, or won't, grasp that 1776 was the outworking of 1688. The Northern Ireland ingrained worldview - where every single thing is perceived only by how it applies to our two competing nationalisms - is a mental prison. Apparently it's a psychological condition called belief perseverance.

There's going to be a lot of it this year – 1688 was loyalty, 1776 was disloyalty. Wrong and wrong again. 1688 and 1776 were both about liberty.

Here's yet another evidence, from Daniel J. Boorstin. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 and was the Librarian of Congress from 1975-1987.

"... The continuity of American history is impressive. It should not be obscured by any supposed “revolution.” To many thoughtful colonists the War for Independence seemed but a logical sequel to British history of the previous century and a half. 

From a British Whig point of view, it was a second civil war, a fight to extend and localize in America the principles of the Glorious Revolution of 1689. And it provided the basis for a secessionist tradition which shook the new nation in the 19th century. The struggle for a new nation was not to be completed until 1865 or after ..."

- from The Americans: The National Experience (1965).

• Boorstin also gave the BBC Reith Lectures in 1974, which are on iPlayer here.

Samuel Adams (and Dr Thomas Young?) – "The Rights of the Colonists" (1772)

Also known as The Votes and Proceedings of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of the Town of Boston, this was authored by the 50 year old Boston Puritan, the Harvard graduate and tax collector Samuel Adams - some sources say that he was assisted in it by 44 year old Dr Thomas Young. It's sparkling stuff. Adams is said to have been "vehemently Christian" whereas Young, despite his parents being Presbyterians from Ireland, was a Deist.

Here is the text. Much of it is straight out of John Locke's Two Treatises of Government - which is no surprise as it's known that Thomas Young discussed Locke with Ethan Allen in the 1760s, with whom he co-wrote Reason, The Only Oracle of Man.

Young relocated to Boston where he forged his revolutionary friendship with Samuel Adams. In one of Young's letters to Adams, he signed it off as "your friend and fellow countryman, fellow sufferer and incessant fellow laborer, Thos. Young.” 

The Rights of the Colonists states that there are three types of liberty: Natural Rights of the Colonists as Men; Natural Rights of the Colonists as Christians; Natural Rights of the Colonists as Subjects. It strongly hinted at independence for America –

"Our Ancestors received from King William and Queen Mary a Charter, by which it was understood by both Parties in the contract, that such a proportion or balance was fixed; and therefore every thing which renders any one Branch of the Legislative more independent of the other two than it was originally designed, is an alteration of the Constitution as settled by the Charter; and as it has been, until the establishment of this Revenue, the constant practice of the general Assembly to provide for the support of Government, so it is an essential part of our Constitution, as it is a necessary means of preserving an Equilibrium, without which we cannot continue a free State."

And this, against the establishment of a state religion which would empower one denomination over all of the others –

"As our Ancestors came over to this Country that they might not only enjoy their civil but their religious Rights, and particularly desired to be freed from the Prelates, who in those times cruelly persecuted all who differed in sentiment from the established Church; we cannot see without concern, the various at|tempts which have been made, and are now making, to establish an American Episcopate. Our Episcopal brethren of the Colonies do en|joy, and nightfully ought over to enjoy, the free exercise of their Religion; but as an American Episcopate is by no means essential to that free exercise of their Religion, we can|not help fearing that they who are so warmly contending for such an Establishment, have Views altogether inconsistent with the universal and peaceful enjoyment of our Christian privileges: And doing or attempting to do any thing which has even the remotest tendency to endanger this Enjoyment, is justly looked upon a great Grievance, and also an Infringement of our Rights; which is not barely to exercise, but peaceably and securely to enjoy, that Liberty with which CHRIST hath made us free." 

 

It was published under the auspices of the Boston Committee of Correspondence. Check it out online at the Massachusetts Historical Society website here.

• Then Again: Vermont wouldn’t have been Vermont without Thomas Young - article about Thomas Young on VTDigger.org here, by Mark Bushnell

• Then Again: American Revolution’s ‘necessary man’ mentored Ethan Allen - article about Thomas Young's friendship with Ethan Allan on VTDigger.org here, by Mark Bushnell

• Pauline Maier's paper for the 1976 Bicentennial, Reason and Revolution: The Radicalism of Dr. Thomas Young, is on JSTOR here.

Bernard Bailyn - "The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution" (1967)

(Photo above, of Bernard Bailyn and President Barack Obama, is from the New York Times website)

...........

If, like me, you're reading a lot about the Declaration of Independence, this book provides essential context. Bernard Bailyn (1922-2020; Wikipedia here) was one of the world's authorities on the pre-Revolution era. Published in 1967, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution won the Pulitzer Prize in 1968. There's a scanned version on Archive.org here. There is a page about it on Wikipedia here.

Liberty is woven throughout – as the antidote or counterbalance to power. Independence is not liberty, nationality is not liberty. Bailyn observes that the printing press was the wellspring of liberty, with 400 pamphlets printed on the subject before the Declaration:

"... pamphlets appeared year after year and month after month in the crisis of the 1760s and 1770s. More than 400 of them bearing on the Anglo-American controversy were published between 1750 and 1776; over 1500 appeared by 1783. Explanatory as well as declarative, and expressive of the beliefs, attitudes, and motivations as well as of the professed goals of those who led and supported the Revolution, the pamphlets are the distinctive literature of the Revolution. They reveal, more clearly than any other single group of documents, the contemporary meaning of that transforming event..."

And, revolution as duty when power threatens liberty. 

'... Samuel Adams, speaking for the Boston Town Meeting, declared, "that ambition and lust of power above the law are ... predominant passions in the breasts of most men." These are instincts that have "in all nations combined the worst passions of the human heart and the worst projects of the human mind in league against the liberties of mankind." Power always and everywhere had had a pernicious, corrupting effect upon men. It "converts a good man in private life to a tyrant in office" ... and nothing within man is sufficiently strong to guard against these effects of power...'

The Reluctant Rebels, by Lynn Montross (1950)

Of the 340 members of the Continental Congresses from 1774-1780, only one man was a constant. Charles Thomson. Read the published Journals of the Continental Congress which Thomson was responsible for keeping through all those years and you'll see, as this book title says, they were reluctant rebels. They didn't want to be independent. They were:

• Forced to resist a London government who had withdrawn the liberties they’d had since 1689.

• Forced to declare independence in 1776 from a London government and King who refused to restore those liberties to them. 

• Forced into a war to ensure that independence.

• Then, forced to resist the new American élite, to secure those liberties, in a new Bill of Rights in 1789, a century after the original.

• And despite all that, forced to accept new taxes when George Washington himself led an American army to crush their resistance in 1794.

 

Edward Rutledge to Thomas Bee, 25 November 1775 - "an abundance of letters from gentlemen in Ireland to their friends in Boston" – British Army recruitment efforts in Ireland, summer 1775

Context: War had started, at Lexington and Concord, on 19 April 1775. The Siege of Boston began too, with the Patriot colonists taking over the city, and seizing ships offshore...

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

The father of Edward Rutledge (Wikipedia here) was from somewhere in Ulster, probably Co Tyrone. The family were likely to have been Border Reiver Routledges. He emigrated to South Carolina in 1735. 

Edward was born there in 1749. He was elected to the South Carolina General Assembly, and was later sent as a South Carolina delegate to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

While there, Edward wrote to fellow South Carolina Assembly member Thomas Bee (Wikipedia here), about the recent seizure of letters on a ship that arrived at Boston from Ireland. These letters revealed remarkable detail about British Army recruitment efforts there. Check this out (the bulleting format is mine, to hopefully help with accessibility) –

November 25th, 1775.

I should have done myself the pleasure of writing to you by the return of the express, but was so ill at that time, that I found it impossible. I am now much better, but still greatly distressed with a cough, which I see no prospect of getting rid of till I bend my course to a warmer and better climate. — So much for myself.

Some time last summer, the officers at Boston fitted out a large schooner, and despatched her to Ireland for a supply of tongues, wines, &c.;

On her return a few days ago, she was intercepted by one of our armed vessels in continental pay, and brought into harbour, with all her prog, and an abundance of letters from gentlemen in Ireland to their friends in Boston. These letters have been opened, and have afforded much amusement and some intelligence —

We find by them, 

• that the administration are determined, at all events, to attempt the reduction of America, 

• that Boston will be made strong by twenty-two or twenty-five thousand men, in the course of next winter and spring; 

• that Lord Kenmare has added to the king's bounty, that of ten and sixpence per man, for all who shall enlist under Major Roche; that the city of Cork has followed the example, but more extensively; 

• that Lord Bellamont has the direction of the recruiting parties in that part of the kingdom; that the Roman Catholic priests have been applied to, to stimulate their flocks against us, which they have promised to do if the regiments to be raised be officered by gentlemen of their religious persuasion; in short, 

• that all the powers of hell are to be let loose upon us.

 

On the other hand, intelligence, by the same conveyance, informs us: 

• that all the whigs in the kingdom, (a very few excepted) are warmly interested in our cause, 

• that the common people are not less well affected; 

• that several towns have resolved not to permit any officers to recruit amongst them, and have destroyed the drums of those who have been hardy enough to attempt it; and 

• that the dislike to the service is so great and so general, that those employed therein meet with little or no success...

The letter continues with Rutledge's thoughts on how events were shaping up in America:

"... we have lived in so unsettled a condition, for such a length of time, that I now wish to fight it fairly out, and either establish a connexion consistent with the principles of liberty, and placed upon a permanent basis, or have nothing more to do with them;— the latter I think most likely to be the case. 

The destruction of our towns, and the wanton manner in which it has been effected, a mode of warfare totally exploded among civilized nations, give us little reason to think that they will attempt to make peace; indeed if it be not soon set about, it will be in vain to wish for it for a long while; the minds of the people will be so inflamed by the acts of cruelty hitherto exercised, and daily committing against them, that they will not endure a connexion with men of such savage dispositions."

William Gerard Hamilton MP, 1767 - "every man is obliged to have a musket, a pound of powder ... you have no right to tax them"

William Gerard Hamilton (1729-96) was the Chief Secretary for Ireland and MP for Killybegs in Donegal. After all of the protests about the 1765 Stamp Act, and then its withdrawal, in 1767 Hamilton wrote a warning letter to John Calcraft:

"As to America, I wish we may not burn our fingers, and do our enemies work for them, by quarrelling among ourselves.

There are, in the different provinces, above a million of people, of which we may suppose at least 200,000 men able to bear arms; and not only able to bear arms, but having arms in their possession, unrestrained by any iniquitous Game Act.

In the Massachusetts government particularly, there is an express law, by which every man is obliged to have a musket, a pound of powder, and a pound of bullets always by him: so there is nothing wanting but knapsacks (or old stockings, which will do as well) to equip an army for marching, and nothing more than a Sartorius or a Spartacus at their head requisite to beat your troops and your custom-house officers out of the country, and set your laws at defiance.

There is no saying what their leader may put them upon; but if they are active, clever people, and love mischief as well as I do peace and quiet, they will furnish matter of consideration to the wisest among you, and perhaps dictate their own terms at last, as the Roman people formerly in their famous secession upon the sacred mount.

For my own part, I think you have no right to tax them, and that every measure built upon this supposed right stands upon a rotten foundation, and must consequently tumble down, perhaps, upon the heads of the workmen."

Nationality is not the same as Liberty

 On 28 February 1776, Patrick Henry walked away from an offer to be a colonel in the Continental Army. He had famously announced "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!" less than a year before, at the Second Virginia Convention in St John's Church in Richmond on 23 March 1775. He was the commander of all of the patriot militias in Virginia. So why a demotion? Orthodox histories have presented it as a personal affront, but it was an ideological difference.

Henry's focus was on the rights of the people in America. His objective was not to merely replace London rule with a new ruling class of American élites. As Tad Stoermer says in a recent YouTube video:

"the patriot resistance drew on mostly ... the idea that a community exists to promote the mutual safety and prosperity of its members - all of them - and that authority is only legitimate when it serves that purpose. Rights were what the community used to defend itself against power that had stopped serving it and started serving itself".

The danger of this year's USA250 commemorations is that they will reinforce nationalisms – American, British, and Irish – rather than explain rights and liberty. 

Here in the constitutional ambiguity of Northern Ireland, that means being dragged into the "two tribes" mire. People are so invested in their binary choice of nationality that they can't think beyond it. And challenging that binary risks a backlash.

Northern Ireland / the island of Ireland is a poisoned society – but there are many lucrative careers in poison management.

Nationality is not the same as liberty.

The Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, North Carolina, 27 February 1776

It was the backcountry's equivalent of the Battle of Lexington and Concord. It was the last "Highland Charge"...

Thomas McKean, two weeks before the Declaration...

Thomas McKean's father was born in Ballymoney, and according to a 1970s biography, both of his grandfathers had come to Ulster from Scotland, and were involved at Derry and the Boyne. On his maternal side, his grandfather carried battle scars for the rest of his life.

McKean wrote this letter about two weeks before the Declaration of Independence, which he would be involved in finalising the wording of on 2-4 July, rallying the Associators militias of Pennsylvania:

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

To the Associators of Pennsylvania :

Gentlemen: —

The only design of our meeting together was to put an end to our own power in the province, by fixing upon a plan for calling a convention, to form a government under the authority of the people. But the sudden and unexpected separation of the late assembly, has compelled us to undertake the execution of a resolve of Congress, for calling forth 4500 of the militia of the Province, to join the militia of the neighboring colonies, to form a camp for our immediate protection.. We presume only to recommend the plan we have formed to you, trusting that in a case of so much consequence, your love of virtue and zeal for liberty will supply the want of authority delegated to us expressly for that purpose.

We need not remind you that you are now furnished with new motives to animate and support your courage. You are now about to contend against the power of Great Britain, in order to displace one set of villains to make room for another. Your arms will not be enervated in the day of battle with the reflection, that you are to risk your lives or shed your blood for a British tyrant; or that your posterity will have your work to do over again. You are about to contend for permanent freedom, to be supported by a government which will be derived from yourselves, and which will have for its object, not the emolument of one man or class of men only, but the safety, liberty and happiness of every individual in the community. We call upon you, therefore, by the respect and obedience which are due to the authority of the United Colonies to concur in this important measure. The present campaign will probably decide the fate of America. It is now in your power to immortalize your names, by mingling your achievements with the events of the year 1776 — a year which we hope will be famed in the annals of history to the end of time, for establishing upon a lasting foundation the liberties of one quarter of the globe.

Remember the honor of our colonies is at stake. Should you desert the common cause at the present juncture, the glory you have acquired by your former exertions of strength and virtue, will be tarnished; and our friends and brethren, who are now acquiring laurels in the most remote parts of America, will reproach us and blush to own themselves natives or inhabitants of Pennsylvania.

But there are other motives before you. Your houses, your fields, the legacies of your ancestors, or the dearbought fruits of your own industry, and your liberty, now urge you to the field. These cannot plead with you in vain, or we might point out to you further, your wives, your children, your aged fathers and mothers, who now look up to you for aid, and hope for salvation in this day of calamity, only from the instrumentality of your swords.

Remember the name of Pennsylvania. Think of your ancestors and of your posterity.

Signed by the unanimous order of the conference,

Thomas McKean, President.

June 25. 1776.

William Findley on the separation of Church and State

(below is from the Online Library of Liberty, here).

"All who are acquainted with the nature of government, must at once see the absurdity of considering civil government, and the government of the church of Christ, as different branches of the same government.

In all free governments, the governing power is separated into different departments or branches, such as, the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary. These three being exercised by one person, or by one body of men, is, in the opinion of the celebrated Montesquieu, the definition of tyranny….

Now, I enquire, what place or department, in this machine of government, has he left for the ecclesiastical branch, wherein to operate?

It could not act in passing laws—that belongs to the legislature.

It could not execute laws—that belongs to the executive.

It cannot be employed in applying the law to cases as they arise—this belongs to the judiciary. 

Ecclesiastical government, as instituted in national churches, by human authority, is in so far, the ordinance of man; but few of these governments give that branch much share even in its own government".

William Findley

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William Findley reminds us that there is no place within the checks and balances of the modern constitutional state for “ecclesiastical government” to influence the operation of civil government. It may serve a use for the voluntary members of a particular church or religious body to have an “ecclesiastical government” which governs their affairs and their affairs only, but given the enormous civil and military conflicts which emerged during the Reformation the presence of a “4th” branch within the civil government to serve the needs of “the church” would undermine the civil peace which had emerged as a result of religious toleration and “the separation of church and state”.