Book Review: John Dickinson: Conservative Revolutionary by Milton E. Flower

This attractive volume contains a well-written biography of one of the great founders of the United States, known as the “penman of the Revolution,” and a symbol of that event.

In the New World, the American Revolution was another dimension of the English Revolution of the preceding century. After Montesquieu had classified Britain as republican in substance, Americans made their government republican also in form. The United States became the only country founded in the year of the publication of The Wealth of Nations, in which Adam Smith urged free enterprise for the good of mankind. After the adoption of popular forms of government, Americans soon became aware of the major problem of democracy, namely, to what degree the ruling majority should be restricted for the sake of the rights of the individual, among which those of property ranked highly. All this shows that the American Revolution was a conservative revolution.

John Dickinson was a conservative revolutionary. According to Mr. Flower, “Dickinson’s approach was a crystallization of the whig theory that dominated the thinking of American leaders.” Dickinson, whom Voltaire compared to Cicero, was born in 1732 in Talbot County, Maryland, and died in 1808 in Wilmington, Delaware. He studied law at the Middle Temple in London and had an outstanding career, as a lawyer and a public figure. This corresponded with the words of Tacitus he had recorded in his commonplace book, “To despise fame is to despise the Virtues by which it is acquired.”

Aside from occupying important positions in Delaware and Pennsylvania, Dickinson played a major role on the American level. He represented Pennsylvania in the Stamp Act Congress of 1767 and drained the Declaration of Rights and Grievances. In 1767-68, he published the Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies. They reached a wide audience so that prior to independence, Dickinson, with the exception of Benjamin Franklin, was probably the American known to more colonists than any other. They helped turn public opinion against the Townshend Act, under which new duties were to be collected to pay for the salaries of British officials in the colonies.

Flower writes that Dickinson was “the first native political hero: the outstanding harbinger of American protest against arbitrary British measures and a true defender of liberty,” who up to the convening of the Second Continental Congress was recognized as the chief spokesman for American rights. Dickinson was a delegate from Pennsylvania in the First Continental Congress. In the Second Continental Congress, he was the principal author of the Declaration, setting forth the causes and necessity of taking up arms. He helped in the preparation of the first draft of the Articles of Confederation. A signer of the United States Constitution, Dickinson worked for its adoption and defended it in a series of letters signed “Fabius,” the mastery and dignity of which won the praise of George Washington.

Dickinson’s concept of freedom was a comprehensive one. “Men cannot be happy,” he declared, “without freedom; nor free without security of property; nor so secure, unless the sole power to dispose of it be lodged in themselves.” He feared big government and denounced governmental regulations from unfair taxation to restriction of manufacturing to the control of the shipment of goods, and so forth. He wanted liberty to be protected not only from the English, but also from representatives Americans had elected. In 1769, Dickinson wrote that he had been incensed at the Pennsylvania Assembly’s permitting “the vilest acts of despotism.” Similar fears were voiced by Dr. Benjamin Rush, who founded Dickinson College in his honor.

His love of liberty did not make Dickinson favor anarchy or political turbulence. He was convinced that “the Cause of Liberty is a cause of too much dignity to be sullied by turbulence and tumult.” He believed in the rule of law, which to him was the guardian of the individual’s rights from arbitrary government as well as the protector of these rights from infringements by fellow men: “The law delights in certainty and quiet because, without these, there can be no liberty.” A contemporary of Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant and Thomas Jefferson, Dickinson had a strong sense of morals and virtue. When in 1782 an old friend had voiced strong approval of his gubernatorial proclamation against vice and immorality, Dickinson replied that he was convinced “that the happiness of men in this life as well as in the next depends on the prevalence of piety and virtue among them.”

The penman of the American Revolution believed that “every friend to mankind must rejoice, in contemplating the actual and probable consequences of our revolution to other nations.” Never bending to public opinion if he felt it to be wrong, Dickinson urged Americans to favor free government; “As for me, I will assuredly contend for that glorious plan of Liberty handed down to us from our ancestors; but whether my labors shall prove successful or in vain, depends wholly on you, my dear Countrymen.”