The American Tradition An exhibition held at the John Carter Brown Library October 15,1991 - January 15,1992 Providence, Rhode Island The American Tradition D The American Tradition An exhibition held at the John Carter Brown Library October 15, 1991 - January 15, 1992 Providence, Rhode Island Copyright, 1991, the John Carter Brown Library. The John Carter Brown Library is an independently funded and administered center for advanced research in the humanities at Brown University. In order to facilitate and encourage use of the Library's outstanding collection of printed and manuscript materials concerning the Americas from 1493 to ca. 1825, the Library offers fellowships, sponsors lectures and conferences, regularly mounts exhibitions for the public, and publishes catalogues, bibliographies, facsimiles, and other works that interpret the Library's holdings. For further information, write to: John Carter Brown Library Box 1894 Providence, Rhode Island 02912 Preface The John Carter Brown Library exhibition on the "American Tradition" dates back at least to 1942, during the dark days of the war against fascism, when an exhibition with that name, and incorporating many of the same books as are shown here, was mounted at the Library. A version of the "American Tradition" was then revived in 1954, when the threat of McCarthyism to American liberties seemed to call for a return to first principles. The text of this exhibition was published at that time in a handsome pamphlet, with an introduction by the distinguished political science professor, now deceased, Clinton Rossiter. In 1991, much that is most valuable in the American political tradition is on the ascendant globally, and this year happens also to be the 200th anniversary of the ratification of the first ten amendments to the Federal constitution, which constitutes the Bill of Rights of this country. More so than on the past two occasions, therefore, the revival of the exhibition now is a celebration of success, not a candle in the dark. We have considerably revised the original text, to bring it into better focus and to emphasize certain features of our political tradition that were not as fully understood, even as late as 1954, as they are now. With regard to the Bill of Rights, it cannot be emphasized too much that the absence of such a list in the Constitution as originally drawn was not the result of any lack of sympathy with the entitlement of all citizens to such rights. The case was rather that James Madison and others were opposed to an enumeration of rights in the Constitution because they feared that any enumeration could, sometime in the future, be interpreted as an actual limit on the extent of human rights. Whatever was not listed in the first ten amendments, it could then be argued, is not an inalienable right. Such is the danger of a list: it may be regarded as exhaustive. The Bill of Rights, it was understood at the time, was an affirmation of some of the most obvious and basic rights of persons and citizens, not an exhaustive list. Inherent human rights exist prior to any government. They are not "granted" by government as a kind of favor to the people, which then can be withdrawn. The U.S. Constitution was a progressive document for its time. Viewed from the perspective of later years, however, it was obviously flawed because of its acceptance of slavery and its exclusion of women from certain rights of citizenship. Yet the ideals that came to realization in the founding years of the U.S., after centuries of slow development going back to the ancient Greeks, were formulated with sufficient generality and abstraction to allow for continuous growth, development, and reinterpretation. In this respect the American Tradition is, ironically and happily, one of perpetual revolution. * The holdings of the John Carter Brown Library span the entire Western Hemisphere, from Greenland to Patagonia, for the period, roughly, between 1492 and 1825. The Library's collection is equally strong in materials from British America and Spanish America, and encompasses as well Portuguese, French, and Dutch America. At the JCB, the word "America" typically has a very broad reference. In the case of this exhibition, however, the reference is to the precious tradition on which the government of the United States is founded. Norman Fiering Director and Librarian THE AMERICAN TRADITION An exhibition held at the John Carter Brown Library THE BACKGROUND 1. Bible. Interprete Sebastiano Castalione ... Basle, 1556. The Bible was an important influence on the development of American political and social institutions. This Latin version printed in Basle in 1556, translated by Sebastien Castellion, a French Protestant, is appropriate as the first item in the present exhibition both as an edition of the Holy Scriptures and because it contains Castellion's celebrated plea for religious toleration, in the form of a preface addressed to Edward IV of England. Castellion's contention that the sword of the magistrate should not be called upon to enforce religious conformity was a principle that, through various channels, eventually became one of the basic tenets of the American way of life. 2. Le bregement de toutes les estatutes ... correctes par Guillaume Owein_[London, 1552.] Three conceptions of secular law are basic in American political thought — statute law, common law, and natural law. The first of these is represented here by an alphabetical handbook of acts of Parliament in abridged form, compiled in French and published in London in 1522. 1 The American Tradition 3. Henry de Bracton. Henrici de Bracton de Legibus & consuetudinibus Angliae Libri quinq ... London, 1569. Henry de Bracton's treatise, composed between 1250 and 1256 and first printed in 1569, is the second and most famous of the works on the Common Law of England. The Common Law tradition also includes the later compilations and commentaries of Littleton, Coke, and Blackstone. One writer says of the English Common Law that "based on Saxon customs, moulded by Norman lawyers, and jealous of foreign systems, it is, as Bacon says, as mixed as the English language and as truly national. And, like the language, it has been taken into other English-speaking countries, and is the foundation of the law in the United States." The colonial American guarded jealously his right as a free-born Englishman to the benefits that came to him through the operation of this body of principles and procedures. (Lent by the Brown University Library.) 4. John Locke. Two Treatises of Government. ... [London], 1764. Champions of human rights have insisted that these basic attributes of all persons are the legacy of mankind through the natural law. Thus, liberty of worship, as Roger Williams held, is not a right granted to men by their rulers but an inherent right belonging to them by natural law. All men, said the Declaration of Independence, are endowed by their Creator with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This philosophic background, as well as the idea that government was not a natural growth in the life of a people but a social contract based upon the consent of all concerned, came to the attention of thinking men in the colonies from a number of sources, among them John Locke's Letters on Toleration and his Two Treatises of Government, first published in 1688. 2