Дарон Аджемоглу - Why Nations Fail

A crucial building block of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was the pluralistic nature of interests represented in Parliament. None of the merchants, industrialists, gentry, or aristocracy allied with William of Orange and then with the Hanoverian monarchs, who succeeded Queen Anne in 1714, were strong enough to impose their will unilaterally.

Attempts at restoring the Stuart monarchy continued throughout much of the eighteenth century. After James II’s death in 1701, his son, James Francis Edward Stuart, the “Old Pretender,” was recognized as the lawful heir to the English Crown by France, Spain, the pope, and supporters of the Stuart monarchy in England and Scotland, the so-called Jacobites. In 1708 the Old Pretender attempted to take back the throne with support of French troops, but was unsuccessful. In the ensuing decades there would be several Jacobite revolts, including major ones in 1715 and 1719. In 1745–46, the Old Pretender’s son, Charles Edward Stuart, the “Young Pretender,” made an attempt to take back the throne, but his forces were defeated by the British army.

The Whig political party, which as we saw (this page–this page) was founded in the 1670s to represent the new mercantile and economic interests, was the main organization behind the Glorious Revolution, and the Whigs dominated Parliament from 1714 to 1760. Once in power, they were tempted to use their newly found position to prey on the rights of others, to have their cake and eat it, too. They were no different from the Stuart kings, but their power was far from absolute. It was constrained both by competing groups in Parliament, particularly the Tory Party which had formed to oppose the Whigs, and by the very institutions that they had fought to introduce to strengthen Parliament and to prevent the emergence of a new absolutism and the return of the Stuarts. The pluralistic nature of society that emerged from the Glorious Revolution also meant that the population at large, even those without formal representation in Parliament, had been empowered, and “blacking” was precisely a response by the common people to perceptions that the Whigs were exploiting their position.

The case of William Cadogan, a successful general in the War of the Spanish Succession between 1701 and 1714 and in the suppression of the Jacobite revolts, illustrates the sort of encroachment of common people’s rights by the Whigs that led to blacking. George I made Cadogan a baron in 1716 and then an earl in 1718. He was also an influential member of the Regency Council of Lords Justices, which presided over major affairs of state, and he served as the acting commander in chief. He bought a large property of about a thousand acres at Caversham, about twenty miles west of Windsor. There he built a grand house and ornate gardens and laid out a 240-acre deer park. Yet this property was consolidated by encroaching on the rights of those around the estate. People were evicted, and their traditional rights to graze animals and collect peat and firewood were abrogated. Cadogan faced the wrath of the Blacks. On January 1, 1722, and again in July, the park was raided by mounted and armed Blacks. The first attack killed sixteen deer. Earl Cadogan was not alone. The estates of many notable landowners and politicians were also raided by the Blacks.

The Whig government was not going to take this lying down. In May 1723, Parliament passed the Black Act, which created an extraordinary fifty new offenses that were punishable by hanging. The Black Act made it a crime not only to carry weapons but to have a blackened face. The law in fact was soon amended to make blacking punishable by hanging. The Whig elites went about implementing the law with gusto. Baptist Nunn set up a network of informers in Windsor Forest to discover the identity of the Blacks. Soon several were arrested. The transition from arrest to hanging ought to have been a straightforward affair. After all, the Black Act had already been enacted, the Whigs were in charge of Parliament, Parliament was in charge of the country, and the Blacks were acting directly contrary to the interests of some powerful Whigs. Even Sir Robert Walpole, secretary of state, then prime minister—and like Cadogan, another influential member of the Regency Council of the Lords Justices—was involved. He had a vested interest in Richmond Park in southwest London, which had been created out of common land by Charles I. This park also encroached upon the traditional rights of local residents to graze their animals, hunt hares and rabbits, and collect firewood. But the ending of these rights appears to have been rather laxly enforced, and grazing and hunting continued, until Walpole arranged for his son to become the park ranger. At this time, the park was closed off, a new wall was constructed, and man traps were installed. Walpole liked hunting deer, and he had a lodge built for himself at Houghton, within the park. The animosity of local Blacks was soon ignited.

On November 10, 1724, a local resident outside the park, John Huntridge, was accused of aiding deer stealers and abetting known Blacks, both crimes punishable by hanging. The prosecution of Huntridge came right from the top, initiated by the Regency Council of Lords Justices, which Walpole and Cadogan dominated. Walpole went so far as to extract evidence himself as to Huntridge’s guilt from an informant, Richard Blackburn. Conviction ought to have been a foregone conclusion, but it wasn’t. After a trial of eight or nine hours, the jury found Huntridge innocent, partly on procedural grounds, since there were irregularities with the way the evidence had been collected.

Not all Blacks or those who sympathized with them were as lucky as Huntridge. Though some others were also acquitted or had their convictions commuted, many were hanged or transported to the penal colony of choice at the time, North America; the law in fact stayed on the statute books until it was repealed in 1824. Yet Huntridge’s victory is remarkable. The jury was made up not of Huntridge’s peers, but of major landowners and gentry, who ought to have sympathized with Walpole. But this was no longer the seventeenth century, where the Court of Star Chamber would simply follow the wishes of Stuart monarchs and act as an open tool of repression against their opponents, and where kings could remove judges whose decisions they did not like. Now the Whigs also had to abide by the rule of law, the principle that laws should not be applied selectively or arbitrarily and that nobody is above the law.

THE EVENTS SURROUNDING the Black Act would show that the Glorious Revolution had created the rule of law, and that this notion was stronger in England and Britain, and the elites were far more constrained by it than they themselves imagined. Notably, the rule of law is not the same as rule by law. Even if the Whigs could pass a harsh, repressive law to quash obstacles from common people, they had to contend with additional constraints because of the rule of law. Their law violated the rights that the Glorious Revolution and the changes in political institutions that followed from it had already established for everybody by tearing down the “divine” rights of kings and the privileges of elites. The rule of law then implied that both elites and nonelites alike would resist its implementation.

The rule of law is a very strange concept when you think about it in historical perspective. Why should laws be applied equally to all? If the king and the aristocracy have political power and the rest don’t, it’s only natural that whatever is fair game for the king and the aristocracy should be banned and punishable for the rest. Indeed, the rule of law is not imaginable under absolutist political institutions. It is a creation of pluralist political institutions and of the broad coalitions that support such pluralism. It’s only when many individuals and groups have a say in decisions, and the political power to have a seat at the table, that the idea that they should all be treated fairly starts making sense. By the early eighteenth century, Britain was becoming sufficiently pluralistic, and the Whig elites would discover that, as enshrined in the notion of the rule of law, laws and institutions would constrain them, too.